Last Seen Wearing ... (Hillary Waugh novel)

Plot summary

"The police examine her past for any motive that might make her wish to disappear, or any reason why someone might want to kill her. They find her body after a long and frustrating search. As they sift all the evidence again and again, the identity of her killer slowly begins to emerge, like a photograph taking on recognizable features in the developing fluid" (Ian Ousby).

The novel, which minutely chronicles the work of the police, is told exclusively in chronological order. No piece of information is ever held back. At any given point in time, the reader knows just as much as the police — neither more nor less. The time narrated is 5½ weeks, from 3 March 1950 to 11 April 1950.

A step-by-step account of the work of the police as presented in the novel

(1) In broad daylight, at lunchtime on a cold winter's day, 18-year-old Marilyn Lowell Mitchell disappears from the campus of the all-female Parker College situated in the small town of Bristol, Massachusetts, 66 miles from Boston. She has left all her things in her room, and her diary is found. Her parents are informed, and eventually, on the following day, the police are called in.

(2) Right from the start of the investigation, Bristol police chief Frank W. Ford's principal is "Cherchez le boy". In other words, the police think Lowell might be pregnant, with or without her trying to contact a doctor willing to perform an abortion (illegal in 1950), or that she has just run off with some man. Both her fellow students and her parents declare all these speculations impossibilities and claim that Lowell is not that sort of girl; that she has had dates, but with no-one in particular; that she has never gone any further than "necking" and "soul-kissing"; and that she is definitely still a virgin. Her diary gives the police no clue whatsoever to prove the opposite.

(3) The police, however, pursue this line of investigation further. ("Look at her face. [...] It spells S-E-X to me.") Accordingly, they make a list of all the 47 males mentioned in the girl's diary, including even such unlikely figures as movie stars and local policemen, and consider all of them potential suspects. They also keep a watch on those shady doctors in town who might be willing to perform an illegal abortion, but the latter move does not lead anywhere.

(4) The process of elimination begins, based on the hypothesis that the diary could be deliberately misleading as far as her relationships to men are concerned. The 47 males are categorized into seven groups and then either questioned or eliminated right away:

1. famous actors and Winston Churchill
2. "casuals", i. e. men mentioned only once without any comment (a policeman she asked for directions; relatives; etc.)
3. men she mentions only once but comments on (including some teachers, such as Harlan P Seward, her history teacher, and an older man called Charles M. Watson, who once dined at the same place as she and her friends)
4. boys she has nothing to do with (for example her date's roommate)
5. boys from back home (whom she has not written to or dated)
6. boys she has dated (including blind dates)
7. boys she "really has something to do with".

(5) When the dragging of an artificial lake by the campus fails to produce a body, Ford has it drained, and when no body is revealed, the lake bed searched, but no evidence is found.

(6) When the police investigations do not locate the girl or her body, her father hires John Monroe, a private investigator. Monroe, who Ford does not mind co-operating with, does not get anywhere either, but he nevertheless develops his own theory that she was the victim of foul play. To one of Ford's colleagues, Lowell has become "the disappearingest girl I ever saw".

Several false leads are pursued:

(7) Two weeks after the disappearance, a student, while crossing a small bridge on campus, happens to notice a small object lying at the bottom of the shallow river. The recovered object turns out to be Lowell's hair clip. Assuming that the girl fell into the river and was carried downstream, the search resumes. Her body is found two miles downstream in a marshy flat. An autopsy shows she died instantly of a broken neck, not drowning, indicating she either jumped or was pushed head-first into the river, and that she was six weeks pregnant at the time of death. An inquest is ordered and Ford turns over his evidence to McNarry, the District Attorney. He re-examines the girl's diary and re-interprets the final entries to show that she likely committed suicide by jumping off the bridge soon after learning of her pregnancy. Ford, however, does not think the pregnancy was sufficient motivation for suicide and proves McNarry wrong by having a large block of ice dropped into the river and following its course, demonstrating that the body could not possibly have been washed ashore on the flat. It was therefore dumped there by someone and the hair clip planted in the river to cause the body to be found, both in the aftermath of a murder.

(8) Seen in this new light, Ford also re-examines the diary. He concludes that the same entries McNarry concluded were indications of her suicidal resignation instead mean that she was anticipating that her lover would be compelled by social conventions to marry her. The rejection of those expectations and her subsequent intent to reveal his role provided the motive for murder.

(9) Ford has a hunch that the killer is a local man barely mentioned (or not at all) in the diary. Consequently, he orders his men to determine every man she talked to since coming to Parker, a Herculean and laborious task. People from outside Bristol are not completely eliminated though, for example the rather mysterious figure of Charles M. Watson, a traveling salesman who showed a romantic interest in her.

(10) Ford scrutinizes the entire diary, especially the entries dating back to six weeks before she was murdered — the time of conception, i. e. when she must have slept with her murderer — and realizes that it must be coded. Finally he breaks the code: It consists of three exclamation marks in a row. Each time this symbol appears at the end of a sentence the girl must have met her lover. The three exclamation marks appear for the first time in an entry on Friday, 16 December and again the next day, when she stopped over in New York City on her way home to Philadelphia. Lowell fabricated a story to her family that she met a fellow student in New York to explain not coming home on Friday.

(11) The process of elimination continues. The list of suspects has been narrowed down to 17 men. The police focus their attention on Seward when they find out that on 16 December 1949 he left town on the same train as Lowell. Now they check up on Seward's past, his family, and the circumstances under which he lives now. Among other things, they find out that he has a record as a lifelong womanizer. Also, they have his house searched by his maid, Mrs Glover. However, 35-year-old Seward seems to have changed his ways: Mrs Glover cannot report having witnessed any "immoral" situations or any traces thereof. Taking into consideration that keeping such things a secret in a small town, where there is hardly any anonymity, the police come to the conclusion that Seward is "either innocent or smart".

(12) The number of suspects is further narrowed down by the fact that two conditions must be true for the murderer: He must have been in New York on 16 December 1949 and in the college town on 3 March (to dump the body). There are other conditions as well — for instance, he must own a car or at least have access to one (again to dispose of the body). Nevertheless the police do have doubts as to the conclusiveness of their work so far ("You'd better remember we don't even know if he's the guy. Hell, what if his folks do say he didn't get home until late Saturday, what will it prove? Do you think a jury will say he's her lover because Lowell puts three exclamation points in her diary on that day?").

(13) Seward is kept under surveillance round the clock now, but not directly approached by the police. They let him stew for a while, waiting for him to make a mistake or at least act conspicuously. During the stakeout they bring in a girl observed surreptitiously visiting Seward's house late one evening. It is 20-year-old Mildred Naffzinger, an employee at the local drug store and "a little tart who knows her way around". She denies any connection with Seward, but, after a long time of questioning, finally gives in, telling the police that she loves Seward, who dropped her when he began his affair with Lowell but resumed the affair after her death. Just as he persuaded Lowell not to mention his name anywhere, including her diary, he has worked out a special code for arranging his secret meetings with Mildred and another code for his meetings with Lowell, a code they could use in the classroom without anybody noticing.

(14) Eventually the police search Seward's house and garden while he is conducting his classes and find Lowell's handbag. The police are going to arrest him the moment he leaves the classroom, theorizing that he accidentally broke her neck trying to quiet her when she became hysterical after he refused to marry her. In a panic he concocted the suicide scenario, which nearly worked.

There is obviously no twist or surprise ending, as in that case all or at least most of the meticulous police work described in the novel would have to turn out wrong or in vain. There is no "lucid, astounding explanation presented to the group of suspects gathered in the library — but the accumulation of enough evidence to point to a suspect, justify an arrest and stand up in court" (Ousby).

The novel has never been filmed; in a film version, the killer, Harlan P Seward, would only be a minor character. He never personally appears in the novel: He is never directly approached, let alone cross-examined by the police, and he is not driven to committing any follow-up crimes either.