Last Bus to Woodstock

by Colin Dexter

  Morse stared gloomily at the floor and found himself watching the nurses’ legs go by. Not much to make the blood boil really. Except one pair – beautiful! Morse would like to have seen the rest of the delicious damsel, but she had walked swiftly past. Fat, so-so, thin, so-so – and then those legs again and this time they stopped miraculously in front of him.

  ‘I hope you’re being looked after all right, Inspector Morse?’

  The Inspector was visibly stunned. He looked up slowly, straight and deep into the sad, come-hither face of darling Dark-eyes, co-resident of the cool Miss Jennifer Coleby. ‘You remember me?’ said Morse; a little illogically, thought the girl standing directly above him.

  ‘Don’t you remember me?’ she asked.

  ‘How could I forget you?’ said the Inspector, slipping at last into a smooth forward gear. How lovely she was! ‘You work here?’

  ‘If I may say so, Inspector, you must have asked a great many more intelligent questions in your time.’ She wore her uniform becomingly – and Morse always thought a nurse’s uniform did more for a girl than all the fine feathers of the fashion houses.

  ‘No, not very bright, was it?’ he confessed. She smiled – delightfully.

  ‘Have a seat,’ said Morse, ‘I’d like to have a chat with you. We didn’t say much before, did we?’

  ‘I’m sorry, Inspector. I can’t do that. I’m on duty.’

  ‘Oh.’ He was disappointed.

  ‘Well . . .’

  ‘Just stay a minute,’ said Morse. ‘You know, I really would like to see you, some time. Can I see you when you come off duty?’

  ‘I’m on duty until six.’

  ‘Well, I could meet . . .’

  ‘At six I shall go home and have a quick meal, and then at seven . . .’

  ‘You’ve got a date.’

  ‘Well, let’s say I’m busy.’

  ‘Lucky bugger,’ mumbled Morse. ‘Tomorrow?’

  ‘Not tomorrow.’

  ‘Wednesday?’ Morse wondered mournfully if the progression through the remaining days of the week was anything more than a hollow formality; but she surprised him.

  ‘I could see you on Wednesday evening, if you like.’

  ‘Could you?’ Morse sounded like an eager schoolboy. They arranged to meet in the ‘Bird and Baby’ in St Giles’ at 7.30 p.m. Morse tried to sound more casual: ‘I can take you home, of course, but perhaps it would be better not to pick you up. You can get a bus all right?’

  ‘I’m not a child, Inspector.’

  ‘Good. See you then.’ She turned away. ‘Oh, just a minute,’ called Morse. She walked back to him. ‘I don’t know your name yet, Miss . . .’

  ‘Miss Widdowson. But you can call me Sue.’

  ‘Is that just for special friends?’

  ‘No,’ said Miss Widdowson. ‘Everyone calls me Sue.’

  For the first week of the case Morse had felt confident in his own abilities, like a schoolboy with a tricky problem in mathematics to work out who had the answer book secretly beside him. From the very beginning of the case he thought he had glimpsed a Grand Design – he would have to juggle about a bit with the pieces of evidence that came to hand, but he knew the pattern of the puzzle. For this reason he had not, he realized, considered the evidence qua evidence, but only in relation to his own prejudiced reconstruction of events. And having failed to work out an answer to his problem which bore the faintest similarity to the agreed solution in the answer book, he was now beginning seriously to wonder if, after all, the answer book was wrong. Sometimes on the eve of a big horse-race he had read through the list of runners and riders, closed his eyes and tried to visualize the headlines on the sports page of the following morning’s newspaper. He’d had little success with that, either. Yet he still thought he was on the right track. He was, as he saw himself, a persevering man, although he was wide awake to the possibility that to Lewis (sitting across the table now) his perseverance might well be considered stubbornness, and to his superiors sheer pig-headedness.

  In fact Lewis was not at that moment considering the stubbornness of his chief at all; he was contemplating with great distaste the orders he had just received.

  ‘But do you think it’s proper to do it this way, sir?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ said Morse.

  ‘But it’s not legal, surely?’

  ‘Probably not.’

  ‘But you want me to do it.’ Morse ignored the non-question. ‘When?’

  ‘You’d have to make sure he was out first.’

  ‘How do you suggest . . .’

  Morse interrupted him. ‘Christ man, you’re not in apron strings. Use your nous!’

  Lewis felt angry as he walked across to the canteen and ordered a cup of coffee.

  ‘What’s the matter, Sarge?’ Constable Dickson was eating again.

  ‘That bloody man Morse – that’s what’s the matter,’ muttered Lewis, setting down his cup with such vigour that half the contents slopped messily into the saucer.

  ‘I see you like your coffee half and half, Sarge,’ said Dickson. ‘Half in the cup and half in the saucer.’ He was highly amused.

  McPherson walked in and ordered coffee. ‘Solved the murder yet, Sergeant?’

  ‘No we bloody haven’t,’ snapped Lewis. He got up and left the grey-looking apology untouched – half in the cup and half in the saucer.

  ‘What’s eating him?’ asked McPherson. ‘God, he don’t know how lucky he is. Damn good chap, Inspector Morse. I tell you, if he don’t get to the bottom of that Woodstock business, nobody will.’

  It was a nice compliment and Morse could have done with it. After Lewis had left, he sat for a long time, his hands together in front of his face, fingertips to fingertips, eyes closed, as if praying to some benign divinity for light along the darkening path. But Morse had long ago, albeit unwillingly, discounted the existence of any supernatural agency. He was fishing patiently in the troubled waters of his mind.

  He got his bite about 4.30 p.m., and limped across to the file on the Woodstock murder. Yes, they were both there. He took them out and read them again – for the umpteenth time, it seemed. He must be right. He had to be. But still he wondered if he was.

  The first thing (but it was a minnow, not a shark) that arrested his attention was that in both the letter from the (pretty certainly) bogus employer, and in the statement made by Crowther, the writer had used the form ‘I should’. Morse, not as conversant as he should have been with some of the niceties of English grammar, more often than not – almost always now he thought of it – used the form ‘would’. He could hear himself dictating: ‘Dear Sir, I would be very glad to . . .’ Ought he to have said ‘I should?’ He reached for Fowler’s Modern English Usage. There it was: ‘The verbs like, prefer, care, be glad, be inclined, etc., are very common in first-person conditional statements (I should like to know etc.). In these should, not would, is the correct form in the English idiom.’ Well, thought Morse, we learn something new every day. But somebody knew all about it already. So he should, though; he was an English don, wasn’t he? What about Mr G – undecipherable who had something to do with a misspelt Psychology Department? (Blast – he’d not even checked that yet). But Mr G was a university man, too, wasn’t he? said a still small voice at the back of Morse’s mind. A very little minnow! Interesting though.

  He read the documents yet again. Just a minute. Hold on. Yes. This wasn’t a minnow. Surely not! ‘Yet it is not improbable . . .’ The phrase appeared in each document. A mannered phrase. ‘Yet’ standing at the beginning of its clause; not the commonest of syntactical structures. And what about ‘not improbable’. That was a figure of speech Morse had learned at school. ‘St Paul was a citizen of no mean city.’ He consulted Fowler again. That was it. Litotes. Parallel expressions raced through his mind. ‘Yet it is probable . . .’; ‘But it is probable/likely . . .’; ‘But it may be . . .’; ‘Maybe . . .’; ‘I think . . .’; ‘But I think . . .’ Odd. Very odd. A very mannered phrase
.

  And there was another coincidence. The phrase ‘in all honesty’ also appeared in each letter. What would he himself have written? ‘Frankly’, ‘honestly’, ‘to be frank’, ‘truthfully’? Come to think of it, it didn’t mean very much at all. Three little weasel words. The letter really was most odd. Had his first appraisal of its significance been over-sophisticated, too clever-clever? But people did do that sort of thing. Wives and husbands did it in war-time, communicating to each other a wealth of factual data unsuspected by the army censors. ‘I’m sorry to hear little Archie’s got the croup. Will write again soon,’ might well have concealed the military intelligence that Trooper Smith was to be posted from Aldershot to Cairo next Saturday. Fanciful? No! Morse believed that he had been right.

  The evening shadows fell across his desk, and he replaced the Woodstock file and locked the cabinet. The answer was slowly coming, and it seemed to be the answer in the answer book.

  * * *

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  * * *

  Tuesday, 12 October

  ON TUESDAY MORNING at 11.00 a.m., half an hour after Crowther had boarded a bus to the city centre, a small business van, bearing the legend ‘Kimmons Typewriters’ drew up outside the Crowther residence in Southdown Road. A man, wearing a lightweight grey jacket with ‘Kimmons’ embroidered across the pocket, alighted from the van and walked through the white gate, past the scraggy lawn, and knocked. Margaret Crowther, wiping her hands on her apron, opened the door.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Mr Crowther live here, please?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Is he in?’

  ‘No, not at the minute.’

  ‘Oh. You Mrs Crowther?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Your husband rang to ask us to look at his typewriter. He said the carriage was getting stuck.’

  ‘Oh, I see. Come in, will you?’

  The typewriter man rather ostentatiously took from his pocket a small box, containing, one must have supposed, the requisite tools of the trade, stepped with an obvious diffidence into the narrow hallway and was ushered into the room off the right-hand side of the hall where Bernard Crowther spent so much of his time considering the glories of the English literary heritage. He spotted the typewriter immediately.

  ‘Do you need me?’ Mrs Crowther seemed anxious to resume her culinary duties.

  ‘No, no. Shan’t be more than a few minutes – unless it’s really wonky.’ His voice sounded strained.

  ‘Well, call me when you’ve finished. I’m only in the kitchen.’

  He looked carefully around, made a few perfunctory tappings on the typewriter, slid the carriage tinkling to and fro several times, and listened carefully. He could hear the clink of plates and saucers; he felt fairly safe and very nervous. Quickly he slid open the top drawer on the right of the small desk: paper-clips, biros, rubbers, elastic bands – nothing very suspicious. Systematically he tried the two lower drawers, and then the three on the left. All pretty much the same. Wadges of notes clipped together, bulky agendas for college meetings, file-cases, writing paper, more writing paper and yet more – ruled, plain, headed, foolscap, folio, quarto. He repeated his pathetic little pantomime and heard, in welcome counter-point, an answering clatter of crockery. He took one sheet from each of the piles of writing paper, folded them carefully and put them into his inside pocket. Finally taking one sheet of quarto he stood it in the typewriter, twiddled the carriage and quickly typed two lines of writing:

  After asessing the mny applications we have received, we must regretfully inform you that our application.

  Mrs Crowther showed him to the door. ‘Well, that should be all right now, Mrs Crowther. Dust in the carriage-bearings, that’s all.’ Lewis hoped it sounded all right.

  ‘Do you want me to pay you?’

  ‘No. Don’t bother about that now.’ He was gone.

  At twelve noon Lewis knocked on Bernard Crowther’s door in the second court of Lonsdale College and found him finishing a tutorial with a young, bespectacled, long-haired undergraduate.

  ‘No rush, sir,’ said Lewis. ‘I can wait perfectly happily until you’ve finished.’

  But Crowther had finished. He had met Lewis the previous Saturday, and was anxious to hear whatever must be heard. The youth was forthwith dismissed with the formidable injunction to produce an essay for the following tutorial on ‘Symbolism in Cymbeline’, and Crowther shut the door. ‘Well, Sergeant Lewis?’

  Lewis told him exactly what had occurred that morning; he made no bones about it and confessed that he had not enjoyed the subterfuge. Crowther showed little surprise and seemed anxious only about his wife.

  ‘Now, sir,’ said Lewis. ‘If you say you expected a man from Kimmons to come and look at your typewriter, no harm’s been done. I want to assure you of that.’

  ‘Couldn’t you have asked me?’

  ‘Well, yes, sir, we could. But I know that Inspector Morse wanted to make as little fuss as possible.’

  ‘Yes, I’m sure.’ Crowther said it with an edge of bitterness in his voice. Lewis got up to go. ‘But why? What did you expect to find?’

  ‘We wanted to find out, sir, if we could, on what machine a certain, er, a certain communication was written.’

  ‘And you thought I was involved?’

  ‘We have to make inquiries, sir.’

  ‘Well?’

  ‘Well what, sir?’

  ‘Did you find out what you wanted?’

  Lewis looked uneasy. ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Shall we say, sir, that we didn’t find anything at all, er – at all incriminating. That’s about the position, sir.’

  ‘You mean that you thought I’d written something on the typewriter and now you think I didn’t.’

  ‘Er, you’d have to ask Inspector Morse about that, sir.’

  ‘But you just said that the letter wasn’t written on . . .’

  ‘I didn’t say it was a letter, sir.’

  ‘But people do write letters on typewriters don’t they, Sergeant?’

  ‘They do, sir.’

  ‘You know, Sergeant, you’re beginning to make me feel guilty.’

  ‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to do that. But in a job like ours you’ve got to suspect everybody really. I’ve told you all I can, sir. Whatever typewriter we’re looking for wasn’t the one in your house. But there’s more than one typewriter in the world, isn’t there, sir?’

  Crowther did not contest the truth of the assertion. A large bay window gave a glorious view on to the silky grass of the second court, smooth and green as a billiard table. Before the window stood a large mahogany desk, littered with papers and letters and essays and books. And in the centre of this literary clutter there sat, four-square upon the desk, a large, ancient, battered typewriter.

  On his way back to Kidlington Lewis drove through the broad tree-lined sweep of St Giles’ and took the right fork to follow the Banbury Road up through North Oxford. As he passed the large engineering block on his right, he saw a tallish woman in dark slacks and a long heavy coat walking along, every few steps sticking out a thumb in what seemed a particularly demoralized and pessimistic way. She had long blonde hair, natural by the look of it, reaching half-way down her back. Lewis thought of Sylvia Kaye. Poor kid. He passed the blonde just as she turned her head, and he blinked hard. What a world we live in! For the lovely blonde had a lovely beard and side-whiskers down to his chin. Interesting thought . . .

  Morse had been unable to conceal his exasperation when Lewis had reported to him earlier and when, with ridiculous rapid certitude, he had established that the letter on which he had pinned his faith had neither been written on Crowther’s personal typewriter nor on any of the brands of writing paper so carefully filched from Crowther’s personal store. His one worry then had been to paper over the cracks of irregularity in police procedure, and it was for this reason that he had immediately dispatched Lewis to talk to Crowther. To the report of this
interview he listened with care, if without enthusiasm, when Lewis returned at 1.00 p.m.

  ‘Not the happiest of mornings then, Sergeant.’

  ‘No. I’d rather not do that sort of thing again, sir.’

  Morse sympathized. ‘I don’t think we’ve done any harm though, have we, Lewis? I’m not worried so much about Crowther – he’s hardly been above-board with us, has he? But Mrs Crowther . . . could have been tricky. Thanks, anyway.’ He spoke with genuine feeling. ‘Never mind, sir. At least we tried.’ Lewis felt much better.

  ‘What about a drink?’ said Morse. The two men went off in lighter spirits.

  It had occurred to neither of the policemen that women of the intelligence and experience of Mrs Margaret Crowther would do anything but automatically and unquestioningly accept the bona fides of any Tom, Dick and Harry of a tradesman. Furthermore, Mrs Crowther had herself been a confidential secretary before she married Bernard; in fact the typewriter was hers and that very morning she herself had typed out two letters on the same machine, one addressed to her husband and one addressed to Inspector Morse, c/o Thames Valley Police HQ, Kidlington. The typewriter was in perfect order, she knew that; and she had seen the nervous man from Kimmons Typewriters as he had slid open the drawers of Bernard’s desk. She wondered what he was looking for, but she didn’t really care. In a gaunt, weary way she had even smiled as she closed the door behind him. She would fairly soon be ready to post the two letters. But she wanted to be sure.