Part 5 (1/2)

'Mrs Webb?'

'Mrs Webb. I rang again later and asked her why she'd been eavesdropping. She denied it, of course; but I told her I'd forget all about it if she told me the truth about who had been in the headmaster's study. She was scared - for her job, I suppose. Anyway, she said that n.o.body had been in with Phillipson when I rang.'

Lewis opened his mouth to say something but Morse was already pouncing on the piles of textbooks.

'Ah, Keats. Fine poet, Keats. You should read him, Lewis ... Well, well, well. Travels with a Donkey.' He picked up a copy and began to read under the cob-webbed central light bulb.

Lewis made for the far wall of the room, where whole stacks of exercise books, used and unused, mauve, green, blue and orange, were heaped upon the shelves, some bundled neatly, but the majority in loose disarray. Lewis, as always, tackled his task with systematic thoroughness, although he doubted whether he would find anything. Fortunately, it was a good deal easier going than he had thought.

Half an hour later he found them. A pile of loose books, eight of them, each with the name Valerie Taylor inscribed in capitals on the front cover. He blew the dust off the edges and savoured his brief moment of triumph.

'I've found them, sir.'

'Well done. Leave them where they are - don't touch them.'

'I already have, I'm afraid, sir.'

'Was there any dust on the top book?'

The sweet taste of success had already turned sour. 'I don't know.'

'Give 'em here.' Morse was clearly very cross and muttered angrily under his breath.

'Pardon, sir?'

'I said I think someone else may well have been looking at these books recently. That's what I said!'

'I don't think the top book was dusty, sir. Just the edges.'

'And where's the dust on the edges?'

'I blew it off.'

You blew it off! Christ, man. We've got a murder on our hands here, and we're supposed to be investigating it - not blowing all the b.l.o.o.d.y clues away!'

He gradually calmed down, and with a silent Lewis returned to Phillipson's study. It was now 4.30 and apart from the headmaster and Mrs Webb the school was empty.

'I see you found the books.'

Morse nodded curtly, and the three men sat down once more. 'Bit of luck, really,' continued Phillipson. 'It's a wonder they weren't thrown away.'

'Where do you throw old books away?' It seemed an odd question.

'Funnily enough they get buried - down on the rubbish dump. It's a difficult job burning a whole lot of books, you know.'

'Unless you've got a fiery furnace,' said Morse slowly.

'Well, yes. But even ...”

'You've got a furnace here?'

*Yes, we have. But...'

'And that would burn just about anything, would it?'

'Yes. But as I was going ...' Again Morse cut him short.

'Would it burn a body all right?' His words hung in the air, and Lewis s.h.i.+vered involuntarily.

Phillipson's eyes were steady as he looked directly at Morse.

*Yes. It would burn a body, and it wouldn't leave much trace, either.'

Morse appeared to accept the remark without the slightest surprise or interest. 'Let's get back to these books a minute, sir, if we may. Are there any missing?'

Phillipson hadn't the remotest idea and breathed an inner sigh of relief as Baines (answering an earlier urgent summons) knocked on the study door, was ushered in and introduced.

It was immediately clear that the second master was a mine of information on all curricular queries, and within ten minutes Morse had copies of the information he required: Valerie's timetable for the summer term in which she disappeared, her homework schedule for the same period, and a list of her subject teachers. No books, it seemed, were missing. He made some complimentary remarks on Baines's efficiency, and the second master's shrewd eyes blinked with gratification.

After they had all gone Phillipson sat behind his desk and groaned inwardly. In the s.p.a.ce of one short afternoon the cloud on the horizon had grown to menacing proportions. What a b.l.o.o.d.y fool he had been!

As a husband and a father, Sergeant Lewis experienced the delights and despondencies, the difficulties and the duties of family life, and with Morse's blessing returned home at 5.45 p.m.

At the same time Morse himself, with no such responsibilities, returned to his office at Police HQ.

He was quite looking forward to his evening's work.

First he studied Valerie's timetable for each of her Tuesday mornings during that last summer term.

9.15-10.00 Environmental Studies 10.00-10.45 Applied Science 10.45-11.00 Break 11.00-11.45 Sociology 11.45-12.30 French He contemplated with supercilious disdain the academic disciplines (sub-disciplines, he would call them) which were now monopolizing the secondary school curricula. 'Environmental Studies', he doubted, was little more than a euphemism for occasional visits to the gasworks, the fire-station and the sewage installations; whilst for Sociology and Sociologists he had nothing but sour contempt, and could never discover either what was entailed in its subject matter or how its pract.i.tioners deployed their dubious talents. With such a plethora of non-subjects crowding the timetable there was no room for the traditional disciplines taught in his own day ... But French now. At least that had a bit of backbone, although he had always felt that a language which sanctioned the p.r.o.nunciation of donne, donnes and donnent without the slightest differentiation could hardly deserve to be taken seriously. Anyway, she was studying French and it was French which won the day. He consulted the homework schedule and found dial French was set on Friday evenings and (he guessed) it might be collected in and marked on the following Monday. He checked to see that French appeared on Monday's timetable. It did. And then handed back to the pupils on the Tuesday, perhaps? That is, if the teacher had remembered to set the homework and if the teacher had been conscientious enough to mark it straightaway. Who was the teacher, anyway?

He looked at the list. Mr D. Ac.u.m. Well, a little inspection of Mr Ac.u.m's discharge of duty was called for, and Morse flicked through the orange exercise book until he came to' the last entry.

He found the day, Friday, 6 June, carefully filled in and neatly underlined. He then turned his attention to Valerie's efforts, which had entailed the translation from English into French of ten short sentences. Judging, however, from the enormous quant.i.ty of red ink the despairing D.

Ac.u.m had seen fit to squander upon her versions, judging from the treble underlinings, and the pathetic 'Oh dear' written beside one particularly heinous blunder, Valerie's linguistic prowess seemed extraordinarily limited. But Morse's eye was not on the exercise itself. He had spotted it as soon as he turned to the page. Beneath the exercise Ac.u.m had written: 'See me immediately after the lesson.' Morse felt a s.h.i.+ver of excitement. 'After the lesson.' 12.30 p.m.

Ac.u.m must have been one of the very last people to have seen Valerie before she ... Before she what? He looked through his office window at the pale blue sky gradually edging into dusk - and he wondered. Had Ainley got on to Ac.u.m? Why had Ac.u.m wished to see Valerie Taylor that far-off Tuesday morning? The most likely answer, he supposed, was that Valerie would be ticked off good and proper for such disgusting work. But the simple fact remained: Ac.u.m had been one of the very last people to see Valerie alive.

Before leaving for home Morse looked once again at the short letter from Valerie and compared its handwriting with that of the exercise books. On the face of it, certainly, there seemed an undeniable similarity. But for a definitive opinion he would have to wait until the forensic experts had considered the specimens; and that would mean waiting until fairly late tomorrow evening, for he and Lewis had a trip to London in the morning. Would he believe them if their report stated categorically that the letter was written by Valerie Taylor? Yes. He would have no choice but to accept such a conclusion. But he thought he need have little worry on that score: for it was now his firm conviction that the letter had not been written by Valerie at all, but by someone who had carefully copied her writing -copied it rather too well, in fact. Further, Morse felt he knew who had copied it, although the reasons for the deception he could, at this stage, only dimly descry. Quite indubitably now, in his own mind, the case was one of wilful murder.

CHAPTER EIGHT.

Gypsy Rose Lee, the strip-tease artist, has arrived in Hollywood widr twelve empty trunks.

Harry P. Wade, American Columnist DOUBTLESS IN ITS heyday a fine example of neo-Georgian elegance, the st.u.r.dily and attractively built house was now fallen on seedier times, the stuccoed front dirty and chipped. Stuck to one of the stout pillars which flanked the peeling front door was an outdated poster announcing the arrival of Maharaj Ji, and on the other, in black figures, the number 42.