Last Seen Wearing

'It's not like you to back out of anything, sir.'

Morse stared morosely at the blotting paper. 'It's just not my sort of case, Lewis. I know it's not a very nice thing to say, but I just get on better when we've got a body — a body that died from unnatural causes. That's all I ask. And we haven't got a body.'

'We've got a living body,' said Lewis quietly.

Morse nodded. 'I suppose you're right.' He walked across the room and stood by the door, but Lewis remained seated at the desk. 'What's the matter, Lewis?'

'I just can't help wondering where she is, sir. You know, at this very minute she must be somewhere, and if only we knew we could just go along there and find her. Funny, isn't it? But we can't find her, and I don't like giving up. I just wish we could find her, that's all.'

Morse walked back into the room and sat down again. 'Mm. I'd not thought of it quite like that before. . I've been so cocksure she was dead that I haven't really thought of her as being alive. And you're right. She's somewhere; at this very second she's sitting somewhere.' The grey eyes were beginning to glow once more and Lewis felt happier.

'Could be quite a challenge, couldn't it, sir?'

'Ye-es. Perhaps it's not such a bad job after all — chasing a young tart like Valerie Taylor.'

'You think we should try, then?'

'I'm beginning to think we should, yes.'

'Where do we start?'

'Where the hell do you think? She's almost certainly sitting somewhere in a luxury flat plucking her eyebrows.'

'But where, sir?'

'Where? Where do you think? London, of course. What was that postmark? EC4 wasn't it? She's within a few miles' radius of EC4. Sure to be!'

'That wasn't the postmark on the second letter she wrote.'

'Second letter? Oh yes. What was the postmark on that?'

Lewis frowned slightly, 'W1. Don't you remember?'

'W1, eh? But I wouldn't worry your head about that second letter, Lewis?'

'You wouldn't?'

'No, I wouldn't bother about it at all. You see, Lewis, I wrote that second letter myself.'

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

And all the woe that moved him so

That he gave that bitter cry,

And the wild regrets, and the bloody

sweats, None knew so well as I:

For he who lives more lives than one

More deaths than one must die.

(Oscar Wilde, The Ballad of Reading Gaol)

THERE WERE OVER one hundred and twenty of them, and it was too many. Why, if each of them were given leave to speak only for a minute, that would be two hours! But anyway, Acum didn't think he wanted to say anything. The great majority of the delegates were in their forties and fifties, senior men and women who, judging from their comments and their questions, sent forth an annual stream of gifted linguists to assume their natural Oxbridge birthrights.

He had felt tired after his five-and-a-half-hours' drive the previous day, and this morning's programme, conducted in a genteel atmosphere of rarefied intellectuality, had hardly succeeded in fostering any real esprit de corps. Speaking on 'Set Texts in the Sixth Form' the Senior Tutor had given voice softly and seriously to the delicate rhythms of Racine, and Acum began to wonder if the premier universities were not growing further and further out of touch with his own particular brand of comprehensive school. His main problem in the sixth was to recruit a handful of pupils who had just about reached the minimum requirement of a grade C in O-level French, and who, in the wake of their qualified triumphs, had promptly mislaid the substance of their erstwhile knowledge during two long months of carefree summer freedom. He wondered if other schools were different; if he himself, in some way, were to blame.

Fortunately the post-lunch discussion on the merits of the Nuffield French experiment was infinitely lighter and brighter, and Acum felt slightly more at home with his co-delegates. The Senior Tutor, the rhythms of Racine still rippling along through his mind, testified evangelically to the paramount need for a formal grammatical discipline in the teaching of all languages, including modern languages. And if Racine and Moliere were not worth reading, reading with accuracy, and reading without the remotest possibility of misunderstanding arising from mistranslation — then we all might just as well forget literature and life. It sounded magnificent. And then that burly, cheerful fellow from Bradford had brought the academic argument down to earth with a magnificent thud: give him a lad or a lass with t'gumption to order t'pound of carrots at t'French greengrocer's shop, any dair! The conference exploded in glorious uproar. Slyly, a dignified old greybeard suggested that no Englishman, even one who had the good fortune to learn his native tongue in Yorkshire, had ever been confronted with an insuperable language-barrier in finding his way to a pissoir in Paris.

It was all good stuff now. The conference should have passed a vote of thanks to the burly Bradfordian and his pound of carrots. Even Acum nearly said something; and almost every other member of the silent majority nearly said something, too. There were just far too many there. Ridiculous, really. No one would notice if you were there or not. He was going out tonight, anyway. No one was going to miss him if he slipped away from the conference hall. He would be back long before the porters' lodge was shut at 11.00 p.m.