Last Bus To Woodstock im-1

by Colin Dexter

  The dramatic news broke at a quarter-past seven. Margaret Crowther had committed suicide.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  Monday, 18 October

  BERNARD CROWTHER, AFTER dropping Jennifer Coleby in the High, had been lucky in finding a parking space in Bear Lane. Not even the dons were permitted to park outside the college now. He had lunched in the Senior Common Room and spent the afternoon and early evening working. Both the children were away for a week on a school camping holiday in nearby Whitham Woods. On such ventures it was customary for the parents to visit their children on one evening during the week, but the young Crowthers had told their parents not to bother; and that was that. At least it would be a chance for Bernard and Margaret to have a few decent meals, instead of the inevitable chips and tomato sauce with everything.

  Bernard left college at about twenty-past six. The roads were getting free again by now and he had an easy journey home. He let himself in with his Yale key and hung up his coat. Funny smell. Gas? 'Margaret?' He put his brief-case in the front room. 'Margaret?' He walked to the kitchen and found the door locked. 'Margaret!' He rattled the knob of the kitchen door, but it was firmly locked on the other side. He banged on the door. 'Margaret! Margaret! Are you there?' He could smell the gas more strongly now. His mouth went completely dry and there was wild panic in his voice. 'MARGARET!' He rushed back to the front door, through the side gate, and tried the back door. It was locked. He whimpered like a child. He looked into the kitchen through the large window above the sink. The electric light was on and for a fraction of a second a last ember of hope flared up, and glowed, and then was gone. The surrealistic sight that met his eyes was so strangely improbable that it registered itself blankly as a meaningless picture on the retina of his eyes — a sight without significance — a waxwork model, bright-eyed and brightly hued, with a fixed, staring smile. What was she doing sitting on the floor like that? Cleaning the oven?

  He picked up a house-brick lying by the side of the wall, smashed a pane in the window, and cut his fingers badly as he reached for the catch and opened the window from the inside. The nauseating smell of gas hit him with an almost physical impact, and it was some seconds before, holding his handkerchief to his face, he climbed awkwardly in through the window and turned off the gas. Margaret's head was just inside the oven, resting on a soft red cushion. In a numbed, irrational way he thought he should put the cushion back where it came from; it was from the settee in the lounge. He looked down with shocked, zombie-like eyes at the jagged cuts on his hand and mechanically dabbed them with his handkerchief. He saw the sticky brown paper lining the gaps by the door-jambs and the window, and noticed that Margaret had cut the ends as neatly as she always did when she wrapped the children's birthday presents. The children! Thank God they were away! He saw the scissors on the formica top over the washing machine, and like an automaton he picked them up and put them in the drawer. The smell was infinitely sickly still, and he felt the vomit rising in his gorge. And now the horror of it all was gradually seeping into his mind, like a pool of ink into blotting paper. He knew that she was dead.

  He unlocked the kitchen door, picked up the phone in the hall and in a dazed, uncomprehending voice he asked for the police. A letter addressed to him was lying beside the telephone directory. He picked it up and put it in his breast pocket and returned to the kitchen.

  Ten minutes later the police found him there, sitting on the floor beside his wife, his hand on her hair, his eyes bleak and glazed. He had been deaf to the strident ringing of the front doorbell.

  Morse arrived only a few minutes after the police car and the ambulance. It was Inspector Bell of the Oxford City Police who had called Morse; Crowther had insisted on it. The two Inspectors had met several times before and stood in the hallway talking together in muted voices. Bernard had been led unresistingly from the kitchen by a police doctor and was now sitting in the lounge, his head sunk into his hands. He appeared unaware of what was going on or what was being said, but when Morse came into the lounge he seemed to come to life again.

  'Hullo, Inspector.' Morse put his hand on Crowther's shoulder, but could think of nothing to say that might help. Nothing could help. 'She left this, Inspector.' Bernard reached into his breast pocket and pulled out the sealed envelope.

  'It's for you, you know, sir; it's addressed to you — not to me,' said Morse quietly.

  'I know. But you read it. I can't.' He put his head in his hands again, and sobbed quietly.

  Morse looked enquiringly at his fellow-Inspector. Bell nodded and Morse carefully opened the letter.

  Dear Bernard,

  When you read this I shall be dead. I know what this will mean to you and the children and it's only this that has kept me from doing it before — but I just can't cope with life any longer. I am finding it so difficult to know what to say — but I want you to know that it's not your fault. I have not been all that a wife should be to you and I have been a miserable failure with the children, and everything has built up and I long for rest and peace away from it all. I just can't go on any longer. I realize how selfish I am and I know that I'm just running away from everything. But I shall go mad if I don't run away. I must run away — I haven't the courage to stand up to things any longer.

  On your desk you will find all the accounts. All the bills are paid except Mr. Andersen's for pruning the apple trees. We owe him £5 but I couldn't find his address.

  I am thinking of the earlier times when we were so happy. Nothing can take them from us. Look after the children. It's my fault — not theirs. I pray that you won't think too badly of me and that you can forgive me.

  Margaret.

  It wasn't going to be much comfort, but Crowther had got to face it some time.

  'Please read it, sir.'

  Bernard read it, but he showed no emotion. His despair could plumb no lower depths. "What about the children?' he said at last.

  'Don't worry yourself about that, sir. We'll look after everything.' The police doctor's voice was brisk. He was no stranger to such situations, and he knew the procedure from this point on. It wasn't much that he could do — but it was something.

  'Look, sir, I want you to take. .'

  'What about the children?' He was a shattered, broken man, and Morse left him to the ministrations of the doctor. He retired with Bell to the front room, and noticed the list of the accounts, insurances, mortgage repayments, and stock-exchange holdings which Margaret had left so neatly ordered under a paper-weight on the desk. But he didn't touch them. They were something between a husband and his wife, a wife who had been alive when he had interviewed Crowther earlier that day.

  'You know him, then?' asked Bell.

  'I saw him this morning,' said Morse. 'I saw him about the Woodstock murder.'

  'Really?' Bell looked surprised.

  'He was the man who picked up the girls.'

  'You think he was involved?'

  'I don't know,' said Morse.

  'Has this business got anything to do with it?'

  'I don't know.'

  The ambulance was still waiting outside and curious eyes were peeping from all the curtains along the road. In the kitchen Morse looked down at Margaret Crowther. He had never seen her before, and he was surprised to realize how attractive she must have been. Fortyish? Hair greying a little, but a good, firm figure and a finely featured face, twisted now and blue.

  'No point in keeping her here,' said Bell.

  Morse shook his head. 'No point at all.'

  'It takes a long time, you know, this North Sea gas.'

  The two men talked in a desultory way for several minutes, and Morse prepared to leave. But as he walked out to his car, he was called back by the police doctor.

  'Can you come back a minute, Inspector?' Morse re-entered the house.

  'He says he must talk to you.'

  Crowther sat with his head against the back of the chair. He was breathing heavily and the sweat stood out upon his brow. He was in a stat
e of deep shock, and was already under sedation.

  'Inspector,' he opened his eyes wearily. 'Inspector, I've got to talk to you.' He had great difficulty in getting this far, and Morse looked to the doctor, who slowly shook his head.

  'Tomorrow, sir,' said Morse. 'I'll see you tomorrow.'

  'Inspector, I've got to talk to you.'

  'Yes, I know. But not now. We'll talk tomorrow. It'll be all right then.' Morse put his hand to Crowther's forehead and felt the clammy wetness there.

  'Inspector!' But the top corner of the walls where Crowther was trying to focus was slowly disintegrating before his eyes; the angles melted and spiralled and faded away.

  Morse drove slowly out of Southdown Road and realized just how close Crowther lived to Jennifer Coleby. It was a black night and the moon was hidden away deep behind the lowering clouds. Rectangles of light, shaded by curtains, showed from most of the front-room windows, and in many Morse could see the light-blue phosphorescent glow of television screens. He looked at one house in particular and looked up at one window in it, the window directly above the door. But it was dark, and he drove on.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Tuesday, 19 October, a.m.

  MORSE HAD SLEPT very badly and woke with a throbbing head. He hated suicides. Why had she done it? Was suicide just the coward's refuge from some black despair? Or was it in its way an act of courage that revealed a perverted sort of valour? Not that, though. So many other lives were intertwined; no burdens were shed — they were merely passed from the shoulders of one to those of another. Morse's mind would give itself no rest but twirled around on some interminable fun-fair ride.

  It was past nine o'clock before he was sitting in his leather chair, and his sombre mood draped itself over his sagging shoulders. He summoned Lewis, who knocked apprehensively on the door before going in; but Morse had seemingly lost all recollection of the nasty little episode the day before. He told Lewis the facts of Margaret Crowther's suicide.

  'Do you think he's got something important to tell us, sir?'

  There was a knock on the door before Lewis could learn the answer to his question, and a young girl brought in the post, said a bright 'Good morning' and was off. Morse fingered through the dozen or so letters and his eye fell on an unopened envelope marked 'strictly private' and addressed to himself. The envelope was exactly similar to the one he had seen the previous evening.

  'I don't know whether Crowther's got anything to tell us or not; but it looks as if his late wife has.' He opened the envelope neatly with a letter-knife and read its typewritten contents aloud to Lewis.

  Dear Inspector,

  I have never met you, but I have seen from the newspapers that you are in charge of the inquiry into the death of Sylvia Kaye. I should have told you this a long time ago, but I hope it's not too late even now. You see, Inspector, I killed Sylvia Kaye. (The words were doubly underlined.)

  I must try to explain myself. Please forgive me if I get a little muddled, but it all seems very long ago.

  I have known for about six months — well, certainly for six months — perhaps I've known for much longer — that my husband has been having an affair with another woman. I had no proof and have none now. But it is so difficult for a man to hide this sort of thing from his wife. We have been married for fifteen years and I know him so well. It was written all over what he said and what he did and how he looked — he must have been terribly unhappy, I think.

  On Wednesday, 22nd September, I left the house at 6.30 p.m. to go to my evening class at Headington — but I didn't go immediately. Instead, I waited in my car just oft the Banbury Road. I seemed to wait such a long time and I didn't really know what I was going to do. Then at about a quarter to seven Bernard — my husband — drove up to the junction at Charlton Road and turned right towards the northern roundabout. I followed him as best I could — I say that because I'm not a good driver — and anyway it was getting darker all the time. There wasn't much traffic and I could see him clearly two or three cars ahead. At the Woodstock Road roundabout he turned along the A34. He was driving too fast for me, though, and I kept dropping further and further behind. I thought I had lost him — but there were road-works ahead and the traffic had to filter into single line for about a mile. There was a slow, heavy lorry in the front and I soon caught up again — Bernard was only about six or seven cars ahead of me. The lorry turned off towards Bladon at the next round about and I managed to keep Bernard in sight and saw him take the first turning on the left in Woodstock itself. I panicked a bit and didn't know what to do — I turned into the next street, and stopped the car and walked back. But it was hopeless. I drove back to Headington and was only twenty minutes late for my evening class.

  The next Wednesday, the 29th September, I drove out to Woodstock again, leaving the house a good ten minutes earlier than usual, parked my car further along the village, and walked back to the street into which Bernard had turned the previous week. I didn't know where to wait and I felt silly and conspicuous, but I found a safe enough little spot on the left of the road — I was terrified that Bernard would see me — if he came that was — and I waited there and watched every car that came round the corner. It was child's play to see the cars turning in — and the occupants as well. He came at quarter-past seven and I felt myself trembling frantically. He was not alone — a young girl with long fair hair, in a white blouse, was sitting next to him in the front seat. I thought they must see me because the car turned — oh, only six or seven yards ahead of me — into the car park of The Black Prince. My legs were shaking and the blood was pounding in my ears, but something made me go through with it. I walked cautiously up to the yard and peered in. There were several cars there already and I couldn't see Bernard's for several minutes. I edged round the back of one car — just to the left of the yard — and then I saw them. The car was on the same side at the far end, with the boot towards the wall — he must have backed in. They were sitting in the front — talking for a while. I felt a cold anger inside me. Bernard and a blowzy blonde — about seventeen she looked! I saw them kissing. Then they got out of the front and into the back. I couldn't see any more — at least I was spared that.

  I can't really explain what I felt. As I write now it all seems so flat — and so unimportant somehow. I felt more anger than jealousy I know that. Burning anger that Bernard had shamed me so. It was about five minutes later when they got out. They said something — but I couldn't hear what it was. There was a lever — a long tire-lever — I found it on the floor of the yard, and I picked it up. I don't know why. I felt so frightened and so angry. And suddenly the engine of the car was switched on and then the lights and the whole yard was lit up. The car moved off and out of the yard, and after it had gone the darkness seemed even blacker than before. The girl stood where he had left her, and I crept behind the three or four cars between us and came up behind her. I said nothing and I'm sure she didn't hear me. I hit her across the back of the head with an easy strength. It seemed like a dream. I felt nothing — no remorse — no fear — nothing. I left her where she was, against the far wall. It was still very dark. I didn't know when or how she would be found — and I didn't care.

  Bernard knew all along that I had murdered Sylvia Kaye — he passed me on my way back to Oxford. He must have seen me because I saw him. He was right behind me for some time and must have seen the number plate. I saw his car as clear as daylight when he overtook me.

  I know what you have suspected about Bernard. But you have been wrong. I don't know what he's told you — but I know you have spoken to him. If he has told you lies, it has only been to shield me. But I need no one to shield me any longer. Look after Bernard and don't let him suffer too much because of me. He did what hundreds of men do, and for that I blame myself and no one else. I have neither been a good wife to him nor a good mother to his children. I am just so tired — so desperately tired of everything. For what I have done I am now most bitterly sorry — but I realize that this is no excu
se. What else can I say — what else is there to say?

  Margaret Crowther.

  Morse's voice trailed away and the room was very still. Lewis felt very moved as he heard the letter read aloud, almost as if Margaret Crowther were there. But she would never speak again. He thought of his visit to her and guessed how cruelly she must have suffered these last few months.

  You thought it was something like that, didn't you, sir?'

  'No,' said Morse.

  'Comes as a bit of a shock, doesn't it? Out of the blue, like.'

  'I don't think much of her English style,' said Morse. He handed the letter over to Lewis. 'She uses far too many dashes for my liking.' The comment seemed heardess and irrelevant Lewis read the letter to himself.

  'She's a good, clean typist anyway, sir.'

  'Bit odd, don't you think, that she typed her name at the end instead of using her signature?'