by David Bishop
Morris breaks into Lawson’s office in search of evidence. He is disturbed by a man who bears a strong resemblance to Lawson. Morris recognises the man as one of the transients Lawson assisted. There are rumours the man is actually the reverend’s brother.
Brenda discovers her husband is having an affair with Ruth Rawlinson, a parishioner who cleans the church twice a week. Ruth overhears Morris giving a blackmail payment to the vicar’s brother at the church. The reverend later approaches Morris – he has something important to discuss...
Seven months later, Morse visits St Frideswide’s while on holiday. He meets Ruth. She gives him newspaper cuttings about the tragic events of the previous autumn. Churchwarden Harry Josephs was stabbed to death in the vestry on 26 September while the congregation was singing the last hymn of a service. Chief Inspector Bell investigated the murder.
At the inquest it emerged that Josephs had a lethal quantity of morphine in his stomach when he was stabbed with a crucifix-shaped letter-opener. The body was identified by Morris. Ruth says Morris and Brenda Josephs both left Oxford soon after the inquest. Another cutting details how Reverend Lawson died on 19 October, committing suicide by leaping from the church tower.
Morse asks Bell about the case. Lawson withdrew £30,000 from his bank account just before Josephs was murdered. Bell lets Morse look through the case files. A transient called Swanpole is mentioned several times. The inspector notes that Swanpole is an anagram of P E Lawson – the vicar’s brother. Wondering if anyone has been up the tower since Lawson’s death, Morse and Lewis discover a body at the top of it. It has been there for some months, making identification very difficult. The detectives suspect it is Paul Morris. Bell falls ill with flu, so Morse and Lewis are assigned to the case.
Brenda Josephs is working at a hospital near Shrewsbury. She is murdered in her room at a nurse’s hostel. Morse worries about what has happened to the boy Peter Morris, especially if the corpse up the tower is that of Paul Morris. He and Lewis investigate the crypt beneath St Frideswide’s. They find the boy’s body under a pile of coal.
Morse phones Ruth. She says Reverend Lawson always wore spectacles; they were in his coat pocket when he died. Morse says short-sighted suicidal people always take off their glasses before jumping.
The detectives go to Shrewsbury to see Brenda’s body. Notes in her diary indicate which days she drove her husband to St Frideswide’s; Harry had been disqualified from driving. But there is no such notation on 26 September. Morse thinks the service may have been staged to facilitate the murder.
He plants a piece in the Oxford Mail claiming the police are waiting on a final witness and that an arrest is imminent. The killer sees this and decides he will act the next morning, when Ruth is cleaning the church.
Next day Morse catches the killer trying to strangle Ruth. The killer runs up the tower, pursued by the inspector. They grapple and Morse is close to death when Lewis intervenes. The killer falls to his death. Morse and Lewis believed the killer was Philip Lawson, but it proves to have been Harry Josephs.
In Ruth’s statement she says she was having an affair with Josephs. She recalls overhearing the Lawson brothers plotting to murder Harry. The vicar offered her £5,000 to co-operate. Ruth desperately needed money for her sick mother and repairs to their home. She agreed to help the vicar arrange the murder of Harry, along with Brenda, Paul Morris and Philip Lawson. Morse dismisses the statement as lies. He says the victim of the first murder was the vicar’s brother, whose body was falsely identified as Harry Josephs.
At Ruth’s trial on perjury charges, Morse lies in order to mitigate her crimes. She is found guilty and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment.
A book among Harry’s possessions includes an underlined passage about myopic suicides always removing their glasses.
UNLUCKY IN LOVE: Morse sees a natural elegance in Ruth Rawlinson’s walk the first time they meet, which quickens his interest in her. He sees a woman at the Randolph and thinks of buying her a drink. When she turns round it’s Ruth, but some other man has already approached her. Ruth thinks about Morse. She’s fascinated by his bluey-grey eyes, which seem cold to her, yet somehow vulnerable and lost.
Morse invites Ruth out for dinner on her birthday but she has a prior engagement. She phones him, hoping he won’t be in, then hoping he is. Later she wishes someone like Morse had found her years ago. He ponders how attractive she could have been to him.
The inspector understands and forgives her actions, but cannot forget them. Once she is released he visits her and is invited inside. They kiss and embrace, then he begins to unzip her dress. After four novels, Morse finally gets lucky...
DRINK UP, LEWIS: After his first visit to St Frideswide’s, Morse goes to the cocktail bar of the Randolph Hotel and drinks three pints of beer.
Morse sets off on holiday to Derwentwater, hoping to arrive in time for dinner and a bottle of red wine.
He goes to the Randolph after attending a concert at St Frideswide’s but leaves after only one pint. At home he has a large neat whisky.
Morse drinks two pints in The Bulldog pub just opposite Christ Church, the day after discovering the body of Paul Morris in the tower.
The inspector gets a sherry from the headmaster at the school where Morris taught.
The detectives drink three pints in The Bulldog. Lewis pays for two of the rounds but doesn’t mind as the beer is good. Several days later they visit the Golden Cross pub, where Lewis leaves after one pint. Morse has three.
The pair go to the Friar Bacon for beer while Morse outlines the complex case. Lewis gets the second round in, careful not to slop a cubic millimetre on the carpet. Morse is supposed to buy the next round but gets them on the house.
When everything is settled, Morse turns down a pint from Lewis!
More than a year later, Morse has two pints of beer in the cocktail bar at the Randolph. He calls in at the Dew Drop in Summertown for another two pints before visiting Ruth. She offers him whisky – he’d rather have her.
ONE FOR THE MORGUE: This story has one of the highest body counts ever for Morse, whether on the page or screen. Eyes down for half a dozen deaths...
Philip Lawson is given a fatal dose of morphine and is stabbed in the back with a crucifix-shaped letter-opener by Harry Josephs. Lionel Lawson is thrown off the tower at St Frideswide’s by Josephs and falls to his death on the railings below. Paul Morris is murdered by Josephs and the body dumped atop the tower. Peter Morris is also murdered by Josephs and the body hidden under coal in the crypt beneath St Frideswide’s. Brenda Josephs is strangled by her husband in a nurse’s hostel at Shrewsbury. Lastly, Harry Josephs dies after falling off the tower at St Frideswide’s.
MURDERS: five. BODY COUNT: six.
INCREASE YOUR VOCABULARY: A dozen Japanese tourists walk past St Frideswide’s with a small, bespectacled cicerone (guide). Lawson’s words have a pedagogic (superciliously instructive) tone when he speaks to Peter Morris. Ruth’s elbows circle sedulously (diligently) as she scrubs the floor of St Frideswide’s. A record sleeve describes music composed by Richard Strauss as melismatic (full of melodic embellishment). A post-mortem report describes Paul Morris’ head as brachycephalic (short-headed).
THE MANY LUSTS OF MORSE: Morse secretly enjoys watching the barmaid at the Randolph as she leans forward in a low-cut dress to pull his pint. She is too young for him, however. Morse has decided that men are attracted to women of their own age, give or take ten years in either direction.
He irritates the secretary at Roger Bacon School and then leaves her blushing. Morse admires a schoolgirl in the music class whose eyes flash at him. She has very beautiful legs. Afterwards she wonders why she is attracted to older men like Morse.
MORSE DECODED: Morse had a short-lived schoolboy enthusiasm for tracing the development of church architecture from Early English to Gothic. Morse has not been to church for a decade. His mother was loving and kind. He thinks of her often. The inspector hardly knows a sweet pea f
rom a broad bean.
When Morse took his eleven-plus exam, he was seated next to a famously stupid boy. But that day the idiot solved ten anagrams while Morse was still puzzling over the third. He sang in a church choir as a boy.
Morse’s parents once took him to a music-hall show. As a young boy he was always afraid of the dark.
PORN TO BE WILD: Not even the few erotic tidbits in the News of the World can cheer up a bored Morse one Sunday. He later ponders going to see the torrid Sandra Bergson starring as the leader of a sexy, savage, insatiable all-girl gang in On the Game at the Moulin Rouge cinema, but decides the X-rated film will only be a disappointment.
SOPHOCLES DID DO IT: Morse decides either Reverend Lawson killed Josephs and committed suicide afterwards, or someone else killed Josephs and then added the vicar to their victims.
The inspector suggests the body in Reverend Lawson’s coffin belongs to somebody else – but the vicar was cremated.
Morse speculates that Philip Lawson killed Josephs, getting the roles in the first murder completely reversed.
LEWIS’ KITH AND KIN: Mrs Lewis is irritated when Morse interrupts The Archers. Lewis has gone to see Oxford United play at home in the rain at night.
The sergeant treats Morse’s temperamental outbursts as Lewis had once treated the saddeningly bitchy bouts of temper from his own teenage daughters.
Lewis is happy to be brought on to the case with Morse. It gets him out of a dreaded visit to his ancient mother-in-law. Lewis has very few vices but fast driving is certainly one of them.
Mrs Lewis doesn’t care what happens to her body after death, as long as it’s made absolutely certain she’s deceased first. She never takes her false teeth out when she goes to bed.
PEOPLE JUST CALL ME MORSE: Ruth looks up Morse in the telephone directory. She wonders what his initial E stands for. As the book ends, she asks what his Christian name is. He says he will tell her afterwards – after they make love.
SOUNDTRACK: Morse decides to listen to Richard Strauss’ Vier letze Lieder at home but changes his mind.
The inspector attends a concert at St Frideswide’s where the church choir sings a selection of Gilbert and Sullivan songs. The performance is excellent and concludes with the finale of The Mikado. Once home, he listens to the previously selected Strauss.
Morse attends a service at St Frideswide’s where he knows most of the hymns. He does his best to drown out the singing of a woman next to him.
A music class at Roger Bacon School listens to Fauré’s Requiem when Morse comes in. He feels almost instant ecstasy listening to the ethereal sweep of the ‘In Paradisum’.
The church choir sing Palestrina’s ‘Iste Confessor’ when Morse and Lewis attend a church service.
Facing death, Morse recalls the ending of Richard Strauss’ last song.
QUOTE-UNQUOTE: Dexter describes a vicar offering Morse a cup of tea: ‘Tea? It had never occurred to Morse that he might be drinking tea at 9.00 pm.’
Morse, of all people, admonishes Lewis for assuming too much: ‘I’m just a little more cautious than you, shall we say?’
Lewis finishes a pint while Morse is still lingering over his. ‘You feeling well, sir?’ Lewis asks.
The inspector gives his sergeant a compliment: ‘You know, Lewis, you get brighter all the time. I think it must be my company that does it.’
SURVEILLANCE REPORT: Morse is now 47 years old. He has never been to Greece. The inspector was on an eight-week secondment to west Africa when the first murder took place. He does not believe in God or the Fates. He regards the teachings of the church as so much gobbledegook. His philosophy of life is a heap of confused impressions.
He selects a holiday destination by randomly pointing at the index of the AA Hotels of Britain’s index page. He thinks the A49 is one of the prettiest roads in England.
Morse takes over the case from Chief Inspector Bell, setting a trend that will continue into the next novel, The Dead of Jericho. The two senior detectives are old sparring partners.
The inspector is sickened when he witnesses a serious traffic accident. The novel says he has examined many brutally mutilated corpses with nothing more than distaste. He is scared of heights and suffers from acrophobia. He realises how out of condition he has allowed his body to become.
The headmaster of the Roger Bacon School, Mr Phillipson, makes a cameo in this novel after featuring prominently in Last Seen Wearing.
THE VERDICT: Service of All the Dead continues the strong run of Morse novels. Colin Dexter was rewarded with his first major accolade – a Silver Dagger at the Crime Writers’ Association awards of 1979. The solution hinges on a cliché of the whodunit genre – the first person to be murdered actually turns out to be the murderer. But the author handles this with aplomb and keeps the plot twisting to the end.
Unusually, the book goes beyond the solving of the riddle to show part of the subsequent court case. But one sequence jars, when Morse uses Ruth as bait to lure the killer into the open. The inspector runs a terrible risk, especially since Josephs has already killed his own wife, a young boy and several other people without compunction.
THE DEAD OF JERICHO
‘If there was one man guilty of Anne Scott’s death, that man was Sophocles.’ A suicide leads to murder and Morse misses out on a promotion – but unrequited love hurts him more.
FIRST PUBLISHED: 1981
STORYLINE: Morse meets Anne Scott at a party. She used to work for a small publishers run by two brothers, Charles and Conrad Richards. Morse and Anne like each other but he is called away on a case and never contacts her.
Six months later Morse is in the Jericho suburb of Oxford, where Anne lives. He decides to visit her. The inspector notices a Rolls-Royce parked nearby with a ticket on its windscreen. The front door of Anne’s terraced house at 9 Canal Reach is unlocked. A light is on upstairs. Morse gets no answer. He notices a wet black umbrella, then leaves, noticing the light is now off.
That night Morse attends a lecture in Jericho. He hears police sirens nearby and investigates. The sirens lead him to Canal Reach, where Anne hanged herself in the kitchen. Chief Inspector Bell is handling the case. The police received an anonymous call about the suicide. A key was found on the doormat in the hallway, as if someone had pushed it through the letter box.
The police activity is watched from number 10 by George Jackson. The retired man does odd jobs for local people. He saw Morse’s earlier visit.
Charles Richards returns home to his wife Celia. She picks up his black umbrella from the hallway and puts it in the back of his Rolls.
Teenager Edward Murdoch was due to have a German lesson with Anne on the day she died. But she sent him a note cancelling the lesson.
Jackson had recently repaired a back wall for Anne. He had a spare key to number 9. He pushed it back through the letter box on the day Anne died. He tells the police about Morse visiting number 9 twice the same day.
At the inquest into Anne’s death, the police surgeon says she was eight to ten weeks pregnant. The jury records a verdict of death by suicide. Morse calls Max afterwards and, when pressed, the surgeon says it was suicide.
Charles Richards gets a letter demanding a thousand pounds for silence over his affair with Anne. Edward Murdoch’s elder brother Michael, meanwhile, is admitted to hospital after taking a drug overdose. He later tries to pluck out his own eyes.
Morse unofficially investigates Anne’s death. He secretly revisits number 9 at night. As he leaves Morse is grabbed by Detective Constable Walters, who has been investigating Anne’s death with Bell.
Charles Richards gets a phone call from a man demanding money. Richards settles a time and place for the cash to be left. Next day Jackson collects the blackmail money. He doesn’t notice he is being followed.
Richards gives a talk to the Oxford Book Association about being a small publisher. Anne arranged the lecture before she died. Morse attends, hoping to talk with the association chairman about Anne. The inspecto
r meets Richards and decides the publisher could be a formidable liar.
Morse hears police sirens and again follows them to Canal Reach. Jackson has been murdered. The police received an anonymous call about the killing. Richards can’t have murdered Jackson, who was still alive in a pub when the publisher began talking and was found dead before the end of the lecture. Jackson’s house was thoroughly searched by his killer.
The Assistant Chief Commissioner asks Morse to take over the case. Bell has been promoted. Morse has Lewis follow up the parking ticket on the Rolls. The fine was paid two days after Anne died, by a cheque from the account of Mr C Richards.
Lewis learns Jackson paid in £250 at the post office on the day he died. A fingerprint team finds two prints not belonging to Jackson at number 10.
Morse confronts Richards about the parking ticket. Celia Richards intervenes and says that she was the person upstairs when Morse first visited number 9. Celia wanted to confront Anne about Charles’ infidelity. But she never saw the dead woman and fled after being disturbed by Morse.
Charles Richards flies to Madrid on business. Morse and Lewis decide to investigate Conrad Richards. Lewis gets Conrad’s fingerprints for comparison with those found at number 10. Conrad cannot provide an alibi for the night Jackson was murdered. He flies to Madrid to join Charles.
Morse and Lewis search the offices of the Richards brothers. Lewis finds the blackmail letter in Charles’ desk. The fingerprints taken from Conrad do not match those found in number 10. Morse does not believe that Jackson wrote the blackmail letter. Lewis learns the dead man was illiterate. The detectives discover that one of Jackson’s neighbours read him Anne’s suicide note, which he had found at number 9.
The inspector interviews Charles Richards when he returns from Madrid. Richards admits following Jackson after dropping off the blackmail payment. Morse arranges for Lewis to take a statement from Richards several days later.