Last Seen Wearing im-2

by Colin Dexter

  'And yours,' said Lewis. But the mood in the quiet bedroom was sombre, and neither man seemed much amused. Morse drained his whisky and smacked his lips.

  'Well, Lewis? What do you think?'

  'You mean Phillipson, I suppose, sir?'

  'Could have been, but I doubt it. I think he'd learned his lesson.'

  Lewis thought for a moment and frowned deeply. Was it possible? Would it tie in with the other business? 'Surely you don't mean Baines, do you, sir? She must have been willing to go to bed with anyone if she let Baines. .' He broke off. How sickening it all was!

  Morse brooded a while, and stared through the bedroom window. 'I thought of it, of course. But I think you're right. At least I don't think she would have gone to bed willingly with Baines. And yet, you know, Lewis, it would explain a great many things if it was Baines.'

  'I thought you had the idea that he was seeing Mrs. Taylor — not Valerie.'

  'I think he was,' said Morse. 'But, as I say, I don't think it was Baines.' He was speaking more slowly now, almost as if he were working through some new equation which had suddenly flashed across his mind; some new problem that challenged to some extent the validity of the case he was presenting. But reluctandy he put it aside, and resumed the main thread of his argument. 'Try again, Lewis.'

  It was like backing horses. Lewis had backed the favourite, Phillipson, and lost; he'd then chosen an outsider, an outsider at least with a bit of form behind him, and lost again. There weren't many other horses in the race. 'You've got the advantage over me, sir. You went to see Acum yesterday. Don't you think you ought to tell me about it?'

  'Leave Acum out of it for the minute,' said Morse flatly.

  So Lewis reviewed the field again. There was only one other possibility, and he was surely a non-starter. Surely. Morse couldn't seriously. . 'You don't mean. . you can't mean you think it was. . George Taylor?'

  'I'm afraid I do, Lewis, and we'd both better get used to the grisly idea as quickly as we can. It's not pleasant, I know; but it's not so bad as it might be. After all, he's not her natural father, as far as we know, and so we're not fishing around in the murky waters of genuine incest or anything like that. Valerie would have known perfectly well that George wasn't her real father. They all lived together, and became as intimate as any other family. But intimate with one vital difference. Valerie grew into a young girl, and her looks and her figure developed, and she was not his daughter. I don't know what happened. What I do know is that we can begin to see one overwhelming motive for Mrs. Taylor murdering her own daughter: the suspicion, gradually edging into a terrible certainty, that her only daughter was expecting a baby and that the father of that baby was her own husband. I think that on that Tuesday Mrs. Taylor accused her daughter of precisely that.'

  'It's a terrible thing,' said Lewis slowly, 'but perhaps we shouldn't be too hard on her.'

  'I don't feel hard on anybody,' rejoined Morse. 'In fact, I feel some sympathy for the wretched woman. Who wouldn't? But if all this is true, you can see what the likely train of events is. When George Taylor arrives home he's caught up in it all. Like a fly in a spider's web. His wife knows. It's no good him trying to wash his hands of the whole affair: he's the cause of it all. So, he goes along with her. What else can he do? What's more, he's in a position, the remarkably fortunate position, of being able to dispose, without suspicion and without too much trouble, of virtually anything, including a body. And I don't mean in the reservoir. George works at a place where vast volumes of rubbish and waste are piled high every day, and the same day buried without trace below the ground. And don't forget that Taylor was a man who had worked on road construction—driving a bulldozer. If he arrives at work half an hour early, what's to stop him using the bulldozer that's standing all ready, with the keys invitingly hung up for him on a nail in the shack? Nothing. Who would know? Who would care? No, Lewis. I don't think they put her into the reservoir. I think she lies buried out there on the rubbish dump.' Morse stopped for a second or two, and visualized the course of events anew.

  'I think that Valerie must have been put into a sack or some sort of rubbish bag, and consigned for the long night to the boot of Taylor's old Morris. And in the morning he drove off early, and dumped her there, amid all the other mouldering rubbish; and he started up the bulldozer and buried her under the mounds of soil that stood ready at the sides of the tip. That's about it, Lewis. I'm very much afraid that's just about what happened. I should have been suspicious before, especially about the police not being called in until the next morning.'

  'Do you think they'll find her body after all this time?'

  'I should think so. It'll be a horribly messy business — but I should think so. The surveyor's department will know roughly which parts of the tip were levelled when and where, and I think we shall find her. Poor kid!'

  'They put the police to a hell of a lot of trouble, didn't they?'

  Morse nodded. 'It must have taken some guts to carry it through the way they did, I agree. But when you've committed a murder and got rid of the body, it might not have been so difficult as you think.'

  A stray thought had been worrying Lewis as Morse had expounded his views of the way things must have happened.

  'Do you think Ainley was getting near the truth?'

  'I don't know,' said Morse. 'He might have had all sorts of strange ideas before he'd finished. But whether he got a scent of the truth or not doesn't really matter. What matters is that other people thought he was getting near the truth.'

  'Where do you think the letter fits in, sir?'

  Morse looked away. 'Yes, the letter. Remember the letter was probably posted before whoever sent it knew that Ainley was dead. I thought at the time that the whole point of it was to concentrate police attention away from the scene of the crime and on to London; and it seemed a possibility that the Taylors had cooked it up themselves because they thought Ainley was coming a bit too close for comfort.'

  'But you don't think so now?'

  'No. Like you, I think we've got to accept the evidence that it was almost certainly written by Baines.'

  'Any idea why he wrote it?'

  'I think I have, although—'

  The front door bell rang in mid-sentence, and almost immediately Mrs. Lewis appeared with the doctor. Morse shook hands with him and got up to go.

  'There's no need for you to go. Shan't be with him long.'

  'No, I'll be off,' said Morse. I'll call back this afternoon, Lewis.'

  He let himself out and drove back to the police HQ at Kidlington. He sat in his black leather chair and looked mournfully at his in-tray. He would have to catch up with his correspondence very soon. But not today. Perhaps he had been glad of the interruption in Lewis's bedroom, for there were several small points in his reconstruction of the case which needed further cerebration. The truth was that Morse felt a little worried.

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  Money often costs too much.

  (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

  FOR THE NEXT HOUR he sat, without interruption, without a single telephone call, and thought it all through, beginning with the question that Lewis had put to him: why had Baines written the letter to the Taylors? At twelve noon, he rose from his chair, walked along the corridor and knocked at the office of Superintendent Strange.

  Half an hour later, the door reopened and the two men exchanged a few final words.

  'You'll have to produce one,' said Strange. 'There's no two ways about it, Morse. You can hold them for questioning, if you like, but sooner or later we want a body. In fact, we've got to have a body.'

  'I suppose you're right, sir,' said Morse. 'It's a bit fanciful without a body, as you say.'

  'It's a bit fanciful with a body,' said Strange.

  Morse walked to the canteen, where the inevitable Dickson was ordering a vast plate of meat and vegetables.

  'How's Sergeant Lewis, sir? Have you heard?'

  'Much better. I saw him this morning. He'll be back any day.'


  He thought of Lewis as he ordered his own lunch, and knew that he had not finally resolved the question that his sergeant had put to him. Why had Baines written that letter? He had thought of all the possible reasons that anyone ever had for writing a letter, but was still not convinced that he had a satisfactory answer. It would come, though. There was still a good deal about Baines he didn't know, but he had set inquiries in progress several days ago, and even bank managers and income tax inspectors didn't take all that long surely.

  He ought to have had a closer look through his in-tray; and he would. For the moment, however, he thought that a breath of fresh air would do him good, and he walked out into the main road, turned right and found himself walking towards the pub. He didn't wish to see Mrs. Taylor, and he was relieved to find that she wasn't there. He ordered a pint, left immediately after he had finished it, and walked down towards the main road. Two shops he had never paid any attention to before lay off a narrow service road at the top of Hatfield Way, one a general provisions store, the other a fresh fruiterer, and Morse bought a small bunch of black grapes for the invalid. It seemed a kind thought. As he walked out, he noticed a small derelict area between the side of the provisions store and the next row of council houses. It was no more than ten square yards in extent, with two or three bicycle racks, the bric-a-brac of builders' carts from years ago — half-bricks, a flattened heap of sand; and strewing the area the inevitable empty cigarette cartons and crisps packets. Two cars stood in the small area, unobtrusive and unmolested. Morse stopped and took his bearings and realized that he was only some forty or fifty yards from the Taylors' house, a little further down towards the main road on the left. He stood quite still and gripped the bag of grapes more firmly. Mrs. Taylor was in the front garden. He could see her quite clearly, her hair piled rather untidily on top of her head, her back towards him, her slim legs more those of a schoolgirl than a mother. In her right hand she held a pair of secateurs, and she was bending over the rose trees and clipping off the faded blooms. He found himself wondering if he would have been able to recognize her if she suddenly rushed out of the gate in a bright school uniform with her hair flowing down to her shoulders; and it made him uneasy, for he felt that he would have been able to tell at once that she was a woman and not a girl. You couldn't really disguise some things, however hard you tried; and perhaps it was very fortunate for Mrs. Taylor that none of the neighbours had seen her that Tuesday lunchtime, and that old Joe Godberry's eyes had grown so tired and dim. And all of a sudden he saw it all plainly, and the blood tingled in his arms. He glanced around again at the small piece of waste land, shielded from the Taylors' home by the wall of the council house, looked again at the Taylors' front garden, where the wilted petals were now piled neatly at the edge of the narrow lawn, turned on his heel and walked back the long way round to Police HQ.

  He had been right about his in-tray. There were detailed statements about Baines's financial position, and Morse raised his eyebrows in some surprise as he studied them, for Baines was better off than he had thought. Apart from insurance policies, Baines had over £5,000 in the Oxford Building Society, £6,000 tied up in a high-interest long-term loan with Manchester Corporation, £4,500 in his deposit account with Lloyds, as well as £150 in his current account with the same bank. It all added up to a tidy sum, and schoolmasters, even experienced second masters, weren't all that highly recompensed. The pay cheques for the previous year had all been paid directly into the deposit account, and Morse noticed with some surprise that the withdrawals on the current account had seldom amounted to more than £30 per month over that period. It seemed clear from the previous year's tax returns that Baines had no supplementary monies accruing to him from examination fees or private tuition, and although he may have risked not declaring any such further income, Morse thought that on the whole it was unlikely. The house, too, belonged to Baines: the final payment had been made some six years previously. Of course, he may well have been left a good deal of money by his parents and other relatives; but the fact remained that Baines somehow had managed to live on about seven or eight pounds a week for the last twelve months. Either he was a miser or, what seemed more likely, he was receiving a supply of ready cash fairly regularly from some quarter or quarters. And it hardly needed a mind as imaginative as Morse's to make one or two intelligent deductions on that score. There must have been several people who had shed no tears when Baines had died; indeed there had been one person who had been unable to stand it any longer and who had stuck him through with a carving knife.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  To you, Lord Governor, Remains the censure of this hellish villain—

  The time, the place, the torture. O enforce it!

  (Shakespeare, Othello, Act V)

  LEWIS WAS SITTING up in his dressing-gown in the front room when Morse returned at a quarter to three.

  'Start next Monday, sir — Sunday if you want me — and I can't tell you how glad I am.'

  'It'll all be over then with a bit of luck,' said Morse. 'Still we may have another homicidal lunatic roaming the streets before then, eh?'

  'You really think this is nearly finished, sir?'

  'I saw Strange this morning. We're going ahead tomorrow. Bring in both the Taylors and then start digging up all the rubbish dump — if we have to; though I think George will co-operate, even if his wife doesn't.'

  'And you think it all links up with Baines's murder?'

  Morse nodded. 'You were asking this morning about Baines writing that letter, and the truth is I don't quite know yet. It could have been to put the police off the scent, or to put them on — take your pick. But I feel fairly sure that one way or another it would keep his little pot boiling.'

  'I don't quite follow you, sir.'

  Morse told him of Baines's financial position, and Lewis whistled softly. 'He really was a blackmailer, then?'

  'He was certainly getting money from somewhere, probably from more than one source.'

  'Phillipson, for sure, I should think.'

  'Yes. I think Phillipson had to fork out a regular monthly payment; not all that much perhaps, certainly not a ruinous sum for a man in Phillipson's position. Let's say twenty, thirty pounds a month. I don't know. But I shall know soon. There can be little doubt that Baines saw him the night he was going back home after his interview, saw him with a bit of stuff — more than likely Valerie Taylor. He could have ruined Phillipson's position straight away, of course, but that doesn't seem to have been the way that Baines's warped and devious mind would usually work. It gave him power to keep the intelligence to himself — to himself, that is, and to Phillipson.'

  'He had as good a reason as anybody for killing Baines, didn't he?'

  'He had, indeed. But he didn't kill Baines.'

  'You sound pretty sure of yourself, sir.'

  'Yes I am sure,' said Morse quietly. 'Let's just go on a bit I think there was another member of staff Baines had been blackmailing.'

  'You mean Acum?'

  'Yes, Acum. It seemed odd to me from the start that he should leave a fairly promising situation in the modern languages department here at the Roger Bacon, and take up a very similar position in a very similar school right up in the wilds of North Wales — away from his friends and family and the agreeable life of a university town like Oxford. I think that there must have been a little flurry of a minor scandal earlier in the year that Acum left. I asked him about it when I saw him yesterday, but he wouldn't have any of it. It doesn't matter much, though, and Phillipson will have to come clean anyway.'

  'What do you think happened?'

  'Oh, the usual thing. Somebody caught him with one of the girls with his trousers down.'

  Lewis leaned his head to one side and smiled rather wearily. 'I suppose you think it may have been Valerie Taylor, sir?'

  'Why not?' said Morse. 'She seems to have made most of the men put their hands on their cocks at some time, doesn't she? I should think that Phillipson got to know and Baines, t
oo — oh yes, I'm sure Baines got to know — and they got together and agreed to hush things up if Acum would agree to leave as soon as it was practicable to do so. And I shouldn't think that Acum had any option. He'd be asked to leave whatever happened, and his wife would probably find out and — well, it would have seemed like the end of the world to a young fellow like Acum.'