Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter

Author:Colin Dexter [Dexter, Colin]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, pdf
ISBN: 9780330468565
Publisher: Pan Macmillan

Mrs Crowther showed him to the door. ‘Well, that should be all right now, Mrs Crowther. Dust in the carriage-bearings, that’s all.’ Lewis hoped it sounded all right.

‘Do you want me to pay you?’

‘No. Don’t bother about that now.’ He was gone.

At twelve noon Lewis knocked on Bernard Crowther’s door in the second court of Lonsdale College and found him finishing a tutorial with a young, bespectacled, long-haired undergraduate.

‘No rush, sir,’ said Lewis. ‘I can wait perfectly happily until you’ve finished.’

But Crowther had finished. He had met Lewis the previous Saturday, and was anxious to hear whatever must be heard. The youth was forthwith dismissed with the formidable injunction to produce an essay for the following tutorial on ‘Symbolism in Cymbeline’, and Crowther shut the door. ‘Well, Sergeant Lewis?’

Lewis told him exactly what had occurred that morning; he made no bones about it and confessed that he had not enjoyed the subterfuge. Crowther showed little surprise and seemed anxious only about his wife.

‘Now, sir,’ said Lewis. ‘If you say you expected a man from Kimmons to come and look at your typewriter, no harm’s been done. I want to assure you of that.’

‘Couldn’t you have asked me?’

‘Well, yes, sir, we could. But I know that Inspector Morse wanted to make as little fuss as possible.’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’ Crowther said it with an edge of bitterness in his voice. Lewis got up to go. ‘But why? What did you expect to find?’

‘We wanted to find out, sir, if we could, on what machine a certain, er, a certain communication was written.’

‘And you thought I was involved?’

‘We have to make inquiries, sir.’

‘Well?’

‘Well what, sir?’

‘Did you find out what you wanted?’

Lewis looked uneasy. ‘Yes, sir.’

‘And?’

‘Shall we say, sir, that we didn’t find anything at all, er – at all incriminating. That’s about the position, sir.’

‘You mean that you thought I’d written something on the typewriter and now you think I didn’t.’

‘Er, you’d have to ask Inspector Morse about that, sir.’

‘But you just said that the letter wasn’t written on . . .’

‘I didn’t say it was a letter, sir.’

‘But people do write letters on typewriters don’t they, Sergeant?’

‘They do, sir.’

‘You know, Sergeant, you’re beginning to make me feel guilty.’

‘I’m sorry, sir. I didn’t mean to do that. But in a job like ours you’ve got to suspect everybody really. I’ve told you all I can, sir. Whatever typewriter we’re looking for wasn’t the one in your house. But there’s more than one typewriter in the world, isn’t there, sir?’

Crowther did not contest the truth of the assertion. A large bay window gave a glorious view on to the silky grass of the second court, smooth and green as a billiard table. Before the window stood a large mahogany desk, littered with papers and letters and essays and books. And in the centre of this literary clutter there sat, four-square upon the desk, a large, ancient, battered typewriter.

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