Last Seen Wearing Part 23

The steps on the narrow flight of stairs creaked loudly as Lewis mounted aloft, and Morse stood below and watched him, his heart pounding against his ribs.

There were only two bedrooms, each of them opening almost directly off the tiny landing: one to the right, the other immediately in front. First Lewis tried the one to his right, and peered round the door. The junk room, obviously. A single bed, unmade, stood against the far wall; and the bed itself and the rest of the limited s.p.a.ce available were strewn with the necessary and the unnecessary oddments that had yet to find for themselves a permanent place in the disposition of the Ac.u.m household: several bell-jars of home-made wine, bubbling intermittently; a vacuum cleaner, with its box of varied fitments; dusty lampshades; old curtain rails, the mounted head of an old, moth-eaten deer; and a large a.s.sortment of other semi-treasured bric-a-brac that cluttered up the little room. But nothing else. Nothing.

Lewis left the room and tried the other door. It would be the bedroom, he knew dial. Tentatively he pushed open the door slightly further and became aware of something scarlet lying there upon the bed, bright scarlet - the colour of new-spilt blood. He opened the door fully now and went inside. And there, draped across the pure white coverlet, the arms ready folded across the bodice, the waist tight-belted and slim, lay a long, red-velvet evening dress.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX.

No one does anything from a single motive. S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria.

THEY SAT DOWNSTAIRS in the small kitchen.

'It looks as if our little bird has flown.'

'Mm.' Morse leaned his head upon his left elbow and stared blankly through the window.

'When did you first suspect all this, sir?'

'Sometime last night, it must have been. About half-past three, I should think.'

"This morning, then.'

Morse seemed mildly surprised. It seemed a long, long time ago.

'What put you on to it, though?'

Morse sat up and leaned his back against the rickety kitchen chair. 'Once we learned that Valerie was probably still alive, it altered everything, didn't it? You see, from the start I'd a.s.sumed she was dead.'

'You must have had some reason.'

'I suppose it was the photograph more than anything,' replied Morse. "The one of the genuine Mrs Ac.u.m that Mrs Phillipson showed me. It was a clear-cut, glossy photograph - not like the indistinct and out-of-date ones we've got of Valerie. Come to think of it, I doubt if either of us will recognize Valerie when we do see her. Anyway, I met who I thought was Mrs Ac.u.m when I first came up here to Caernarvon, and although she had a towel round her head I couldn't help noticing that she wasn't a natural blonde at all. The roots of her hair were dark, and for some reason' (he left it at that) 'the detail, well, just stuck with me. She'd dyed her hair, anyone could see that.'

'But we don't know that the real Mrs Ac.u.m is a natural blonde.'

'No. That's true,' admitted Morse.

'Not much to go on then, is it?'

There was something else, Lewis.'

'What was that?'

Morse paused before replying. 'In the photograph I saw of Mrs Ac.u.m, she had a sort of, er, sort of a boyish figure, if you know what I mean.'

'Bit flat-chested you mean, sir?'

Yes.'

'So?'

'The woman I saw here - well, she wasn't flat-chested, that's all.'

'She could have been wearing a padded bra. You just can't tell for certain, can you?'

'Can't you?' A gentle, wistful smile played momentarily about the inspector's mouth, and he enlightened the innocent Lewis no further. 'I ought to have guessed much earlier. Of course I should. They just don't have anything in common at all: Mrs Ac.u.m - and Valerie Taylor. Huh! I don't think you'd ever find anyone less like a blue-stocking than Valerie. And I've spoken to her twice over the phone, Lewis! More than that, I've actually seen her!' He shook his head in self-reproach. "Yes. I really should have guessed the truth a long, long time ago.'

'From what you said, though, sir, you didn't see much of her, did you? You said she had this beauty-pack-'

'No, not much of her, Lewis. Not much ...' His thoughts were very far away.

'What's all this got to do with the car-hire firms you're trying to check?' asked Lewis suddenly.

'Well, I've got to try to get some hard evidence against her, haven't I? I thought, funnily enough, of letting her give me the evidence herself, but..."

Lewis was completely lost. 'I don't quite follow you.'

'Well, I thought of ringing her up this morning first thing and tricking her into giving herself away.

It would have been very easy, really.'

'It would?'

"Yes. All I had to do was to speak to her in French. You see, the real Mrs Ac.u.m is a graduate from Exeter, remember? But from what we know about poor Valerie's French, I doubt she can get very much further than bonjour.'

'But you can't speak French either can you, sir?'

'I have many hidden talents of which as yet you are quite unaware,' said Morse a trifle pompously.

'Oh.' But Lewis had a strong suspicion that Morse knew about as much (or as little) French as he did. And what's more, he'd had no answer to his question. 'Aren't you going to tell me why you'll be checking on the car-hire firms?'

"You've had enough shocks for one day.'

'I don't think one more'll make much difference," replied Lewis.

'All right, I'll tell you. You see, we've not only found Valerie; we've also found the murderer of Baines.' Lewis opened and closed his mouth like a stranded goldfish, but no identifiable vocable emerged.

'You'll understand soon enough,' continued Morse. 'It's fairly obvious if you think about it. She has to get from Caernarfon to Oxford, right? Her husband's got the car. So, what does she do?

Train? Bus? There aren't any services. And anyway, she's got to get there quickly, and there's only one thing she can do and that's to hire a car.'

'But we don't know yet dial she did hire a car,' protested Lewis. 'We don't even know she can drive.'

'We shall know soon enough.'

The 'ifs' were forgotten now, and Morse spoke like a minor prophet enunciating necessary trudis.

And with gradually diminishing reluctance, Lewis was beginning to sense the inevitability of the course of events that Morse was sketching out for him, and the inexorable logic working through the inquiry they'd begun together. A young schoolgirl missing, and more than two years later a middle-aged schoolmaster murdered; and no satisfactory solution to either mystery. Just two insoluble problems. And suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, there were no longer two problems - no longer even one problem; for somehow each had magically solved the other.

"You think she drove from here that day?'

'And back,' said Morse.

'And it was Valerie who ... who killed Baines?'

'Yes. She must have got there about nine o'clock, as near as dammit.'

Lewis's mind ranged back to the night when Baines was murdered. 'So she could have been in Baines's house when Mrs Phillipson and Ac.u.m called,' he said slowly.

Morse nodded. 'Could have been, yes.'

He stood up and walked along the narrow hallway. From the window in the front room he could see two small boys, standing at a respectful distance from the police car and trying with cautious curiosity to peer inside. But for the rest, nothing. No one left and no one came along the quiet street.

'Are you worried, sir?' asked Lewis quietly, when Morse sat down again.

'We'll give her a few more minutes,' replied Morse, looking at his watch for the twentieth time.

'I've been thinking, sir. She must be a brave girl.'

'Mm.'

'And he was a nasty piece of work, wasn't he?'

'He was a s.h.i.thouse,' said Morse with savage conviction. 'But I don't think that Valerie would ever have killed Baines just for her own sake.'

'What was her motive then?'

It was a simple question and it deserved a simple answer, but Morse began with the guarded evasiveness of a senior partner in the Circ.u.mlocution Office.

'I'm a bit sceptical about the word "motive", you know, Lewis. It makes it sound as if there's just got to be one - one big, beautiful motive. But sometimes it doesn't work like that. You get a mother slapping her child across its face because it won't stop crying. Why does she do it? You can say she just wants to stop the kid from bawling its head off, but it's not really true, is it? The motive lies much deeper than that. It's all bound up with lots of other things: she's tired, she's got a headache, she's fed up, she's just plain disillusioned with the duties of motherhood. Anything you like. When once you ask yourself what lies in the murky depths below what Aristotle called the immediate cause ... You know anything about Aristotle, Lewis?'

'I've heard of him, sir. But you still haven't answered my question.'

'Ah, no. Well, let's just consider for a minute the position that Valerie found herself in that day.

For the first time for over two years, I should think, she finds herself completely on her own.

Since Ac.u.m came to join her, he's no doubt been pretty protective towards her, and for the first part of their time together here .he's probably been anxious for Valerie not to be caught up in too much of a social whirl. She stays in. And she'd bleached her hair - probably right at the beginning. Surprising, isn't it, Lewis, how so many of us go to the trouble of making a gesture - however weak and meaningless. A sop to Cerberus, no doubt. As you know, Ac.u.m's real wife had long, blonde hair - that's the first thing anyone would notice about her; it's the first thing I noticed about her when I saw her photograph. Perhaps Ac.u.m asked her to do it; may have helped his conscience. Anyway, he must have been glad she did dye her hair. You remember the photograph of Valerie in the Colour Supplement? If he saw it, he must have been a very worried man. It wasn't a particularly clear photograph, I know.

It had been taken over three years previously, and a young girl changes a good deal - especially between leaving school and becoming to all intents and purposes a married woman. But it still remained a photograph of Valerie and, as I say, I should think Ac.u.m was jolly glad about her hair.

As far as we know, no one did spot the likeness.'

'Perhaps they don't read the Sunday Times in Caernarfbn.'

For all his anti-Welsh prejudices, Morse let it go. 'She's on her own at last, then. She can do what she likes. She probably feels a wonderful sense of freedom, freedom to do something for herself - something that now, for the first time, can in fact be done.'

'I can see all that, sir. But why? That's what I want to know.'

'Lewis! Put yourself in the position Valerie and her mother and Ac.u.m and Phillipson and G.o.d knows who else must have found themselves. They've all got their individual and their collective secrets - big and little -and somebody else knows all about them. Baines knows. Somehow - well, we've got a jolly good idea how - he got to know things. Sitting all those years in that little office of his, with the telephone there and all the correspondence, he's been at the nerve-centre of a small community - the Roger Bacon School. He's second master there, and it's perfectly proper that he should know what's going on. All the time his ears are tuned in to the slightest rumours and suspicions. He's like a bug in the Watergate Hotel: he picks it all up and he puts it all together. And it gives to his sinister cast of character just the nourishment it craves for -the power over other people's lives. Think of Phillip-son for a minute.

Baines can put him out of a job any day he chooses - but he doesn't. You see, I don't think he gloried so much in the actual exercise of his power as-'

'He did actually blackmail Phillipson, though, didn't he?'

'I think so, yes. But even blackmail wouldn't be as sweet for a louse like Baines as the thought that he could blackmail - whenever he wanted to.'

'I see,' said the blind man.

'And Mrs Taylor. Think what he knows about her: about the arrangements for her daughter's abortion, about her elaborate lies to the police, about her heavy drinking, about her money troubles, about her anxiety that George Taylor - the only man who's ever treated her with any decency - should be kept in the dark about some of her wilder excesses.'

'But surely everybody must have known she went to Bingo most nights and had a drop of drink now and then?'

'Do you know how much she spent on Bingo and fruit machines? Even according to George it was a pound a night, and she's hardly likely to tell him the truth, is she? And she drinks like a fish - you know she does. Lunch times as well.'

'So do you, sir.'

"Yes, but ... well, I only drink in moderation, you know that Anyway, that's only the half of it You've seen the way she dresses. Expensive clothes, shoes, accessories - the lot. And jewellery.

You noticed the diamonds on her fingers? G.o.d knows what they're worth. And do you know what her husband is? He's a dustman! No, Lewis. She's been living way, way beyond her means - you must have realized that'

'All right, sir. Perhaps that's a good enough motive for Mrs Taylor, but-'

'I know. Where does Valerie fit in? Well, I should think Mrs Taylor probably kept in touch with her daughter by phone - letters would be far too dangerous - and Valerie must have had a pretty good idea of what was going on: that her mother was getting hopelessly mixed up with Baines - that she was getting like a drug addict, loathing the whole thing in her saner moments but just not being able to do without it. Valerie must have realized that one way or another her mother's life was becoming one long misery, and she probably guessed how it was all likely to end. Perhaps her mother had hinted that she was coming to the end of her tether and couldn't face up to things much longer. I don't know.

'And then just think of Valerie herself. Baines knows all about her, too: her promiscuous background, her night with Phillipson, her affair with Ac.u.m - and all its consequences. He knows the lot And at any time he can ruin everything. Above all he can ruin David Ac.u.m, because once it gets widely known that he's likely to start fiddling around with some of the girls he's supposed to be teaching, he'll have one h.e.l.l of a job getting a post in any school, even in these permissive days. And I suspect, Lewis, that in a strange sort of way Valerie has gradually grown to love Ac.u.m more than anyone or anything she's ever wanted. I think they're happy together - or as happy as anyone could hope to be under the circ.u.mstances. Do you see what I mean, then?

Not only was her mother's happiness threatened at every turn by that b.a.s.t.a.r.d Baines, but equally the happiness of David Ac.u.m. And one day she suddenly found herself with the opportunity of doing something about it all: at one swift, uncomplicated swoop to solve all the problems, and she could do that by getting rid of Baines.'

Lewis pondered a while. 'Didn't she ever think that Ac.u.m might be suspected, though? He was in Oxford, too - she knew that.'

'No, I don't suppose she gave it a thought. I mean, the chance that Ac.u.m himself would go along to Baines's place at the very same time as she did - well, it's a thousand to one against, isn't it?'

'Odd coincidence, though.'

'It's an odd coincidence, Lewis, that the 46th word from the beginning and the 46th word from the end of the 46th Psalm in the Authorized Version should spell "Shakespeare".'

Aristotle, Shakespeare and the Book of Psalms. It was all a bit too much for Lewis, and he sat in silence deciding that he'd missed out somewhere along the educational line. He'd asked his questions and he'd got his answers. They hadn't been the best answers in the world, perhaps, but they just about added up. It was, one could say, satisfactory.

Morse stood up and went over to the kitchen window. The view was magnificent, and for some time he stared across at the ma.s.sive peaks of the Snowdon range. 'We can't stay here for ever, I suppose,' he said at last. His hands were on the edge of the sink, and almost involuntarily he pulled open the right-hand drawer. Inside he saw a wooden-handled carving knife, new, 'Prestige, Made in England', and he was on the point of picking it up when he heard the rattle of a Yale key in the front-door lock. Swiftly he held up a finger to his mouth and drew Lewis back with him against the wall behind the kitchen door. He could see her quite clearly now, the long, blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders, as she fiddled momentarily with the inner catch, withdrew the key, and closed the door behind her.

Thinly veiled anger yet little more than mild surprise showed on her face as Morse stepped into the hallway. That's your car outside, I suppose.' She said it in a bleak almost contemptuous voice. 'I'd just like to know what right you think you've got to burst into my house like this!'