by Colin Dexter
Meiklejohn had finished his long-winded, oily introduction, the lights had been switched off, and now the stage-curtains were jerkily wound back to reveal the Tap-Dance Troupe in all its bizarre glory. For Morse the whole thing was embarrassingly amusing; and he was quite unprepared for the wild applause which greeted the final unsynchronised kneelings of the eleven little girls, plumed plastic headgear and all, who for three minutes or so had braved inadequate rehearsal, innate awkwardness, and the appallingly incompetent accompaniment of the pianist. To make matters worse, the troupe had started with a complement of twelve, but one small child had turned left instead of right at a crucial point in the choreography, and had promptly fled to the wings, her face collapsing in tearful misery. Yet still the audience clapped and clapped, and was not appeased until the appearance of the troupe's instructress, alias the piano-player, leading by the hand the unfortunate, but now shyly smiling, little deserter – the latter greeted by all as if she were a prima ballerina from the Sadler's Wells. '
The Gilbert and Sullivan selections were excellently sung, and Morse realised that the St Frideswide's choir contained some first-rate talent. This time, fortunately, the piano was in the hands of an infinitely more able executant – Mr Sharpe, no less, former deputy to Mr Morris (that name again!). Morris… the man who had been on the scene when Josephs was murdered; had been on the scene, too, when Lawson was – when Lawson was found. Surely, surely, it shouldn't be at all difficult to trace him? Or to trace Mrs Brenda Josephs? They must be somewhere; must be earning some money; must have insurance numbers; must have a house… With clinical precision the choir cut off the last chord from the finale of The Mikado, and their turn was complete – greeted by appreciative if comparatively short-lived applause.
It took a good five minutes for the Victorian melodrama to materialise; minutes during which could be heard the squeaking and bumping of furniture, during which the curtains were twice prematurely half opened, and during which Morse once more looked through the coroner's digest on Lawson's death. There was this fellow Thomas's evidence, for example: 'He had just parked his car in St Giles' and was walking down towards Broad Street when he noticed someone on the tower of St Frideswide 's. He could not recall seeing anyone standing there before, but it was not unusual to see people looking out over Oxford from St Mary's in the High, or from Carfax tower. He thought that the figure was dressed in black, looking down, his head leaning over the parapet… ' That was all, really. Only later had he heard of the morning's tragedy and had reluctantly rung up the police – at his wife's suggestion. Not much there, but the man must have been the very last person (Morse supposed) to see Lawson alive. Or was he? He might just have been the first – no, the second – person to see Lawson dead. Morse found the key words again: 'looking down, his head leaning over the parapet…' How high were those parapets? No more than three feet or so, surely. And why bring Lawson's head into it? Why not just 'leaning over the parapet'? And why 'looking down'? Was a man about to leap to his death likely to be all that worried about the place he was going to land? A minister, surely – more than most of his fellow-mortals – might be expected to seek a little consolation from more ethereal realms, whatever the depths of his despair. But if… if Lawson had been dead already; if someone had-
The melodrama was under way at last, and in Morse's view a more crudely amateurish production could seldom have merited a public presentation. The play appeared to have been chosen to embrace the largest possible cast, and to allow to all of it's participants the briefest possible exposure on the boards, in order to minimise their breathtaking incompetences. The bearded one-armed hero, who at least had learned his lines and spoke them audibly, clumped around in a pair of squeaky army boots, and at one point conducted a crucial telephone conversation by speaking into the ear-piece – of an incongruously modern-looking instrument at that; whilst one of the numerous housemaids was every other line reduced to referring to a copy of her part pasted on the underside of her dustpan. The only feature which prevented the whole thing from degenerating into a farcical shambles was the performance of the heroine herself, a young blonde who acted with a charm and sophistication hopelessly at variance with the pathetically inadequate crew around her. She appeared to know everyone else's part, and covered their lapses and stumbles with impressive aplomb. She even managed, at one stage, to prevent one of the butlers (blind fool! thought Morse) from tripping over an intervening chair as he carried in her ladyship's tea. Mercifully many of the lines (as originally written) must have been extremely amusing, and even voiced by these clowns could elicit a little polite laughter; and when the final curtain drew its veil over the proceedings there seemed to Morse not the slightest sign of embarrassed relief amongst the audience. Perhaps all church concerts were the same.
The Vicar had earlier announced that tea would be served at the end of the entertainment, and Morse felt certain that Mrs W.-A. would not be leaving without a cup. All he had to do was find out which one she was. He looked around in vain for Miss Rawlinson, but it seemed clear that she'd given the evening a miss – enough of a penance, no doubt, her scrubbing the pews. But he felt a certain disappointment… People were leaving the hall fairly quickly now, but Morse decided to wait a minute or two. He took out his programme and looked at it vaguely, but with no real purpose other than that of seeming not to be lonely.
'I hope you'll have a cup of tea with us?' Even at this late stage Meiklejohn was not neglecting his pastoral duties.
Tea? It had never occurred to Morse that he might be drinking tea at 9 p.m. 'Yes; thank you. I wonder if you happen to know a Mrs Walsh-Atkins. I want- '
'Yes, yes. This way. Wonderful concert, wasn't it?'
Morse mumbled inaudibly and followed his guide into the crowded vestibule where a stout lady was coaxing a dark-brown liquid from a formidable urn. Morse took his place in the queue and listened to the conversation of the two women in front of him.
'You know, it's the fourth time now he's been in one of them. His dad would have been ever so proud of him.'
'No one would ever suspect he was blind, would they? Coming on the way he does and all that.'
'It's lots of rehearsal that does it, you know. You have to sort of picture where everything is- '
'Yes. You really must be proud of him, Mrs Kinder.'
'They've asked him to be in the next one, anyway, so he must be all right, mustn't he?'
So the poor devil had been blind after all. And learning a part and stepping out on to the stage had probably been about as much of an ordeal as for a sighted person walking through a swamp of crocodiles. Morse suddenly felt very moved, and very humbled. When it came to his turn, he slipped a fifty-pence piece on to the tea-money plate, and hoped that nobody had noticed. He felt oddly out of place there. These were good people, who rejoiced in the simple ties of family and Christian fellowship; who thought of God as a father, and who never in a month of Sabbaths could begin to understand the aberrations of the new theology which thought of Him (if it thought of Him at all) as the present participle of the verb 'to be'. Morse sipped his tea self-consciously, and once more took out his programme and looked for the name of Her Ladyship's butler, whose mother (with what sweet justification!) was feeling so happy and proud. But once again he was interrupted. Meiklejohn was at his shoulder, and with him a diminutive old lady munching a digestive biscuit.
'Mr – er?'
'Morse.'
'You said you wanted to meet Mrs Walsh-Atkins?'
Morse stood above her, acutely conscious of her smallness, and suggested they should sit down back in the hall. He explained who he was, why he was there, and what he wanted to know; and she readily told him of her own part in that dreadful day's events when she'd found Lawson dashed to pieces from the tower, repeating virtually verbatim the words she had used at the inquest.
Nothing! Morse had learned nothing. Yet he thanked her politely and asked if he could fetch her another cup of tea.
'One's enough for me th
ese days, Inspector. But I must have left my umbrella somewhere. If you would be kind enough to…'
Morse felt his scalp tingling in the old familiar way. They were seated at a small table at the back of the hall, and there was the umbrella, large as life, lying diagonally across it. There could be little doubt about it: the old lady must be going blind.
'Do you mind me asking how old you are, Mrs Walsh-Atkins?'
'Can you keep a secret, Inspector?'
'Yes.'
'So can I,' she whispered.
Whether Morse's decision to patronise the cocktail-lounge of the Randolph was determined by his thirst, or by some wayward wish to find out if Miss Rawlinson might be there, he didn't stop to think. But he recognised no one, left after only one pint, and caught a bus outside the Taylorian. Back home, he poured himself a large neat whisky and put on Vier Letzte Lieder. Marvellous. 'Melismatic', as it said on the sleeve…
It was time for an early night, and he hung up his jacket in the hallway. The programme stuck out of one of the pockets and, third time lucky, he opened it and read it.
'Her Ladyship's Butler – Mr John Kinder.' And then his pulse raced as he looked at the top of the cast: 'Her Ladyship, the Hon. Amelia Barker-Barker – Miss Ruth Rawlinson.'
Chapter Eleven
Mediums and clairvoyants claim enhanced scope for their talents if they can be physically present in a room where the absent ones – the missing or the plain dead – may have left a few stray emanations behind. Murderers, likewise, have the reputation of nursing an uncontrollable urge to revisit the scene of death, and on Sunday morning Morse found himself wondering whether the murderer of Josephs had ever set foot in St Frideswide's again since the day of his crime. He thought that the answer was probably 'yes', and it was one of the very few positive thoughts he had managed to generate since Friday evening. Somehow his mind had gone completely stale, and on the Saturday he had firmly resolved to abandon all idea of further investigation into a mysterious affair which was none of his business anyway. In the morning he had consulted the Sibyl once more, but had drawn the line at Inverness. In the afternoon he had wasted two idle hours in front of the television set watching the racing from Doncaster. He was restless and bored: there were so many books he could read, so many records he could play – and yet he could summon up no enthusiasm for anything. What did he want? His listless mood persisted through to Sunday morning, when not even the few erotic titbits in the News of the World could cheer him. He sprawled gloomily in his armchair, his eyes vaguely scanning the multi-coloured spines along the bookshelves. Baudelaire might match his mood, perhaps? What was that line about the prince in 'Les Fleurs du Mal'? 'Riche, mais impuissant, jeune et pourtant très vieux… ' And quite suddenly Morse felt better. Bloody nonsense! He was neither impotent nor senile – far from it! It was time for action.
He rang the number and she answered.
'Hello?'
'Miss Rawlinson?'
'Speaking.'
'You may not remember me. I – I met you in St Frideswide's last Monday.'
'I remember.'
'I was – er – thinking of going to church this morning- '
'Our church, you mean?'
'Yes.'
'You'd better get a move on – it starts at half-past ten.'
‘Oh. I see. Well – er – thank you very much.'
'You're very interested in us all of a sudden, Inspector.' There was a suggestion of friendly amusement in her voice, and Morse wanted to keep her on the phone.
'Did you know I came to the social on Friday evening?'
'Of course.' Morse felt a silly juvenile joy about that 'of course'. Keep going, lad! 'I – er – I didn't see you afterwards. In fact I didn't realize that it was you in the play.' 'Amazing what a blonde wig does, isn't it?' 'Who is it?' Someone called behind her voice. 'Pardon?' said Morse. 'It's all right. That was my mother – asking who you are.'
'Oh, I see.'
'Well, as I say, you'd better hurry up if you're going- '
'Are you going? Perhaps I could give you- '
'No, not this morning. Mother's had one of her asthma attacks, and I can't leave her.'
'Oh.' Morse hid his disappointment beneath a cheerful farewell, and said 'Bugger it!' as he cradled the phone. He was going, though. It wasn't Ruth Rawlinson he wanted to see. He just wanted to get the feel of the place – to pick up a few of those stray emanations. He told himself that it didn't matter two hoots whether the Rawlinson woman was there or not.
Looking back on his first church attendance for a decade, Morse decided that it was quite an experience. St Frideswide's must, he thought, be about as 'spikey ' as they come in the Anglican varieties. True, there was no Peter's Pence at the back of the church, no bulletin from the pulpit proclaiming the infallibility of his Holiness; but in other respects there seemed little that separated the church from the Roman fold. There'd been a sermon, all right, devoted to St Paul 's humourless denunciation of the lusts of the flesh, but the whole service had really centred round the Mass. It had not started all that well for Morse who, two minutes late, had inadvertently seated himself in the pew reserved for the churchwarden, and this had necessitated an awkward, whispered exchange as the people knelt to confess their wrongdoings. Fortunately, from his vantage-point at the rear, Morse was able to sit and stand and kneel in concert with the rest, although many of the crossings and genuflections proved equally beyond his reflexes as his inclinations. What amazed him more than anything was the number of the cast assembled around the altar, each purposefully pursuing his part: the celebrant, the deacon, the sub-deacon, the incense-swinger and the boat-boy, the two acolytes and the four torch-bearers, and conducting them all a youngish, mournful-faced master of ceremonies, his hands sticking out horizontally before him in a posture of perpetual prayer. It was almost like a floor-show, with everyone so well trained: bowing, crossing, kneeling, rising, with a synchronised discipline which (as Morse saw it) could profitably have been emulated by the Tap-Dance Troupe. To these manoeuvres the equally well-disciplined congregation would match its own reactions, suddenly sitting, as suddenly on its feet again, and occasionally giving mouth to mournful responses. The woman seated next to Morse had soon spotted him for the greenhorn that he was, and was continually thrusting the appropriate page of the proceedings under his nose. She herself sang in a shrill soprano, and was so refined in her diction that the long 'o' vowels issued forth as bleating 'ew's: thus, all the 'O Lords' became 'You Lords', and three times at the start of the service, whilst Meikiejohn walked briskly up and down the aisles sprinkling everything in sight with holy water, she had implored the Almighty to wash her from her sins and make her waiter yea waiter than snew. But there was one thing in Morse's favour – he knew most of the hymns; and at one point he thought he almost managed to drown the 'Hewly Hewly Hewly' on his right. And he learned something, too. From Meiklejohn's notices for the week's forthcoming attractions, it was clear that this Mass business was rather more complicated than he'd imagined. There must be three types, it seemed -'low', 'high' and 'solemn'; and if, as Morse suspected, the low variety wasn't all that posh, if no choir was involved – no organist even? – then what in heaven's name was Morris doing in church when the unhappy Lawson dashed himself to pieces from the tower? People perhaps did sometimes go to church because they wanted to but… Anyway, it might be worthwhile finding out a bit more about those different masses. And there was something else; something very suggestive indeed. With the exception of Morse himself, all the congregation partook of the blessed bread and the blessed wine, ushered quietly and firmly to the chancel-rails by that same churchwarden who had so nearly lost his seat, and who – doubtless by venerable tradition – was himself the very last to receive the sacrament. Josephs had been churchwarden. Josephs must have been the last to kneel at the chancel-rails on the evening of his death. Josephs had drunk some of the communion wine that same night. And Josephs – so the pathologist said – had finished up with some very queer
things in his stomach. Was it possible? Was it possible that Josephs had been poisoned at the altar? From his observation of the final part of the ritual, it was clear to Morse that any celebrant with a chalice in his hands could wreak enormous havoc if he had the inclination to do so, for when he'd finished he could get rid of every scrap of evidence. Nor did he need any excuse for this, for it was part of the drill: rinse the cup and wipe it clean and stick it in the cupboard till the next time. Yes. It would be tricky, of course, with all those other stage-hands standing around, like they were now; but on the evening of Josephs' murder, the cast must surely have been very much smaller. Again, it was something worth looking into. There was another snag, though, wasn't there? It seemed that the celebrant himself was called upon to drain the dregs that were left in the chalice, and to do it in front of the whole congregation. But couldn't he just pretend to do that? Pour it down the piscina later? Or, again, there might have been nothing left in the chalice at all…
There were so very many possibilities… and Morse's fancies floated steeple-high as he walked out of the cool church into the sunlit reach of Cornmarket.
Chapter Twelve
It was some relief for Morse to recognise the fair countenance of Reason once more, and she greeted him serenely when he woke, clear-headed, on Monday morning, and told him that it would be no bad idea to have a quiet look at the problem itself before galloping off towards a solution. Basically there were only two possibilities: either Lawson had killed Josephs, and thereafter committed suicide in a not surprising mood of remorse; or else some unknown hand had killed Josephs and then compounded his crime by adding Lawson to his list. Of these alternatives, the first was considerably the more probable; especially so if Josephs had in some way been a threat to Lawson, if the dagger found in Josephs' back had belonged to Lawson, and if Lawson himself had betrayed signs of anxiety or distress in the weeks preceding Josephs' death, as well as in the days that followed it. The trouble was that Morse had no one to talk to. Yet someone, he felt sure, knew a very great deal about his three 'ifs', and at 9.45 a.m. he found himself knocking rather hesitantly on the door of number 14 Manning Terrace. Such hesitancy was attributable to two causes: the first, his natural diffidence in seeming on the face of it to be so anxious to seek out the company of the fair Ruth Rawlinson; the second, the factual uncertainty that he was actually knocking on the right door, for there were two of them, side by side; the one to the left marked 14B, the other 14A. Clearly the house had been divided – fairly recently by the look of it – with one of the doors (Morse presumed) leading directly to the upper storey, the other to the ground floor.
