stared across at the massive peaks of the Snowdon range. 'We can't stay here for ever, I suppose,' he said at last. His hands were on the edge of the sink, and almost involuntarily he pulled open the right-hand drawer. Inside he saw a wooden-handled carving knife, new, 'Prestige, Made in England', and he was on the point of picking it up when he heard the rattle of a Yale key in the front-door lock. Swiftly he held up a finger to his mouth and drew Lewis back with him against the wall behind the kitchen door. He could see her quite clearly now, the long, blonde hair tumbling over her shoulders, as she fiddled momentarily with the inner catch, withdrew the key, and closed the door behind her.
Thinly veiled anger yet little more than mild surprise showed on her face as Morse stepped into the hallway. 'That's your car outside, I suppose.' She said it in a bleak almost contemptuous voice. 'I'd just like to know what right you think you've got to burst into my house like this!'
'You've every right to feel angry,' said Morse defencelessly, lifting up his left hand in a feeble gesture of pacification. 'I'll explain everything in a minute. I promise I will. But can I just ask you one question first? That's all I ask. Just one question. It's very important'
She looked at him curiously, as if he were slightly mad.
'You speak French, don't you?'
'Yes.' Frowning she put down her shopping basket by the door, and stood there quite still, maintaining the distance between them. 'Yes, I do speak French. What's that?'
Morse took the desperate plunge.
For a brief moment only she stared at him with blank, uncomprehending eyes, before the devastating reply slid smoothly and idiomatically from her tutored lips. '
Morse walked back into the kitchen with the air of an educationally subnormal zombie, sat down at the table, and held his head between his hands. Why had he bothered anyway? He had known already. He had known as soon as she had closed the front door and turned her face towards him — a face still blotched with ugly spots.
'Would you both like a cup of tea?' asked Mrs. Acum, as the embarrassed Lewis stepped forward sheepishly from behind the kitchen door.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The gaudy, blabbing and remorseful day
Is crept into the bosom of the sea.
(Shakespeare,
AS HE SLUMPED back in the passenger seat, Morse presented a picture of stupefied perplexity. They had left Caernarfon just after 9.00 p.m., and it would be well into the early hours before they arrived in Oxford. Each left the other to his private thoughts, thoughts that criss-crossed ceaselessly the no-man's-land of failure and futility.
The interview with Acum had been a very strange affair. Morse seemed entirely to have lost the thread of the inquiry, and his early questions had been almost embarrassingly apologetic. It had been left to Lewis to press home some of the points that Morse had earlier made, and after an initial evasiveness Acum had seemed almost glad to get it all off his chest at last. And as he did so, Lewis was left wondering where the inspector's train of thought had jumped the rails and landed in such a heap of crumpled wreckage by the track; for many of Morse's assumptions had been correct, it seemed. Almost uncannily correct.
Acum (on his own admission now) had indeed been attracted to Valerie Taylor and several times had intercourse with her; including a night in early April (not March) when his wife had returned home early one Tuesday (not Wednesday) evening from night school in Oxpens (not Headington) where she was attending art (not sewing) classes. Her teacher was down with shingles (not with flu), and the class was cancelled. It was just after eight o'clock (not a quarter to) when Mrs. Acum had returned and found them lying together across the settee (not in bed), and the upshot had been veritably volcanic, with Valerie, it seemed, by far the least confounded of that troubled trio. There followed, for Acum and his wife, a succession of bleak and barren days. It was all over between them — she insisted firmly upon that; but she agreed to stay with him until their separation could be effected with a minimum of social scandal. He himself decided he must move in any case, and applied for a job in Caernarfon; and although he had been questioned by Phillipson at some length about his motives for a seemingly meaningless move to a not particularly promising post, he had told him nothing of the truth. Literally nothing. He could only pray that Valerie would keep her mouth shut, too.
Not until about three weeks before her disappearance had he spoken personally to Valerie again, when she told him that she was expecting a baby, a baby that was probably his. She appeared (or so it seemed to Acum) completely confident and unconcerned and told him everything would be all right. She begged of him one thing only: that if she were to run away he would say nothing and know nothing — that was all; and although he had pressed her about her intentions, she would only repeat that she would be all right. Did she need any money? She told him she would let him know, but, smiling slyly as she told him, she said that she was going to be all right. Everything was 'all right'. Everything was always 'all right' with Valerie. (It was at this point in Lewis's interrogation, and only at this point, that Morse had suddenly pricked up his ears and asked a few inconsequential questions.) It appeared, however, that the money side of things was not completely 'all right', for only a week or so before the day she disappeared Valerie had approached Acum and told him she would be very grateful for some money if he could manage it. She hadn't pressed her claim on him in any way, but he had been only too glad to help; and from the little enough they had managed to save — and with his wife's full knowledge — he had raised one hundred pounds. And then she had gone; and like everyone else he hadn't the faintest idea where she had gone to, and he had kept his silence ever since, as Valerie had asked him to.
Meanwhile in the Acum household the weeping wounds were at last beginning to heal; and with Valerie gone they had tried, for the first time since that dreadful night, to discuss their sorry situation with some degree of rationality and mutual understanding. He told her that he loved her, that he realized now how very much she meant to him, and how desperately he hoped that they would stay together. She had wept then, and said she knew how disappointed he must be that she could have no children of her own. . And as the summer term drew towards its close they had decided — almost happily decided — that they would stay together, and try to patch their marriage up. In any case there had never been the slightest question of divorce: for his wife was a Roman Catholic.
So, continued Acum, they had moved together to North Wales, and life was happy enough now — or had been so until the whole thing had once more exploded in their faces with the murder of Reggie Baines, of which (he
