Last Seen Wearing im-2

by Colin Dexter

  'You know, Lewis, something must have turned sour somewhere, mustn't it? Perhaps something went wrong. .' He suddenly brightened. 'We shall have to find out, shan't we?'

  'You think Valerie's still alive then, sir?'

  Morse backed down with commendable grace. 'I suppose so, yes. After all she wrote home, didn't she? Or so you tell me.'

  He had a cheek, this man Morse, and Lewis shook his head in dismay. Everything had pointed to a straightforward case of a girl running away from home. As everyone (including Morse) had said, it happens all the time. And what a dog's breakfast he'd made of it all!

  But Lewis had to concede that there might be something worth salvaging from all that complicated nonsense. Valerie and Phillipson. Could be true, perhaps. But why did he have to invent all that fanciful stuff about changing in ladies' lavatories? Oh dear. But something else was worrying him.

  'You said, sir, that you thought Baines might have found out about Phillipson and this girl — whoever she was.'

  'I think he did. In fact, I think Baines knows a hell of a lot more about the whole caboodle than anybody.'

  'More than you, sir?'

  'God, yes. He's been watching and waiting, has Baines; and I suspect he'd be very happy for the truth — or most of it — to come out. Phillipson would be a dead duck then, and they'd have to appoint a new headmaster, wouldn't they? And they've got Baines — a faithful servant who's been there all these years, runner-up at the last appointment. . why, I shouldn't think the Governors would even advertise.'

  'They'd have to, sir. It's the law.'

  'Oh. . Anyway, he'd get the job — sure as eggs are eggs. And he'd love it. The thought of all that power, Lewis — power over other people's lives. That's what Baines is hankering after.'

  'Don't you think,' said Lewis gently, 'that it would be a good idea to get things on to a bit of a firmer footing, sir? I mean, why not question Phillipson and Baines and the Taylors? You'd probably get the truth out of one of them.'

  'Perhaps.' Morse stood up and flexed his arms. 'But you're going to be pleased with me, Lewis. At the beginning of this case I promised myself I'd stick to facts, and so far I've not done very well. But you see a reformed character before you, my friend. First, I've arranged to see Phillipson and Baines — together, mind you! — tomorrow afternoon. Good touch, eh, Lewis? Tuesday afternoon. Should be good, I reckon. No holds barred! And then — that phone call you heard. Metropolitan Police, no less. They're going to help us if they can; and they think they can. If Valerie did go up to London for an abortion, she'd have to go to some sort of clinic, wouldn't she? And we know exactly when she went. She might have changed her name and address and God knows what. But those boys in London are pretty sharp. If she did go to a clinic — even a shady, back-street clinic — I reckon we've got her on toast. And if they don't trace anything — well we shall have to think again, I suppose. But if we do find out where she went — and I think we shall — well, we're there, aren't we? She had no money of her own, that's for sure, and somebody, somebody, Lewis, had to fork out pretty handsomely. And then? Then we take it from there.'

  Morse sat down again. He was trying hard, but was convincing no one, not even himself.

  'You're not really very interested in finding her at all, are you, sir?'

  The sparkle had gone from Morse's eyes: Lewis was right, of course. 'To tell you the truth, I shan't give two buggers if we never find her. Perhaps we've found her, anyway. She may have been the girl sharing Maguire's flat. I don't think so. But if she was — so what? She may have been one of those strippers we saw; you remember, the one with the mask and the bouncy tits. So what? You know, Lewis, this whole case is beginning to get one almighty bore, and if all we're going to do is stir up a load of trouble and get poor old Phillipson the sack — I'd rather pack it up.'

  'It's not like you to back out of anything, sir.'

  Morse stared morosely at the blotting paper. 'It's just not my sort of case, Lewis. I know it's not a very nice thing to say, but I just get on better when we've got a body — a body that died from unnatural causes. That's all I ask. And we haven't got a body.'

  '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 Moliere were not worth reading, reading with accuracy, an
d 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, quite 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 Stones, 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 longgrun 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.