Inspector Morse - Last Bus to Woodstock Part 12

'Yes, we might just find something, you know - hair, that sort of thing. They can do wonderful things these days, our forensic boys.' He got up from his chair and asked Crowther for his crutches. 'Ill promise you one thing,' said Morse. "We'll keep your wife out of it. I'm sure you can make up something to tell her. After all, you're used to that sort of thing, aren't you, sir?'

Morse limped out behind Crowther and ordered the desk sergeant to get some transport. 'Leave your car keys with me please, sir,' said Morse. 'You should have the car back early next week.' The two men shook hands and Crowther was to wait only a few minutes before he was ushered into a police car. Morse watched him go with mixed feelings. He felt he'd handled things satisfactorily. He needed to think now, not to talk. Funny, though, that about the other girl's legs; Mrs Jarman said she was splay-footed.

He summoned a.s.sistance and was helped across to Crowther's car. The doors were open. He struggled his way into the nearside front seat and sat back, manoeuvring his foot as carefully as he could, and stretching his legs as far as possible in front of him. He closed his eyes and pictured the legs of Sylvia Kaye, long, tanned, finely formed, rising up to her brief skirt. He thought she might have leaned back, too. 'Hot pants!' he said, almost to himself.

'Pardon, sir?' said the sergeant who had helped him into the car.

By an odd coincidence (or was it?) Studio 2 in Walton Street was presenting a double s.e.xploitation bill whose t.i.tles were calculated to t.i.tillate even the most jaded appet.i.te. The first, 2.00-3.05 p.m., was Danish Blue (not, judging from the mounds of female flesh that burst their bounds in the stills outside, a film about the manufacturing of cheese) and from 3.20-5.00 p.m. the main attraction of the week, ent.i.tled Hot Pants.

At 5.00 pan. the earlier addicts were leaving, and a small group of men stood inside the foyer waiting for admission. One of these would normally have joined the early brigade, for this was for him a weekly occurrence. But he had been needed by Messrs Chalkley and Sons for two hours' overtime in the formica shop. He would not, this week, be able to stay round and see the programme twice; but the films seldom met his inflated expectations or the infinite promise of the coming-shortly trailers. On these occasions he seldom looked about him, and it was just as well in the late afternoon of Sat.u.r.day, 9 October, that once again he averted his eyes from his fellow voyeurs. For standing no more than four feet away from him, ostensibly checking the times of the next programme, but keeping himself carefully and un.o.btrusively out of the limelight, was the sergeant seconded to Detective Chief Inspector Morse for the inquiry into the murder of Sylvia Kaye. Lewis thought that this was one of Morse's more rewarding a.s.signments, and he suspected that, but for his accident, his chief might well have undertaken it himself.

15 Monday, 11 October

The weekend drifted by, and the leaves continued to fall. Morse was feeling more cheerful; he could now put a good deal of weight on to his foot, and on Monday morning, deciding that he could exchange his crutches for a pair of sticks, he arranged for McPherson to drive him down to the Radcliffe Infirmary Outpatients' (Accident) Department.

He questioned McPherson closely as they drove. What impression had he formed of Crowther?

What had been Crowther's immediate reactions? What was he like at home did he think? What had he been doing when McPherson called? Morse found the young constable surprisingly intelligent and observant, and told him so. Furthermore he found a good deal in the information he had been given that interested him and aroused his curiosity.

'What had he been reading - did you manage to see?'

'No, sir. But books on literature, I think. You know, poetry.' Morse let it pa.s.s.

'He had a writing-desk, you say?'

'Yes, sir. You know, papers all over it.' Morse mentally resolved not to count up the "you knows'

he'd had so far and the "you knows' he was surely going to get. "Was there a typewriter there?' He said it casually enough.

'Yes. You know, one of those portable things.'

Morse said no more. Waved through the narrow yards of the Infirmary, that seemed in conspiracy to prevent too many injured citizens from gaining immediate access to the Outpatients' Department, the police car parked itself, with no objections from porters, orderlies or traffic wardens, on a broad stretch of concrete marked 'Ambulances Only'. A policeman's parking lot was sometimes not an unhappy one.

Morse had foreseen the swopping of crutches for sticks as a straightforward transaction; but it was not to be. There appeared to be an unbreached egalitarianism in the world of all injured brothers, and Morse was constrained to take his proper place and wait his proper time whilst the proper formalities were completed. He sat on the same bench, skipped through the same old edition of Punch, and felt the same impatience; he heard the same Chinese doctor, his sang-froid seemingly disturbed by the inability of a little boy to sit still: 'Youwannagetbetter, li'l boy, youbetter sidstill.'

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 fas.h.i.+on 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 b.u.g.g.e.r,' 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 ap.r.o.n 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 d.i.c.kson was eating again.

'That b.l.o.o.d.y 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 d.i.c.kson. '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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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. 'G.o.d, he don't know how lucky he is. d.a.m.n good chap, Inspector Morse. I tell you, if he don't get to the bottom of that Woodstock business, n.o.body 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 fis.h.i.+ng 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 (' 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 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 doc.u.ments 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 doc.u.ment. 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 Sat.u.r.day. 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.

16 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 ap.r.o.n, 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 a.s.sessing the many 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.