postmark. So when this tour was advertised and I saw three days would be spent in London I just decided to go, that's all. It would be good to see old England again and even if I didn't find her I could tell myself I'd just tried that little bit. So when we were there in London I asked around at several centers for rehabilitating women and I struck lucky. At one place there were about a dozen young women having a lunch together. I don't recall the name of the place but there was royal blue woodwork there and gray walls and all the pipes were bright red. It was a biggish house in a Terrace, yellowish brick and white window frames about five or ten minutes walk from Kings Cross. The only other thing I remember is that there was litter everywhere in that street there. The Warden was a wonderful guy and he mentioned my daughter's name to these girls and one of them knew her! There were a lot of street walkers and petty criminals, he called them his pros and cons, but one of them had seen my daughter Pippa a week earlier in a cafeteria somewhere near. So I left her ?10 and asked her to please tell the warden if she saw her again so that he could call me with any news. Yesterday was the last possible day we could have on the tour that was near enough to London to get up there easily, only about an hour away. Then I had a phone call yesterday from my daughter herself! I'd given the warden details of our itinerary, and the call got put straight through to my own room just before we went for lunch. So we arranged to meet in The Bronel Bar in the Great Western Hotel at Paddington at a quarter after two and I just decided to go without telling anyone in the group. I got to Paddington just after 2 o'clock right on schedule and I walked straight over to the hotel bar and got me a big whiskey because gee was I was nervous. You see, I'd never seen my own daughter before. I waited and waited and waited — until about 3 o'clock and then when the bar closed until about 4 o'clock in the lounge there. But she didn't come though I was willing and praying for any woman round forty-five or so who came in to be her, so I caught the 4.20 train back to oxford which stopped at Reading and then Didcot. I didn't see Eddie get in the train at Didcot but I know he saw me. I only know because he told me this morning, he'd not meant to say anything but his conscience was worrying him so he told me what he'd told you. I just hope the police can come nearer solving the murder if we all tell the truth even if there are a few skeletons in the cupboard. I only ask for my secret to stay a secret. But just one more thing. I asked Janet Mrs. Janet Roscoe to sigh that she saw me yesterday afternoon at one of the sessions. Please don't blame her because I just told her I'd gotten a bad headache. She is a much nicer lady than the others may think and I admire her such a lot.
Philip Aldrich
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Just a song at twilight
When the lights are low
And the flick'ring shadows
Softly come and go.
(From the English Song Book)
FOR ALL THE swiftness of his thought, Morse was quite a slow reader. And as Lewis (who had already read through the statement) watched his chief going through the same pages, he felt more than a little encouraged. It was like finding a Senior Wrangler from Cambridge unable to add seventy-seven and seventeen together without demanding pencil and paper.
'Well?' asked Morse at long last. 'What did you make of that?'
'One odd thing, sir. It's an alibi for Aldrich all right, but not really one for Stratton, is it?'
'It isn't?'
'Surely not. Aldrich didn't actually see Stratton — on the train, did he?'
'You mean Stratton might not have been on the train? Ye-es. But if so, how did he know Aldrich was on the train?'
Lewis shook his head: 'I'm thinking about it, sir.'
'But you're right, Lewis,' added Morse slowly, as he sat back and stared at the ceiling for a few seconds. 'And I'll tell you something else: he writes well!'
'Clever man, sir!'
'More literate than his daughter, I should think. Only those couple or so spelling mistakes, wasn't it?'
'Only the two I spotted,' replied Lewis, his features as impassive as those of a professional poker-player, as Morse, with a half-grin of acknowledgement, started shuffling inconsequentially through the completed questionnaires.
'Bit sad' ventured Lewis, 'about Mr. Aldrich's daughter.'
'Mm?'
'Wonder why she didn't turn up at Paddington.'
'Probably met a well-oiled sheik outside The Dorchester.'
'She'd agreed to meet him, though.'
'So he says.'
'Don't you believe him?' Lewis's eyes looked up in puzzlement. 'He can't have made up all that stuff about the army. or the train—'
'Not those bits, no.'
'But you don't believe the bits in the middle?'
'As you just said, he's a clever man. I think he went up to London, yes, but I'm not at all sure what he did there. All a bit vague, don't you think? Just as I'm not quite sure what Kemp was doing, after he left his publishers. But if they met each other, Lewis.? Interesting, don't you think?'
Lewis shook his head. It was almost invariably the same: halfway through any case Morse would be off on some improbable and complicated line of thought which would be just as readily abandoned as soon as a few more facts emerged. And, blessedly, it was facts that Morse now seemed to be concentrating on as, forgetting Aldrich for the moment, he browsed once again through the questionnaires.
