Last Seen Wearing

(G. K. Chesterton)

'MUMMY?' ALISON MANAGED a very important frown upon her pretty little face as her mother tucked her early into bed at 8 p.m.

'Yes, darling?'

'Will the policemen be coming to see Daddy again when he gets back?'

'I don't think so, darling. Don't start worrying your little head about that.'

'He's not gone away to prison or anything like that, has he?'

'Of course he hasn't, you silly little thing! He'll be back tonight, you know that, and I'll tell him to come in and give you a big kiss — I promise.'

Alison was silent for a few moments. 'Mummy, he's not done anything wrong, has he?'

'No, you silly little thing. Of course he hasn't.'

Alison frowned again as she looked up into her mother's eyes. 'Even if he did do something wrong, he'd still be my daddy, wouldn't he?'

'Yes. He'd still be your daddy, whatever happened.'

'And we'd forgive him, wouldn't we?'

'Yes, my darling. . And you'd forgive Mummy, too, wouldn't you, if she did something wrong? Especially if. .'

'Don't worry, Mummy. God forgives everybody, doesn't he? And my teacher says that we must all try to be like him.'

Mrs. Phillipson walked slowly down the stairs, and her eyes were glazed with tears.

Morse left the Lancia at home and walked down from North Oxford to the railway station. It took him almost an hour and he wasn't at all sure why he'd decided to do it; but his head felt clear now and the unaccustomed exercise had done him good. At twenty past eight he stood outside the station buffet and looked around him. It was dark, but just across the way the street lights shone on the first few houses in Kempis Street. So close! He hadn't quite realized just how close to the railway station it was. A hundred yards? No more, certainly. Get off the train on Platform 2, cross over by the subway, hand your ticket in. . For a second or two he stood stock-still and felt the old familiar thrill that coursed along his nerves. He was catching the 8.35 train — the same train that Phillipson could have caught that fateful night so long ago. . Paddington about 9.40. Taxi. Let's see. . Yes, with a bit of luck he'd be there about 10.15.

He bought a first-class ticket and walked past the barrier on to Platform № 1, and almost immediately the loudspeaker intoned from somewhere in the station roof above: 'The train now arriving at Platform 1, is for Reading and Paddington only. Passengers for. .' But Morse wasn't listening.

He sat back comfortably and closed his eyes. Idiot! Idiot! It was all so simple really. Lewis had found the pile of books in the store-room and had sworn there'd been no dust upon the top one; and all Morse had done had been to shout his faithful sergeant's head off. Of course there had been no dust on the top book! Someone had taken a book from the top of the selfsame pile — a book that was doubtless thick with dust by then. Taken it recently, too. So very recently in fact that the book at the top of the remaining pile was virtually free from dust when Lewis had picked it up. Someone. Yes, a someone called Baines who had taken it home and studied it very hard. But not because he'd wished to forge a letter in Valerie Taylor's hand. That had been one of Morse's biggest mistakes. There was, as he had guessed the night before, a blindingly obvious answer to the question of why Baines had written the letter to Valerie's parents. The answer was that he hadn't. Mr. and Mrs. Taylor had received the letter on the Wednesday morning and had been in two minds about taking it to the police — George Taylor himself had told Morse exactly that. Why? Obviously because they couldn't decide whether it had come from Valerie or not: it might just have been a hoax. It must surely have been Mrs. Taylor who had taken it to Baines; and Baines had very sensibly taken an exercise book from the store- room and written out his own parallel version of the brief message, copying as accurately as he could the style and shape of Valerie's own lettering as he found it in the Applied Science book. And then he'd compared the letter from Valerie with his own painstaking effort, and pronounced to Mrs. Taylor that at least in his opinion the letter seemed completely genuine. That was how things must have happened. And there was something else, too. The logical corollary of all this was that Mr. and Mrs. Taylor had no idea at all about where Valerie was. For more than two years they had heard nothing whatsoever from her. And if both of them were genuinely puzzled about the letter, there seemed one further inescapable conclusion: the Taylors were completely in the clear. Go on, Morse! Keep going! With a smooth inevitability the pieces were falling into place. Keep going!

Well, if this hypothesis were correct, the overwhelming probability was that Valerie was alive and that she had written the letter herself. It was just as Peters said it was; just as Lewis said it was; just as Morse himself had said it wasn 't. Moreover, as he had learned the previous evening, there was a very interesting and suggestive piece of corroborative evidence. Acum had given it to him: Valerie was always using the expression 'all right', he'd said. And on his return Morse had checked the letter once again:

Just to let you know I'm alright so don't worry. Sorry I've not written before but I'm alright.

And Ainley (poor old Ainley!) had not only known that she was still alive; he'd actually found her — Morse felt sure of that now. Or, at the very least, he'd discovered where she could be found. Stolid, painstaking old Ainley! A bloody sight better cop than he himself would ever be. (Hadn't Strange said the same thing — right at the beginning?) Valerie could never have guessed the full extent of the hullabaloo that her disappearance had caused. After all, hundreds of young girls went missing every year. Hundreds. But had she suddenly learned of it, so long after the event? Had Ainley actually met her and told her? It seemed entirely probable now, since the very next day she had sat down and written to her parents for the very first time. That was all. Just a brief scratty little letter! And that prize clown Morse had been called in. Big stuff. Christ! What a mess, what a terribly unholy mess he'd made of everything!

They were well into the outskirts of London now, and Morse walked out to the corridor and lit a cigarette. Only one thing worried him now: the thought that had flashed across his mind as he stood outside the station buffet and looked across at Kempis Street. But he'd know soon enough now; so very soon he'd know it all.

CHAPTER FORTY

For she and I were long acquainted

And I knew all her ways.