Service of all the dead

by Colin Dexter

  'I reckon this'll be mother and infant,' said Lewis under his breath. And indeed the heavily pregnant, dowdily dressed young woman dragging a two-year-old child along the pavement duly announced that she herself was the present occupier of 3 Home Close and that this was her daughter, Eve. Yes, she said, since the landlord had no objections, they could come in and have a look round the house. With pleasure.

  Morse declined the offer of a cup of tea, and went out into the back garden. Clearly someone had been very busy, for the whole plot showed every evidence of a systematic and recent digging-over; and in the small garden-shed the tines of the fork and the bottom half of the spade were polished to a silvery smoothness.

  'I see your husband's keen on growing his own veg.,' said Morse lightly, as he wiped his shoes on the mat by the back door.

  She nodded. 'It was all grass before we came, but, you know, with the price of things these days- '

  'Looks as if he's been doing a bit of double-digging.'

  'That's it. Took him ages, but he says it's the only way.'

  Morse, who hardly knew a sweet pea from a broad bean, nodded wisely, and gratefully decided he could forget about the garden.

  'Mind if we have a quick look upstairs?'

  'No. Go ahead. We only use two of the bedrooms – like the people who was here before us did. But – well, you never know…' Morse glanced down at her swollen belly and wondered how many bedrooms she might need before her carrying days were over.

  Young Eve's bower, the smallest of the bedrooms, was redolent of urine, and Morse screwed up his nose in distaste as he cursorily bent down over the uncarpeted floorboards. A dozen Donald Ducks on the newly decorated walls seemed to mock his aimless investigations, and he quickly left the room and closed the door behind him.

  'Nothing in either of the other rooms, sir,' said Lewis, joining Morse on the narrow landing, where the walls had been painted in a light Portland beige, with the woodwork cleanly finished off in white gloss. Morse, thinking the colours a good match, looked up at the ceiling – and whistled softly. Immediately above his head was a small rectangular trap-door, some 3 feet by 2 1/2 feet, painted as lovingly as the rest of the woodwork.

  'You got a step-ladder?' Morse shouted downstairs.

  Two minutes later Lewis was poking his head over the dusty beams and shining a torch around the rafters. Here and there a little of the early afternoon light filtered through ill-fitting joints in the tiles, yet the surprisingly large roof-space seemed dismal and darkly silent as Lewis took his weight on his wrists, gently levered himself up into the loft, and warily trod from beam to beam. A large trunk occupied the space between the trap-door and the chimney-stack, and as Lewis opened the lid and shone his torch on the slightly mildewed covers of the books inside a black, fat-bellied spider scurried its way out of reach. But Lewis was no arachnophobe, and quickly satisfying himself that the trunk was packed only with books he prodded around amid the rest of the débris: a furled Union Jack on a long blue pole, its colours faded now and forlorn; an old camp-bed probably dating from the Baden-Powell era; a brand-new lavatory-pan, patched (for some unfathomable purpose) with strips of gummed brown paper; an antiquated carpet-sweeper; two rolls of yellow insulation material; and a large roll of something else – surely? – pushed up tight between the beams and the roof-angle. Bending forward as low as he could, and groping in front of him, Lewis managed to reach the bundle, where his finger-tips prodded something soft and where his torch-light shone on to a black shoe sticking out of one end, the toe-cap filmed with a layer of grey dust.

  'Anything there?' Lewis heard the quiet urgent voice from below, but said nothing. The string tying the bundle together broke as he tugged at it, and there unrolled before him a collection of good-quality clothes: trousers, shirts, underclothes, socks, shoes and half a dozen ties – one of them a light Cambridge blue.

  Lewis' grim face appeared suddenly framed in the darkened rectangle. 'You'd better come up and have a look, sir.'

  They found another roll of clothes then, containing very much the same sort of items as the first. But the trousers were smaller, as indeed were all the other garments, and the two pairs of shoes looked as if they might have fitted a boy of about eleven or twelve. There was a tie, too. Just the one. A brand-new tie, with alternate stripes of red and grey: the tie worn by the pupils of the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School.

  Chapter Twenty-three

  A good many of the gradually swelling congregation were acid-faced spinsters of some fifty or sixty summers, several of whom glanced round curiously at the two strangers who sat on the back row of the central pews, next to the empty seat now clearly marked churchwarden. Lewis both looked and felt extraordinarily uncomfortable, whilst Morse appeared to gaze round him with bland assurance.

  'We do what everybody else does, understand?' whispered Morse, as the five-minute bell ceased its monotonous melancholy toll, and the choir set out in procession from the vestry and down the main aisle, followed by the incense-swinger and the boat-boy, the acolytes and torch-bearers, the master of ceremonies, and three eminent personages, similarly but not identically dressed, the last wearing, amongst other things, alb, biretta and chasuble – the ABC of ecclesiastical rig as far as Morse as yet had mastered it. In the chancel, the dramatis personae dispersed to their appropriate stations with practised alacrity, and suddenly all was order once more. Ruth Rawlinson, in a black, square choir-hat, took her place just beneath a stone-carved angel, and the assembled choir now launched into the Mass. During this time the churchwarden slipped noiselessly into his seat, and handed Morse a little scrap of paper: 'Setting, Iste Confessor – Palestrina'; at which Morse nodded wisely before passing it on to Lewis.

  At half-time, one of the eminent personages temporarily doffed his chasuble and ascended the circular steps of the pulpit to admonish his flock against the dangers and follies of fornication. But Morse sat throughout as one to whom the admonition was not immediately applicable. Once or twice earlier his eyes had caught Ruth's, but all the female members of the choir were now sheltered from view behind a stout octagonal pillar, and he leaned back and contemplated the lozenge-shaped panes of stained glass – deepest ruby, smoky blue and brightest emerald – his mind drifting back to his own childhood, when he had sung in the choir himself…

  Lewis, too, though for different reasons, very soon lost all interest in fornication. Being, in any case, the sort of man who had seldom cast any lascivious glances over his neighbour's wife, he let his mind wander quietly over the case instead, and asked himself once more whether Morse had been right in his insistence that another visit to a church service would be certain to spark off a few flashes of association, 'to give the hooked atoms a shake', as Morse had put it – whatever that might mean…

  It took some twenty minutes for the preacher to exhaust his anti-carnal exhortations; after which he descended from the pulpit, disappeared from view through a screen in the side of the Lady Chapel, before re-emerging, chasuble redonned, at the top of the main chancel. This was the cue for the other two members of the triumvirate to rise and to march in step towards the altar where they joined their brother. The choir had already picked up their Palestrina scores once more, and amid much genuflexion, crossing and embracing the Mass was approaching its climactic moment. 'Take, eat, this is my body,' said the celebrant, and his two assistants suddenly bowed towards the altar with a perfect synchronisation of movement and gesture – just as if the two were one. Yes, just as if the two were one… And there drifted into Morse's memory that occasion when as a young boy he'd been taken to a music-hall show with his parents. One of the acts had featured a woman dancing in front of a huge mirror, and for the first few minutes he had been unable to fathom it out at all. She wasn't a particularly nimble-bodied thing, and yet the audience had seemed enthralled by her performance. Then his mind had clicked: the dancer wasn't in front of a mirror at all! The apparent reflection was in reality another woman, dancing precisely the same steps, making precisel
y the same gestures, dressed in precisely the same costume. There were two women – not one. So? So, if there had been two dancers, could there not have been two priests on the night when Josephs was murdered?

  The kittiwake was soaring once again…

  Five minutes after the final benediction, the church was empty. A cassocked youth had finally snuffed out the last candle in the galaxy, and even the zealous Mrs Walsh-Atkins had departed. Missa est ecclesia.

  Morse stood up, slid the slim red Order of Service into his raincoat pocket, and strolled with Lewis into the Lady Chapel, where he stood reading a brass plaque affixed to the south wall:

  In the vaults beneath are interred the terrestrial remains of Jn. Baldwin Esq., honourable benefactor and faithful servant of this parish. Died 1732. Aged 68 yrs. Requiescat in pace.

  Meiklejohn smiled without joy as he approached them, surplice over his left arm. 'Anything else we can do for you, gentlemen?'

  'We want a spare set of keys,' said Morse.

  'Well, there is a spare set,' said Meiklejohn, frowning slightly. 'Can you tell me why-?'

  'It's just that we'd like to get in when the church is locked, that's all.'

  'Yes, I see.' He shook his head sadly. 'We've had a lot of senseless vandalism recently – mostly schoolchildren, I'm afraid. I sometimes wonder… '

  'We shall only need 'em for a few days.'

  Meiklejohn led them into the vestry, climbed on to a chair, and lifted a bunch of keys from a hook underneath the top of the curtain. 'Let me have them back as soon as you can, please. There are only four sets now, and someone's always wanting them – for bell-ringing, that sort of thing.'

  Morse looked at the keys before pocketing them: old-fashioned keys, one large, three much smaller, all of them curiously and finely wrought.

  'Shall we lock the door behind us?' asked Morse. It was meant to be lightly jocular, but succeeded only in sounding facetious and irreverent.

  'No, thank you,' replied the minister quietly. 'We get quite a lot of visitors on Sundays, and they like to come here and be quiet, and to think about life – even to pray, perhaps.'

  Neither Morse nor Lewis had been on his knees throughout the service; and Lewis, at least, left the church feeling just a little guilty, just a little humbled; it was as if he had turned his back on a holy offering.

  'C'm on,' said Morse, 'we're wasting good drinking-time.'

  At 12.25 p.m. the same day, a call from the Shrewsbury Constabulary came through to the Thames Valley Police H.Q. in Kidlington, where the acting desk-sergeant took down the message carefully. He didn't think the name rang any bells, but he'd put the message through the appropriate channels. It was only after he'd put the phone down that he realised he hadn't the faintest idea what 'the appropriate channels' were.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  Morse was lingering longer than usual, and it was Lewis who drained his glass first.

  'You feeling well, sir?'

  Morse put the Order of Service back in his pocket, and finished his beer in three or four gargantuan gulps. 'Never better, Lewis. Fill 'em up.'

  'Your round, I think, sir.'

  'Oh.'

  Morse leaned his elbows beside the replenished pints and continued. 'Who murdered Harry Josephs? That's the key question really, isn't it?'

  Lewis nodded. 'I had a bit of an idea during the service- '

  'No more ideas, please! I've got far too many already. Listen! The prime suspect's got to be the fellow Bell tried to trace. Agreed? The fellow who'd stayed several times at Lawson's vicarage, who was at the church when Josephs was murdered, and who disappeared afterwards. Agreed? We're not quite certain about it but there's every chance that this fellow was Lionel Lawson's brother, Philip Lawson. He's hard up and he's a wino. He sees some ready cash on the collection-plate and he decides to pinch it. Josephs tries to stop him, and gets a knife in the back for his trouble. Any problems?'

  'How did Philip Lawson come to have the knife?'

  'He'd seen it lying around the vicarage, and he decided to pocket it.'

  'Just on the off chance?'

  'That's it,' said Morse, as he turned unblinking towards Lewis.

  'But there were only a dozen or so people at the service, and the collection wouldn't have come to more than a couple of quid.'

  'That's it.'

  'Why not wait till one of the Sunday-morning services? Then he'd have the chance of fifty-odd quid.'

  'Yes. That's true.'

  'Why didn't he, then?'

  'I dunno.'

  'But no one actually saw him in the vestry.'

  'He skipped it as soon as he'd knifed Josephs.'

  'Surely someone would have seen him – or heard him?'

  'Perhaps he just hid in the vestry – behind the curtain.'

  'Impossible!'

  'Behind the door to the tower, then,' suggested Morse. 'Perhaps he went up to the tower – hid in the bell-chamber – hid on the roof – I dunno.'

  'But that door was locked when the police arrived – so it says in the report.'

  'Easy. He locked it from the inside.'

  'You mean he had – he had the key?'

  'You say you read the report, Lewis. Well? You must have seen the inventory of what they found in Josephs' pockets.'

  The light slowly dawned in Lewis' mind, and he could see Morse watching him, a hint of mild amusement in the inspector's pale-blue eyes.

  'You mean – they didn't find any keys,' he said at last.

  'No keys.'

  'You think he took them out of Josephs' pocket?'

  'Nothing to stop him.'

  'But – but if he looked through Josephs' pockets, why didn't he find the money? The hundred quid?'

  'Aren't you assuming,' asked Morse quietly, 'that that was all there was to find. What if, say, there'd been a thousand?'

  'You mean-?' But Lewis wasn't sure what he meant.

  'I mean that everyone, almost everyone, Lewis, is going to think what you did: that the murderer didn't search through Josephs' pockets. It puts everyone on the wrong scent, doesn't it? Makes it look as if it's petty crime – as you say, a few pennies off the collection-plate. You see, perhaps our murderer wasn't really much worried about how he was going to commit the crime – he thought he could get away with that. What he didn't want was anyone looking too closely at the motive.'

  Lewis was growing increasingly perplexed. 'Just a minute, sir. You say he wasn't much worried about how he murdered Josephs. But how did he? Josephs was poisoned as well as stabbed.'

  'Perhaps he just gave him a swig of booze – doctored booze.'

  Again Lewis felt the disconcerting conviction that Morse was playing a game with him. One or two of the points the chief had just made were more like those flashes of insight he'd learned to expect. But surely Morse could do better than this? He could do better himself.

  'Josephs could have been poisoned when he took communion, sir.'

  'You think so?' Morse's eyes were smiling again. 'How do you figure that out?' 'I reckon the churchwarden is usually the last person to take communion – '

  'Like this morning, yes.'

  ' – and so this tramp fellow is kneeling there next to him and he slips something into the wine.'

  'How did he carry the poison?'

  'He could have had it in one of those rings. You just unscrew the top – '

  'You watch too much television,' said Morse.

  ' – and sprinkle it in the wine.'

  'It would be a whitish powder, Lewis, and it wouldn't dissolve immediately. So the Rev. Lionel would see it floating on top. Is that what you're saying?'

  'Perhaps he had his eyes closed. There's a lot of praying and all that sort of thing when- '

  'And Josephs himself? Was he doing a lot of praying and all that sort of thing?'

  'Could have been.'

  'Why wasn't Lawson poisoned, then? It's the minister's job to finish off any wine that's left and, as you say, Josephs was pretty certainly the la
st customer.'

  'Perhaps Josephs swigged the lot,' suggested Lewis hopefully; and then his eyes irradiated a sudden excitement. 'Or perhaps, sir – or perhaps the two of them, the two Lawson brothers, were in it together. That would answer quite a lot of questions, wouldn't it?'

  Morse smiled contentedly at his colleague. 'You know, Lewis, you get brighter all the time. I think it must be my company that does it.'

  He pushed his glass across the table. 'Your turn, isn't it?'

  He looked around him as Lewis waited patiently to be served: it was half-past one and Sunday lunch-time trade was at its peak. A man with a rough beard, dressed in a long ex-army coat, had just shuffled through the entrance and was standing apprehensively by the bar; a man in latish middle-age, it seemed, wearing that incongruous pair of sun-glasses, and grasping an empty flagon of cider in his hand. Morse left his seat and walked over to him.

  'We met before, remember?'

  The man looked slowly at Morse and shook his head. 'Sorry, mate.'

  'Life not treating you so good?'

  'Nah.'

  'Been roughing it long?'

  'Last back-end.'

  'You ever know a fellow called Swanpole?'

  'Nah. Sorry, mate.'

  'Doesn't matter. I used to know him, that's all.'

  'I knew somebody who did,' said the tramp quietly. 'Somebody who knew the fellah you was just talking about.'

  'Yes?' Morse fumbled in his pockets and pushed a fifty-pence piece into the man's hand.

  'The old boy I used to go round with – 'e mentioned that name recently. "Swanny" – that's what they called 'im, but 'e's not round these parts any more.'

  'What about the old boy? Is he still around?'

  'Nah. 'E's dead. Died o' pneumonia – yesterday.'

  'Oh.'

  Morse walked back thoughtfully to the table, and a few minutes later watched a little sadly as the landlord showed the tramp the way to the exit. Clearly there was no welcome for the poor fellow's custom here, and no cider slowly to be sipped on one of the city's benches that Sunday afternoon; not from this pub anyway.