'That the headmaster?' enquired Morse innocently.
'No. Baines here. Second master. Can I help you?'
'Ah, Mr. Baines. Good evening, sir. As a matter of fact it was you I was hoping to get hold of. I, er, wonder if we might be able to meet again fairly soon. It's this Taylor girl business again. There are one or two points I think you could help me with.'
Baines would be free about a quarter to ten, and he could be in the White Horse soon after that. No time like the present.
Morse felt pleased with himself. He would have been even more pleased had he been able to see the deeply worried look on Baines's face as he shrugged into his gown and walked down into the Great Hall to meet the parents.
There was little point in going home now and he walked over to the canteen and found a copy of the Telegraph. He ordered sausages and mash, wrote the precise time in the right-hand margin of the back page and turned to 1 across. Has been known to split under a grilling (7). He smiled to himself. It was too many letters for BAINES, so he wrote SAUSAGE.
Back in the office he felt he was in good form. Crossword finished in only seven and a half minutes. Still, it was a bit easier than The Times. Perhaps this case would be easy if only he could look at it in the right way, and as Baines had said there was no time like the present. A long, quiet, cool, detached look at the case. But it never worked quite like that. He sat back and closed his eyes and for more than an hour his brain seethed in ceaseless turmoil. Ideas, ideas galore, but still the firm outline of the pattern eluded him. One or two of the pieces fitted firmly into place, but so many wouldn't fit at all. It was like doing the light-blue sky at the top of a jigsaw, with no clouds, not even a solitary sea-gull to break the boundless monochrome.
By nine o'clock he had a headache. Leave it. Give it a rest and go back later. Like crosswords. It would come; it would come.
He consulted the STD codes and found that he would have to get Caernarfon through the operator. It was Acum who answered.
As succinctly as he could Morse explained the reason for his call, and Acum politely interjected the proper noises of understanding and approval. Yes, of course. Yes, of course he remembered Valerie and the day she had disappeared. Yes, he remembered it all well.
'Did you realize that you were one of the very last people to see Valerie before she, er, before she disappeared?'
'I must have been, yes.'
'In fact, you taught her the very last school lesson she ever had, I think?'
'Yes.'
'I mention this, sir, because I have reason to believe that you asked Valerie to see you after the lesson.'
'Ye-es. I think I did.'
'Remember why, sir?' Acum took his time and Morse wished that he could see the schoolmaster's face.
'If I remember rightly, Inspector, she was due to sit her O-level French the next week, and her work was, well, pretty dreadful, and I was going to have a word with her about it. Not that she had much chance in the exam, I'm afraid.'
'You said, sir, you were going to see her.'
'Yes, that's right. As it happened I didn't get a chance. She had to rush off, she said.'
'Did she say why?'
The answer was ready this time, and it took the wind out of Morse's sails. 'She said she'd got to see the head.'
'Oh, I see.' Another piece that didn't fit. 'Well, thank you, Mr. Acum. You've been most helpful. I hope I've not interrupted anything important.'
'No. No. Just marking a few books, that's all.'
'Well, I'll leave you to it. Thanks very much.'
'Not at all. If I can help in any other way, don't hesitate to ring me, will you?'
'Er, no. I won't. Thanks again.' '
Morse sat still for many minutes and began to wonder if he ought not to turn the jigsaw upside down and work the blue sky in at the bottom. There was no doubt about it: he ought to have gone home as he'd promised himself earlier. He was just walking blindly in the forest bumping into one wretched tree after another. But he couldn't go home yet; he had an appointment.
Baines was there already and got up to buy the inspector a drink. The lounge was quiet and they sat alone in a corner and wished each other good health.
Morse tried to size him up. Tweed jacket, grey slacks, balding on top and rather flabby in the middle, but obviously nobody's fool. His eyes were keen and Morse imagined the pupils would never take too many liberties with Baines. He spoke with a slight North Country accent and as he listened to Morse he picked away at his lower nostrils with his index finger. Irritating.
What was the routine on Tuesday afternoons? Why was there no register taken? Was there any likelihood that Valerie had, in fact, returned to school that afternoon, and only later disappeared? How did the pupils work the skiving that was obviously so widespread? Was there any sort of skivers' den where the reluctant athletes could safely hide themselves away? Have a smoke perhaps?
Baines seemed rather amused. He could give the boys and girls a few tips about getting off games! By jove, he could. But it was the staffs fault. The PE teachers were a bloody idle lot — worse than the kids. Hardly bothered to get changed, some of them. And anyway there were so many activities: fencing, judo, table-tennis, athletics, rounders, netball — all this self-expression nonsense. No one really knew who was expected when and where. Bloody stupid. Things had tightened up a bit with the new head, but — well. Baines gave the impression that for all his possible virtues Phillipson had a long way still to go. Where they went to? Plenty of places. He'd found half a dozen smoking in the boiler room one day, and the school itself was virtually empty. Quite a few of them just sloped off home though, and some didn't turn up at all. Anyway, like the headmaster, he wasn't really involved on Tuesday afternoons. It wasn't a bad idea, though, to get away from school occasionally — have a free afternoon. The headmaster had tried to do it for all the staff. Put all their free periods together and let them have a morning or an afternoon off. Trouble was that it meant a hell of a lot of work for the chap who did the timetabling. Him!
As he talked on Morse wondered whether he still felt bitter towards Phillipson; whether he would be all that eager to throw out a life-line to the drowning helmsman. He casually mentioned that he knew of Baines's ill luck in being pipped for the job; and bought more beer. Yes (Baines admitted), he'd been a bit unlucky perhaps, and more than once. He thought he could have run a school as well as most, and Morse felt he was probably right. Greedy and selfish (like most men), but shrewdly competent. Above all, thought Morse, he would have enjoyed power. And now that there no longer seemed much chance of power, perhaps a certain element of dark satisfaction in observing the inadequacies of others and quietly gloating over their misfortunes. There wasn't a word for it in English. The Germans called it Schadenfreude. Would Baines get the job if Phillipson left or if for some reason he had to leave? Morse thought he would be sure to. But how far would he go in actively promoting such a situation? Perhaps though, as usual, Morse was attributing too much cynical self-seeking to his fellow men, and he brought his attention back to the fairly ordinary man who sat opposite him, talking openly and amusingly about life in a comprehensive school.