by Colin Dexter
At 2.30 a.m. the night sergeant, carrying a steaming cup of coffee on a tray, tapped lightly and opened the door. He saw Morse, his hands over his ears, his desk strewn with documents, and an expression of such profound intensity upon his face that he quickly and gently put down the tray, reclosed the door, and walked quickly away.
He called again at 4.30 a.m. and carefully put down a second cup of coffee beside the first, which stood where he had left it, cold, ugly-brown, untouched. Morse was fast asleep now, his head leaning back against the top of the black leather chair, the neck of his white shirt unfastened, and an expression on his face as of a young child for whom the vivid terrors of the night were past . . .
It had been Lewis who had found her. She lay supine upon the bed, fully clothed, her left arm placed across the body, the wrist slashed cruelly deep. The white coverlet was a pool of scarlet, and blood had dripped its way through the mattress. Clutched in her right hand was a knife, a wooden-handled carving knife, ‘Prestige, Made in England’, some 35–36 centimetres long, the cutting blade honed along its entire edge to a razor-sharp ferocity.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
Things are not always what they seem;
the first appearance deceives many.
Phaedrus
LEWIS REPORTED BACK for duty at eight o’clock and found a freshly shaven Morse seated at his desk. He could scarcely hide his disappointment as Morse began to recount the previous day’s events, and found himself quite unable to account for the inspector’s sprightly tone. His spirits picked up, however, when Morse mentioned the crucial evidence given by Miss Baker, and after hearing the whole story, he evinced little surprise at the string of instructions that Morse proceeded to give him. There were several phone calls to make and he thought he began to understand the general tenor of the inspector’s purpose.
At 9.30 he had finished, and reported back to Morse.
‘Feel up to the drive then?’
‘I don’t mind driving one way, sir, but—’
‘Settled then. I’ll drive there, you drive back. Agreed?’
‘When were you thinking of going, sir?’
‘Now,’ said Morse. ‘Give the missus a ring and tell her we should be back about er . . .’
‘Do you mind me mentioning something, sir?’
‘What’s worrying you?’
‘If Valerie was in that nursing home—’
‘She was,’ interrupted Morse.
‘—well, someone had to take her and fetch her and pay for her and everything.’
‘The quack won’t tell us. Not yet, anyway.’
‘Isn’t it fairly easy to guess, though?’
‘Is it?’ said Morse, with apparent interest.
‘It’s only a guess, sir. But if they were all in it together – you know, to cover things up . . .’
‘All?’
‘Phillipson, the Taylors and Acum. When you come to think of it, it would kill a lot of birds with one stone, wouldn’t it?’
‘How do you mean?’
‘Well, if you’re right about Phillipson and Valerie, he’d have a bit of a guilt complex about her and feel morally bound to help out, wouldn’t he? And then there’s the Taylors. It would save them any scandal and stop Valerie mucking up her life completely. And then there’s Acum. It would get him out of a dickens of a mess at the school and save his marriage into the bargain. They’ve all got a stake in it.’
Morse nodded and Lewis felt encouraged to continue. ‘They could have cooked it all up between them: fixed up the clinic, arranged the transport, paid the bill, and found a job for Valerie to go to afterwards. They probably hadn’t the faintest idea that her going off like that would create such a fuss, and once they started on it, well, they just had to go through with it. So they all stuck together. And told the same story.’
‘You may well be right.’
‘If I am, sir, don’t you think it would be a good idea to fetch Phillipson and the Taylors in? I mean, it would save us a lot of trouble.’
‘Save us going all the way to Caernarfon, you mean?’
‘Yes. If they spill the beans, we can get Acum brought down here.’
‘What if they all stick to their story?’
‘Then we’ll have to go and get him.’
‘I’m afraid it’s not quite so easy as that,’ said Morse.
‘Why not?’
‘I tried to get Phillipson first thing this morning. He went off to Brighton yesterday afternoon – to a headmasters’ conference.’
‘Oh.’
‘And the Taylors left by car for Luton airport at 6.30 yesterday morning. They’re spending a week on a package tour in the Channel Islands. So the neighbours say.’
‘Oh.’
‘And,’ continued Morse, ‘we’re still trying to find out who killed Baines, remember?’
‘That’s why you’ve asked the Caernarfon police to pick him up?’
‘Yep. And we’d better not keep him waiting too long. It’s about four and a half hours – non-stop. So we’ll allow five. We might want to give the car a little rest on the way.’
Outside a pub, thought Lewis, as he pulled on his overcoat. But Lewis thought wrong.
The traffic this Sunday morning was light and the police car made its way quickly up through Brackley and thence to Towcester where it turned left on to the A5. Neither man seemed particularly anxious to sustain much conversation, and a tacit silence soon prevailed between them, as if they waited tensely for the final wicket to fall in a test match. The traffic decelerated to a paralytic crawl at road works in Wellington, and suddenly Morse switched on full headlights and the blue roof-flasher, and wailing like a dalek in distress the car swept past the stationary column of cars and soon was speeding merrily along once more out on the open road. Morse turned to Lewis and winked almost happily.
Along the Shrewsbury ring-road, Lewis ventured a conversational gambit. ‘Bit of luck about this Miss Baker, wasn’t it?’
‘Ye-es.’ Lewis looked at the inspector curiously. ‘Nice bit of stuff, sir?’
‘She’s a prick-teaser.’
‘Oh.’
They drove on through Betws-y-coed: Caernarfon 25 miles.
‘The real trouble,’ said Morse suddenly, ‘was that I thought she was dead.’
‘And now you think she’s still alive?’
‘I very much hope so,’ said Morse, with unwonted earnestness in his voice. ‘I very much hope so.’
At five minutes to three they came to the outskirts of Caernarfon, where ignoring the sign directing traffic to the city centre Morse turned left on to the main Pwllheli Road.
‘You know your way around here then, sir?’
‘Not too well. But we’re going to pay a brief visit before we meet Acum.’ He drove south to the village of Bont-Newydd, turned left off the main road and stopped outside a house with the front door painted Cambridge blue.
‘Wait here a minute.’
Lewis watched him as he walked up the narrow front path and knocked on the door; and knocked again. Clearly there was no one at home. But then of course David Acum wouldn’t be there; he was three miles away, detained for questioning on the instructions of the Thames Valley Police. Morse came back to the car and got in. His face seemed inexplicably grave.
‘No one in, sir?’
Morse appeared not to hear. He kept looking around him, occasionally glancing up into the driving mirror. But the quiet street lay preternaturally still in the sunny autumn afternoon.
‘Shan’t we be a bit late for Acum, sir?’
‘Acum?’ The inspector suddenly woke from his waking dreams. ‘Don’t worry about Acum. He’ll be all right.’
‘How long do you plan to wait here?’
‘How the hell do I know!’ snapped Morse.
‘Well, if we’re going to wait, I think I’ll just—’ He opened the nearside door and began to unfasten his safety-belt.
‘Stay where you are.’ There was a note of harsh authority in the v
oice, and Lewis shrugged his shoulders and closed the door again.
‘If we’re waiting for Mrs Acum, don’t you think she may have gone with him?’
Morse shook his head. ‘I don’t think so.’
The time ticked on inexorably, and it was Morse who finally broke the silence. ‘Go and knock again, Lewis.’
But Lewis was no more successful than Morse had been; and he returned to the car and slammed the door with some impatience. It was already half-past three.
‘We’ll give her another quarter of an hour,’ said Morse.
‘But why are we waiting for her, sir? What’s she got to do with it all? We hardly know anything about her, do we?’
Morse turned his light-grey eyes upon his sergeant and spoke with an almost fierce simplicity. ‘That’s where you’re wrong, Lewis. We know more about her – far more about her – than about anyone else in the whole case. You see, the woman living here with David Acum is not his real wife at all – she’s the person we’ve been looking for from the very beginning.’ He paused and let his words sink in. ‘Yes, Lewis. The woman who’s been living here for the past two years as Acum’s wife is not his wife at all – she’s Valerie Taylor.’
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
‘Now listen, you young limb,’ whispered Sikes. ‘Go softly up the steps straight afore you, and along the little hall, to the street door: unfasten it, and let us in.’
Charles Dickens, Oliver Twist
LEWIS’S MOUTH GAPED in flabbergasted disbelief as this astonishing intelligence partially percolated through his consciousness. ‘You can’t mean . . .’
‘But I do mean. I mean exactly what I say. And that’s why we’re sitting here waiting, Lewis. We’re waiting for Valerie Taylor to come home at last.’
For the moment Lewis was quite incapable of any more intelligent comment than a half-formed whistle. ‘Phew!’
‘Worth waiting another few minutes for, isn’t she? After all this time?’
Gradually the implications of what the inspector had just told him began to register more significantly in Lewis’s mind. It meant . . . it meant . . . But his mental processes seemed now to be anaesthetized, and he gave up the unequal struggle. ‘Don’t you think you ought to put me in the picture, sir?’
‘Where do you want me to start?’ asked Morse, in a slightly brisker tone.
‘Well, first of all you’d better tell me what’s happened to the real Mrs Acum.’
‘Listen, Lewis. In this case you’ve been right more often than I have. I’ve made some pretty stupid blunders – as you know. But at last we’re getting near the truth, I think. You ask me what’s happened to the real Mrs Acum. Well, I don’t know for certain. But let me tell you what I think may have happened. I’ve hardly got a shred of evidence for it, but as I see things it must have happened something like this.
‘What do we know about Mrs Acum? A bit prim and proper, perhaps. She’s got a slim, boyish-looking figure, and long shoulder-length blonde hair. Not unattractive, maybe, in an unusual sort of way, but no doubt very self-conscious about the blotch of ugly spots all over her face. Then think about Valerie. She’s a real honey, by all accounts. A nubile young wench, with a sort of animal sexuality about her that proves fatally attractive to the opposite sex – the men and the boys alike. Now just put yourself in Acum’s place. He finds Valerie in his French class, and he begins to fancy her. He thinks she may have a bit of ability, but neither the incentive nor the inclination to make anything of it. Well, from whatever motives, he talks to her privately and suggests some extra tuition. Now let’s try to imagine what might have happened. Let’s say Mrs Acum has joined a Wednesday sewing class at Headington Tech. – I know, Lewis, but don’t interrupt: it doesn’t matter about the details. Where was I? Yes. Acum’s free then on Wednesday evenings, and we’ll say that he invites Valerie round to his house. But one night in March the evening class is cancelled – let’s say the teacher’s got flu – and Mrs Acum arrives home unexpectedly early, about a quarter to eight, and she finds them both in bed together. It’s a dreadful humiliation for her, and she decides that their marriage is finished. Not that she necessarily wants to ruin Acum’s career. She may feel she’s to blame in some way: perhaps she doesn’t enjoy sex; perhaps she can’t have any children – I don’t know. Anyway, as I say, it’s finished between them. They continue to live together, but they sleep in different rooms and hardly speak to each other. And however hard she tries, she just can’t bring herself to forgive him. So they agree to separate when the summer term is over, and Acum knows it will be better for both of them if he gets a new post. Whether he told Phillipson the truth or not, doesn’t really matter. Perhaps he didn’t tell him anything when he first handed in his resignation; but he may well have had to say something when Valerie tells him that she’s expecting a baby and that he’s almost certainly the father. So, as you yourself said this morning, Lewis, they all decide to put their heads together. Valerie, Acum, Phillipson and Mrs Taylor – I don’t know about George. They arrange the clinic in London and fix up the house in North Wales here, where Valerie comes immediately after the abortion, and where Acum will join her just as soon as the school term ends. And Valerie arrives and acts the dutiful little wife, decorating the place and getting things straight and tidy; and she’s still here. Where the real Mrs Acum is, I don’t know; but we should be able to find out easily enough. If you want me to make a guess, I’d say she’s living with her mother, in a little village somewhere near Exeter.’
For several minutes Lewis sat motionless within the quiet car, until aroused at length by the very silence he took a yellow duster from the glove compartment and wiped the steamy windows. Morse’s imaginative reconstruction of events seemed curiously convincing, and several times during the course of it Lewis’s head had nodded an almost involuntary agreement.
Morse himself suddenly looked once more at his wristwatch. ‘Come on, Lewis,’ he said. ‘We’ve waited long enough.’
The side gate was locked, and Lewis clambered awkwardly over. The small top window of the back kitchen was open slightly, and by climbing on to the rain-water tub he was able to get his arm through the narrow gap and open the latch of the main window. He eased himself through on to the draining board, jumped down inside, and breathing heavily walked to the front door to let the inspector in. The house was eerily silent.
‘No one here, sir. What do we do?’
‘We’ll have a quick look round,’ said Morse. ‘I’ll stay down here. You try upstairs.’
The steps on the narrow flight of stairs creaked loudly as Lewis mounted aloft, and Morse stood below and watched him, his heart pounding against his ribs.
There were only two bedrooms, each of them opening almost directly off the tiny landing: one to the right, the other immediately in front. First Lewis tried the one to his right, and peered round the door. The junk room, obviously. A single bed, unmade, stood against the far wall; and the bed itself and the rest of the limited space available were strewn with the necessary and the unnecessary oddments that had yet to find for themselves a permanent place in the disposition of the Acum household: several bell-jars of home-made wine, bubbling intermittently; a vacuum cleaner, with its box of varied fitments; dusty lampshades; old curtain rails, the mounted head of an old, moth-eaten deer; and a large assortment of other semi-treasured bric-à-brac that cluttered up the little room. But nothing else. Nothing.
Lewis left the room and tried the other door. It would be the bedroom, he knew that. Tentatively he pushed open the door slightly further and became aware of something scarlet lying there upon the bed, bright scarlet – the colour of new-spilt blood. He opened the door fully now and went inside. And there, draped across the pure white coverlet, the arms neatly folded across the bodice, the waist tight-belted and slim, lay a long, red-velvet evening dress.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
No one does anything from a single motive.
S. T. Coleridge, Biographia Literaria
T
HEY SAT DOWNSTAIRS in the small kitchen.
‘It looks as if our little bird has flown.’
‘Mm.’ Morse leaned his head upon his left elbow and stared blankly through the window.
‘When did you first suspect all this, sir?’
‘Sometime last night, it must have been. About half-past three, I should think.’
‘This morning, then.’
Morse seemed mildly surprised. It seemed a long, long time ago.
‘What put you on to it, though?’
Morse sat up and leaned his back against the rickety kitchen chair. ‘Once we learned that Valerie was probably still alive, it altered everything, didn’t it? You see, from the start I’d assumed she was dead.’
‘You must have had some reason.’
‘I suppose it was the photograph more than anything,’ replied Morse. ‘The one of the genuine Mrs Acum that Mrs Phillipson showed me. It was a clear-cut, glossy photograph – not like the indistinct and out-of-date ones we’ve got of Valerie. Come to think of it, I doubt if either of us will recognize Valerie when we do see her. Anyway, I met who I thought was Mrs Acum when I first came up here to Caernarfon, and although she had a towel round her head I couldn’t help noticing that she wasn’t a natural blonde at all. The roots of her hair were dark, and for some reason’ (he left it at that) ‘the detail, well, just stuck with me. She’d dyed her hair, anyone could see that.’
‘But we don’t know that the real Mrs Acum is a natural blonde.’
‘No. That’s true,’ admitted Morse.
‘Not much to go on then, is it?’
‘There was something else, Lewis.’
‘What was that?’
Morse paused before replying. ‘In the photograph I saw of Mrs Acum, she had a sort of, er, sort of a boyish figure, if you know what I mean.’
