Inspector Morse 4 - Service Of All The Dead

by Colin Dexter

  As always with this man, the woman experienced that curious admixture of revulsion and attraction—compulsive combination! Until so very recently a virgin, she was newly aware of herself as a physical object, newly conscious of the power of her body. She lay back passively as he fondled her far beyond the point which a few months previously would have been either pleasing or permissible; and she seemed almost mesmerised as he pulled her up from the sofa and led the way through to the bedroom.

  Their coitus was not exceptionally memorable—certainly not ecstatic; but it was satisfactory and satisfying. It usually was. As usual, too, the woman now lay between the sheets silently, feeling cheap and humiliated. It was not only her body that was naked, but her soul, too; and instinctively she drew the top of the sheet up to her neck and prayed that for a little while at least he would keep his hands and eyes away from her. How she despised him! Yet not one half, not one quarter as much as she had learned to despise herself.

  It had got to stop. She hated the man and the power he had come to wield over her—yet she needed him, needed the firm virility of his body. He had kept himself wonderfully fit . . . but, then, that wasn't . . . wasn't surprising . . . not really . . . not really . . .

  Briefly she fell asleep.

  He spoke to her as she stood by the door, the mackintosh loosely over her shoulders. 'Same time on Wednesday?'

  Once more the humiliation of it all settled heavily upon her, and her lip was shaking as she replied.

  'It's got to stop! You know it has!'

  'Stop?' His mouth was set in a conceited sneer. 'You couldn't stop. You know that as well as I do.'

  'I can stop seeing you whenever I like, and there's nothing you or anybody else—'

  'Isn't there? You're in this as deeply as I am—don't you ever forget that!'

  She shook her head, almost wildly. 'You said you'd be going away. You promised!'

  'And I shall be. I'll be going very soon now, my girl, and that's the truth. But until I do go, I keep seeing you—understand? I see you when I want, as often as I want. And don't tell me you don't enjoy it, because you do! And you know you do.'

  Yes, she knew it, and she felt her eyes prickling with hurt at his cruel words. How could she do this? How could she hate a man so much—and yet allow him to make love to her? No! It just couldn't go on like this! And the solution to all her troubles was so childishly simple: she just had to go and see Morse, that was all; tell him everything and face the consequences, whatever they were. She still had a bit of courage left, didn't she?

  The man was watching her carefully, half-guessing what was going through her mind. He was used to taking swift decisions—he always had been; and he saw his next moves as clearly as if he were a grandmaster playing chess with a novice. He had known all along that he would have to deal with her sooner or later; and, although he had hoped it would be later, he realised now that the game must be finished quickly. For him, sex had always come—would always come—a poor second to power.

  He walked over to her, and his face for once seemed kind and understanding as he placed his hands so very lightly on her shoulder, his eyes looking searchingly into hers.

  'All right, Ruth,' he said quietly. 'I'll not be a nuisance to you any more. Come and sit down a minute. I want to talk to you.' Gently he took her arm and led her unresisting to the sofa. 'I won't make any more demands on you, Ruth—I promise I won't. We'll stop seeing each other, if that's what you really want. I can't bear to see you unhappy like this.'

  It had been many weeks since he had spoken to her in such a way, and for a while, in the context of her wider grief, she felt infinitely grateful for his words.

  'As I say, I'll be going away soon and then you can forget me, and we can both try to forget what we've done. The wrong we've done—because it was wrong, wasn't it? Not about us going to bed together—I don't mean that. That was something lovely for me—something I shall never regret—and I'd hoped . . . I'd hoped it was lovely for you, too. But never mind that. Just promise me one thing, Ruth, will you? If you ever want to come to me—while I'm here, I mean—please come! Please! You know I'll be wanting you—and waiting.'

  She nodded, and the tears trickled down her cheeks at the bitter-sweet joy of his words as he cradled her head against his shoulder and held her firmly to him.

  She stayed there for what seemed to her a long, long time; yet for him it was little more than a functional interspace, his cold eyes staring over her shoulder at the hateful wallpaper behind the television. He would have to kill her, of course: that decision had been taken long ago anyway. What he was quite unable to understand was the delay. Surely the police were not so stupid as they seemed? Nothing so far—why?—about the Shrewsbury murder. Nothing definite about the body on the tower. Nothing at all about the boy . . .

  'Your mother all right?' He asked it almost tenderly.

  She nodded and sniffed. It was time she was back home with that mother of hers.

  'Still cleaning the church?'

  She nodded again, continued her sniffing, and finally broke away from him.

  'Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?'

  'Just Mondays and Wednesdays now, I'm getting a bit slack in my old age.'

  'Still in the mornings?'

  'Mm. I usually go about ten. And I've been going for a drink in the Randolph when I've finished, I'm afraid.' She laughed nervously, and blew her nose loudly into her sopping handkerchief. 'I could do with a quick drink now if—'

  'Of course.' He fetched a bottle of Teacher's whisky from the sideboard and poured a good measure into her wine-glass 'Here you are. You'll feel better soon. You feel better now, don't you?'

  'Yes, I do.' She took a sip of the whisky. 'You—you remember when I asked you whether you knew anything about—about what they found up on the church tower?'

  'I remember.'

  'You said you hadn't any idea at all—'

  'And I hadn't—haven't. Not the faintest idea. But I expect the police will find out.'

  'They just say they're—they're making enquiries.'

  'They've not been bothering you again, have they?'

  She breathed deeply and stood up. 'No. Not that I could tell them anything about that.'

  For a moment she thought of Morse with his piercing eyes. Sad eyes, though, as if they were always looking for something and never quite finding it. A clever man, as she realised, and a nice man, too. Why, oh why, hadn't someone like Morse found her many years ago?

  'What are you thinking about?' His voice was almost brusque again.

  'Me? Oh, just thinking how nice you can be when you want. That's all.'

  She wanted to get away from him now. It was as if freedom beckoned her from behind the locked door, but he was close behind her and his hands were once again fondling her body; and soon he had forced her to the floor where, within a few inches of the door, he penetrated her once again, snorting as he did so like some animal, whilst she for her part stared joylessly at a hair-line crack upon the ceiling.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  'THEY TELL ME YOU can start a fibroblast from the commercial banger,' said Morse, rubbing his hands delightedly over the crowded plate of sausages, eggs and chips which Mrs. Lewis had placed before him. It was half-past eight on the same Sunday evening.

  'What's a fibroblast?' asked Lewis.

  'Something to do with taking a bit of tissue and keeping it alive. Frightening really. Perhaps you could keep a bit of somebody alive—well, indefinitely, I suppose. Sort of immortality of the body.' He broke the surface of one of his eggs and dipped a golden-brown chip into the pale-yellow yolk.

  'You won't mind if I have the telly on?' Mrs. Lewis sat down with a cup of tea, and the set was clicked on. 'I don't really care what they do to me when I'm gone, Inspector, just as long as they make absolutely certain that I'm dead, that's all.'

  It was an old fear—a fear that had prompted some of the wealthier Victorians to arrange all sorts of elaborate contraptions inside their coffin
s so that any corpse, revivified contrary to the expectations of the physicians, could signal from its subterranean interment immediate intelligence of any return to consciousness. It was a fear, too, that had driven Poe to write about such things with so grisly a fascination; and Morse refrained from mentioning the fact that those whose most pressing anxiety was they might be lowered living into their graves could have their minds set at rest: the disturbing medical truth was they quite certainly would be so lowered.

  'What's on?' mumbled Morse, his mouth full of food.

  But Mrs. Lewis didn't hear him. Already, Svengali-like, the television held her in its holy trance.

  Ten minutes later Lewis sat checking his football pools from the Sunday Express, and Morse leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes, his mind preoccupied with death and people being lowered . . . lowered into their graves . . .

  Where—where was he?

  Morse's head and shoulders jerked backwards, and he blinked himself awake. Lewis was still engrossed in the back page of the Sunday Express, and on the television screen a head butler was walking sedately down some stairs to a wine-cellar.

  That was it! Silently Morse cursed himself for his own stupidity. The answer had stared him in the face that very same morning: 'In the vaults beneath are interred the terrestrial remains . . .' A wave of excitement set his senses tingling as he stood up and drew back the edge of the curtain from the window. It was dark now, and the pane was spattered with fine drizzle. Things could wait, surely? What on earth was going to be gained by another nocturnal visit to a dark, deserted church, that couldn't wait until the light of the morning? But inevitably Morse knew that he couldn't wait and wouldn't wait.

  'Sorry about this, Mrs. Lewis, but I shall have to take the old man away again, I'm afraid. We shouldn't be long, though; and thanks again for the meal.'

  Mrs. Lewis said nothing, and fetched her husband's shoes from the kitchen. Lewis himself said nothing, either, but folded the newspaper away and resigned himself to the fact that his Lit-plan permutations had once more failed to land him a fortune. It was the 'bankers' that always let him down, those virtual certainties round which the plan had to be constructed. Like this case, he thought, as he pulled on his shoes: no real certainties at all. Not in his own mind anyway; and from what Morse had said at lunch-time no real certainties in his mind, either. And where the Dickens, he wondered, were they off to now?

  As it happened, the church was neither dark nor deserted, and the main door at the north porch creaked open to reveal a suffused light over the quiet interior.

  'Do you think the murderer's here, sir—confessing his sins?'

  'I reckon somebody's confessing something,' muttered Morse.

  His ears had caught the faintest murmurings and he pointed to the closed curtains of the confessional, set into the north wall.

  Almost immediately an attractive young woman emerged, her sins presumably forgiven, and with eyes averted from the two detectives click-clacked her way out of the church.

  'Nice-looking girl, sir.'

  'Mm. She may have what you want, Lewis; but do you want what she's got?'

  'Pardon, sir?'

  The Reverend Canon Meiklejohn was walking silently towards them on his rubber-soled shoes, removing a long, green-embroidered stole from round his neck.

  'Which of you wants to be first, gentlemen?'

  'I'm afraid I've not been sinning much today,' said Morse. 'In fact there's many a day when I hardly get through any sinning at all.'

  'We're all sinners, you know that,' said Meiklejohn seriously. 'Sin, alas, is the natural state of our unregenerate humanity—'

  'Is there a crypt under the church?' asked Morse.

  Meiklejohn's eyes narrowed slightly. 'Well, yes, there is, but—er—no one goes down there. Not as far as I know anyway. In fact I'm told that no one's been down there for ten years or so. The steps look as if they've rotted away and—'

  Again Morse interrupted him. 'How can we get down there?'

  Meiklejohn was not in the habit of being spoken to so sharply, and a look of slight annoyance crossed his face. 'I'm afraid you can't, gentlemen. Not now anyway. I'm due at Pusey House in about—' He looked down at his wristwatch.

  'You don't really need me to remind you what we're here for, do you, sir? And it's not to inspect your Norman font, is it? We're investigating a murder—a series of murders—and as police officers we've every right to expect a bit of co-operation from the public. And for the minute you're the public. All right? Now. How do we get down there?'

  Meikiejohn breathed deeply. It had been a long day and he was beginning to feel very tired. 'Do you really have to talk to me as if I were a naughty child, Inspector? I'll just get my coat, if you don't mind.'

  He walked off to the vestry, and when he returned Morse noticed the shabbiness of the thick, dark overcoat; the shabbiness, too, of the wrinkled black shoes.

  'We shall need this,' said Meiklejohn, pointing to a twenty-foot ladder against the south porch.

  With a marked lack of professionalism, Morse and Lewis manoeuvred the long ladder awkwardly out of the south door, through the narrow gate immediately opposite, and into the churchyard, where they followed Meiklejohn over the wet grass along the south side of the outer church wall. A street lamp threw a thin light on to the irregular rows of gravestones to their right, but the wall itself was in the deepest gloom.

  'Here we are,' said Meiklejohn. He stood darkly over a horizontal iron grille, about six feet by three feet, which rested on the stone sides of a rectangular shaft cut into the ground. Through the grille-bars, originally painted black but now brown-flaked with rust, the torch-light picked out the bottom of the cavity, about twelve feet below, littered with the débris of paper bags and cigarette-packets. To the side of the shaft furthest from the church wall was affixed a rickety-looking wooden ladder, and parallel to it an iron hand-rail ran steeply down. Set just beneath the church wall was a small door: the entrance to the vaults.

  For a minute or so the three men looked down at the black hole, similar thoughts passing through the mind of each of them. Why not wait until the sane and wholesome light of morning—a light that would dissipate all notions of grinning skulls and gruesome skeletons? But no. Morse put his hands beneath the bars of the grille and lifted it aside easily and lightly.

  'Are you sure no one's been down here for ten years?' he asked.

  Lewis bent down in the darkness and felt the rungs of the ladder.

  'Feels pretty firm, sir.'

  'Let's play it safe, Lewis. We don't really want any more corpses if we can help it.'

  Meiklejohn watched as they eased down the ladder, and when it was resting firmly on its fellow Lewis took the torch and slowly and carefully made his way down.

  'I reckon someone's been down here fairly recently, sir. One of the steps near the bottom here's broken, and it doesn't look as if it happened all that long ago.'

  'Some of these hooligans, I expect,' said Meiklejohn to Morse. 'Some of them would do anything for what they call a "kick". But look, Inspector, I really must be going. I'm sorry if I—er . . .'

  'Forget it,' said Morse. 'We'll let you know if we find anything.'

  'Are you—are you expecting to find something?'

  Was he? In all honesty the answer was 'yes'—he was expecting to find the body of a young boy called Peter Morris, 'Not really, sir. We just have to check out every possibility, though.'

  Lewis' voice sounded once more from the black hollow. 'The door's locked, sir. Can you—?'

  Morse dropped his set of keys down. 'See if one of these fits.'

  'If it doesn't,' said Meiklejohn, 'I'm afraid you really will have to wait until the morning. My set of keys is just the same as yours and—'

  'We're in, Meredith,' shouted Lewis from the depths.

  'You get off, then, sir,' said Morse to Meiklejohn. 'As I say, we'll let you know if—er—if . . .'

  'Thank you. Let's just pray you don't, Inspector. This is al
l such a terrible business already that—'

  'Goodnight, sir.'

  With infinite pains and circumspection Morse eased himself on to the ladder, and with nervously iterated entreaties that Lewis make sure he was holding 'the bloody thing' firmly he gradually descended into the shaft with the slow-motion movements of a trainee tight-rope walker. He noted, as Lewis had just done, that the third rung from the bottom of the original wooden ladder had been snapped roughly in the middle, the left-hand half of it drooping at an angle of some forty-five degrees. And, judging from the yellowish-looking splintering at the jagged fracture, someone's foot had gone through the rung comparatively recently. Someone fairly heavy; or someone not so heavy, perhaps—with an extra weight upon his shoulder.

  'Do you think there are any rats down here?' asked Morse.

  'Shouldn't think so. Nothing to feed on, is there?'

  'Bodies, perhaps?' Morse thought yet again of leaving the grim mission until the morning, and experienced a little shudder of fear as he looked up at the rectangle of faint light above his head, half-expecting some ghoulish figure to appear in the aperture, grinning horridly down on him. He breathed deeply.

  'In we go, Lewis.'

  The door creaked whiningly on its rusted hinges as inch by inch Lewis pushed it open, and Morse splayed his torch nervously to one side and then to the other. It was immediately clear that the main supporting pillars of the upper structure of the church extended down to the vaults, forming a series of stone recesses and dividing the subterranean area into cellar-like rooms that seemed (at least to Lewis) far from weird or spooky. In fact the second alcove on the left could hardly have been less conducive to thoughts of some skeletal spectre haunting these nether regions. For within its walls, dry-surfaced and secure, was no more than a large heap of coke (doubtless for the church's earlier heating system) with a long-handled spatulate instrument laid across it.