Last Seen Wearing Part 18

Morse interrupted her again. She was beginning to crack, he knew that; her voice was high-pitched now amidst the elocutionary wreckage.

'All right - you didn't leave your children alone - I believe you - you love your children - of course you do - it would be illegal to leave them on their own - how old are they?'

Again she opened her mouth to speak, but he pushed relentlessly, remorselessly on.

'Have you heard of a baby-sitter, Mrs Phillipson? -somebody who comes in and looks after your children while you go out - do you hear me? - while you go out - do you want me to find out who it was? - or do you want to tell me? - I could soon find out, of course - friends, neighbours - do you want me to find out, Mrs Phillipson? - do you want me to go and knock next door? - and the door next to that? - of course, you don't, do you? You know, you're not being very sensible about this, are you, Mrs Phillipson?' (He was speaking more slowly and calmly now.) 'You see, I know what happened on Monday night. Someone saw you, Mrs Phillipson; someone saw you in Kempis Street. And if you'd like to tell me why you were there and what you did, it would save a lot of time and trouble. But if you won't tell me, then I shall have to-'

Of a sudden she almost shrieked as the incessant flow of words began to overwhelm her. 'I told you! I don't know what you're talking about! You don't seem to understand that, do you? I just don't know what you're talking about?

Morse sat back in the armchair, relaxed and unconcerned. He looked about him, and once more fastened his gaze on the photograph of the headmaster and his wife above the large bureau. And then he looked at his wrist.w.a.tch.

'What time do the children get home?' His tone was suddenly friendly and quiet, and Mrs Phillipson felt the panic welling up within her. She looked at her own wrist.w.a.tch and her voice was shaking as she answered him.

'They'll be home at four o'clock.'

'That gives us an hour, doesn't it, Mrs Phillipson. I think dial's long enough - my car's outside.

You'd better put your coat on - the pink one, if you will.'

He rose from the armchair, and fastened the front b.u.t.tons of his jacket. I'll see that your husband knows if...' He took a few steps towards the door, but she laid her hand upon him as he moved past her.

'Sit down, please, Inspector," she said quietly.

She had gone (she said). That was all, really. It was like suddenly deciding to write a letter or to ring the dentist or to buy some restorer for the paint brushes encrusted stiff with last year's gloss. She asked Mrs Cooper next door to baby-sit, said she'd be no longer than an hour at the very latest, and caught the 9.20 p.m. bus from the stop immediately outside the house. She got off at Cornmarket, walked quickly through Gloucester Green and reached Kempis Street by about quarter to ten. The light was shining in Raines's front window - she had never been there before - and she summoned up all her courage and knocked on the front door. There was no reply. Again she knocked -and again there was no reply. She then walked along to the lighted window and tapped upon it hesitantly and quietly with the back of her hand; but she could hear no sound and could make out no movement behind the cheap yellow curtains. She hurried back to the front door, feeling as guilty as a young schoolgirl caught out of her place in the cla.s.sroom by the headmistress. But still nothing happened. She had so nearly called the whole thing off there and then; but her resolution had been wrought up to such a pitch that she made one last move. She tried the door - and found it unlocked. She opened it slightly, no more than a foot or so, and called his name.

'Mr Baines?' And then slightly louder, 'Mr Baines?' But she received no reply. The house seemed strangely still and the sound of her own voice echoed eerily in the high entrance hall. A cold shiver of fear ran down her spine, and for a few seconds she felt sure that he was there, very near to her, watching and waiting ... And suddenly a panic-stricken terror had seized her and she had rushed back to the lighted, friendly road, crossed over by the railway station and, with her heart pounding in her ribs, tried to get a grip on herself. In St Giles' she caught a taxi and arrived home just after ten.

That was her story, anyway. She told it in a flat, dejected voice, and she told it well and clearly.

To Morse it sounded in no way like the tangled, mazy machinations of a murderer. Indeed a good deal of it he could check fairly easily: the baby-sitter, the bus conductor, the taxi driver. And Morse felt sure that all would verify the outline of her story, and confirm the approximate times she'd given. But there was no chance of checking those fateful moments when she stood outside the door of Baines's house ... Had she gone in? And if she had, what terrible things had then occurred? The pros and cons were counterpoised in Morse's mind, with the balance tilting slightly in Mrs Phillipson's favour.

'Why did you want to see him?'

'I wanted to talk to him, that's all.'

Yes. Go on.'

'It's difficult to explain. I don't think I knew myself what I was going to say. He was - oh, I don't know - he was everything that's bad in life. He was mean, he was vindictive, he was - sort of calculating. He just delighted in seeing other people squirm. I'm not thinking of anything in particular, and I don't really know all that much about him. But since Donald has been headmaster he's - how shall I put it? - he's waited, hoping for things to go wrong. He was a cruel man, Inspector.'

'You hated him?'

She nodded hopelessly. "Yes, I suppose I did.'

'It's as good a motive as any,' said Morse sombrely.

'It might seem so, yes.' But she sounded unperturbed.

'Did your husband hate Baines, too?' He watched her carefully and saw the light flash dangerously in her eyes.

'Don't be silly, Inspector. You can't possibly think that Donald had anything to do with all this. I know I've been a fool, but you can't ... It's impossible. He was at the theatre all night. You know that'

'Your husband would have thought it was impossible for you to be knocking at Baines's door that night, wouldn't he? You were here, at home, with the children, surely?' He leaned forward and spoke more curtly again now. 'Make no mistake, Mrs Phillipson, it would have been a h.e.l.l of a sight easier for him to leave the theatre than it was for you to leave here. And don't try to tell me otherwise!'

He sat back impa.s.sively in the chair. He sensed an evasion somewhere in her story, a half-truth, a curtain not yet fully drawn back; and at the same time he knew that he was almost there, and all he had to do was sit and wait. And so he sat and waited; and the world of the woman seated opposite him was slowly beginning to fall apart, and suddenly, dramatically, she buried her head in her hands and wept uncontrollably.

Morse fished around in his pockets and finally found a crumpled apology for a paper handkerchief, and pushed it gently into her right hand.

'Don't cry,' he said softly. 'It won't do either of us any good.'

After a few minutes the tears dried up, and soon the snivelling subsided. 'What can do us any good, Inspector?'

'It's very easy, really,' said Morse in a brisk tone. "You tell me the truth, Mrs Phillipson. You'll find I probably know it anyway.'

But Morse was wrong - he was terribly wrong. Mrs Phillipson could do little more than reiterate her strange little story. This time, however, with a startling addition - an addition which caught Morse, as he sat there nodding sceptically, like an uppercut to the jaw. She hadn't wanted to mention it because ... because, well, it seemed so much like trying to get herself out of a mess by pushing someone else into it But she could only tell the truth, and if that's what Morse was after she thought she'd better tell it. As she had said, she ran along to the main street after leaving Raines's house and crossed over towards the Royal Oxford Hotel; and just before she reached the hotel she saw someone she knew - knew very well - come out of the lounge door and walk across the road to Kempis Street. She hesitated and her tearful eyes looked pleadingly and pathetically at Morse.

'Do you know who it was, Inspector? It was David Ac.u.m.'

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE.

For oily or spotty skin, first cleanse face and throat, then pat with a hot towel. Smooth on an even layer of luxurious 'Ladypak', avoiding the area immediately, around the eyes.

Directions for applying a beauty mask AT 6.20 THE following morning Morse was on the road: it would take about five hours. He would have enjoyed the drive more with someone to talk to, especially Lewis, and he switched on the Lancia's radio for the 7.00 a.m. news. The world seemed strangely blighted: abroad there were rumours of war and famine, and at home more bankruptcies and unemployment -and a missing lord who had been dredged up from a lake in east Ess.e.x. But the morning was fresh and bright, the sky serene and cloudless, and Morse drove fast. He had left Evesham behind him and was well on the way to Kidderminster before he met any appreciable volume of traffic. The 8.00 a.m.

news came and went, with no perceptible amelioration of the cosmic plight, and Morse switched over to Radio Three and listened lovingly to the Brandenburg Concerto No 5 in D. The journey was going well, and he was through Bridgnorth and driving rather too quickly round the Shrewsbury ring-road by 9.00 a.m. when he decided that a Schoenberg string quartet might be a little above his head, and switched off. He found himself vaguely pondering the lake in east Ess.e.x, and remembering the reservoir behind the Taylors' home, before switching that off, too, and concentrating with appropriate care and attention upon the perils of the busy A5. At Nesscliffe, some twelve miles north of Shrewsbury, he turned off left along the B4396 towards Bala. Wales now, and the pale green hills rose ever more steeply. He was making excellent time and he praised the G.o.ds that his journey was not being made on a dry Welsh Sunday. He was feeling thirsty already. But he was through Bala and swinging in the long left-handed loop around Llyn Tegid (reservoir again!) long before the pubs were open; and dirough the crowded streets of Pordimadog, festooned still with the multicoloured bunting of high summer, and past the Lloyd George Museum in Llan-ystumdwy, and still the hands of the fascia clock were some few minutes short of eleven. He might just as well drive on. At Four Crosses he turned right on to the Pwllheli-Caernarfon Road, and drove on into the Lleyn Peninsula, past the triple peaks of the Rivals and on to the coastal road, with the waters of Caernarfon Bay laughing and glittering in the sunshine to his left. He would stop at the next likely-looking hostelry. He had pa.s.sed one in the last village, but the present tract of road afforded little for the thirsty traveller; and he was only two or three miles south of Caernarfon itself when he spotted the sign: BONT-NEWYDD. Surely the village where the Ac.u.m's lived? He pulled in to the side of the road, and consulted the file in his brief-case. Yes, it was. 16 St Beuno's Road. He inquired of an ageing pa.s.serby and learned that he was only a few 'undred yaards from St Beuno's Road, and that The Prince of Wales was just around the corner. It was five minutes past eleven.

As he sampled the local brew, he debated whether he should call at the Ac.u.m's' home. Did the modern languages master come home for lunch? Morse's original plan had been to go direct to the City of Caernarfon School, preferably about lunchtime. But perhaps it would do no harm to have a little chat with Mrs Ac.u.m first? Temporarily he shelved the decision, bought another pint, and considered the forthcoming interview. Ac.u.m had lied, of course, about not leaving the conference; for Mrs Phillipson could not have had the faintest notion that Ac.u.m would be in Oxford on that Monday night. How could she? Unless ... but he dropped the fanciful line of thought. The beer was good, and at noon he was happily discussing with his host the sorry Sunday situation in the thirsty counties and the defacement of the Welsh road signs by the Nationalists. And ten minutes later, legs astraddle, he stood and contemplated the defacement of the landlord's lavatory walls by a person or persons unknown. Several of the graffiti were unintelligible to the non-Welsh-speaker; but one that was scrawled in his native tongue caught Morse's eye, and he smiled in approbation as his bladder achingly emptied itself: "The p.e.n.i.s mightier than the sword.'

It was now 12.15 p.m., and if Ac.u.m were coming home to lunch, there was an obvious danger of his pa.s.sing Morse in the opposite direction. Well, there was one pretty certain way of finding out. He left the Lancia at The Prince of Wales and walked.

St Beuno's Road led off right from the main road. The houses were small here, built of square, grey, granite blocks, and tiled with the purplish-blue Ffestiniog slate. The gra.s.s in the tiny front gardens was of a green two or three shades paler than the English variety, and the soil looked tired and undernourished. The front door was painted a Cambridge blue, with the black number 16 dextrously worked in the florid style of a Victorian theatre-bill. Morse knocked firmly, and after a brief interval the door opened; but opened only slightly, and then to reveal a strangely incongruous sight. A woman stood before him, her face little more than a white mask, with slits left open for the eyes and mouth, a blood-red towel swathed around the top of her head where (as, alas, with most blondes) the tell-tale roots of the hair betrayed its darker origins. It was curious to witness the lengths to which the ladies were prepared to go in order to improve upon the natural gifts their maker had endowed them with; and in the depths of Morse's mind there stirred the dim remembrance of the fair-haired woman with the spotty face in the staff photograph of the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School. He knew that this must be Mrs Ac.u.m.

Yet it was not the beauty pack, smeared though it doubtless was with a practised skill, that chiefly held the inspector's rapt attention. She was holding a meagre white towel to the top of her shoulders, and as she stood half hidden by the door, it was immediately apparent that behind the towel the woman was completely naked. Morse felt as lecherous as a billy-goat. A Welsh billy-goat, perhaps. It must have been the beer.

'I've called to see your husband. Er, it is Mrs Ac.u.m, isn't it?'

The head nodded, and a hair-line fracture of the carefully a.s.sembled mask appeared at the corners of the white mouth. Was she laughing at him?

'Will he be back home for lunch?'

The head shook, and the top of the towel drooped tantalizingly to reveal the beautifully-moulded outline of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

'He's at school, I suppose?'

The head nodded, and the eyes stared blandly through the slits.

'Well, I'm sorry to have bothered you, Mrs Ac.u.m, especially at, er, such, er... We've spoken to each other before, you know - over the phone, if you remember. I'm Morse. Chief Inspector Morse from Oxford.'

The red towel bobbed on her head, the mask almost breaking through into a smile. They shook hands through the door, and Morse was conscious of the heady perfume on her skin. He held her hand for longer than he need have done, and the white towel dropped from her right shoulder; and for a brief and beautiful moment he stared with shameless fascination at her nakedness. The nipple was fully erect and he felt an almost irresistible urge to hold it there and then between his fingers. Was she inviting him in?

He looked again at the pa.s.sive mask. The towel was now in place again, and she stood back a little from the door; it was fifty-fifty. But he had hesitated too long, and the chance, if chance it was, was gone already. He lacked, as always, the bogus courage of his own depravity, and he turned away from her and walked back slowly towards The Prince of Wales. At the end of the road he stopped, and looked back; but the light-blue door was closed upon him and he cursed the conscience that invariably thus doth make such spineless cowards of us all. It was perhaps something to do with status. People just didn't expect such base behaviour from a chief inspector, as if such eminent persons were somehow different from the common run of lewd humanity. How wrong they were! How wrong! Why, even the mighty had their little weaknesses.

Good gracious, yes. Just think of old Lloyd George. The things they said about Lloyd George! And he was a prime minister...

He climbed into the Lancia. Oh G.o.d, such beautiful b.r.e.a.s.t.s! He sat motionless at the wheel for a short while, and then he smiled to himself. He reckoned that Constable d.i.c.kson could almost have hung his helmet there! It was an irreverent thought, but it made him feel a good deal better. He pulled carefully out of the car park and headed north on the final few miles of his journey.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX.

Merely corroborative detail, to add artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado A SMALL GROUP of boys was kicking a football around at the side of a large block of cla.s.srooms which ab.u.t.ted on to the wide sports field, where sets of rugby and hockey posts demarcated the area of gra.s.s into neatly white-lined rectangles. The rest of the school was having lunch. The two men walked three times around the playing fields, hands in pockets, heads slightly forward, eyes downcast. They were about the same build, neither man above medium height; and to the football players they seemed unworthy of note, anonymous almost. Yet one of the two men pacing slowly over the gra.s.s was a chief inspector of police, and the other, one of their very own teachers, was a suspect in a murder case.

Morse questioned Ac.u.m about himself and his teaching career; about Valerie Taylor and Baines and Phillipson; about the conference in Oxford, times and places and people. And he learned nothing that seemed of particular interest or importance. The schoolmaster appeared pleasant enough - in a nondescript sort of way; he answered the inspector's questions with freedom and with what seemed a fair degree of guarded honesty. And so Morse told him, told him quietly yet quite categorically, that he was a liar; told him that he had indeed left the conference that Monday evening, at about 9.30 p.m., told him that he had walked to Kempis Street to see his former colleague, Mr Baines, and that he had been seen there; told him that, if he persisted in denying such a plain, incontrovertible statement of the truth, he, Morse, had little option but to take him back to Oxford where he would be held for questioning in connection with the murder of Mr Reginald Baines. It was as simple as that! And, in fact, it proved a good deal simpler than even Morse had dared to hope; for Ac.u.m no longer denied the plain, incontrovertible statement of the truth which the inspector had presented to him. They were on their third and final circuit of the playing fields, far away from the main school buildings, by the side of some neglected allotments, where the ramshackle sheds rusted away sadly in despairing disrepair. Here Ac.u.m stopped and nodded slowly.

'Just tell me what you did, sir, that's all.'

'I'd been sitting at the back of the hall - deliberately - and I left early. As you say, it was about half-past nine, or probably a bit earlier.'

'You went to see Baines?' Ac.u.m nodded. 'Why did you go to see him?'

'I don't know, really. I was getting a bit bored with the conference, and Baines lived fairly near. I thought I'd go and see if he was in and ask him out for a drink. It's always interesting to talk about old times, you know the sort of thing - what was going on at school, which members of staff were still there, which ones had left, what they were doing. You know what I mean.'

He spoke naturally and easily, and if he were a liar he seemed to Morse a fairly fluent one.

'Well,' continued Ac.u.m, 'I walked along there. I was in a bit of a hurry because I knew the pubs would be closed by half-past ten and time was getting on. I had a drink on the way and it must have been getting on for ten by the time I got there. I'd been there before, and thought he must be in because the light was on in the front room.'

'Were the curtains drawn?' For the first time since they had been talking together, Morse's voice grew sharper.

Ac.u.m thought for a moment. "Yes, I'm almost certain they were.'

'Goon.'

'Well, I thought, as I say, that he must be in. So I knocked pretty loudly two orthreetimes on the door. But he didn't answer, or at least he didn't seem to hear me. I thought he might be in the front room perhaps with the TV on, so I went to the window and knocked on it.'

'Could you hear the TV? Or see it''

Ac.u.m shook his head; and to Morse it was all beginning to sound like a record stuck in its groove.

He knew for certain what was coming next 'It's a funny thing, Inspector, but I began to feel just a bit frightened - as if I were sort of trespa.s.sing and shouldn't really be there at all; as if he knew that I was there but didn't want to see me ... Anyway, I went back to the door and knocked again, and then I put my head round the door and shouted his name.'

Morse stood quite still, and considered his next question with care. If he was to get his piece of information, he wanted it to come from Ac.u.m himself without too much prompting.

"You put your head round the door, you say?'

'Yes. I just felt sure he was there.'

'Why did you feel that?'

'Well, there was a light in the front room and..." He hesitated for a moment, and seemed to be fumbling around in his mind for some fleeting, half-forgotten impression that had given him this feeling.

'Think back carefully, sir,' said Morse. 'Just picture yourself there again, standing at the door.

Take your time. Just put yourself back there. You're standing there in Kempis Street. Last Monday night...'

Ac.u.m shook his head slowly and frowned. He said nothing for a minute or two.

'You see, Inspector, I just had this idea that he was somewhere about. I almost knew he was. I thought he might just have slipped out somewhere for a few seconds because ..." It came back to him then, and he went on quickly. "Yes, that's it. I remember now. I remember why I thought he must be there. It wasn't just the light in the front window. There was a light on in the hall because the front door was open. Not wide open, but standing ajar as if he'd just slipped out and would be back again any second.'

'And then?'

'I left. He wasn't there. I just left, that's all.' 'Why didn't you tell me all this when I rang you, sir?' 'I was frightened, Inspector. I'd been there, hadn't I? And he was probably lying there all the time - murdered. I was frightened, I really was. Wouldn't you have been?'

Morse drove into the centre of Caernarfon, and parked his car alongside the jetty under the great walls of the first Edward's finest castle. He found a Chinese restaurant nearby, and greedily gulped down the oriental fare that was set before him. It was his first meal for twenty-four hours, and he temporarily dismissed all else from his mind. Only over his coffee did he allow his restless brain to come to grips with the case once more; and by the time he had finished his second cup of coffee he had reached the firm conclusion that, whatever improbabilities remained to be explained away, especially the reasons given for calling on Baines, both Mrs Phillipson and David Ac.u.m had told him the truth, or something approximating to the truth, at least as far as their evidence concerned itself with the visits made to the house in Kempis Street.

Their accounts of what had taken place there were so clear, so mutually complementary, that he felt he should and would believe them. That bit about the door being slightly open, for example - exactly as Mrs Phillipson had left it before panicking and racing down to the lighted street. No.

Ac.u.m could not have made that up. Surely not. Unless ... It was the second time that he had qualified his conclusions with that sinister word 'unless'; and it troubled him. Ac.u.m and Mrs Phillipson. Was there any link at all between that improbable pair? If link there was, it had to have been forged at some point in the past, at some point more than two years ago, at the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School. Could there have been something? It was an idea, anyway. Yet as he drove out of the castle car park, he decided on balance that it was a lousy idea. In front of the castle he pa.s.sed the statue erected to commemorate the honourable member for Caemarfon (Lloyd George, no less) and as he drove out along the road to Capel Curig, his brain was as jumbled and cluttered as a magpie's nest.

He stopped briefly in the pa.s.s of Llanberis, and watched the tiny figures of the climbers, conspicuous only by their bright orange anoraks, perched at dizzying heights on the sheer mountain faces that towered ma.s.sively above the road on either side. He felt profoundly thankful that whatever the difficulties of his own job he was spared the risk, at every second, and every precarious hand- and foot-hold, of a vertical plunge to a certain death upon the rocks far, far below. Yet, in his own way, Morse knew that he too was scaling a peak and knew full well the blithe exhilaration of reaching the summit. So often there was only one way forward, only one.

And when one route seemed utterly impossible, one had to look for the nearly impossible alternative, to edge along the face of the cliff, to avoid the impa.s.se, and to lever oneself painstakingly up to the next ledge, and look up again and follow the only route. On the death of Baines, Morse had considered only a small group of likely suspects. The murderer could, of course, have been someone completely unconnected with the Valerie Taylor affair; but he doubted it. There had been five of them, and he now felt that the odds against Mrs Phillipson and David Ac.u.m had lengthened considerably. That left the Taylors, the pair of them, and Phillipson himself. It was time he tried to put together the facts, many of them very odd facts, that he had gleaned about these three. It must be one of them surely; for he felt convinced now that Baines had been murdered before the visits of Mrs Phillipson and David Ac.u.m. Yes, that was the only way it could have been. He grasped the firm fact with both hands and swung himself on to a higher ledge, and discovered that from this vantage point the view seemed altogether different.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN.