The Jewel That Was Ours

'Can I buy you a drink, Inspector?' The voice was slightly husky, slightly slurred, and more than slightly disturbing.

Morse had no need to look round. He said, 'Let me buy you one, Sheila.'

'No! I insist.' She took his arm, gently squeezing it against herself, then pressed her lips — so full, so dry! — against a cheek that had been hurriedly ill-shaven some fourteen hours earlier.

For the moment, Morse said nothing. The day that would soon be drawing to its close had been one of the most wonderful he had experienced: the theft, the murder, the link between the theft and the murder — yes, all now known. Well, almost known. And he'd solved it all himself. He'd needed help — yes! Help in crossing the 't's and barring the '7's and dotting the 'j's. Of course he had. Yet it had been his own vision, his own analysis, his own solution.

His.

'What are you doing here?' he asked.

'Annual Dance. Lit and Phil Society. Bloody booring!'

'You with a partner?'

'You don't come to these do's without a partner.'

'So?'

'So he kept trying to get a bit too intimate during the Veleta.'

'Veleta? God! That's what I used to dance. '

'We're none of us getting much younger.'

'And you didn't want — you didn't want that?'

'I wanted a drink. That's why I'm here.'

'And you told him. '

'. to bugger off.'

Morse looked at her now — perhaps properly for the first time. She wore a black dress reaching to just above her knees, suspended from her shoulders by straps no thicker than shoe-laces; black stockings, encasing surprisingly slim legs, and very high-heeled red shoes that elevated her an inch or so above Morse as he stood up and offered her his stool. He smiled at her, with what seemed warmth and understanding in his eyes.

'You look happy,' she said.

But Morse knew, deep down, that he wasn't really happy at all. For the last hour his progressively alcoholised brain had reminded him of the consequences of justice (small 'j'): of bringing a criminal before the courts, ensuring that he was convicted for his sins (or was it his crimes?), and then getting him locked up for the rest of his life, perhaps, in a prison where he would never again go to the WC without someone observing such an embarrassingly private function, someone smelling him, someone humiliating him. (And, yes, it was a him.) Humiliating him in that little paddock of privacy just outside the back of the house where he would try so hard to keep all that remained of his dignity and self-esteem.

'I'm not happy,' said Morse.

'Why not?'

'G and T, is it?'

'How did you guess?'

'I'm a genius.'

'I'm quite good at some things myself.'

'Yes?'

'Do you want me to make you happy for tonight?' Her voice was suddenly more sober, more sharply etched — and yet more gentle, too.

Morse looked at her: looked at the piled-up hair above her wistful face; looked down at the full and observably bra-less bosom; looked down at the taut stretch of black stocking between the knee and the thigh of her crossed right leg. He was ready for her, and she seemed to sense it.

'I've got a wonderfully comfortable bed,' she whispered into his left ear.

'So have I!' said Morse, oddly defensive.

'But we wouldn't argue too much about that sort of thing, would we?' Sheila smiled and reached for her drink. 'Aren't you having another one?'

Morse shook his head: ' 'It provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance.' '

'Do you know, I've never met anyone before who's quoted that thing correctly.'

Perhaps she shouldn't have said it, for suddenly its implications stirred Morse to an irrational jealousy. But soon, as she linked her arm possessively through his, collected her coat from Cloaks, then steered him across towards the taxi-rank in St. Giles', he knew that his lust for her had returned; and would remain.

'I ought to make it quite clear to you, ma'am,' he murmured in the taxi, 'that any knickers you may be wearing may well be taken down and used in evidence.'

For the first time in many days, Sheila Williams felt inordinately happy. And was to remain so — if truth is to be told — until the early dawn of the following day when Morse left her to walk slowly to his bachelor flat — only a short distance away up the Banbury Road — bareheaded in the beating rain which an hour since had obliquely streaked the windows of Sheila Williams's front bedroom.