Last Bus to Woodstock Read online

  ‘Well, I want to thank you very much, Mrs Jarman.’ Lewis closed his note-book and looked, in a mildly satisfied manner, towards his chief.

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Morse, ‘I could ask you to come to see us in the morning? Sergeant Lewis will have your statement typed out, and we’d like you to have a look through it to see that he’s got it all right – just a formality, you know.’

  Lewis stood up to go, but Morse’s veiled glance told him to sit down again.

  ‘I wonder, Mrs Jarman,’ he said, ‘if you could do us one last favour. I’d just love a cup of tea. I know it’s late but . . .’

  ‘Why, of course, Inspector. I wish you’d said so before.’ She hurried off and the policemen heard a spurt of water and a clatter of cups.

  ‘Well, Sergeant, you’ve done a good job.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Now listen. That bus. Get on to it as soon as you can.’

  ‘But you said you’d checked the buses, sir.’

  ‘Well check ’em again.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘And,’ said Morse, ‘there’s that articulated lorry. With a bit of luck we can trace that.’

  ‘You think we can?’

  ‘You’ve got a definite time – what else do you want, man?’

  ‘Anything else, sir?’ said Lewis in a subdued voice.

  ‘Yes. Stay and make a few more notes. I won’t be long.’

  The kitchen door opened and Mrs Jarman reappeared. ‘I was just wondering whether you gentlemen would like a little drop of whisky, instead of tea. I’ve had a bottle since Christmas – I don’t usually drink myself.’

  ‘Now, now,’ said Morse, ‘you are a very resourceful woman, Mrs Jarman.’ Lewis smiled wanly. He knew what was coming. Déjà vu.

  ‘I think a little drop of Scotch would do me the power of good. Perhaps you’ll have a drop yourself?’

  ‘Oh no, sir, I’ll have a cuppa, if you don’t mind.’ She opened a drawer in the cupboard and brought out two glass tumblers.

  ‘Just the one glass then, Mrs Jarman,’ said Morse. ‘It’s a pity, I know, but Sergeant Lewis here is on duty and you will appreciate that a policeman is not allowed to consume any alcoholic drink whilst on duty. You wouldn’t want him to break the law, would you?’

  Lewis muttered to himself.

  Morse smiled into his liberal dose of whisky whilst his assistant soberly stirred a diminutive cup of wickedly dark brown tea.

  ‘Mrs Jarman I just want to ask you one or two more questions about what you’ve said to Sergeant Lewis. I hope you don’t feel too tired?’

  ‘Oh no.’

  ‘Do you remember how this “other girl” seemed? Was she a bit cross? A bit nervous?’

  ‘I don’t think she was – well, I don’t know. Perhaps she was a bit nervous.’

  ‘A bit frightened?’

  ‘Oh no. Not that. A bit sort of, er, excited. Yes, that’s it, a bit excited.’

  ‘Excited and impatient.’

  ‘I think so.’

  ‘Now, I want you to think back. Just close your eyes if you like, and picture yourself at the bus stop again. Can you recall anything, anything at all, that she said. She asked you if the next bus went to Woodstock. You’ve told us that. Anything else?’

  ‘I can’t remember. I just can’t seem to remember.’

  ‘Now, Mrs Jarman, don’t rush yourself. Just relax and picture it all again. Take your time.’

  Mrs Jarman closed her eyes and Morse watched her with keen anticipation. She said nothing. Morse at last broke the embarrassing silence. ‘What about the girl who was murdered? Did she say anything else? She wanted to hitch-hike, you said.’

  ‘Yes, she kept saying something like “Come on”.’

  ‘“It’ll be all right”?’ added Morse.

  ‘Yes. It’ll be all right. We’ll have a giggle about it in the morning.’

  Morse’s blood froze. He remained utterly motionless. But Mrs Jarman’s memory had dredged its last.

  Morse relaxed. ‘We’ve kept you up late, but you’ve been wonderful. And this must be a real priority brand of Scotch?’

  ‘Oh, would you like a little drop more, sir?’

  ‘Well, I think I wouldn’t perhaps say no, Mrs Jarman. Yes, a drop of the finest Scotch I’ve tasted in years.’

  As Mrs Jarman turned her back to refill his glass, Morse sternly motioned Lewis to stay where he was, and for the next half hour he tried with every subtlety he knew to jog the good lady’s recollection of her chance encounter with the murdered girl and her companion. But to no avail.

  ‘Just one more thing, Mrs Jarman. When you come to see us in the morning, we shall be holding an identity parade. It won’t take more than a minute or two.’

  ‘You mean you want me to . . . Oh dear!’

  At 11.45 p.m. Morse and Lewis took their leave of Mrs Jarman. They were standing by their cars when the door of the house suddenly opened again and Mrs Jarman came hurriedly towards Morse.

  ‘There’s just one more thing, sir. I’ve just remembered. When you said close your eyes and just picture things. I’ve thought of something. The other girl, sir. When she ran, she ran with a sort of splay-footed run – do you know what I mean, sir?’

  ‘Yes I do,’ said Morse.

  The two men returned to HQ. After enquiring whether any further calls had come through and learning there were none, Morse called Lewis to his office.

  ‘Well, my friend?’ Morse looked pleased with himself.

  ‘You told her we’re going to have an identity parade?’ asked a puzzled Lewis.

  ‘We are. Now tell me this. What would you say was the most vital fact we learned from Mrs Jarman?’

  ‘We learned quite a few pieces of valuable information.’

  ‘Yes, we did. But only one fact that really made your hair stand on end, eh?’ Lewis tried to look intelligent. ‘We learned, did we not,’ said Morse, ‘that the girls would have a bit of a giggle about it all in the morning?’

  ‘Oh, I see,’ said Lewis, not seeing.

  ‘You see what it means? They would be meeting in the morning – Thursday morning, and we know that Sylvia Kaye was in employment and we know where, do we not?’

  ‘So the other girl works there, too.’

  ‘The evidence would seem to point very much that way, Lewis.’

  ‘But I was there, sir, and none of them said a word.’

  ‘Don’t you find that very interesting?’

  ‘I don’t seem to have done a very good job, do I?’ Lewis looked disconsolately down at the Chief Inspector’s carpet.

  ‘But don’t you see,’ continued Morse, ‘we now know that one of the girls – how many were there?’

  ‘Fourteen.’

  ‘That one of those girls is at the very least withholding vital evidence and at the best telling us a heap of lies.’

  ‘I didn’t talk to them all, sir.’

  ‘Good God, man! They knew what you were there for, didn’t they? One of their colleagues is murdered. A sergeant of the murder squad comes to their office. What the hell did they think you’d gone for? Service the bloody typewriters? No, you did well, Lewis. You didn’t force our little girl to weave her tangled web for us. She thinks she’s OK and that’s how I want it.’ Morse got up. ‘I want you to get some sleep, Lewis. You’ve got work to do in the morning. But just before you go, find me the private address of Mr Palmer. I think a little visit is called for.’

  ‘You’re not thinking of knocking him up now, are you, sir?’

  ‘Not only am I going to knock him up as you put it, Lewis, I am going to ask him, very nicely of course, to open up his offices for me and I am going to look through the private drawers of fourteen young ladies. It should be an exciting business.’

  ‘Won’t you need a search warrant, sir?’

  ‘I never did understand the legal situation over search warrants,’ complained Morse.

  ‘I think you ought to have one, sir.’

  ‘An
d perhaps you’ll let me know where the hell I find anyone to sign a warrant at this time of the night – or morning, whatever it is.’

  ‘But if Mr Palmer insists on his legal rights . . .’ began Lewis.

  ‘I shall tell him we’re trying to find out who raped and murdered one of his girls,’ snapped Morse, ‘not looking for dirty postcards from Pwllheli!’

  ‘Wouldn’t you like me to come with you, sir?’

  ‘No. Do as I say and go to bed.’

  ‘Well, good luck, sir.’

  ‘I shan’t need it,’ said Morse. ‘I know you’d never believe it, but I can be an officious bastard when I want to be. Mr Palmer will be out of bed as if he’d got a flea in his pyjama bottoms.’

  But the manager of the Town and Gown Assurance Co., though condescending to get out of bed, flatly refused to get out of his pyjamas – top or bottom. He asked Morse for his authority to search his offices, and once having established that Morse had none, he proved adamant to all the cajolings and threats that Morse could muster. The Inspector reflected that he had badly underestimated the little manager. After prolonged negotiation, however, a policy was finally agreed. All the staff of the Town and Gown would be assembled in the manager’s office at 8.45 a.m. the following morning, where they would all be asked if they had any objections to the police opening any incoming private correspondence. If there were no objection (Palmer assured Morse), the Inspector could open all correspondence, and, if need be, make confidential copies of any letter which might be of value. Furthermore all the female employees would be asked to attend an identity parade at the Thames Valley HQ some time later the same morning. Palmer would need some time to arrange a skeleton servicing of the telephone exchange and other vital matters. It was a good job it was Saturday; the office closed at midday.

  Perhaps, thought Morse in retrospect, things hadn’t worked out too badly. He wearily drove to HQ and wondered why, with all his experience, he had rushed so wildly into such an ill-considered and probably futile scheme as he had contemplated. Yet, for all that, he thought that he had in some strange way been right. He felt in his bones that there was an urgency about this stage of the investigation. He felt he was poised for a big breakthrough, though he did not at this stage realize how many breaks-through would be required before the case was solved. Nor did he realize that in an oddly perverse way Palmer’s refusal to allow him unauthorized entry to his premises had presented him with one gigantic piece of luck. For a letter, addressed to one of the young ladies in Palmer’s employ, was already on its way, and no power on earth, except the inefficiency of some unsuspecting sorting clerk, could – or indeed did – prevent its prompt delivery.

  Morse returned to HQ and spent the next hour at his desk. He finished at 4.15 a.m. and sat back in his black leather chair. Little point in going home now. He pondered the case, at first with a slow, methodical analysis of the facts known hitherto and then with what, if he had been wider awake, he would wish to have called a series of swift, intuitive leaps, all of which landed him in areas of twilight and darkness. But he knew that whatever had taken place on Wednesday evening had its causation in the activities of certain persons, and that these persons had been motivated by the ordinary passions of love and hate and greed and jealousy. That wasn’t the puzzle at all. It was the interlocking of the jigsaw pieces, those pieces that would now be coming into his hands. He dozed off. He fitfully dreamed of an attractive red-headed barmaid and a blonde beauty with blood all over her hair. He always seemed to dream of women. He sometimes wondered what he would dream about if he got himself married. Women probably, he thought.

  * * *

  CHAPTER SIX

  * * *

  Saturday 2 October, a.m.

  ‘WHAT NEXT?’ SAID Judith, Mr Palmer’s confidential secretary. ‘Opening our letters, he said!’

  ‘You could have said no,’ replied Sandra, an amiable, feckless girl, who had, on merit, made no advance either in status or in salary since joining the office three years ago.

  ‘I almost did,’ chimed in Ruth, a flutter-lashed girl with the brains of a butterfly. ‘If Bob sent me one of his real passionate ones, coo!’ She giggled nervously.

  Most of the girls were young and unmarried and lived with their parents, and because of late morning postal deliveries and a fear that parents might pry into matters not concerning them, several of them had invited their correspondents to address mail to the office. Indeed, so many incoming letters were marked ‘Private and Confidential’, ‘Personal’ and the like, that an unsuspecting observer might have surmised that the Town and Gown was the headquarters of a classified intelligence department. But Palmer countenanced such mild abuse of his establishment with philosophic quietude, whilst at the same time keeping a hawk-like eye on the office telephone accounts. It seemed to him a fair arrangement.

  Each girl in her own way had been a little overawed by Morse, and his quietly spoken requests were conceded with no audible murmur of dissent. Of course they all wanted to help. In any case he was only going to get copies of the mail and everything would be treated with the utmost confidentiality. Nevertheless Ruth had given an audible sigh of relief on discovering that this was a morning when Bob had temporarily exhausted his supply of lecherous suggestions. However broadminded they were, well . . .

  ‘I think we all ought to help them find out about poor old Sylvia,’ said Sandra. For all her low-geared intellect she was a girl of ready sensitivity and had been deeply saddened, and a little frightened, by Sylvia’s death. She wished in her own innocent way that she could contribute something to the inquiry, and she sensed disappointment, though little surprise, that no one had written to her.

  There were seven personal letters and two postcards for Morse to study, and as he cursorily cast his eye over each before placing it in the copying machine, he felt it was all rather foolish. Still, there was the identity parade, of which he had high hopes, although here again in the sobering light of the morning the expectancy index had already fallen several points.

  ‘Have you been on an identity parade before?’ said Sandra.

  ‘Of course not,’ replied Judith. ‘People don’t get involved in murders every week, do they?’

  ‘Just wondered.’

  ‘What do we do?’ asked Ruth.

  ‘We do what we’re told.’ Judith believed passionately in the virtues of authority, and she sometimes wished that Mr Palmer, though he was very nice of course, would be just a little firmer and not quite so friendly with one or two of his employees.

  ‘I saw one once at the pictures,’ said Sandra.

  ‘I saw one on the telly,’ said Ruth. ‘Will it be like that?’

  Afterwards they decided it was like that. Disappointing really. A nondescript woman walked along and looked at each of them as they spoke the words, ‘Do you know when the next bus is?’ You couldn’t really be frightened of her. Wouldn’t it have been awful, though, if she’d put her hand on your shoulder? But she didn’t. She’d walked past all the girls and then walked back and then walked off. That Inspector – he’d been hoping, hadn’t he? And that was a bit funny at the end, wasn’t it? Running to the door at the far end of the yard. What was that all about?

  ‘They got the crook in the picture,’ said Sandra.

  ‘And on the telly,’ said Ruth.

  ‘You shouldn’t believe all you see,’ said Judith.

  Morse was sitting in his office at midday, when Lewis came in. ‘Well, sir? Any good?’

  Morse shook his head.

  ‘No good at all?’

  ‘She thought two or three of them might be her.’

  ‘Well, that narrows it down a bit, sir.’

  ‘Not really. I’ve heard defending counsels make powdered mincemeat out of witnesses who swore on their grandfathers’ graves that they were absolutely positive about an identification. No, Lewis. It doesn’t help us much, I’m afraid.’

  ‘What about your other idea, sir? You know, the girl had a funny splayed sort of
run.’

  ‘Oh, we got them to run all right.’

  Lewis sensed he had landed on a sore point. ‘No good, sir.’ It was a statement, not a question.

  ‘That’s right, Lewis. No good. And it might have occurred, it might just have occurred, Lewis, to members of the crime squad, to me, Lewis, and to you, that all girls run in the same ham-footed bloody way.’ He blasted the last few words at his sergeant, who waited for the hurricane to subside.

  ‘You could do with a pint of beer, sir.’

  Morse looked a little happier. ‘You may be right.’

  ‘I’ve got a bit of news, sir.’

  ‘Let’s have it.’

  ‘Well, the bus – that’s out. I got the driver and conductor of the 6.30 p.m. 4E from Carfax. There were only a dozen or so on the bus anyway, most of them regulars. Our two girls pretty certainly didn’t get to Woodstock by bus.’

  ‘We don’t know for certain that both of them got to Woodstock anyway,’ said Morse.

  ‘But Sylvia got there, didn’t she, sir, and the other girl asked for the bus there?’

  ‘I’m beginning to wonder if Mrs Jarman is such a helpful witness, after all.’

  ‘I think she is, because that’s only the bad news.’

  ‘You’ve got some good news?’ Morse tried to sound a bit more cheerful.

  ‘Well, it’s that lorry the old girl told us about. Quite easy really to trace it. You see at Cowley there’s this system with car-bodies. When they . . .’

  ‘Yes, I know. You did a sharp job, Lewis. But cut the trimmings.’

  ‘He remembers them. A Mr George Baker – lives in Oxford. And listen to this, sir. He saw the two girls getting into a car. A red car – he was sure of that. Chap driving – not a woman. He remembered because he often picks up hitchers, especially if they’re girls; and he saw these two just beyond the roundabout – about fifty yards ahead. He would have given them a lift, he said, but this other car pulls up, and he has to pull out to get past. He saw the blonde all right.’