Last Bus To Woodstock

All right. But since it was established that Bernard Crowther was the man who had stopped at the Woodstock roundabout, certain aspects of the case seemed to get more puzzling rather than less. I could well imagine that Crowther was the sort of man who might now and then be unfaithful to his wife; from what we now know, his relationship with his wife seems to have drifted over the last few years from idyllic bliss to idiotic bickering. But if we were looking for a sex-crazed maniac, I felt fairly sure Crowther wasn't the man we were looking for. He seemed to me an essentially civilized man. You remember when you looked at those photographs of Sylvia, Lewis? You remember you said you'd like to get the bastard who did it? But you had a composite picture of the crime in your mind, I think: you were putting together the rape and the murder and something else — the obvious interference with Sylvia's scanty clothing. Now I couldn't fit Crowther into that picture; and if Mrs. Crowther's evidence was right in any respect, it was surely right at the point where she described what she saw in the car. You made that point yourself, Lewis. What have we got then? First, he makes love to the girl in the back of the car. Second, he may have had a quarrel with her about something. Let's say she's a mercenary young tart and she agreed to make love with him on the sort of terms a common prostitute would ask. Let's say he couldn't or wouldn't pay her. Let's say they quarrel and he kills her. It's a possibility. But I just couldn't believe that if this had been the sequence of events that we should have found Sylvia in the condition we did — with her blouse torn and ripped away from her. Or at least not if we were right in thinking of Crowther as the guilty party.'

Lewis interrupted him quietly. 'You said that you knew who did that.'

'I think you do, too,' replied Morse. 'As the case progressed there seemed to be only one person who had a mind sufficiently warped and perverted to interfere with the body of a murdered girl. A man who had been waiting to see her anyway; a man we know who perpetually tantalized and tortured himself by thoughts of sex; a man who feasted on a weekly diet of blue films and pornography. You know all about him, Lewis. And I went to see him a week ago. His bedroom is cluttered with the whole paraphernalia of dirty postcards, Danish magazines, hard pornography and all the rest. He's sick, Lewis, and he knows he's sick, and his mother knows he's sick. But he's not a vicious type of chap. In fact he's not unlikeable in a nasty sort of way. He told me that he'd often had a dream about undressing the body of a dead girl.'

'My God!' said Lewis.

'You shouldn't feel too surprised about it, you know,' said Morse. 'I'm told that Freud mentions that sort of dream as being quite a common form of sexual fantasy among frustrated voyeurs.' Lewis remembered the film. He'd found it a bit erotic himself, hadn't he? But he hadn't wanted to admit it — even to himself.

'He'd met Sylvia several times before. They usually met in the cocktail lounge of The Black Prince, had some booze and then went back to his house — to his bedroom. He paid for it. He told me so.'

'He had quite a lot of expense one way or another, sir.'

'He did indeed. Anyway, on the night when Sylvia was murdered he'd been waiting since about a quarter to eight. He drank more and more and felt more and more desperate as the time ticked by and Sylvia didn't appear. He went out several times to look for her. But he saw nothing. When he did find her he was sick in mind and body: sick from pent-up sexual frustration and sick from too much drink. He found her quite by chance — so he says — and I believe him.'

'And then. . you mean he. . he fiddled about with her?'

Morse nodded. 'Yes. He did.'

'He needs treatment, sir.'

'He's promised me to see a psychiatrist — but I'm not very optimistic about that. I only ever knew one psychiatrist. Funny chap. If ever a man was in need of psychiatric treatment it was him.' Morse smiled ruefully, and Lewis felt his chief was becoming more like his normal self.

'So that's cleared that bit up, sir.'

'Yes. But it didn't help all that much, did it? I was as sure as I could be that Sylvia Kaye was not murdered by Mr. John Sanders. She was murdered, so the pathology report says, between 7 and 8 p.m. or thereabouts. Now we know all that stuff about the murderer going back to the scene of the crime, but I just couldn't believe that Sanders had stood for about two and a half to three hours drinking whisky no more than fifty-odd yards away from where his victim lay murdered. He'd have hopped it, that's for sure. What seemed so odd to me was why she wasn't found earlier. But you cleared that up.'

Lewis was glad to know that he had been of value somewhere along the line, and he knew what Morse was referring to, for he had himself interviewed all the drivers of vehicles parked in the yard that night. The driver of the car beside which Sylvia had been found had earlier parked in an awkward position just outside the yard of The Black Prince; but he had been anxious about blocking other cars and he had immediately taken the opportunity, on seeing a car drive out from the yard, of backing his own car into the space left vacant. His light of course could not possibly have picked up Sylvia's body, and when he got out of the driving seat the body was against the wall on the other side of the car.

'Well,' continued Morse, 'by this time, for one reason or another we managed to get on to Crowther. Or rather the Crowthers. Perhaps we shall never know the exact part each of them played that night. But one thing I think we can confidently suggest — that as a result of what happened Margaret thought that Bernard had murdered Sylvia. Whether she killed herself just because of what she suspected, I don't know, though it was surely one of the factors that drove her to it. But that's only half the matter. I think, too, that Bernard thought that Margaret had murdered Sylvia. If I'm right about this, it seems to me to explain a lot of things. Bernard had two overwhelming reasons for keeping quiet. First, his love affair would almost certainly be brought out into the open, with all the consequences that would entail. But second, and even more important, his evidence might well help us find the murderer who, as Bernard saw things, was probably his own wife, Margaret. Oh dear, Lewis, if only they had spoken to each other about it! You don't suspect someone else of a crime if you've done it yourself. And I think each of them was quite genuine in suspecting the other. So we can say with every confidence that neither of them did it. And if Bernard had shown any intelligence he would have known how improbable it was that Margaret was actually involved in the murder. He passed his wife on the way back to Oxford! Now we know from Margaret's evidence that she's a slowish driver and perhaps most cars would pass her anyway. But if he left for Oxford before her, it is a physical impossibility for him to have overtaken her. Agreed?'

'Unless he called for a drink or something, sir.'

'I hadn't thought of that,' said Morse slowly. 'But it isn't a vital point. Let's go on. Now the key person in the case from the beginning has been Miss X — the Miss X who was with Sylvia in Bernard Crowther's car. What did we learn about her? The most vital fact we learned was something Mrs. Jarman heard; and she's utterly convinced that she did hear it — I saw her again last night. She heard Sylvia say, 'We'll have a giggle about it in the morning.' So. We find the field narrowed very considerably, do we not? We investigate the Town and Gown Assurance Co. and we discover some interesting facts. And the most interesting fact of all is that someone tells Miss Jennifer Coleby to keep her mouth shut.' Lewis opened his own mouth, but got no further. 'I know you think I've been anti that young lady from the beginning, but I am now convinced — more than ever convinced —