Last Seen Wearing

by Colin Dexter

  ‘Bit flat-chested you mean, sir?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘The woman I saw here – well, she wasn’t flat-chested, that’s all.’

  ‘She could have been wearing a padded bra. You just can’t tell for certain, can you?’

  ‘Can’t you?’ A gentle, wistful smile played momentarily about the inspector’s mouth, and he enlightened the innocent Lewis no further. ‘I ought to have guessed much earlier. Of course I should. They just don’t have anything in common at all: Mrs Acum – and Valerie Taylor. Huh! I don’t think you’d ever find anyone less like a blue-stocking than Valerie. And I’ve spoken to her twice over the phone, Lewis! More than that, I’ve actually seen her!’ He shook his head in self-reproach. ‘Yes. I really should have guessed the truth a long, long time ago.’

  ‘From what you said, though, sir, you didn’t see much of her, did you? You said she had this beauty-pack—’

  ‘No, not much of her, Lewis. Not much . . .’ His thoughts were very far away.

  ‘What’s all this got to do with the car-hire firms you’re trying to check?’ asked Lewis suddenly.

  ‘Well, I’ve got to try to get some hard evidence against her, haven’t I? I thought, funnily enough, of letting her give me the evidence herself, but . . .’

  Lewis was completely lost. ‘I don’t quite follow you.’

  ‘Well, I thought of ringing her up this morning first thing and tricking her into giving herself away. It would have been very easy, really.’

  ‘It would?’

  ‘Yes. All I had to do was to speak to her in French. You see, the real Mrs Acum is a graduate from Exeter, remember? But from what we know about poor Valerie’s French, I doubt she can get very much further than bonjour.’

  ‘But you can’t speak French either can you, sir?’

  ‘I have many hidden talents of which as yet you are quite unaware,’ said Morse a trifle pompously.

  ‘Oh.’ But Lewis had a strong suspicion that Morse knew about as much (or as little) French as he did. And what’s more, he’d had no answer to his question. ‘Aren’t you going to tell me why you’ll be checking on the car-hire firms?’

  ‘You’ve had enough shocks for one day.’

  ‘I don’t think one more’ll make much difference,’ replied Lewis.

  ‘All right, I’ll tell you. You see, we’ve not only found Valerie; we’ve also found the murderer of Baines.’ Lewis opened and closed his mouth like a stranded goldfish, but no identifiable vocable emerged.

  ‘You’ll understand soon enough,’ continued Morse. ‘It’s fairly obvious if you think about it. She has to get from Caernarfon to Oxford, right? Her husband’s got the car. So, what does she do? Train? Bus? There aren’t any services. And anyway, she’s got to get there quickly, and there’s only one thing she can do and that’s to hire a car.’

  ‘But we don’t know yet that she did hire a car,’ protested Lewis. ‘We don’t even know she can drive.’

  ‘We shall know soon enough.’

  The ‘ifs’ were forgotten now, and Morse spoke like a minor prophet enunciating necessary truths. And with gradually diminishing reluctance, Lewis was beginning to sense the inevitability of the course of events that Morse was sketching out for him, and the inexorable logic working through the inquiry they’d begun together. A young schoolgirl missing, and more than two years later a middle-aged schoolmaster murdered; and no satisfactory solution to either mystery. Just two insoluble problems. And suddenly, in the twinkling of an eye, there were no longer two problems – no longer even one problem; for somehow each had magically solved the other.

  ‘You think she drove from here that day?’

  ‘And back,’ said Morse.

  ‘And it was Valerie who . . . who killed Baines?’

  ‘Yes. She must have got there about nine o’clock, as near as dammit.’

  Lewis’s mind ranged back to the night when Baines was murdered. ‘So she could have been in Baines’s house when Mrs Phillipson and Acum called,’ he said slowly.

  Morse nodded. ‘Could have been, yes.’

  He stood up and walked along the narrow hallway. From the window in the front room he could see two small boys, standing at a respectful distance from the police car and trying with cautious curiosity to peer inside. But for the rest, nothing. No one left and no one came along the quiet street.

  ‘Are you worried, sir?’ asked Lewis quietly, when Morse sat down again.

  ‘We’ll give her a few more minutes,’ replied Morse, looking at his watch for the twentieth time.

  ‘I’ve been thinking, sir. She must be a brave girl.’

  ‘Mm.’

  ‘And he was a nasty piece of work, wasn’t he?’

  ‘He was a shithouse,’ said Morse with savage conviction. ‘But I don’t think that Valerie would ever have killed Baines just for her own sake.’

  ‘What was her motive then?’

  It was a simple question and it deserved a simple answer, but Morse began with the guarded evasiveness of a senior partner in the Circumlocution Office.

  ‘I’m a bit sceptical about the word “motive”, you know, Lewis. It makes it sound as if there’s just got to be one – one big, beautiful motive. But sometimes it doesn’t work like that. You get a mother slapping her child across its face because it won’t stop crying. Why does she do it? You can say she just wants to stop the kid from bawling its head off, but it’s not really true, is it? The motive lies much deeper than that. It’s all bound up with lots of other things: she’s tired, she’s got a headache, she’s fed up, she’s just plain disillusioned with the duties of motherhood. Anything you like. When once you ask yourself what lies in the murky depths below what Aristotle called the immediate cause . . . You know anything about Aristotle, Lewis?’

  ‘I’ve heard of him, sir. But you still haven’t answered my question.’

  ‘Ah, no. Well, let’s just consider for a minute the position that Valerie found herself in that day. For the first time for over two years, I should think, she finds herself completely on her own. Since Acum came to join her, he’s no doubt been pretty protective towards her, and for the first part of their time together here he’s probably been anxious for Valerie not to be caught up in too much of a social whirl. She stays in. And she’d bleached her hair – probably right at the beginning. Surprising, isn’t it, Lewis, how so many of us go to the trouble of making a gesture – however weak and meaningless. A sop to Cerberus, no doubt. As you know, Acum’s real wife had long, blonde hair – that’s the first thing anyone would notice about her; it’s the first thing I noticed about her when I saw her photograph. Perhaps Acum asked her to do it; may have helped his conscience. Anyway, he must have been glad she did dye her hair. You remember the photograph of Valerie in the Colour Supplement? If he saw it, he must have been a very worried man. It wasn’t a particularly clear photograph, I know. It had been taken over three years previously, and a young girl changes a good deal – especially between leaving school and becoming to all intents and purposes a married woman. But it still remained a photograph of Valerie and, as I say, I should think Acum was jolly glad about her hair. As far as we know, no one did spot the likeness.’

  ‘Perhaps they don’t read the Sunday Times in Caernarfon.’

  For all his anti-Welsh prejudices, Morse let it go. ‘She’s on her own at last, then. She can do what she likes. She probably feels a wonderful sense of freedom, freedom to do something for herself – something that now, for the first time, can in fact be done.’

  ‘I can see all that, sir. But why? That’s what I want to know.’

  ‘Lewis! Put yourself in the position Valerie and her mother and Acum and Phillipson and God knows who else must have found themselves. They’ve all got their individual and their collective secrets – big and little – and somebody else knows all about them. Baines knows. Somehow – well, we’ve got a jolly good idea how – he got to know things. Sitting all those years in that little offi
ce of his, with the telephone there and all the correspondence, he’s been at the nerve-centre of a small community – the Roger Bacon School. He’s second master there, and it’s perfectly proper that he should know what’s going on. All the time his ears are tuned in to the slightest rumours and suspicions. He’s like a bug in the Watergate Hotel: he picks it all up and he puts it all together. And it gives to his sinister cast of character just the nourishment it craves for – the power over other people’s lives. Think of Phillip-son for a minute. Baines can put him out of a job any day he chooses – but he doesn’t. You see, I don’t think he gloried so much in the actual exercise of his power as—’

  ‘He did actually blackmail Phillipson, though, didn’t he?’

  ‘I think so, yes. But even blackmail wouldn’t be as sweet for a louse like Baines as the thought that he could blackmail – whenever he wanted to.’

  ‘I see,’ said the blind man.

  ‘And Mrs Taylor. Think what he knows about her: about the arrangements for her daughter’s abortion, about her elaborate lies to the police, about her heavy drinking, about her money troubles, about her anxiety that George Taylor – the only man who’s ever treated her with any decency – should be kept in the dark about some of her wilder excesses.’

  ‘But surely everybody must have known she went to Bingo most nights and had a drop of drink now and then?’

  ‘Do you know how much she spent on Bingo and fruit machines? Even according to George it was a pound a night, and she’s hardly likely to tell him the truth, is she? And she drinks like a fish – you know she does. Lunchtimes as well.’

  ‘So do you, sir.’

  ‘Yes, but . . . well, I only drink in moderation, you know that. Anyway, that’s only the half of it. You’ve seen the way she dresses. Expensive clothes, shoes, accessories – the lot. And jewellery. You noticed the diamonds on her fingers? God knows what they’re worth. And do you know what her husband is? He’s a dustman! No, Lewis. She’s been living way, way beyond her means – you must have realized that.’

  ‘All right, sir. Perhaps that’s a good enough motive for Mrs Taylor, but—’

  ‘I know. Where does Valerie fit in? Well, I should think Mrs Taylor probably kept in touch with her daughter by phone – letters would be far too dangerous – and Valerie must have had a pretty good idea of what was going on: that her mother was getting hopelessly mixed up with Baines – that she was getting like a drug addict, loathing the whole thing in her saner moments but just not being able to do without it. Valerie must have realized that one way or another her mother’s life was becoming one long misery, and she probably guessed how it was all likely to end. Perhaps her mother had hinted that she was coming to the end of her tether and couldn’t face up to things much longer. I don’t know.

  ‘And then just think of Valerie herself. Baines knows all about her, too: her promiscuous background, her night with Phillipson, her affair with Acum – and all its consequences. He knows the lot. And at any time he can ruin everything. Above all he can ruin David Acum, because once it gets widely known that he’s likely to start fiddling around with some of the girls he’s supposed to be teaching, he’ll have one hell of a job getting a post in any school, even in these permissive days. And I suspect, Lewis, that in a strange sort of way Valerie has gradually grown to love Acum more than anyone or anything she’s ever wanted. I think they’re happy together – or as happy as anyone could hope to be under the circumstances. Do you see what I mean, then? Not only was her mother’s happiness threatened at every turn by that bastard Baines, but equally the happiness of David Acum. And one day she suddenly found herself with the opportunity of doing something about it all: at one swift, uncomplicated swoop to solve all the problems, and she could do that by getting rid of Baines.’

  Lewis pondered a while. ‘Didn’t she ever think that Acum might be suspected, though? He was in Oxford, too – she knew that.’

  ‘No, I don’t suppose she gave it a thought. I mean, the chance that Acum himself would go along to Baines’s place at the very same time as she did – well, it’s a thousand to one against, isn’t it?’

  ‘Odd coincidence, though.’

  ‘It’s an odd coincidence, Lewis, that the 46th word from the beginning and the 46th word from the end of the 46th Psalm in the Authorized Version should spell “Shakespear”.’

  Aristotle, Shakespeare and the Book of Psalms. It was all a bit too much for Lewis, and he sat in silence deciding that he’d missed out somewhere along the educational line. He’d asked his questions and he’d got his answers. They hadn’t been the best answers in the world, perhaps, but they just about added up. It was, one could say, satisfactory.

  Morse stood up and went over to the kitchen window. The view was magnificent, and for some time he stared across at the massive peaks of the Snowdon range. ‘We can’t stay here for ever, I suppose,’ he said at last. His hands were on the edge of the sink, and almost involuntarily he pulled open the right-hand drawer. Inside he saw a wooden-handled carving knife, new, ‘Prestige, Made in England’, and he was on the point of picking it up when he heard the rattle of a Yale key in the front-door lock. Swiftly he held up a finger to his mouth and drew Lewis back with him against the wall behind the kitchen door. He could see her quite clearly now, the long, blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders, as she fiddled momentarily with the inner catch, withdrew the key, and closed the door behind her.

  Thinly veiled anger yet little more than mild surprise showed on her face as Morse stepped into the hallway. ‘That’s your car outside, I suppose.’ She said it in a bleak almost contemptuous voice. ‘I’d just like to know what right you think you’ve got to burst into my house like this!’

  ‘You’ve every right to feel angry,’ said Morse defencelessly, lifting up his left hand in a feeble gesture of pacification. ‘I’ll explain everything in a minute. I promise I will. But can I just ask you one question first? That’s all I ask. Just one question. It’s very important.’

  She looked at him curiously, as if he were slightly mad.

  ‘You speak French, don’t you?’

  Yes.’ Frowning she put down her shopping basket by the door, and stood there quite still, maintaining the distance between them. ‘Yes, I do speak French. What’s that—?’

  Morse took the desperate plunge. ‘Avez-vous appris français à l’école?

  For a brief moment only she stared at him with blank, uncomprehending eyes, before the devastating reply slid smoothly and idiomatically from her tutored lips. ‘Oui. Je l’ai étudié d’abord à l’école et après pendant trois ans à l’université. Alors je devrais parler la langue assez bien, n’est-ce pas?’

  ‘Et avez-vous rencontré votre mari à Exeter?’

  ‘ Oui. Nous étions étudiants là-bas tous les deux. Naturelle-ment, il parle français mieux que moi. Mais il est assez évident que vous parlez français comme un anglais typique, et votre accent est abominable.’

  Morse walked back into the kitchen with the air of an educationally subnormal zombie, sat down at the table, and held his head between his hands. Why had he bothered anyway? He had known already. He had known as soon as she had closed the front door and turned her face towards him – a face still blotched with ugly spots.

  ‘Would you both like a cup of tea?’ asked Mrs Acum, as the embarrassed Lewis stepped forward sheepishly from behind the kitchen door.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

  The gaudy, blabbing and remorseful day Is crept into the bosom of the sea.

  Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II

  AS HE SLUMPED back in the passenger seat, Morse presented a picture of stupefied perplexity. They had left Caernarfon just after 9.00 p.m., and it would be well into the early hours before they arrived in Oxford. Each left the other to his private thoughts, thoughts that criss-crossed ceaselessly the no-man’s-land of failure and futility.

  The interview with Acum had been a very strange affair. Morse seemed entirely to have lost the thread of the inquiry,
and his early questions had been almost embarrassingly apologetic. It had been left to Lewis to press home some of the points that Morse had earlier made, and after an initial evasiveness Acum had seemed almost glad to get it all off his chest at last. And as he did so, Lewis was left wondering where the inspector’s train of thought had jumped the rails and landed in such a heap of crumpled wreckage by the track; for many of Morse’s assumptions had been correct, it seemed. Almost uncannily correct.

  Acum (on his own admission now) had indeed been attracted to Valerie Taylor and several times had intercourse with her; including a night in early April (not March) when his wife had returned home early one Tuesday (not Wednesday) evening from night school in Oxpens (not Headington) where she was attending art (not sewing) classes. Her teacher was down with shingles (not with flu), and the class was cancelled. It was just after eight o’clock (not a quarter to) when Mrs Acum had returned and found them lying together across the settee (not in bed), and the upshot had been veritably volcanic, with Valerie, it seemed, by far the least confounded of that troubled trio. There followed, for Acum and his wife, a succession of bleak and barren days. It was all over between them – she insisted firmly upon that; but she agreed to stay with him until their separation could be effected with a minimum of social scandal. He himself decided he must move in any case, and applied for a job in Caernarfon; and although he had been questioned by Phillipson at some length about his motives for a seemingly meaningless move to a not particularly promising post, he had told him nothing of the truth. Literally nothing. He could only pray that Valerie would keep her mouth shut, too.

  Not until about three weeks before her disappearance had he spoken personally to Valerie again, when she told him that she was expecting a baby, a baby that was probably his. She appeared (or so it seemed to Acum) completely confident and unconcerned and told him everything would be all right. She begged of him one thing only: that if she were to run away he would say nothing and know nothing – that was all; and although he had pressed her about her intentions, she would only repeat that she would be all right. Did she need any money? She told him she would let him know, but, smiling slyly as she told him, she said that she was going to be all right. Everything was ‘all right’. Everything was always ‘all right’ with Valerie. (It was at this point in Lewis’s interrogation, and only at this point, that Morse had suddenly pricked up his ears and asked a few inconsequential questions.) It appeared, however, that the money side of things was not completely ‘all right’, for only a week or so before the day she disappeared Valerie had approached Acum and told him she would be very grateful for some money if he could manage it. She hadn’t pressed her claim on him in any way, but he had been only too glad to help; and from the little enough they had managed to save – and with his wife’s full knowledge – he had raised one hundred pounds. And then she had gone; and like everyone else he hadn’t the faintest idea where she had gone to, and he had kept his silence ever since, as Valerie had asked him to.