Colin Dexter - Last Bus To Woodstock

'Oh.'

A cool, clean-looking Jennifer, dressed in blouse and jeans, came out to greet Morse, without apparent enthusiasm.

'Can I help you, Inspector?'

'I wonder if we could have a few words together? Is it convenient?'

'It will have to be, I suppose. You'd better come in.'

Morse was shown into a lounge, where Miss Dark-eyes sat pretending to be deeply engrossed in a report on the Arsenal v. Tottenham match.

'Sue, this is Inspector Morse. Do you mind if we speak here?'

Sue stood up, and a little too theatrically, thought Morse, switched off the set. He observed her slow, graceful movements and smiled to himself, approvingly. 'I'll be upstairs, Jen.' She glanced at Morse before she left, saw the incipient smile at the corners of his mouth and afterwards swore to Jennifer that he had winked at her.

Jennifer motioned Morse to sit on the settee, and sat opposite him in an armchair.

'How can I help, Inspector?'

Morse noticed a copy of Charlotte Bronte's Vittette balancing like a circumflex accent over the arm of her chair.

'I'm having — purely routine, of course — to check the movements of all the er. . persons. .'

'Suspects?'

'No, no. Those who worked with Sylvia. You understand that this sort of thing has to be done.'

'Of course. I'm surprised you haven't done it before.' Morse was a little taken aback. Indeed, why hadn't he done it before? Jennifer continued. "Last Wednesday evening, I got home a bit later than usual — I went round Blackwells to spend a book token. It was my birthday last week. I got home about six, I should think. You know what the traffic's like in the rush hour.' Morse nodded. "Well, I had a bite to eat — the other girls were here — and went out about, let's see, about half past six I should think. I got back about eight — perhaps a bit later.'

'Can you tell me where you went?'

'I went to the Summertown library.'

'What time does the library close?'

'Seven-thirty.'

'You spent about an hour there.'

'That seems to be a reasonable conclusion, Inspector.'

'It seems a long time. I usually spend about two minutes.'

'Perhaps you're not very fussy what you read.'

That's a point, thought Morse. Jennifer spoke with an easy, clear diction. A good education, he thought. But there was more than that. There was a disciplined independence about the girl, and he wondered how she got on with men. He thought it would be difficult to make much headway with this young lady — unless, of course, she wanted to. She could, he suspected, be very nice indeed.

'Are you reading that?'

She laid a delicately manicured hand lightly upon Villette . 'Yes. Have you read it?'

' 'Fraid not,' confessed Morse.

'You should do.'

'I'll try to remember,' muttered Morse. Who was supposed to be conducting this interview? 'Er, you stayed an hour?'

'I've told you that.'

'Did anyone see you there?'

'They'd have a job not to, wouldn't they?'

'Yes, I suppose they would.' Morse felt he was losing his way. 'Did you get anything else out?' He suddenly felt a bit better.

'You'll be interested to know that I got that as well.' She pointed to a large volume, also lying open, on the carpet in front of the TV set. 'Mary's started to read it.' Morse picked it up and looked at the title. Who was Jack the Ripper?

'Mm.'

'I'm sure you've read that.'

Morse's morale began to sag again. 'I don't think I've read that particular account, no.'

Jennifer suddenly smiled. 'I'm sorry, Inspector. I'm very much of a bookworm myself, and I have far more spare time than you, I'm sure.'

'Coming back to Wednesday a minute, Miss Coleby. You say you were back about eight.'

'Yes, about then. It could have been quarter past, even half past, I suppose.'

'Was anyone in when you got back?'

'Yes. Sue was in. But Mary had gone off to the pictures. Day of the Jackal I think it was; she didn't get back until eleven.'

'I see.'

'Shall I ask Sue to come down?'

'No. No need to bother.' Morse realized he was probably wasting his time, but he stuck it out. 'How long does it take to walk to the library?'

'About ten minutes.'

'But it took you almost an hour, perhaps, if you didn't get back until eight-thirty?'

Again the pleasant smile, the regular white teeth, a hint of gentle mockery around the lips. 'Inspector, I think we'd better ask Sue if she remembers the time, don't you?'

'Perhaps we should," said Morse.

When Jennifer left the room Morse was looking around with sombre, weary eyes, when suddenly a thought flashed through his mind. He was deadly quick as he picked up Villette , turned to the inside of the cover and deftly replaced it over the arm of the chair. Sue came in, and quickly confirmed that as far as she could remember Jennifer had been back in the house at some time after eight. She couldn't be more precise. Morse got up to take his leave. He hadn't mentioned the very thing he had come to discuss, and he wasn't going to. That could come later.

He sat for a few minutes in the driving seat of his car and his blood ran hot and cold. He had not quite been able to believe his eyes. But he'd seen it in black and white, or rather dark blue on white.

Morse knew the Oxford library routine only too well, for he rarely returned his own irregular borrowings without having to pay a late fine. The library worked in weeks, not days, for books borrowed, and the day that every 'week' began was Wednesday. If a book was borrowed on a Wednesday, the date for return was exactly 14 days later — that Wednesday fortnight. If a book was borrowed on Thursday, the date for return was a fortnight after the following Wednesday, 20 days later. The date-stamp was changed each Thursday morning. This working from Wednesday to Wednesday simplified matters considerably for the library assistants and was warmly welcomed by those borrowers who found seven or eight hundred pages an excessive assignment inside just fourteen days. Morse would have to check, of course, but he felt certain that only those who borrowed books on Wednesday had to return books within the strict 14-day limit. Anyone taking out a book on any other day would have a few extra days' grace. If Jennifer Coleby had taken Villette from the library on Wednesday last, the date-stamp for return would have read Wednesday, 13 October. But it didn't. It read Wednesday, 20 October. Morse knew beyond any reasonable doubt that Jennifer had lied to him about her movements on the night of the murder. And why? To that vital question there seemed one very simple answer.

Morse sat still in his car outside the house. From the corner of his eye he saw the lounge curtain twitch slightly, but he could see no one. Whoever it was, he decided to let things stew a while longer. He could do with a breath of fresh air, anyway. He locked the car doors and sauntered gently down the road, turned left into the Banbury Road and walked more briskly now towards the library. He timed himself carefully: nine and a half minutes. Interesting. He walked up to the library door marked PUSH. But it didn't push. The library had closed its doors two hours ago.

CHAPTER EIGHT

Saturday, 2 October

BERNARD CROWTHER'S WIFE, Margaret, disliked the weekends, and effected her household management in such a way that neither her husband nor her twelve-year-old daughter nor her ten-year-old son enjoyed them very much either. Margaret had a part-time job in the School of Oriental Studies, and suspected that throughout the week she put in more hours of solid work than her gentle, bookish husband and her idle, selfish offspring put together. The weekend, they all assumed, was a time of well-earned relaxation; but they didn't think of her. 'What's for breakfast, mum?' 'Isn't dinner ready yet?' Besides which, she did her week's wash on Saturday afternoons and tried her best to clean the house on Sundays. She sometimes thought that she was going mad.