Baines knocked perfunctorily and entered the study.
'Have a seat a minute, Baines.'
Warily the second master took a seat. There was a serious edge to Phillipson's voice — like a doctor's about to inform you that you've only a few months more to live.
'Inspector Morse will be in again tomorrow afternoon. You know that, don't you?' Baines nodded. 'He wants to talk to us both — together.'
'He didn't mention that to me.'
'Well, that's what he's going to do.' Baines said nothing. 'You know what this probably means, don't you?'
'He's a clever man.'
'No doubt. But he won't be getting any further, will he?' The tone of Phillipson's voice was hard, almost the tone of a master to his pupil. 'You realize what I'm saying, don't you, Baines? Keep your mouth shut!'
'Yes, you'd like me to do that, wouldn't you?'
'I'm warning you!' The latent hatred suddenly blazed in Phillipson's eyes. No pretence now; only an ugly, naked hatred between them.
Baines got up, savouring supremely the moment of his power. 'Don't push me too far, Phillipson! And just remember who you're talking to.'
'Get out!' hissed Phillipson. The blood was pounding in his ears, and although a non-smoker he longed to light a cigarette. He sat motionless at his desk for many minutes and wondered how much longer the nightmare could go on. What a relief it would be to end it all — one way or another. .
Gradually he grew calmer, and his mind wandered back again. How long ago was it now? Over three and a half years! And still the memory of that night came back to haunt him like a ghost unexorcized. That night. . He could picture it all so vividly still. .
He felt quite pleased with himself. Difficult to tell for certain, of course; but yes, quite pleased with himself really. As accurately as it could his mind retraced the stages of the day's events; the questions of the interviewing committee — wise and foolish; and his own answers — carefully considered. .
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
In philological works. . a dagger † signifies an obsolete word. The. . sign, placed before a person's name, signifies deceased.
(Rules for Compositors and Readers, OUP)
THIS SAME MONDAY night or, to be accurate, Tuesday morning, Morse was not in bed until 2.00 a.m., overtired and underbeered. The euphoria of the earlier part of the day had now completely passed, partly as a result of Lewis's sceptical disparagement, but more significantly because of his own inability ever to fool himself for very long. He still believed that some of the pieces had clicked into place, but knew that many didn't fit at all; and a few didn't even look like pieces of the same jigsaw. He recollected how in the army he had been given a test for colour-blindness. A sheet of paper on which a chaotically confused conglomeration of colour blocks were printed had been magically metamorphosed when looked at through differently-coloured filter slides; a red filter, and there appeared an elephant; a blue filter, and a lion leaped out at the eyes; a green filter, and behold the donkey! Donkey. . He'd been reading something about a donkey only a few days ago. Where had he read it? Morse was not a systematic reader, he was a dipper-in. He looked at the small pile of books on his bedside table underneath the alarm clock. The Road to Xanadu, A Selection of Kipling's Short Stones, The Life of Richard Wagner and Selected Prose of A. E. Housman. It was in Housman, surely, that bit about the donkey who couldn't make up its asinine mind which bundle of hay to start on first. Hadn't the stupid animal finally died of starvation? He soon found the passage:
An editor of no judgement, perpetually confronted with a couple of MSS to choose from, cannot but feel in every fibre of his being that he is a donkey between two bundles of hay.
Two MSS, and no judgement! That summed it up perfectly. One MS told him that Valerie Taylor was alive, and the other told him she was dead. And he still didn't know which MS a man of judgement should settle for. Oh Lord! Which of the wretched MSS had the correct reading? Had either?
He knew that at this rate he would never go to sleep, and he told himself to forget it all and think of something else. He picked up Kipling and began rereading his favourite short story, Love O' Women. He firmly believed that Kipling knew more about women than Kinsey ever had, and he came back to a passage marked with vertical lines in the margin:
. . as you say, sorr, he was a man with an educashin, an' he used ut for his schames; an' the same educashin an' talkin' an' all that made him able to do fwhat he had a mind to wid a woman, that same wud turn back again in the longgrun an' tear him alive.
Phew!
He thought back on what he'd learned about Valerie's sex life. Nothing much, really. He thought of Maguire, and half-remembered something Maguire had said that didn't quite ring true. But he couldn't quite get hold of it and the memory slipped away again like a bar of soap in the bath.
Educashin. Most people were more interesting for a bit of education. More interesting to women. . some of these young girls must soon get tired of the drib-drab, wishy-washy drivel that sometimes passed for conversation. Some of them liked older men for just that reason; interesting men with some show of pretence for cultured pursuits, with a smattering of knowledge — with something more in mind than fiddling for their bra-straps after a couple of whiskies.
What was Valerie like? Had she gone for the older men? Phillipson? Baines? But surely not Baines. Some of her teachers, perhaps? Acum? He couldn't remember the other names. And then he suddenly caught the bar of soap. He'd asked Maguire how many times he'd been to bed with Valerie, and Maguire had said a dozen or so. And Morse had told him to come off it and tell him the truth, fully expecting a considerably increased count of casual copulations. But no. Maguire had come down, hadn't he? 'Well, three or four,' he'd said. Something like that. Probably hadn't slept with her at all? Morse sat up and considered. Why, ah why, hadn't he pressed this point with Maguire when he had seen him yesterday? Was she really pregnant after all? He had assumed so, and Maguire had seemingly confirmed his suspicions. But was she? It made sense if she was. But made sense of what? Of the preconceived pattern that Morse was building up, and into which, willy-nilly, the pieces were being forced into their places.
If only he knew what the problem was. Then he wouldn't be quite so restless, even if it proved beyond his powers. Problem! He remembered his old Latin master. Hm! Whenever he was confronted with an insoluble difficulty — a crux in the text, an absurdly complex chunk of syntax — he would turn to his class with a serious mien: 'Gentlemen, having looked this problem boldly in the face, we must now, I think, pass on.' Morse smiled at the recollection. . It was getting very late. A crux in the Oxford Classical Text, marked by daggers. . the daggered text. . He was falling asleep. Texts, manuscripts, and a donkey in the middle braying and bellyaching, not knowing which way to turn. . like Morse, like himself. . His head fell to the right and his ear strained no more for the incomprehensible nocturnal clues. He fell asleep, the light still burning and Kipling's stories still held loosely in his hand.
Earlier the same evening Baines had opened his front door to find an unexpected visitor.