by Colin Dexter
'Well, that's who it is,' said her mother.
'Pardon?'
'The man up the tower, dear. It's the tramp.'
'Bit elegantly dressed for a tramp, wouldn't you say, Mother? White shirt and a- '
'I thought you said you hadn't seen the paper, dear.' The charge was levelled with a silky tongue.
Ruth took a deep breath. 'I just thought you'd like to find it for yourself, that's all.'
'You're beginning to tell me quite a few little lies, Ruthie, and you've got to stop it.'
Ruth looked up sharply. What was that supposed to mean? Surely her mother couldn't know about…?
'You're talking nonsense, Mother.'
'So you don't think it is the tramp?'
'A tramp wouldn't be wearing clothes like that.'
'People can change clothes, can't they?'
'You've been reading too many detective stories.'
'You could kill someone and then change his clothes.'
'Of course you couldn't.' Again Ruth was watching her mother carefully- 'Not just like that anyway. You make it sound like dressing up a doll or something.'
'It would be difficult, dear, I know that. But, then, life is full of difficulties, isn't it? It's not impossible, that's all I'm saying.'
'I've got two nice little steaks from Salisbury 's, I thought we'd have a few chips with them.'
'You could always change a man's clothes before you killed him.'
'What? Don't be so silly! You don't identify a body by the clothes. It's the face and things like that. You can't change- '
'What if there's nothing left of his face, dear?' asked Mrs Rawlinson sweetly, as if reporting that she'd eaten the last piece of Cheddar from the pantry.
Ruth walked over to the window, anxious to bring the conversation to a close. It was distasteful and, yes, worrying. And perhaps her mother wasn't getting quite so senile after all… In her mind's eye Ruth still had a clear picture of the 'tramp' her mother had been talking of, the man she'd known (though she'd never actually been told) to be Lionel Lawson's brother, the man who had usually looked exactly what he was – a worthless, feckless parasite, reeking of alcohol, dirty and degraded. Not quite always, though. There had been two occasions when she'd seen him looking more than presentable: hair neatly groomed, face shaven freshly, finger-nails clean, and a decently respectable suit on his back. On those occasions the family resemblance between the two brothers had been quite remarkable…
'…if they ask me, which doubtless they won't- ' Mrs Rawlinson had been chattering non-stop throughout, and her words at last drifted through to Ruth's consciousness.
'What would you tell them?'
'I've told you. Haven't you been listening to me, dear? Is there something wrong?'
Yes, there's a lot wrong. You, for a start. And if you're not careful, Mother dear, I'll strangle you one of these days dress you up in someone else's clothes, carry your skinny little body up to the top of the tower, and let the birds have a second helping! 'Wrong? Of course there isn't. I'll go and get tea.'
Rotten, black blotches appeared under the skin of the first potato she was peeling, and she took another from the bag she had just bought – a bag marked with the words 'Buy British' under a large Union Jack. Red, white and blue… And she thought of Paul Morris seated on the organ-bench, with his red hood, white shirt and blue tie; Paul Morris, who (as everyone believed) had run off with Brenda Josephs. But he hadn't, had he? Someone had made very, very sure that he hadn't; someone who was sitting somewhere – even now! – planning, gloating, profiting, in some way, from the whole dreadful business. The trouble was that there weren't many people left. In fact, if you counted the heads of those that were left, there was really only one who could conceivably… Surely not, though. Surely Brenda Josephs could have nothing to do with it, could she?
Ruth shook her head with conviction, and peeled the next potato.
Chapter Twenty-one
Although her husband (unbeknown to her) had borrowed on the mortgage of their house in Wolvercote, Mrs Brenda Josephs was now comfortably placed financially, and the nurses' hostel in the General Hospital on the outskirts of Shrewsbury provided more than adequate accommodation. On Paul's specific instructions, she had not written to him once, and she had received only that one letter from him, religiously guarded under the lining of her handbag, much of which she knew by heart: '… and above all don't be impatient, my darling. It will take time, perhaps quite a lot of time, and whatever happens we must be careful. As far as I can see there is nothing to worry us, and we must keep it that way. Just be patient and all will be well. I long to see you again and to feel your beautiful body next to mine. I love you, Brenda you know that, and soon we shall be able to start a completely new life together. Be discreet always, and do nothing until you hear from me again. Burn this letter – now!'
Brenda had been working since 7.30 a.m. on the women's surgical ward, and it was now 4.15 p.m. Her Friday evening and the whole of Saturday were free, and she leaned back in one of the armchairs in the nurses' common room and lit a cigarette. Since leaving Oxford her life (albeit without Paul) had been fuller and freer than she could ever have hoped or imagined. She had made new friends and taken up new interests. She had been made aware, too happily aware, of how attractive she remained to the opposite sex. Only a week after her appointment (she had given, as her referee, the name of the matron for whom she had worked prior to her nursing at the Radcliffe) one of the young married doctors had said to her, 'Would you like to come to bed with me, Brenda?' Just like that! She smiled now as she recollected the incident, and an unworthy thought, not for the first time, strayed across the threshold of her mind. Did she really want Paul all that badly now? With that son of his, Peter? He was a nice enough young boy, but… She stubbed out her cigarette and reached for the Guardian. There was an hour and a half to wait before the evening meal, and she settled down to a leisurely perusal of the day's news. Inflation figures seemed mildly encouraging for a change; but the unemployment figures were not, and she knew only too well what unemployment could do to a man's soul. Middle East peace talks were still taking place, but civil wars in various parts of Africa seemed to be threatening the delicate balance between the superpowers. In the Home News, at the bottom of page three, there was a brief item on the discovery of a body on the tower of an Oxford church; but Brenda didn't reach it. The young doctor sat down beside her, unnecessarily but not distressingly close.
'Hello, beautiful! What about us doing the crossword together?'
He took the paper from her, folded it over to the crossword, and undipped a biro from the top pocket of his white coat.
'I'm not much good at crosswords,' said Brenda.
'I bet you're good in bed, though.'
'If you're going to- '
'One across. Six letters. "Girl takes gun to district attorney." What's that, do you think?'
'No idea.'
'Just a minute! What about BRENDA? Fits, doesn't it? Gun – "bren"; district attorney – "D.A." Voilà!'
Brenda snatched the paper and looked at the clue: Girl in bed – censored. 'You're making it up,' she laughed.
'Lovely word "bed", isn't it?' He printed the letters of 'Brenda' on the margin of the paper, and then neatly ringed the three letters 'b', 'e', 'd' in sequence. 'Any hope for me yet?'
'You're a married man.'
'And you ran away.' He underlined the three remaining letters 'r', 'a', 'n', and turned impishly towards her. 'No one'll know. We'll just nip up to your room and- '
'Don't be silly!'
'I'm not silly. I can't help it, can I, if I lust after you every time I see you in your uniform?' His tone was light and playful, but he suddenly became more serious as the door opened and two young nurses came in. He spoke softly now. 'Don't get cross with me if I keep trying, will you? Promise?'
'Promise,' whispered Brenda.
He wrote banned into the squares for 1 Across, and read out the clue for 1 Down. But Brenda w
asn't listening. She didn't wish to be seen sitting so closely to the young doctor as this, and soon made up an excuse to go to her room, where she lay back on her single bed and stared long and hard at the ceiling. The door was locked behind her, and no one would have known, would they? Just as he'd said. If only… She could hardly bring herself to read her own thoughts. If only he'd just walk up the stairs, knock on the door and ask her again, in his simple, hopeful, uncomplicated way, she knew that she would invite him in, and lie down – just as she lay there now – gladly unresistant as he unfastened the white buttons down the front of her uniform.
She felt tired, and the room was excessively stuffy – the radiator too hot to touch. Gradually she dozed off, and when she awoke her mouth was very dry. Something had woken her; and now she heard the gently reiterated knock-knock at the door. How long had she slept for? Her watch told her it was 5.45 p.m. She fluffed her hair, straightened her uniform, lightly smeared on a little lipstick and, with a little flutter of excitement in her tummy, walked across to the door of her room, newly painted in dazzling white gloss.
* * *
It was lying by the same door that a member of the cleaning staff found her the next morning. Somehow she had managed to crawl across from the centre of the small room; and it was clear that her fingers had groped in vain for the handle of the door, for the lower panels were smeared with the blood coughed up from her throat. No one seemed to know exactly where she came from, but the letter the police found beneath the lining of her handbag suggested strongly that she was, or had been, on the most intimate terms with a man called 'Paul', who had given his address only as 'Kidlington', and who had urged the recipient to burn the evidence immediately.
Chapter Twenty-two
It was on Saturday morning, and in the middle of page two of the long-delayed post-mortem report on the corpse found on the tower, that Morse came to the conclusion he might just as well be reading the Chinese People's Daily. He appreciated, of course, the need for some technical jargon, but there was no chance whatsoever for a non-medical man to unjumble such a farrago of physiological labellings. The first paragraph had been fairly plain sailing, though, and Morse handed the report over to Lewis:
The body is that of an adult Caucasian male, brachycephalic. Height: 5 ft 8 1/2 in. Age: not easy to assess with accuracy, but most likely between 35 and 40. Hair: light brown, probably cut a week or so before death. Eyes: colouring impossible to determine. Teeth: remarkably good, strongly enamelled, with only one filling (posterior left six). Physical peculiarities: none observable, although it cannot be assumed that there were no such peculiarities, since the largest patch of skin, taken from the lower instep (left), measures only…
Lewis passed the report back, for he had little wish to be reminded too vividly of the sight picked out so recently by the narrow beam of the verger's torch. Moreover, his next job promised to be quite gruesome enough for one morning, and for the next half-hour he sifted through the half-dozen transparent plastic bags containing the remnants of the dead man's clothes. Morse himself declined to assist in the unsavoury operation and expressed only mild interest when he heard a subdued whistle of triumph from his subordinate.
'Let me guess, Lewis. You've found a label with his name and telephone number.'
'As good as, sir.' In a pair of tweezers, he held up a small rectangular bus-ticket. 'It was in the breast-pocket of the jacket – 30p fare on 26 October. I reckon the fare from Kidlington to Oxford 's about 30p – '
'Probably gone up by now,' muttered Morse.
' – and surely' (Lewis' eyes suddenly sparkled with excitement) 'that was the day when Paul Morris disappeared, wasn't it?'
'Never my strong point – dates,' said Morse.
For the moment, however, nothing was going to dampen Lewis' enthusiasm. 'Pity his teeth were so good, sir. He's probably not been near a dentist for years. Still, we ought to be able to- '
'You're taking an awful lot for granted, you know. We neither of us have the slightest proof about who the fellow is, agreed? And until- '
'No, we haven't. But there's not much sense in closing our eyes to the obvious.'
'Which is?'
'That the man we found is Paul Morris,' replied Lewis with firm confidence.
'Just because a young girl in one of his classes says he used to wear a dark suit – '
'And a blue tie.'
'- and a blue tie, all right, that makes him Paul Morris, you say? Lewis! You're getting as bad as I am.'
'Do you think I'm wrong?'
'No, no. I wouldn't say that. I'm just a little more cautious than you, shall we say?'
This was ridiculous. Morse, as Lewis knew only too well, was a man prepared to take the most prodigious leaps into the dark; and yet here he was now – utterly blind to the few simple facts that lay staring him in the face in broad daylight. Forget it, though!
It took Lewis no more than ten minutes to discover that Paul Morris had been a patient at the Kidlington Health Centre, and after a little quiet but urgent pressure the senior partner of that consortium was reading through the details on his medical card.
'Well?' asked Morse, as Lewis cradled the receiver.
'Fits pretty well. Thirty-eight years old, five feet nine inches, light-brown hair- '
'Fits a lot of people. Medium height, medium colouring, medium- '
'Don't you want to find out who he is?' Lewis stood up and looked down at Morse with unwonted exasperation in his voice. 'I'm sorry if all this doesn't fit in with any clever little theory you've thought up, but we've got to make some sort of start, haven't we?'
Morse said nothing for a few moments, and when he did speak his quiet words made Lewis feel ashamed of the tetchiness which had marked his own.
'Surely you can understand, can't you, Lewis, why I'm hoping that rotting corpse isn't Paul Morris? You see, if it is, I'm afraid we'd better start looking round pretty quickly, hadn't we? We'd better start looking round for yet another corpse, my old friend – a corpse aged about twelve.'
Like Bell, the landlord of 3 Home Close, Kidlington, had flu, but he gave Morse a sneezy blessing to look over the property, rented out (since Morris left) to a young married couple with one baby daughter. But no one answered Lewis' repeated knockings. 'Probably shopping,' he said as he sat down again next to Morse in the front of the police car.
Morse nodded and looked vaguely around him. The small crescent had been built some time in the early 1930s – a dozen or so red-brick, semi-detached properties, now beginning to look their age, with the supports of their slatted wooden fences virtually sopped and sapped away. Tell me, Lewis,' he said suddenly. 'Who do you think murdered Josephs?'
'I know it's not a very original idea, sir, but I should think it must have been this down-and-out fellow. Like as not he decided to pinch the collection-money, and Josephs got in his way, and he knifed him. Another possibility- '
'But why didn't Josephs yell the place down?'
'He did try to shout for help, sir, if you remember. Couldn't make himself heard above the organ, perhaps.'
'You could be right, you know,' said Morse, almost earnestly as if he'd suddenly woken up to the fact that the obvious way of looking at things wasn't necessarily the wrong one. 'What about Lawson? Who killed him?'
'You know better than I do, sir, that the majority of murderers either give themselves up or commit suicide. There's surely not much doubt that Lawson committed suicide.'
'But Lawson didn't kill Josephs, did he? You just said- '
'I was going on to say, sir, that there was another possibility. I don't think Lawson himself actually killed Josephs, but I think he may have been responsible for killing him.'
'You do?' Morse looked across at his subordinate with genuine interest. 'I think you'd better take it a bit more slowly, Lewis. You're leaving me a long way behind, I'm afraid.'
Lewis allowed himself a mild grin of modest gratification. It wasn't often that Morse was the back-marker – just the opposite in
fact: he was usually about three or four jumps ahead of his stable-companion. 'I think there's more than a possibility, sir, that Lawson got this down-and-out fellow to kill Josephs – probably by giving him money.'
'But why should Lawson want to kill Josephs?'
'Josephs must have had some hold over him.'
'And Lawson must have had some hold on this down-and-out fellow.'
'How right you are, sir!'
'Am I?' Morse looked across in a semi-bewildered way at his sergeant. He remembered how when he was taking his eleven-plus examination he was seated next to a boy renowned for his vacuous imbecility, and how this same boy had solved the tenth anagram whilst Morse himself was still puzzling over the third.
'As I see it,' continued Lewis, 'Lawson must have been looking after him all ways: meals, clothes, bed, everything.'
'He must have been like a sort of brother to him, you mean?'
Lewis looked at Morse curiously. 'Bit more than that, wasn't he, sir?'
'Pardon?'
'I said it was a bit more than being like a brother to him. He was a brother, surely.'
'You mustn't believe every piece of gossip you hear.'
'And you mustn't automatically disbelieve it, either.'
‘If only we had a bit more to go on, Lewis!' And then the truth hit him, as it usually did, with a flash of blinding simplicity. Any corroboration he'd wanted had been lying under his nose since his visit with Lewis to Stamford, and a shiver of excitement ran along his sculp as at last he spotted it. 'Swanpole' had appeared several times in Bell 's files as the probable name of the man who had been befriended by the Reverend Lionel Lawson, the man who had so strangely disappeared after the murder of Josephs. But, if all the rumors were right, that man's real name was Philip Edward Lawson, and whether you were a rather timid little fellow trying your eleven-plus question-paper, or whether you were a souring middle-aged detective sitting in a panda-car, Swanpole was an anagram of P. E. Lawson.
