Last Bus to Woodstock (23 page)

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 heartless 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?’

Give Morse a letter and his imagination soared to the realms of the bright-eyed seraphim. Lewis groaned inwardly.

‘You think she wrote it, don’t you, sir?’

Morse reluctantly reined back the wild horses. ‘Yes. She wrote it.’

Lewis thought he understood the Inspector’s feelings. There would have to be a bit of tidying up, of course, but the case was now substantially over. He’d enjoyed most of his time working with the irascible, volatile inspector, but now . . . The phone rang and Morse answered. He said ‘I see’ a dozen times and replaced the receiver.

‘Crowther’s in the Radcliffe – he’s had a mild heart attack. He’s not allowed to see anyone for two days at least.’

‘Perhaps he couldn’t tell us much more,’ suggested Lewis.

‘Oh yes he could,’ said Morse. He leaned back, put his hands on his head like a naughty schoolboy, and stared vacantly at the farthest corner of the wall. Lewis thought it best to keep quiet, but he grew uncomfortably restless as the minutes ticked by.

‘Would you like a coffee, sir?’ Morse didn’t seem to hear him. ‘Coffee? Would you like a coffee?’ Morse reminded him of a very deaf person with his hearing-aid switched off. Minute after minute slipped by before the grey eyes refocused on the world around him.

‘Well, that’s cleared up one thing, Lewis. We can cross Mrs Crowther off our list of suspects, can’t we?’

A
T MIDDAY
P
ETER
Newlove was sitting in his rooms. He was expecting no one. Normally Bernard might have dropped in about now for a gin, but the news had swept the college that morning: Margaret had killed herself and Bernard had suffered a heart attack. And the double-barrelled news hit no one harder than Peter. He had known Margaret well and had liked her; and Bernard was his best friend in that academic, dilettante style of friendship which springs up in most collegiate universities. He had rung up the hospital, but there was no chance of visiting Bernard until Thursday at the earliest. He had sent some flowers: Bernard liked flowers and had no wife to send them now . . . He had enquired, too, about the children. They had gone to stay with an aunt in Hendon, though Peter couldn’t imagine how such an arrangement could possibly help them very much.

There was a knock on the door. ‘It’s open.’

He had not met Inspector Morse before and was pleasantly surprised that his offer of a drink was accepted. Morse explained in blunt, unequivocal terms why he had called.

‘And it was written on
that
one?’ Newlove frowned at the open portable typewriter on the table.

‘No doubt about it.’

Newlove looked mildly perplexed, but said nothing.

‘Do you know a young lady named Jennifer Coleby, Miss Jennifer Coleby?’

‘I don’t, I’m afraid.’ Newlove’s frown grew deeper.

‘She works in the High, not far from here. Town and Gown. Assurance place.’

Newlove shook his head. ‘I might have seen her, of course. But I don’t know her. I’ve not heard the name before.’

‘And you’ve never written to anyone of that name?’

‘No. How could I? As I say, I’ve never heard of the woman.’

Morse pursed his lips and continued. ‘Who else could have used your typewriter, sir?’

‘Well, I don’t know really. I suppose almost anyone in a way. I don’t lock the place up very much unless there are question papers about.’

‘You mean you leave your doors open and let anybody just walk in and help himself to your booze or your books – or your typewriter?’

‘No, it’s not like that. But quite a few of the Fellows do drop in.’

‘Who in particular, would you say?’

‘Well, there’s a new young don here this term, Melhuish, for example. He’s been in quite a few times recently.’

‘And?’

‘And a dozen others.’ He sounded a little uneasy.

‘Have you ever seen any of these, er, friends of yours using your typewriter?’

‘Well, no. I don’t think I have.’

‘They’d use their own, wouldn’t they?’

‘Yes. I suppose they would.’

‘Not much “suppose” about it, is there, sir?’ said Morse.

‘No.’

‘You’ve no idea then?’

‘I’m not being very helpful, I know. But I’ve no idea at all.’

Morse abruptly switched his questioning. ‘Did you know Mrs Crowther?’

‘Yes.’

‘You’ve heard about her?’

‘Yes,’ said Newlove quietly.

‘And Bernard Crowther?’ Newlove nodded. ‘I understand he’s one of your best friends?’ Again Newlove nodded. ‘I’ve been to his room this morning, sir. If you want to put it crudely I’ve been snooping around. But you see, I often have to snoop around. I take no particular delight in it.’

‘I understand,’ said Newlove.

‘I wonder if you do understand, sir.’ There was a clipped impatience in his voice now. ‘He often drops in to see you, is that right?’

‘Quite often.’

‘And do you think he’d come to you if he wanted anything?’

‘You mean rather than to somebody else?’

‘Yes.’

‘He’d come to me.’

‘Did you know that his typewriter can’t even cope with a comma?’

‘No, I didn’t,’ lied Newlove.

After dropping Morse at Lonsdale College, Lewis had his own duties to perform. For the life of him he couldn’t understand the point of this particular errand, but Morse had said it was of vital importance. Something had galvanized the Inspector into new life. But it wasn’t the gay, rumbustious Morse of the early days of the case. Something grim had come over him and Lewis found him a little frightening sometimes. He only hoped they got no more letters upon which Morse could practise his misdirected ingenuity.

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.’