Colin Dexter - Last Bus To Woodstock

'Yes, sir.'

'Well?'

'They think you're making it up. They think you've got gout really. You know — too much port.'

Morse groaned. He could picture himself limping round with every other person stopping him to enquire into the circumstances of the disaster. He'd write it all out, have it photocopied, and distribute the literature around the station.

'Still painful, sir?'

'Of course it bloody well is. You've got millions of nerve endings all over your bloody toes. You know that, don't you?"

'I had an uncle, sir, who had a beer barrel run over his toes.'

'Shut up,' winced Morse. The thought of anything, let alone a beer barrel, being within three feet of his injured foot was quite unbearable. Beer barrel, though. Morse was getting better.

'Are the pubs open yet?'

'Fancy a drink, sir?' Lewis looked pleased with himself.

'Wouldn't mind a jar.'

'As a matter of fact I brought a few cans in last night, sir.'

'Well?'

Lewis found some glasses, and positioning a chair a goodly distance from 'the foot', poured out the beer.

'Nothing new?' asked Morse.

'Not yet.'

'Mm.'

The two men drank in silence. Some of the answers almost right. . others on the tip of his tongue. . What, wondered Morse, if he had been right, or almost right? If only he could start again. . Suddenly he sat up, forgot his incapacity, yelped 'Oh, me foot!' and leaned back again into his nest of pillows. He could start again, couldn't he? 'Lewis. I want you to do me one or two favours. Get me some writing paper — it's in the writing-desk downstairs; and what about some fish and chips for lunch?'

Lewis nodded. As he went off for the writing paper Morse interrupted him.

'Three favours. Open a few of those cans.'

A thought had been floating around in Morse's mind for several days, elusive as a bar of soap in a slippery bath. In the beginning was the thought, and the thought became word and Morse unwrapped the text carefully and read the message. Im Anfang war die Hypothese . In the beginning was the hypothesis. But before formulating any hypothesis, even of the most modest order, Morse decided that he would feel sharper in body, mind and spirit with a good wash and a shave. Slowly and painfully he got out of bed, tacked crabwise around the walls and ended up by hopping over the last few feet of the bathroom floor. It took him almost an hour to complete his toilet, but he felt a new man. He retraced his irregular progress and gently heaved his right foot into a comfortable niche alongside a spare pillow stuffed down at the bottom of the bed. He felt exhausted but wonderfully refreshed. He closed his eyes and fell fast asleep.

Lewis wondered if he should wake him, but the pungent smell of fried batter and vinegar saved him the trouble.

'What's the time, Lewis? I've been asleep.'

'Quarter past one, sir. Do you want the fish and chips on a plate? Me and the wife always eat 'em off the paper — seems to taste better somehow.'

'They say it's the newsprint sticking to the chips,' replied Morse, taking the oily package from his sergeant and tucking in with relish. 'You know, Lewis, perhaps we've been going about this case in the wrong way.'

'We have, sir?'

'We've been trying to solve the case in order to find the murderer, right?'

'I suppose that's the general idea, isn't it?'

'Ah, but we might get better results the other way round.'

'You mean. .' But though Morse waited it was clear that Lewis had no idea whatsoever what he meant.

'I mean we ought to find the murderer in order to solve the case.'

'I see,' said Lewis, unseeing.

'I'm glad you do,' said Morse. 'It's as clear as daylight — and open some of these bloody curtains, will you?'

Lewis complied.

'If,' continued Morse, 'if I told you who the murderer was and where he lived, you could go along and you could arrest him, couldn't you?' Lewis nodded vaguely and wondered if his superior officer had caught his skull on the kitchen sink before landing on his precious right foot. "You could, couldn't you? You could bring him here to see me, you could keep him at a safe distance from my grievous injury — and he could tell us all about it, eh? He could do all our work for us, couldn't he?'

Morse jabbered on, his mouth stuffed with fish and chips, and with genuine concern Lewis began to doubt the Inspector's sanity. Shock was a funny thing; he'd seen it many times in road accidents. Sometimes two or three days afterwards some of the parties would go completely gaga. They'd recover of course. . Or had Morse been drinking? Not the beer. The opened cans were still unpoured. A heavy responsibility suddenly seemed to descend on Lewis's shoulders. He was sweating slightly. The room was hot, the autumn sun bright upon the glass of the bedroom window.

'Can I get you anything, sir?'

"Yep. Flannel and soap and towel. By Jove, your wife's right, Lewis. I'll never eat "em off a plate again.'

A quarter of an hour later a bewildered sergeant let himself out of the front door of Morse's flat. He felt a little worried and would have felt even more so if he had been back in the bedroom at that moment to hear Morse talking to himself, and nodding occasionally whenever he particularly approved of what he heard coming from his own lips.

'Now my first hypothesis, ladies and gentlemen, and as I see things the most vital hypothesis of all — I shall make many, oh yes, I shall make many — is this: that the murderer is living in North Oxford. You will say this is a bold hypothesis, and so it is. Why should the murderer not live in Didcot or Sidcup or even Southampton? Why should he live in North Oxford? Why not, coming nearer home, why not just in Oxford? I can only repeat to you that I am formulating a hypothesis, that is, a supposition, a proposition, however wild, assumed for the sake of argument; a theory to be proved (or disproved — yes, we must concede that) by reference to facts, and it is with facts and not with airy-fairy fancies that I shall endeavour to bolster my hypothesis. Im Anfang war die Hypothese , as Goethe might have put it. And please let it not be forgotten that I am Morse of the Detective, as Dickens would have said. Oh yes, a detective. A detective has a sensibility towards crime — he feels it; he must feel it before he can detect it. There are indications which point to North Oxford. We need not review them all here, but the ambience is right in North Oxford. And if I am wrong, why, no harm is done to our investigation. We are propounding a hypothesis, that is, a supposition, a proposition, however wild. . I've said all that before, though. Where was I, now? Oh yes. I wish you to accept, provisionally, dubiously, hopelessly if needs be, my premier hypothesis. The murderer is a resident of North Oxford. Now I mentioned facts, and I shall not disappoint you. Aristotle classified the animals, I believe, by subdividing them, and sub-division will be our method of procedure. Aristotle, that great man, divided and subdivided — species, subspecies, genera (Morse was getting lost) genera, species, subspecies and so on until he reached — what did he reach? — the individual specimen of the species.' (That sounded better.) 'I, too, will divide. In North Oxford there are, let us say, "x" number of people. Now we further hypothesize that our murderer is a male. Why can we be confident of this fact? Because, ladies and gentlemen, the murdered girl was raped . This is a fact, and we shall bring forward at the trial the evidence of eminent medical personnel to. .' Morse was tiring a little, and fortified himself with another can of beer. 'As I was saying, our murderer is male. We can therefore divide our number x by, let us say, er, four — leaving the women and children out of our reckoning. Now can we subdivide again, you will ask? Indeed, we can. Let us guess at the age of our murderer. I put him — I am diffident, and you will accuse me of formulating sub-hypotheses — between 35 and 50. Yes, there are reasons. .' But Morse decided to skip them. They weren't all that convincing, perhaps, but he had reasons, and he wished to sustain the impetus of his hypothesis. 'We may then further subdivide our number x by two. That seems most reasonable, does it not? Let us continue. What else can we reasonably hypothesize? I believe — for reasons which I realize may not be fully acceptable to you all — that our suspect is a married man.' Morse was feeling his way with an increasing lack of confidence. But the road ahead was already clearing; the fog was lifting and dissipating in the sun, and he resumed with his earlier briskness. 'Now this means yet a further diminution in the power of x. Our x is becoming a manageable unit, is it not? But not yet is the focus of our camera hypothetica fixed with any clear delineation upon our unsuspecting quarry. But wait! Our man is a regular drinker, is he not? It is surely one of our more reasonable claims, and gives to our procedure not only the merits of hypothetical plausibility, but also of extreme probability. Our case is centred upon The Black Prince, and one does not visit The Black Prince in order to consult the tax inspector.' Morse was wilting again. His foot was throbbing again with rhythmic pain, and his mind wandered off for a few minutes. Must be those Disprin. He closed his eyes and continued his forensic monologue within his brain.