Colin Dexter - Last Bus To Woodstock

He must, too, surely he must, figure in at least the top 5 % of the IQ range? Jennifer wouldn't fall for an ignorant buffoon, would she? That letter. Clever chap, well schooled. If he wrote it. If, if, if. Carry on. Where's our x now? Go on. He must be attractive to women. Yet who can say what attracts those lovely creatures? But yes. Say yes. Subdivide. Cars! God, he'd forgotten cars. Not everyone has a car. About what proportion? Never mind, subdivide. Just a minute— red car. He felt slightly delirious. Just a fraction longer. . That really would be a significant subdivision. The x was floating slowly away, and now was gone. The pain was less vicious. Comfortable. . almost. . comfortable. .

He was woken at 4.00 p.m. by Lewis's inability to manage the front door without a disturbing clatter. And when Lewis anxiously put his head round the bedroom door, he saw Morse scribbling as furiously as Coleridge must have scribbled when he woke up to find, full grown within his mind, the whole of Kubla Khan .

'Sit down, Lewis. Glad to see you.' He continued to write with furious rapidity for two or three minutes. Finally he looked up. 'Lewis, I'm going to ask you some questions. Think carefully — don't rush! — and give me some intelligent answers. You'll have to guess, I know, but do your best.'

Oh hell, thought Lewis.

'How many people live in North Oxford?'

'What do you call "North Oxford", sir?'

'I'm asking the questions, you're answering 'em. Just think generally what you think North Oxford is; let's say Summertown and above. Now come on!'

'I could find out, sir.'

'Have a bloody guess, man, can't you?"

Lewis felt uncomfortable. At least he could see that only three of the beer cans were empty. He decided to plunge in. 'Ten thousand.' He said it with the assurance and unequivocal finality of a man asked to find the sum of two and two.

Morse took another sheet of paper and wrote down the number 10,000. 'What proportion of them are men?'

Lewis leaned back and eyed the ceiling with the confidence of a statistical consultant. 'About a quarter.'

Morse wrote down his second entry neatly and carefully beneath the first: 2,500. 'How many of those men are between 35 and 50?'

Quite a lot of retired people in North Oxford, thought Lewis, and quite a lot of young men on the estates. 'About half, no more.'

The third figure was entered: 1,250. 'How many of them are married, would you say?'

Lewis considered. Most of them, surely? 'Four out of five, sir.'

Morse formed the figures of his latest calculation with great precision: 1,000.

'How many of them regularly go out for a drink — you know what I mean — pubs, clubs, that sort of thing?'

Lewis thought of his own street. Not so many as some people thought. The neighbours on either side of him didn't — mean lot! He thought of the street as a whole. Tricky this one. 'About half.'

Morse revised his figure and went on to his next question. 'You remember the letter we had, Lewis. The letter Jennifer Coleby said she knew nothing about?' Lewis nodded. 'If we were right in thinking what we did, or what I did, would you say we were dealing with a man of high intelligence?'

'That's a big if, isn't it, sir?'

'Look, Lewis. That letter was written by our man — just get that into your head. It was the big mistake he made. It's the best clue we've got. What the hell do they pay us for. We've got to follow the clues, haven't we?' Morse didn't sound very convinced, but Lewis assured him that they had to follow the clues. 'Well?'

'Well what, sir?'

'Was he an intelligent man?'

'Very much so, I should think.'

'Would you think of writing a letter like that?',

' Me? No, sir.'

'And you're pretty bright, aren't you Sergeant?'

Lewis squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and decided not to minimize his intellectual capacity. 'I'd say I was in the top 15 %, sir.'

'Good for you! And our unknown friend? You remember he not only knows how to spell all the tricky words, he knows how to misspell them, too!'

'Top 5 %, sir.'

Morse wrote down the calculation.

'What proportion of middle-aged men are attractive to women?' Silly question! Morse noticed the derision in Lewis's face. "You know what I mean. Some men are positively repulsive to women!' Lewis seemed unconvinced. 'I know all about these middle-aged Romeos. We're all middle-aged Romeos. But some men are more attractive to women than others, aren't they?'

'I don't get many falling for me, sir.'

'That's not what I'm asking you. Say something, for God's sake!'

Lewis plunged again. 'Half? No, more than that. Three out of five.'

'You're sure you mean that?'

Of course he wasn't sure. 'Yes.'

Another figure. 'How many men of this age group have cars?'

'Two out of three.' What the hell did it matter?

Morse wrote down his penultimate figure. 'One more question. How many people own red cars?'

Lewis went to the window and watched the traffic going by. He counted. Two black, one beige, one dark blue, two white, one green, one yellow, one black. 'One in ten, sir."

Morse had shown a growing excitement in his manner for the last few minutes. 'Phew! Who'd have believed it? Lewis, you're a genius!'

Lewis thanked him for the compliment and asked wherein his genius lay. 'I think, Lewis, that we're looking for a male person, resident in North Oxford, married — probably a family, too; he goes out for a drink fairly regularly, sometimes to Woodstock; he's a well-educated man, may even be a university man; he's about 35 to 45, as I see him, with a certain amount of charm — certainly, I think a man some of the young ladies could fall for; finally he drives a car — to be precise a red car.'

'He'd be as good as anyone, I suppose.'

'Well, even if we're a bit out here and there, I'd bet my bottom dollar he's pretty likely to fit into most of those categories. And, do you know, Lewis, I don't think there are many who fall into that category . Look here.' He passed over to Lewis the sheet of paper containing the figures.

North Oxford? 10,000

Men? 2,500

35-50? 1,250

Married? 1,000

Drinker? 500

Top 5 %? 25

Charm? 15

Car? 10

Red Car? 1

Lewis felt a guilty sense of responsibility for the remarkable outcome of these computations. He stood by the window in the fading light of afternoon, and saw two red cars go by one after the other. How many people did live in North Oxford? Was he really in the top 15 %? 25 % more likely. 'I'm sure, sir, that we could check a lot of these figures.' Lewis felt constrained to voice his suspicions. 'I don't think you can just fiddle about with figures like that, anyway. You'd need to. .' He had a dim recollection of the need for some statistical laws operating on data; the categories had to be ordered and reduced in logical sequence; he couldn't quite remember. But it was all little more than an elaborate game to amuse a fevered brain. Morse would be up in a day or so. Better look after him and humour him as best he could. But was there any logic in it? Was it all that stupid? He looked again at the paper of figures and another red car went by. There were nine 'ifs'. He stared gloomily out of the window and mechanically counted the next ten cars. Only one red one! North Oxford was, of course, the biggest gamble. But the fellow had to live somewhere didn't he? Perhaps the old boy was not so cuckoo as he'd thought. He looked at the sheet yet again. . The other big thing was that letter. If the murderer had written it.

'What do you think then, Lewis?'

'Might be worth a go.'

'How many men do you want?'

'We'd need to do a bit of thinking first, wouldn't we?'

'What do you mean?'