Morse shook his head. 'Oh no, I didn't lose anything; in fact I made a few quid. I backed it each way.'
'But. .' began Lewis
'C'mon,' said Morse. 'Drink up. We've got work to do.'
For the next four hours the two of them were busy sorting the reports flowing in from the wide-flung inquiries Morse had initiated the previous day. At twelve noon, Lewis felt he knew more about Sylvia Kaye than he did about his wife. He read each report with great care — Morse's orders — and felt that many of the facts were beginning to fix themselves firmly in his mind. Morse, he noticed, devoured the reports with an amazing rapidity, reminiscent of someone skipping through a tedious novel; yet occasionally he would re-read the odd report with a fascinated concentration.
'Well?' said Morse finally.
'I think I've got most things pretty straight, sir.'
'Good.'
'You seemed to find one or two of the reports very interesting, sir.'
'Did I?' Morse sounded surprised.
'You spent about ten minutes on that one from the secretarial college, and it's only half a page.'
'You're very observant, Lewis, but I'm sorry to disappoint you. It was the most ill-written report I've seen in years, with twelve — no less — grammatical monstrosities in ten lines! What's the force coming to?'
Lewis didn't know what the force was coming to and hadn't the courage to inquire into the Inspector's statistical findings on his own erratic style. He asked instead, "Do you think we're getting anywhere, sir?'
'Doubt it,' replied Morse.
Lewis wasn't so sure. Sylvia's movements on the previous Wednesday seemed established. She had left the office in the High at 5.00 p.m., and almost certainly walked the hundred yards or so to the № 2 bus stop outside University College. She had arrived home at 5.35 p.m. and had a good meal. She told her mother she might be late home, left the house at roughly 6.30 p.m. wearing — as far as could be established — the clothes in which she was found. Somehow she had got to Woodstock. It all seemed to Lewis a promising enough starting-point for a few preliminary inquiries.
'Would you like me to get on to the bus company, sir, and see the drivers on the Woodstock run?'
'Done it,' said Morse.
"No good?' Disappointment showed in the sergeant's voice.
'I don't think she went by bus.'
'Taxi, sir?'
'Improbable wouldn't you think?'
'I don't know, sir. It might not be all that expensive.'
'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-shift and no one else to help. But he doubted whether her call was as important as the one he was about to make. News bulletins had always gripped his attention, however trivial the items reported; and the item he had watched on the BBC news at 9.00 p.m. had been far from trivial. He could remember verbatim the words the police inspector had used: 'We shall be very glad if any motorist. .' Yes, he could tell them something, for he had played his part in the terrifying and tragic train of events. But what was he going to say? He couldn't tell them the truth. Nor even half the truth. His fragile resolution began to crumble. He'd give that wretched woman another minute — one minute and no longer.