Part 6 (1/2)

His in-tray was high with reports, but he ignored them. He unlocked his cabinet, took out the file on the Sylvia Kaye murder, and extracted the letter addressed to Jennifer Coleby. He knew there had been something wrong with the whole thing. His mouth was dry and his hand trembled slightly, like a schoolboy opening his O-level results:

Dear Madam, After a.s.sessing the many applications we have received, we must regretfully inform you that our application has been unsuccessful. At the beginning of November however, further posts will become available, and I should, in all honesty, be sorry to loose the opportunity of reconsidering your position then.

We have now allotted the September quota of posts in the Psychology Department; yet it is probable that a reliably qualified a.s.sistant may be required to deal with the routine duties for the Princ.i.p.al's office.

Yours faithfully,

How wrong-headed he had been! Instead of thinking, as he had done, with such supercilious arrogance, of the illiteracy and incompetence of some poor blockhead of a typist, he should have been thinking exactly the opposite. He'd been a fool. The clues were there. The whole thing was phoney - why hadn't he spotted that before? When you boiled it down it was a nonsense letter. He had first made the mistake of concentrating upon individual mistakes and not even bothering to see the letter as a synoptic whole.

But not only that. He had compounded his mistake. For if he had read the letter as a letter, he might have considered the mistakes as mistakes - deliberate mistakes. He took a sheet of paper and started: 'asessing' 's' omitted; 'mny' - 'a' omitted; ”begining* - 'n' omitted; 'loose' - 'o' inserted; 'Psycology' - 'h' omitted. SANOH - whatever that signified. Look again, 'our' - shouldn't it be 'your”?

'y' omitted; 'routnie' 'n' and 'i' transposed. What did that give him? SAYNOHNI. Hardly _ promising.

Try once more, 'alloted' - surely two 't's? 't' omitted.?; And there it was staring him in the face. The 'G' of course from the signature, the only recognizable letter therein: SAY NOTHING. Someone had been desperately anxious for Jennifer not to say a word - and Jennifer, it seemed, had got the message.

It had taken Morse two minutes, and he was glad that Jennifer had been out the previous evening.

He felt sure that faced with her lies about the visit to the library, she would have said how sorry she was and that she must have got it wrong. It must have been Thursday, she supposed; it was so difficult to think back to events of even the day before, wasn't it? She honestly couldn't remember; but she would try very hard to. Perhaps she had gone for a walk - on her own, of course.

But she would find things more awkward now. Strangely Morse felt little sense of elation. He had experienced an odd liking for Jennifer when they had met, and in retrospect he understood how difficult it must have been for her. But he must look the fact squarely in the face. She was lying. She was s.h.i.+elding someone - that someone who in all probability had raped and murdered Sylvia. It was not a pretty thought. Every piece of evidence now pointed unequivocally to the fact that it was Jennifer Coleby who had stood at Fare Stage 5 with Sylvia on the night of the 29th; that it was she who had been given a lift by a person or persons unknown (pretty certainly the former) as far as Woodstock; that there she had witnessed something about which she had been warned to keep her silence. In short that Jennifer Coleby knew the ident.i.ty of the man who had murdered Sylvia Kaye. Morse suddenly wondered if she was in danger, and it was this fear which prompted his immediate decision to have Jennifer held on suspicion of being an accessory to the crime of murder. He would need Lewis in.

He reached for his outside phone and rang his sergeant's home number.

'Lewis?'

'Speaking.'

'Morse here. I'm sorry to ruin your weekend, but I want you here.'

'Straight away, sir?'

'If you can.'

'I'm on my way.'

Morse looked through his in-tray. Reports, reports, reports. He crossed through his own initials immediately, barely glancing at such uncongenial t.i.tles as The Drug Problem in Britain, The Police and the Public, and The Statistics for Crimes of Violence in Oxfords.h.i.+re (second quarter). At the minute he was interested only in one statistic which would doubtless, in time, appear in the statistics of violent crime in Oxfords.h.i.+re (third quarter). He'd no time for reports. He suspected that about 95% of the written word was never read by anyone anyway. But there were two items which held his attention.

A report from the forensic lab on the murder weapon, and a supplementary report from the pathology department on Sylvia Kaye. Neither did more than confirm what he already knew or at any rate suspected. The tyre-lever proved to be a singularly unromantic specimen. Morse read all about its shape, size, weight ... But why bother? There was no mystery about the lever at all. The landlord of the Black Prince had spent the afternoons of Tuesday, 28th and Wednesday, 29th tinkering with an ancient Sunbeam, and had unwittingly left his tool kit outside the garage on the right at the back of the courtyard where he kept the car. There were no recognizable prints - just the ugly evidence, at one of the lever's curving ends, that it had crashed with considerable force into the bone of a human skull.

There followed a gory a.n.a.lysis, which Morse was glad to skip.

It was only a few minutes before Lewis knocked and entered.

'Ah, Lewis. The G.o.ds, me thinks, have smiled weakly on our inquiries.' He outlined the developments in the case. 'I want Miss Jennifer Coleby brought in for questioning. Be careful. Take Policewoman Fuller with you if you like. Just held for questioning, you understand? There's no question at all of any formal arrest. If she prefers to ring up her legal advisers, tell her it's Sunday and they're all playing golf. But I don't think you'll have much trouble.' On the latter point, at least, Morse guessed correctly.

Jennifer was sitting in interrogation room 3 by 3.45 p.m. On Morse's instructions, Lewis spent an hour with her, making no mention whatever of the information he had been given earlier in the afternoon.

Lewis mentioned quietly that, in spite of all their inquiries, they had not been able to trace the young lady, seen by two independent witnesses, who had been with Sylvia Kaye an hour or so before she was murdered.

'You must be patient, Sergeant.'

Lewis smiled weakly, like the G.o.ds. 'Oh, we're patient enough, miss, and I think with a little cooperation we shall get there.'

'Aren't you getting any co-operation?'

'Would you like a cup of tea, miss?'

'I'd prefer coffee.'

Policewoman Fuller hurried off; Jennifer moistened her lips and swallowed; Lewis brooded quietly.

In the tug-of-war silence which ensued it was Lewis who finally won.

'You think I'm not co-operating, Sergeant?'

'Are you?'

'Look, I've told the Inspector what I know. Didn't he believe me?'

'Just what did you tell the Inspector, miss?'

'You want me to go over all that again?' Jennifer's face showed all the impatience of a schoolgirl asked to rewrite a tedious exercise.

'We shall have to have a signed statement in any case.'

Jennifer sighed. 'All right. You want me to account for my movements - I think that's the phrase, isn't it? - on Wednesday night.'

'That's right, miss.'

'On Wednesday night...' Laboriously Lewis began to write. 'Shall I write it out for you?' asked Jennifer.

'I think I ought to get it down myself, miss, if you don't mind. I haven't got a degree in English, but I'll do my best.' A quick flash of caution gleamed in Jennifer's eyes. It was gone immediately, but it had been there and Lewis had seen it.

Half an hour later, Jennifer's statement was ready. She read it, asked if she could make one or two amendments - 'only spelling, Sergeant' - and agreed that she could sign it.

'I'll just get it typed out, miss.'

'How long will that take?'

'Oh, only ten minutes.'

”Would you like me to do it? It'll only take me about two.'

'I think we ought to do it ourselves, miss, if you don't mind. We have our regulations, you know.'

'Just thought I might be able to help.' Jennifer felt more relaxed.