Last Seen Wearing (19 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

For having considered God and himself he will consider his neighbour.

(Christopher Smart,
My Cat Jeffrey)

D
ETECTIVE CONSTABLE DICKSON
soon realized he was on to something and he felt as secretly excited as the poor woman was visibly nervous. It was the sixth house he had visited, a house on the opposite side of the street from Baines's and nearer the main road.

   'You know, madam, that Mr. Baines across the way was murdered on Monday night?' Mrs. Thomas nodded quickly. 'Er, did you know Mr. Baines?'

   'Yes, I did. He's lived in the street nearly as long as I have.'

   'I'm, er . . . we're, er, obviously anxious to find any witness who might have seen someone going into Baines's house that night—or coming out, of course.' Dickson left it at that and looked at her hopefully.

   In her late sixties now, scraggy-necked and flat-chested, Mrs. Thomas was a widow who measured her own life's joy by the health and happiness of her white cat, which playfully and lovingly gyrated in undulating spirals around her lower leg as she stood on the threshold of her home. And as she stood there she was almost glad that this young police officer had called, for she
had
seen something; and several times the previous evening and again this Wednesday morning she had decided she ought to report it to someone. It would have been so easy in the first exciting hours when policemen had been everywhere; later, too, when they had come and placed their no-parking signs, like witches' hats, around the front of the house. Yet it was all so hazy in her mind. More than once she wondered if she could have imagined it, and she would die of shame if she were to put the police to any trouble for no cause. It had always been like that for Mrs. Thomas; she had hidden herself unobtrusively away in the corners of life and seldom ventured forth.

   But, yes; she had seen something.

   Her life was fairly orderly, if nothing else, and each evening of the week, between 9.30 and 10.00 p.m., she put out the two milk bottles and the two Co-op tokens on the front doorstep before bolting the door securely, making herself a cup of cocoa, watching the News at Ten, and going to bed. And on Monday evening she had seen something. If only at the time she had thought it might be important! Unusual, certainly, but only afterwards had she realized exactly how unusual it had been: for never had she seen a woman knocking at Baines's door before. Had the woman gone in? Mrs. Thomas didn't think so, but she vaguely remembered that the light was burning in Baines's front room behind the faded yellow curtains. The truth was that it had all become so very frightening to her. Had the woman she had seen been the one who . . .? Had she actually seen the . . . murderer? The very thought of it caused her to shiver throughout her narrow frame. Oh God, please not! Such a thing should never be allowed to happen to her—to her of all people. And as the panic rose within her, she again began to wonder if she'd dreamed it after all.

   The whole thing was too frightening, especially since there was one thing that she knew might be very important. Very important indeed. 'You'd better come in, officer,' she said.

In the early afternoon she felt far less at ease than she had done with the constable. The man sitting opposite her in the black leather chair was pleasant enough, charming even; but his eyes were keen and hard, and there was a restless energy about his questions.

   'Can you describe her, Mrs. Thomas? Anything special about her—anything at all?'

   'It was just the coat I noticed—nothing else. I told the constable . . .'

   'Yes, I know you did; but tell me. Tell me, Mrs. Thomas.'

   'Well, that's all really—it was pink, just like I told the constable.'

   'You're quite sure about that?'

   She swallowed hard. Once more she was assailed by doubts from every quarter. She thought she was sure; she was sure, really, but could she just conceivably be wrong?

   'I'm—I'm fairly sure.'

   'What sort of pink?'

   'Well, sort of . . .' The vision was fading rapidly now, had almost gone.

   'Come on!' snapped Morse. 'You know what I mean. Fuchsia? Cyclamen? Er, lilac?' He was running out of shades of pink and received no help from Mrs. Thomas. 'Light pink? Dark pink?'

   'It was a fairly bright sort of . . .'

   'Yes?'

   It was no good, though; and Morse changed his tack and changed it again and again. Hair, height, dress, shoes, handbag—on and on. He kept it up for more than twenty minutes. But try as she might Mrs. Thomas was now quite incapable of raising any mental image whatsoever of Baines's late-night caller. Suddenly she knew that she was going to burst into tears, and she wanted desperately to go home. And just as suddenly it all changed.

   'Tell me about your cat, Mrs. Thomas.'

   How he knew she had a cat, she hadn't the faintest idea, but the tension drained away from her like the pus from an abscess lanced by the dentist. She told him happily about her blue-eyed cat.

   'You know,' said Morse, 'one of the most significant physical facts about the cat is so obvious that we often tend to forget it. A cat's face is flat between the eyes and so the eyes can work together. Stereoscopic vision they call it. Now, this is very rare among animals. You just think. The majority of animals have . . .' He went on for several minutes and Mrs. Thomas was enthralled. But more than that; she was excited. It was all so clear again and she interrupted his discourse on the facial structure of the dog and told him all about it. Cerise pink coat—it might have been a herring-bone pattern, no hat, medium height, brownish hair. About ten minutes to ten. She was pretty certain about the time because . . .

   She left soon afterwards, happy and relieved, and a nice policeman saw her safely back to her own cosy front parlour, where the short-haired white cat lay indolently upon the sofa, momentarily opening the mysterious, stereoscopic eyes to greet his mistress's return.

Cerise.
Morse got up and consulted the OED. 'A light, bright, clear red, like the colour of cherries.' Yes, that was it. For the next five minutes he stared vacantly through the window in the pose of Rodin's Aristotle; and at the end of that time he lifted his eyebrows slightly and nodded slowly to himself. It was time to get moving. He knew a coat like that, although he'd only seen it once—the colour of bright-pink cherries in the summer time.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

'Is there anybody there?' said the Traveller

Knocking on the moonlit door.

(Walter de la Mare,
The Listeners)

W
ITHIN THE PHILLIPSON
family the financial arrangements were a matter of clear demarcation. Mrs. Phillipson herself had a small private income accruing from interest received on her late mother's estate. This account she kept strictly separate from all other monies; and although her husband had known the value of the original capital inheritance, he had no more idea of his wife's annual income than she did of her husband's private means. For Phillipson himself also had a private account, in which he accumulated a not negligible annual sum from his examining duties with one of the national boards, from royalties on a moderately successful textbook, written five years previously, on nineteenth-century Britain, and from various incidental perks associated with his headship. In addition to these incomes there was, of course, Phillipson's monthly salary as a headmaster, and this was administered in a joint account on which both drew cash and wrote cheques for the normal items of household expenditure. The system worked admirably, and since by any standards the family was well-to-do, financial bickering had never blighted the Phillipsons' marriage; in fact financial matters had never caused the slightest concern to either party. Or had not done so until recently.

   Phillipson kept his cheque book, his bank statements and all his financial correspondence in the top drawer of the bureau in the lounge, and he kept it locked. And in normal circumstances Mrs. Phillipson would no more have dreamed of looking through this drawer than of opening the private and confidential letters which came through the letter-box week after week from the examination board. It was none of her business, and she was perfectly happy to keep it that way—in normal circumstances. But circumstances had been far from normal these last two weeks, and she had not lived with Donald for over twelve years without coming to know his moods and his anxieties. For she slept beside him every night and he was her husband, and she knew him. She knew with virtual certainty that whatever had lain so heavily upon his mind these last few days was neither the school, nor the inspector whose visit had been so strangely upsetting, nor even the ghost of Valerie Taylor that flitted perpetually across the twilit zone of his subconscious fears. It was a man. A man she had come to think of as wholly evil and wholly malignant. It was Baines.

   No specific incident had led her to open her husband's drawer and to examine the papers within; it was more an aggregation of many minor incidents which had driven her lively imagination to the terminus—a terminus which the facts themselves may never have reached, but towards which (as she fearfully foresaw their implications) they seemed inevitably to be heading. Did he know that she had her own key to the drawer? Surely not. For otherwise, if there was something he was anxious to hide, he would have kept the guilty evidence at school and not at home. And she
had
looked—only last week, and many things were now so frighteningly clear. Assuredly she had heard the warning voices, and yet had looked and now could guess the truth: her husband was being blackmailed. And strangely enough she found that she could face the truth: it mattered less to her than she had dared to hope. But one thing was utterly certain. Never would she tell a living soul—never, never, never! She was his wife and she loved him, and would go on loving him. And if possible she would protect him; to the last ounce of her energy, to the last drop of her blood. She might even be able to do something. Yes, she might even be able to
do
something . . .

She seemed neither surprised nor dismayed to see him, for she had learned a great deal about herself the past few days. Not only was it better to face up to life's problems than to run away from them or desperately to pretend they didn't exist; it seemed far easier, too.

   'Can we talk?' asked Morse.

   She took his coat and hung it on the hall-stand behind the front door, beside an expensive-looking winter coat, the colour of ripening cherries.

   They sat in the lounge, and Morse again noticed the photograph above the heavy mahogany bureau.

   'Well, Inspector? How can I help you?'

   'Don't you know?' replied Morse quietly.

   'I'm afraid not.' She gave a little laugh and the hint of a smile played at the corners of her mouth. She spoke carefully, almost like a self-conscious teacher of elocution, the 'd' and the 't' articulated separately and distinctly.

   'I think you do, Mrs. Phillipson, and it's going to be easier for both of us if you're honest with me from the start because believe me, my love, you're going to be honest with me before we've finished.'

   The niceties were gone already, the words direct and challenging, the easy familiarity almost frightening. As if she were looking in on herself from the outside, she wondered what her chances were against him. It depended, of course, on what he knew. But surely there was nothing he
could
know?

   'What am I supposed to be honest about?'

   'Can't we keep this between ourselves, Mrs. Phillipson? That's why I've called now, you see, while your husband's still at school.'

   He noted the first glint of anxiety in the light-brown eyes; but she remained silent, and he continued. 'If you're in the clear, Mrs. Phillipson—' He had repeated her name with almost every question, and she felt uncomfortable. It was like the repeated blows of a battering ram against a beleaguered city.

  
'In the clear ?
What
are
you talking about?'

   'I think you called at Mr. Baines's house on Monday night, Mrs. Phillipson.' The tone of his voice was ominously calm, but she only shook her head in semi-humorous disbelief.

   'You can't really be serious, can you, Inspector?'

   'I'm always serious when I'm investigating murder.'

   You don't think—you can't think that I had anything to do with
that?
On Monday night? Why, I hardly knew the man.'

   'I'm not interested in how well you knew him.' It seemed an odd remark and her eyebrows contracted to a frown.

   'What are you interested in?'

   'I've told you, Mrs. Phillipson.'

   'Look, Inspector. I think it's about time you told me exactly why you're here. If you've got something you want to say to me, please say it. If you haven't . . .'

   Morse, in a muted way, admired her spirited performance. But he had just reminded Mrs. Phillipson, and now he reminded himself: he was investigating murder.

   When he spoke again his words were casual, intimate almost. 'Did you like Mr. Baines?'

   Her mouth opened as if to speak and, as suddenly, closed again; and whatever doubts had begun to creep into Morse's mind were now completely removed.

   'I didn't know him very well. I just told you that.' It was the best answer she could find, and it wasn't very good.

   'Where were you on Monday evening, Mrs. Phillipson?'

   'I was here of course. I'm almost always here.'

   'What time did you go out?'

   'Inspector! I just told—'

   'Did you leave the children on their own?'

   'Of course I didn't—I mean I wouldn't. I could never—'

   'What time did you get back?'

   'Back? Back from where?'

   'Before your husband?'

   'My husband was out—that's what I'm telling you. He went to the theatre, the Playhouse—'

   'He sat in row M seat 14.'

   'If you say so, all right. But he wasn't home until about eleven.'

   'Ten to, according to him.'

   'All right, ten to eleven. What does—'

   'You haven't answered my question, Mrs. Phillipson.'

   'What question?'

   'I asked you what time you got home, not your husband.' His questions were flung at her now with breakneck rapidity.

   'You don't think I would go out and leave—'

   'Go out? Where to, Mrs. Phillipson? Did you go on the bus?'

   'I didn't go anywhere. Can't you understand that? How could I possibly go out and leave—'

   Morse interrupted her again. She was beginning to crack, he knew that; her voice was high-pitched now amidst the elocutionary wreckage.

   'All right—you didn't leave your children alone—I believe you—you love your children—of course you do—it would be illegal to leave them on their own—how old are they?'

   Again she opened her mouth to speak, but he pushed relentlessly, remorselessly on.

   'Have you heard of a baby-sitter, Mrs. Phillipson?—somebody who comes in and looks after your children while you go out—do you hear me?—while you go out—do you want me to find out who it was?—or do you want to tell me?—I could soon find out, of course—friends, neighbours—do you want me to find out, Mrs. Phillipson?—do you want me to go and knock next door?—and the door next to that?—of course, you don't, do you? You know, you're not being very sensible about this, are you, Mrs. Phillipson?' (He was speaking more slowly and calmly now.) 'You see, I
know
what happened on Monday night. Someone saw you, Mrs. Phillipson; someone saw you in Kempis Street. And if you'd like to tell me why you were there and what you did, it would save a lot of time and trouble. But if you won't tell me, then I shall have to—'

   Of a sudden she almost shrieked as the incessant flow of words began to overwhelm her. 'I told you! I don't know what you're talking about! You don't seem to understand that, do you?
I just don't know what you're talking about?

   Morse sat back in the armchair, relaxed and unconcerned. He looked about him, and once more fastened his gaze on the photograph of the headmaster and his wife above the large bureau. And then he looked at his wristwatch.

   'What time do the children get home?' His tone was suddenly friendly and quiet, and Mrs. Phillipson felt the panic welling up within her. She looked at her own wristwatch and her voice was shaking as she answered him.

   'They'll be home at four o'clock.'

   'That gives us an hour, doesn't it, Mrs. Phillipson. I think that's long enough—my car's outside. You'd better put your coat on—the pink one, if you will.'

   He rose from the armchair, and fastened the front buttons of his jacket. I'll see that your husband knows if . . .' He took a few steps towards the door, but she laid her hand upon him as he moved past her.

   'Sit down, please, Inspector,' she said quietly.

   She had gone (she said). That was all, really. It was like suddenly deciding to write a letter or to ring the dentist or to buy some restorer for the paint brushes encrusted stiff with last year's gloss. She asked Mrs. Cooper next door to baby-sit, said she'd be no longer than an hour at the very latest, and caught the 9.20 p.m. bus from the stop immediately outside the house. She got off at Cornmarket, walked quickly through Gloucester Green and reached Kempis Street by about quarter to ten. The light was shining in Baines's front window—she had never been there before—and she summoned up all her courage and knocked on the front door. There was no reply. Again she knocked—and again there was no reply. She then walked along to the lighted window and tapped upon it hesitantly and quietly with the back of her hand; but she could hear no sound and could make out no movement behind the cheap yellow curtains. She hurried back to the front door, feeling as guilty as a young schoolgirl caught out of her place in the classroom by the headmistress. But still nothing happened. She had so nearly called the whole thing off there and then; but her resolution had been wrought up to such a pitch that she made one last move. She tried the door—and found it unlocked. She opened it slightly, no more than a foot or so, and called his name.