Last Bus to Woodstock (12 page)

Lewis wondered if he should wake him, but the pungent smell of fried batter and vinegar saved him the trouble.

‘What’s the time, Lewis? I’ve been asleep.’

‘Quarter past one, sir. Do you want the fish and chips on a plate? Me and the wife always eat ’em off the paper – seems to taste better somehow.’

‘They say it’s the newsprint sticking to the chips,’ replied Morse, taking the oily package from his sergeant and tucking in with relish. ‘You know, Lewis, perhaps we’ve been going about this case in the wrong way.’

‘We have, sir?’

‘We’ve been trying to solve the case in order to find the murderer, right?’

‘I suppose that’s the general idea, isn’t it?’

‘Ah, but we might get better results the other way round.’

‘You mean . . .’ But though Morse waited it was clear that Lewis had no idea whatsoever what he meant.

‘I mean we ought to find the murderer in order to solve the case.’

‘I see,’ said Lewis, unseeing.

‘I’m glad you do,’ said Morse. ‘It’s as clear as daylight – and open some of these bloody curtains, will you?’

Lewis complied.

‘If,’ continued Morse, ‘if I told you who the murderer was and where he lived, you could go along and you could arrest him, couldn’t you?’ Lewis nodded vaguely and wondered if his superior officer had caught his skull on the kitchen sink before landing on his precious right foot. ‘You could, couldn’t you? You could bring him here to see me, you could keep him at a safe distance from my grievous injury – and he could tell us all about it, eh? He could do all our work for us, couldn’t he?’

Morse jabbered on, his mouth stuffed with fish and chips, and with genuine concern Lewis began to doubt the Inspector’s sanity. Shock was a funny thing; he’d seen it many times in road accidents. Sometimes two or three days afterwards some of the parties would go completely gaga. They’d recover of course . . . Or had Morse been drinking? Not the beer. The opened cans were still unpoured. A heavy responsibility suddenly seemed to descend on Lewis’s shoulders. He was sweating slightly. The room was hot, the autumn sun bright upon the glass of the bedroom window.

‘Can I get you anything, sir?’

‘Yep. Flannel and soap and towel. By Jove, your wife’s right, Lewis. I’ll never eat ’em off a plate again.’

A quarter of an hour later a bewildered sergeant let himself out of the front door of Morse’s flat. He felt a little worried and would have felt even more so if he had been back in the bedroom at that moment to hear Morse talking to himself, and nodding occasionally whenever he particularly approved of what he heard coming from his own lips.

‘Now my first hypothesis, ladies and gentlemen, and as I see things the most vital hypothesis of all – I shall make many, oh yes, I shall make many – is this: that the murderer is living in North Oxford. You will say this is a bold hypothesis, and so it is. Why should the murderer not live in Didcot or Sidcup or even Southampton? Why should he live in North Oxford? Why not, coming nearer home, why not just in Oxford? I can only repeat to you that I am formulating a hypothesis, that is, a supposition, a proposition, however wild, assumed for the sake of argument; a theory to be proved (or disproved – yes, we must concede that) by reference to facts, and it is with facts and not with airy-fairy fancies that I shall endeavour to bolster my hypothesis.
Im Anfang war die Hypothese
, as Goethe might have put it. And please let it not be forgotten that I am Morse of the Detective, as Dickens would have said. Oh yes, a detective. A detective has a sensibility towards crime – he feels it; he must feel it before he can detect it. There are indications which point to North Oxford. We need not review them all here, but the
ambience
is right in North Oxford. And if I am wrong, why, no harm is done to our investigation. We are propounding a hypothesis, that is, a supposition, a proposition, however wild . . . I’ve said all that before, though. Where was I, now? Oh yes. I wish you to accept, provisionally, dubiously, hopelessly if needs be, my premier hypothesis. The murderer is a resident of North Oxford. Now I mentioned facts, and I shall not disappoint you. Aristotle classified the animals, I believe, by subdividing them, and subdivision will be our method of procedure. Aristotle, that great man, divided and subdivided – species, subspecies, genera (Morse was getting lost) genera, species, subspecies and so on until he reached – what did he reach? –
the individual specimen of the species
.’ (That sounded better.) ‘I, too, will divide. In North Oxford there are, let us say, “
x
” number of people. Now we further hypothesize that our murderer is a male. Why can we be confident of this fact? Because, ladies and gentlemen, the murdered girl was
raped
. This is a
fact
, and we shall bring forward at the trial the evidence of eminent medical personnel to . . .’ Morse was tiring a little, and fortified himself with another can of beer. ‘As I was saying, our murderer is male. We can therefore divide our number
x
by, let us say, er, four – leaving the women and children out of our reckoning. Now can we subdivide again, you will ask? Indeed, we can. Let us guess at the age of our murderer. I put him – I am diffident, and you will accuse me of formulating sub-hypotheses – between 35 and 50. Yes, there are reasons . . .’ But Morse decided to skip them. They weren’t all that convincing, perhaps, but he had reasons, and he wished to sustain the impetus of his hypothesis. ‘We may then further subdivide our number
x
by two. That seems most reasonable, does it not? Let us continue. What else can we reasonably hypothesize? I believe – for reasons which I realize may not be fully acceptable to you all – that our suspect is a married man.’ Morse was feeling his way with an increasing lack of confidence. But the road ahead was already clearing; the fog was lifting and dissipating in the sun, and he resumed with his earlier briskness. ‘Now this means yet a further diminution in the power of
x
. Our
x
is becoming a manageable unit, is it not? But not yet is the focus of our
camera hypothetica
fixed with any clear delineation upon our unsuspecting quarry. But wait! Our man is a regular drinker, is he not? It is surely one of our more reasonable claims, and gives to our procedure not only the merits of hypothetical plausibility, but also of extreme probability. Our case is centred upon the Black Prince, and one does not visit the Black Prince in order to consult the tax inspector.’ Morse was wilting again. His foot was throbbing again with rhythmic pain, and his mind wandered off for a few minutes. Must be those Disprin. He closed his eyes and continued his forensic monologue within his brain.

He must, too, surely he must, figure in at least the top 5% of the IQ range? Jennifer wouldn’t fall for an ignorant buffoon, would she? That letter. Clever chap, well schooled.
If
he wrote it. If, if, if. Carry on. Where’s our
x
now? Go on. He must be attractive to women. Yet who can say what attracts those lovely creatures? But yes. Say yes. Subdivide. Cars! God, he’d forgotton cars. Not everyone has a car. About what proportion? Never mind, subdivide. Just a minute –
red
car. He felt slightly delirious. Just a fraction longer . . . That really would be a significant subdivision. The
x
was floating slowly away, and now was gone. The pain was less vicious. Comfortable . . . almost . . . comfortable . . .

He was woken at 4.00 p.m. by Lewis’s inability to manage the front door without a disturbing clatter. And when Lewis anxiously put his head round the bedroom door, he saw Morse scribbling as furiously as Coleridge must have scribbled when he woke up to find, full grown within his mind, the whole of
Kubla Khan
.

‘Sit down, Lewis. Glad to see you.’ He continued to write with furious rapidity for two or three minutes. Finally he looked up. ‘Lewis, I’m going to ask you some questions. Think carefully – don’t rush! – and give me some intelligent answers. You’ll have to guess, I know, but do your best.’

Oh hell, thought Lewis.

‘How many people live in North Oxford?’

‘What do you call “North Oxford”, sir?’

‘I’m asking the questions, you’re answering ’em. Just think generally what
you
think North Oxford is; let’s say Summertown and above. Now come on!’

‘I could find out, sir.’

‘Have a bloody guess, man, can’t you?’

Lewis felt uncomfortable. At least he could see that only three of the beer cans were empty. He decided to plunge in. ‘Ten thousand.’ He said it with the assurance and unequivocal finality of a man asked to find the sum of two and two.

Morse took another sheet of paper and wrote down the number 10,000. ‘What proportion of them are men?’

Lewis leaned back and eyed the ceiling with the confidence of a statistical consultant. ‘About a quarter.’

Morse wrote down his second entry neatly and carefully beneath the first: 2,500. ‘How many of those men are between 35 and 50?’

Quite a lot of retired people in North Oxford, thought Lewis, and quite a lot of young men on the estates. ‘About half, no more.’

The third figure was entered: 1,250. ‘How many of them are married, would you say?’

Lewis considered. Most of them, surely? ‘Four out of five, sir.’

Morse formed the figures of his latest calculation with great precision: 1,000.

‘How many of them regularly go out for a drink – you know what I mean – pubs, clubs, that sort of thing?’

Lewis thought of his own street. Not so many as some people thought. The neighbours on either side of him didn’t – mean lot! He thought of the street as a whole. Tricky this one. ‘About half.’

Morse revised his figure and went on to his next question. ‘You remember the letter we had, Lewis. The letter Jennifer Coleby said she knew nothing about?’ Lewis nodded. ‘If we were right in thinking what we did, or what I did, would you say we were dealing with a man of high intelligence?’

‘That’s a big if, isn’t it, sir?’

‘Look, Lewis. That letter was written by our man – just get that into your head. It was the big mistake he made. It’s the best clue we’ve got. What the hell do they pay us for. We’ve got to follow the clues, haven’t we?’ Morse didn’t sound very convinced, but Lewis assured him that they had to follow the clues. ‘Well?’

‘Well what, sir?’

‘Was he an intelligent man?’

‘Very much so, I should think.’

‘Would you think of writing a letter like that?’

‘Me? No, sir.’

‘And you’re pretty bright, aren’t you Sergeant?’

Lewis squared his shoulders, took a deep breath and decided not to minimize his intellectual capacity. ‘I’d say I was in the top 15%, sir.’

‘Good for you! And our unknown friend? You remember he not only knows how to spell all the tricky words, he knows how to misspell them, too!’

‘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.

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.