by Colin Dexter
'Want a bit of free coke, sir?' Lewis was leading the way, and now took the torch from Morse and shone it gaily around the surprisingly dry interior. But as they progressed deeper into the darkness it became increasingly difficult to form any coherent pattern of the layout of the vaults, and Morse was already hanging back a little as Lewis shone the torch upon a stack of coffins, one piled on top of another, their lids warped and loose over the shrunken, concave sides.
'Plenty of corpses here,' said Lewis.
But Morse had turned his back and was staring sombrely into the darkness. 'I think it'll be sensible to come back in the morning, Lewis. Pretty daft trying to find anything at this time of night.' He experienced a deeper shudder of fear as he grew aware of something almost tangibly oppressive in the dry air. As a young boy he'd always been afraid of the dark, and now, again, the quaking hand of terror touched him lightly on the shoulder.
They retraced their way towards the entrance, and soon Morse stood again at the entrance to the vaults, his forehead damp with cold sweat. He breathed several times very deeply, and the prospect of climbing the solid ladder to the ground above loomed like a glorious release from the panic that threatened to engulf him. Yet it was a mark of Morse's genius that he could take hold of his weaknesses and almost miraculously transform them into his strengths. If anyone were going to hide a body in these vaults, he would feel something (surely!), at least something, of this same irrational fear of the dark, of the dead, of the deep-seated terror that forever haunted the subconscious mind? No one, surely, would venture too far, alone and under the cover of night, into these cavernous, echoing vaults? His foot kicked a cigarette-packet as he walked past the heap of coke, and he picked it up and asked Lewis to shine the torch on it. It was a golden-coloured empty packet of Benson & Hedges, along the side of which he read: 'Government health warning. Cigarettes can seriously damage your health. Middle tar. ' When had the Government decided to stipulate such a solemn warning to cigarette addicts? Three, four, five years ago? Certainly not—what had Meiklejohn said?—ten years!
'Have a look under the coke, will you?' said Morse quietly.
Five minutes later Lewis found him. He was a young boy, aged about eleven or twelve, well preserved, just over five feet in height, and dressed in school uniform. Round his neck was a school tie, a tie tightened so viciously that it had dug deep into the flesh around the throat; a tie striped alternately in the regulation red and grey of the Roger Bacon School, Kidlington.
In the Pending file of the duty-sergeant's tray at Thames Valley H.Q., there still lay the handwritten message taken down from Shrewsbury.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
LEWIS REACHED BELL'S office at 9. 15 a.m. the following morning, but Morse had beaten him to it and was sitting behind the desk shouting into the phone with a livid fury.
'Well, get the stupid bugger, then. Yes! Now.' He motioned Lewis to take a seat, the fingers of his left hand drumming the desk-top in fretful impatience.
'You?' he bellowed into the mouthpiece at last. 'What the hell do you think you're playing at? It's been sitting under your bloody nose since yesterday lunch-time! And all you can do is to sit on that great fat arse of yours and say you're sorry. You'll be sorry, my lad—you can be sure of that. Now, just listen to me carefully. You'll go along to the Super's office as soon as I give you permission to put that phone down, and you tell him exactly what you've done and exactly what you've not done. Is that understood?'
The unfortunate voice at the other end of the line could only have mumbled something less than propitiatory, and Lewis sat almost fearfully through the next barrage of abuse.
'What are you going to tell him? I'll tell you what you're going to tell him, my lad. First, you tell him you deserve the bloody V.C. All right? Second, you tell him it's about time they made you chief constable of Oxfordshire. He'll understand. Third, you tell him you're guilty of the blindest bloody stupidity ever witnessed in the history of the force. That's what you tell him!' He banged down the phone and sat for a minute or so still seething with rage.
Sensibly Lewis sat silent, and it was Morse who finally spoke. 'Mrs. Josephs was murdered. Last Friday, in a nurses' hostel in Shrewsbury.'
Lewis looked down at the threadbare carpet at his feet and shook his head sadly. 'How many more, sir?'
Morse breathed deeply and seemed suddenly quite calm again.
'I dunno.'
'Next stop Shrewsbury, sir?'
Morse gestured almost hopelessly. 'I dunno.'
'You think it's the same fellow?'
'I dunno.' Morse brooded in silence and stared blankly at the desk in front of him. 'Get the file out again.'
Lewis walked across to one of the steel cabinets. 'Who was on the other end of the rocket, sir?'
Morse's face broke into a reluctant grin. 'That bloody fool, Dickson. He was sitting in as duty-sergeant yesterday. I shouldn't have got so cross with him really.'
'Why did you, then?' asked Lewis, as he put the file down on the desk.
'I suppose because I ought to have guessed, really—guessed that she'd be next on the list, I mean. Perhaps I was just cross with myself, I dunno. But I know one thing, Lewis: I know that this case is getting out of hand. Christ knows where we are; I don't.'
The time seemed to Lewis about right now. Morse's anger had evaporated and only an irritable frustration remained to cloud his worried features. Perhaps he would welcome a little bit of help.
'Sir, I was thinking when I got home last night about what you'd been saying in the Bulldog. Remember? You said that Lawson, the Reverend Lawson, that is, might just have walked straight down—'
'For God's sake, Lewis, come off it! We're finding corpses right, left and centre, are we not? We're in the biggest bloody muddle since God knows when, and all you can do is to—'
'It was you who said it—not me.'
'I know—yes. But leave me alone, man! Can't you see I'm trying to think? Somebody's got to think around here.'
'I was only—'
'Look Lewis. Just forget what I said and start thinking about some of the facts in the bloody case. All right?' He thumped the file in front of him viciously. 'The facts are all in here. Josephs gets murdered, agreed? All right. Josephs gets murdered. The Reverend Lionel Lawson jumps off the bloody tower. Right? He jumps off the bloody tower. Morris senior gets murdered and gets carted off to the same bloody tower. Right? Exit Morris senior. Morris junior gets strangled and gets carted off down the crypt. Right? Why not just accept these facts, Lewis? Why fart around with all that piddling nonsense about—Augh! Forget it!'
Lewis walked out, making sure to slam the door hard behind him. He'd had just about enough, and for two pins he'd resign from the force on the spot if it meant getting away from this sort of mindless ingratitude. He walked into the canteen and ordered a coffee. If Morse wanted to sit in peace—well, let the miserable blighter! He wouldn't be interrupted this side of lunch-time. Not by Lewis anyway. He read the Daily Mirror and had a second cup of coffee. He read the Sun and had a third. And then he decided to drive up to Kidlington.
There were patches of blue in the sky now, and the overnight rain had almost dried upon the pavements. He drove along the Banbury Road, past Linton Road, past Belbroughton Road, and the cherry—and the almond-trees blossomed in pink and white, and the daffodils and the hyacinths bloomed in the borders of the well-tended lawns. North Oxford was a lovely place in the early spring; and by the time he reached Kidlington Lewis was feeling slightly happier with life.
Dickson, likely as not would be in the canteen. Dickson was almost always in the canteen.
'I hear you got a bit of a bollocking this morning,' ventured Lewis.
'Christ, ah! You should have heard him.'
'I did,' admitted Lewis.
'And I was only standing in, too. We're so short here that they asked me to take over on the phone. And then this happens! How the hell was I supposed to know who she was? She'd changed her name anyway, and she o
nly might have lived in Kidlington, they said. Huh! Life's very unfair sometimes, Sarge.'
'He can be a real sod, can't he?'
'Pardon?'
'Morse. I said he can be a real—'
'No, not really.' Dickson looked far from down-hearted as he lovingly took a great bite from a jam doughnut.
'You've not been in to the Super yet?'
'He didn't mean that.'
'Look, Dickson. You're in the force, you know that—not in a play-school. If Morse says—'
'He didn't. He rang me back half an hour later. Just said he was sorry. Just said forget it.'
'He didn't!'
'He bloody did, Sarge. We had quite a pally little chat in the end, really. I asked him if I could do anything to help, and d'you know what he said? Said he just wanted me to find out from Shrewsbury C.I.D. whether the woman was killed on Friday. That's all. Said he didn't give a monkey's whether she'd been knifed or throttled or anything, just so long as she was killed on Friday. Funny chap, ain't he? Always asking odd sort of questions—never the questions you'd think he'd ask. Clever, though. Christ, ah!'
Lewis stood up to go.
'It wasn't a sex murder, Sarge.'
'Oh?'
'Nice-looker, they said. Getting on a little bit, but it seems quite a few of the doctors had tried to get off with her. Still, I've always thought those black stockings are sexy—haven't you, Sarge?'
'Was she wearing black stockings?'
Dickson swallowed the last of his doughnut and wiped his fingers on his black trousers. 'Don't they all wear—?'
But Lewis left him to it. Once more he felt belittled and angry. Who was supposed to be helping Morse anyway? Himself or Dickson? Aurrgh!
It was 11.45 a.m. when Lewis re-entered St Aldates Police Station and walked into Bell's office. Morse still sat in his chair, but his head was now resting on the desk, pillowed in the crook of his left arm. He was sound asleep.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
MRS. RAWLINSON WAS getting more than a little anxious when Ruth had still not arrived home at five minutes to one. She suspected—knew, really—that Ruth's visits to the Randolph were establishing themselves into a regular lunch-time pattern, and it was high time she reminded her daughter of her filial responsibilities. For the moment, however, it was the primitive maternal instinct that was paramount; and increasingly so, as the radio news finished at ten-past one with still no sign of her daughter. At a quarter-past one the phone rang, shattering the silence of the room with a shrill, abrupt urgency, and Mrs. Rawlinson reached across for the receiver with a shaking hand, incipient panic welling up within her as the caller identified himself.
'Mrs. Rawlinson? Chief Inspector Morse here.'
Oh my God! 'What is It?' she blurted out. 'What's happened?'
'Are you all right, Mrs. Rawlinson?'
'Yes. Oh, yes. I—I just thought for a moment . . .'
'I assure you there's nothing to worry about.' (But didn't his voice sound a little worried?) 'I just wanted a quick word with your daughter, please.'
'She's—she's not in at the moment, I'm afraid. She—' And then Mrs. Rawlinson heard the key scratching in the front door. 'Just a minute, Inspector.'
Ruth appeared, smiling and fresh-faced, round the door.
'Here! It's for you,' said her mother as she pushed the receiver into Ruth's hand, and then leaned back in her wheelchair, luxuriating in a beautifully relieved anger.
'Hello?'
'Miss Rawlinson? Morse here. Just routine, really. One of those little loose ends we're trying to tie up. I want you to try to remember, if you can, whether the Reverend Lawson wore spectacles.'
'Yes, he did. Why—?'
'Did he wear them just for reading or did he wear them all the time?'
'He always wore them. Always when I saw him anyway. Gold-rimmed, they were.'
'That's very interesting. Do you—er—do you happen to remember that tramp fellow? You know, the one who sometimes used to go to your church?'
'Yes, I remember him,' replied Ruth slowly.
'Did he wear spectacles?'
'No-o, I don't think he did.'
'Just as I thought. Good. Well, that's about all, I think. Er—how are you, by the way?'
'Oh, fine; fine, thanks.'
'You still engaged on your—er—your good works? In the church, I mean?'
'Yes.'
'Mondays and Wednesdays, isn't it?'
'Ye-es.' It was the second occasion she'd been asked the same question within a very short time. And now (she knew) he was going to ask her what time she usually went there. It was just like hearing a repeat on the radio.
'Usually about ten o'clock, isn't it?'
'Yes, that's right. Why do you ask?' And why did she suddenly feel so frightened?
'No reason, really. I just—er—I just thought, you know, I might see you again there one day.'
'Yes. Perhaps so.'
'Look after yourself, then.'
Why couldn't he look after her? 'Yes, I will,' she heard herself say.
'Goodbye,' said Morse. He cradled the phone and for many seconds stared abstractedly through the window on to the tar-macadamed surface of the inner yard. Why was she always so tight with him? Why couldn't she metaphorically open her legs for him once in a while?
'You ask some very odd questions,' said Lewis.
'Some very important ones, too,' replied Morse rather pompously. 'You see, Lawson's specs were in his coat pocket when they found him—a pair of gold-rimmed specs. It's all here.' He tapped the file on the death of the Reverend Lionel Lawson which lay on the desk in front of him. 'And Miss Rawlinson said that he always wore them. Interesting, eh?'
'You mean—you mean it wasn't Lionel Lawson who—'
'I mean exactly the opposite, Lewis. I mean it was Lionel Lawson who chucked himself off the tower. I'm absolutely sure of it.'
'I just don't understand.'
'Don't you? Well, it's like this. Short-sighted jumpers invariably remove their specs and put 'em in one of their pockets before jumping. So any traces of glass in a suicide's face are a sure tip-off that it wasn't suicide but murder.'
'But how do you know Lawson was short-sighted. He may have been—'
'Short-sighted, long-sighted—doesn't matter! It's all the same difference.'
'You serious about all this?'
'Never more so. It's like people taking their hearing-aids off before they have a bath or taking their false teeth out when they go to bed.'
'But the wife never takes hers out when she goes to bed, sir.'
'What's your wife got to do with it?'
Lewis was about to remonstrate against the injustice of such juvenile logic, but he saw that Morse was smiling at him. 'How do you come to know all this stuff about suicides anyway?'
Morse looked thoughtful for a few seconds. 'I can't remember. I think I read it on the back of a match-box.'
'And that's enough to go on?'
'It's something, isn't it? We're up against a very clever fellow, Lewis. But I just can't see him murdering Lawson, and then very carefully taking off his specs and putting 'em back in their case. Can you?'
No, Lewis couldn't see that; couldn't see much at all. 'Are we making any progress in this case, sir?'
'Good question,' said Morse. 'And, as one of my old schoolmasters used to say, "Having looked that problem squarely in the face, let us now pass on." Time we had a bit o' lunch, isn't it?'
The two men walked out of the long three-storey stone building that forms the headquarters of the Oxford Constabulary, up past Christ Church, across Carfax, and turned into the Golden Cross, where Morse decided that, for himself at least, a modicum of liquid refreshment was all that would be required. He had always believed that his mind functioned better after a few beers, and today he once again acted on his customary assumption. He should, he realised, be off to Shrewsbury immediately, but the prospect of interviewing hospital porters and nurses and doctors about times and places and
movements and motives filled him with distaste. Anyway, there was a great deal of routine work to be done in Oxford.
Lewis left after only one pint, and Morse himself sat back to think. The flashing shuttles wove their patterns on the loom of his brain, patterns that materialised in different shapes and forms, but patterns always finally discarded. After his third pint, there was nothing to show for his cerebrations except the unpalatable truth that his fanciful theories, all of them, were futile, his thinking sterile, his progress nil. Somewhere, though, if only he could think where, he felt convinced that he had missed something—something that would present him with the key to the labyrinth. Yes, that's what he needed: the key to the—He had the key to the church, though. Was it there, in the church itself, that he had overlooked some simple, obvious fact that even at this very second lay waiting to be discovered?
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
MORSE RELOCKED THE door in the north porch after him, conscious that he must try to look upon the interior of the church somehow differently. Previously he had gazed vaguely across the pews, his mind wafted away to loftier things by the pervasive sickly-sweet smell of the incense and the gloomy grandeur of the stained-glass windows. Not so now. He fingered through half a dozen devotional tracts, neatly stacked side by side on a wall-ledge just inside the door to the left; he examined a sheaf of leaflets to be filled in by those who wished to be added to the electoral roll; he drew back a curtain just behind the font and noticed a bucket, a scrubbing-brush and two sweeping-brushes. This was much better—he felt it in his bones! He examined postcards (6p each), which carried exterior views of the church taken from several angles, large close-ups of the famous font (much admired, it seemed, by all save Morse), and full frontal photographs of one of the grinning gargoyles on the tower (how on earth had anyone taken those?); then he turned his attention to a stack of Guides to St. Frideswide's (10p each), and another stack of Parish Notes (2p each) in which details of the current month's activities were fully listed; then, beside the west wall, he noted again the heaps of prayer-books with their dull-red covers and the heaps of hymn-books with their—He suddenly stopped, experiencing the strange conviction that he had already overlooked the vital clue that he'd been looking for. Was it something he'd just seen? Something he'd just heard? Something he'd just smelt? He went back to the door, retraced his few steps around the porchway, and then duplicated as far as he could his exact actions since entering the church. But it was no use. Whatever it was—if it was anything—was still eluding his grasp. Maddeningly. Slowly he paced his way up the central aisle and there stood still. The hymns from the previous evening's service were there, white cards with their red numbers, slotted into a pair of hymn-boards, one on either side of him. Odd! Why hadn't they been taken down? Was that one of Ruth Rawlinson's jobs? The bucket and the scrubbing-brush looked as if they had been used very recently, almost certainly by Ruth herself that very morning. Had she forgotten the hymn-boards? Or was that the job of the Vicar? Or one of the choir? Or one of the supernumerary assistants? For someone had to look after such matters. Come to think of it, someone had to decide the hymns, the psalms, the collects, epistles and gospels and the rest. Morse knew nothing about it, but he presumed that it was all laid down in some great holy book available for the guidance of the clergy. Must be. Like all those saints' days and other religious festivals. No one could carry all that stuff around in his head. What was more, someone would have to keep some sort of record of all the services every week—surely so!—especially when you had as many services as—That was it! He walked quickly back to the north porch and picked up a copy of the Parish Notes, and stared with curious excitement at the front page:
