by Colin Dexter
To Lewis, he seemed to have lost interest completely. He’d tried his best to make a murder out of it; and now he’d learned he’d failed, he’d decided to go to bed! It was as good a time as any to mention that other little thing.
‘I was just wondering, sir. Don’t you think it might be a good idea if I went up to London. You know – make a few inquiries, have a look round—’
Morse interrupted him angrily from the other end of the line. ‘What the hell are you talking about, man? If you’re going to work with me on this case, for God’s sake get one thing into that thick skull of yours, d’you hear? Valerie Taylor isn’t living in London or anywhere else. You got that? She’s dead.’ The line was dead, too.
Lewis walked out of the office and slammed the door behind him. Dickson was in the canteen; Dickson was always in the canteen.
‘Solved the murder yet, sarge?’
‘No I have not,’ snarled Lewis. ‘And nor has Inspector bloody Morse.’
He sat alone in the farthest corner and stirred his coffee with controlled fury.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
’Tis a strange thing, Sam, that among us people can’t agree the whole week because they go different ways upon Sundays.
George Farquhar
THE BRIEF INDIAN summer, radiant and beneficent, was almost at an end. On Friday evening the forecast for the weekend was unsettled, changeable weather with the possibility of high winds and rain; and Saturday was already appreciably cooler, with dark clouds from the west looming over North Oxfordshire. Gloomily the late-night weatherman revealed to the nation a map of the British Isles almost obliterated by a series of close, concentric millibars with their epicentrum somewhere over Birmingham, and prophesied in minatory tones of weak fronts and associated depressions. Sunday broke gusty and raw, and although the threatened rain storm held its hand, there was, at 9.00 a.m., a curiously deadened, almost dreamlike quality about the early morning streets, and the few people there were seemed to move as in a silent film.
From Carfax (at the centre of Oxford) Queen Street leads westwards, very soon changing its name to Park End Street; and off Park End Street on the left-hand side and just opposite the railway station, is Kempis Street, where stands a row of quietly senescent terraced houses. At five minutes past nine the door of one of these houses is opened, and a man walks to the end of the street, opens the faded-green doors of his garage and backs out his car. It is a dull black car, irresponsive, even in high summer, to any glancing sunbeams, and the chrome on the front and rear bumpers is rusted to a dirty brown. It is time he bought a new car, and indeed he has more than enough money to do so. He drives to St Giles’ and up the Woodstock Road. It would be slightly quicker and certainly more direct to head straight up the Banbury Road; but he wishes to avoid the Banbury Road. At the top of the Woodstock Road he turns right along the ring-road for some three or four hundred yards and turns left at the Banbury Road roundabout. Here he increases his speed to a modest 45 m.p.h. and passes out of Oxford and down the long, gentle hill that leads to Kidlington. Here (inconspicuously, he hopes) he leaves his car in a side street which is only a few minutes’ walk from the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School. It is a strange decision. It is more than that; it is an incomprehensible decision. He walks fairly quickly, pulling his trilby hat further over his eyes and hunching deeper into his thick, dark overcoat. He walks up the slight incline, passing the prefabricated hut in which the Clerk of Works directs (and will direct) the perpetual and perennial alterations and extensions to the school, and as deviously as he can he penetrates the sprawling amalgam of outbuildings, permanent and temporary, wherein the pupils of secondary school age are initiated into the mysteries of the Sciences and the Humanities. Guardedly his eyes glance hither and thither, but there is no one to be seen. Thence over the black tarmac of the central play area and towards the two-storeyed, flat-roofed central administrative block, newly built in yellow brick. The main door is locked; but he has a key. He enters quietly and unlocks the door. Within, there is a deathly silence about the familiar surroundings; his footsteps echo on the parquet flooring, and the smell of the floor polish takes him back to times of long ago. Again he looks around him and quickly mounts the stairs. The door to the secretary’s office is locked; but he has a key, and enters and locks the door behind him. He walks over to the headmaster’s study. The door is locked; but he has a key, and enters and feels a sudden fear. But there is no reason for the fear. He walks over to a large filing cabinet. It is locked; but he has a key, and opens it and takes out a file marked ‘Staff Appointments’. He flicks through the thick file and replaces it; tries another; and another. At last he finds it. It is a sheet of paper he has never seen before; but it contains no surprises, for he has known its contents all along. In the office outside he turns on the electric switch of the copying machine. It takes only thirty seconds to make two copies (although he has been asked for only one). Carefully he replaces the original document in the filing cabinet, relocks the study door, unlocks and relocks the outer door, and makes his way down the stairs. Stealthily he looks outside. It is five minutes to ten. There is no one in sight as he lets himself out, relocks the main door and leaves the school premises. He is lucky. No one has seen him and he retraces his steps. A man is standing on the pavement by the car, but moves on, guiltily tugging a small white dog along the pavement and momentarily deferring the imminent defecation.
This same Sunday morning Sheila Phillipson is picking up the windfalls under the apple trees. The grass needs cutting again, for in spite of the recent weeks of sunshine a few dark ridges of longish grass are sprouting in dark-green patches; and with rain apparently imminent, she will mention it to Donald. Or will she? He has been touchy and withdrawn this last week – almost certainly because of that girl! It is unlike him, though. Hereto he has assumed the duties and responsibilities of the headship with a verve and a confidence that have slightly surprised her. No. It isn’t like him to worry. There must be something more to it; something wrong somewhere.
She stands with the basket of apples on her arm and looks around: the tall fencing that keeps them so private, the bushes and shrubs and ground-cover that blend so wonderfully with their variegated greens. It is almost terrifyingly beautiful. And the more she treasures it all the more frightened she is that she may lose it all. How she wants to keep everything just as it is! And as she stands beneath the apple-heavy boughs her face grows hard and determined. She will keep it all – for Donald, for the children, for herself. She will let nothing and no one take it from her!
Donald comes out to join her and says (praise be!) that it’s high time he cut the grass again, and greets the promise of apple pie for dinner with a playfully loving kiss upon her cheek. Perhaps after all she is worrying herself over nothing.
At midday the beef and the pie are in the oven, and as she prepares the vegetables she watches him cutting the lawn. But the shaded patterns of the parallel swaths seem not so neat as usual – and suddenly she bangs her hands upon the window and shouts hysterically: ‘Donald! For God’s—’ So nearly, so very nearly has he chewed up the electric flex of the lead with the blades of the mower. She has read of a young boy doing just that only a week ago: instantly and tragically fatal.
The Senior Tutor’s secretary has had to come into Lonsdale College this Sunday morning. In common with many she feels convinced there are far too many conferences, and wonders whether the Conference for the Reform of French Teaching in Secondary Schools will significantly affect the notorious inability of English children to learn the language of any other nation. So many conferences, especially before the start of the Michaelmas Term! She is efficient and has almost everything ready for the evening’s business: lists of those attending, details of their schools, programmes for the following two days’ activities, certifications of attendance and the menus for the evening’s banquet. There remain only the name-tags, and using the red ribbon and the upper case she begins typing the name and provenance of each of the de
legates. It is a fairly simple and quick operation. She then cuts up the names into neat rectangles and begins to fit them into the small celluloid holders: MR J. ABBOTT, The Royal Grammar School, Chelmsford; MISS P. ACKROYD, High Wycombe Technical College; MR D. ACUM, City of Caernarfon School . . . and so on, to the end of the list. She is finished by midday and takes all her bits and pieces to the Conference Room, where at 6.30 p.m. she will sit behind the reception desk and greet the delegates as they arrive. To be truthful, she rather enjoys this sort of thing. Her hair will be most cunningly coiffured, and on her name-tag she has proudly printed ‘Lonsdale College’ as her own academic provenance.
With the new stretch of the M40 blasted through the heart of the Chilterns, the journey to and from London is now quicker than ever; and Morse feels reasonably satisfied with his day’s work when he arrives back in Oxford just after 4.00 p.m. Lewis was quite right: there were one or two things that could only be checked in London, and Morse thinks that he has dealt with them. On his return he calls in at Police HQ and finds an envelope, heavily sealed with Sellotape, and boldly marked for the attention of Chief Inspector Morse. The pieces are beginning to fall into place. He dials Acum’s home number and waits.
‘Hello?’ It is a woman’s voice.
‘Mrs Acum?’
‘Yes, speaking.’
‘Could I have a word with your husband, please?’
‘I’m afraid he’s not here.’
‘Will he be in later?’
‘Well, no. He won’t. He’s away on a teachers’ conference.’
‘Oh, I see. When are you expecting him back, Mrs Acum?’
‘He said he hoped to be back Tuesday evening – fairly late, though, I think.’
‘I see.’
‘Can I give him a message?’
‘Er, no. Don’t worry. It’s not important. I’ll try to ring him later in the week.’
‘You sure?’
‘Yes, that’ll be fine. Thanks very much, anyway. Sorry to trouble you.’
‘That’s all right.’
Morse sits back and considers. As he’s just said, it isn’t really important.
Baines is not a man of regular habits, nor indeed of settled tastes. Sometimes he drinks beer, and sometimes he drinks Guinness. Occasionally, when a heavy burden weighs upon his mind, he drinks whisky. Sometimes he drinks in the lounge, and sometimes he drinks in the public bar; sometimes in the Station Hotel, and sometimes in the Royal Oxford, for both are near. Sometimes he doesn’t drink at all.
Tonight he orders a whisky and soda in the lounge bar of the Station Hotel. It is a place with a very special and a very important memory. The bar is fairly small, and he finds he can easily follow long stretches of others’ conversations; but tonight he is deaf to the chatter around him. It has been a worrying sort of day – though not worrying exactly; more a nervy, fluttery sort of day. Clever man, Morse!
Several of the customers are waiting for the London train; smartly dressed, apparently affluent. Later there will be a handful who have missed the train and who will book in for the night if there are vacancies; relaxed, worldly men with generous expense allowances and jaunty anecdotes. And just once in a while there is a man who deliberately misses his train, who rings his wife and tells his devious tale.
It had been a chance in a thousand, really – seeing Phillipson like that. Phillipson! One of the six on the short-list, a list that had included himself! A stroke of luck, too, that she had not seen him when, just after 8.30, they had entered arm-in-arm. And then they had actually appointed Phillipson! Well, well, well. And the little secret glittered and gleamed like a bright nugget of gold in a miser’s hoard.
Phillipson, Baines, Acum; headmaster, second master, ex-Modern Languages master of the Roger Bacon School, and all thinking of Valerie Taylor as they lay awake that Sunday night listening as the wind howled and the rain beat down relentlessly. At last to each of them came sleep; but sleep uneasy and disturbed. Phillipson, Baines, Acum; and tomorrow night one of the three will be sleeping a sleep that is long and undisturbed; for tomorrow night at this same time one of the three will be dead.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
They wish to know the family secrets and to be feared accordingly.
Juvenal, Satire III, 113
MORSE WOKE FROM a deep, untroubled sleep at 7.30 a.m. and switched on Radio Oxford: trees uprooted, basements flooded, outbuildings smashed to matchwood. But as he washed and shaved, he felt happier than he had done since taking over the case. He saw things more clearly now. There was a long way still to go but at least he had made the first big breakthrough. He would have to apologize to Lewis – that was only fit and proper; but Lewis would understand. He backed out the Lancia and got out to lock the garage doors. The rain had ceased at last and everywhere looked washed and clean. He breathed deeply – it was good to be alive.
He summoned Lewis to his office immediately, cleared his desk, and cheated by having a quick preliminary look at 1 across: Code name for a walrus (5). Ha! The clue was like a megaphone shouting the answer at him. It was going to be his day!
Lewis greeted his chief defensively; he had not seen him since the previous Thursday morning. Where Morse had been he didn’t know, and what he’d been doing he didn’t really care.
‘Look,’ said Morse. ‘I’m sorry I blasted your head off last week. I know you don’t worry about things like that, but I do.’
It was a new angle, anyway, thought Lewis.
‘And I feel I ought to apologize. It’s not like me, is it, to go off the deep end like that.’
It was hardly a question and Lewis made no reply.
‘We’re a team, Lewis, you and me – you must never forget that . . .’ He went on and on and Lewis felt better and better. ‘You see, Lewis, the long and the short of it is that you were right and I was wrong. I should have listened to you.’ Lewis felt like a candidate who learns that he has been awarded grade 1 although he was absent for the examination.
‘Yes,’ continued Morse, ‘I’ve had the chance to stand back and see things a little more clearly, and I think we can now begin to see what really happened.’
He was becoming rather pompous and self-satisfied, and Lewis tried to bring him down to earth. As far as he knew, Morse had been nowhere near the office since Thursday morning.
‘There’s that report from Peters on Valerie’s second letter, sir. You remember, I rang you about it.’
Morse brushed the interruption aside. ‘That’s not important, Lewis. But I’m going to tell you something that is important.’ He leaned back in the black leather chair and commenced an analysis of the case, an analysis which at several points had Sergeant Lewis staring at him in wide-eyed amazement and despair.
‘The one person who has worried me all along in this case has been Phillipson. Why? Because it’s clear that the man is hiding something, and to keep things dark he’s been forced to tell us lies.’
‘He didn’t lie about Blackwells, sir.’
‘No. But I’m not worried so much about what happened on the day when Valerie disappeared. That’s where we’ve been making our mistake. We should have been concentrating much more on what happened before she disappeared. We should have been looking into the past for some incident, some relationship, something, that gives a coherent pattern to all the rest. Because, make no mistake, there is something buried away back there in the past, and if we can find it everything will suddenly click into place. It’s the key, Lewis – a key that slips easily into the lock and when it turns it’s smooth and silky and – hey presto! So, let’s forget for a while who saw Valerie last and what colour knickers she was wearing. Let’s go back long before that. For if I’m right, if I’m right . . .’
‘You think you’ve found the key?’
Morse grew rather more serious. ‘I think so, yes. I think that what we’ve got to reckon with in this case is power, the power that someone, by some means or other, can exercise over someone else.’
‘Blackmail, you
mean, sir?’
Morse paused before answering. ‘It may have been; I’m not sure yet.’
‘You think someone’s blackmailing Phillipson, is that it?’
‘Let’s not rush, Lewis. Just suppose for a minute. Suppose you yourself did something shady, and no one found out. No one, that is, except for one other person. Let’s say you bribed a witness, or planted false evidence or something like that. All right? If you got found out, you’d be kicked out of the force on your ear, and find yourself in jug, as likely as not. Your career would be ruined, and your family, too. You’d give a lot to keep things dark, and just let’s suppose that I was the one who knew all about this, eh?’
‘You’d have me by the . . .’ Lewis thought better of it.
‘I would, indeed. But not only that. I could also do some shady things myself, couldn’t I? And get you to cover up for me. It would be dangerous, but it might be necessary. I could get you to compound the original crime you’d committed, by committing another, but committing it for me, not for yourself. From then on we’d sink or swim together, I know that; but we’d be fools to split on each other, wouldn’t we?’
Lewis nodded, he was getting a bit bored.
‘Just think, Lewis, of the ordinary people we come across every day. They do the same sort of things we do and have the same sort of hopes and fears as everybody else. And they’re not really villains at all, but some of them occasionally do things they’d be frightened to death of anyone else finding out about.’
‘Pinching a bag of sugar from the supermarket – that sort of thing?’ Morse laughed.
‘Your mind, as always, Lewis leaps immediately to the limits of human iniquity! In the seventh circle of Dante’s Hell we shall doubtless find the traitors, the mass murderers, the infant torturers, and the stealers of sugar from the supermarkets. But that’s the sort of thing I mean, yes. Now just let that innocent mind of yours sink a little lower into the depths of human depravity, and tell me what you find.’
