Last Bus To Woodstock

'Top 5 %, sir.'

Morse wrote down the calculation.

'What proportion of middle-aged men are attractive to women?' Silly question! Morse noticed the derision in Lewis's face. 'You know what I mean. Some men are positively repulsive to women!' Lewis seemed unconvinced. 'I know all about these middle-aged Romeos. We're all middle-aged Romeos. But some men are more attractive to women than others, aren't they?'

'I don't get many falling for me, sir.'

'That's not what I'm asking you. Say something, for God's sake!'

Lewis plunged again. 'Half? No, more than that. Three out of five.'

'You're sure you mean that?'

Of course he wasn't sure. 'Yes.'

Another figure. 'How many men of this age group have cars?'

'Two out of three.' What the hell did it matter?

Morse wrote down his penultimate figure. 'One more question. How many people own red cars?'

Lewis went to the window and watched the traffic going by. He counted. Two black, one beige, one dark blue, two white, one green, one yellow, one black. 'One in ten, sir.'

Morse had shown a growing excitement in his manner for the last few minutes. 'Phew! Who'd have believed it? Lewis, you're a genius!'

Lewis thanked him for the compliment and asked wherein his genius lay. 'I think, Lewis, that we're looking for a male person, resident in North Oxford, married — probably a family, too; he goes out for a drink fairly regularly, sometimes to Woodstock; he's a well-educated man, may even be a university man; he's about 35 to 45, as I see him, with a certain amount of charm — certainly, I think a man some of the young ladies could fall for; finally he drives a car — to be precise a red car.'

'He'd be as good as anyone, I suppose.'

'Well, even if we're a bit out here and there, I'd bet my bottom dollar he's pretty likely to fit into most of those categories. And, do you know, Lewis, I don't think there are many who fall into that category. Look here.' He passed over to Lewis the sheet of paper containing the figures.

North Oxford? 10,000

Men? 2,500

35-50? 1,250

Married? 1,000

Drinker? 500

Top 5 %? 25

Charm? 15

Car? 10

Red Car? 1

Lewis felt a guilty sense of responsibility for the remarkable outcome of these computations. He stood by the window in the fading light of afternoon, and saw two red cars go by one after the other. How many people did live in North Oxford? Was he really in the top 15 %? 25 % more likely. 'I'm sure, sir, that we could check a lot of these figures.' Lewis felt constrained to voice his suspicions. 'I don't think you can just fiddle about with figures like that, anyway. You'd need to. .' He had a dim recollection of the need for some statistical laws operating on data; the categories had to be ordered and reduced in logical sequence; he couldn't quite remember. But it was all little more than an elaborate game to amuse a fevered brain. Morse would be up in a day or so. Better look after him and humour him as best he could. But was there any logic in it? Was it all that stupid? He looked again at the paper of figures and another red car went by. There were nine 'ifs'. He stared gloomily out of the window and mechanically counted the next ten cars. Only one red one! North Oxford was, of course, the biggest gamble. But the fellow had to live somewhere didn't he? Perhaps the old boy was not so cuckoo as he'd thought. He looked at the sheet yet again. . The other big thing was that letter. If the murderer had written it.

'What do you think then, Lewis?'

'Might be worth a go.'

'How many men do you want?'

'We'd need to do a bit of thinking first, wouldn't we?'

'What do you mean?'

'The local authorities could help a good deal. First we'd need some up-to-date lists of residents.'

'Yes. You're right. We need to think it through before we do anything.'

'That's what I thought, sir'.

'Well?'

'We could get straight on to it in the morning, sir, if you felt up to it.'

'Or we could get straight on to it now if you felt up to it?'

'I suppose we could.'