'I thought. .'
'Won't you come in?'
Morse's decision to refuse the offer of a drink was made with such obvious reluctance that he was speedily prevailed upon to reverse it; and sitting behind a glass of gin and tonic he did his best to say all the right things. On the whole, he thought, he was succeeding.
Mrs. Ainley was small, almost petite, with light-brown hair and delicate features. She looked well enough, although the darkness beneath her eyes bore witness to the recent tragedy.
'Will you stay on here?'
'Oh, I think so. I like it here.'
Indeed, Morse knew full well how attractive the situation was. He had almost bought a similar house here a year ago, and he remembered the view from the rear windows over the green expanse of Port Meadow across to the cluster of stately spires and the dignified dome of the Radcliffe Camera. Like an Ackerman print, only alive and real, just two or three miles away.
'Another drink?'
'I'd better not,' said Morse, looking appealingly towards his hostess.
'Sure?'
'Well, perhaps a small one.'
He took the plunge. 'Irene, isn't it?'
'Eileen.'
It was a bad moment. 'You're getting over it, Eileen?' He spoke the words in a kindly way.
'I think so.' She looked down sadly, and picked some non-existent object from the olive-green carpet. 'He was hardly marked, you know. You wouldn't really have thought. .' Tears were brimming, and Morse let them brim. She was quickly over it. 'I don't even know why Richard went to London. Monday was his day off, you know.' She blew her nose noisily, and Morse felt more at ease.
'Did he often go away like that?'
'Quite often, yes. He always seemed to be busy.' She began to look vulnerable again and Morse trod his way carefully. It had to be done.
'Do you think when he went to London he was, er. .'
'I don't know what he went for. He never told me much about his work. He always said he had enough of it at the office without talking about it again at home.'
'But he was worried about his work, wasn't he?' said Morse quietly.
'Yes. He always was a worrier, especially. .'
'Especially?'
'I don't know.'
'You mean he was more worried — recently?'
She nodded. 'I think I know what was worrying him. It was that Taylor girl.'
'Why do you say that?'
'I heard him talking on the phone to the headmaster.' She made the admission guiltily as if she really had no business to know of it.
'When was that?'
'About a fortnight, three weeks ago.'
'But the school's on holiday, isn't it?'
'He went to the headmaster's house.'
Morse began to wonder what else she knew. 'Was that on one of his days off. .?'
She nodded slowly and then looked up at Morse. 'You seem very interested.'
Morse sighed. 'I ought to have told you straight away. I'm taking over the Taylor case.'
'So Richard found something after all.' She sounded almost frightened.
'I don't know,' said Morse.
'And. . and that's why you came, I suppose.' Morse said nothing. Eileen Ainley got up from her chair and walked briskly over to a bureau beside the window. 'Most of his things have gone, but you might as well take this. He had it in the car with him.' She handed to Morse a Letts desk diary, black, about six inches by four. 'And there's a letter for the accountant at the station. Perhaps you could take it for me?'
'Of course.' Morse felt very hurt. But he often felt hurt — it was nothing new.
Eileen left the room to fetch the envelope and Morse quickly opened the diary and found Monday, 1 September. There was one entry, written in neatly-formed, minuscule letters: 42 Southampton Terrace. That was all. The blood tingled, and with a flash of utter certitude Morse knew that he hardly needed to look up the postal district of 42 Southampton Terrace. He would check it, naturally; he would look it up immediately he got home. But without the slightest shadow of doubt he knew it already. It. would be EC4.
He was back in his North Oxford bachelor home by a quarter to eleven, and finally discovered the street map of London, tucked neatly away behind The Collected Works of Swinburne and Extracts from Victorian Pornography. (He must put that book somewhere less conspicuous.) Impatiently he consulted the alphabetical index and frowned as he found Southampton Terrace. His frown deepened as he traced the given coordinates and studied the grid square. Southampton Terrace was one of the many side-streets off the Upper Richmond Road, south of the river, beyond Putney Bridge. The postal district was SW12. He suddenly decided he had done enough for one day.
He left the map and the diary on top of the bookshelf, made himself a cup of instant coffee and selected from his precious Wagner shelf the Solti recording of Die Walküre. No fat man, no thin-lipped woman, no raucous tenor, no sweaty soprano distracted his mind as Siegmund and Sieglinde poured forth their souls in an ecstasy of recognition. The coffee remained untouched and gradually grew cold.
But even before the first side was played through, a fanciful notion was forming in his restless brain. There was surely a very simple reason for Ainley's visit to London. He should have thought of it before. Day off; busy, preoccupied, uncommunicative. He'd bet that was it! 42 Southampton Terrace. Well, well! Old Ainley had been seeing another woman, perhaps.
CHAPTER FOUR
As far as I could see there was no connection between them beyond the tenuous nexus of succession.
(Peter Champkin)
IN DIFFERENT PARTS of the country on the Monday following Morse's interview with Strange, four fairly normal people were going about their disparate business. What each was doing was, in its own way, ordinary enough — in some cases ordinary to the point of tediousness. Each of them, with varied degrees of intimacy, knew the others, although one or two of them were hardly worthy of any intimate acquaintanceship. They shared one common bond, however, which in the ensuing weeks would inexorably draw each of them towards the centre of a criminal investigation. For each of them had known, again with varied degrees of intimacy, the girl called Valerie Taylor.
Mr. Baines had been second master in Kidlington's Roger Bacon Comprehensive School since its opening three years previously. Before that time he had also been second master, in the very same buildings, although then they had housed a secondary modern school, now incorporated into the upper part of a three-tier comprehensive system — a system which in their wisdom or unwisdom (Baines wasn't sure) the Oxfordshire Education Committee had adopted as its answer to the problems besetting the educational world in general and the children of Kidlington in particular. The pupils would be returning the following day, Tuesday, 16 September, after a break of six and a half weeks, for much of which time, whilst some of his colleagues had motored off to Continental resorts, Baines had been wrestling with the overwhelmingly complex problems of the timetable. Such a task traditionally falls upon the second master, and in the past Baines had welcomed it. There was a certain intellectual challenge in dovetailing the myriad options and combinations of the curriculum to match the inclinations and capacities of the staff available; and, at the same time (for Baines), a vicarious sense of power. Sadly, Baines had begun to think of himself as a good loser, a best man but never the groom. He was now fifty-five, unmarried, a mathematician. He had applied for many headships over the years and on two occasions had been the runner-up. His last application had been made three and a half years ago, for the headship of his present school, and he thought he'd had a fairly good chance; but even then, deep down, he knew that he was getting past it. Not that he had been much impressed by the man they appointed, Phillipson. Not at the time, anyway. Only thirty-four, full of new ideas. Keen on changing everything — as if change inevitably meant a change for the better. But over the last year or so he had learned to respect Phillipson a good deal more. Especially after that glorious showdown with the odious caretaker.
Baines was sitting in the small office which served as a joint HQ for himself and for Mrs. Webb, the headmaster's secretary — a decent old soul who like himself had served in the old secondary modern school. It was mid-morning and he had just put the finishing touches to the staff dinner-duty roster. Everyone was neatly fitted in, except the headmaster, of course. And himself. He had to pick up his perks from somewhere. He walked across the cluttered office clutching the handwritten sheet.
'Three copies, my old sugar.'