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(Colour Suppt. August 24). As a direct result of reading the article, our only daughter, Christine, returned home last week after being away for over a year. We thank you most sincerely.
   Mr. and Mrs. J. Richardson (Kidderminster).
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Morse got up and went to a large pile of newspapers neatly bundled in string, that lay in the hallway beside the front door. The Boy Scouts collected them once a month, and although Morse had never been a tenderfoot himself he gave the movement his qualified approval. Impatiently he tore at the string and delved into the pile. Thirty-first August. Fourteenth September. But no 24 August. It may have gone with the last pile. Blast. He looked through again, but it wasn't there. Now who might have a copy? He tried his next-door neighbour, but on reflection he might have saved himself the bother. What about Lewis? Unlikely, yet worth a try. He telephoned his number.
   'Lewis? Morse here.'
   'Ah. Morning, sir.'
   'Lewis, do you take the Sunday Times?'
   ' 'Fraid not, sir. We have the Sunday Mirror.' He sounded somewhat apologetic about his Sabbath-day reading.
   'Oh.'
   'I could get you a copy, I suppose.'
   'I've got today's. I want the copy for August the twenty-fourth.'
   It was Sergeant Lewis's turn to say, 'Oh.'
   'I can't really understand an intelligent man like you, Lewis, not taking a decent Sunday newspaper.'
   'The sport's pretty good in the Sunday Mirror, sir.'
   'Is it? You'd better bring it along with you in the morning, then.'
   Lewis brightened. 'I won't forget.'
   Morse thanked him and rang off. He had almost said he would swop it for his own copy of the News of the World, but considered it not improper to conceal from his subordinates certain aspects of his own depravity.
   He could always get a back copy from the Reference Library. It could wait, he told himself. And yet it couldn't wait. Again he read the letter from the parents of the prodigal daughter. They would be extra-pleased now, with a letter in the newspaper, to boot. Dad would probably cut it out and keep it in his wallet—now that the family unit was functioning once more. We were all so vain. Cuttings, clippings and that sort of thing. Morse still kept his batting averages somewhere . . .
   And suddenly it hit him. It all fitted. Four or five weeks ago Ainley had resurrected the Taylor case of his own accord and pursued it in his own spare time. Some reporter had been along to Thames Valley Police and got Ainley to spill the beans on the Taylor girl. Ainley had given him the facts (no fancies with Ainley!) and somehow, as a result of seeing the facts again, he had spotted something that he had missed before. It was just like doing a crossword puzzle. Get stuck. Leave it for ten minutes. Try again—and eureka! It happened to everyone like that. And, he repeated to himself, Ainley had seen something new. That must be it.
   As a corollary to this, it occurred to Morse that if Ainley had taken a hand in the article, not only would Valerie Taylor have been one of the missing girls featured, but Ainley himself would almost certainly have kept the printed article—just as surely as Mr. J. Richardson would be sticking his own printed letter into his Kidderminster wallet.
   He rang Mrs. Ainley. 'Eileen?' (Right this time.) 'Morse here. Look, do you happen to have kept that bit of the Sunday Times —you know, that bit about missing girls?'
   'You mean the one they saw Richard about?' He had been right.
   'That's the one.'
   'Yes. I kept it, of course. It mentioned Richard several times.'
   'Can I, er, can I come round and have a look at it?'
   'You can have it with pleasure. I don't want it any more.'
   Some half an hour later, forgetful of his earlier pledge, Morse was seated with a pint of flat beer and a soggy steak-and-mushroom pie. He read the article through with a feeling of anticlimax. Six girls were featured—after the preliminary