The Jewel That Was Ours by Colin Dexter Read Free Book Online

(1840-1901)
    Walter Pater . . .

    That was him!
    It took Ashenden some twenty minutes or so, treading through overgrown grasses, and parting ivy from many semi-decipherable inscriptions, to find the strong, squat cross:

    In te, Domine, speravi WALTER PATER Died July 30 1894

    Then, almost immediately, he saw that other stone, the one he was looking for - an even simpler memorial:

    JAMES ALFRED BOWDEN 1956 - 1981 Requiescat

    For several minutes Ashenden stood there silently under the darkening shadows: it seemed a wonderfully unforbidding piece of ground in which to find a final resting-place. Yet no one wanted to die - certainly not John Ashenden, as he remained standing by the grave, wondering whether Jimmy Bowden, during the pain of his terminal illness, had ever recanted the dogmatic and confident atheism he had once
    propounded in the early hours of one most memorable day. But Ashenden doubted it. He recalled, too, that final postcard to which he had never replied . . .
    There was no one else in the cemetery; no one there to observe the strange little incident when Ashenden, after looking round about him for a last reassurance, parted the thickly twined rootage of ivy at the rear of Bowden's small cross, took something from the right-hand pocket of his raincoat, and laid it carefully at the foot of the stone before replacing the ivy and patting it, almost effeminately, back into its pristine state.
    He was in no hurry, and on his leisurely way back to the cemetery gate he stopped and read several of the gravestones, including 'Kenneth Grahame, who passed the river on the 6th July 1932, leaving childhood and literature through him the more blest for all time'. Ashenden loved the wording. He looked vaguely for 'Theodore and Sibley, Drowned (1893)'; but it was too dark now, and he could find no clue as to who they were and where they had perished.
    He regained the main street, and on his way back to The Randolph called in the back bar of The King's Arms to order a pint of cask-conditioned Flowers. For which choice, Inspector Morse would have been quietly proud of him.
    Shirley Brown had disengaged her arm as she and Eddie Stratton crossed into Beaumont Street at ten-past five.
    'Whatever you say, Ed, I'd still like to know where he was going.'
    'Like I say, forget it, Shirl!'
    'He was trying to get out of sight - quick. You know he was.' 'You still reckon he saw us?'
    'I still reckon he saw us,' said Shirley Brown, in her Californian drawl. They were the only two in the guest-lift; and Eddie bade his temporary leave as they reached the third floor.
    'See you in a little while, Shirl.'
    'Yeah. And tell Laura I hope her feet are rested.'
    Eddie Stratum had made no reply as he walked towards Room 310.

10

    A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds
    (Ralph Waldo Emerson, Essays)

    Too long had Morse been in the police business for him to believe that a death and a theft, or (as he was now beginning to think) a theft and a death, were likely to be a pair of fortuitously contingent events. Not that he was even remotely hopeful about the theft. He would never mind pitting his brains against a murderer; but he'd always discounted his chances against a reasonably competent burglar - even, come to think of it, against a reasonably incompetent burglar. And if, as seemed the consensus of opinion now, Laura Stratton had left her door ajar for her husband to let himself in; if she had carelessly left her handbag on the bedside table immediately inside her partially opened door; if someone had known of these things - even if someone had not known of these things . . . well, certainly, the odds were pretty strong on the prompt disappearance of the handbag. Give it fifteen minutes? At the outside, thought Morse. We all might pray (some of us might pray) 'Lead us not into temptation', yet most people seemed perfectly happy to stick their cameras, binoculars, radios, squash rackets, handbags . . . mm . . . yes, stick any of 'em