Read The Jewel That Was Ours Online
Authors: Colin Dexter
The Jewel That Was Ours
Colin Dexter graduated from Cambridge in 1953. He spent his years wholly in education until his retirement in 1988, first teaching Greek and Latin, then moving to Oxford in 1966 to work for the University Examination Board, where he fought in vain against the coursework philosophy of the GCSE.
His first Inspector Morse novel,
Last Bus to Woodstock,
was published in 1975, and in addition to winning the Gold Dagger Award for
The Wench is Dead,
Colin Dexter has also been awarded Silver Daggers by the Crime Writers' Association for
Service of All the Dead
and
The Dead of Jericho.
The Inspector Morse novels have, with huge success, been translated for the small screen in Central Television's series starring John Thaw and Kevin Whately.
His interests range from listening to
The Archers
to setting crosswords.
COLIN DEXTER
THE JEWEL THAT WAS OURS
CRIME
PAN BOOKS
IN ASSOCIATION WITH MACMILLAN LONDON
First published 1991 by Macmillan London Limited This edition first published 1992 by Pan Books Ltd Cavaye Place, London SW10 9PG in association with Macmillan London Limited
135798642
© Colin Dexter 1991
ISBN 0 330 32419 5
The right of Colin Dexter to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act
1988.
Printed in England by Clays Ltd, St Ives plc
This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser
Espied the god with gloomy soul
The prize that in the casket lay,
Who came with silent tread and stole
The jewel that was ours away.
(Lilian Cooper,
1904-1981)
Acknowledgements
The author and publishers wish to thank the following who have kindly given permission for use of copyright materials:
Extract from
Oxford
by Jan Morris published by Oxford University Press 1987, reprinted by permission of Oxford University Press;
Extract from the introduction by Lord Jenkins of Hillhead to
The Oxford Story,
published by Heritage Projects (Management) Ltd, reprinted by permission of the Peters Fraser & Dunlop Group Ltd;
Extract from
Lanterns and Lances,
published by Harper & Row and by Hamish Hamilton in the United Kingdom and Commonwealth, copyright © 1961 James Thurber. Copyright © 1989 Rosemary A. Thurber;
Julian Symons for the extract from
Bloody Murder;
Marilyn Yurdan for the extract from
Oxford: Town & Gown;
Basil Swift for the extracts from
Collected Haiku;
Martin Amis for the extract from
Other People,
published by Jonathan Cape;
Max Beerbohm for the extract from
Mainly on the Air,
published by William Heinemann Ltd;
A. P. Watt Ltd on behalf of Crystal Hale and Jocelyn Herbert for the extract from 'Derby Day’,
Comic Opera,
by A. P. Herbert;
Extract from
Aspects of Wagner
by Bryan Magee, reprinted by permission of the Peters Fraser & Dunlop Group Ltd;
The Estate of Virginia Woolf for the extract from
Mrs Dalloway,
published by The Hogarth Press.
Every effort has been made to trace all the copyright holders but if any has been inadvertently overlooked, the author and publishers will be pleased to make the necessary arrangement at the first opportunity.
This novel is based in part on an original storyline written by Colin Dexter for Central Television's
Inspector Morse
series.
One
1
It is not impossible to become bored in the presence of a mistress
(Stendhal)
The red-seal
Brut Imperial Moet & Chandon
stood empty on the top of the bedside table to her left; empty like the champagne glass next to it, and like the champagne glass on the table at the other side of the bed. Everything seemed empty. Beside her, supine and still, hands behind his head, lay a lean, light-boned man in his early forties, a few years older than herself. His eyes were closed, and remained closed as she folded back her own side of the floral-patterned duvet, rose quickly, put her feet into fur-lined slippers, drew a pink silk dressing gown around a figure in which breasts, stomach, thighs, were all a little over-ripe perhaps - and stepped over to peer through the closed curtains.
Had she consulted her Oxford University Pocket Diary, she would have noticed that the sun was due to set at 16.S0 that early Wednesday evening in late October. The hour had gone back the previous week-end, and the nights, as they said, were pulling in fast. She had always found difficulty with the goings back and forth of the clock - until she had heard that simple little jingle on Radio Oxford: Spring Forward/Fall Back. That had pleased her. But already darkness had fallen outside, well before its time; and the rain still battered and rattled against the window-panes. The tarmac below was a glistening black, with a pool of orange light reflected from the street lamp opposite.
When she was in her junior school, the class had been asked one afternoon to paint a scene on the Thames, and all the boys and girls had painted the river blue. Except her. And that was when the teacher had stopped the lesson (in midstream, as it were) and asserted that young Sheila was the only one of them who had the natural eye of an artist. Why? Because the Thames might well be grey or white or brown or green or yellow - anything, in fact, except those little rectangles of Oxford blue and Cambridge blue and cobalt and ultramarine into which all the wetted brushes were dipping. So, would all of them please start again, and try to paint the colours they saw, and forget the postcards, forget the atlases? All of them, that is, except Sheila; for Sheila had painted the water black.
And below her now the street was glistening black . . .
Yes.
Everything seemed black.
Sheila hugged the thin dressing gown around her and knew that he was awake; watching her; thinking of his wife, probably - or of some other woman. Why didn't she just tell him to get out of her bed and out of her life? Was the truth that she needed him more than he needed her? It had not always been so.
It was so very hard to say, but she said it: 'We were happy together till recently, weren't we?'
'What?' The tongue tapped the teeth sharply at the
final ‘t’
She turned now to look at him lying there, the moustache linking with the neatly trimmed Vandyke beard in a darkling circle around his mouth - a mouth she sometimes saw as too small, and too prim, and, yes, too bloody
conceited!
'I must go!' Abruptly he sat up, swung his legs to the floor, and reached for his shirt.
'We can see each other tomorrow?' she asked softly.
'Difficult not to, won't it?' He spoke with the clipped precision of an antique pedagogue, each of the five 't's articulated with pedantic completion. With an occasional lisp, too.