Colin Dexter - Last Seen Wearing

He went in to see Strange, and the superintendent, reluctantly, agreed to stand in for him at the inquest.

He rang Lewis, and told him he had to go off to London — he mentioned nothing more — and learned that Lewis would be reporting for duty again the next morning. That is, if he was needed. And Morse said, in a rather weak voice, that he thought he probably would be.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

She'll be wearing silk pyjamas when she comes.

(Popular song)

BY ANY RECKONING Yvonne Baker was a honey. She lived alone — or to be accurate she rented a single flat — in a high-rise tenement block in Bethune Road, Stoke Newington. She would have preferred a slightly more central spot and a slightly more luxurious apartment. But from Manor House tube station in Seven Sisters Road, just ten minutes' walk away, she could be in Central London in a further twenty minutes; and anyone looking around the tasteful and expensive decor of her flat would have guessed (correctly) that, whether from money honourably earned in the cosmetic department of an exclusive store in Oxford Street, or from other unspecified sources of income, Miss Baker was a young woman of not unsubstantial means.

At half-past six she lay languorously relaxed upon her costly counterpane, idly painting her long, beautifully-manicured nails with a particularly revolting shade of sickly green varnish. She wore a peach-coloured satin dressing-gown, her legs, invitingly long and slender, drawn up to her waist, her thoughts centred on the evening ahead of her. The real trouble with pyjama parties was that some of the guests hadn't quite the courage to conform to the code, and wore enough under their nightshirts or pyjamas to defeat the whole object of the simple exercise. At least she would show them. Some of the girls would wear a bra and panties, but she wasn't going to. Oh no. She experienced a tingle of excitement at the thought of dancing with the men, and of knowing only too clearly the effect that she would have upon them. It was a gorgeous feeling anyway, wearing so little. So sensuous, so abandoned!

She finished her left hand, held it up before her like a policeman stopping the traffic, and flexed her fingers. She then poured some removing fluid on to a wad of cotton wool and proceeded to rub off all the varnish. Her hands looked better without any nail polish, she decided. She stood up, unfastened and took off her dressing-gown, and carefully lifted out of one of the wardrobe drawers a pair of palish-green pyjamas. She had a beautiful body, and like so many of her admirers she was inordinately conscious of it. She admired herself in the long wall-mirror, fastened all but the top button of her pyjama top and began to brush her long, luxuriant, honey-coloured hair. She would be collected by car at half-past seven, and she glanced again at the alarm clock on her bedside table. Three-quarters of an hour. She walked into the living room, put a record on the turntable, and lit a cigarette of quite improbable length.

The door bell rang at ten minutes to seven, and her first thought was that the alarm clock must be slow again. Well, if it was, so much the better. She walked gaily to the door and opened it with a beaming smile upon her soft, full lips, a smile which slowly contracted and finally faded away as she stared at a man she had never seen before, who stood rather woodenly upon the threshold. Middle-aged and rather sour.

'Hullo,' she managed.

'Miss Baker?' Miss Baker nodded. 'I'm Chief Inspector Morse. I'd like to come in and have a word with you, if I may.'

'Of course.' A slightly worried frown puckered the meticulously plucked eyebrows as he stood aside and closed the door behind him.

As he explained the reason for his visit, she felt that he was the only man within living memory upon whom she appeared to have no visibly erotic effect. In her pyjamas, too! He was brisk and businesslike. Two years the previous June she had shared, had she not, a room in the East Chelsea Nursing Home with a girl named Valerie Taylor? He wanted to know about this girl. Everything she could conceivably remember — every single little thing.

The door bell rang again at twenty-five past seven and Morse told her in an unexpectedly peremptory tone to get rid of him, whoever he was.

'I hope you realize I'm going out to a party tonight, Inspector.' She sounded vexed, but in reality was not so vexed as she appeared. In an odd sort of way he was beginning to interest her.

'So I see,' said Morse, eyeing the pyjamas. 'Just tell him you'll be another half-hour with me — at least.' She decided she liked his voice. 'And tell him I'll take you myself if he can't wait' She decided she'd rather like that.

Morse had already learned enough; and he knew — had known earlier, really — that what Rogers had written was true. There was now no doubt whatsoever that Valerie Taylor had somehow found her way into a London abortion clinic on the very same day on which she had disappeared. The doctor who ran the nursing home had been pleasantly co-operative, but had categorically refused to break what he termed the code of professional confidentiality by revealing the identity of the person or persons who had negotiated Miss Taylor's visit. It had amazed Morse that the affluent abortionist should have heard of, let alone practised, any code of professional confidentiality; but short of a forcible entry into his filing cabinets, the ambivalent doctor made it abundantly clear that further information was not forthcoming.

After explaining the situation to her pyjama-bottomed beau Miss Baker retired briefly to the bedroom, examined herself once more in the mirror, and wrapped her dressing-gown — not too tightly — around her. She was beginning to feel chilly.

'There was no need to worry too much about me,' said Morse. 'I'm pretty harmless with women, they say.' For the first time she smiled at him, fully and freely, and immediately Morse wished she hadn't.

'I'll take it off again if you'll turn the fire on, Inspector.' She purred the words at him, and the danger bells were ringing in his head.

'I shan't keep you much longer, Miss Baker.'

'Most people call me Yvonne.' She smiled again and lay back in the armchair. No one ever called Morse by his Christian name.

'I'll turn on the fire if you're not careful,' he said. But he didn't.

'You tell me she said she was from Oxford — not from Kidlington?'

'From where?'

'Kidlington. It's just outside Oxford.'

'Oh, is it? No. She said Oxford, I'm sure of that.'

Perhaps she would anyway, thought Morse. It did sound a bit more imposing. He had nearly finished. 'Just one last thing, and I want you to think very hard, Miss — er Yvonne. Did Miss Taylor mention to you at any stage who the father was? Or who she thought the father was?'

She laughed openly. 'You're so beautifully delicate, Inspector. But as a matter of fact she did, yes. She was quite a lass really, you know.'

'Who was it?'

'She said something about one of her teachers. I remember that because I was a bit surprised to learn she was still a schoolgirl. She looked much older than that. She seemed much more. . much more knowing somehow. She was nobody's fool, I can tell you that.'

'This teacher,' said Morse. 'Did she say anything else about him?'

'She didn't mention his name, I don't think. But she said he'd got a little beard and it tickled her every time he. . every time. . you know.'

Morse took his eyes from her and stared sadly down at the thick-piled, dark-green carpet It had been a crazy sort of day.

'She didn't say what he taught? What subject?'

She thought a moment. 'Do you know, I. . I rather think she did. I think she said he was a French teacher or something.'

He drove her into the West End, tried to forget that she was off to an open-ended orgy dressed only in the pyjamas he had eyed so lovingly in her flat, and decided that life had passed him by.