Part 19 (2/2)

'Now,' continued Morse, 'we surely come to the central point, and one that you gloss over rather too lightly, if I may say so.' Lewis looked stolidly at the counterpane, but made no interruption.

'It's this. What could possibly have been the motive that led Mrs Taylor to murder Valerie?

Valerie! Her only daughter! You say that Valerie was pregnant, and although it isn't firmly established, I think the overwhelming probability is that she was pregnant; perhaps she had told her mother about it. But there's another possibility, and one that makes the whole situation far more sinister and disturbing. It isn't easy, I should imagine, for a daughter to hide a pregnancy from her mother for too long, and I think on balance it may well have been Mrs Taylor who accused Valerie of being pregnant - rather than Valerie who told her mother. But whichever way round it was, it surely can't add up to a sufficient motive for murdering the girl. It would be bad enough, I agree. The neighbours would gossip and everyone at school would have to know, and then there'd be the uncles and aunts and all the rest of 'em.

But it's hardly a rare thing these days to have an unmarried mother in the family, is it? It could have happened as you say it did, but I get the feeling that Valerie's pregnancy had been known to Mrs Taylor for several weeks before the day she was murdered. And I think that on that Tuesday lunchtime Mrs Taylor tackled her daughter - she may have tackled her several times before - on a question which was infinitely more important to her than whether her daughter was pregnant or not. A question which was beginning to send her out of her mind; for she had her own dark and terrifying suspicions which would give her no rest, which poisoned her mind day and night, and which she had to settle one way or the other. And that question was this: who was the father of Valerie's baby? To begin with I automatically a.s.sumed that Valerie was a girl of pretty loose morals who would jump into bed at the slightest provocation with some of her randy boyfriends.

But I think I was wrong. I ought to have seen through Maguire's s.e.xual boastings straight away.

He may have put his dirty fingers up her skirt once or twice, but I doubt that he or any of the other boys did much more. No. I should think that Valerie got an itch in her knickers as often - more often perhaps - than most young girls. But the indications all along the line were that her own particular weakness was for older men. Men about your age, Lewis.' 'And yours,' said Lewis.

But the mood in the quiet bedroom was sombre, and neither man seemed much amused. Morse drained his whisky and smacked his lips.

'Well, Lewis? What do you think?'

”You mean Phillipson, I suppose, sir?'

'Could have been, but I doubt it. I think he'd learned his lesson.'

Lewis thought for a moment and frowned deeply. Was it possible? Would it tie in with the other business? 'Surely you don't mean Baines, do you, sir? She must have been willing to go to bed with anyone if she let Baines ...' He broke off. How sickening it all was!

Morse brooded a while, and stared through the bedroom window. 'I thought of it, of course. But I think you're right. At least I don't think she would have gone to bed willingly with Baines. And yet, you know, Lewis, it would explain a great many things if it was Baines.'

'I thought you had the idea that he was seeing Mrs Taylor - not Valerie.'

'I think he was,' said Morse. 'But, as I say, I don't think it was Baines.' He was speaking more slowly now, almost as if he were working through some new equation which had suddenly flashed across his mind; some new problem that challenged to some extent the validity of the case he was presenting. But reluctantly he put it aside, and resumed the main thread of his argument. 'Try again, Lewis.'

It was like backing horses. Lewis had backed the favourite, Phillipson, and lost; he'd then chosen an outsider, an outsider at least with a bit of form behind him, and lost again. There weren't many other horses in the race. ”You've got the advantage over me, sir. You went to see Ac.u.m yesterday. Don't you think you ought to tell me about it?'

'Leave Ac.u.m out of it for the minute,' said Morse flatly.

So Lewis reviewed the field again. There was only one other possibility, and he was surely a non-starter. Surely. Morse couldn't seriously ... ”You don't mean ... you can't mean you think it was ...

George Taylor?'

'I'm afraid I do, Lewis, and we'd both belter get used to the grisly idea as quickly as we can. It's not pleasant, I know; but it's not so bad as it might be. After all, he's not her natural father, as far as we know, and so we're not fis.h.i.+ng around in them murky waters of genuine incest or anything like that. Valerie would have known perfectly well that George wasn't her real father. They all lived together, and became as intimate as any other family. But intimate with one vital difference. Valerie grew into a young girl, and her looks and her figure developed, and she was not his daughter. I don't know what happened. What I do know is that we can begin to see one overwhelming motive for Mrs Taylor murdering her own daughter: the suspicion, gradually edging into a terrible certainty, that her only daughter was expecting a baby and that the father of that baby was her own husband. I think that on that Tuesday Mrs Taylor accused her daughter of precisely that.'

'It's a terrible thing,' said Lewis slowly, 'but perhaps we shouldn't be too hard on her.'

'I don't feel hard on anybody,' rejoined Morse. 'In fact, I feel some sympathy for the wretched woman.

Who wouldn't? But if all this is true, you can see what the likely train of events is. When George Taylor arrives home he's caught up in it all. Like a fly in a spider's web. His wife knows. It's no good him trying to wash his hands of the whole affair: he's the cause of it all. So, he goes along with her. What else can he do? What's more, he's in a position, the remarkably fortunate position, of being able to dispose, without suspicion and without too much trouble, of virtually anything, including a body. And I don't mean in the reservoir. George works at a place where vast volumes of rubbish and waste are piled high every day, and the same day buried without trace below the ground. And don't forget that Taylor was a man who had worked on road construction - driving a bulldozer. If he arrives at work half an hour early, what's to stop him using the bulldozer that's standing all ready, with the keys invitingly hung up for him on a nail in the shack?

Nothing. Who would know? Who would care? No, Lewis. I don't think they put her into the reservoir. I think she lies buried out there on the rubbish dump.' Morse stopped for a second or two, and visualized the course of events anew.

'I think that Valerie must have been put into a sack or some sort of rubbish bag, and consigned for the long night to the boot of Taylor's old Morris. And in the morning he drove off early, and dumped her there, amid all the other mouldering rubbish; and he started up the bulldozer and buried her under the mounds of soil dial stood ready at the sides of the tip. That's about it, Lewis.

I'm very much afraid dial's just about what happened. I should have been suspicious before, especially about the police not being called in until the next morning.' '

'Do you think they'll find her body after all this time?'

'I should think so. It'll be a horribly messy business -but I should think so. The surveyor's department will know roughly which parts of the tip were levelled when and where, and I think we shall find her. Poor kid!'

'They put the police to a h.e.l.l of a lot of trouble, didn't they?'

Morse nodded. 'It must have taken some guts to carry it through the way they did, I agree. But when you've committed a murder and got rid of the body, it might not have been so difficult as you think.'

A stray thought had been worrying Lewis as Morse had expounded his views of the way things must have happened.

'Do you think Ainley was getting near the truth?'

'I don't know,' said Morse. 'He might have had all sorts of strange ideas before he'd finished. But whether he got a scent of the truth or not doesn't really matter. What matters is that other people thought he was getting near the truth.'

'Where do you think the letter fits in, sir?'

Morse looked away. ”Yes, the letter. Remember the letter was probably posted before whoever sent it knew that Ainley was dead. I thought at the time that the whole point of it was to concentrate police attention away from the scene of the crime and on to London; and it seemed a possibility that the Taylors had cooked it up themselves because they thought Ainley was coming a bit too close for comfort.'

'But you don't think so now?'

'No. Like you, I think we've got to accept the evidence that it was almost certainly written by Baines.'

'Any idea why he wrote it?'

'I think I have, although-'

The front door bell rang in mid-sentence, and almost immediately Mrs Lewis appeared with the doctor. Morse shook hands with him and got up to go.

'There's no need for you to go. Shan't be with him long.'

'No, I'll be off,' said Morse. I'll call back this afternoon, Lewis.'

He let himself out and drove back to the police HQ at Kidlington. He sat in his black leather chair and looked mournfully at his in-tray. He would have to catch up with his correspondence very soon. But not today. Perhaps he had been glad of the interruption in Lewis's bedroom, for there were several small points in his reconstruction of the case which needed further cerebration. The truth was that Morse felt a little worried.

CHAPTER THIRTY.

Money often costs too much. Ralph Waldo Emerson FOR THE NEXT hour he sat, without interruption, without a single telephone call, and thought it all through, beginning with the question that Lewis had put to him: why had Baines written the letter to the Taylors? At twelve noon, he rose from his chair, walked along the corridor and knocked at the office of Superintendent Strange.

<script>