Last Bus to Woodstock

by Colin Dexter

  He pulled the official police car into the small yard of the Summertown Health Centre, situated on the corner of the Banbury Road and Marston Ferry Road. It was a finely built, large, red-stone structure with steps up to a white porch before the front door – one of the many beautiful large houses built by the well-to-do along the Banbury Road in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Lewis was expected and had only a minute or so to wait before being shown into the consulting room of the senior partner.

  ‘That’s the lot, Sergeant.’ Dr Green handed over a file to Lewis.

  ‘Are you sure it’s all here, sir? Inspector Morse was very anxious for me to get everything.’

  Dr Green was silent for a moment. ‘The only thing that’s not there is . . . is er any record that we had er may have had about any er conversation we er may have had with Miss Kaye about her er private sex life. You understand, I know, Sergeant, that there are er there is the ethical side of er the er confidential nature of the er doctor’s relationship with the er patient.’

  ‘You mean she was on the pill, doctor.’ Lewis stepped boldly with his policeman’s boots where the angelic Green had so delicately feared to tread.

  ‘Er . . . I er didn’t say that, did I, Sergeant? I er said that we er it is er improper yes improper to er betray to betray the confidences that we er we er hear in the consulting room.’

  ‘Would you have told us if she wasn’t on the pill?’ asked Lewis innocently.

  ‘Now that’s er a very difficult er question. You er we er you er you are putting words into my er mouth a bit aren’t you, Sergeant? All I’m saying is er . . .’

  Lewis wondered what the senior partner would say to a patient who had malignant cancer. It would be, he was sure, a most protracted er interview. He thanked the good doctor and left as quickly as he could, although he was half-way down the porch steps before he finally shook off the er persistent Green. He’d have to tell his wife about er Dr Green.

  As they had agreed, Lewis picked up Morse outside Lonsdale College at one o’clock. He told the Inspector about the troubled state of Dr Green’s conscience on the problem of professional confidentiality, but Morse was cynically unimpressed.

  ‘We know she was on the pill, remember?’ Lewis should have remembered. He had read the reports; in fact Morse had specially asked him to get to know them as well as he could. It hadn’t seemed very important at the time. Perhaps, even then, Morse had seen its relevance? But he doubted it, and his doubts, as it happened, were well justified.

  As Lewis drove out of the city, Morse asked him to turn off to the motel at the Woodstock roundabout. ‘We’ll have a pint and a sandwich, eh?’

  They sat in the Morris Bar, Morse engrossed in the medical reports on Sylvia Kaye. They covered, at intermittent stages, the whole of her pathetically brief little life, from the mild attack of jaundice at the age of two days to an awkward break of her arm in the August before she had died. Measles, warts on fingers, middle-ear infection, dysmenorrhoea, headaches (myopia?). A fairly uneventful medical history. Most of the notes were reasonably legible, and oddly enough the arch-apostle of indecision, the conscientious Green, had a beautifully clear and rounded hand. His only direct contacts with Sylvia had been over the last two afflictions, the headaches and the broken arm. Morse passed the file over to Lewis, and went to refill the glasses. Some of the details had appeared in the post-mortem report anyway, but his memory wasn’t Lewis’s strongest asset.

  ‘Have you ever broken your arm?’ asked Morse.

  ‘No.’

  ‘They say it’s very painful. Something to do with the neurological endings or something. Like when you hurt your foot, Lewis. Very, very painful.’

  ‘You should know, sir.’

  ‘Ah, but if you’ve got a basically strong constitution like me, you soon recover.’ Lewis let it go. ‘Did you notice,’ continued Morse, ‘that Green saw her on the day before she died?’

  Lewis opened the file again. He had read the entry, but without noticing the date. He looked again and saw that Morse was right. Sylvia had visited the Summer-town Health Centre on Tuesday, 28 September, with a letter from the orthopaedic surgeon at the Radcliffe Infirmary. It read: ‘Arm still very stiff and rather painful. Further treatment necessary. Continuation of physiotherapy treatment recommended as before – Tuesday and Thursday a.m.’

  Lewis could imagine the consultation. And suddenly a thought flashed into his mind. It was being with Morse that did it. His fanciful suspicions were getting as wild as the Inspector’s. ‘You don’t think, surely, that er . . .’ He was getting as bad as Green.

  ‘That what?’ said Morse, his face strangely grave.

  ‘That Green was having an affair with Sylvia?’

  Morse smiled wanly and drained his glass. ‘We could find out, I suppose.’

  ‘But you said this medical stuff was very important.’

  ‘That was an understatement.’

  ‘Have you found what you wanted, sir?’

  ‘Yes. You could say that. Let’s say I just wanted a bit of confirmation. I spoke to Green on the telephone yesterday.’

  ‘Did he er did he er er,’ mimicked Lewis. It was an isolated moment of levity in the last grim days of the case.

  Sue had Tuesday afternoon off, and she was glad of it. Working in the casualty department was tiring, especially on her feet. The other girls were out and she made herself some toast and sat in the little kitchen staring with her beautiful, doleful eyes at the white floor-tiles. She’d promised to write to David and she really must get down to it this afternoon. She wondered what to say. She could tell him about work and she could tell him how lovely it had been to see him last weekend and she could tell him how much she looked forward to seeing him again. Yet all seemed empty of delight. She blamed herself bitterly for her own selfishness; but even as she did so, she knew that she was more concerned with her own wishes and her own desires than with anyone else’s. With David’s – particularly David’s. It was futile, it was quite impossible, it was utterly foolish, it was even dangerous to think of him – to think about Morse, that is. But she wanted him so badly. She longed for him to call – she longed just to see him. Anything . . . And as she sat there in the little kitchen staring at the white tiles still, she felt an overwhelming sense of self-reproach and loneliness and misery.

  Jennifer was busy on Tuesday afternoon. Palmer had sent her a draft letter and wanted her to look it through. Premiums on virtually everything were to be increased by 10% after Christmas and all the company’s clients had to be informed. The dear man, thought Jennifer; he’s not so very bright really. The first paragraph of his letter was reminiscent of the tortuous exercises she’d been set in Latin prose. ‘Which’ followed ‘which’, which followed yet another ‘which’. A coven of whiches, she thought, and smiled at the conceit. She amended the paragraph with a bold confidence; a full stop here, a new paragraph there, a better word here – much clearer. Palmer knew she was by far the brightest girl in the office, and over important drafts he always consulted her. She wouldn’t be staying there much longer, though. She had applied for two jobs in the last week. But she wouldn’t dream of telling anybody, not even Mr Palmer. Not that it was unpleasant working where she was – far from it. And she earned almost as much as Mary and Sue put together . . . Sue! She thought of Sunday evening when she had returned from London. How glad she had felt to find them like that! She visualized the scene again and a cruel smile played over her lips.

  She took the amended drafts to Mr Palmer’s office, where Judith was trying to keep pace with the very moderate speed at which her employer was dictating a letter. She handed the draft to him. ‘I’ve made a few suggestions.’

  ‘Oh, thank you very much. I just rushed it off, you know. Put down the first things that came into my head. I realized it was, you know, a bit er a bit rough. Thanks very much. Jolly good.’

  Jennifer said no more. She left, and as she walked up the corridor to the typists’ room, the same nasty smil
e was playing about her pretty mouth.

  The third of the triad, the undaunted, dumpy, freckled little Mary, worked for Radio Oxon. In the BBC she might have been accorded the distinguished title of ‘continuity girl’; but she was in a dead-end job with the local radio station. Like Jennifer she had been thinking of a change, although unlike Jennifer she had few qualifications behind her. Jennifer had some A levels and all her shorthand and typing certificates; she must have been clever at school, thought Mary. Cool, sort of knowing all the time . . . It worked well enough, the three of them living together; but she wouldn’t mind a move. Sue was all right, she quite liked Sue really, although she’d been a bit moody and broody just recently. Men trouble. Had she fallen for that Inspector chap? She wouldn’t blame her, though. At least Sue was human. She wasn’t quite so sure about Jennifer.

  After lunch on Tuesday one of the assistants came in to chat with her. He had a beard, a light-hearted manner, five young children and a roving eye for the ladies. Mary did not positively strive to discourage his attentions.

  * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  Thursday, Friday; 21, 22 October

  BERNARD CROWTHER WAS, in the words of the ward sister, ‘satisfactory’, and on Thursday afternoon he was sitting up in bed to receive his first visitor. Strangely, Morse had not seemed anxious to press his claims, and had waived his rights at the head of the queue.

  Peter Newlove was glad to see his old friend looking so lively. They talked naturally and quietly for a few minutes. Some things just had to be said, but when Peter had said them, he turned to other matters and he knew that Bernard understood. It was almost time to go. But Bernard put his hand on his friend’s arm and Peter sat down again beside the bed. An oxygen tube hung over the metal frame behind Bernard’s head and a multi-dialled machine stood guard on the other side of the bed.

  ‘I want to tell you something, Peter.’

  Peter leaned forward slightly to hear him. Bernard was speaking more labouredly now and taking a deep breath before each group of words. ‘We can talk again tomorrow. Don’t upset yourself now.’

  ‘Please stay.’ Bernard’s voice was strained and urgent as he went on. ‘I’ve got to tell you. You know all about that murder at Woodstock?’ Peter nodded. ‘I picked up the two girls.’ He breathed heavily again and a light smile came on his lips. ‘Funny really. I was going to meet one of them anyway. But they missed the bus and I picked them up. It ruined everything, of course. They knew each other and – well, it scared me off.’ He rested a while, and Peter looked hard at his old friend and tried to keep the look of incredulity out of his eyes.

  ‘To cut a long story short, I finished up with the other one. Think of it, Peter! I finished up with the other one! She was hot stuff, good Lord she was. Peter, can you hear me?’ He leaned back, shook his head sadly, and took another deep breath.

  ‘I had her – in the back of the car. She made me feel as randy as an old goat. And then – and then I left her. That’s the funny thing about it. I left her. I drove back home. That’s all.’

  ‘You left her, you mean, at the Black Prince?’

  Bernard nodded. ‘Yes. That’s where they found her. I’m glad I’ve told you.’

  ‘Are you going to tell the police?’

  ‘That’s what I want to ask you, Peter. You see I . . .’ he stopped. ‘I don’t know whether I should tell you, and you must promise me never to breathe it to a living soul’ – he looked anxiously at Peter, but seemed confident of his trust – ‘but I’m pretty sure that I saw someone else in the yard that night. I didn’t know who it was, of course.’ He was becoming progressively more exhausted each time he spoke, and Peter rose to his feet anxiously.

  ‘Don’t go.’ The uphill climb was nearly done. ‘I didn’t know – it was so dark. It worried me though. I had a double whisky at a pub near by and I drove home.’ The words were coming more slowly. ‘I passed her. What a stupid fool I was. She saw me.’

  ‘Who do you mean? Who did you pass, Bernard?’

  Bernard’s eyes were closed, and he appeared not to hear. ‘I checked up. She didn’t go to her night class.’ He opened his heavy eyes; he was glad he’d told somebody, and glad it was Peter. But Peter looked dazed and puzzled. He stood up and bent over and spoke as quietly but as clearly as he could into Bernard’s ear.

  ‘You mean you think it was – it was Margaret who killed her?’ Bernard nodded.

  ‘And that was why she . . .’ Bernard nodded his weary head once more.

  ‘I’ll call in again tomorrow. Try to rest.’ Peter prepared to go and was already on his way when he heard his name called again.

  Bernard’s eyes were open and he held up his right hand with a fragile authority. Peter retraced his steps.

  ‘Not now, Bernard. Get some sleep.’

  ‘I want to apologize.’

  ‘Apologize?’

  ‘They’ve found out about the typewriter, haven’t they?’

  ‘Yes. It was mine.’

  ‘I used it, Peter. I ought to have told you.’

  ‘Forget it. What does it matter?’

  But it did matter. Bernard knew that; but he was too tired and could think no more. Margaret was dead. That was the overwhelming reality. He was only now beginning to grasp the utter devastation caused by that one terrible reality: Margaret was dead.

  He lay back and dozed into a wakeful dream. The cast of the scene was assembled and he saw it all again, yet in a detached, impersonal way, as if he were standing quite outside himself.

  When he saw them he had known immediately it was her, but he couldn’t understand why she was hitchhiking. They exchanged no words and she sat in the back. She must have felt, as he had, how dangerous it had suddenly become; she obviously knew the other girl. It was almost a relief to him when she said she was getting off at Begbroke. He made an excuse – getting cigarettes – and they had whispered anxiously together. It was better to forget it for that night. He was worried. He couldn’t afford the risk. But surely he could pick her up later, couldn’t he? She had asked it with a growing anger. He’d sensed, as they were driving along, the jealousy she must have felt as the girl in the front had chatted him up. Not that he had given her any encouragement. Not then, anyway. But he felt genuinely worried, and, he told her so. They could meet again next week: he would be writing in the usual way. It was half a minute of agitated whispering – no longer; just inside the door of the Golden Rose. There had been exasperation and a glint of blind fury in her eyes. But he understood how she felt. He wanted her again, too – just as badly as ever.

  He got back into the car and drove on to Woodstock. Now that she had the field to herself, the blonde girl seemed even freer from any inhibitions. She leaned back with a relaxed and open sensuality. The top button of her thin, white blouse was unfastened, and the blouse itself seemed like a silken seed-pod ready to burst open, her breasts swelling like two sun-ripened seeds beneath it.

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m at the University.’

  ‘Lecturer?’

  ‘Yes.’ Their eyes met. It had gone on like that until they reached Woodstock. ‘Well, where shall I drop you?’

  ‘Oh, anywhere really.’

  ‘You going to see the boy friend?’

  ‘Not for half an hour or so. I’ve got plenty of time.’

  ‘Where are you meeting him?’

  ‘The Black Prince. Know it?’

  ‘Would you like to come for a drink with me first?’ He felt very nervous and excited.

  ‘Why not?’

  There was a space in the yard and he backed in, up against the far left-hand wall.

  ‘Perhaps it’s not such a good idea to have a drink here,’ she said.

  ‘No, perhaps not.’

  She lay back again in the seat, her skirt rising up around her thighs. Her legs were stretched out, long, inviting, slightly parted.

  ‘You married?’ she asked. He nodded. Her right hand pl
ayed idly and irregularly with the gear lever, her fingers caressing the knob. The windows were gradually misting over with their breath and he leaned over to the compartment on the near side of the dashboard. His arm brushed her as he did so and he felt a gentle forward pressure from her body. He found the duster and half-heartedly cleaned her side window. He felt the pressure of her right hand against his leg as he moved slightly across her, but she made no effort to remove it. He put his left arm around the back of her seat and she turned towards him. Her lips were full and open and tantalizingly she licked her tongue along them. He could resist her no longer and kissed her with an abrupt and passionate abandon. Her tongue snaked into his mouth and her body turned towards him, her breasts thrusting forward against him. He caressed her legs with his right hand, revelling in sheer animal joy as she swayed slightly and parted them with wider invitation. She broke off the long and frenzied kissing and licked the lobe of his ear and whispered, ‘Undo the buttons on my blouse. I’m not wearing a bra.’

  ‘Let’s get in the back,’ he said hoarsely. His erection was enormous.

  It was over all too soon, and he felt guilty of his own reactions. He wanted to get away from her. She seemed quite different now – metamorphosed in a single minute.

  ‘I’d better go.’

  ‘So soon?’ She was slowly fastening her blouse but the spell was broken now.

  ‘Yes. I’m afraid so.’

  ‘You enjoyed it, didn’t you?’

  ‘Of course. You know I did.’

  ‘You’d like to do it again some time?’

  ‘You know I would.’ He was getting more and more anxious to get away. Had he imagined someone out there? A peeping Tom, perhaps?