Last Seen Wearing im-2

by Colin Dexter

  He drove to Capel Curig and there turned right on to the A5 towards Llangollen. And even as he drove he began to see the pattern. He ought to have seen it before; but with the testimony of Mrs. Phillipson and Acum behind him, it became almost childishly easy now to fit the pieces into quite a different pattern. One by one they clicked into place with a simple inevitability, as on and on he drove at high speed, passing Shrewsbury and, keeping to the A5, rattling along the old Wading Street and almost missing the turning off for Daventry and Banbury. It was now nearly 8 p.m. and Morse was feeling the effects of his long day. He found his mind wandering off to that news item he had heard about the unfortunate lord in the Essex reservoir; and as he was leaving the outskirts of Banbury an oncoming car flashed its lights at him. He realized that he had been drifting dangerously over the centre of the road, and jerked himself into a startled wakefulness. He resolved not to allow his concentration to waver one centimetre, opened the side window and breathing deeply upon the cool night air, sang in a mournful baritone, over and over again, the first and only verse he could remember of 'Lead, Kindly Light'.

  He drove straight home and locked up the garage. It had been a long day, he hoped he would sleep well.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  All happy families are alike, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.

  (Leo Tolstoy)

  LEWIS WAS GETTING better. He got up for a couple of hours just after Morse had arrived back in Oxford, with the aid of the banister made his careful way downstairs, and joined his surprised wife on the sofa in front of the television set. His temperature was normal now, and though he felt weak on his legs and sapped of his usual energy, he knew he would soon be back in harness. Many of the hours in bed he had spent in thinking, thinking about the Taylor case; and that morning he had been suddenly struck by an idea so novel and so exciting that he had persuaded his wife to ring the station immediately. But Morse was out: off to Wales, they said. It puzzled Lewis: the Principality in no way figured in his own new-minted version of events, and he guessed that Morse had followed one of his wayward fancies about Acum, wasted a good many gallons of police petrol, and advanced the investigation not one whit. But that wasn't quite fair. In the hands of the chief inspector things seldom stood still; they might go sideways, or even backwards, and often (Lewis agreed) they went forwards. But they seldom stood still. Yes, Lewis had been deeply disappointed not to catch him. Everything — well, almost everything — fitted so perfectly. It had been that item on his bedside radio at eight o'clock that had started the chain reaction; that item about some big noise being washed up in a reservoir. He knew they had dredged the reservoir behind the Taylors' home; but you could never be sure in such a wide stretch of water as that; and anyway it didn't really matter much whether it was in the reservoir or somewhere else. That was just the starting point. And then there was that old boy at the Belisha crossing, and the basket, and — oh, lots of other things. How he wished he'd caught the chief at the station! The really surprising thing was that Morse hadn't thought of it himself. He usually thought of everything — and more! But later, as the day wore on, he began to think that Morse probably had thought of it. After all, it was Morse himself who had suggested, right out of the blue, that she was carrying a basket.

  Laboriously, during the afternoon, Lewis wrote it all down, and when he had finished the initial thrill was already waning, and he was left only with the quiet certainty that it had indeed been, for him, a remarkable brainwave, and that there was a very strong possibility that he might be right. At 9.15 p.m., he rang the station himself, but Morse had still not shown up.

  'Probably gone straight home — or to a pub,' said the desk sergeant. Lewis left a message, and prayed that for the morrow the chief had planned no trip to the Western Isles.

  Donald Phillipson and his wife sat silently watching the nine o'clock news on BBC television. They had said little all evening, and now that the children were snugly tucked up in bed, the little had dried up to nothing. Once or twice each of them had almost asked a question of the other, and it would have been the same question: is there anything you want to tell me? Or words to that effect. But neither of them had braved it, and at a quarter-past ten Mrs. Phillipson brought in the coffee and announced that she was off to bed.

  'You've had your fill tonight, haven't you?'

  He mumbled something inaudible, and lumbered along unsteadily, trying with limited success to avoid bumping into her as they walked side by side along the narrow pavement. It was 10.45 p.m. and their home was only two short streets away from the pub.

  'Have you ever tried to work out how much you spend a week on beer and fags?'

  It hurt him, and it wasn't fair. Christ, it wasn't fair.

  'If you want to talk about money, my gal, what about your Bingo. Every bloody night nearly.'

  'You just leave my Bingo out of it. It's about the one pleasure I've got in life, and don't you forget it. And some people win at Bingo; you know that, don't you? Don't tell me you're so ignorant you don't know that.'

  'Have you won recently?' His tone was softer and he hoped very much that she had.

  'I've told you. You keep your nose out of it. I spend my own money, thank you, not yours; and if I win that's my business, isn't it?'

  'You were lashing out a bit with your money tonight, weren't you? Bit free with your favours all round, if you ask me.'

  'What's that supposed to mean?' Her voice was very nasty.

  'Well, you—'

  'Look, if I want to treat some of my friends to a drink, that's my lookout, isn't it? It's my money, too!'

  'I only meant—'

  They were at the front gate now and she turned on him, her eyes flashing. 'And don't you ever dare to say anything again about my favours! Christ! You're a one to talk, aren't you — you—bastard.'

  Their holiday together, the first for seven years, was due to begin at the weekend. The omens seemed hardly favourable.

  It was half-past eleven when Morse finally laid his head upon the pillows. He shouldn't have had so much beer really, but he felt he'd deserved it. It would mean shuffling along for a pee or two before the night was out. But what the hell! He felt at peace with himself and with the world in general. Beer was probably the cheapest drug on the market, and he only wished that his GP would prescribe it for him on the National Healdi. Ah, this was good! He turned into the pillows. Old Lewis would be in bed, too. He would see Lewis first thing in the morning; and he was quite sure that however groggy his faithful sergeant was feeling he would sit up in his sick bed and blink with a pained, incredulous surprise. For tomorrow morning he would be able to reveal the identity of the murderer of Valerie Taylor and that of the murderer of Reginald Baines, to boot. Or, to be slightly more accurate, just the one identity; for it had been the same hand which had murdered them both, and Morse now knew whose hand it was.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  An ill-favoured thing, sir, but mine own.

  (Shakespeare, As You Like It)

  'HOW'RE YOU DOING then, my old friend?'

  'Much better, thanks. Should be fit again any day now.'

  'Now you're not to rush things, remember that. There's nothing spoiling.'

  'Isn't there, sir?' The tone of the voice caught the inspector slightly unawares, and he looked at Lewis curiously.

  'What's on your mind?'

  'I tried to get hold of you yesterday, sir.' He sat up in bed and reached to the bedside table. 'I thought I had a bright idea. I may be wrong, but. . Well, here it is anyway, for what it's worth.' He handed over several sheets of notepaper, and Morse shelved his own pronouncements and sat down beside the bed. His head ached and he stared reluctandy at his sergeant's carefully written notes.

  'You want me to read all this?'

  'I just hope it's worth reading, that's all.'

  And Morse read; and as he read a wan smile crept across his mouth, and here and there he nodded with rigorous approbation, and Lewis sank back into hi
s pillows with the air of a pupil whose essay is receiving the alpha accolade. When he had finished, Morse took out his pen.

  'Don't mind if I make one or two slight alterations, do you?' For the next ten minutes he went mediodically through the draft, correcting the more heinous spelling errors, inserting an assortment of full-stops and commas, and shuffling several of the sentences into a more comprehensible sequence. 'That's better,' said Morse finally, handing back to a rueful-looking Lewis his amended masterpiece. It was an improvement, though. Anyone could see that

  To begin with, the evidence seemed to point to the fact that Valerie Taylor was alive. After all, her parents received a letter from her. But we then discovered that the letter was almost certainly not written by Valerie at all. So. Instead of assuming that she's alive, we must face the probability that she's dead, and we must ask ourselves the old question: who was the last person to see her alive? The answer is Joe Godberry, a short-sighted old fellow who ought never to have been in charge of a Belisha crossing in the first place. Could he have been wrong? He could, and in my view he was wrong: that is, he didn't see Valerie Taylor at all on the afternoon she disappeared. He says quite firmly that he did see her, but might he not have been mistaken? Might he just have seen someone who looked like Valerie? Well? Who looked like Valerie? Chief Inspector Morse himself thought that a photograph of Mrs. Taylor was one of her daughter Valerie, and this raises an interesting possibility. Could the person seen by Godberry have been not Valerie but Valerie's mother? [Lewis had underlined the words thickly, and it was at this point on his first reading that Morse had nodded his approval.] If it was Valerie's mother there are two important implications. First, that the last person to see Valerie alive was none other than her own mother at lunchtime that same day. Second, that this person — Valerie's mother — had gone to a great deal of trouble to establish the fact that her daughter had left the house and returned to afternoon school. On this second point we know that mother and daughter were very similar in build and figure generally, and Mrs. Taylor is still fairly slim and attractive. [It was at this point that Morse nodded again.] What was the best way of convincing anyone who might notice, the neighbours, say, or the Belisha man or the shop assistants, that Valerie had left home after lunch that day? The answer is fairly obvious. The uniform of the school which Valerie attended was quite distinctive, especially the red socks and the white blouse. Mrs. Taylor could dress up in the uniform herself, run quickly down the road, keep on the far side of the crossing, and with a bit of luck there would be no trouble in persuading anyone, even the police, that her daughter had left home. We learned that on the particular Tuesday afternoon in question, Valerie would be most unlikely to be missed anyway. Games afternoon — and a real shambles. So. Let us assume that Mrs. Taylor dresses up as her daughter and makes her way towards school. Chief Inspector Morse suggested early on that the person seen by Godberry was perhaps carrying a basket or some such receptacle. [Lewis had made a sorry mess of the spelling.] Now, if she had been carrying clothes [heavily scored by Lewis] the situation is becoming very interesting. Once Mrs. Taylor has created the impression that Valerie has left for school, it is equally important that she should not create the further impression that Valerie has returned home some five or ten minutes later. Because if someone sees Valerie, or someone who looks like Valerie, returning to the Taylors' house, the careful plan is ruined. When Valerie is reported missing, the inquiries will naturally centre on the house, not on the area around the school. But she can deal with this without too much trouble. In the basket Mrs. Taylor has put her own clothes. She goes into the ladies', just past the shopping area, and changes back into them, and then walks back, as unobtrusively as she can, probably by a roundabout route, to her own house. The real question now is this. Why all this palaver? Why should Mrs. Taylor have to go to all this trouble and risk? There can only be one answer. To create the firm impression that Valerie is alive when in fact she is dead. If Valerie had arrived home for lunch, and if Valerie did not leave the house again, we must assume that she was killed at some time during the lunch hour in her own home. And there was, it seems, only one other person in the Taylor household during that time: Valerie's own mother. It is difficult to believe, but the facts seem to point to the appalling probability that Valerie was murdered by her own mother. Why? We can only guess. There is some evidence that Valerie was pregnant. Perhaps her mother flew at her in a wild rage and struck her much harder than she intended to. We may learn the truth from Mrs. Taylor herself. The next thing is — what to do? And here we have the recorded evidence of the police files. The fact is that the police were not called in until the next morning. Why so much delay? Again an answer readily presents itself. [Morse had admired his sergeant's style at this point, and the nod had signified a recognition of a literary nicety rather than any necessary concurrence with the argument.] Mrs. Taylor had to get rid of the body. She waited, I think, obviously in great distress, until her husband arrived home about six; and then she told him what had happened. He has little option. He can't leave his poor wife to face the consequences of the terrible mess she's got herself into, and the two of them plan what to do. Somehow they get rid of the body, and I suspect the reservoir behind the house is the first place that occurs to them. I know that this was dragged at the time, but it's terribly easy to miss anything in so large a stretch of water. I can only suggest that it is thoroughly dragged again.

  Lewis put the document back on the bedside table and Morse tapped him in congratulatory fashion upon the shoulder.

  'I think it's time they made you up to inspector, my old friend.'

  'You think I may be right then, sir?'

  'Yes,' said Morse slowly, 'I do.'

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Incest is only relatively boring.

  (Inscription on the lavatory wall of an Oxford pub)

  LEWIS LEANED BACK into his pillows, and felt content. He would never make an inspector, he knew that, didn't even want to try. But to beat old Morse at his own game — my goodness, that was something!

  'Got a drop of booze in the house?' asked Morse.

  Ten minutes later he was sipping a liberal helping of whisky as Lewis dunked a chunk of bread into his Bovril.

  'There are one or two things you could add to your admirable statement, you know, Lewis.' A slightly pained expression appeared on Lewis's face, but Morse quickly reassured him. 'Oh, that's pretty certainly how it happened, I'm sure of that. But there are just one or two points where we can be even more specific, I think, and one or two where we shall need a clearer picture not so much of what happened as of why it happened. Let's just go over a few of the things you say. Mrs. Taylor dresses up as Valerie. I agree. You mention the school uniform and you rightly stress how distinctive this uniform is. But there's surely another small point. Mrs. Taylor would not only wish in a positive way to be mistaken for her daughter, but in a negative sort of way not to be recognized facially as who she was — Valerie's mother. After all it's the face that most of us look at — not the clothes. And here I think her hair would be all-important. Their hair was the same colour, and Mrs. Taylor is still too young to have more than a few odd streaks of grey. When we saw her she wore her hair on the top of her head, but I'd like to bet that when she lets it down it gives her much the same sort of look that Valerie had; and with long shoulder-length hair, doubtless brushed forward over her face, I think the disguise would be more than adequate.'

  Lewis nodded; but as the inspector said, it was only a small point.

  'Now,' continued Morse, 'we surely come to the central point, and one that you gloss over rather too lightly, if I may say so.' Lewis looked stolidly at the counterpane, but made no interruption. 'It's this. What could possibly have been the motive that led Mrs. Taylor to murder Valerie? Valerie! Her only daughter! You say that Valerie was pregnant, and although it isn't firmly established, I think the overwhelming probability is that she was pregnant; perhaps she had told her mother about it. But there's anot
her possibility, and one that makes the whole situation far more sinister and disturbing. It isn't easy, I should imagine, for a daughter to hide a pregnancy from her mother for too long, and I think on balance it may well have been Mrs. Taylor who accused Valerie of being pregnant — rather than Valerie who told her mother. But whichever way round it was, it surely can't add up to a sufficient motive for murdering the girl. It would be bad enough, I agree. The neighbours would gossip and everyone at school would have to know, and then there'd be the uncles and aunts and all the rest of 'em. But it's hardly a rare thing these days to have an unmarried mother in the family, is it? It could have happened as you say it did, but I get the feeling that Valerie's pregnancy had been known to Mrs. Taylor for several weeks before the day she was murdered. And I think that on that Tuesday lunchtime Mrs. Taylor tackled her daughter — she may have tackled her several times before — on a question which was infinitely more important to her than whether her daughter was pregnant or not. A question which was beginning to send her out of her mind; for she had her own dark and terrifying suspicions which would give her no rest, which poisoned her mind day and night, and which she had to settle one way or the other. And that question was this: who was the father of Valerie's baby? To begin with I automatically assumed that Valerie was a girl of pretty loose morals who would jump into bed at the slightest provocation with some of her randy boyfriends. But I think I was wrong. I ought to have seen through Maguire's sexual boastings straight away. He may have put his dirty fingers up her skirt once or twice, but I doubt that he or any of the other boys did much more. No. I should think that Valerie got an itch in her knickers as often — more often perhaps — than most young girls. But the indications all along the line were that her own particular weakness was for older men. Men about your age, Lewis.'