Colin Dexter - Last Seen Wearing

Lewis greeted his chief defensively; he had not seen him since the previous Thursday morning. Where Morse had been he didn't know, and what he'd been doing he didn't really care.

'Look,' said Morse. 'I'm sorry I blasted your head off last week. I know you don't worry about things like that, but I do.'

It was a new angle, anyway, thought Lewis.

'And I feel I ought to apologize. It's not like me, is it, to go off the deep end like that.'

It was hardly a question and Lewis made no reply.

'We're a team, Lewis, you and me — you must never forget that. .' He went on and on and Lewis felt better and better. 'You see, Lewis, the long and the short of it is that you were right and I was wrong. I should have listened to you.' Lewis felt like a candidate who learns that he has been awarded grade 1 although he was absent for the examination.

'Yes,' continued Morse, 'I've had the chance to stand back and see things a little more clearly, and I think we can now begin to see what really happened.'

He was becoming rather pompous and self-satisfied, and Lewis tried to bring him down to earth. As far as he knew, Morse had been nowhere near the office since Thursday morning.

'There's that report from Peters on Valerie's second letter, sir. You remember, I rang you about it.'

Morse brushed the interruption aside. 'That's not important, Lewis. But I'm going to tell you something that is important.' He leaned back in the black leather chair and commenced an analysis of the case, an analysis which at several points had Sergeant Lewis staring at him in wide-eyed amazement and despair.

'The one person who has worried me all along in this case has been Phillipson. Why? Because it's clear that the man is hiding something, and to keep things dark he's been forced to tell us lies.'

'He didn't lie about Blackwells, sir.'

'No. But I'm not worried so much about what happened on the day when Valerie disappeared. That's where we've been making our mistake. We should have been concentrating much more on what happened before she disappeared. We should have been looking into the past for some incident, some relationship, something, that gives a coherent pattern to all the rest. Because, make no mistake, there is something buried away back there in the past, and if we can find it everything will suddenly click into place. It's the key, Lewis — a key that slips easily into the lock and when it turns it's smooth and silky and — hey presto! So, let's forget for a while who saw Valerie last and what colour knickers she was wearing. Let's go back long before that. For if I'm right, if I'm right. .'

'You think you've found the key?'

Morse grew rather more serious. 'I think so, yes. I think that what we've got to reckon with in this case is power, the power that someone, by some means or other, can exercise over someone else.'

'Blackmail, you mean, sir?'

Morse paused before answering. 'It may have been; I'm not sure yet.'

'You think someone's blackmailing Phillipson, is that it?'

'Let's not rush, Lewis. Just suppose for a minute. Suppose you yourself did something shady, and no one found out. No one, that is, except for one other person. Let's say you bribed a witness, or planted false evidence or something like that. All right? If you got found out, you'd be kicked out of the force on your ear, and find yourself in jug, as likely as not. Your career would be ruined, and your family, too. You'd give a lot to keep things dark, and just let's suppose that I was the one who knew all about this, eh?'

'You'd have me by the. .' Lewis thought better of it.

'I would, indeed. But not only that. I could also do some shady things myself, couldn't I? And get you to cover up for me. It would be dangerous, but it might be necessary. I could get you to compound the original crime you'd committed, by committing another, but committing it for me, not for yourself. From then on we'd sink or swim together, I know that; but we'd be fools to split on each other, wouldn't we?'

Lewis nodded, he was getting a bit bored.

'Just think, Lewis, of the ordinary people we come across every day. They do the same sort of things we do and have the same sort of hopes and fears as everybody else. And they're not really villains at all, but some of them occasionally do things they'd be frightened to death of anyone else finding out about.'

'Pinching a bag of sugar from the supermarket — that sort of thing?' Morse laughed.

'Your mind, as always, Lewis leaps immediately to the limits of human iniquity! In the seventh circle of Dante's Hell we shall doubtless find the traitors, the mass murderers, the infant torturers, and the stealers of sugar from the supermarkets. But that's the sort of thing I mean, yes. Now just let that innocent mind of yours sink a little lower into the depths of human depravity, and tell me what you find.'

'You mean having another woman, sir?'

'How delicately you put things! Having another woman, yes. Jumping between the sheets with a luscious wench and thinking of nothing but that great lump of gristle hanging between your legs. And the little woman at home cooking a meal for you and probably pressing your pants or something. You make it all sound like having another pint of beer, Lewis; but perhaps you're right. It's not all that important in the long run. A quick blow-through, a bit of remorse and anxiety for a few days, and then it's all over. And you tell yourself you're a damned fool and you're not going to do it again. But what, Lewis, what if someone finds out?

'Bit of hard luck.' He said it in such a way that Morse looked at him curiously.

'Have you ever had another woman?'

Lewis smiled. An old memory stirred and swam to the surface of his mind like a bubble in still water. 'I daren't tell you, sir. After all, I wouldn't want you to kick me out of the force, would I?'

The phone rang and Morse answered it. 'Good. . Good. . That's good. . Excellent' Morse's half of the conversation seemed singularly unenlightening and Lewis asked him who it was. 'I'll Come to that in a minute, Lewis. Now, where were we? Oh yes. I suspect — and, if I may say so, you tend to confirm my suspicion — that adultery is more widespread than even the League of Light would have us believe. And a few unlucky ones still get caught with their pants down, and a hell of a lot of others get away with it.'

'What are you getting at, sir?'

'Simply this.' He took a deep breath and hoped it wouldn't sound too melodramatic. 'I think that Phillipson had an affair with Valerie Taylor, that's all.'

Lewis whistled softly and slowly took it in. 'What makes you think that?'

'No one reason — just lots of little reasons. And above all, the fact that it's the only thing that makes sense of the whole wretched business.'

'I think you're wrong, sir. There's an old saying, isn't there — if you'll excuse the language — about not shitting on your own doorstep. Surely it would be far too risky? Her at the school and him headmaster? I don't believe it, sir. He's not such a fool as that, surely?'

'No, I don't think he is. But as I told you, I'm trying to look back further than that, to the time, let's say, before he became headmaster.'

'But he didn't know her then. He lived in Surrey.'

'Yes. But he came to Oxford at least once, didn't he?' said Morse slowly. 'He came up here when he was interviewed for the job. And in that sense, to use your own picturesque terminology, he wouldn't exactly be shitting on his own doorstep, would he?'

'But you just can't say things like that, sir. You've got to have some evidence.'

'Yes. We shall need some evidence, you're quite right. But just forgetting the evidence for a minute, what worries me is whether it's a fact or not; and I think that we've just got to assume that it is a fact. We could get the evidence — I'm sure of that. We could get it from Phillipson himself; and I think, Lewis, that there are one or two other persons who could tell us a good deal if they had a mind to.'