Colin Dexter - Last Seen Wearing

'If I can.'

'Have you any idea at all about who killed Baines?'

Idly Morse stirred the strong black coffee. 'Have you?'

'The real trouble is we seem to be eliminating all the suspects. Not many left, are there?'

'We're not beaten yet,' said Morse with a sudden and unexpected lift of spirits. 'We got a bit lost in the winding mazes, and we still can't see the end of the road, but. .' He broke off and stared through the window. In a sudden gust of wind a shower of leaves rained down from the thinning trees.

'But what, sir?'

'Somebody once said that the end is the beginning, Lewis.'

'Not a particularly helpful thing to say, was it?'

'Ah, but I think it was. You see, we know what the beginning was.'

'Do we?'

'Oh yes. We know that Phillipson met Valerie Taylor one night, and we know that when he was appointed headmaster he discovered that she was one of his own pupils. That was where it all began, and that's where we've got to look now. There's nowhere else to look.'

'You mean. . Phillipson?'

'Or Mrs. Phillipson.'

'You don't think—'

'I don't think it matters much which of them you go for. They had the same motive; they had the same opportunity.'

'How do we set about it?'

'How do you set about it, you mean. I'm leaving it to you, Lewis.'

'Oh.'

'Want a bit of advice?' Morse smiled weakly. 'Bit of a cheek, isn't it, me giving you advice?'

'Of course I want your advice,' said Lewis quietly. 'We both know that.'

'All right. Here's a riddle for you. You look for a leaf in the forest, and you look for a corpse on the battle-field. Right? Where do you look for a knife?'

'An ironmonger's shop?'

'No, not a new knife. A knife that's been used — used continuously; used so much that the blade is wearing away.'

'A butcher's shop?'

'Warmer. But we haven't got a butcher in the case, have we?'

'A kitchen?'

'Ah! Which kitchen?'

'Phillipson's kitchen?'

'They'd only have one knife. It would be missed, wouldn't it?'

'Perhaps it was missed.'

'I don't think so, somehow, though you'll have to check. No, we need to find a place where knives are in daily use; a lot of knives; a place where no one would notice the loss of a single knife; a place at the very heart of the case. Come on, Lewis! Lots of people cutting up spuds and carrots and meat and everything. .'

'The canteen at the Roger Bacon School,' said Lewis slowly.

Morse nodded. 'It's an idea, isn't it?'

'Ye-es.' Lewis pondered for a while and nodded his agreement. 'But you say you want me to look into all this? What about you?'

'I'm going to look into the only other angle we've got left.'

'What's that?'

'I've told you. The secret of this case is locked away in the beginning: Phillipson and Valerie Taylor. You've got one half; I've got the other.'

'You mean. .?' Lewis had no idea what he meant.

Morse stood up. 'Yep. You have a go at the Phillipsons. I shall have to find Valerie.' He looked down at Lewis and grinned disarmingly. 'Where do you suggest I ought to start looking?'

Lewis stood up, too. 'I've always thought she was in London, sir. You know that. I think she just. .'

But Morse was no longer listening. He felt the icy fingers running along his spine, and there was a sudden wild elation in the pale-grey eyes. 'Why not, Lewis? Why not?'

He walked back to his office, and dialled the number immediately. After all, she had invited him, hadn't she?

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

The only way of catching a train I ever discovered is to miss the one before.

(G. K. Chesterton)

'MUMMY?' ALISON MANAGED a very important frown upon her pretty little face as her mother tucked her early into bed at 8 p.m.

'Yes, darling?'

'Will the policemen be coming to see Daddy again when he gets back?'

'I don't think so, darling. Don't start worrying your little head about that.'

'He's not gone away to prison or anything like that, has he?'

'Of course he hasn't, you silly little thing! He'll be back tonight, you know that, and I'll tell him to come in and give you a big kiss — I promise.'

Alison was silent for a few moments. 'Mummy, he's not done anything wrong, has he?'

'No, you silly little thing. Of course he hasn't.'

Alison frowned again as she looked up into her mother's eyes. 'Even if he did do something wrong, he'd still be my daddy, wouldn't he?'

'Yes. He'd still be your daddy, whatever happened.'

'And we'd forgive him, wouldn't we?'

'Yes, my darling. . And you'd forgive Mummy, too, wouldn't you, if she did something wrong? Especially if. .'

'Don't worry, Mummy. God forgives everybody, doesn't he? And my teacher says that we must all try to be like him.'

Mrs. Phillipson walked slowly down the stairs, and her eyes were glazed with tears.

Morse left the Lancia at home and walked down from North Oxford to the railway station. It took him almost an hour and he wasn't at all sure why he'd decided to do it; but his head felt clear now and the unaccustomed exercise had done him good. At twenty past eight he stood outside the station buffet and looked around him. It was dark, but just across the way the street lights shone on the first few houses in Kempis Street. So close! He hadn't quite realized just how close to the railway station it was. A hundred yards? No more, certainly. Get off the train on Platform 2, cross over by the subway, hand your ticket in. . For a second or two he stood stock-still and felt the old familiar thrill that coursed along his nerves. He was catching the 8.35 train — the same train that Phillipson could have caught that fateful night so long ago. . Paddington about 9.40. Taxi. Let's see. . Yes, with a bit of luck he'd be there about 10.15.

He bought a first-class ticket and walked past the barrier on to Platform № 1, and almost immediately the loudspeaker intoned from somewhere in the station roof above: 'The train now arriving at Platform 1, is for Reading and Paddington only. Passengers for. .' But Morse wasn't listening.

He sat back comfortably and closed his eyes. Idiot! Idiot! It was all so simple really. Lewis had found the pile of books in the store-room and had sworn there'd been no dust upon the top one; and all Morse had done had been to shout his faithful sergeant's head off. Of course there had been no dust on the top book! Someone had taken a book from the top of the selfsame pile — a book that was doubtless thick with dust by then. Taken it recently, too. So very recently in fact that the book at the top of the remaining pile was virtually free from dust when Lewis had picked it up. Someone. Yes, a someone called Baines who had taken it home and studied it very hard. But not because he'd wished to forge a letter in Valerie Taylor's hand. That had been one of Morse's biggest mistakes. There was, as he had guessed the night before, a blindingly obvious answer to the question of why Baines had written the letter to Valerie's parents. The answer was that he hadn't. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor had received the letter on the Wednesday morning and had been in two minds about taking it to the police — George Taylor himself had told Morse exactly that. Why? Obviously because they couldn't decide whether it had come from Valerie or not: it might just have been a hoax. It must surely have been Mrs. Taylor who had taken it to Baines; and Baines had very sensibly taken an exercise book from the store-room and written out his own parallel version of the brief message, copying as accurately as he could the style and shape of Valerie's own lettering as he found it in the Applied Science book. And then he'd compared the letter from Valerie with his own painstaking effort, and pronounced to Mrs. Taylor that at least in his opinion the letter seemed completely genuine. That was how things must have happened. And there was something else, too. The logical corollary of all this was that Mr. and Mrs. Taylor had no idea at all about where Valerie was. For more than two years they had heard nothing whatsoever from her. And if both of them were genuinely puzzled about the letter, there seemed one further inescapable conclusion: the Taylors were completely in the clear. Go on, Morse! Keep going! With a smooth inevitability the pieces were falling into place. Keep going!