Service of all the dead

by Colin Dexter

  Lingfield Park : 4 p.m.

  £2 win: Poor Old Harry.

  A year or so previously, after purchasing two tins of baked beans from a supermarket, he had been given change for one pound instead of for the five-pound note he knew he had handed over. His protestations on that occasion had necessitated a full till-check and a nervy half-hour wait before the final justification of his claim; and since that time he had been more careful, always memorising the last three numbers of any five-pound note he tendered. He did so now, and repeated them to himself as he waited for his change: 546… 546… 546…

  The drizzle had virtually stopped when at 11.20 a.m. he walked unhurriedly down the Woodstock Road. Twenty-five minutes later he was standing in one of the private car-parks at the Radcliffe where he spotted the car almost immediately. Threading his way through the closely parked vehicles, he soon stood beside it and looked through the off-side window. The milometer read 25,622. That tallied: it had read 619 before she left. And if she now followed the normal routine of any sensible person she would walk down into Oxford from here, and when she got home the milometer would read 625 – 626 at the most. Finding a suitable vantage-point behind a moribund elm-tree he looked at his watch. And waited.

  At two minutes past twelve the celluloid doors leading to E.N.T. Outpatients flapped open and Brenda Josephs appeared and walked briskly to the car. He could see her very clearly. She unlocked the door and sat for a few seconds leaning forward and viewing herself in the driving-mirror, before taking a small scent-bottle from her handbag and applying it to her neck, first to one side, then to the other. Her safety-belt remained unfastened as she backed none too expertly out of the narrow space; then the right blinker on as she drove out of the car-park and up to the Woodstock Road; then the orange blinker flashing left (left!) as she edged into the traffic departing north and away from the city centre.

  He knew her next moves. Up to the Northern Ring Road roundabout, there cutting through Five Mile Drive, and then out on to the Kidlington Road. He knew his own move, too.

  The telephone-kiosk was free and, although the local directory had long since been stolen, he knew the number and dialled it.

  'Hello?' (A woman's voice.) ' Roger Bacon School, Kidlington. Can I help you?'

  'I was wondering if I could speak to Mr Morris, Mr Paul Morris, please. I believe he's one of your music teachers.'

  'Yes, he is. Just a minute. I'll just have a look at the time-table to see if… just a minute… No. He's got a free period. I'll just see if he's in the staff-room. Who shall I say?'

  'Er, Mr Jones.'

  She was back on the line within half a minute. 'No, I'm afraid he doesn't seem to be on the school premises, Mr Jones. Can I take a message?'

  'No, it doesn't really matter. Can you tell me whether he's likely to be at school during the lunch-hour?'

  'Just, a minute.' (Josephs heard the rustling of some papers. She needn't have bothered, though, he knew that.) 'No. He's not on the list for lunches today. He usually stays but- '

  'Don't worry. Sorry to have been a nuisance.'

  He felt his heart pounding as he rang another number – another Kidlington number. He'd give the bloody pair a fright! If only he could drive a car! The phone rang and rang and he was just beginning to wonder… when it was answered.

  'Hello?' (Just that. No more. Was the voice a little strained?)

  'Mr Morris?' (It was no difficulty for him to lapse into the broad Yorkshire dialect of his youth.)

  'Ye-es?'

  'Electricity Board 'ere, sir. Is it convenient for us to come along, sir? We've-'

  Today, you mean?'

  'Aye. This lunch-taime, sir.'

  'Er – er – no, I'm afraid not. I've just called in home for a second to get a – er – book. It's lucky you caught me, really. But I'm due back at school – er – straightaway. What's the trouble, anyway?'

  Josephs slowly cradled the phone. That would give the sod something to think about!

  When Brenda arrived home at ten minutes to three, he was clipping the privet-hedge with dedicated precision. 'Hello, love. Have a good day?'

  'Oh. Usual, you know. I've brought something nice for tea, though.'

  'That's good news.'

  'Have any lunch?'

  'Mouthful of bread and cheese.'

  She knew he was telling a lie, for there was no cheese in the house. Unless, of course, he'd been out again…? She felt a sudden surge of panic as she hurried inside with her shopping-bags.

  Josephs continued his meticulous clippings along the tall hedge that separated them from next door. He was in no hurry, and only when he was immediately alongside the off-side front door of the car did he casually glance at the fascia dials. The milometer read 25,633.

  As he always did, he washed up after their evening meal by himself, but he postponed one small piece of investigation until later, for he knew that as surely as night follows day his wife would make some excuse for retiring early to bed. Yet, strange as it seemed, he felt almost glad: it was he who was now in control of things. (Or, at least, that is what he thought.)

  She was on cue, all right – just after the news headlines on BBC1: 'I think I'll have a bath and an early night, Harry. I – I feel a bit tired.'

  He nodded understandingy. 'Like me to bring you a cup of Ovaltine?'

  'No, thanks. I shall be asleep as soon as I hit the pillow. But thanks anyway.' She put her hand on his shoulder and gave it the slightest squeeze, and for a few seconds her face was haunted by the twin spectres of self-recrimination and regret.

  When the water had finished running in the bathroom, Josephs went back into the kitchen and looked in the waste-bin. There, screwed up into small balls and pushed right to the bottom of the debris, he found four white paper-bags. Careless, Brenda! Careless! He had checked the bin himself that same morning, and now there were four newcomers, four white paper-bags, all of them carrying the name of the Quality supermarket at Kidlington.

  After Brenda had left the next morning, he made himself some coffee and toast, and sat down with the Daily Express. Heavy overnight rain at Lingfieid Park had upset a good many of the favourites, and there were no congratulatory columns to the wildly inaccurate prognostications of the racing tipsters. With malicious glee he noticed that The Organist had come seventh out of eight runners; and Poor Old Harry – had won! At sixteen to one! Whew! It hadn't been such a blank day after all.

  Chapter Three

  The last lesson of the week could hardly have provided a more satisfactory envoi. There were only five of them in the O-Level music group, all reasonably anxious to work hard and to succeed, all girls; and as they sat forward awkwardly and earnestly, their musical scores of Piano Sonata Opus 90 on their knees, Paul Morris vaguely reminded himself how exquisitely Gilels could play Beethoven. But his aesthetic sense was only minimally engaged, and not for the first time during the past few weeks he found himself wondering whether he was really cut out for teaching. Doubtless, these particular pupils would all get decent O-Level grades, for he had sedulously drilled the set works into them – their themes, their developments and recapitulations. But there was, he knew, little real radiance either in his own exposition of the works or in his pupils' appreciation of them; and the sad truth was that what until so recently had been an all-consuming passion was now becoming little more than pleasurable background listening. From Music to Muzac – in three short months.

  Morris had moved from his previous post (it was almost three years ago now) primarily to try to forget that terrible day when the young police constable had come to tell him that his wife had been killed in a car accident; when he had gone along to the primary school to collect Peter and watched the silent, tragic tears that sprang from the boy's eyes; and when he had wrestled with that helpless, baffled anger against the perversity and cruelty of the Fates which had taken his young wife from him – an anger which over those next few dazed and despairing weeks had finally settled into a firm resolve at all costs to p
rotect his only child whenever and wherever he could. The boy was something – the only thing – that he could cling to. Gradually, too, Morris had become convinced that he had to get away, and his determination to move – to move anywhere – had grown into an obsession as weekly the Posts Vacant columns in The Times Educational Supplement reminded him of new streets, new colleagues, a new school – perhaps even a new life. And so finally he had moved to the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School on the outskirts of Oxford, where his breezy interview had lasted but fifteen minutes, where he'd immediately found a quiet little semi-detached to rent, where everyone was very kind to him – but where his life proved very much the same as before. At least, until he met Brenda Josephs.

  It was through Peter that he had established contact with St Frideswide's. One of Peter's friends was a keen member of the choir, and before long Peter had joined, too. And when the aged choirmaster had finally retired it was common knowledge that Peter's father was an organist, and the invitation asking him to take over was accepted without hesitation.

  Gilels was lingering pianissimo over the last few bars when the bell sounded the end of the week's schooling. One of the class, a leggy, large-boned, dark-haired girl, remained behind to ask if she could borrow the record for the week-end. She was slightly taller than Morris, and as he looked into her black-pencilled, languidly amorous eyes he once more sensed a power within himself which until a few months previously he could never have suspected. Carefully he lifted the record from the turntable and slipped it smoothly into its sleeve.

  'Thank you,' she said softly.

  'Have a nice week-end, Carole.'

  'You, too, sir.'

  He watched her as she walked down the steps from the stage and clattered her way across the main hall in her high wedge-heeled shoes. How would the melancholy Carole be spending her week-end? he wondered. He wondered, too, about his own.

  Brenda had happened just three months ago. He had seen her on many occasions before, of course, for she always stayed behind after the Sunday morning service to take her husband home. But that particular morning had not been just another occasion. She had seated herself, not as usual in one of the pews at the back of the church, but directly behind him in the choir-stalls; and as he played he'd watched her with interest in the organ-mirror, her head slightly to one side, her face set in a wistful, half-contented smile. As the deep notes died away around the empty church, he had turned towards her.

  'Did you like it?'

  She had nodded quietly and lifted her eyes towards him.

  'Would you like me to play it again?'

  'Have you got time?'

  'For you I have.' Their eyes had held then, and for that moment they were the only two beings alive in the world.

  ‘Thank you,' she whispered.

  Remembrance of that first brief time together was even now a source of radiant light that shone in Morris's heart. Standing by his side she had turned over the sheet-music for him, and more than once her arm had lightly brushed his own…

  That was how it had begun, and how, he told himself, it had to end. But that couldn't be. Her face haunted his dreams that Sunday night, and again through the following nights she would give his sleeping thoughts no rest. On the Friday of the same week he had rung her at the hospital. A bold, irrevocable move. Quite simply he had asked her if he could see her some time – that was all; and just as simply she had answered 'Yes, of course you can' – words that re-echoed round his brain like the joyous refrain of the Seraphim.

  In the weeks that followed, the frightening truth had gradually dawned on him: he would do almost anything to have this woman for his own. It was not that he bore any malice against Harry Josephs. How could he? Just a burning, irrational jealousy, which no words from Brenda, none of her pathetic pleas of reassurance could assuage. He wished Josephs out of the way – of course he did! But only recently had his conscious mind accepted the stark reality of his position. Not only did he wish Josephs out of the way: he would be positively happy to see him dead.

  'You stayin' much longer, sir?'

  It was the caretaker, and Morris knew better than to argue. It was a quarter past four, and Peter would be home.

  The regular Friday evening fish and chips, liberally vinegared and blotched with tomato sauce, were finished, and they stood together at the kitchen sink, father washing, son drying. Although Morris had thought long and hard about what he would say, it was not going to be easy. He had never before had occasion to speak to his son about matters connected with sex; but one thing was quite certain: he had to do so now. He remembered with devastating clarity (he had only been eight at the time) when the two boys next door had been visited by the police, and when one of the local ministers had been taken to court, and there convicted and sentenced to prison. And he remembered the new words he had then learned, words that his school-fellows had learned, too, and laughed about in lavatory corners: slimy words that surfaced ever after in his young mind as if from some loathsome, reptilian pool.

  'I think we may be able to get you that racing bike in a couple of months.'

  'Really, Dad?'

  'You'd have to promise me to be jolly careful… '

  But Peter was hardly listening. His mind was racing as fast as the bike was going to race, his face shining with joy…

  'Pardon, Dad?'

  'I said, are you looking forward to the outing tomorrow?'

  Peter nodded, honestly, if comparatively unenthusiastically. ''Spect I'll get a bit fed up on the way back. Like last year.'

  'I want you to promise me something.'

  Another promise? The boy frowned uncertainly at the serious tone in his father's voice, and rubbed the tea-towel quite unnecessarily round and round the next plate, anticipating some adult information, confidential, and perhaps unwelcome.

  'You're still a young lad, you know. You may think you're getting a bit grown-up, but you've still got a lot to learn. You see, some people you'll meet in life are very nice, and some aren't. They may seem nice, but – but they're not nice at all.' It sounded pathetically inadequate.

  'Crooks, you mean?'

  'In a way they're crooks, yes, but I'm talking about people who are bad inside. They want – strange sort of things to satisfy them. They're not normal – not like most people.' He took a deep breath. 'When I was about your age, younger in fact-'

  Peter listened to the little story with apparent unconcern. 'You mean he was a queer, Dad?'

  'He was a homosexual. Do you know what that means?'

  ' 'Course I do.'

  'Listen, Peter, if any man ever tries anything like that – anything! – you have nothing at all to do with it. Is that clear? And, what's more, you'll tell me. All right?'

  Peter tried so very hard to understand, but the warning seemed remote, dissociated as yet from his own small experience of life.

  'You see, Peter, it's not just a question of a man – touching' (the very word was shudderingly repulsive) 'or that sort of thing. It's what people start talking about or – or photographs that kind of-'

  Peter's mouth dropped open and the blood froze in his freckled cheeks. So that was what his father was talking about! The last time had been two weeks ago when three of them from the youth club had gone along to the vicarage and sat together on that long, black, shiny settee. It was all a bit strange and exciting, and there had been those photographs – big, black and white, glossy prints that seemed almost clearer than real life. But they weren't just pictures of men, and Mr Lawson had talked about them so – so naturally, somehow. Anyway, he'd often seen pictures like that on the racks in the newsagent's. He felt a growing sense of bewilderment as he stood there by the sink, his hands still clutching the drying-cloth. Then he heard his father's voice, raucous and ugly, in his ears, and felt his father's hand upon his shoulder, shaking him angrily.

  'Do you hear me? Tell me about it!'

  But the boy didn't tell his father. He just couldn't. What was there to tell anyway?

  Ch
apter Four

  The coach, a wide luxury hulk of a thing, was due to leave Cornmarket at 7.30 a.m., and Morris joined the group of fussy parents counterchecking on lunch-bags, swimming-gear and pocket-money. Peter was already ensconced between a pair of healthily excited pals on the back seat, and Lawson once more counted heads to satisfy himself that the expedition was fully manned and could at last proceed. As the driver heaved round and round at the huge horizontal steering-wheel, slowly manoeuvring the giant vehicle into Beaumont Street, Morris had his last view of Harry and Brenda Josephs sitting silently together on one of the front seats, of Lawson folding his plastic raincoat and packing it into the overhead rack, and of Peter chatting happily away and like most of the other boys disdaining, or forgetting, to wave farewell. All en route for Bournemouth.

  It was 7.45 a.m. by the clock on the south face of St Frideswide's as Morris walked up to Carfax and then through Queen Street and down to the bottom of St Ebbe's, where he stopped in front of a rangy three-storeyed stuccoed building set back from the street behind bright yellow railings. Nailed on to the high wooden gate which guarded the narrow path to the front door was a flaking notice-board announcing in faded capitals st frideswide's church and OXFORD pastorate. The gate itself was half-open; and as Morris stood self-consciously and indecisively in the deserted street a whistling paper-boy rode up on his bicycle and inserted a copy of The Times through the front door. No inside hand withdrew the newspaper, and Morris walked slowly away from the house and just as slowly back. On the top floor a pale yellow strip of neon lighting suggested the presence of someone on the premises, and he walked cautiously up to the front door where he rapped gently on the ugly black knocker. With no sound of movement from within, he tried again, a little louder. There must be someone, surely, in the rambling old vicarage. Students up on the top floor, probably? A housekeeper, perhaps? But again as he held his ear close to the door he could hear no movement; and conscious that his heart was beating fast against his ribs he tried the door. It was locked.