Last Bus To Woodstock

about the troubled state of Doctor Green's conscience on the problem of professional confidentiality, but Morse was cynically unimpressed.

'We know she was on the pill, remember?' Lewis should have remembered. He had read the reports; in fact Morse had specially asked him to get to know them as well as he could. It hadn't seemed very important at the time. Perhaps, even then, Morse had seen its relevance? But he doubted it, and his doubts, as it happened, were well justified.

As Lewis drove out of the city, Morse asked him to turn off to the motel at the Woodstock roundabout. 'We'll have a pint and a sandwich, eh?'

They sat in the Morris Bar, Morse engrossed in the medical reports on Sylvia Kaye. They covered, at intermittent stages, the whole of her pathetically brief little life, from the mild attack of jaundice at the age of two days to an awkward break of her arm in the August before she had died. Measles, warts on fingers, middle-ear infection, dysmenorrhoea, headaches (myopia?). A fairly uneventful medical history. Most of the notes were reasonably legible, and oddly enough the arch-apostle of indecision, the conscientious Green, had a beautifully clear and rounded hand. His only direct contacts with Sylvia had been over the last two affliction:, the headaches and the broken arm. Morse passed the file over to Lewis, and went to refill the glasses. Some of the details had appeared in the post-mortem report anyway, but his memory wasn't Lewis's strongest asset.

'Have you ever broken your arm?' asked Morse.

'No.'

'They say it's very painful. Something to do with the neurological endings or something. Like when you hurt your foot, Lewis. Very, very painful.'

'You should know, sir.'

'Ah, but if you've got a basically strong constitution like me, you soon recover.' Lewis let it go. 'Did you notice,' continued Morse, 'that Green saw her on the day before she died?'

Lewis opened the file again. He had read the entry, but without noticing the date. He looked again and saw that Morse was right. Sylvia had visited the Summertown Health Centre on Tuesday, 28 September, with a letter from the orthopaedic surgeon at the RadclifFe Infirmary. It read: 'Arm still very stiff and rather painful. Further treatment necessary. Continuation of physiotherapy treatment recommended as before — Tuesday and Thursday a.m.'

Lewis could imagine the consultation. And suddenly a thought flashed into his mind. It was being with Morse that did it. His fanciful suspicions were getting as wild as the Inspector's. 'You don't think, surely, that er. .' He was getting as bad as Green.

'That what?' said Morse, his face strangely grave.

'That Green was having an affair with Sylvia?'

Morse smiled wanly and drained his glass. 'We could find out, I suppose.'

'But you said this medical stuff was very important.'

'That was an understatement.'

'Have you found what you wanted, sir?'

'Yes. You could say that. Let's say I just wanted a bit of confirmation. I spoke to Green on the telephone yesterday.'

'Did he er did he er er,' mimicked Lewis. It was an isolated moment of levity in the last grim days of the case.

Sue had Tuesday afternoon off, and she was glad of it. Working in the casualty department was tiring, especially on her feet. The other girls were out and she made herself some toast and sat in the little kitchen staring with her beautiful, doleful eyes at the white floor-tiles. She'd promised to write to David and she really must get down to it this afternoon. She wondered what to say. She could tell him about work and she could tell him how lovely it had been to see him last weekend and she could tell him how much she looked forward to seeing him again. Yet all seemed empty of delight. She blamed herself bitterly for her own selfishness; but even as she did so, she knew that she was more concerned with her own wishes and her own desires than with anyone else's. With David's — particularly David's. It was futile, it was quite impossible, it was utterly foolish, it was even dangerous to think of him — to think about Morse, that is. But she wanted him so badly. She longed for him to call — she longed just to see him. Anything. . And as she sat there in the little kitchen staring at the white tiles still, she felt an overwhelming sense of self-reproach and loneliness and misery.

Jennifer was busy on Tuesday afternoon. Palmer had sent her a draft letter and wanted her to look it through. Premiums on virtually everything were to be increased by 10 % after Christmas and all the company's clients had to be informed. The dear man, thought Jennifer; he's not so very bright really. The first paragraph of his letter was reminiscent of the tortuous exercises she'd been set in Latin prose. 'Which' followed 'which', which followed yet another 'which'. A coven of whiches, she thought, and smiled at the conceit. She amended the paragraph with a bold confidence; a full stop here, a new paragraph there, a better word here — much clearer. Palmer knew she was by far the brightest girl in the office, and over important drafts he always consulted her. She wouldn't be staying there much longer, though. She had applied for two jobs in the last week. But she wouldn't dream of telling anybody, not even Mr. Palmer. Not that it was unpleasant working where she was — far from it. And she earned almost as much as Mary and Sue put together. . Sue! She thought of Sunday evening when she had returned from London. How glad she had felt to find them like that! She visualized the scene again and a cruel smile played over her lips.

She took the amended drafts to Mr. Palmer's office, where Judith was trying to keep pace with the very moderate speed at which her employer was dictating a letter. She handed the draft to him. 'I've made a few suggestions.'

'Oh, thank you very much. I just rushed it off, you know. Put down the first things that came into my head. I realized it was, you know, a bit er a bit rough. Thanks very much. Jolly good.'

Jennifer said no more. She left, and as she walked up the corridor to the typists' room, the same nasty smile was playing about her pretty mouth.

The third of the triad, the undaunted, dumpy, freckled little Mary, worked for Radio Oxon. In the BBC she might have been accorded the distinguished title of 'continuity girl'; but she was in a dead-end job with the local radio station. Like Jennifer she had been thinking of a change, although unlike Jennifer she had few qualifications behind her. Jennifer had some A levels and all her shorthand and typing certificates; she must have been clever at