"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 radier pompous and self-satisfied, and Lewis tried to bring him down to eardi.
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 somethingthat is important." He leaned back in the black leather chair and commenced an a.n.a.lysis of the case, an 142.
a.n.a.lysis 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 somediing, 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, dial 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. T think so, yes. I think dial what we"ve got to reckon with in this case is power, the power dial 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."
143.
"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 dial 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 deadi of anyone else finding out about."
"Pinching a bag of sugar from the supermarket -that sort of thing?" Morse laughed.
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Tour mind, as always, Lewis leaps immediately to the limits of human iniquity! In the seventh circle of Dante"s h.e.l.l we shall doubtless find the traitors, the ma.s.s 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 d.a.m.ned 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 145.
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 h.e.l.l of a lot of odiers 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 Phillip-son 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 s.h.i.tting 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 s.h.i.tting on his own doorstep, would he?"
146.
"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 a.s.sume 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."
"You mean, sir, that you"ve not really got any evidence yet?"
"Oh, I wouldn"t say that. One or two pointers, aren"t there?"
"Such as?"
"Well, first of all there"s Phillipson himself. You know he"s hiding something as well as I do." As was his wont, Morse bl.u.s.tered boldly through the weakest points in his argument. "He doesn"t talk about the girl in a natural way at all - not about the girl herself. It"s almost as if he"s frightened to remember her - as if he feels guilty about her in some way." Lewis seemed stolidly unimpressed, and Morse left it. "And then there"s Maguire. By the way, I saw him again yesterday."
Lewis raised his eyebrows. "Did you? Where was that?"
"I, er, thought I ought to follow your advice after all. You were quite right, you know, about the London end. One or two loose ends to tie up, weren"t there?"
Lewis opened his mouth, but got no further.
147.
"When I first saw him," continued Morse, "it was obvious that he was jealous - plain miserably jealous. I think Valerie must have dropped the odd hint; nothing too specific, perhaps. And I tackled Maguire about it again yesterday, and - well, I"m sure there was a bit of gossip, at least among some of the pupils."
Lewis continued to sit in glum silence.
"And then there was George Taylor. According to him it was just about that time - when Phillipson first came for the job, that is - that Valerie began staving out late. Again I agree, nothing definite, but another suggestive indication, wouldn"t you say?"
"To be truthful, sir, I wouldn"t. I think you"re making it all up as you"re going along."
"All right. I"ll not argue. Just have a look at this." He handed to Lewis the doc.u.ment that Baines had so carefully packaged for him. It was a photocopy of the expenses form that Phillipson had submitted to the Governors after the headship interviews. From the form it was immediately apparent that he had not reached home that evening; he had claimed for B and B at the Royal Oxford, and had arrived home at lunchtime on the following day.
"He probably missed his train," protested Lewis.
"Don"t think so," said Morse. "I"ve checked. The last of the interviews was over by a quarter to six, and there was a good train for Phillipson to catch at 8.35. And even if he"d missed that, there was another at 9.45. But he wouldn"t miss it, would he? Two and three-quarter hours to get from Kidlington to Oxford? Come off it!"
"He probably felt tired - you know how it is."
148.
"Not too tired to c.o.c.k his leg around Valerie Taylor."
"It"s just not fair to say that, sir."
"Isn"t it, now? Well, let me tell you something else, Lewis. I went to the Royal Oxford yesterday and found the old register. Do you know somediing? There is no entry for any PhiUipson that night."
"All right. He just tried to claim a few extra quid for nothing. He caught the train after all."
"I bet he wouldn"t like me to check up with his wife about that!" Morse was now regaining his momentum.
"You"ve not checked with her, then?"
"No. But I checked up on something else. I went round to the Station Hotel just opposite. Very interesting. They looked out their old register for me, and I"ll give you one guess who the last entry on the list was."
"He probably just got the names of the hotels muddled. They"re pretty near each otiier."
"Could be. But you see, Lewis, there"s no Phillipson there either. Let me show you what tiiere was, though."
He pa.s.sed over a photocopied sheet of paper and Lewis read what Morse had found: "Mr E. Phillips, 41 Longmead Road, Farnborough." He sat silendy, and then looked again at the copy of the expenses form dial Morse had given him earlier. It was certainly odd. Very, very odd.
"And," continued Morse, "I"ve checked on something else. There"s no Mr Phillips who lives in Longmead Road, Farnborough, for the very simple reason there is no Longmead Road in Farnborough."
Lewis considered the evidence. Initials? Move on one from D to E. Easy. Phillipson? Just leave off the last 149.
two letters. Could be. But something else was staring him in the face. The home address (as given on the expenses form) of Mr D. Phillipson was 14 Longmead Road, Epsom. Transpose the 1 and the 4, and move on one from E to F: Epsom to Famborough.
"I should think Peters ought to be able to give us a line on the handwriting, sir."
"We"ll leave him out of it." It sounded final.
"It"s a bit suspicious, all right," admitted Lewis. "But where does Valerie Taylor fit in? Why her?"
"It"s got to be her," said Morse. "It all adds up, don"t you see?"
"No."
"Well, let"s just a.s.sume that what I suspect is the truth. Agreed? a.s.sume, nothing more. Now, where are we? For some reason Phillipson meets Valerie, probably in Oxford, probably at the station buffet. He chats her up and - Bob"s your uncle. Off they go to the Station Hotel - a bit of a roll round the bed, and she goes off home with a few quid in her pocket. I don"t think she"d stay all night; probably a couple of hours or so - no more. It wouldn"t be easy for her to leave the hotel after midnight, would it? Not without causing a bit of comment."
"I still don"t see why it should be Valerie, though. And even if you"re right, sir, what"s it all got to do with Valerie disappearing?"
Morse nodded. Tell me, Lewis. If anyone got to know about this little bit of philandering, who do you think it would be?"
150.
Thillipson could have told his wife, I suppose. You know, he would have felt guilty about it-"
"Mm." It was Morse"s turn to display a lack of endiusiasm and Lewis tried again.
"I suppose Valerie could have told someone?"
"Who?"
"Her mum?"
"She was a bit scared of her mum, wasn"t she?"
"Her dad, then?"
"Could be."
"I suppose someone could have seen them," said Lewis slowly.
"I"m pretty sure someone did," said Morse.
"And you think you know who it was?"
Again Morse nodded. "So do you, I think."
Did he? In such situations Lewis had learned to play it cleverly. "You mean ...?" He tried to look as knowing as his utter lack of comprehension would permit, and mercifully Morse took up his cue.
"Yes. He"s the only person connected with the case who lives anywhere near there. You don"t make an excursion to the Station Hotel if you live in Kidlington, do you? Come to think of it, you don"t make an excursion to the Station Hotel wherever you live. The beer there"s b.l.o.o.d.y awful."
Lewis understood now, but wondered how on earth they"d ever managed to get this far on such a flimsy series, of hypotheses. "He found out, you think?"