Last Seen Wearing im-2

by Colin Dexter

  'Do you know who it was, Inspector? It was David Acum.'

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  For oily or spotty skin, first cleanse face and throat, then pat with a hot towel. Smooth on an even layer of luxurious 'Ladypak', avoiding the area immediately, around the eyes.

  (Directions for applying a beauty mask)

  AT 6.20 THE FOLLOWING morning Morse was on the road: it would take about five hours. He would have enjoyed the drive more with someone to talk to, especially Lewis, and he switched on the Lancia's radio for the 7.00 a.m. news. The world seemed strangely blighted: abroad there were rumours of war and famine, and at home more bankruptcies and unemployment — and a missing lord who had been dredged up from a lake in east Essex. But the morning was fresh and bright, the sky serene and cloudless, and Morse drove fast. He had left Evesham behind him and was well on the way to Kidderminster before he met any appreciable volume of traffic. The 8.00 a.m. news came and went, with no perceptible amelioration of the cosmic plight, and Morse switched over to Radio Three and listened lovingly to the Brandenburg Concerto № 5 in D. The journey was going well, and he was through Bridgnorth and driving rather too quickly round the Shrewsbury ring-road by 9.00 a.m. when he decided that a Schoenberg string quartet might be a little above his head, and switched off. He found himself vaguely pondering the lake in east Essex, and remembering the reservoir behind the Taylors' home, before switching that off, too, and concentrating with appropriate care and attention upon the perils of the busy A5. At Nesscliffe, some twelve miles north of Shrewsbury, he turned off left along the B4396 towards Bala. Wales now, and the pale green hills rose ever more steeply. He was making excellent time and he praised the gods that his journey was not being made on a dry Welsh Sunday. He was feeling thirsty already. But he was through Bala and swinging in the long left-handed loop around Llyn Tegid (reservoir again!) long before the pubs were open; and through the crowded streets of Porthmadog, festooned still with the multicoloured bunting of high summer, and past the Lloyd George Museum in Llanystumdwy, and still the hands of the fascia clock were some few minutes short of eleven. He might just as well drive on. At Four Crosses he turned right on to the Pwllheli-Caernarfon Road, and drove on into the Lleyn Peninsula, past the triple peaks of the Rivals and on to the coastal road, with the waters of Caernarfon Bay laughing and glittering in the sunshine to his left. He would stop at the next likely-looking hostelry. He had passed one in the last village, but the present tract of road afforded little for the thirsty traveller; and he was only two or three miles south of Caernarfon itself when he spotted the sign: BONT-NEWYDD. Surely the village where the Acums lived? He pulled in to the side of the road, and consulted the file in his brief-case. Yes, it was. 16 St. Beuno's Road. He inquired of an ageing passerby and learned that he was only a few 'undred yaards from St. Beuno's Road, and that The Prince of Wales was just around the corner. It was five niinutes past eleven.

  As he sampled the local brew, he debated whether he should call at the Acums' home. Did the modern languages master come home for lunch? Morse's original plan had been to go direct to the City of Caernarfon School, preferably about lunchtime. But perhaps it would do no harm to have a little chat with Mrs. Acum first? Temporarily he shelved the decision, bought another pint, and considered the forthcoming interview. Acum had lied, of course, about not leaving the conference; for Mrs. Phillipson could not have had the faintest notion that Acum would be in Oxford on that Monday night. How could she? Unless. . but he dropped the fanciful line of thought. The beer was good, and at noon he was happily discussing with his host the sorry Sunday situation in the thirsty counties and the defacement of the Welsh road signs by the Nationalists. And ten minutes later, legs astraddle, he stood and contemplated the defacement of the landlord's lavatory walls by a person or persons unknown. Several of the graffiti were unintelligible to the non-Welsh-speaker; but one that was scrawled in his native tongue caught Morse's eye, and he smiled in approbation as his bladder achingly emptied itself:

  'The penis mightier than the sword.'

  It was now 12.15 p.m., and if Acum were coming home to lunch, there was an obvious danger of his passing Morse in the opposite direction. Well, there was one pretty certain way of finding out. He left the Lancia at The Prince of Wales and walked.

  St. Beuno's Road led off right from the main road. The houses were small here, built of square, grey, granite blocks, and tiled with the purplish-blue Ffestiniog slate. The grass in the tiny front gardens was of a green two or three shades paler than the English variety, and the soil looked tired and undernourished. The front door was painted a Cambridge blue, with the black number 16 dextrously worked in the florid style of a Victorian theatre-bill. Morse knocked firmly, and after a brief interval the door opened; but opened only slightly, and then to reveal a strangely incongruous sight. A woman stood before him, her face little more than a white mask, with slits left open for the eyes and mouth, a blood-red towel swathed around the top of her head where (as, alas, with most blondes) the tell-tale roots of the hair betrayed its darker origins. It was curious to witness the lengths to which the ladies were prepared to go in order to improve upon the natural gifts their maker had endowed them with; and in the depths of Morse's mind there stirred the dim remembrance of the fair-haired woman with the spotty face in the staff photograph of the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School. He knew that this must be Mrs. Acum. Yet it was not the beauty pack, smeared though it doubtless was with a practised skill, that chiefly held the inspector's rapt attention. She was holding a meagre white towel to the top of her shoulders, and as she stood half hidden by the door, it was immediately apparent that behind the towel the woman was completely naked. Morse felt as lecherous as a billy-goat. A Welsh billy-goat, perhaps. It must have been the beer.

  'I've called to see your husband. Er, it is Mrs. Acum, isn't it?'

  The head nodded, and a hair-line fracture of the carefully assembled mask appeared at the corners of the white mouth. Was she laughing at him?

  'Will he be back home for lunch?'

  The head shook, and the top of the towel drooped tantalizingly to reveal the beautifully-moulded outline of her breasts.

  'He's at school, I suppose?'

  The head nodded, and the eyes stared blandly through the slits.

  'Well, I'm sorry to have bothered you, Mrs. Acum, especially at, er, such, er. . We've spoken to each other before, you know — over the phone, if you remember. I'm Morse. Chief Inspector Morse from Oxford.'

  The red towel bobbed on her head, the mask almost breaking through into a smile. They shook hands through the door, and Morse was conscious of the heady perfume on her skin. He held her hand for longer than he need have done, and the white towel dropped from her right shoulder; and for a brief and beautiful moment he stared with shameless fascination at her nakedness. The nipple was fully erect and he felt an almost irresistible urge to hold it there and then between his fingers. Was she inviting him in? He looked again at the passive mask. The towel was now in place again, and she stood back a little from the door; it was fifty-fifty. But he had hesitated too long, and the chance, if chance it was, was gone already. He lacked, as always, the bogus courage of his own depravity, and he turned away from her and walked back slowly towards The Prince of Wales. At the end of the road he stopped, and looked back; but the light-blue door was closed upon him and he cursed the conscience that invariably thus doth make such spineless cowards of us all. It was perhaps something to do with status. People just didn't expect such base behaviour from a chief inspector, as if such eminent persons were somehow different from the common run of lewd humanity. How wrong they were! How wrong! Why, even the mighty had their little weaknesses. Good gracious, yes. Just think of old Lloyd George. The things they said about Lloyd George! And he was a prime minister. .

  He climbed into the Lancia. Oh God, such beautiful breasts! He sat motionless at the wheel for a short while, and then he smiled to himself. He reckoned that Constable Dickson could almost have hung his hel
met there! It was an irreverent thought, but it made him feel a good deal better. He pulled carefully out of the car park and headed north on the final few miles of his journey.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Merely corroborative detail, to add artistic verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative.

  (W. S. Gilbert, The Mikado)

  A SMALL GROUP OF boys was kicking a football around at the side of a large block of classrooms which abutted on to the wide sports field, where sets of rugby and hockey posts demarcated the area of grass into neatly white-lined rectangles. The rest of the school was having lunch. The two men walked three times around the playing fields, hands in pockets, heads slightly forward, eyes downcast. They were about the same build, neither man above medium height; and to the football players they seemed unworthy of note, anonymous almost. Yet one of the two men pacing slowly over the grass was a chief inspector of police, and the other, one of their very own teachers, was a suspect in a murder case.

  Morse questioned Acum about himself and his teaching career; about Valerie Taylor and Baines and Phillipson; about the conference in Oxford, times and places and people. And he learned nothing that seemed of particular interest or importance. The schoolmaster appeared pleasant enough — in a nondescript sort of way; he answered the inspector's questions with freedom and with what seemed a fair degree of guarded honesty. And so Morse told him, told him quietly yet quite categorically, that he was a liar; told him that he had indeed left the conference that Monday evening, at about 9.30 p.m., told him that he had walked to Kempis Street to see his former colleague, Mr. Baines, and that he had been seen there; told him that, if he persisted in denying such a plain, incontrovertible statement of the truth, he, Morse, had little option but to take him back to Oxford where he would be held for questioning in connection with the murder of Mr. Reginald Baines. It was as simple as that! And, in fact, it proved a good deal simpler than even Morse had dared to hope; for Acum no longer denied the plain, incontrovertible statement of the truth which the inspector had presented to him. They were on their third and final circuit of the playing fields, far away from the main school buildings, by the side of some neglected allotments, where the ramshackle sheds rusted away sadly in despairing disrepair. Here Acum stopped and nodded slowly.

  'Just tell me what you did, sir, that's all.'

  'I'd been sitting at the back of the hall — deliberately — and I left early. As you say, it was about half-past nine, or probably a bit earlier.'

  'You went to see Baines?' Acum nodded. 'Why did you go to see him?'

  'I don't know, really. I was getting a bit bored with the conference, and Baines lived fairly near. I thought I'd go and see if he was in and ask him out for a drink. It's always interesting to talk about old times, you know the sort of thing — what was going on at school, which members of staff were still there, which ones had left, what they were doing. You know what I mean.'

  He spoke naturally and easily, and if he were a liar he seemed to Morse a fairly fluent one.

  'Well,' continued Acum, 'I walked along there. I was in a bit of a hurry because I knew the pubs would be closed by half-past ten and time was getting on. I had a drink on the way and it must have been getting on for ten by the time I got there. I'd been there before, and thought he must be in because the light was on in the front room.'

  'Were the curtains drawn?' For the first time since they had been talking together, Morse's voice grew sharper.

  Acum thought for a moment. 'Yes, I'm almost certain they were.'

  'Go on.'

  'Well, I thought, as I say, that he must be in. So I knocked pretty loudly two or three times on the door. But he didn't answer, or at least he didn't seem to hear me. I thought he might be in the front room perhaps with the TV on, so I went to the window and knocked on it.'

  'Could you hear the TV? Or see it?'

  Acum shook his head; and to Morse it was all beginning to sound like a record stuck in its groove. He knew for certain what was coming next

  'It's a funny thing, Inspector, but I began to feel just a bit frightened — as if I were sort of trespassing and shouldn't really be there at all; as if he knew that I was there but didn't want to see me. . Anyway, I went back to the door and knocked again, and then I put my head round the door and shouted his name.'

  Morse stood quite still, and considered his next question with care. If he was to get his piece of information, he wanted it to come from Acum himself without too much prompting.

  'You put your head round the door, you say?'

  'Yes. I just felt sure he was there.'

  'Why did you feel that?'

  'Well, there was a light in the front room and. .' He hesitated for a moment, and seemed to be fumbling around in his mind for some fleeting, half-forgotten impression that had given him this feeling.

  'Think back carefully, sir,' said Morse. 'Just picture yourself there again, standing at the door. Take your time. Just put yourself back there. You're standing there in Kempis Street. Last Monday night. .'

  Acum shook his head slowly and frowned. He said nothing for a minute or two.

  'You see, Inspector, I just had this idea that he was somewhere about. I almost knew he was. I thought he might just have slipped out somewhere for a few seconds because. .' It came back to him then, and he went on quickly. 'Yes, that's it. I remember now. I remember why I thought he must be there. It wasn't just the light in the front window. There was a light on in the hall because the front door was open. Not wide open, but standing ajar as if he'd just slipped out and would be back again any second.'

  'And then?'

  'I left. He wasn't there. I just left, that's all.'

  'Why didn't you tell me all this when I rang you, sir?'

  'I was frightened, Inspector. I'd been there, hadn't I? And he was probably lying there all the time — murdered. I was frightened, I really was. Wouldn't you have been?'

  Morse drove into the centre of Caernarfon, and parked his car alongside the jetty under the great walls of the first Edward's finest castle. He found a Chinese restaurant nearby, and greedily gulped down the oriental fare that was set before him. It was his first meal for twenty-four hours, and he temporarily dismissed all else from his mind. Only over his coffee did he allow his restless brain to come to grips with the case once more; and by the time he had finished his second cup of coffee he had reached the firm conclusion that, whatever improbabilities remained to be explained away, especially the reasons given for calling on Baines, both Mrs. Phillipson and David Acum had told him the truth, or something approximating to the truth, at least as far as their evidence concerned itself with the visits made to the house in Kempis Street. Their accounts of what had taken place there were so clear, so mutually complementary, that he felt he should and would believe them. That bit about the door being slightly open, for example — exactly as Mrs. Phillipson had left it before panicking and racing down to the lighted street. No. Acum could not have made that up. Surely not. Unless. . It was the second time that he had qualified his conclusions with that sinister word 'unless'; and it troubled him. Acum and Mrs. Phillipson. Was there any link at all between that improbable pair? If link there was, it had to have been forged at some point in the past, at some point more than two years ago, at the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School. Could there have been something? It was an idea, anyway. Yet as he drove out of the castle car park, he decided on balance that it was a lousy idea. In front of the castle he passed the statue erected to commemorate the honourable member for Caernarfon (Lloyd George, no less) and as he drove out along the road to Capel Curig, his brain was as jumbled and cluttered as a magpie's nest.

  He stopped briefly in the pass of Llanberis, and watched the tiny figures of the climbers, conspicuous only by their bright orange anoraks, perched at dizzying heights on the sheer mountain faces that towered massively above the road on either side. He felt profoundly thankful that whatever the difficulties of his own job he was spared the risk, at every se
cond, and every precarious hand- and foot-hold, of a vertical plunge to a certain death upon the rocks far, far below. Yet, in his own way, Morse knew that he too was scaling a peak and knew full well the blithe exhilaration of reaching the summit. So often there was only one way forward, only one. And when one route seemed utterly impossible, one had to look for the nearly impossible alternative, to edge along the face of the cliff, to avoid the impasse, and to lever oneself painstakingly up to the next ledge, and look up again and follow the only route. On the death of Baines, Morse had considered only a small group of likely suspects. The murderer could, of course, have been someone completely unconnected with the Valerie Taylor affair; but he doubted it. There had been five of them, and he now felt that the odds against Mrs. Phillipson and David Acum had lengthened considerably. That left the Taylors, the pair of them, and Phillipson himself. It was time he tried to put together the facts, many of them very odd facts, that he had gleaned about these three. It must be one of them surely; for he felt convinced now that Baines had been murdered before the visits of Mrs. Phillipson and David Acum. Yes, that was the only way it could have been. He grasped the firm fact with both hands and swung himself on to a higher ledge, and discovered that from this vantage point the view seemed altogether different.