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that night. Throughout the long vigil it was Grace Taylor who feared the worst and suffered the most, for her husband felt sure that Valerie had gone off with some boyfriend and would be back the next morning. At 4.00 a.m. he managed to persuade his wife to take two sleeping tablets and he took her upstairs to bed.
   She was sleeping when he left the house at 7.30 a.m., leaving a note saying that he would be back at lunch-time, and that if Valerie still had not returned they would have to call the police. In fact the police were notified earlier than that. Mrs. Taylor had awoken at about nine and, in a distraught state, had rung them from a neighbour's telephone.
   Detective Chief Inspector Ainley of the Thames Valley Police was put in charge of the case, and intensive inquiries were immediately begun. During the course of the next week the whole of the area in the vicinity of Valerie's home and the area of woodland behind the school were searched with painstaking care and patience; the river and the reservoir were dragged . . . But no trace was found of Valerie Taylor.
   Inspector Ainley himself was frankly critical of the delay. At least twelve hours had been lost; fifteen, if the police had been notified as soon as the Taylors' anxiety had begun to deepen into genuine alarm.
   Such delay is a common feature of the cases assembled here. Vital time lost; perhaps vital clues thrown to the wind—and all because parents think they will be wasting the time of the police and would seem to look foolish if the wayward off-spring should suddenly turn up whilst the police were busy taking statements. It is a common human weakness, and it is only too easy to blame parents like the Taylors. But would we ourselves have acted all that differently? I knew exactly what Mrs. taylor meant when she said to me, 'I felt all the time that if we called the police something dreadful must have happened.' Illogical, you may say, but so very understandable.
   Mr. and Mrs. Taylor still live on the council estate in Hatfield Way. For over two years now they have waited and prayed for their daughter to return. as in the five other cases discussed here, the police files remain open. 'No,' said Inspector Ainley, 'we shan't be closing them until we find her.'
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Not bad reporting, thought Morse. There were several things in the article that puzzled him slightly, but he deliberately suppressed the fanciful notions that began to flood his mind. He had been right earlier. When Ainley had got the hard facts down on paper, he had spotted something that for over two years had lurked in the darkness and eluded his grasp. Some clue or other which had monopolized his attention and filled his spare time, and eventually, if indirectly, led to his death.
   Just stick to the facts, Morse, stick to the facts! It would be difficult, but he would try. And tomorrow he and Lewis would start on the files wherein lay the facts as Ainley had gleaned them. Anyway, Christine was back in Kidderminster and, like as not, Valerie would be back in Kidlington before the end of the month. The naughty girls were all coming home and would soon be having the same sort of rows they'd had with mum and dad before they left. Life, alas, was like that.
   Over his third pint of beer Morse could stem the flood of fancy no longer. He read the article through quickly once again. Yes, there was something wrong here. Only a small thing, but he wondered if it was the same small thing that had set Ainley on a new track . . . And the strangest notion began to formulate in the mind so recently dedicated to the pursuit of unembellished fact.

CHAPTER SIX

He certainly has a great deal of fancy, and a very good memory; but, with a perverse ingenuity, he employs these qualities as no other person does.
(Richard Brinsley Sheridan)

A S HE KNOCKED at the door of Morse's office Sergeant Lewis, who had thoroughly enjoyed the police routine of the previous week, wondered just what was in