by Colin Dexter
Half an hour later, the door reopened and the two men exchanged a few final words.
‘You’ll have to produce one,’ said Strange. ‘There’s no two ways about it, Morse. You can hold them for questioning, if you like, but sooner or later we want a body. In fact, we’ve got to have a body.’
‘I suppose you’re right, sir,’ said Morse. ‘It’s a bit fanciful without a body, as you say.’
‘It’s a bit fanciful with a body,’ said Strange.
Morse walked to the canteen, where the inevitable Dickson was ordering a vast plate of meat and vegetables.
‘How’s Sergeant Lewis, sir? Have you heard?’
‘Much better. I saw him this morning. He’ll be back any day.’
He thought of Lewis as he ordered his own lunch, and knew that he had not finally resolved the question that his sergeant had put to him. Why had Baines written that letter? He had thought of all the possible reasons that anyone ever had for writing a letter, but was still not convinced that he had a satisfactory answer. It would come, though. There was still a good deal about Baines he didn’t know, but he had set inquiries in progress several days ago, and even bank managers and income tax inspectors didn’t take all that long surely.
He ought to have had a closer look through his in-tray; and he would. For the moment, however, he thought that a breath of fresh air would do him good, and he walked out into the main road, turned right and found himself walking towards the pub. He didn’t wish to see Mrs Taylor, and he was relieved to find that she wasn’t there. He ordered a pint, left immediately he had finished it, and walked down towards the main road. Two shops he had never paid any attention to before lay off a narrow service road at the top of Hatfield Way, one a general provisions store, the other a fresh fruiterer, and Morse bought a small bunch of black grapes for the invalid. It seemed a kind thought. As he walked out, he noticed a small derelict area between the side of the provisions store and the next row of council houses. It was no more than ten square yards in extent, with two or three bicycle racks, the bric-à-brac of builders’ carts from years ago – half-bricks, a flattened heap of sand; and strewing the area the inevitable empty cigarette cartons and crisps packets. Two cars stood in the small area, unobtrusive and unmolested. Morse stopped and took his bearings and realized that he was only some forty or fifty yards from the Taylors’ house, a little further down towards the main road on the left. He stood quite still and gripped the bag of grapes more firmly. Mrs Taylor was in the front garden. He could see her quite clearly, her hair piled rather untidily on top of her head, her back towards him, her slim legs more those of a schoolgirl than a mother. In her right hand she held a pair of secateurs, and she was bending over the rose trees and clipping off the faded blooms. He found himself wondering if he would have been able to recognize her if she suddenly rushed out of the gate in a bright school uniform with her hair flowing down to her shoulders; and it made him uneasy, for he felt that he would have been able to tell at once that she was a woman and not a girl. You couldn’t really disguise some things, however hard you tried; and perhaps it was very fortunate for Mrs Taylor that none of the neighbours had seen her that Tuesday lunchtime, and that old Joe Godberry’s eyes had grown so tired and dim. And all of a sudden he saw it all plainly, and the blood tingled in his arms. He glanced around again at the small piece of waste land, shielded from the Taylors’ home by the wall of the council house, looked again at the Taylors’ front garden, where the wilted petals were now piled neatly at the edge of the narrow lawn, turned on his heel and walked back the long way round to Police HQ.
He had been right about his in-tray. There were detailed statements about Baines’s financial position, and Morse raised his eyebrows in some surprise as he studied them, for Baines was better off than he had thought. Apart from insurance policies, Baines had over £5,000 in the Oxford Building Society, £6,000 tied up in a high-interest long-term loan with Manchester Corporation, £4,500 in his deposit account with Lloyds, as well as £150 in his current account with the same bank. It all added up to a tidy sum, and schoolmasters, even experienced second masters, weren’t all that highly recompensed. The pay cheques for the previous year had all been paid directly into the deposit account, and Morse noticed with some surprise that the withdrawals on the current account had seldom amounted to more than £30 per month over that period. It seemed clear from the previous year’s tax returns that Baines had no supplementary monies accruing to him from examination fees or private tuition, and although he may have risked not declaring any such further income, Morse thought that on the whole it was unlikely. The house, too, belonged to Baines: the final payment had been made some six years previously. Of course, he may well have been left a good deal of money by his parents and other relatives; but the fact remained that Baines somehow had managed to live on about seven or eight pounds a week for the last twelve months. Either he was a miser or, what seemed more likely, he was receiving a supply of ready cash fairly regularly from some quarter or quarters. And it hardly needed a mind as imaginative as Morse’s to make one or two intelligent deductions on that score. There must have been several people who had shed no tears when Baines had died; indeed there had been one person who had been unable to stand it any longer and who had stuck him through with a carving knife.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
To you, Lord Governor,
Remains the censure of this hellish villain –
The time, the place, the torture. O enforce it!
Shakespeare, Othello, Act V
LEWIS WAS SITTING up in his dressing-gown in the front room when Morse returned at a quarter to three.
‘Start next Monday, sir – Sunday if you want me – and I can’t tell you how glad I am.’
‘It’ll all be over then with a bit of luck,’ said Morse. ‘Still we may have another homicidal lunatic roaming the streets before then, eh?’
‘You really think this is nearly finished, sir?’
‘I saw Strange this morning. We’re going ahead tomorrow. Bring in both the Taylors and then start digging up all the rubbish dump – if we have to; though I think George will co-operate, even if his wife doesn’t.’
‘And you think it all links up with Baines’s murder?’
Morse nodded. ‘You were asking this morning about Baines writing that letter, and the truth is I don’t quite know yet. It could have been to put the police off the scent, or to put them on – take your pick. But I feel fairly sure that one way or another it would keep his little pot boiling.’
‘I don’t quite follow you, sir.’
Morse told him of Baines’s financial position, and Lewis whistled softly. ‘He really was a blackmailer, then?’
‘He was certainly getting money from somewhere, probably from more than one source.’
‘Phillipson, for sure, I should think.’
‘Yes. I think Phillipson had to fork out a regular monthly payment; not all that much perhaps, certainly not a ruinous sum for a man in Phillipson’s position. Let’s say twenty, thirty pounds a month. I don’t know. But I shall know soon. There can be little doubt that Baines saw him the night he was going back home after his interview; saw him with a bit of stuff – more than likely Valerie Taylor. He could have ruined Phillipson’s position straight away, of course, but that doesn’t seem to have been the way that Baines’s warped and devious mind would usually work. It gave him power to keep the intelligence to himself – to himself, that is, and to Phillipson.’
‘He had as good a reason as anybody for killing Baines, didn’t he?’
‘He had, indeed. But he didn’t kill Baines.’
‘You sound pretty sure of yourself, sir.’
‘Yes I am sure,’ said Morse quietly. ‘Let’s just go on a bit. I think there was another member of staff Baines had been blackmailing.’
‘You mean Acum?’
‘Yes, Acum. It seemed odd to me from the start that he should leave a fairly promising situation in the modern languages department he
re at the Roger Bacon, and take up a very similar position in a very similar school right up in the wilds of North Wales – away from his friends and family and the agreeable life of a university town like Oxford. I think that there must have been a little flurry of a minor scandal earlier in the year that Acum left. I asked him about it when I saw him yesterday, but he wouldn’t have any of it. It doesn’t matter much, though, and Phillipson will have to come clean anyway.’
‘What do you think happened?’
‘Oh, the usual thing. Somebody caught him with one of the girls with his trousers down.’
Lewis leaned his head to one side and smiled rather wearily. ‘I suppose you think it may have been Valerie Taylor, sir?’
‘Why not?’ said Morse. ‘She seems to have made most of the men put their hands on their cocks at some time, doesn’t she? I should think that Phillipson got to know and Baines, too – oh yes, I’m sure Baines got to know – and they got together and agreed to hush things up if Acum would agree to leave as soon as it was practicable to do so. And I shouldn’t think that Acum had any option. He’d be asked to leave whatever happened, and his wife would probably find out and – well, it would have seemed like the end of the world to a young fellow like Acum.’
‘And you think Baines had the bite on Acum?’
‘Pretty certain of it. I should think that Acum’ (Morse chose his words carefully) ‘ – judging from the little I’ve seen of his wife – would have been a bloody fool to have ruined his career just for the sake of a brief infatuation with one of his pupils. And he didn’t. He played the game and cleared out.’
‘And paid up.’
‘Yes. He paid up, though I shouldn’t think Baines was stupid enough to expect too much from a former colleague who was probably fairly hard up anyway. Just enough, though. Just enough for Baines to relish another little show of power over one of his fellow human beings.’
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me next that Baines had the bite on the Taylors as well.’
‘No. Just the opposite, in fact. I reckon that Baines was paying money to Mrs Taylor.’
Lewis sat up. Had he heard aright? ‘You mean Mrs Taylor was blackmailing Baines?’
‘I didn’t say that, did I? Let’s go back a bit. We’ve agreed that Baines got to know about Phillipson’s little peccadillo at the Station Hotel. Now I can’t imagine that Baines would merely be content with the Phillipson angle. I think that he began to grub around on the Taylor side of the fence. Now, Lewis. What did he find? You remember that George Taylor was out of work at the time, and that far from being a potential source of blackmail the Taylors were in dire need of money themselves. And especially Mrs Taylor. Baines had met them several times at parents’ evenings, and I should guess that he arranged to see Mrs Taylor privately, and that he pretty soon read the temperature of the water correctly.’
‘But Baines wasn’t the type of man who went around doing favours.’
‘Oh no. The whole thing suited Baines splendidly.’
‘But he gave her money, you think?’
‘Yes.’
‘But she wouldn’t take his money just like that, would she? I mean . . . she wouldn’t expect . . .’
‘Wouldn’t expect to get the money for nothing? Oh no. She had something to give him in return.’
‘What was that?’
‘What the hell do you think it was? You weren’t born yesterday, were you?’
Lewis felt abashed. ‘Oh, I see,’ he said quietly.
‘Once a week in term time, if you want me to keep guessing, Tuesdays, likely as not, when he had the afternoon off. Tuesday afternoons, Lewis. Do you see what that means?’
‘You mean,’ stammered Lewis, ‘that Baines probably . . . probably . . .’
‘Probably knew more about the fate of Valerie Taylor than we thought, yes. I should think that Baines would park somewhere near the Taylors’ house – not too near – and wait until Valerie had gone off back to school. Then he’d go in, get his pound of flesh, pay his stamp duty—’
‘Bit dangerous, wasn’t it?’
‘If you’re a bachelor like Baines and you’re dying to spill your oats – well . . . After all, no one would know what was going on. Lock the door and—’
Lewis interrupted him. ‘But if they’d arranged to meet the day that Valerie disappeared, it would have been crazy for Mrs Taylor to have murdered her daughter.’
‘It was crazy anyway. I don’t think she would have worried too much if the police force was out the front and the fire brigade was out the back. Listen. What I think may have happened on that Tuesday is this. Baines parked pretty near the house, probably in a bit of waste land near the shops, just above the Taylors’ place. He waited until afternoon school had started, and then he saw something very odd. He saw Valerie, or who he thought was Valerie, leave by the front door and run down the road. Then he went up to the house and knocked – we didn’t find a key, did we? – and he got no answer. It’s all a bit odd. Has his reluctant mistress – well, let’s hope she was reluctant – has she slipped out for a minute? He can almost swear she hasn’t, but he can’t be absolutely sure. He walks back, frustrated and disappointed, and scratches his balls in the car; and something tells him to wait. And about ten minutes later he sees Mrs Taylor walking – probably walking in a great hurry – out of one of the side streets and going into the house. Has she been out over the lunchtime? Unusual, to say the least. But there’s something odder still – far odder. Something that makes him sit up with a vengeance. Valerie – he would remember now – had left with a basket; and here is Valerie’s mother returning with the very same basket. Does he guess the truth? I don’t know. Does he go to the house again and knock? Probably so. And I would guess she told him she couldn’t possibly see him that afternoon. So Baines walks away, and drives home, and wonders . . . Wonders even harder the next day when he hears of Valerie’s disappearance.’
‘He guessed what had happened, you think?’
‘Pretty sure he did.’
Lewis thought for a minute. ‘Perhaps Mrs Taylor just couldn’t face things any longer, sir, and told him that everything was finished; and he in turn might have threatened to go to the police.’
‘Could be, but I should be very surprised if Baines was killed to stop him spilling the beans – or even some of them. No, Lewis. I just think that he was killed because he was detested so viciously that killing him was an act of superb and joyous revenge.’
‘You think that Mrs Taylor murdered him, then?’
Morse nodded. ‘You remember the first time we saw Mrs Taylor in the pub? Remember that large American-style handbag she had? It was a bit of a puzzle at first to know how anyone could ever cart such a big knife around. But the obvious way to do it is precisely the way Mrs Taylor chose. Stick it in a handbag. She got to Kempis Street at about a quarter-past nine, I should think, knocked on the door, told a surprised Baines some cock-and-bull story, followed him into the kitchen, agreed to his offer of a glass of something, and as he bends down to get the beer out of the fridge, she takes her knife out and – well, we know the rest.’
Lewis sat back and considered what Morse had said. It all hung loosely together, perhaps, but he was feeling hot and tired.
‘Go and have a lie down,’ said Morse, as if reading his thoughts. ‘You’ve had about enough for one day.’
‘I think I will, sir. I shall be much better tomorrow.’
‘Don’t worry about tomorrow. I shan’t do anything until the afternoon.’
‘It’s the inquest in the morning, though, isn’t it?’
‘Formality. Pure formality,’ said Morse. ‘I shan’t say much. Just get him identified and tell the coroner we’ve got the bloodhounds out. “Murder by person or persons unknown.” I don’t know why we’re wasting public money on having an inquest at all.’
‘It’s the law, sir.’
‘Mm.’
‘And tomorrow afternoon, sir?’
‘I’m bringing the Tay
lors in.’
Lewis stood up. ‘I feel a bit sorry for him, sir.’
‘Don’t you feel a bit sorry for her?’ There was a sharp edge on Morse’s voice; and after he had gone Lewis wondered why he’d suddenly turned so sour.
At four o’clock that same afternoon, as Morse and Lewis were talking together and trying to unravel the twisted skein of the Valerie Taylor case, a tall military-looking man was dictating a letter to one of the girls from the typing pool. He had some previous experience of the young lady in question, and decided it would be sensible to make the letter even briefer than he had intended; for although it would contain no earth-shattering news, he was anxious for it to go in the evening post. He had tried to phone earlier but had declined to leave a message when he learned that the only man who could have any possible interest in the matter was out – whereabouts temporarily unknown. At four-fifteen the letter was signed and in the evening postbag.
The bombshell burst on Morse’s desk at 8.45 a.m. the following morning.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.
A. Conan Doyle, The Sign of Four
‘IT’S A MISTAKE, I tell you. It’s some clown of a sergeant who’s ballsed the whole thing up.’ His voice was strident, exasperated. He was prepared to forgive a certain degree of inadequacy, but never incompetence of this order. The voice at the other end of the line sounded firm and assured, like a kindly parent seeking to assuage a petulant child.
‘There’s no mistake, I’m afraid. I’ve checked it myself. And for heaven’s sake calm down a bit, Morse my old friend. You asked me to do something for you, and I’ve done it. If it comes as a bit of a shock—’
