Colin Dexter - Last Bus To Woodstock

He got his bite about 4.30 p.m., and limped across to the file on the Woodstock murder. Yes, they were both there. He took them out and read them again — for the umpteenth time, it seemed. He must be right. He had to be. But still he wondered if he was.

The first thing (but it was a minnow, not a shark) that arrested his attention was that in both the letter from the (pretty certainly) bogus employer, and in the statement made by Crowther, the writer had used the form 'I should'. Morse, not as conversant as he should have been with some of the niceties of English grammar, more often than not — almost always now he thought of it — used the form 'would'. He could hear himself dictating: 'Dear Sir, I would be very glad to. .' Ought he to have said 'I should?' He reached for Fowler's Modern English Usage . There it was: 'The verbs like, prefer, care, be glad, be inclined , etc., are very common in first-person conditional statements ( I should like to know etc.). In these should , not would , is the correct form in the English idiom.' Well, thought Morse, we learn something new every day. But somebody knew all about it already. So he should, though; he was an English don, wasn't he? What about Mr. G — undecipherable who had something to do with misspelt Psychology Department? (Blast — he'd not even checked that yet.) But Mr. G was a university man, too, wasn't he? said a still small Voice at the back of Morse's mind. A very little minnow! Interesting though.

He read the documents yet again. Just a minute. Hold on. Yes. This wasn't a minnow. Surely not! Yet it is not improbable. .' The phrase appeared in each document. A mannered phrase. 'Yet' standing at the beginning of its clause; not the commonest of syntactical structures. And what about 'not improbable'. That was a figure of speech Morse had learned at school. 'St Paul was a citizen of no mean city.' He consulted Fowler again. That was it. Litotes . Parallel expressions raced through his mind. 'Yet it is probable. .'; 'But it is probable/likely. .'; 'But it may be. .'; 'Maybe. .'; 'I think. .'; 'But I think. .' Odd. Very odd. A very mannered phrase.

And there was another coincidence. The phrase 'in all honesty' also appeared in each letter. What would he himself have written? 'Frankly', 'honestly', 'to be frank', 'truthfully'? Come to think of it, it didn't mean very much at all. Three little weasel words. The letter really was most odd. Had his first appraisal of its significance been over-sophisticated, too clever-clever? But people did do that sort of thing. Wives and husbands did it in war-time, communicating to each other a wealth of factual data unsuspected by the army censors. 'I'm sorry to hear little Archie's got the croup. Will write again soon,' might well have concealed the military intelligence that Trooper Smith was to be posted from Aldershot to Cairo next Saturday. Fanciful? No! Morse believed that he had been right.

The evening shadows fell across his desk, and he replaced the Woodstock file and locked the cabinet. The answer was slowly coming, and it seemed to be the answer in the answer book.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Tuesday, 12 October

ON TUESDAY MORNING at 11.00 a.m., half an hour after Crowther had boarded a bus to the city centre, a small business van, bearing the legend 'Kimmons Typewriters' drew up outside the Crowther residence in Southdown Road. A man, wearing a lightweight grey jacket with 'Kimmons' embroidered across the pocket, alighted from the van and walked through the white gate, past the scraggy lawn, and knocked. Margaret Crowther, wiping her hands on her apron, opened the door.

'Yes?'

'Mr. Crowther live here, please?'

'Yes'

'Is he in?'

'No, not at the minute.'

'Oh. You Mrs. Crowther?'

'Yes'

'Your husband rang to ask us to look at his typewriter. He said the carriage was getting stuck.'

'Oh, I see. Come in, will you?'

The typewriter man rather ostentatiously took from his pocket a small box, containing, one must have supposed, the requisite tools of the trade, stepped with an obvious diffidence into the narrow hallway and was ushered into the room off the right-hand side of the hall where Bernard Crowther spent so much of his time considering the glories of the English literary heritage. He spotted the typewriter immediately.

'Do you need me?' Mrs. Crowther seemed anxious to resume her culinary duties.

'No, no. Shan't be more than a few minutes — unless it's really wonky.' His voice sounded strained.

'Well, call me when you've finished. I'm only in the kitchen.'

He looked carefully around, made a few perfunctory tappings on the typewriter, slid the carriage tinkling to and fro several times, and listened carefully. He could hear the clink of plates and saucers; he felt fairly safe and very nervous. Quickly he slid open the top drawer on the right of the small desk: paper-clips, biros, rubbers, elastic bands — nothing very suspicious. Systematically he tried the two lower drawers, and then the three on the left. All pretty much the same. Wadges of notes clipped together, bulky agendas for college meetings, file-cases, writing paper, more writing paper and yet more — ruled, plain, headed, foolscap, folio, quarto. He repeated his pathetic little pantomime and heard, in welcome counter-point, an answering clatter of crockery. He took one sheet from each of the piles of writing paper, folded them carefully and put them into his inside pocket. Finally taking one sheet of quarto he stood it in the typewriter, twiddled the carriage and quickly typed two lines of writing:

After assessing the many applications we have received, we must

regretfully inform you that our application.

Mrs. Crowther showed him to the door. "Well, that should be all right now, Mrs. Crowther. Dust in the carriage-bearings, that's all.' Lewis hoped it sounded all right.

'Do you want me to pay you?'

'No. Don't bother about that now.' He was gone.

At twelve noon Lewis knocked on Bernard Crowther's door in the second court of Lonsdale College and found him finishing a tutorial with a young, bespectacled, long-haired undergraduate.

No rush, sir,' said Lewis. 'I can wait perfectly happily until you've finished.'

But Crowther had finished. He had met Lewis the previous Saturday, and was anxious to hear whatever must be heard. The youth was forthwith dismissed with the formidable injunction to produce an essay for the following tutorial on 'Symbolism in Cymbeline ', and Crowther shut the door. "Well, Sergeant Lewis?'

Lewis told him exactly what had occurred that morning; he made no bones about it and confessed that he had not enjoyed the subterfuge. Crowther showed little surprise and seemed anxious only about his wife.

'Now, sir,' said Lewis. 'If you say you expected a man from Kimmons to come and look at your typewriter, no harm's been done. I want to assure you of that.'

'Couldn't you have asked me?'

'Well, yes, sir, we could. But I know that Inspector Morse wanted to make as little fuss as possible.'

'Yes, I'm sure.' Crowther said it with an edge of bitterness in his voice. Lewis got up to go. 'But why? What did you expect to find?'

'We wanted to find out, sir, if we could, on what machine a certain, er, a certain communication was written.'

'And you thought I was involved?'

'We have to make inquiries, sir.'

'Well?'

'Well what, sir?'

'Did you find out what you wanted?'

Lewis looked uneasy. 'Yes, sir.'

'And?'

'Shall we say, sir, that we didn't find anything at all, er — at all incriminating. That's about the position, sir.'

'You mean that you thought I'd written something on the typewriter and now you think I didn't.'

'Er, you'd have to ask Inspector Morse about that, sir.'