Last Bus To Woodstock im-1

by Colin Dexter

  '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 very 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 hitch-hiking. 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 boyfriend?'

  '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 played 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?

  'You've not told me your name.'

  'You've not told me yours.'

  'Sylvia. Sylvia Kaye.'

  'Look Sylvia.' He tried to sound as loving towards her as he could. 'Don't you think it would be better if we, you know, just thought of this as something beautiful that happened to us. Just the once. Here tonight.'

  She turned nasty and sour then. 'You don't want to see me again, do you? You're just like the rest. Bi' of sex and a blow out and you're off.' She spoke differently, too. She sounded like a common slut, a cheap, hard pick-up from a Soho side-street. But she was right, of course — absolutely right. He'd got what he wanted. But hadn't she? Was she a prostitute? He thought of his days in the army and the men who'd caught a dose of the pox He must get out of here; out of this claustrophobic car and this dark and miserable yard. He put his hand in his pocket and found a £1 note. But for some loose silver, he had no more money on him.

  'A pound no'! One bloody pound no'! Chris'—you must think I'm a cheap bi' of goods. You 'ave a bi' of money on you nex' time mate — or else keep your bloody 'ands off.'

  He felt a deep sense of shame and corruption. She got out of the car and he followed her.

  'I'll find ou' who you bloody are, mister. I will — you see!'

  What had happened then he didn't know. He remembered saying something and he vaguely remembered that she had said something back. He remembered his headlights swathing the yard and he remembered waiting for a gap in the traffic as he reached the main road. He remembered stopping to buy a double whisky and he remembered driving fast down the dual carriageway; and he remembered coming up behind a car and then swerving past it and flying through the night, his mind reeling. And on Thursday afternoon he had read in The Oxford Mail of the murder of Sylvia Kaye.

  It had been foolish to write that letter, of course, but at least Peter would be out of trouble now. It was always asking for trouble — putting anything down on paper; but it had been a neat little arrangement until then. It was her suggestion anyway, and it seemed necessary. The post in North Oxford was really dreadful—10.00 a.m. or later now — and no one seemed to mind the girls at the office getting letters. And so often he couldn't be quite sure until the
last minute. Sometimes things got into a complex tangle, but more often the arrangement had worked very smoothly. They had worked out a good system between them. Quite clever really. No one even looked at the date anyway. Sometimes he had incorporated a brief message, too — like that last time. That last time. . Morse must have had his wits about him, but he hadn't been quite clever enough to see the whole picture. . He couldn't have told Morse the whole truth, of course, but he hadn't deliberately meant to mislead him. A bit, certainly. That height business, for example. . He'd like to see Morse. Perhaps under other circumstances they could have got to know each other, become friends. .

  He dozed off completely and it was dark when he awoke. The lights were dim. The silent, white figure of a nurse sat behind a small table at the far end of the ward, and he saw that most of the other patients were lying asleep. The real world rushed back at him, and Margaret was dead. Why? Why? Was it as she said in the letter? He wondered how he could ever face life again, and he thought of the children. What had they been told?

  Sharp spasms of agonizing pain leaped across his chest and he knew suddenly and with certitude that he was going to die. The nurse was with him, and now the doctor. He was drenched with sweat. Margaret! Had she killed Sylvia or had he? What did it matter? The pains were dying away and he felt a strange serenity.

  'Doctor,' he whispered.

  'Take it gently, Mr. Crowther. You'll feel better now.' But Crowther had suffered a massive coronary thrombosis and his chances of living on were tilted against him in the balances.

  'Doctor. Will you write something for me?'

  'Yes. Of course.'

  'To Inspector Morse. Write it down.' The doctor took his note-book out and wrote down the brief message. He looked at Crowther with worried eyes: the pulse was weakening rapidly. The machine was working, its black dials turned up to their maximum readings. Bernard felt the oxygen mask over his face and saw in a strangely lucid way the minutest details of all around him. Dying was going to be much easier than he had ever hoped. Easier than living. He knocked away the mask with surprising vigour, and spoke his last words.

  'Doctor. Tell my children that I loved them.'

  His eyes closed and he seemed to fall into a deep sleep. It was 2.35 a.m. He died at 6.30 the same morning before the sun had risen in the straggly grey of the eastern sky and before the early morning porters came clattering along the corridors with their hospital trolleys.

  Morse looked down at him. It was 8.30 a.m. and the last mortal remains of Bernard Crowther had been unobtrusively wheeled into the hospital mortuary almost two hours ago. Morse had liked Crowther. Intelligent face; good-looking man really. He thought that Margaret must have loved him dearly once; probably always had, deep down. And not only Margaret. There had been someone else, too, hadn't there, Bernard? Morse looked down at the sheet of note-paper in his hand, and read it again. 'To Inspector Morse. I'm so sorry. I've told you so many lies. Please leave her alone. She had nothing to do with it. How could she? I killed Sylvia Kaye.'

  The pronouns were puzzling, or so they had seemed to the doctor as he wrote the brief message. But Morse understood them and he knew that Bernard Crowther had guessed the truth before he died. He looked at the dead man again: the feet were as cold as stone and he would babble no more o' green fields.

  Morse turned slowly on his heel and left.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Friday, 22 October, a.m.

  LATER THAT SAME Friday morning Morse sat in his office bringing Lewis up to date with the morning's developments. "You see, all along the trouble with this case has been not so much that they've told us downright lies but that they've told us such a tricky combination of lies and the truth. But we're nearly at the end of the road, thank God.'

  'We're not finished yet, sir?'

  'Well, what do you think? It's not a very tidy way of leaving things, is it? It's always nice to have a confession, I know, but what do you do with two of 'em?'

  'Perhaps we shall never know, sir. I think that they were just trying to cover up for each other, you know — taking the blame for what the other had done.'

  'Who do you think did it, Sergeant?'

  Lewis had his choice ready. 'I think she did it, sir.'

  'Pshaw!' Well, it had been a 50:50 chance, and he'd guessed wrong. Or at least Morse thought he was wrong. But he hadn't been on very good form recently, had he? 'Come on,' said Morse. Tell me. What makes you pick on poor Mrs. Crowther?'

  'Well, I think she found out about Crowther going with this other woman and I believe what she said about following him and seeing him at Woodstock. She couldn't have known some of the things she mentioned if she hadn't been there, could she?'

  'Go on,' said Morse.

  'I mean, for instance, about where the car was parked in the yard. About them getting in the back of the car—we didn't know that; but it seems to fit in with the evidence we got when one of Sylvia's hairs was found on the back seat. I just feel she couldn't have made it up. She couldn't have got those things from the newspapers because they were never printed.'

  Morse nodded his agreement. 'And I'll tell you something else, Lewis. She wasn't at her Headington class on that Wednesday night. There's no tick for her on the register anyway. I've looked.'

  Lewis was grateful for the corroborative evidence. 'But you don't believe it was her, sir?'

  'I know it wasn't," said Morse simply. 'You see, Lewis, I think that if Margaret Crowther had been in murderous mood that night, it would have been Bernard's skull on the other end of a tire-lever — not a nonentity like Sylvia's.'

  Lewis seemed far from convinced. 'I think you're wrong, sir. I know what you mean, but all women are different. You can't just say a woman would do this and wouldn't do that. Some women would do anything. She must have felt terribly jealous of this other girl taking her husband from her like that.'

  'She doesn't say she was jealous, though; she says she felt "burning anger", remember?'

  Lewis didn't, but he saw his opening. 'But why are you all of a sudden so anxious to believe what she says, sir? I thought you said you didn't believe her.'

  Morse nodded his approval. "That's exactly what I mean. It's all such a mixture of truth and falsehood. Our job is to sift the wheat from the chaff.'

  'And how do we do that?'

  'Well, we need a bit of psychological insight, for one thing. And I think she was telling the truth when she said she was angry. To me, it's got the right sort of ring about it. I'm pretty sure if she was making it up she'd have said she was jealous, rather than angry. And if she was angry, I think the object of her anger would be her husband, not Sylvia Kaye.'

  To Lewis it all seemed thin and wishy-washy. 'I've never cared much for psychology, sir.'

  'You're not convinced?'

  'Not with that, sir. No.'

  'I don't blame you,' said Morse. 'I'm not very convinced myself. But you'll be glad to know that we don't have to depend on my abilities as a psychologist. Just think a minute, Lewis. She said she entered the yard, keeping close in — that is, to her left — and edged her way behind the cars. She saw Crowther at the far end of the yard, also on the left. Agreed?'

  'Agreed.'

  'But the tire-lever, if we can believe the evidence, and I can see no possible reason for not doing so, was either in, or beside, the tool-box at the farthest right-hand corner of the yard. The weapon with which Mrs. Crowther claims she killed Sylvia Kaye was at least twenty yards away from where she stood. She mentions in her statement that she was not only angry but frightened, too. And I can well believe her. Who wouldn't be frightened? Frightened of what was going on, frightened of the dark perhaps; but above all frightened of being seen. And yet you ask me to believe that she crossed the yard and picked up a tire-lever that was almost certainly no more than four or five yards from where Bernard stood with his bottled blonde? Rubbish! She read about the tire-lever in the papers.'

  'Someone could have moved it, sir.'

  'Yes. Someone could, c
ertainly. Who do you suggest?'

  Lewis felt that his arguing with Morse in this mood was almost as sacrilegious as Moses arguing with the Lord on Sinai. Anyway, he ought to have spotted that business about the spanner from the start. Very bad, really. But something else had bothered him about Margaret's statement. It had seemed so obvious from the start that this was a man's crime, not a woman's. He had himself looked down on Sylvia that first night and he had known perfectly well, without any pathologist's report, that she had been raped. Her clothes were torn and quite obviously someone had not been able to wait to get his hands on her body. It had been no surprise to him, or to Morse surely, that the report had mentioned the semen dribbling down her legs, and the bruising round her breasts. But all that didn't square with Margaret Crowther's evidence. She'd seen them in the back of the car, she said. But had she been right? The hair was found in the back of the car, but that didn't prove very much, did it? It could have got there in a hundred different ways. No. Things didn't add up either way. It beat him. He put his thoughts into words and Morse listened carefully.