by Colin Dexter
‘We’ve got a living body,’ said Lewis quietly.
Morse nodded. ‘I suppose you’re right.’ He walked across the room and stood by the door, but Lewis remained seated at the desk. ‘What’s the matter, Lewis?’
‘I just can’t help wondering where she is, sir. You know, at this very minute she must be somewhere, and if only we knew we could just go along there and find her. Funny, isn’t it? But we can’t find her, and I don’t like giving up. I just wish we could find her, that’s all.’
Morse walked back into the room and sat down again. ‘Mm. I’d not thought of it quite like that before . . . I’ve been so cocksure she was dead that I haven’t really thought of her as being alive. And you’re right. She’s somewhere; at this very second she’s sitting somewhere.’ The grey eyes were beginning to glow once more and Lewis felt happier.
‘Could be quite a challenge, couldn’t it, sir?’
‘Ye-es. Perhaps it’s not such a bad job after all – chasing a young tart like Valerie Taylor.’
‘You think we should try, then?’
‘I’m beginning to think we should, yes.’
‘Where do we start?’
‘Where the hell do you think? She’s almost certainly sitting somewhere in a luxury flat plucking her eyebrows.’
‘But where, sir?’
‘Where? Where do you think? London, of course. What was that postmark? EC4 wasn’t it? She’s within a few miles’ radius of EC4. Sure to be!’
‘That wasn’t the postmark on the second letter she wrote.’
‘Second letter? Oh yes. What was the postmark on that?’
Lewis frowned slightly. ‘W1. Don’t you remember?’
‘W1, eh? But I wouldn’t worry your head about that second letter, Lewis?’
‘You wouldn’t?’
‘No, I wouldn’t bother about it at all. You see, Lewis, I wrote that second letter myself.’
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
And all the woe that moved him so
That he gave that bitter cry,
And the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats,
None knew so well as I:
For he who lives more lives than one
More deaths than one must die.
Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol
THERE WERE OVER one hundred and twenty of them, and it was too many. Why, if each of them were given leave to speak only for a minute, that would be two hours! But anyway, Acum didn’t think he wanted to say anything. The great majority of the delegates were in their forties and fifties, senior men and women who, judging from their comments and their questions, sent forth an annual stream of gifted linguists to assume their natural Oxbridge birthrights.
He had felt tired after his five-and-a-half-hours’ drive the previous day, and this morning’s programme, conducted in a genteel atmosphere of rarefied intellectuality, had hardly succeeded in fostering any real esprit de corps. Speaking on ‘Set Texts in the Sixth Form’ the Senior Tutor had given voice softly and seriously to the delicate rhythms of Racine, and Acum began to wonder if the premier universities were not growing further and further out of touch with his own particular brand of comprehensive school. His main problem in the sixth was to recruit a handful of pupils who had just about reached the minimum requirement of a grade C in O-level French, and who, in the wake of their qualified triumphs, had promptly mislaid the substance of their erstwhile knowledge during two long months of carefree summer freedom. He wondered if other schools were different; if he himself, in some way, were to blame.
Fortunately the post-lunch discussion on the merits of the Nuffield French experiment was infinitely lighter and brighter, and Acum felt slightly more at home with his co-delegates. The Senior Tutor, the rhythms of Racine still rippling along through his mind, testified evangelically to the paramount need for a formal grammatical discipline in the teaching of all languages, including modern languages. And if Racine and Molière were not worth reading, reading with accuracy, and reading without the remotest possibility of misunderstanding arising from mistranslation – then we all might just as well forget literature and life. It sounded magnificent. And then that burly, cheerful fellow from Bradford had brought the academic argument down to earth with a magnificent thud: give him a lad or a lass with t’gumption to order t’pound of carrots at t’French greengrocer’s shop, any dair! The conference exploded in glorious uproar. Slyly, a dignified old greybeard suggested that no Englishman, even one who had the good fortune to learn his native tongue in Yorkshire, had ever been confronted with an insuperable language-barrier in finding his way to a pissoir in Paris.
It was all good stuff now. The conference should have passed a vote of thanks to the burly Bradfordian and his pound of carrots. Even Acum nearly said something; and almost every other member of the silent majority nearly said something, too. There were just far too many there. Ridiculous, really. No one would notice if you were there or not. He was going out tonight, anyway. No one was going to miss him if he slipped away from the conference hall. He would be back long before the porters’ lodge was shut at 11.00 p.m.
The school bell rang at 4.00 p.m., and the last lesson of the day was over. Streams of children emerged from classrooms and, like a nest of ants uncovered, bewilderingly crossed and re-crossed to cloakrooms, to bicycle sheds, to societies, to games practices and to sundry other pursuits. More leisurely, the teachers threaded their way back through the milling throngs to the staff room; some to smoke, some to talk, some to mark. And very soon most of them, teachers and pupils alike, would be making their way home. Another day was done.
Baines returned from teaching a fourth-year mathematics set and dropped a pile of thirty exercise books on to his table. Twenty seconds each – no more; only ten minutes the lot. He might as well get them marked straight away. Thank the Lord it wasn’t like marking English or History, with all that reading to do. His practised eye had learned to pounce upon the pages in a flash. Yes, he would dash them off now.
‘Mr Phillipson would like a word with you,’ said Mrs Webb.
‘Oh. Now?’
‘As soon as you came in, he said.’
Baines knocked perfunctorily and entered the study.
‘Have a seat a minute, Baines.’
Warily the second master took a seat. There was a serious edge to Phillipson’s voice – like a doctor’s about to inform you that you’ve only a few months more to live.
‘Inspector Morse will be in again tomorrow afternoon. You know that, don’t you?’ Baines nodded. ‘He wants to talk to us both – together.’
‘He didn’t mention that to me.’
‘Well, that’s what he’s going to do.’ Baines said nothing. ‘You know what this probably means, don’t you?’
‘He’s a clever man.’
‘No doubt. But he won’t be getting any further, will he?’ The tone of Phillipson’s voice was hard, almost the tone of a master to his pupil. ‘You realize what I’m saying, don’t you, Baines? Keep your mouth shut!’
‘Yes, you’d like me to do that, wouldn’t you?’
‘I’m warning you!’ The latent hatred suddenly blazed in Phillipson’s eyes. No pretence now; only an ugly, naked hatred between them.
Baines got up, savouring supremely the moment of his power. ‘Don’t push me too far, Phillipson! And just remember who you’re talking to.’
‘Get out!’ hissed Phillipson. The blood was pounding in his ears, and although a non-smoker he longed to light a cigarette. He sat motionless at his desk for many minutes and wondered how much longer the nightmare could go on. What a relief it would be to end it all – one way or another . . .
Gradually he grew calmer, and his mind wandered back again. How long ago was it now? Over three and a half years! And still the memory of that night came back to haunt him like a ghost unexorcized. That night . . . He could picture it all so vividly still . . .
He felt quite pleased with himself. Difficult to tell for certain, of course; but yes, quit
e pleased with himself really. As accurately as it could his mind retraced the stages of the day’s events; the questions of the interviewing committee – wise and foolish; and his own answers – carefully considered . . .
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In philological works . . . a dagger † signifies an obsolete word. The . . . sign, placed before a person’s name, signifies deceased.
Rules for Compositors and Readers, OUP
THIS SAME MONDAY night or, to be accurate, Tuesday morning, Morse was not in bed until 2.00 a.m., overtired and underbeered. The euphoria of the earlier part of the day had now completely passed, partly as a result of Lewis’s sceptical disparagement, but more significantly because of his own inability ever to fool himself for very long. He still believed that some of the pieces had clicked into place, but knew that many didn’t fit at all; and a few didn’t even look like pieces of the same jigsaw. He recollected how in the army he had been given a test for colour-blindness. A sheet of paper on which a chaotically confused conglomeration of colour blocks were printed had been magically metamorphosed when looked at through differently-coloured filter slides; a red filter, and there appeared an elephant; a blue filter, and a lion leaped out at the eyes; a green filter, and behold the donkey! Donkey . . . He’d been reading something about a donkey only a few days ago. Where had he read it? Morse was not a systematic reader; he was a dipper-in. He looked at the small pile of books on his bedside table underneath the alarm clock. The Road to Xanadu, A Selection of Kipling’s Short Stories, The Life of Richard Wagner and Selected Prose of A. E. Housman. It was in Housman, surely, that bit about the donkey who couldn’t make up its asinine mind which bundle of hay to start on first. Hadn’t the stupid animal finally died of starvation? He soon found the passage:
An editor of no judgement, perpetually confronted with a couple of MSS to choose from, cannot but feel in every fibre of his being that he is a donkey between two bundles of hay.
Two MSS, and no judgement! That summed it up perfectly. One MS told him that Valerie Taylor was alive, and the other told him she was dead. And he still didn’t know which MS a man of judgement should settle for. Oh Lord! Which of the wretched MSS had the correct reading? Had either?
He knew that at this rate he would never go to sleep, and he told himself to forget it all and think of something else. He picked up Kipling and began rereading his favourite short story, Love O’ Women. He firmly believed that Kipling knew more about women than Kinsey ever had, and he came back to a passage marked with vertical lines in the margin:
. . . as you say, sorr, he was a man with an educashin, an’ he used ut for his schames; an’ the same educashin an’ talkin’ an’ all that made him able to do fwhat he had a mind to wid a woman, that same wud turn back again in the long-run an’ tear him alive.
Phew!
He thought back on what he’d learned about Valerie’s sex life. Nothing much, really. He thought of Maguire, and half-remembered something Maguire had said that didn’t quite ring true. But he couldn’t quite get hold of it and the memory slipped away again like a bar of soap in the bath.
Educashin. Most people were more interesting for a bit of education. More interesting to women . . . some of these young girls must soon get tired of the drib-drab, wishy-washy drivel that sometimes passed for conversation. Some of them liked older men for just that reason; interesting men with some show of pretence for cultured pursuits, with a smattering of knowledge – with something more in mind than fiddling for their bra-straps after a couple of whiskies.
What was Valerie like? Had she gone for the older men? Phillipson? Baines? But surely not Baines. Some of her teachers, perhaps? Acum? He couldn’t remember the other names. And then he suddenly caught the bar of soap. He’d asked Maguire how many times he’d been to bed with Valerie, and Maguire had said a dozen or so. And Morse had told him to come off it and tell him the truth, fully expecting a considerably increased count of casual copulations. But no. Maguire had come down, hadn’t he? ‘Well, three or four,’ he’d said. Something like that. Probably hadn’t slept with her at all? Morse sat up and considered. Why, ah why, hadn’t he pressed this point with Maguire when he had seen him yesterday? Was she really pregnant after all? He had assumed so, and Maguire had seemingly confirmed his suspicions. But was she? It made sense if she was. But made sense of what? Of the preconceived pattern that Morse was building up, and into which, willy-nilly, the pieces were being forced into their places.
If only he knew what the problem was. Then he wouldn’t be quite so restless, even if it proved beyond his powers. Problem! He remembered his old Latin master. Hm! Whenever he was confronted with an insoluble difficulty – a crux in the text, an absurdly complex chunk of syntax – he would turn to his class with a serious mien: ‘Gentlemen, having looked this problem boldly in the face, we must now, I think, pass on.’ Morse smiled at the recollection . . . It was getting very late. A crux in the Oxford Classical Text, marked by daggers . . . the daggered text . . . He was falling asleep. Texts, manuscripts, and a donkey in the middle braying and bellyaching, not knowing which way to turn . . . like Morse, like himself . . . His head fell to the right and his ear strained no more for the incomprehensible nocturnal clues. He fell asleep, the light still burning and Kipling’s stories still held loosely in his hand.
Earlier the same evening Baines had opened his front door to find an unexpected visitor.
‘Well, well! This is a surprise. Come in, won’t you? Shall I take your coat?’
‘No. I’ll keep it on.’
‘Well, at least you’ll have a drop of something to cheer you up, eh? Can I offer you a glass of something? Nothing much in, though, I’m afraid.’
‘If you like.’
His visitor following behind, Baines walked through to the small kitchen, opened the fridge, and looked inside. ‘Beer? Lager?’
Baines squatted on his haunches and reached inside. His left hand lay on the top of the fridge, the fingernails slightly dirty; his right hand reached far in as he bent forward. There were two bald patches on the top of his head, with a greying tuft of hair between them, temporarily thwarting the impending merger. He wore no tie, and the collar of his light-blue shirt was grubbily lined. He would have changed it the next day.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
One morn I miss’d him on the custom’d hill.
Thomas Gray, Elegy Written in a Country Churchyard
FULL MORNING ASSEMBLY at the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School began at 8.50. The staff stood at the back of the main hall, wearing (at least those authorized to do so) the insignia of their respective universities; it was something the head insisted on. Punctual to the second, and flanked at some short distance in the rear by the second master and the senior mistress, Phillip-son, begowned and behooded, walked from the back of the hall, and the pupils rose to their feet as the procession made its way down the central gangway, climbed the short flight of steps at the side and mounted on to the stage itself. The routine seldom varied: a hymn sung, a prayer intoned, a passage read from Holy Writ – and paid for one more day were the proper respects to the Almighty. The last unsynchronized ‘Amen’ marked the end of morning devotions, and gave the cue to the second master to recall the attention of the assembled host to more terrestrial things. Each morning he announced, in clear, unhurried tones, any changes in the day’s procedure necessitated by staff absences, house activities, the times and places of society meetings, and the results of the sports teams. And, always, reserved until the end, he read with doomsday gravity a list of names; the names of pupils who would report outside the staff room immediately after the assembly was finished: the recalcitrants, the anarchists, the obstructionists, the truants, the skivers, and the defectors in general from the rules that governed the corporate life of the establishment.
As the procession walked up the central aisle on Tuesday morning, and as the school rose en bloc from their seats, several heads turned towards each other and many whispered voices asked where Baines coul
d be; not even the oldest pupils could remember him being away for a single day before. The senior mistress looked lopsided and lost: it was like the dissolution of the Trinity. Phillipson himself read the notices, referring in no way to the absence of his adjutant. The girls’ hockey team had achieved a rare and decisive victory, and the school greeted the news with unwonted enthusiasm. The chess club would meet in the physics lab and 4C (for unspecified criminality) would be staying in after school. The following pupils, etc., etc. Phillip-son turned away from the rostrum and walked out through the wings. The school chattered noisily and prepared to go to their classrooms.
At lunchtime Phillipson spoke to his secretary.
‘No word from Mr Baines yet?’
‘Nothing. Do you think we should give him a ring?’
Phillipson considered for a moment. ‘Perhaps we should. What do you think?’
‘Not like him to be away, is it?’
‘No, it isn’t. Give him a ring now.’
Mrs Webb rang Baines’s Oxford number and the distant burring seemed to echo in a vaulted, ominous silence.
‘There’s no answer,’ she said.
At 2.15 p.m. a middle-aged woman took from her handbag the key to Baines’s house; she cleaned for him three afternoons a week. Oddly, the door was unlocked and she pushed it open and walked in. The curtains were still drawn and the electric light was still turned on in the living room, as well as in the kitchen, the door to which stood open wide. And even before she walked through to the kitchen she saw the slumped figure of Baines in front of the refrigerator, a long-handled household knife plunged deep into his back, the dried blood forming a horrid blotch upon the cotton shirt, like a deranged artist’s study in claret and blue.
