Colin Dexter - Last Bus To Woodstock

Morse looked down at him. It was 8.30 a.m. and the last mortal remains of Bernard Crowther had been unobtrusively wheeled into the hospital mortuary almost two hours ago. Morse had liked Crowther. Intelligent face; good-looking man really. He thought that Margaret must have loved him dearly once; probably always had, deep down. And not only Margaret. There had been someone else, too, hadn't there, Bernard? Morse looked down at the sheet of note-paper in his hand, and read it again. 'To Inspector Morse. I'm so sorry. I've told you so many lies. Please leave her alone. She had nothing to do with it. How could she? I killed Sylvia Kaye.'

The pronouns were puzzling, or so they had seemed to the doctor as he wrote the brief message. But Morse understood them and he knew that Bernard Crowther had guessed the truth before he died. He looked at the dead man again: the feet were as cold as stone and he would babble no more o' green fields.

Morse turned slowly on his heel and left.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

Friday, 22 October, a.m.

LATER THAT SAME Friday morning Morse sat in his office bringing Lewis up to date with the morning's developments. "You see, all along the trouble with this case has been not so much that they've told us downright lies but that they've told us such a tricky combination of lies and the truth. But we're nearly at the end of the road, thank God.'

'We're not finished yet, sir?'

'Well, what do you think? It's not a very tidy way of leaving things, is it? It's always nice to have a confession, I know, but what do you do with two of 'em?'

'Perhaps we shall never know, sir. I think that they were just trying to cover up for each other, you know — taking the blame for what the other had done.'

'Who do you think did it, Sergeant?'

Lewis had his choice ready. 'I think she did it, sir.'

'Pshaw!' Well, it had been a 50:50 chance, and he'd guessed wrong. Or at least Morse thought he was wrong. But he hadn't been on very good form recently, had he? 'Come on,' said Morse. Tell me. What makes you pick on poor Mrs. Crowther?'

'Well, I think she found out about Crowther going with this other woman and I believe what she said about following him and seeing him at Woodstock. She couldn't have known some of the things she mentioned if she hadn't been there, could she?'

'Go on,' said Morse.

'I mean, for instance, about where the car was parked in the yard. About them getting in the back of the car— we didn't know that; but it seems to fit in with the evidence we got when one of Sylvia's hairs was found on the back seat. I just feel she couldn't have made it up. She couldn't have got those things from the newspapers because they were never printed.'

Morse nodded his agreement. 'And I'll tell you something else, Lewis. She wasn't at her Headington class on that Wednesday night. There's no tick for her on the register anyway. I've looked.'

Lewis was grateful for the corroborative evidence. 'But you don't believe it was her, sir?'

'I know it wasn't," said Morse simply. 'You see, Lewis, I think that if Margaret Crowther had been in murderous mood that night, it would have been Bernard's skull on the other end of a tire-lever — not a nonentity like Sylvia's.'

Lewis seemed far from convinced. 'I think you're wrong, sir. I know what you mean, but all women are different. You can't just say a woman would do this and wouldn't do that. Some women would do anything. She must have felt terribly jealous of this other girl taking her husband from her like that.'

'She doesn't say she was jealous, though; she says she felt "burning anger", remember?'

Lewis didn't, but he saw his opening. 'But why are you all of a sudden so anxious to believe what she says, sir? I thought you said you didn't believe her.'

Morse nodded his approval. "That's exactly what I mean. It's all such a mixture of truth and falsehood. Our job is to sift the wheat from the chaff.'

'And how do we do that?'

'Well, we need a bit of psychological insight, for one thing. And I think she was telling the truth when she said she was angry. To me, it's got the right sort of ring about it. I'm pretty sure if she was making it up she'd have said she was jealous, rather than angry. And if she was angry, I think the object of her anger would be her husband, not Sylvia Kaye.'

To Lewis it all seemed thin and wishy-washy. 'I've never cared much for psychology, sir.'

'You're not convinced?'

'Not with that, sir. No.'

'I don't blame you,' said Morse. 'I'm not very convinced myself. But you'll be glad to know that we don't have to depend on my abilities as a psychologist. Just think a minute, Lewis. She said she entered the yard, keeping close in — that is, to her left — and edged her way behind the cars. She saw Crowther at the far end of the yard, also on the left. Agreed?'

'Agreed.'

'But the tire-lever, if we can believe the evidence, and I can see no possible reason for not doing so, was either in, or beside, the tool-box at the farthest right-hand corner of the yard. The weapon with which Mrs. Crowther claims she killed Sylvia Kaye was at least twenty yards away from where she stood. She mentions in her statement that she was not only angry but frightened, too. And I can well believe her. Who wouldn't be frightened? Frightened of what was going on, frightened of the dark perhaps; but above all frightened of being seen . And yet you ask me to believe that she crossed the yard and picked up a tire-lever that was almost certainly no more than four or five yards from where Bernard stood with his bottled blonde? Rubbish! She read about the tire-lever in the papers.'

'Someone could have moved it, sir.'

'Yes. Someone could, certainly. Who do you suggest?'

Lewis felt that his arguing with Morse in this mood was almost as sacrilegious as Moses arguing with the Lord on Sinai. Anyway, he ought to have spotted that business about the spanner from the start. Very bad, really. But something else had bothered him about Margaret's statement. It had seemed so obvious from the start that this was a man's crime, not a woman's. He had himself looked down on Sylvia that first night and he had known perfectly well, without any pathologist's report, that she had been raped. Her clothes were torn and quite obviously someone had not been able to wait to get his hands on her body. It had been no surprise to him, or to Morse surely, that the report had mentioned the semen dribbling down her legs, and the bruising round her breasts. But all that didn't square with Margaret Crowther's evidence. She'd seen them in the back of the car, she said. But had she been right? The hair was found in the back of the car, but that didn't prove very much, did it? It could have got there in a hundred different ways. No. Things didn't add up either way. It beat him. He put his thoughts into words and Morse listened carefully.

'You're right. It's a problem that caused me a great deal of anxiety.'

'But it's not a problem now, sir?'

'Oh no. If that were our only problem we'd have some plain sailing ahead of us.'

'And you don't think we have?'

'I'm afraid we've got some very stormy seas to face.' Morse's face was drawn and grey, and his voice was strained as he continued. 'There's one more thing I should have told you, Lewis. After I left the Radcliffe this morning, I called to see Newlove. He'd been to see Bernard yesterday afternoon and was quite willing to talk about him.'

'Anything new, sir?'

'Yes, I suppose you can say there is, in a way. Newlove didn't want to talk about the personal side of things, but he told me that Crowther had spoken to him about the night of the murder. Very much what we already knew or what we've pieced together. Except one thing, Lewis. Crowther said he thought there was someone else in the yard that night.'