Last Seen Wearing

'Did she talk about running away?'

'Not to me.'

'Who else might she have spoken to?' Maguire hesitated. 'She had another boyfriend, didn't she,' persisted Morse, 'apart from you?'

'Pete?' Maguire could relax again. 'He didn't even touch her.'

'But she might have spoken to him?' Maguire was amused, and Morse felt that his questioning had lost its impetus. 'What about her form tutor? She might have gone to her, perhaps?'

Maguire laughed openly. 'You don't understand.'

But suddenly Morse realized that he was beginning to understand, and as the dawn was slowly breaking in his mind, he leaned forward and fixed Maguire with grey eyes, hard and unblinking.

'She could have gone to the headmaster, though.' He spoke the words with quiet, taut emphasis, and the impact upon Maguire was dramatic. Morse saw the sudden flash of burning jealousy and knew that gradually, inch by inch, he was moving nearer to the truth about Valerie Taylor.

Morse took a taxi to Southampton Terrace where he found a patient Lewis awaiting him. The car was ready and they were soon heading out along the M40 towards Oxford. Morse's mind was simultaneously veering in every direction, and he lapsed into uncommunicative introversion. It wasn't until they left the three-lane motorway that he broke the long silence.

'Sorry you had such a long wait, Lewis.'

'That's all right, sir. You had a long wait, too.'

'Yes,' said Morse. He made no mention of his return to the Penthouse. He must have gone down a good deal already in his sergeant's estimation; he had certainly sunk quite low enough in his own.

It was five miles outside Oxford that Lewis exploded the minor bombshell.

'I was having a talk with Mrs. Gibbs, sir, while you were with Mr. Maguire.'

'Well?'

'I asked her why he'd been such a nuisance.'

'What did she say?'

'She told me that until recently he'd had a girl in the flat.'

'She what?

'Yes, sir. Almost a month, she said.'

'But why the hell didn't you tell me before, man? You surely realize. .?' He glared at Lewis, incredulous and exasperated, and sank back in despair behind his safety belt.

His stubborn conviction that Valerie was no longer alive would (one had thought) have been sorely tested when he looked back into his office at 8.00 p.m. Awaiting him was a report from the forensic laboratory, short and to the point.

'Sufficient similarities to warrant positive identification. Suggest that investigation proceed on firm assumption that letter was written by signatory, Miss Valerie Taylor. Please contact if detailed verification required.'

But Morse seemed far from impressed. In fact, he looked up from the report and smiled serenely. Reaching for the telephone directory, he looked up Phillipson, D. There was only one Phillipson: 'The Firs', Banbury Road, Oxford.

CHAPTER NINE

We hear, for instance, of a comprehensive school in Connecticut where teachers have three pads of coloured paper, pink, blue and green, which are handed out to pupils as authority to visit respectively the headmaster, the office or the lavatory.

(Robin Davis, The Grammar School)

SHEILA PHILLIPSON WAS absolutely delighted with her Oxford home, a four-bedroomed detached house, just below the Banbury Road roundabout. Three fully grown fir trees screened the spacious front garden from the busy main road, and the back garden, with its two old apple trees and its goldfish pond, its beautifully conditioned lawn and its neatly tended borders, was an unfailing joy. With unimaginative predictability she had christened it 'The Firs'.

Donald would be late home from school; he had a staff meeting. But it was only a cold salad, and the children had already eaten. She could relax. At a quarter to six she was sitting in a deck-chair in the back garden, her eyes closed contentedly. The evening air was warm and still. . She felt so proud of Donald; and of the children, Andrew and Alison, now contentedly watching the television. They were both doing so well at their primary school. And, of course, if they didn't really get the chances they deserved, they could always go to private schools; and Donald would probably send them there — in spite of what he'd told the parents at the last speech day. The Dragon, New College School, Oxford High, Headington — one heard such good reports. But that was all in the future. For the moment everything in the garden was lovely. She lifted her face to catch the last rays of the sloping sun and breathed in the scent of thyme and honeysuckle. Lovely. Almost too lovely, perhaps. At half-past six she heard the crunch of Donald's Rover on the drive.

Later in the evening Sheila did not recognize the man at the door, a slimly built man with a clean, sensitive mouth and wide light-grey eyes. He had a nice voice, she thought, for a police inspector.

In spite of Morse's protests that Tom and Jerry ranked as his very favourite TV programme, the children were immediately sent upstairs to bed. She was cross with herself for not having packed them off half an hour ago: toys littered the floor, and she fussily and apologetically gathered together the offending objects and took them out. On her return she found her visitor gazing with deep interest at a framed photograph of herself and her husband.

'Press photograph, isn't it?'