by Colin Dexter
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 only 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, a
nd 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:
CHURCH OF ST FRIDESWIDE, OXFORD
Services: Sundays Mass and Holy Communion 8 a.m.
10.30 a .m. (High) and 5.30 p.m.
Evening Service 6 p.m. Weekdays Mass on Tuesdays and Fridays 7.30 a.m.
On Feast Days 7.30 a.m. and 7.30 p.m.
(Solemn)
Confessions: Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays, all at midday.
Or by arrangement with the clergy.
Clergy: The Revd. Canon K. D. Meiklejohn (Vicar), St
Frideswide's Vicarage.
The Revd Neil Armitage (Curate), 19 Port Meadow
Lane.
April
1st In Octave of Easter
2nd LOW SUNDAY. Preacher at 10.30 a.m.
The Bishop of Brighton. Annual Parish
Meeting 6.15 p.m.
3rd ST RICHARD OF CHICHESTER
Mass at 8 a.m. and 7.30 p.m.
4th Holy Hour 11 a.m.
5th Mothers' Union 2.45 p.m.
6th Deanery Synod 7.45 p.m.
8th Holy Hour 5 to 6 p.m.
9th EASTER II…
So it went on, through the whole month, with one major Feast Day (Morse noted) in two of the other three weeks. But so what? Was there anything here that was of the slightest interest or value? The name 'Armitage' was new to Morse, and he suspected that the Curate was probably a fairly recent acquisition, and had almost certainly been one of the three wise men in the purple vestments. Still, with all those services on the programme, there'd be need of a helping hand, wouldn't there? It would be a pretty hefty assignment for one poor fellow, who presumably was entrusted, in addition, with the pastoral responsibilities of visiting the lame and the sick and the halt and the blind. My goodness, yes! Meikiejohn would certainly need a co-labourer in such an extensive vineyard. And then a little question posed itself to Morse's mind, and for a second or two the blood seemed to freeze in his cheeks. Did Lawson have a curate? It should be easy enough to find out, and Morse had a peculiar notion that the answer might be important, though exactly how important he had, at this point, no real idea at all.
He pocketed the Parish Notes, and turned back into the church. A long tasselled rope barred access to the altar in the Lady Chapel, but Morse stepped irreverently over it and stood before the heavily embossed and embroidered altar-cloth. To his immediate left was the arched opening to the main altar, and slowly he walked through it. In a niche to the left of the archway was an Early English piscina, and Morse stopped to look at it carefully, nodding slowly as he did so. He then turned left, made his way along the high carved screen which separated the Lady Chapel from the main nave, skipped lightly across the entrance to the Lady Chapel, and came to a halt outside the vestry. For some reason he looked quite pleased with himself and nodded his head again several times with a semi-satisfied smile.
He stood where he was for several minutes looking around him once more; and, indeed, had he but realised it, he was now within a few yards of the clue that would smash some of his previous hypotheses into a thousand pieces; but for the moment the Fates were not smiling upon him. The north door was opened and Meiklejohn entered, carrying a carton of electric-light bulbs, in the company of a young man balancing an extending ladder on his shoulder.
'Hello, Inspector,' said Meiklejohn. 'Discovered anything more yet?'
Morse grunted non-committally, and decided that the investigation of
the vestry could, without any cosmic ill-consequence, be temporarily postponed.
'We're just going to change the bulbs,' continued Meiklejohn. 'Have to do it, you know, every three or four months. Quite a few have gone already, I'm afraid.'
Morse's eyes travelled slowly up to the tops of the walls where, about forty feet above the floor he could see a series of twin electric-light bulbs, each pair set about twenty feet apart. Meanwhile the ladder had been propped up beneath the nearest lights, and in a progressively more precarious stutter of elongations the two men were pushing the ladder even higher until the slimly converging top of the third extension now rested about two or three feet below the first pair of bulbs.
'I'm afraid,' said Morse, 'that I just haven't got the stomach to stop and witness this little operation any further.'
'Oh, it's not so bad, Inspector, as long as you're careful. But I must admit I'm always glad when it's over.'
'He's a better man than I am,' said Morse, pointing to the young man standing (rather nervously?) on the second rung and gently manoeuvring the ladder on to a more firmly based vertical.
Meiklejohn grinned and turned to Morse quietly. 'He's about as bad as you are – if not worse. I'm afraid I have to do the job myself.'
And may the good Lord be with you, thought Morse, as he made his rapid exit, completely forgetting that he was debtor to church funds to the sum of 2p; forgetting, too, that there was a most important question he had yet to put to the dare-devil incumbent of St Frideswide's.
In all there were twenty bulbs to change, and as always the job was taking an unconscionably long time to complete. To any observer of the scene, it would have appeared that the young man who stood dutifully with his foot placed firmly on the bottom rung of the ladder seemed quite incapable of raising his eyes above the strict horizontal as Meiklejohn repeatedly ascended to the dizzy heights above him where, standing on the antepenultimate rung, he would place his left hand for support against the bare wall, stretch up to twist out one of the old bulbs, place it carefully in his coat pocket, and then insert one of the new bulbs with an upward thrust of his right arm which virtually lifted his body into unsupported space. With the merest moment of carelessness, with the slightest onset of giddiness, the good vicar would have lost his precarious balance and plunged to his death on the floor so far below; but mercifully the task was now almost complete, and the ladder was in place below the last pair of bulbs when the door (which had remained unlocked) creaked open to admit a strange-looking man whose beard was unkempt, who was dressed in a long, shabby greatcoat, and who wore an incongruous pair of sun-glasses. For a moment or two he looked about him, unaware of the presence of the other two men. The afternoon had grown dull and the electricity had been turned off whilst the bulbs were being changed.