Inspector Morse - Last Bus to Woodstock Part 7

'Well-go on.'

'What do you mean - "go on"? That was all.'

'Do you want me to ...' began Morse, his voice fuming. 'Fetch Lewis!' he barked. Policewoman Fuller read the gale warning and hurried out.

Jennifer appeared untroubled, and Morse's anger subsided.

It was Jennifer who broke the silence. 'You mustn't be too angry with me, Inspector.' Her voice had become little more than a whisper. Her hand went to her forehead and for a while she closed her eyes. Morse looked at her closely for the first time. He had not noticed before how attractive she could be. She wore a light-blue summer coat over a black jumper, with gloves in matching black. Her cheek bones were high and there was animation in her face, her mouth slightly open revealing the clean lines of her white teeth. Morse wondered if he could ever fall for her, and decided, as usual, that he could.

'I've been so fl.u.s.tered, and so frightened.'

He had to lean forward slightly to catch her words. He noticed that Lewis had come in and motioned him silently to a chair.

'Everything will be all right, you see.' Morse looked at Lewis and nodded as the sergeant prepared to take down the second 'draft of the evidence of Miss Jennifer Coleby.

'Why were you frightened?' asked Morse gently.

'Well, it's all been so strange -1 don't seem to be able to wake up properly since ... I don't seem to know what's real and what's not. So many funny things seem to be happening.' She was still sitting with her head in her hand, looking blankly at the top of the table. Morse glanced at Lewis. Things were almost ready.

'What do you mean - "funny things"?'

'Just everything really. I'm beginning to wonder if I know what I am doing. What am I doing here?

I thought I'd told you the truth about Wednesday - and now I realize I didn't. And there was another funny thing.' Morse watched her keenly. 'I had a letter on Sat.u.r.day morning telling me I'd not been chosen for a job - and I don't even remember applying for it. Do you think I'm going mad?'

'So that was going to be her story! Morse experienced the agony of a bridge player whose ace has just been covered by the deuce of trumps. The two policemen looked at each other, and both were conscious that Jennifer's eyes were on them.

'Well, now.' Morse hid his disappointment and disbelief as well as he was able. "Let's just get back to Wednesday night, shall we? Can you repeat what you just told me? I want Sergeant Lewis to get it down.' His voice sounded exasperated.

Jennifer repeated her brief statement and Lewis, like the Inspector before him, looked temporarily bewildered.

'You mean,' said Morse, 'that Miss Kaye went on to Woodstock, but that you only went as far as Begbroke?'

'Yes, that's exactly what I mean.'

'You asked this man to drop you at Begbroke?'

'What man are you talking about?'

'The man who gave you a lift.'

'But I didn't get a lift to Begbroke.'

'You what?' shrieked Morse.

'I said I didn't get a lift. I would never hitch-hike anyway. I think you ought to know something, Inspector. I've got a car.'

While Lewis was getting the second statement typed, Morse retreated to his office. Had he been wrong all along? If what Jennifer now claimed was true, it would certainly account for several things. On the same road, on the same night and one of her own office friends murdered? Of course she would feel frightened. But was that enough to account for her repeated evasions? He reached for the phone and rang the Golden Rose at Begbroke. The jovial-sounding landlord was anxious to help. His wife had been on duty in the lounge on Wednesday. Could she possibly come down to Kidlington Police HQ?

Yes. The landlord would drive her himself. Good. Quarter of an hour, then.

'Do you remember a young lady coming in to the lounge last Wednesday? On her own? About half past seven time?' The richly ringed and amply bosomed lady wasn't sure. 'But you don't often get women coming in alone, do you?'

'Not often, no. But it's not all that unusual these days, Inspector. You'd be surprised.'

Morse felt that little would surprise him any more. 'Would you recognize someone like that?

'Someone who just dropped in one night?'

'I think so, yes.'

Morse rang Lewis, who was still waiting with Jennifer in the interview room.

'Take her home, Lewis.'

The landlady of the Golden Rose stood beside Morse at the inquiry desk as Jennifer walked past with Lewis.

'That her?' he asked. It was his penultimate question.

'Yes. I think it is.'

'I'm most grateful to you,' lied Morse.

'I'm glad I could help, Inspector.'

Morse showed her to the door. 'I don't suppose you happen to remember what she ordered, do you?'

'Well, as a matter of fact, I think I do, Inspector. It was lager and lime, I think. Yes, lager and lime.'

It was half an hour before Lewis returned. 'Did you believe her, sir?'

'No,' said Morse. He felt more frustrated than depressed. He realized that he had already landed himself in a good deal of muddle and mess by his own inadequacies. He had refused the offer of the auxiliary personnel available to him, and this meant that few of the many possible leads had yet been checked and doc.u.mented. Sanders, for example - surely to any trained officer the most obvious target for immediate and thorough investigation - he had thus far almost totally ignored. Indeed, even a superficial scrutiny of his conduct of the case thus far would reveal a haphazardness in his approach almost bordering upon negligence. Only the previous month he had himself given a lecture to fellow detectives on the paramount importance in any criminal investigation of the strictest and most disciplined thoroughness in every respect of the inquiry from the very beginning.

And yet, for all this, he sensed in some intuitive way (a procedure not mentioned in his lecture) that he was vaguely on the right track still; that he had been right in allowing Jennifer to go; that although his latest shot had been kicked off the line, sooner or later the goal would come.

For the next hour the two officers exchanged notes on the afternoon's interrogation, with Morse impatiently probing Lewis's reactions to the girl's evasions, glances, and gestures.

'Do you think she's lying, Lewis?'

'I'm not so sure now.'

'Come off it, man. When you're as old as I am you'll recognize a liar a mile off!'

Lewis remained doubtful: he was by several years the older man anyway. Silence fell between them.

'Where do we go from here, then?' said Lewis at last.

'I think we attack down the other flank.'

We do?'

'Yes. She's shielding a man. Why? Why? That's what we've been asking ourselves so far. And you know where we've got with that line of inquiry? Nowhere. She's lying, I know that; but we haven't broken her - not yet. She's such a good liar she'd get any d.a.m.ned fool to believe her.'

Lewis saw the implication. 'You could be wrong, sir.'

Morse bl.u.s.tered on, wondering if he was. 'No, no, no. We've just been tackling the case from the wrong angle. They tell me, Lewis, that you can climb up the Eiger in your carpet slippers if you go the easy way.'

'You mean we've been trying to solve this the hard way?'

'No. I mean just the opposite. We've been trying to solve it the easy way. Now we've got to try the hard way.'

'How do we do that, sir?'

'We've been trying to find out who the other girl was, because we thought she could lead us to the man we want.'

'But according to you we have found her.'

'Yes. But she's too clever for us - and too loyal. She's been warned to keep her mouth shut - not that she needed much telling, if I'm any judge. But we're up against a brick wall for the time being, and there's only one alternative. The girl won't lead us to the man? All right. We find the man.'

'How do we start on that?'

'I think we shall need a bit of Aristotelian logic, don't you?'

'If you say so, sir.'

'I'll tell you all about it in the morning,' said Morse. Lewis paused as he reached the door. That identification of Miss Coleby, sir. Did you think it was satisfactory - just to take the landlady's word for it?'

'Why not?'

'Well, it was all a bit casual, wasn't it? I mean, it wasn't exactly going by the book.'

'What book?' said Morse.

Lewis decided that his mind had got itself into a quite sufficient muddle for one day, and he left.

Morse's mind, too, was hardly functioning with crystalline lucidity; yet already emerging from the mazed confusion was the germ of a new idea. He had suspected from the start that Jennifer Coleby was lying; would have staked his professional reputation upon it. But he could have been wrong, at least in one respect. He had tried to break Jennifer's story, but had he been trying to break it at the wrong point?

What if all she had told him was perfectly true? ... The same revolving pro's and con's pa.s.sed up and down before his eyes like undulating hobby-horses at a fairground, until his own mind, too, was in a dizzying whirl and he knew that it was time to give it all a rest.

10 Wednesday, 6 October

The c.o.c.ktail lounge of the Black Prince was seldom busy for the hour after opening time at 11.00 a.m., and the morning of Wednesday, 6 October, was to prove no exception. The shock-wave of the murder was now receding and the Black Prince was quickly returning to normality.

It was amazing how quickly things sank into the background, thought Mrs Gaye McFee as she polished another martini gla.s.s and stacked it neatly among its fellows. But not really; only that morning an incoming air-liner had crashed at Heathrow with the loss of seventy-nine lives. And every day on the roads...

'What'll it be, boys?' The speaker was a distinguished-looking man, about sixty years old, thick set, with silvery-grey hair and a ruddy complexion. Gaye had served him many times before and knew him to be Professor Tompsett (Felix to his friends, who were rumoured not to be legion) - emeritus Pro- fessor of Elizabethan Literature at Oxford University, and the recently retired Vice-Princ.i.p.al of Lonsdale College. His two companions, one a gaunt, bearded man in his late twenties, the other a gentle-looking bespectacled man of about forty-five, each ordered gin and tonic.

'Three gin and tonics.' Tompsett had an incisive, imperative voice, and Gaye wondered if he got his college scout to stir his morning coffee.

'Hope you're going to enjoy life with us, young Melhuish!' Tompsett laid a broad hand on his bearded companion's shoulder, and was soon engrossed in matters which Gaye was no longer able to follow. A group of American servicemen had come in and were losing no time in quizzing her about the brands of lager, the menu, the recent murder, and her home address. But she enjoyed Americans, and was soon laughing good-naturedly with them. As usual, the lager-pump was producing more froth than liquid substance and Gaye noticed, waiting patiently at the other end of the bar, the bespectacled member of the Oxford triumvirate.

'Shan't be a second, sir.'

'Don't worry. I'm in no great rush.' He smiled quietly at her, and she saw the glimmer of a twinkle in his dark eyes, and she hurriedly squared the account with the neighbourly Americans.

'Now, sir.'

'We'd all like the same again, please. Three gins and tonics.' Gaye looked at him with interest. The landlord had once told her that if anyone ordered 'gins and tonics' instead of the almost universal 'gin and tonics' - he really was a don. She wished he would speak again, for she liked the sound of his voice with its sarft Glarcestershire accent. But he didn't. Nevertheless, she stayed at his end of the bar and lightly repolished the martini gla.s.ses 'Whatawe done to you, honeybunch?' and similar endearing invitations emanated regularly from her other clients, but Gaye quietly and tactfully declined their ploys; she watched instead the man from Gloucestershire. Tompsett was in full flow.

'He didn't even go to my inaugural when he was up. What do you think of that, Peter, old boy."

'Don't blame him really,' said Peter. 'We all sit and salivate over our own prose, Melhuish, and we kid ourselves it's b.l.o.o.d.y marvellous.'

The Professor of Elizabethan Literature laughed good-humouredly and half-drained his gla.s.s. 'Been here before, Melhuish?'

'No, I haven't. Rather nice, isn't it?'

'Bit notorious now, you know. Murder here last week.'

'Yes, I read about it.'

'Young blonde. Raped and murdered, right in the yard out there. Pretty young thing - if the newspapers are anything to go by.'

Melhuish, newly appointed junior fellow at Lonsdale, very bright and very anxious, was beginning to feel a little more at home with his senior colleagues.

'Raped, too, was she?'

Tompsett drained his gla.s.s. 'So they say. But I've always been a bit dubious myself about this rape business.'

'Confucius, he say girl with skirt up, she run faster than man with trousers down, eh?'

The two older men smiled politely at the tired old joke, but Melhuish wished he hadn't repeated it: off-key, over-familiar. Gaye heard the clear voice of Tompsett rescuing the conversation. He was no fool, she thought.

'Yes, I agree with you, Melhuish. We mustn't get too serious about rape. G.o.d, no. Happens every day. I remember a couple of years back there was a young gal here - you'd remember her, Peter - quick, clear mind, good worker, marvellous kid. She was taking Finals and had eight three-hour papers.

She'd done her seventh paper on the Thursday morning - no it was the Friday, or was it... but that's beside the point. She took her last but one paper in the morning with just one more fence to jump in the afternoon. Well, she went off to her digs out at Headington for lunch and - begger me! - she got raped on her way back. Just think of the shock for the poor la.s.s. You remember, Peter? Anyway, she insisted on taking the last paper and do you know, Melhuish - she did better on the last paper than she'd done on all the others!'