Inspector Morse 4 - Service Of All The Dead

by Colin Dexter

  '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.

  'It's open,' shouted a voice behind 14A. 'I can't get any farther.'

  For once, Sod's Law had been inoperative, and he had chosen right. Two steps led up to the narrow carpeted passage which served as a hallway (the staircase was immediately behind the boarded-up wall to the left, and the conversion had left little room for manoeuvre here), and at the top of these steps sat
Mrs. Alice Rawlinson in her wheelchair, a rubber-tipped walking-stick held firmly across her lap.

  'What d'you want?' Her keen eyes looked up at him sharply.

  'I'm sorry to bother you—Mrs. Rawlinson, isn't it?'

  'I said what d'you want, Inspector.'

  Morse's face must have betrayed his astonishment, and the old lady read his thoughts for him. 'Ruthie told me all about you.'

  'Oh. I just wondered if—'

  'No, she's not. Come in!' She worked her chair round in an expertly economical two-point turn. 'Close the door behind you.'

  Morse obeyed quietly, and found himself pushed brusquely aside as he tried to help her through the door at the end of the passage. She waved him to an upright armchair in the neatly furnished sitting-room, and finally came to rest herself only about four feet in front of him. The preliminaries were now completed, and she launched into the attack immediately.

  'If you want to cart my daughter off for a dirty week-end, you can't! We'd better get that straight from the start.'

  But Mrs. Raw—' He was silenced by a dangerously close wave of the stick. (Belligerent old bitch! thought Morse.)

  'I disapprove of many aspects of the youth of today—young men like yourself, I mean—especially their intolerable lack of manners. But I think they're quite right about one thing. Do you know what that is?'

  'Look, Mrs. Raw—' The rubber ferule was no more than three inches from his nose, and his voice broke off in mid-sentence.

  'They've got enough sense to have a bit of sex together before they get married. You agree?'

  Morse nodded a feeble acquiescence.

  'If you're going to live with someone for fifty years—' She shook her head at the prospect. 'Not that I was married for fifty years . . .' The sharp voice had drifted a few degrees towards a more wistful tone, but recovered immediately. 'As I say, though. You can't have her. I need her and she's my daughter. I have the prior call.'

  'I do assure you, Mrs. Rawlinson, I hadn't the slightest intention of—'

  'She's had men before, you know.'

  'I'm not sur—'

  'She was a very lovely girl, was my Ruthie.' The words were more quietly spoken, but the eyes remained shrewd and calculating. 'She's not a spring chicken any more, though.'

  Morse decided it was wise to hold his peace. The old girl was going ga-ga.

  'You know what her trouble is?' For a distasteful moment Morse thought her mind must be delving into realms of haemorrhoids and body-odour; but she sat there glaring at him, expecting an answer.

  Yes, he knew full well what Ruth Rawlinson's trouble was. Too true, he did. Her trouble was that she had to look after this embittered old battle-axe, day in and day out.

  'No,' he said. 'You tell me.'

  Her lips curled harshly. 'You're lying to me, Inspector. You know her trouble as well as I do.'

  Morse nodded. 'You're right. I don't think I could stick you for very long.'

  Now her smile was perfectly genuine. 'You know, you're beginning to sound like the man Ruthie said you were.' (Perhaps, thought Morse, she's not so ga-ga after all?)

  'You're a bit formidable sometimes, aren't you?'

  'All the time.'

  'Would Ruth have married—but for you?'

  'She's had her chances—though I didn't think much of her choices.'

  'Real chances?'

  Her face grew more serious. 'Certainly one.'

  'Well.' Morse made as if to rise, but got no farther.

  'What was your mother like?'

  'Loving and kind. I often think of her.'

  'Ruthie would have made a good mother.'

  'Not too old now, is she?'

  'Forty-two tomorrow.'

  'Hope you'll bake her a cake,' muttered Morse.

  'What?' The eyes blazed now. 'You don't understand, either, do you? Bake? Cook? How can I do anything like that? I can't even get to the front door.'

  'Do you try?'

  'You're getting impertinent, Inspector. It's time you went.' But as Morse rose she relented. 'No, I'm sorry. Please sit down again. I don't get many visitors. Don't deserve 'em, do I?'

  'Does your daughter get many visitors?'

  'Why do you ask that?' The voice was sharp again.

  'Just trying to be pally, that's all.' Morse had had his fill of the old girl, but her answer riveted him to the chair.

  'You're thinking of Josephs, aren't you?'

  No, he wasn't thinking of Josephs. 'Yes, I was,' he said, as flatly as his excitement would allow.

  'He wasn't her sort.'

  'And he had a wife.'

  She snorted. 'What's that got to do with it? Just because you're a bachelor yourself—'

  'You know that?'

  'I know a lot of things.'

  'Do you know who killed Josephs?'

  She shook her head. 'I don't know who killed Lawson, either.'

  'I do, Mrs. Rawlinson. He killed himself. You'll find the information in the coroner's report. It's just the same as cricket, you know: if the umpire says you're out, you're out, and you can check it up in the papers next morning.'

  'I don't like cricket.'

  'Did you like Josephs?'

  'No. And I didn't like Lawson, either. He was a homosexual you know.'

  'Really? I hadn't heard of any legal conviction.'

  'You're surely not as naïve as you sound, Inspector?'

  'No,' said Morse, 'I'm not.'

  'I hate homosexuals.' The stick lifted menacingly, gripped tight in hands grown strong from long years in a wheelchair. 'I'd willingly strangle the lot of 'em.'

  'And I'd willingly add you to the list of suspects, Mrs. Rawlinson but I'm afraid I can't. You see, if someone killed Lawson, as you're suggesting, that someone must have gone up the church tower.'

  'Unless Lawson was killed in the church and someone else carried him up there.'

  It was an idea; and Morse nodded slowly, wondering why he hadn't thought of it himself.

  'I'm afraid I shall have to kick you out, Inspector. It's my bridge day, and I always spend the morning brushing up on a few practice hands.' She was winning every trick here, too, and Morse acknowledged the fact.

  Ruth was fixing the lock on her bicycle when she looked up to see Morse standing by the door and her mother sitting at the top of the steps behind him.

  'Hello,' said Morse. 'I'm sorry I missed you, but I've had a nice little chat with your mother. I really came to ask if you'd come out with me tomorrow night.' With her pale face and her untidy hair, she suddenly seemed very plain, and Morse found himself wondering why she'd been so much on his mind. 'It's your birthday, isn't it?'

  She nodded vaguely, her face puzzled and hesitant.

  'It's all right,' said Morse. 'Your mother says it'll do you good. In fact she's very pleased with the idea, aren't you, Mrs. Rawlinson?' (One trick to Morse.)

  'Well, I—I'd love to but—'

  'No buts about it, Ruthie! As the Inspector says, I think it would do you the world of good.'

  'I'll pick you up about seven, then,' said Morse.

  Ruth gathered up her string shopping-bag, and stood beside Morse on the threshold. 'Thank you, Mother. That was kind of you. But' (turning to Morse) 'I'm sorry. I can't accept your invitation. I've already been asked out by—by someone else.'

  Life was a strange business. A few seconds ago she'd looked so ordinary; yet now she seemed a prize just snatched from his grasp, and for Morse the day ahead loomed blank and lonely. As it did, if only he had known, for Ruth.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  'WHAT THE 'ELL DO you want?' growled Chief Inspector Bell of the City Police. A fortnight in Malaga which had coincided with a strike of Spanish hotel staff had not brought him home in the sweetest of humours; and the jobs he had gladly left behind him had (as ever) not gone away. But he knew Morse well: they were old sparring partners.

  'The Spanish brothels still doing a roaring trade?'

  'Had the wife with me, didn't I?'

&nb
sp; 'Tell me something about this Lawson business.'

  'Damned if I will. The case is closed—and it's got nothing to do with you.'

  'How're the kids?'

  'Ungrateful little buggers. Shan't take 'em again.'

  'And the Lawson case is closed?'

  'Locked and bolted.'

  'No harm in just—'

  'I've lost the key.'

  'All kids are ungrateful.'

  'Especially mine.'

  'Where's the file?'

  'What d'you want to know?'

  'Who killed Josephs, for a start.'

  'Lawson did.'

  Morse blinked in some surprise. 'You mean that?'

  Bell nodded. 'The knife that killed Josephs belonged to Lawson. The woman who charred for him had seen it several times on his desk in the vicarage.'

  'But Lawson was nowhere near Josephs when—' Morse stopped in his tracks, and Bell continued.

  'Josephs was just about dead when he was knifed: acute morphine poisoning, administered, as they say, at the altar of the Lord. What about that, Morse? Josephs was a churchwarden and he was always last at the altar-rail, and he finished up with some pretty queer things in his belly, right? It seems pretty obvious then, that . . .' It was a strange experience for Morse. Déjà vu. He found himself only half-listening to Bell's explanation—no, not Bell's, his own explanation. ' . . . rinse the utensils, wipe 'em clean, stick 'em in the cupboard till next time. Easy! Proof, though? No.'

  'But how did Lawson—'

  'He's standing in front of the altar, waiting for the last hymn to finish. He knows Josephs is counting tip the collection in the vestry as he always does, and Lawson's expecting him to be lying there unconscious; dead, probably, by now. But suddenly Josephs shouts for help, and Lawson comes swooping down the aisle in his batman outfit—'

  'Chasuble,' mumbled Morse.

  '—and covers him up under his what's-it; he keeps the others—there aren't many of 'em, anyway—away from the vestry, sends for help, and then when he's alone he sticks his knife in Josephs' back—just to make sure.'