Last Seen Wearing Part 27

'Do you believe her, sir?' 'No,' said Morse simply. 'What do we do, then?' 'Ah, let her cool her heels in a cell for a night. I dare say she's got a good idea what happened, but I just don't think she killed Baines, that's all.'

'She's covering up for Phillipson, you think?' 'Could be. I don't know.' Morse stood up. 'And I'll tell you something else, Lewis: I don't b.l.o.o.d.y well care!

I think whoever killed Baines deserves a life peerage - not a life sentence.'

'But it's still our job to find out who did, sir.'

'Not for much longer, it isn't. I've had a bellyful of this lot - and I've failed. I'm going to see Strange in the morning and ask him to take me off the case.' 'He won't be very happy about that.' 'He's never very happy about anything.'

'It doesn't sound like you, though, sir.'

Morse grinned almost boyishly. 'I've disappointed you, haven't I, Lewis?'

'Well, yes, in a way - if you're going to pack it all in now.'

'Well, I am.'

'I see.'

'Life's full of disappointments, Lewis. I should have thought you'd learned that by now.'

Alone Morse walked back to his office. If the truth could be told he felt more than a little hurt by what Lewis had just said. Lewis was right, of course, and had spoken with such quiet integrity: but it's still our job to find out who did it. Yes, he knew that; but he'd tried and tried and hadn 't found out who did it. Come to think of it, he hadn't even found out if Valerie Taylor were alive or dead ... Just now he'd tried to believe Sheila Phillipson; but the plain fact was that he couldn't.

Anyway, if what she said were true, it was much better for someone else to finish off the formalities. Much better. And if she were just shielding her husband ... He let it go. He had sent Lewis round to see Phillipson, but the headmaster was neither at home nor at school, and for the time being the neighbours were looking after the children.

Whatever happened, this Tuesday afternoon was now the end, and he thought back to that first Tuesday afternoon in Phillipson's study ... What, if anything, had he missed in the case? What small, apparently insignificant detail that might have set him on the proper tracks? He sat for half an hour and thought and thought, and thought himself nowhere. It was no good: his mind was stale and the wells of imagination and inspiration were dry as the Sahara sands. Yes, he would see Strange in the morning and hand it all over. He could still make a decision when he wanted to, whatever Lewis might think.

He walked over to the filing cabinet and for the last time took out the ma.s.s of doc.u.ments on the case. They now filled two bulging box-files, and pulling back the spring clips Morse tipped the contents of each haphazardly on to his desk. At least he ought to put the stuff into some sort of order. It wouldn't take all that long, and his mind positively welcomed the prospect of an hour or two of fourth-grade clerical work. Neatly and methodically he began stapling odd notes and sheets to their respective doc.u.ments, and ordering the doc.u.ments themselves into a chronological sequence. He remembered the last time he had tipped the contents (not so bulky then) on to his desk, when Lewis had noticed dial odd business about the lollipop man. A red herring, dial, as it turned out. Yet it could have been a vitally important point, and he himself had missed it. Had he missed anything else, amidst this formidable b.u.mf? Ah, forget it! It was too late now, and he continued with his task. Valerie's reports next. They'd better go into some sort of order, too, and he shuffled them into their sequence. Three reports a year: autumn term; spring term; summer term. No reports at all for the first year in the school, but all the others were there - except one: the report for the summer term of the fourth year. Why was that? He hadn't noticed that before ... The brain was whirring into life once more - but no! Morse snapped off the current impatiently. It was nothing. The report was just lost; lots of things got lost. Nothing at all sinister about that... Yet in spite of himself he stopped what he was doing and sat back again in the black leather chair, his fingertips together on his lower lip, his eyes resting casually on the school reports that lay before him. He'd read them all before, of course, and knew their contents well. Valerie had been one of those many could-do-better-if-she-tried pupils. Like all of us ... In fact, the staff at the Roger Bacon School could quite easily have dispensed with terminal reports in Valerie's case: they were all very much the same, and one would have done quite as well as another. Any one. The last one, for example - the report on her spring term's progress (or rather lack of it) in the year in which she'd disappeared. Idly Morse looked down at it again. Ac.u.m's signature was there beside the French: 'Could do so well if only she tried. Her accent is surprisingly good, but her vocabulary and grammar are still very weak.' Same old comment. In fact there was only one subject in which Valerie had apparently not hidden her light beneath the bushel of her casual indifference; and oddly enough that was Applied Science and Technology.

Funny, really, girls tackling subjects like dial. But the curriculum had undergone mysterious developments since his own school days. He picked up the earlier reports and read some of the comments of the science staff: 'Good with her hands'; 'A good term's work'; 'Has good mechanical sense'. He got up from his chair and went over to the shelf where earlier he'd stacked Valerie's old exercise books. It was there: Applied Science and Technology. Morse flicked through the pages. Yes, the work was good, he could see that - surprisingly good ... Hold it a minute! He looked through the book again, more carefully now, and read the headings of the syllabus: Work; Energy; Power; Velocity Ratio; Efficiency of Machines; Simple Machines; Levers; Pulleys; Simple Power-transmission Systems; Car Engines; Clutches ...

He walked back to his desk slowly, like a man in a dreamlike daze, and read the last spring term report once more: French, and Applied Science and Technology ...

Suddenly the hair on his flesh stood erect. He felt a curious constriction in his throat, and a long shiver pa.s.sed icily down his spine. He reached for the phone and his hand shook as he dialled the number.

CHAPTER FORTY-TWO.

I came fairly to kill him honestly. Beaumont and Fletcher, The Little French Lawyer VALERIE TAYLOR UNSCREWED the latest tube of skin-lotion - her sixth prescription. The last time she'd been to the doctor he'd asked rather pointedly if she were worried about anything; and perhaps she was. But not to that extent. She'd never worried overmuch about anything, really: just wanted to live in the present and enjoy herself ... Carefully she smeared some of the white cream over the ugly spots. How she prayed they would go! Over a month now - and still they persisted, horribly. She'd tried almost everything, including those face-mask things: in fact she had been wearing one of them when Chief Inspector Morse had called. Mm. She thought of Morse. Bit old, perhaps, but then she'd always felt attracted to the older men. Not that David was old. Quite young, really, and he'd been awfully nice to her, but...

Morse's face, when she'd answered him in French! She smiled at the recollection. Phew! What a bit of luck that had been! Just as well she'd been with David on those two trips to France with his sixth-formers, although she'd probably have been all right anyway. It had taken a fair bit of cajoling oil David's part, but as it turned out she'd really enjoyed her two years in the French Conversation Cla.s.s at Caernarfon Tech. At the very least it was a chance to get out once a week, and it got so boring being on her own in the house all day. Nothing to do; nothing much to do if she did get out more. Not that she blamed David, but...

b.l.o.o.d.y spots! She wiped off the lotion and applied a new layer. It might be better to leave them alone - let the sun get at them. But the sky this Tuesday evening was a sullen grey, and the weather would soon be getting cold again; far colder than it would be in the south. Like last winter. Brrh! She didn't intend to face another winter like that ... The washing-up was done and David sat downstairs in the living room marking exercise books. He was always marking exercise books. He would be awfully upset, of course, but...

She stepped over to the wardrobe and took out the long red-velvet dress she'd taken to the cleaners last week. Inclining her head slightly, she held it against her body and stood before the mirror. Dinner-plates, parties, dancing ... It had been such a long time since she'd been out - been out properly, that is ... The dark roots of her hair had now grown almost half an inch into the pseudo-blonde, and it all began to look so obvious. She would buy another bottle of 'Poly-bleach' tomorrow. Or would she bother? After all, she'd got to Oxford and back pretty easily ...

Not that she would hire a car again. Couldn't afford it, for a start. Much easier to get a bus into Bangor, and then hitch-hike down the A5. A lot of men still drove the roads and hoped that every mile they'd see a lone, attractive girl. Yes, that would be much easier, and the A5 went all the way to London ...

It was a good job she'd mentioned the car to David. That really had worried her - whether they'd check up on the car-hire firms. She'd not told David the truth, of course; just said she'd gone to see her mother. Yes, 'she'd admitted how silly and dangerous it was, and had promised David never to think of doing it again. But it had been a very sensible precaution that - warning him to tell them that she couldn't drive. If they ever asked, that was. And Morse had asked, it seemed.

Clever man, Morse ... She'd been a fraction naughty - hadn't she?

- the first time he had called. Yes. And the second time - phew! That had perhaps been the very worst moment of all, when she'd opened the door and found him looking through her kitchen drawer. She'd bought a new one, naturally, but it had been exactly the same sort of knife, brand new ... Funny, really; he hadn't even mentioned it...

Valerie looked at herself once more in the mirror. The spots looked better now, and she closed the bedroom door behind her ... Morse! She smiled to herself as she walked down the creaking stairs. His face! Oui.Je I'ai etudie d'abord a I'ec.o.k et apres...

The phone rang in Caernarvon Police HQ and the switchboard put the call through to the duty inspector.

'All right. Put him on.' He clamped his hand firmly over the mouthpiece and mumbled a few hurried words sotto voce to the sergeant sitting opposite. 'It's Morse again.'

'Morse, sir?'

'Yes, you remember. That fellow from Oxford who b.u.g.g.e.red us all about at the weekend. I wonder what ... h.e.l.lo. Can I help you?'

EPILOGUE.

There are tears of things and mortal matters touch the heart.

Virgil, Atneid I.

IT WAS NOT until Sat.u.r.day morning that a somewhat disgruntled Lewis was at last summoned into Morse's office to hear something of the final developments.

The Caernarfon police had felt (with some justification, admitted Morse) that they had insufficient evidence on which to hold Valerie Taylor - even if they accepted Morse's vehement protestations that the woman living as Mrs Ac.u.m was Valerie Taylor. And when Morse himself had arrived on Wednesday morning, it had been too late: the driver of the 9.50 a.m. bus from Bont-Newydd to Bangor had remembered her clearly; and a petrol-pump attendant had noticed her ('So would you have done, officer!') as she stood beside the forecourt waiting to thumb a lift down the A5.

Lewis had listened carefully, but one or two things still puzzled him. 'So it must have been Baines who wrote the letter?'

'Oh yes. It couldn't have been Valerie.' 'I wouldn't be too sure, sir. She's a pretty clever girl.' And I'm a clown, thought Morse. The car, the French, and the spots: a combination of circ.u.mstance and coincidence which had proved too much even for him to accept; a triple-oxer over which he would normally have leaped with the blithest a.s.surance, but at which, in this instance, he had so strangely refused. After all, it would have been very odd if a mechanically minded girl like Valerie hadn't even bothered to take a driving test; and she wasn't too bad at spoken French - even at school. Those reports! If only- 'Big coincidence, wasn't it - about the spots, I mean?"

'No, not really, Lewis. Don't forget that both of them were sleeping with Ac.u.m; and Ac.u.m's got a beard.'

It was something else that Lewis hadn't considered, and he let it go. 'She's gone to London, I suppose, sir?'

Morse nodded wearily, a wry smile upon his lips. 'Back to square one, aren't we?'

'You think we'll find her?'

'I don't know. I suppose so - in the end.'

On Sat.u.r.day afternoon the Phillipson family motored to the White Horse Hill at Uffington. For Andrew and Alison it was a rare treat, and Mrs Phillipson watched them lovingly as they gambolled with gay abandon about the Downs. So much had pa.s.sed between her and Donald these last few days. On Tuesday evening their very lives together had seemed to be hanging by the slenderest of threads. But now, this bright and chilly afternoon, the future stretched out before them, open and free as the broad landscape around them. She would write, she decided, a long, long letter to Morse, and try to thank him from the bottom of her heart For on that terrible evening it had been Morse who had found Donald and brought him to her; it had been Morse who had seemed to know and to understand all things about them both ...

On Sat.u.r.day evening Mrs Grace Taylor sat staring blankly through the window on to the darkened street. They had returned from their holiday in mid-afternoon, and things seemed very much the same as she had left them. At a quarter-past eight, by the light of the street lamp, she saw Morse walking slowly, head down, towards the pub. She gave him no second thought Earlier in the evening she had gone out into the front garden and clipped off the heads of a few last fading roses. But there had been one late scarlet bloom that was still in perfect flower. She had cut that off too, and it now stood on the mantelshelf, in a cheap gla.s.s vase that Valerie had won on a shooting stall at St Giles's Fair, beneath the ducks that winged their way towards the ceiling in the empty room behind her.

Some of them never did come home ... never.

end.