Last Bus To Woodstock

house-tops. An initial 'G' was clear enough, but the surname to which it was floridly appended would have remained an enigma to the great Champollion himself.

So Miss Jennifer Coleby is after a new job, said Morse to himself. So what? Hundreds of people applied for new jobs every day. He sometimes thought of doing so himself. He wondered why he'd thought the letter worth a second thought. Typically badly written — unforgivable misprints. And mis-spellings. No one in the schools cared much these days about the bread-and-butter mechanisms of English usage. He'd been brought up in the hard school: errors of spelling, punctuation and construction of sentences had been savagely penalized by outraged pedagogues, and this had made its mark on him. He had become pedantic and fussy and thought back on the ill- written travesty of a report he had read from one of his own staff only two days before, when he had mentally totted up the mistakes like an examiner assessing a candidate's work. 'Assessing.' Yes, that was wrong in this letter — among other things. The country was becoming increasingly illiterate — for all the fancy notions of the progressive educationalists. But if his own secretary had produced such rubbish, she would be out on her neck — today! But she was exceptional. Julie's initials at the bottom of any letter were the sure imprimatur of a clean and flawless sheet of typing. Just a minute though. . Morse looked again at the letter before him. No reference at all. Had G. Thingamajig typed it himself? If he had — what was he? A senior administrator of some university department? If he had. . Morse grew more and more puzzled. Why was there no letter heading? Was he worrying his head over nothing?

Well, there was one way of deciding the issue. He looked at his watch. Already 5.30 p.m. Miss Coleby would probably be at home now, he thought. Where did she live? He looked at Lewis's careful details of the address in North Oxford. An interesting thought? Morse began to realize how many avenues he had not even started to explore. He put on his greatcoat and went out to his car. As he drove the two miles down into Oxford, he resolved that he would rid himself as far as he could of all prejudice against Miss Jennifer Coleby. But it was not an easy thing to do; for, if Mrs. Jarman's memory could be trusted, the ambitious Miss Coleby was one of the three girls who may have made the journey to Woodstock that night with the late Miss Sylvia Kaye.

Jennifer Coleby rented, with two other working girls, a semidetached property in Charlton Road where each paid a weekly rent of ?8.25, inclusive of electricity and gas. It meant a fat rake-off of almost ?25 a week for the provident landlord who had snapped up two such properties for what now seemed meagre ?6,500 some six years since. But it was also a blessing for three enterprising girls who, for such a manageable outlay, were reasonably happy to share the narrow bathroom and the even narrower lavatory. Each girl had a bedroom (one downstairs), the kitchen was adequate for their evening meals, and all of them used the lounge in which to sit around, to chat and watch TV when they were in. These arrangements, apart from the bathroom, worked surprisingly well. Seldom were the girls in together during the day, and so far they had avoided any major confrontation. The landlord had forbidden men-friends in the bedrooms and the girls had accepted his Diktat without contention. There had, of course, been a few infractions of the ban, but the household had never degenerated into overt promiscuity. One rule the girls imposed upon themselves — no record players; and for this, at least, their elderly neighbours were profoundly grateful. The house was kept tidy and clean, as Morse immediately saw as the door was opened by a sad girl eating a tomato sandwich.

'I've called to see Miss Coleby, if I may. Is she in?'

Dark, languorous eyes looked at him carefully, and Morse found himself tempted to wink at her.

'Just a minute.' She walked leisurely away, but suddenly turned her head to ask, Who shall I say?'

'Er, Morse. Chief Inspector Morse.'

'Oh.'

A cool, clean-looking Jennifer, dressed in blouse and jeans, came out to greet Morse, without apparent enthusiasm.

'Can I help you, Inspector?'

'I wonder if we could have a few words together? Is it convenient?'

'It will have to be, I suppose. You'd better come in.'

Morse was shown into a lounge, where Miss Dark-eyes sat pretending to be deeply engrossed in a report on the Arsenal v. Tottenham match.

'Sue, this is Inspector Morse. Do you mind if we speak here?'

Sue stood up, and a little too theatrically, thought Morse, switched off the set. He observed her slow, graceful movements and smiled to himself, approvingly. 'I'll be upstairs, Jen.' She glanced at Morse before she left, saw the incipient smile at the corners of his mouth and afterwards swore to Jennifer that he had winked at her.

Jennifer motioned Morse to sit on the settee, and sat opposite him in an armchair.

'How can I help, Inspector?'

Morse noticed a copy of Charlotte Bronte's Vittette balancing like a circumflex accent over the arm of her chair.

'I'm having — purely routine, of course — to check the movements of all the er. . persons. .'

'Suspects?'

'No, no. Those who worked with Sylvia. You understand that this sort of thing has to be done.'

'Of course. I'm surprised you haven't done it before.' Morse was a little taken aback. Indeed, why hadn't he done it before? Jennifer continued. 'Last Wednesday evening, I got home a bit later than usual — I went round Blackwells to spend a book token. It was my birthday last week. I got home about six, I should think. You know what the traffic's like in the rush hour.' Morse nodded. 'Well, I had a bite to eat — the other girls were here — and went out about, let's see, about half past six I should think. I got back about eight — perhaps a bit later.'

'Can you tell me where you went?'

'I went to the Summertown library.'

'What time does the library close?'

'Seven-thirty.'

'You spent about an hour there.'