The Jewel That Was Ours

'So she did, Morse! So she did!'

Strange looked at his watch again and tilted his heavily jowled head: 'What put you on to 'em? The Aldriches?'

'I should have got there earlier, I suppose. Especially after that first statement Aldrich made, about his fictional trip to London. He wrote it straight out — only three crossings-out in three pages. And if only I'd looked at what he'd crossed out instead of what he'd left in! He was writing under pressure and, if my memory serves me, he crossed out things like 'we could have done something' and 'our telephone number'. He was worried about giving himself away, because he was writing like a married man. He was a married man. And there was another clue, too. He even mentioned his daughter's name in that statement: 'Pippa' — which as you know, sir, is a diminutive of 'Philippa'.'

Strange rose to his feet and pulled on his heavy winter coat. 'Some nice bits of thinking, Morse!'

'Thank you, sir!'

'I'm not talking about you! It's this Roscoe woman. Very able little lady! Did you know that a lot of 'em have been little—these big people: Alexander, Augustus, Attila, Nelson, Napoleon. '

'They tell me Bruckner was a very small man, sir.'

'Who?'

The two men smiled briefly at each other as Strange reached the door.

'Just a couple of points, Morse. How did Janet Roscoe get rid of that handbag?'

'She says she walked round the corner into Cornmarket, and went into Salisbury's, and stuck it in the middle of the leather handbags on sale there.'

'What about the murder weapon? You say you've not recovered that?'

'Not yet. You see, she walked along to the Radcliffe Infirmary, so she says, and saw a notice there about an Amnesty — for anything you'd had from the place which you should have returned: 'Amnesty — No Questions Asked', it said. She just handed it in.'

'Why haven't you got it, then?'

'Sergeant Lewis went along, sir. But there were seventy-one walking sticks in the Physio department there.'

'Oh!'

'Do you want any forensic tests on them?'

'Waste of money.'

'That's what Sergeant Lewis said.'

'Good man, Lewis!'

'Excellent man!'

'Not so clever as this Roscoe woman, though.'

'Few cleverer.'

'She'd be useful in the Force.'

'No chance, sir. She had a thorough medical yesterday. They don't even give her a fortnight.'

'Any doctor who tells you when you're going to die is a bloody fool!'

'Not this one,' said Morse quietly — and sadly.

'Think you'll get that jewel back?'

'Hope so, sir. But they won't, will they?'

'Say that again?'

'The jewel that was theirs, sir. They won't ever get her back, will they?'

Was Morse imagining things? For a second or two he thought that Strange's eyes might well have glistened with a film of tears. But there was no way of telling this for certain, for Strange had suddenly looked down fixedly at the threadbare carpet beside the door, before departing for his lunch with the Chief Constable.

CHAPTER SIXTY

Accipe fraterno multum manantia fletu,

Atque in perpetuum, frater, ave atque vale

(Catullus, Poem CI)

A WEEK AFTER HIS meeting with Strange, Morse took the bus down from North Oxford to Cornmarket. He had managed two complete days' furlough, had re-read Bleak House, listened again (twice) to Parsifal, and (though he would never have admitted it) begun to feel slightly bored.

Not today, though!

When he had said farewell to Sheila Williams the previous week, he had suggested a second rendezvous. He was (he assured her) a reasonably civilised sort of fellow, and it would be pleasant for both of them to meet again fairly soon, and perhaps have lunch together: the Greek Taverna, perhaps, up in Summertown? So a time and a