"You've every right to feel angry,' said Morse defencelessly, lifting up his left hand in a feeble gesture of pacification. I'll explain everything in a minute. I promise I will. But can I just ask you one question first? That's all I ask. Just one question. It's very important'

She looked at him curiously, as if he were slightly mad.

"You speak French, don't you?'

"Yes." Frowning she put down her shopping basket by the door, and stood there quite still, maintaining the distance between them. "Yes, I do speak French. What's that-?'

Morse took the desperate plunge. 'Avez-vous appris franfais a I'ecoleT For a brief moment only she stared at him with blank, uncomprehending eyes, before the devastating reply slid smoothly and idiomatically from her tutored lips. ' Oui. Je I'ai etudie d'abord a I'ecole et aprespendant trois ans a I'universite. Alorsje devrais parler la langue a.s.sez bien, n'est-cepasT 'Et avez-vous rencontre votre man a ExeterT 'Oui. Nous etions etudiants Id-has tous les deux. NatureUe-ment, il park franfais mieux que moi.

Mais il est a.s.sez. evident que vous parlez franfais comme un anglais typique, et votre accent est abominable.'

Morse walked back into the kitchen with the air of an educationally subnormal zombie, sat down at the table, and held his head between his hands. Why had he bothered anyway? He had known already. He had known as soon as she had closed the front door and turned her face towards him - a face still blotched with ugly spots.

'Would you both like a cup of tea?' asked Mrs Ac.u.m, as the embarra.s.sed Lewis stepped forward sheepishly from behind the kitchen door.

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN.

The gaudy, blabbing and remorseful day Is crept into the bosom of the sea.

Shakespeare, Henry IV, Part II As HE SLUMPED back in the pa.s.senger seat, Morse presented a picture of stupefied perplexity.

They had left Caernarfon just after 9.00 p.m., and it would be well into the early hours before they arrived in Oxford. Each left the other to his private thoughts, thoughts that criss-crossed ceaselessly the no-man's-land of failure and futility.

The interview with Ac.u.m had been a very strange affair. Morse seemed entirely to have lost the thread of the inquiry, and his early questions had been almost embarra.s.singly apologetic. It had been left to Lewis to press home some of the points that Morse had earlier made, and after an initial evasiveness Ac.u.m had seemed almost glad to get it all off his chest at last. And as he did so, Lewis was left wondering where the inspector's train of thought had jumped the rails and landed in such a heap of crumpled wreckage by the track; for many of Morse's a.s.sumptions had been correct, it seemed. Almost uncannily correct.

Ac.u.m (on his own admission now) had indeed been attracted to Valerie Taylor and several times had intercourse with her; including a night in early April (not March) when his wife had returned home early one Tuesday (not Wednesday) evening from night school in Oxpens (not Headington) where she was attending art (not sewing) cla.s.ses. Her teacher was down with shingles (not with flu), and the cla.s.s was cancelled. It was just after eight o'clock (not a quarter to) when Mrs Ac.u.m had returned and found them lying together across the settee (not in bed), and the upshot had been veritably volcanic, with Valerie, it seemed, by far the least confounded of that troubled trio.

There followed, for Ac.u.m and his wife, a succession of bleak and barren days. It was all over between them - she insisted firmly upon that; but she agreed to stay with him until their separation could be effected with a minimum of social scandal. He himself decided he must move in any case, and applied for a job in Caernarfon; and although he had been questioned by Phillipson at some length about his motives for a seemingly meaningless move to a not particularly promising post, he had told him nothing of the truth. Literally nothing. He could only pray dial Valerie would keep her mouth shut, too.

Not until about three weeks before her disappearance had he spoken personally to Valerie again, when she told him that she was expecting a baby, a baby that was probably his. She appeared (or so it seemed to Ac.u.m) completely confident and unconcerned and told him everything would be all right. She begged of him one thing only: that if she were to run away he would say nothing and know nothing - that was all; and although he had pressed her about her intentions, she would only repeat that she would be all right. Did she need any money? She told him she would let him know, but, smiling slyly as she told him, she said that she was going to be all right.

Everything was 'all right'. Everything was always 'all right' with Valerie. (It was at this point in Lewis's interrogation, and only at this point, that Morse had suddenly p.r.i.c.ked up his ears and asked a few inconsequential questions.) It appeared, however, that the money side of things was not completely 'all right', for only a week or so before the day she disappeared Valerie had approached Ac.u.m and told him she would be very grateful for some money if he could manage it. She hadn't pressed her claim on him in any way, but he had been only too glad to help; and from the little enough they had managed to save - and with his wife's full knowledge - he had raised one hundred pounds. And then she had gone; and like everyone else he hadn't the faintest idea where she had gone to, and he had kept his silence ever since, as Valerie had asked him to.

Meanwhile in the Ac.u.m household the weeping wounds were at last beginning to heal; and with Valerie gone they had tried, for the first time since that dreadful night, to discuss their sorry situation with some degree of rationality and mutual understanding. He told her that he loved her, that he realized now how very much she meant to him, and how desperately he hoped that they would stay together. She had wept then, and said she knew how disappointed he must be that she could have no children of her own ... And as the summer term drew towards its close they had decided - almost happily decided - that they would stay together, and try to patch their marriage up. In any case there had never been the slightest question of divorce: for his wife was a Roman Catholic.

So, continued Ac.u.m, they had moved together to North Wales, and life was happy enough now - or had been so until the whole thing had once more exploded in their faces with the murder of Reggie Baines, of which (he swore on his solemn honour) he was himself completely innocent.

Blackmail? The whole idea was laughable. The only person who had any hold on him was Valerie Taylor, and of Valerie Taylor he had seen or heard nothing whatsoever since the day of her disappearance. Whether she were alive or whether she were dead, he had no idea - no idea at all.

There the interview had finished. Or almost finished. For it was Morse himself who had administered the coup de grace which finally put his tortured and tortuous theory out of all its pain.

'Does your wife drive a car?'

Ac.u.m looked at him with mild surprise. 'No. She's never driven a yard in her life. Why?'

Lewis relived the interview as he drove on steadily through the night. And as he recalled the facts that Ac.u.m had recounted, he felt a deepening sympathy with the sour, dejected, silent figure slumped beside him, smoking (unusually) cigarette after cigarette, and feeling (if the truth be told) unconscionably angry with himself...

Why had he gone wrong? Where had he gone wrong? The questions re-echoed in Morse's mind as if repeated by some interminable interlocutor installed inside his brain. He thought back to his first a.n.a.lysis of the case -the one in which he had cast Mrs Taylor as the murderer not only of Reginald Baines but also of her daughter Valerie. How easy now to see why that was wrong! His reasoning had run aground upon the Rock Improbable and the Rock Impossible: the glaring improbability that Mrs Taylor had murdered her only daughter (mothers just didn't do that sort of thing very often, did they?); and the plain impossibility dial anyone had murdered Valerie on the day she disappeared, since three days later, alive and well, she had climbed into the back of a taxi outside a London abortion clinic. Yes, the first a.n.a.lysis had been brutally smashed to pieces by the facts, and now lay sunk without a trace beneath the sea. It was as simple as that.

And what of the second a.n.a.lysis? That had seemed on the face of it to answer all the facts, or nearly all of them. What had gone wrong with that? Again his logic had foundered upon the Reef of Unreason: the glaring improbability that Valerie Taylor had either sufficient motive or adequate opportunity to murder a man who seemed to pose little more than a peripheral threat to her future happiness; and the plain impossibility that the woman living with David Ac.u.m was Valerie Taylor.

She wasn't. She was Mrs Ac.u.m. And a.n.a.lysis One lay side by side with a.n.a.lysis Two - irrecoverable wrecks upon the ocean floor.

Almost frenetically Morse tried to wrench his thoughts away from it all. He tried to conjure up a dream of fair women; and failing this he essayed to project upon his mind a raw, uncensored film of rank eroticism; he tried so very hard ... But still the wretched earth-bound realities of the Taylor case crowded his brain, forbade those flights of half-forbidden fancies, and jolted him back to his inescapable mood of gloom-ridden despondency. Facts, facts, facts! Facts that one by one he once again reviewed as they marched and counter-marched across his mind. If only he'd stuck to the facts! Ainley was dead - that was a fact. Somebody had written a letter the very day after he died - that was a fact. Valerie had been alive on the days immediately following her disappearance - that was a fact. Baines was dead - that was a fact. Mrs Ac.u.m was Mrs Ac.u.m - that was a fact. But where did he go from there? He began to realize how few the facts had been; how very, very few. A lot of possible facts; a fair helping of probable facts; but few that ranked as positive facts. And once again the facts re- marshalled themselves and marched across the parade ground ... He shook his head sharply and felt he must be going mad.

Lewis, he could see, was concentrating hard upon the road. Lewis! Huh! It had been Lewis who had asked him the one question, the only question, that had completely floored him: Why had Baines written the letter? Why? He had never grappled satisfactorily with that question, and now it worried away at his brain again. Why? Why? Why?

It was as they swept along the old Wading Street, past Wellington, that Morse in a flash conceived a possible answer to this importunate question; an answer of astonishing and devastating simplicity. And he nursed his new little discovery like a frightened mother sheltering her only child amid the ruin of an earthquake-stricken city ... The merry-go-round was slowing now ... the pubs were long shut and the chips were long cold ... his mind was getting back to normal now ... This was better! Methodically he began to undress Miss Yvonne Baker.

Lewis had the road virtually to himself now. It was past 1.00 a.m. and the two men had not exchanged a single word. Strangely, the silence had seemed progressively to reinforce itself, and conversation now would seem as sacrilegious as a breaking of the silence before the cenotaph.

As he drove the last part of the journey his mind roved back beyond the oddly unreal events of the last few hours, and dwelt again on the early days of the Valerie Taylor case. She'd just hopped it, of course - he'd said so right at the beginning: fed up with home and school, she'd yearned for the brighter lights, the excitement and the glamour of the big city. Got shot of the unwanted baby, and finished up in a groovy, swinging set. Contented enough; even happy, perhaps. The last thing she wanted was to go back home to her moody mother and her stolid step-father. We all felt like that occasionally. We'd all like a fresh start in a new life. Like being born again ... He'd felt like running away from home when he was her age ... Concentrate, Lewis! Oxford 30 miles. He glanced at the inspector and smiled quietly to himself. The old boy was fast asleep.

They were within ten miles of Oxford when Lewis became vaguely conscious of Morse's mumbled words, muddled and indistinct; just words without coherent meaning. Yet gradually the words a.s.sumed a patterned sequence that Lewis almost understood: 'b.l.o.o.d.y photographs - wouldn't recognize her - huh! - b.l.o.o.d.y things -huh!'

'We're here, sir.' It was the first time he had spoken for more than five hours and his voice sounded unnaturally loud.

Morse shrugged himself awake and blinked around him. T must have dozed off, Lewis. Not like me, is it?'

'Would you like to drop in at my place for a cup of coffee and a bite to eat?'

'No. But thanks all the same.' He eased himself out of the car like a chronic arthritic, yawned mightily, and stretched his arms. 'We'll take tomorrow off, Lewis. Agreed? We've just about deserved it, I reckon.'

Lewis said he reckoned, too. He parked the police car, backed out his own and waved a weary farewell.

Morse entered Police HQ and made his way along the dimly lit corridor to his office, where he opened his filing cabinet and riffled through the early doc.u.ments in the Valerie Taylor case. He found it almost immediately, and as he looked down at the so familiar letter, once more his mind was sliding easily along the shining grooves. It must be. It must be!

He wondered if Lewis would ever forgive him.

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT.

And then there were two. Ten Little n.i.g.g.e.r Boys '. . . not generally appreciated. We aU normally a.s.sume that the s.e.x instinct is so obviously overriding, so primitively predominant that it must ...' Morse, newly woken and surprisingly refreshed, switched over to Radio Three; and thence to Radio Oxford. But none of the channels seemed anxious to inform him of the time of day, and he turned back to Radio Four. ' ... and above all, of course, by Freud. Let us a.s.sume, for example, that we have been marooned on a desert island for three days without food, and ask ourselves which of the bodily instincts most craves its instant gratification.' With sudden interest Morse turned up the volume: the voice was donnish, slightly effeminate. 'Let us imagine that a beautiful blonde appears with a plate of succulent steak and chips ...' Leaning over to turn the volume higher still, Morse inadvertently nudged the tuning k.n.o.b, and by the time he had re - centred the station it was clear that the beautiful blonde had lost on points. ' ... as we tuck into the steak and ..." Morse switched off.

'Shert erp, you poncy twit!' he said aloud, got out of bed, pulled on his clothes, walked downstairs and dialled the speaking clock. 'At the first stroke it will be eleven - twenty-eight - and forty seconds.' She sounded nice, and Morse wondered if she were a blonde. It was over twenty-four hours since he had eaten, but for the moment steak and chips was registering a poor third on the instinct index.

Without bothering to shave he walked round to the Fletchers' Arms where he surveyed with suspicion a pile of 'freshly cut' ham sandwiches beneath their plastic cover and ordered a gla.s.s of bitter. By 12.45 p.m. he had consumed four pints, and felt a pleasing la.s.situde pervade his limbs.

He walked slowly home and fell fully clothed into his bed. This was the life.

He felt lousy when he woke again at 5.20 p.m., and wondered if he were in the old age of youth or the youth of old age.

By 6.00 p.m. he was seated in his office, clearing up the litter from his desk. There were several messages lying there, and one by one he relegated them to an in-tray which never had been clear and never would be clear. There was one further message, on the telephone pad: 'Ring 01-787 24392'. Morse flicked through the telephone book and found that 787 was the STD code for Stoke Newington. He rang the number.

'h.e.l.lo?' The voice was heavy with s.e.x.

'Ah. Morse here. I got your message. Er, can I help?'

'Oh, Inspector,' purred the voice. 'It was yesterday I tried to get you, but never mind. I'm so glad you rang.' The words were slow and evenly s.p.a.ced. T just wondered if you wanted to see me again - you know, to make a statement or something? I wondered if you'd be coming down again ... perhaps?'

'That's very kind of you, Miss - er, Yvonne. But I think Chief Inspector Rogers will be along to see you. We shall need a statement, though - you're quite right about that.'

'Is he as nice as you are, Inspector?'

'Nowhere near,' said Morse.

'All right, whatever you say. But it would be so nice to see you again.'

'It would, indeed,' said Morse with some conviction in his voice.

'Well, I'd better say goodbye then. You didn't mind me ringing, did you?'

'No, er no, of course I didn't. It's lovely to hear your voice again.'

'Well, don't forget if you're ever this way you must call in to see me.'

'Yes, I will,' lied Morse.

'I really would love to see you again.'

'Same here.'

'You've got my address, haven't you?'

'Yes, I've got it.'

'And you'll make a note of the phone number?'

'Er, yes. Yes, I'll do that.'

'Goodbye, then, till we see each other again.' From the tone of her voice Morse guessed she must be lying there, her hands sensuously sliding along those beautiful limbs; and all he had to do was to say, yes, he'd be there! London wasn't very far away, and the night was still so young.

He pictured her as she had been on the night that he had met her, the top b.u.t.ton of the pyjama jacket already undone; and in his mind's eye his fingers gently unfastened the other b.u.t.tons, one by one, and slowly drew the sides apart. 'Goodbye,' he said sadly.

He walked to the canteen and ordered black coffee.

'I thought you were taking the day off,' said a voice behind him.

'You must love this b.l.o.o.d.y place, Lewis!'

'I rang up. They said you were here.'

'Couldn't you stick it at home?'

'No. The missus says I get under her feet.'

They sat down together, and it was Lewis who put their thoughts into words. 'Where do we go from here, sir?'

Morse shook his head dubiously. 'I don't know.'

'Will you tell me one thing?'

'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?'