a comprehensive set of textbooks on the
'Know anything about modern maths, Lewis?'
'Modern maths? Ha! I'm an acknowledged expert. I do all the kids' maths homework.'
'Oh.' Morse decided to puzzle his brain no more on how 23 in base 10 could be expressed in base 5, replaced the volume, and inspected the rest of Baines's library. He'd been numerate all right. But literate? Doubtful. On the whole Morse felt slightly more sympathy with Maguire's uncompromising collection.
As he stood by the shelves the grim, brutal fact of Baines's murder slowly sank into his mind. As yet it figured as an isolated issue; he'd had no chance of thinking of it in any other context. But he would be doing so soon, very soon. In fact some of the basic implications were already apparent. Or was he fooling himself again? No. It meant, for a start, that the donkey knew for certain which bundle of hay to go for, and that, at least, was one step forward. Baines must have known something. Correction. Baines must have known virtually everything. Was that the reason for his death, though? It seemed the likeliest explanation. But who had killed him? Who? From the look of things the murderer must have been known to Baines — known pretty well; must have walked into the kitchen and stood there as Baines reached inside the fridge for something. And the murderer had carried a knife — surely that was a reasonable inference? Had brought the knife into the house. But how the hell did anyone carry a knife as big as that around? Stuff it down your socks, perhaps? Unless. .
From across the room a low-pitched whistle of staggering disbelief postponed any answers that might have been forthcoming to these and similar questions. Lewis's facial expression was one of thrilled excitement mingled with pained incredulity.
'You'd better come over here straight away, sir.'
Morse himself looked down into the bottom right-hand drawer of the desk; and he felt the hairs at the nape of his neck grow stiff. A book lay in the drawer, an exercise book; an exercise book from the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School; and on the front of the exercise book a name, a most familiar name, was inscribed in capital letters: VALERIE TAYLOR: APPLIED SCIENCE. The two men looked at each other and said nothing. Finally Morse picked up the book gently, placing the top of each index finger along the spine; and as he did so, two loose sheets of paper fell out and fluttered to the floor. Morse picked them up and placed them on the desk. The sheets contained drafts of a short letter; a letter which began Dear Mum and Dad and ended Love Valerie. Several individual words were crossed out and the identical words, but with minor alterations to the lettering, written above them; and between the drafts were whole lines of individual letters, practised and slowly perfected: w's, r's, and t's. It was Lewis who broke the long silence.
'Looks as if you're not the only forger in the case, sir.' Morse made no reply. Somewhere at the back of his mind something clicked smoothly into place. So far in the case he had managed to catch a few of the half-whispers and from them half-divine the truth; but now it seemed the facts were shouting at him through a megaphone.
Baines, it was clear, had written the letter to Valerie's parents; and the evidence for Valerie being still alive was down to zero on the scale of probabilities. In one way Morse was glad; and in another he felt a deep and poignant sadness. For life was sweet, and we each of us had our own little hopes, and few of us exhibited overmuch anxiety to quit this vale of misery and tears. Valerie had a right to live. Like himself. Like Lewis. Like Baines, too, he supposed. But someone had decided that Baines had forfeited his right to live any longer and stuck a knife through him. And Morse stood silently at Baines's desk and knew that everyone expected him to discover who that someone was. And perhaps he would, too. At the rate he was going he would be able to know the truth before the day was out. Perhaps all he had to do was look through the rest of the drawers and find the whole solution neatly copied out and signed. But he hardly expected to find much else, and didn't. For the next hour he and Lewis carefully and patiently vetted the miscellaneous contents of each of the other drawers; but they found nothing more of any value or interest, except a recent photocopy of Phillipson's expenses form.
The phone stood on the top of the desk, a white phone, the same phone that had rung at lunchtime when Mrs. Webb had called a man who then lay cold and dead beside the opened fridge. And then, suddenly, Morse noticed it. It had been under his nose all the time but he had ignored it because it was an item so naturally expected: a plastic, cream-coloured rectangular telephone index-system, whereby one pressed the alphabetical letter and the index opened automatically at the appropriate place. Half expecting to find his own illustrious self recorded, Morse pressed the 'M'; but there was nothing on the ruled card. Clearly none of Baines's more intimate acquaintances boasted a surname beginning with 'M'. So Morse pressed 'N'; and again he found no entry. And 'O'; and with the same result. Probably Baines had only recently acquired the index? It looked reasonably new and maybe he had not yet transcribed the numbers from an older list. But no such list had yet been found. Morse pressed 'P', and a slight shiver ran along his spine as he saw the one entry: Phillipson, with the headmaster's Oxford telephone number neatly appended thereto. Morse continued systematically through the remainder of the alphabet. Under 'R' was the number of the Oxford branch of the RAC, but nothing more. And under 'S', the number of a Sun Insurance agent. And then 'T'; and once again the slight, involuntary shiver down the spine. Taylor. And somewhere at the back of Morse's mind something else clicked smoothly into place, 'U', 'V'—nothing, 'W', Mr. Wright, with an Oxford number: builder and decorator. On to 'X', 'Y', 'Z'—nothing. 'A'. Morse looked carefully at the card and frowned, and whistled softly. Only one entry: Acum, the personal number (not the school's) written neatly in the appropriate column. .
In all, there were fourteen entries only, most of which were as innocently explicable as the RAC and the interior decorator. And only three of the fourteen names appeared to have the slightest connection with the case: Acum, Phillipson, Taylor. Funny (wasn't it?) how the names seemed to crop up in trios. First, it had been Acum, Baines and Phillipson, and now Baines had got himself crossed off the list and another name had appeared almost magically in his place: the name of Taylor. Somewhere, yet again, in the farthest uncharted comers of Morse's mind, a little piece clicked smoothly into place.
Although the curtains had been drawn back as soon as the police arrived, the electric lights were still switched on, and Morse finally switched them off as he stood on the threshold. It was 5.30 p.m.
'What's next?' asked Lewis.
Morse pondered a while. 'Has the wife got the chips on, Lewis?'
'I 'spect so, sir. But I'm getting rather fond of dried-up chips.'
CHAPTER TWENTY
Alibi (L. alibi, elsewhere, orig. locative — alius, other); the plea in a criminal charge of having been elsewhere at the material time.
'HE'S NOT GOING to like it much.'
