by Colin Dexter
‘You want me to read all this?’
‘I just hope it’s worth reading, that’s all.’
And Morse read; and as he read a wan smile crept across his mouth, and here and there he nodded with rigorous approbation, and Lewis sank back into his pillows with the air of a pupil whose essay is receiving the alpha accolade. When he had finished, Morse took out his pen.
‘Don’t mind if I make one or two slight alterations, do you?’ For the next ten minutes he went methodically through the draft, correcting the more heinous spelling errors, inserting an assortment of full-stops and commas, and shuffling several of the sentences into a more comprehensible sequence. ‘That’s better,’ said Morse finally, handing back to a rueful-looking Lewis his amended masterpiece. It was an improvement, though. Anyone could see that.
To begin with, the evidence seemed to point to the fact that Valerie Taylor was alive. After all, her parents received a letter from her. But we then discovered that the letter was almost certainly not written by Valerie at all. So. Instead of assuming that she’s alive, we must face the probability that she’s dead, and we must ask ourselves the old question: who was the last person to see her alive? The answer is Joe Godberry, a short-sighted old fellow who ought never to have been in charge of a Belisha crossing in the first place. Could he have been wrong? He could, and in my view he was wrong: that is, he didn’t see Valerie Taylor at all on the afternoon she disappeared. He says quite firmly that he did see her, but might he not have been mistaken? Might he just have seen someone who looked like Valerie? Well? Who looked like Valerie? Chief Inspector Morse himself thought that a photograph of Mrs Taylor was one of her daughter Valerie, and this raises an interesting possibility. Could the person seen by Godberry have been not Valerie but Valerie’s mother? (Lewis had underlined the words thickly, and it was at this point on his first reading that Morse had nodded his approval.) If it was Valerie’s mother there are two important implications. First, that the last person to see Valerie alive was none other than her own mother at lunchtime that same day. Second, that this person – Valerie’s mother – had gone to a great deal of trouble to establish the fact that her daughter had left the house and returned to afternoon school. On this second point we know that mother and daughter were very similar in build and figure generally, and Mrs Taylor is still fairly slim and attractive. (It was at this point that Morse nodded again.) What was the best way of convincing anyone who might notice, the neighbours, say, or the Belisha man or the shop assistants, that Valerie had left home after lunch that day? The answer is fairly obvious. The uniform of the school which Valerie attended was quite distinctive, especially the red socks and the white blouse. Mrs Taylor could dress up in the uniform herself, run quickly down the road, keep on the far side of the crossing, and with a bit of luck there would be no trouble in persuading anyone, even the police, that her daughter had left home. We learned that on the particular Tuesday afternoon in question, Valerie would be most unlikely to be missed anyway. Games afternoon – and a real shambles. So. Let us assume that Mrs Taylor dresses up as her daughter and makes her way towards school. Chief Inspector Morse suggested early on that the person seen by Godberry was perhaps carrying a basket or some such receptacle. (Lewis had made a sorry mess of the spelling.) Now, if she had been carrying clothes (heavily scored by Lewis) the situation is becoming very interesting. Once Mrs Taylor has created the impression that Valerie has left for school, it is equally important that she should not create the further impression that Valerie has returned home some five or ten minutes later. Because if someone sees Valerie, or someone who looks like Valerie, returning to the Taylors’ house, the careful plan is ruined. When Valerie is reported missing, the inquiries will naturally centre on the house, not on the area around the school. But she can deal with this without too much trouble. In the basket Mrs Taylor has put her own clothes. She goes into the ladies’, just past the shopping area, and changes back into them, and then walks back, as unobtrusively as she can, probably by a roundabout route, to her own house. The real question now is this. Why all this palaver? Why should Mrs Taylor have to go to all this trouble and risk? There can only be one answer. To create the firm impression that Valerie is alive when in fact she is dead. If Valerie had arrived home for lunch, and if Valerie did not leave the house again, we must assume that she was killed at some time during the lunch hour in her own home. And there was, it seems, only one other person in the Taylor household during that time: Valerie’s own mother. It is difficult to believe, but the facts seem to point to the appalling probability that Valerie was murdered by her own mother. Why? We can only guess. There is some evidence that Valerie was pregnant. Perhaps her mother flew at her in a wild rage and struck her much harder than she intended to. We may learn the truth from Mrs Taylor herself. The next thing is – what to do? And here we have the recorded evidence of the police files. The fact is that the police were not called in until the next morning. Why so much delay? Again an answer readily presents itself. (Morse had admired his sergeant’s style at this point, and the nod had signified a recognition of a literary nicety rather than any necessary concurrence with the argument.) Mrs Taylor had to get rid of the body. She waited, I think, obviously in great distress, until her husband arrived home about six; and then she told him what had happened. He has little option. He can’t leave his poor wife to face the consequences of the terrible mess she’s got herself into, and the two of them plan what to do. Somehow they get rid of the body, and I suspect the reservoir behind the house is the first place that occurs to them. I know that this was dragged at the time, but it’s terribly easy to miss anything in so large a stretch of water. I can only suggest that it is thoroughly dragged again.
Lewis put the document back on the bedside table and Morse tapped him in congratulatory fashion upon the shoulder.
‘I think it’s time they made you up to inspector, my old friend.’
‘You think I may be right then, sir?’
‘Yes,’ said Morse slowly, ‘I do.’
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Incest is only relatively boring.
Inscription on the lavatory wall of an Oxford pub
LEWIS LEANED BACK into his pillows, and felt content. He would never make an inspector, he knew that, didn’t even want to try. But to beat old Morse at his own game – my goodness, that was something!
‘Got a drop of booze in the house?’ asked Morse.
Ten minutes later he was sipping a liberal helping of whisky as Lewis dunked a chunk of bread into his Bovril.
‘There are one or two things you could add to your admirable statement, you know, Lewis.’ A slightly pained expression appeared on Lewis’s face, but Morse quickly reassured him. ‘Oh, that’s pretty certainly how it happened, I’m sure of that. But there are just one or two points where we can be even more specific, I think, and one or two where we shall need a clearer picture not so much of what happened as of why it happened. Let’s just go over a few of the things you say. Mrs Taylor dresses up as Valerie. I agree. You mention the school uniform and you rightly stress how distinctive this uniform is. But there’s surely another small point. Mrs Taylor would not only wish in a positive way to be mistaken for her daughter, but in a negative sort of way not to be recognized facially as who she was – Valerie’s mother. After all it’s the face that most of us look at – not the clothes. And here I think her hair would be all-important. Their hair was the same colour, and Mrs Taylor is still too young to have more than a few odd streaks of grey. When we saw her she wore her hair on the top of her head, but I’d like to bet that when she lets it down it gives her much the same sort of look that Valerie had; and with long shoulder-length hair, doubtless brushed forward over her face, I think the disguise would be more than adequate.’
Lewis nodded; but as the inspector said, it was only a small point.
‘Now,’ continued Morse, ‘we surely come to the central point, and one that you gloss over rather too lightly, if I may say so.’ Lewis lo
oked stolidly at the counterpane, but made no interruption. ‘It’s this. What could possibly have been the motive that led Mrs Taylor to murder Valerie? Valerie! Her only daughter! You say that Valerie was pregnant, and although it isn’t firmly established, I think the overwhelming probability is that she was pregnant; perhaps she had told her mother about it. But there’s another possibility, and one that makes the whole situation far more sinister and disturbing. It isn’t easy, I should imagine, for a daughter to hide a pregnancy from her mother for too long, and I think on balance it may well have been Mrs Taylor who accused Valerie of being pregnant – rather than Valerie who told her mother. But whichever way round it was, it surely can’t add up to a sufficient motive for murdering the girl. It would be bad enough, I agree. The neighbours would gossip and everyone at school would have to know, and then there’d be the uncles and aunts and all the rest of ’em. But it’s hardly a rare thing these days to have an unmarried mother in the family, is it? It could have happened as you say it did, but I get the feeling that Valerie’s pregnancy had been known to Mrs Taylor for several weeks before the day she was murdered. And I think that on that Tuesday lunchtime Mrs Taylor tackled her daughter – she may have tackled her several times before – on a question which was infinitely more important to her than whether her daughter was pregnant or not. A question which was beginning to send her out of her mind; for she had her own dark and terrifying suspicions which would give her no rest, which poisoned her mind day and night, and which she had to settle one way or the other. And that question was this: who was the father of Valerie’s baby? To begin with I automatically assumed that Valerie was a girl of pretty loose morals who would jump into bed at the slightest provocation with some of her randy boyfriends. But I think I was wrong. I ought to have seen through Maguire’s sexual boastings straight away. He may have put his dirty fingers up her skirt once or twice, but I doubt that he or any of the other boys did much more. No. I should think that Valerie got an itch in her knickers as often – more often perhaps – than most young girls. But the indications all along the line were that her own particular weakness was for older men. Men about your age, Lewis.’
‘And yours,’ said Lewis. But the mood in the quiet bedroom was sombre, and neither man seemed much amused. Morse drained his whisky and smacked his lips.
‘Well, Lewis? What do you think?’
‘You mean Phillipson, I suppose, sir?’
‘Could have been, but I doubt it. I think he’d learned his lesson.’
Lewis thought for a moment and frowned deeply. Was it possible? Would it tie in with the other business? ‘Surely you don’t mean Baines, do you, sir? She must have been willing to go to bed with anyone if she let Baines . . .’ He broke off. How sickening it all was!
Morse brooded a while, and stared through the bedroom window. ‘I thought of it, of course. But I think you’re right. At least I don’t think she would have gone to bed willingly with Baines. And yet, you know, Lewis, it would explain a great many things if it was Baines.’
‘I thought you had the idea that he was seeing Mrs Taylor – not Valerie.’
‘I think he was,’ said Morse. ‘But, as I say, I don’t think it was Baines.’ He was speaking more slowly now, almost as if he were working through some new equation which had suddenly flashed across his mind; some new problem that challenged to some extent the validity of the case he was presenting. But reluctantly he put it aside, and resumed the main thread of his argument. ‘Try again, Lewis.’
It was like backing horses. Lewis had backed the favourite, Phillipson, and lost; he’d then chosen an outsider, an outsider at least with a bit of form behind him, and lost again. There weren’t many other horses in the race. ‘You’ve got the advantage over me, sir. You went to see Acum yesterday. Don’t you think you ought to tell me about it?’
‘Leave Acum out of it for the minute,’ said Morse flatly.
So Lewis reviewed the field again. There was only one other possibility, and he was surely a non-starter. Surely. Morse couldn’t seriously . . . ‘You don’t mean . . . you can’t mean you think it was . . . George Taylor?’
‘I’m afraid I do, Lewis, and we’d both better get used to the grisly idea as quickly as we can. It’s not pleasant, I know; but it’s not so bad as it might be. After all, he’s not her natural father, as far as we know, and so we’re not fishing around in the murky waters of genuine incest or anything like that. Valerie would have known perfectly well that George wasn’t her real father. They all lived together, and became as intimate as any other family. But intimate with one vital difference. Valerie grew into a young girl, and her looks and her figure developed, and she was not his daughter. I don’t know what happened. What I do know is that we can begin to see one overwhelming motive for Mrs Taylor murdering her own daughter: the suspicion, gradually edging into a terrible certainty, that her only daughter was expecting a baby and that the father of that baby was her own husband. I think that on that Tuesday Mrs Taylor accused her daughter of precisely that.’
‘It’s a terrible thing,’ said Lewis slowly, ‘but perhaps we shouldn’t be too hard on her.’
‘I don’t feel hard on anybody,’ rejoined Morse. ‘In fact, I feel some sympathy for the wretched woman. Who wouldn’t? But if all this is true, you can see what the likely train of events is. When George Taylor arrives home he’s caught up in it all. Like a fly in a spider’s web. His wife knows. It’s no good him trying to wash his hands of the whole affair: he’s the cause of it all. So, he goes along with her. What else can he do? What’s more, he’s in a position, the remarkably fortunate position, of being able to dispose, without suspicion and without too much trouble, of virtually anything, including a body. And I don’t mean in the reservoir. George works at a place where vast volumes of rubbish and waste are piled high every day, and the same day buried without trace below the ground. And don’t forget that Taylor was a man who had worked on road construction – driving a bulldozer. If he arrives at work half an hour early, what’s to stop him using the bulldozer that’s standing all ready, with the keys invitingly hung up for him on a nail in the shack? Nothing. Who would know? Who would care? No, Lewis. I don’t think they put her into the reservoir. I think she lies buried out there on the rubbish dump.’ Morse stopped for a second or two, and visualized the course of events anew.
‘I think that Valerie must have been put into a sack or some sort of rubbish bag, and consigned for the long night to the boot of Taylor’s old Morris. And in the morning he drove off early, and dumped her there, amid all the other mouldering rubbish; and he started up the bulldozer and buried her under the mounds of soil that stood ready at the sides of the tip. That’s about it, Lewis. I’m very much afraid that’s just about what happened. I should have been suspicious before, especially about the police not being called in until the next morning.’
‘Do you think they’ll find her body after all this time?’
‘I should think so. It’ll be a horribly messy business – but I should think so. The surveyor’s department will know roughly which parts of the tip were levelled when and where, and I think we shall find her. Poor kid!’
‘They put the police to a hell of a lot of trouble, didn’t they?’
Morse nodded. ‘It must have taken some guts to carry it through the way they did, I agree. But when you’ve committed a murder and got rid of the body, it might not have been so difficult as you think.’
A stray thought had been worrying Lewis as Morse had expounded his views of the way things must have happened.
‘Do you think Ainley was getting near the truth?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Morse. ‘He might have had all sorts of strange ideas before he’d finished. But whether he got a scent of the truth or not doesn’t really matter. What matters is that other people thought he was getting near the truth.’
‘Where do you think the letter fits in, sir?’
Morse looked away. ‘Yes, the letter. Remember the letter was probably
posted before whoever sent it knew that Ainley was dead. I thought at the time that the whole point of it was to concentrate police attention away from the scene of the crime and on to London; and it seemed a possibility that the Taylors had cooked it up themselves because they thought Ainley was coming a bit too close for comfort.’
‘But you don’t think so now?’
‘No. Like you, I think we’ve got to accept the evidence that it was almost certainly written by Baines.’
‘Any idea why he wrote it?’
‘I think I have, although—’
The front door bell rang in mid-sentence, and almost immediately Mrs Lewis appeared with the doctor. Morse shook hands with him and got up to go.
‘There’s no need for you to go. Shan’t be with him long.’
‘No, I’ll be off,’ said Morse. ‘I’ll call back this afternoon, Lewis.’
He let himself out and drove back to the police HQ at Kidlington. He sat in his black leather chair and looked mournfully at his in-tray. He would have to catch up with his correspondence very soon. But not today. Perhaps he had been glad of the interruption in Lewis’s bedroom, for there were several small points in his reconstruction of the case which needed further cerebration. The truth was that Morse felt a little worried.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Money often costs too much.
Ralph Waldo Emerson
FOR THE NEXT hour he sat, without interruption, without a single telephone call, and thought it all through, beginning with the question that Lewis had put to him: why had Baines written the letter to the Taylors? At twelve noon, he rose from his chair, walked along the corridor and knocked at the office of Superintendent Strange.
