Inspector Morse - Last Bus to Woodstock Part 16

Memories were fading and the case was growing stale. Lewis went home for lunch.

At 2.00 p.m. he was ushered into the office of the car service manager of Barkers Garage on the Banbury Road, where he spent more than an hour working his way methodically through hundreds of carbon copies of work-sheets, customers' invoices, booking-ledgers and other sundry records of car repairs for the weeks beginning September 22 and 27. He found nothing. He spent a further hour going back to the beginning of September, increasingly conscious that his task was futile. Miss Jennifer Coleby, although she had an account with Barkers, had not brought in her car for any repairs or service since July. She had bought the car new from the garage over three years ago; HP nearly finished; no trouble with payments; no serious mechanical faults. 6,000 service on 14 July, with a few oddments put right. 13.55. Bill paid July 30.

Lewis was disappointed if not surprised. Morse seemed to have a bee in his bonnet about this Coleby woman. Perhaps this would put him off for good? But he doubted it. He walked over the road to the newsagents and bought the evening newspaper. A caption near the bottom right-hand corner of the front page caught his eye:

WOODSTOCK KILLING BREAKTHROUGH NEAR.

'Following intensive activity, police are quietly confident that the killer of Sylvia Kaye, found raped and murdered at the Black Prince, Woodstock, on the night of 29 September will soon be found.

Chief Inspector Morse of the Thames Valley HQ, who is heading the murder inquiry, said today that several key witnesses had already come forward and he considered that it would only be a matter of time before the guilty party was brought to justice.' Lewis thought it must be a hoax.

The confident head of the murder inquiry, if ever invited to take his eight discs to a desert island, would have answered 'Committees' to the inevitable question about what he would be most glad to have got away from. The meeting called for this Thursday afternoon to consider pensions, promotions and ap- pointments stretched on and on like an arid desert. His only contribution throughout was a word of commendation for Constable McPherson. It seemed a justifiable excuse for contravening his customary and caustic taciturnity. The meeting finally broke up at five minutes past five, when he yawned his way back to his office and found Lewis reading the prospects for Oxford United's visit to Blackpool the following Sat.u.r.day.

'Seen this, sir?" Lewis handed him the newspaper and pointed to the caption portending judgement day for the Woodstock killer.

Morse read the item with weary composure. 'They do twist things a bit, these reporters, don't they?'

Sue Widdowson's day, too, dragged drearily by. She'd wanted desperately to talk to Morse again last night. Who knows what she might have said? Was his phone out of order? But in the cold light of morning she had realized how foolish it would have been. David was coming on Sat.u.r.day for the weekend, and she would be meeting him at the station at the usual time. Dear David. She had received another letter that morning. He was so nice and she liked him so very much. But ... No! She had just got to stop thinking of Morse. It had been almost impossible. Sandra had been full of questions and Doctor Eyres had patted her bottom far too intimately, and she was lousily, hopelessly miserable.

Mrs Amy Sanders was worried about her son. He had seemed listless and off-colour for a week or so now. In the past he had taken the odd day or two off work, and more than once she had had to lay it on a bit thick in describing to Messrs Chalkley the symptoms of some fict.i.tious malady which had temporarily stricken her dear boy. But today she was genuinely concerned. John had been sick twice during the night and was lying s.h.i.+vering and sweating when she had called him at 7.00 a.m. He had eaten nothing all day and, against her son's wishes, she had rung the doctor's surgery at 5.00 p.m. No, she had not thought it urgent, but would be most grateful if the doctor could call some time.

The bell rang at 7.30 p.m. and Mrs Sanders opened the front door to find a man she had never seen before. Still, the doctors these days were always changing around.

'Does Mr John Sanders live here?'

'Yes. Come in, doctor. I'm ever so glad you could call.'

'I'm not a doctor, I'm afraid. I'm a Police Inspector.'

The landlord of the Bell at Chipping Norton took the booking himself at 8.30 p.m. He consulted the register and picked up the phone again.

'For tomorrow night and Sat.u.r.day night, you said?'

'Yes.'

'I think we can do that all right, sir. Double room. Do you want a private bathroom?'

'That would be nice. And a double bed if you've got one. We never seem to sleep well in these twin beds.'

'Yes. We can do that.'

'I'm afraid I shan't have time to confirm it in writing.'

'Oh don't worry about that, sir. If you could just let me have your name and address.'

'Mr and Mrs John Brown, Hill Top, Eaglesfield (all one word), Bristol.'

'I've got that.'

'Good. My wife and I look forward to seeing you. We should be there about five.'

'We hope you'll enjoy your stay, sir.'

The landlord put down the phone and wrote the names of Mr and Mrs J. Brown in the booking register. His wife had once added up the number of John Browns booked into the Bell: in one month alone there were seven. But it wasn't his job to worry too much about that. Anyway, the man had sounded most polite and well educated. Nice voice, too: West Country-ish - rather like his own. And there must be one or two quite genuine John Browns somewhere.

20 Friday, 15 October, a.m.

Morse woke up late on Friday morning. The Times was already on the floor in the hall and one letter was protruding precariously through the letter box. It was a bill from Barkers -9.25. He stuck it, with several of its fellows, behind the clock on the mantelpiece.

The car purred into life at the first gentle touch. He had the sticks in the back of the car and decided to run down to the Radcliffe Infirmary before going to the office. As he joined the patiently crawling, never-ending line of traffic in the Woodstock Road, he debated his course of action. He could see her quite by chance, of course - as he had last time; or he could ask for her. But would she want that? He longed just to see her again and, dammit!, she would be there. What could be more natural? He had dreamed about Sue the previous night, but in a vague, elusive sort of way which had left her standing in the forecourt of his mind. Had it been her on the phone on Wednesday night?

He turned off, across the traffic, into the yard of the Radcliffe, stopped on double yellow lines, collared the nearest porter, gave him the sticks and the promissory note of the bearer to return the same, and told him to see to it. Police!

The road was clear as he left Oxford and he cursed himself savagely every other minute. He should have gone in - stupid fool. He knew deep down he wasn't a stupid fool, but it didn't help much.

Lewis was waiting for him. 'Well, what's the programme, sir?'

'I thought we'd take a gentle bus ride a little later, Lewis.' Ah well. His not to reason why. 'Yes. I thought we'd go to Woodstock on the bus together. What about that?'

'Has the car conked out again?'

'No. Going like a dream. So it should. Had a bill for the b.l.o.o.d.y battery this morning. Guess how much.'

'Six, seven pounds.'

'Nine pounds twenty-five!'

Lewis screwed up his nose. 'Cheaper if you'd gone to the tyre and battery people up in Headington.

They don't charge for any labour. I've always found them very good.'

'You sound as if you're always haying car trouble.'

'Not really. Had a few punctures lately, though.'

'Can't you change a tyre yourself?'

'Well yes. Course I can. I'm not an old woman you know, but you've got to have a spare.'

Morse wasn't listening. He felt the familiar tingle of the blood freezing in his arms. 'You're a genius, Sergeant. Pa.s.s me the telephone directory. Consult the yellow pages. Here we are -only two numbers. Which shall we try first?'

'What about the first one, sir?'

A few seconds later Morse was speaking to Cowley Tyre and Battery Services. 'I want to speak to the boss of the place. It's urgent. Police here.' He winked at Lewis. 'Ah, hullo. Chief Inspector Morse here.

Thames Valley ... No, no. Nothing like that ... Now, I want you to look up your records for the week beginning 27 September ... Yes. I want to know if you supplied a battery or mended a puncture for a Miss Jennifer Coleby. C-O-L-E-B-Y. Yes. It might have been any day - probably Tuesday or Wednesday. You'll ring me back? Get on with it straight away, please. It's most urgent. Good. You've got my number? Good. Cheers.' He rang the second number and repeated the patter. Lewis was turning over the Sylvia Kaye file that lay open on Morse's desk. He studied the photographs -large, glossy, black and white photographs with amazingly clear delineation. He looked again at the shots of Sylvia Kaye as she lay that night in the yard of the Black Prince. She'd been really something, he thought The white blouse had been torn sharply on the left-hand side, and only the bottom of the four b.u.t.tons remained fastened. The left breast was fully revealed and Lewis was strongly reminded of the provocative poses of the models in the girlie magazines. It could almost have been an erotic experience - looking through those pictures; but Lewis remembered the back of die blonde head and the cruelly shattered skull. He thought of his own darling daughter - thirteen now; she was getting a nice little figure ... G.o.d, what a world to bring up children in. He hoped and prayed that she would be all right, and he felt a deep and burning need to find the man who did all that to Sylvia Kaye.

Morse had finished.

'Can you put me in the picture, sir?' asked Lewis.

Morse sat back and thought for a few minutes. 'I suppose I ought to have told you before, Lewis. But I couldn't be sure -well, can't be sure now - about one or two things. Pretty well from the beginning I thought I had a good idea of the general picture. I thought it was like this. Two girls want a lift to Woodstock and we've got some fairly substantial evidence that they were picked up - both of them.'

Lewis nodded. 'Now neither the driver nor the other girl came forward. The question I asked myself was "why?". Why were both these people anxious to keep quiet? There were pretty obvious reasons why one of them should keep his mouth shut. But why both? It seemed most improbable to me that the pair of them could be partners in crime. So. What are we left with? One very strong possibility, as I saw it, was that they knew each other. But that didn't seem quite good enough, somehow. Most people don't withhold evidence, certainly don't tell complicated lies, just because they know each other. But what if they have, between them, some guilty reason for wanting to keep things very quiet indeed? And what if such a guilty reason is the fact that they know each other rather too well? What if they are - not to put too fine a point on things - having an affair with each other? The situation's not so good for them, is it? With a murder in the background - not so good at all.' Lewis wished he'd get on with it.

'But let's go back a bit. On the face of it our evidence suggested from the word go that the encounter between the two girls and the driver of the car was pure chance: Mrs Jarman's evidence is perfectly clear on that point. Now we have discovered, after a good deal of unnecessary trouble, who the driver of the red car was: Crowther. In his evidence he admits that he is having an affair with another woman and that the venue for these extramarital excursions is Blenheim Park. Furthermore, again on his own evidence, he was going to see his lady-love on the night of Wednesday, 29 September. Now at this point I took a leap in the dark. What if the lady-love was one of the girls he picked up?'

'But...' began Lewis.

'Don't interrupt, Lewis. Now, was the lady-love Sylvia Kaye? I don't think so. We know that Mr John Sanders had a date, however vague, with Sylvia on the 29th. It doesn't prove things one way or the other, but Sylvia is the less likely choice of the two. So. We're left with our other pa.s.senger - Miss, or Mrs X. It is clear from Mrs Jarman's evidence that Miss X seemed anxious and excited, and I think no one gets too anxious and excited about going to Woodstock unless that person has a date, and an important date at that, and not very much time to spare. Crowther said an hour or so at the most, remember?'

'But...' He thought better of it.

'We also learned from what Mrs Jarman said that Sylvia knew the other girl. There was that business of having a giggle about it in the morning. So, we try the place where Sylvia works and we find an extraordinary, quite inexplicable letter written to Miss Jennifer Coleby, who has become my odds-on favourite for the Miss X t.i.tle. I agree that the evidence of the letter is not conclusive; worth following up though. She's a clever girl, our Jennifer. She has two spanners to throw in the works.

First, she seems to have been at a pub this side of Woodstock instead of in Blenheim Park; second - and this really worried me and still does - why does she have to bus to Woodstock, or hitch-hike, if she's got a car? Which, as we know, she has. It seemed a fatal objection. But is it? My car wouldn't start on Wednesday morning because the battery was flat. You said that you had a few punctures recently and you said you could mend them. You said you were not an old woman. Now Jennifer Coleby is not an old woman - but she's a woman. What if she discovered that her car wouldn't start? What would she do? Ring up her garage. That was pretty obvious and hence your visit to Barkers, where you drew a blank. I thought I saw the light, though, this morning. I had a bill for my car-battery and you mentioned the tyre and battery people. The real question then is when did Jennifer! discover her car was out of order? Surely not before she got back from work, at about 5.30 p.m. Now not many garages these days are going to do much at that time; the staff has all gone. But your little tyre and battery men don't work, methinks, to union hours, and they are worth trying. I must a.s.sume that Jennifer could get no one to see to her car that night - not because they couldn't do it, but because they couldn't do it in time. She may not have discovered the trouble until about 6.15 or 6.30 p.m. But I think she tried to get something done - and failed. Well, what's she to do? Naturally, she can get a bus. She's never had to bus before, but she's seen the Woodstock buses often enough and that's why I believe it was Jennifer who was seen at Fare Stage 5 on the night Sylvia was murdered. She meets an impatient fellow-traveller, Sylvia, and the two of them decide to hitchhike. They walk past the roundabout and a car stops: Crowther's car. It's hardly a coincidence, is it? He's got to get to Woodstock, too, and he's bound to be going there at roughly the same time as Jennifer. Whether he knew it was her - it was getting fairly dark - I just don't know. I suspect he did.' Morse stopped.

'And what happened then, do you think, sir?'

'Crowther has told us what happened for the next few miles.'

'Do you believe him?'

Morse sat thoughtfully and didn't answer immediately. The phone rang. 'No,' said Morse, 'I don't believe him.' Lewis watched the Inspector. He could not hear what was being said on the other end of the line. Morse listened impa.s.sively.

'Thank you very much,' he said finally. 'What time would be convenient? All right. Thank you.'

He put down the phone, and Lewis looked at him expectantly.

'Well, sir?'

'I told you Lewis. You're a genius.'

'Her car was out of order?'

Morse nodded. 'Miss Jennifer Coleby rang the Cowley Tyre and Battery Co. at 6.15 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, 29 September. She said it was urgent - a very flat front tyre. They couldn't get there until sevenish and she said that was too late.'

'We're making headway, sir.'

'We are, indeed. Now what about our bus ride?'

The two men caught the 11.35 4A to Woodstock. It was half empty and they sat in the front seat on the upper deck. Morse was silent and Lewis mulled over the strange developments in the case. The bus made good speed and stopped only four times before reaching Woodstock. At the third of these stops Morse gave his sergeant a dig in the ribs and Lewis looked out to see where they were. The bus had pulled into a shallow lay-by just outside Begbroke, at a large, thatched house with its garden crowded with tables and chairs set under brightly striped umbrellas; he bent his head down to the bottom of the side window to see the name of the public house and read the two words Golden Rose.

'Interesting?' said Morse.

'Very,' replied Lewis. He thought he might as well say some thing.

They alighted at Woodstock and Morse led the way. 'Ready for a pint, Sergeant?'

They walked into the c.o.c.ktail bar of the Black Prince. 'Good morning, Mrs McFee. You won't remember me, I suppose?'

'I remember you very well, Inspector.'

'What a memory,' said Morse.

'What can I get for you, gentlemen?' She was clearly not amused.

'Two pints of best bitter, please.'

'Official business?' Her dislike of Morse's manner was not quite enough to stifle her natural curiosity.

'No. No. Just a friendly visit to look at you again.' He's in good spirits this morning, thought Lewis.

'I see from the paper that you're hoping...' she fumbled for the words.

'We're making progress, aren't we, Sergeant?'

'Oh yes,' said Lewis. After all, he was the other half of those intensive inquiries.

'Don't they ever give you a few hours off?" asked Morse.

'Oh, they're very good really.' She was softening a little towards him; it was always nice to be reminded how hard she worked. 'As a matter of fact I've got tonight and all of Sat.u.r.day and Sunday off.'

'Where shall we go?' asked Morse.

The hostess smiled professionally. 'Where do you suggest, Inspector?' Good for you, my girl, thought Lewis.

Morse asked for the menu and studied it in some detail.