Last Bus To Woodstock

'Perhaps not, but it seems most improbable to me. If she'd wanted a taxi, she'd have rung up from home — there's a phone there.'

'She may have done just that, sir.'

'She didn't. No phone call was made by any member of the Kaye household yesterday.'

Lewis was experiencing a dangerous failure of confidence. 'I don't seem to be much help,' he said. But Morse ignored the comment.

'Lewis, how would you go from Oxford to Woodstock?'

'By car, sir.'

'She hadn't got a car.'

'Get a lift with one of her friends?'

'You wrote the report. She doesn't seem to have had many girlfriends.'

'A boyfriend, you think, sir?'

'Do you?'

Lewis thought a minute. 'Bit odd if she was going with a boy friend. Why didn't he pick her up at her house?'

'Why not, indeed?'

'She wasn't picked up at home?'

'No. Her mother saw her walking away.'

'You've interviewed her mother then, sir.'

'Yes. I spoke to her last night.'

'Is she very upset?'

'She's got broad shoulders, Lewis, and I rather like her. Of course she's terribly upset and shocked. But not quite so heartbroken as I thought she'd be. In fact I got the idea her beautiful daughter was something of a trial to her.'

Morse walked over to a large mirror, took out a comb and began to groom his thinning hair. He carefully drew a few strands across a broad area of nakedness at the back of his skull, returned the comb to his pocket and asked a perplexed Sergeant Lewis what he thought of the effect.

'You see, Lewis, if Sylvia didn't go by bus, taxi or boyfriend, how on earth did she ever get to Woodstock? And remember that get to Woodstock somehow she assuredly did.'

'She must have hitched it, sir.'

Morse was still surveying himself in the mirror. 'Yes, Lewis, I think she did. And that is why,' he took out the comb again and made some further passes at his straggling hair, 'that is why I think I must put in a little TV appearance tonight.' He picked, up the phone and put through a call to the Chief Superintendent. 'Go and get some lunch, Lewis. I'll see you later.'

'Can I order anything for you, sir?'

'No. I've got to watch my figure,' said Morse.

The death of Sylvia Kaye had figured dramatically in Thursday afternoon's edition of The Oxford Mail, and prominently in the national press on Friday morning. On Friday evening the news bulletins on both BBC and ITV carried an interview with Chief Inspector Morse, who appealed for help from anyone who had been on the Woodstock Road between 6.40 p.m. and 7.15 p.m. on the evening of Wednesday, 29 September. Morse informed the nation that the police were looking for a very dangerous man who might attack again at any time; for the killer of Sylvia Kaye, when brought to justice, would face not only the charge of wilful murder, but also the charge of sexual assault and rape.

Lewis had stood in the background as Morse faced the camera crews and joined him after his performance was over.

'That damned wind!' said Morse, his hair blown into a tufted wilderness.

'Do you really think he might kill someone else, sir?'

'Doubt it very much,' said Morse.

CHAPTER FIVE

Friday, 1 October

EACH EVENING OF the week, with rare exceptions, Mr. Bernard Crowther left his small detached house in Southdown Road, North Oxford, at approximately 9.40 pm. Each evening his route was identical. Methodically closing behind him the white gate which enclosed a small, patchy strip of lawn, he would turn right, walk to the end of the road, turn right again, and make his way, with perceptible purposefulness in his stride, towards the lounge bar of The Fletcher's Arms. Though an articulate man, indeed an English don at Lonsdale College, he found it difficult to explain either to his disapproving wife or indeed to himself exactly what it was that attracted him to this unexceptionable pub, with its ill-assorted, yet regular and amiable clientele.

On the night of Friday, 1 October, however, Crowther would have been observed to remain quite still for several seconds after closing the garden gate behind him, his eyes downcast and disturbed as if he were pondering deep and troublous thoughts; and then to turn, against his habit and his inclination, to his left. He walked slowly to the end of the road, where, on the left beside a row of dilapidated garages, stood a public telephone-box. Impatient at the best of times, and this was not the best of times, he waited restlessly and awkwardly, pacing to and fro, consulting his watch and throwing wicked glances at the portly woman inside the kiosk who appeared ill-equipped to face the triangular threat of the gadgeted apparatus before her, an uncooperative telephone exchange and her own one-handed negotiations with the assorted coinage in her purse. But she was fighting on and Crowther, in a generous moment, wondered if one of her children had been taken suddenly and seriously ill with dad on the night-