Last Bus to Woodstock

by Colin Dexter

The old courtyard where once the horses had clattered over the cobbled stones had access from the street through a narrow archway, and had proved an invaluable asset to the Black Prince. A rash of fines for trespassing on the single and double yellow lines which bordered even the most inhospitable and inaccessible stretches of road was breeding a reluctant respect for the law; and any establishment offering ‘PATRONS ONLY, cars left at owners’ risk’ was quite definitely in business. Tonight, as usual, the courtyard was tightly packed with the inevitable Volvos and Rovers. A light over the archway threw a patch of inadequate illumination over the entrance to the yard; the rest lay in dark shadow. It was to the far corner of this courtyard, that the young man stumbled his way; and almost there he dimly saw something behind the furthest car. He looked and groped silently. Then horror crept up to the nape of his neck and against a padlocked stable door he was suddenly and violently sick.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWO

  * * *

  Wednesday, 29 September

  THE MANAGER OF the Black Prince, Mr Stephen Westbrook, contacted the police immediately after the body was found, and his call was acted upon with commendable promptitude. Sergeant Lewis of the Thames Valley Police gave him quick and clear instructions. A police car would be at the Black Prince within ten minutes; Westbrook was to ensure that no one left the premises and that no one entered the courtyard; if anyone insisted on leaving, he was to take the full name and address of the person concerned; he should be honest if asked what all the trouble was about.

  The evening’s merriness wilted like a sad balloon and voices gradually hushed as the whispered rumour spread: there had been a murder. None seemed anxious to leave; two or three asked if they could phone. All felt suddenly sober, including a pale-faced young man who stood in the manager’s office and whose scarcely touched whisky still stood on the counter of the cocktail lounge.

  With the arrival of Sergeant Lewis and two uniformed constables, a small knot of people gathered curiously on the pavement opposite. It did not escape their notice that the police car had parked immediately across the access to the courtyard, effectively sealing the exit. Five minutes later a second police car arrived, and eyes turned to the lightly built, dark-haired man who alighted. He conversed briefly with the constable who stood guard outside, nodded his head approvingly several times and walked into the Black Prince.

  He knew Sergeant Lewis only slightly, but soon found himself pleasurably impressed by the man’s levelheaded competence. The two men conferred in brisk tones and very quickly a preliminary procedure was agreed. Lewis, with the help of the second constable, was to list the names, home addresses and car registrations of all persons on the premises, and to take brief statements of their evening’s whereabouts, and immediate destinations. There were over fifty people to see, and Morse realized that it would take some time.

  ‘Shall I try to get you some more help, Sergeant?’

  ‘I think the two of us can manage, sir.’

  ‘Good. Let’s get started.’

  A door, forming the side entrance to the Black Prince, led out into the courtyard and from here Morse stepped gingerly out and looked around. He counted thirteen cars jammed tight into the limited space, but he could have missed one or two, for the cars furthest away were little more than dark hulks against the high back wall, and he wondered by what feats of advanced-motoring skill and precision their inebriated owners could ever negotiate the vehicles unscathed through the narrow exit from the yard. Carefully he shone his torch around and slowly perambulated the yard. The driver of the last car parked on the left-hand side of the yard had presciently backed into the narrow lot and left himself a yard or so of room between his nearside and the wall; and stretched along this space was the sprawling figure of a young girl. She lay on her right side, her head almost up against the corner of the walls, her long blonde hair now cruelly streaked with blood. It was immediately clear that she had been killed by a heavy blow across the back of the skull, and behind the body lay a flat heavy tyre-spanner, about one and a half inches across and some eighteen inches in length – the type of spanner with its undulating ends so common in the days before the inauguration of instant tyre repairs. Morse stood for a few minutes, gazing down at the ugly scene at his feet. The murdered girl wore a minimum of clothing – a pair of wedge-heeled shoes, a very brief dark-blue mini-skirt and a white blouse. Nothing else. Morse shone his torch on the upper part of the body. The left-hand side of the blouse was ripped across; the top two buttons were unfastened and the third had been wrenched away, leaving the full breasts almost totally exposed. Morse flashed his torch around and immediately spotted the missing button – a small, white, mother-of-pearl disc winking up at him from the cobbled ground. How he hated sex murders! He shouted to the constable standing at the entrance to the yard.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘We need some arc-lamps.’

  ‘It would help, I suppose, sir.’

  ‘Get some.’

  ‘Me, sir?’

  ‘Yes, you!’

  ‘Where shall I get . . .?’

  ‘How the hell do I know,’ bellowed Morse.

  By a quarter to midnight Lewis had finished his task and he reported to Morse, who was sitting with The Times in the manager’s office, drinking what looked very much like whisky.

  ‘Ah Lewis.’ He thrust the paper across. ‘Have a look at 14 down. Appropriate eh?’ Lewis looked at 14 down. Take in bachelor? It could do. (3). He saw what Morse had written into the completed diagram: BRA. What was he supposed to say? He had never worked with Morse before.

  ‘Good clue, don’t you think?’

  Lewis, who had occasionally managed the Daily Mirror coffee-time crossword was out of his depth, and felt much puzzled.

  ‘I’m afraid I’m not very hot on crosswords, sir.’

  ‘“Bachelor” – that’s BA and “take” is the letter “r”, recipe in Latin. Did you never do any Latin?’

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Do you think I’m wasting your time, Lewis?’

  Lewis was nobody’s fool and was a man of some honesty and integrity. ‘Yes, sir.’

  An engaging smile crept across Morse’s mouth. He thought they would get on well together.

  ‘Lewis, I want you to work with me on this case.’ The sergeant looked straight at Morse and into the hard, grey eyes. He heard himself say he would be delighted.

  ‘This calls for a celebration,’ said Morse. ‘Landlord!’ Westbrook had been hovering outside and came in smartly. ‘A double whisky.’ Morse pushed his glass forward.

  ‘Would you like a drink, sir?’ The manager turned hesitantly to Lewis.

  ‘Sergeant Lewis is on duty, Mr Westbrook.’

  When the manager returned, Morse asked him to assemble everyone on the premises, including staff, in the largest room available, and drinking his whisky in complete silence, skimmed through the remaining pages of the newspaper.

  ‘Do you read The Times, Lewis?’

  ‘No, sir; we take the Mirror.’ It seemed a rather sad admission.

  ‘So do I sometimes,’ said Morse.

  At a quarter past midnight Morse came into the restaurant-room where everyone was now gathered. Gaye’s eyes met and held his briefly as he entered, and she felt a strong compulsion about the man. It was not so much that he seemed mentally to be undressing her, as most of the men she knew, but as if he had already done so. She listened to him with interest as he spoke.

  He thanked them all for their patience and cooperation. It was getting very late and he didn’t intend to keep them there any longer. They would now know why the police were there. There had been a murder in the courtyard – a young girl with blonde hair. They would appreciate that all the cars in the courtyard must stay where they were until the morning. He knew this meant that some of them would have difficulty getting home, but taxis had been ordered. If anyone wished to report to him or to Sergeant Lewis anything at all which might be of interest or value to the inquiry, ho
wever unimportant it might seem, would such a person please stay behind. The rest could go.

  To Gaye it seemed an uninspired performance. Happening to be on the scene of a murder ought surely to be a bit more exciting than this? She would go home now, where her mother and her young son would be fast asleep. And even if they weren’t, she couldn’t tell them much, could she? Already the police had been there over an hour and a half. It wasn’t exactly what she’d come to expect from her reading of Holmes or Poirot, who by this time would doubtless have interviewed the chief suspects, and made some startling deductions from the most trivial phenomena.

  The murmuring which followed the end of Morse’s brief address died away as most of the customers collected their coats and moved off. Gaye rose, too. Had she seen anything of interest or value? She thought back on the evening. There was, of course, the young man who had found the girl . . . She had seen him before, but she couldn’t quite remember who it was he’d been with, or when. And then she had it – blonde hair! She’d been in the lounge with him only last week. But a lot of girls these days peroxided their hair. Perhaps it was worth mentioning? She decided it was and walked up to Morse.

  ‘You said the girl who has been murdered had blonde hair.’ Morse looked at her and slowly nodded. ‘I think she was here last week – she was with the man who found her body tonight. I saw them here. I work in the lounge.’

  ‘That’s very interesting, Miss – er?’

  ‘Mrs. Mrs McFee.’

  ‘Please forgive me, Mrs McFee. I thought you might have been wearing all those rings to frighten off the boys who come to drool at you over the counter.’

  Gaye felt very angry. He was a hateful man. ‘Look, Inspector whatever your name is, I came to tell you something I thought might be helpful. If you’re going . . .’

  ‘Mrs McFee,’ broke in Morse gently, looking at her with an open nakedness in his eyes, ‘if I lived anywhere near, I’d come in myself and drool over you every night of the week.’

  At just after 1.00 a.m. a primitive, if reasonably effective, relay of arc-lamps was fixed around the courtyard. Morse had instructed Lewis to detain the young man who had found the murdered girl until they had taken the opportunity of investigating the courtyard more closely. The two men now surveyed the scene before them. There was a great deal of blood, and as Sergeant Lewis looked down on her, he felt a deep revulsion against the violence and senselessness of murder. Morse appeared more interested in the starry heavens above.

  ‘Do you study the stars, Lewis?’

  ‘I read the horoscopes sometimes, sir.’

  Morse appeared not to hear. ‘I once heard of a group of schoolchildren, Lewis, who tried to collect a million matchsticks. After they’d filled the whole of the school premises, they decided they’d have to pack it up.’ Lewis thought it his duty to say something, but all appropriate comment eluded him.

  After a while, Morse reverted his attention to more terrestrial things, and the two of them looked down again at the murdered girl. The spanner and the solitary white button lay where Morse had seen them earlier. There was nothing much else to see but for the trail of dried blood that led almost from one end of the back wall to the other.

  The young man sat in the manager’s office. His mother, though expecting him to be late, would be getting worried; and so was he. Morse finally came in at 1.30 a.m. whilst the police surgeon, the photographers and the fingerprint men busied themselves about the courtyard.

  ‘Name?’ he asked.

  ‘Sanders, John Sanders.’

  ‘You found the body?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’

  ‘There’s not much to tell really.’

  Morse smiled. ‘Then we needn’t keep you long, need we, Mr Sanders?’

  The young man fidgeted. Morse sat opposite him, looked him hard in the eye and waited.

  ‘Well, I just walked into the courtyard and there she was. I didn’t touch her, but I knew she was dead. I came straight back in to tell the manager.’

  Morse nodded. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Don’t think so.’

  ‘When were you sick, Mr Sanders?’

  ‘Oh yes. I was sick.’

  ‘Was it after or before you saw the girl?’

  ‘After. It must have upset me seeing her there – sort of shock, I suppose.’

  ‘Why don’t you tell me the truth?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Morse sighed. ‘You haven’t got your car here have you?’

  ‘I haven’t got a car.’

  ‘Do you usually have a stroll round the courtyard before you go home?’ Sanders said nothing. ‘How much drink did you have tonight?’

  ‘A few whiskies – I wasn’t drunk.’

  ‘Mr Sanders, do you want me to find out from someone else?’ It was clear from Sanders’s manner that he hardly welcomed an inquiry along such lines. ‘What time did you come here?’ continued Morse.

  ‘About half past seven?’

  ‘And you got drunk and went out to be sick.’ Reluctantly Sanders agreed. ‘Do you usually drink on your own?’

  ‘Not usually.’

  ‘Who were you waiting for?’ Sanders did not reply. ‘She didn’t show up?’

  ‘No,’ he said flatly.

  ‘But she did come, didn’t she?’

  ‘No, I told you. I was on my own all the time.’

  ‘But she did come, didn’t she?’ repeated Morse quietly. Sanders looked beaten. ‘She came,’ continued Morse in the same quiet voice. ‘She came and you saw her. You saw her in the courtyard, and she was dead.’

  The young man nodded.

  ‘We’d better have a little chat, you and me,’ said Morse ungrammatically.

  * * *

  CHAPTER THREE

  * * *

  Thursday, 30 September

  AS HE STOOD alone in the bedroom of Sylvia Kaye, Morse felt measurably relieved. The grim duties of the night were over, and he switched on the natural defence mechanism of his weary mind. He wished to forget the awakening of Mrs Dorothy Kaye, and the summoning of her husband from his night-shift in the welding division of the Cowley car plant; the fatuous, coarse recriminations and the overwhelming hurt of their bitter, empty misery. Sylvia’s mother was now under sedation, postponing the day and the reckoning; whilst Sergeant Lewis sat at headquarters learning what he could from Sylvia’s father. He took many pages of careful notes but doubted if it all amounted to much. He was to join Morse in half an hour.

  The bedroom was small, one of three in a neat semidetached house in Jackdaw Court, a quiet crescent with rotting wooden fences, a few minutes’ walk off the Woodstock Road. Morse sat down on the narrow bed and looked around him. He wondered if the neatness of the bed was mum’s doing, for the remainder of the room betrayed the slack and untidy living of the murdered girl. A vast coloured portrait of a pop artist was pinned rather precariously above the gas fire in the chimney breast, and Morse reminded himself that he might understand young people rather better if he had a teenage family of his own; as it was, the identity of the handsome youth was cloaked in anonymity and whatever pretentions he may have had would for Morse be for ever unknown. Several items of underwear draped the table and chair which, with a whitewood wardrobe, substantively comprised the only other furniture. Morse gingerly picked up a flimsy black bra lying on the chair. His mind flashed back to that first glimpse of Sylvia Kaye, rested there a few seconds and slowly returned through the tortuous byways of the last unpleasant hours. A pile of women’s magazines was awkwardly stacked on the window-sill, and Morse cursorily flicked his way through make-up hints, personal problems and horoscopes. Not even a paragraph of pornography. He opened the wardrobe door and with perceptibly deeper interest examined the array of skirts, blouses, slacks and dresses. Clean and untidy. Mounds of shoes, ultramodern, wedged, ugly: she wasn’t short of money. On the table Morse saw a travel brochure for package trips to Greece, Yugoslavia and Cyprus, white hotels, azure
seas and small print about insurance liability and smallpox regulations; a letter from Sylvia’s employer explaining the complexities of VAT, and a diary, the latter revealing nothing but a single entry for 2 January: ‘Cold. Went to see Ryan’s Daughter.’

  Lewis tapped on the bedroom door and entered. ‘Find anything, sir?’ Morse looked at his cheerful sergeant distastefully, and said nothing. ‘Can I?’ asked Lewis his hand hovering above the diary.

  ‘Go ahead,’ said Morse.

  Lewis examined the diary, turning carefully through the days of September. Finding nothing, he worked meticulously through every page. ‘Only one day filled in, sir.’

  ‘I don’t even get that far,’ said Morse.

  ‘Do you think “cold” means it was a cold day or she had a cold?’

  ‘How do I know,’ snapped Morse, ‘and what the hell does it matter?’

  ‘We could find out where Ryan’s Daughter was on in the first week of January,’ suggested Lewis.

  ‘Yes, we could. And how much the diary cost and who gave it to her and where she buys her biros from. Sergeant! We’re running a murder enquiry not a stationery shop!’

  ‘Sorry.’

  ‘You may be right though,’ added Morse.

  ‘I’m afraid Mr Kaye hadn’t got much to tell me, either, sir. Did you want to see him?’

  ‘No. Leave the poor fellow alone.’

  ‘We’re not making very rapid progress then.’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ said Morse. ‘Miss Kaye was wearing a white blouse, wasn’t she?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What colour bra would your wife wear under a white blouse?’

  ‘A lightish-coloured one, I suppose.’

  ‘She wouldn’t wear a black one?’

  ‘It would show through.’

  ‘Mm. By the way, Lewis, do you know when lighting-up time was yesterday evening?’