Last Seen Wearing

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 practitioners 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 pronunciation 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 that 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. Acum. Well, a little inspection of Mr. Acum'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 quantity of red ink the despairing D. Acum 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 Acum had written: 'See me immediately after the lesson.' Morse felt a shiver of excitement. 'After the lesson.' 12.30 p.m. Acum 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 Acum? Why had Acum 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: Acum 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 with twelve empty trunks.

(Harry P. Wade, American Columnist)

DOUBTLESS IN ITS heyday a fine example of neo-Georgian elegance, the sturdily 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.

The door was opened by a blowzy, middle-aged woman, a cigarette drooping from her lips and a headscarf half hiding the hair-curlers — like a caricature of the screen charlady. She seemed to eye them shrewdly, but it may have been nothing more than the effect of avoiding the smoke from her cigarette.

'Police. It's Mrs. er?'

'Gibbs. What can I do for yer?'

'Can we come in?'

She hesitated, then moved aside. The door was closed and the two men stood awkwardly in the entrance hall, where they saw neither seats nor chairs of any description, only a grandfather clock showing the correct time (10.30), an overloaded coat-rack, and an umbrella stand incongruously housing a set of ancient golf clubs. It became clear that they were not to be invited into the cosiness of any inner sanctum.

'About three weeks ago, you had a call I think from one of my colleagues — Inspector Ainley.' She considered the statement guardedly, nodded, and said nothing, 'You may have read in the papers that after he left here he was killed in a road accident.'

Mrs. Gibbs hadn't, and the lady's latent humanity stirred to the extent of a mumbled phrase of commiseration if not to the removal of the cigarette from her lips, and Morse knew that he would have to chance his arm a bit.

'He wrote, of course, a full report of his visit here and, er, I think you will have a good idea why we've called again today.'

'Nothing to do with me, is it?'

Morse seized his opportunity. 'Oh, no, Mrs. Gibbs. Nothing at all. That was quite clear from the report. But naturally we need your help, if you'll be kind enough. .'

' 'E's not 'ere. 'E's at work — if yer can call it work. Not that 'e'll be 'ere much longer, anyway. Caused me