Inspector Morse 4 - Service Of All The Dead

by Colin Dexter

  'I thought the collection was pinched.'

  Bell nodded. 'There was one of those down-and-out fellows at the service: Lawson had helped him occasionally—put him up at the vicarage, given him his old suits—that sort of thing. In fact, this fellow had been kneeling next to Josephs at the communion-rail—'

  'So he could have put the stuff in the wine.'

  Bell shook his head. 'You should go to church occasionally, Morse. If he had done, Lawson would have been poisoned just like Josephs, because the minister has to finish off what's left of the wine. You know, I reckon your brain's getting addled in your old age.'

  'Someone still pinched the collection,' said Morse feebly.

  'Oh yes. And I'm sure it was this fellow—Swan, or something like that, his name was. He just saw the money in the vestry and—well, he just nicked it.'

  'I thought you said Lawson kept all the others outside.'

  'For a start, yes. He had to.'

  Morse looked far from convinced, but Bell sailed happily on. 'A reasonably well-educated fellow, by all accounts. We put out a description of him, of course, but . . . They all look much of a muchness, those sort of fellows: none of 'em shave or get their hair cut. Anyway, he'd only be up for petty larceny if we found him. Two or three quid, at the outside—that's all he got. Funny, really. If he'd had a chance to go through Josephs' pockets, he'd have found nearly a hundred.'

  Morse whistled softly. 'That means that Lawson couldn't have gone through his pockets, either, doesn't it? They tell me the clergy aren't exactly overpaid these days, and Lawson couldn't have been rolling in—'

  Bell smiled. 'Lawson was hellish lucky to get the chance to knife him—let alone go through his pockets. But that's neither here nor there. Lawson was rolling in it. Until a few weeks before he died, his deposit account at the bank stood at over £30,000.'

  This time Morse's whistle was loud and long. 'Until a few weeks . . . ?'

  'Yes. Then he took his money out. Almost all of it.'

  'Any idea—'

  'Not really.'

  'What did the bank manager have to tell you?'

  'He wasn't allowed to tell me anything.'

  'What did he tell you?'

  'That Lawson had told him he was going to make an anonymous donation to some charity, and that's why he wanted cash.'

  'Some bloody donation!'

  'Some people are more generous than others, Morse.'

  'Did he take out all this cash before, or after, Josephs was murdered?'

  For the first time Bell seemed slightly uneasy. 'Before, actually.'

  Morse was silent for a short while. The new pieces of evidence were not fitting at all neatly. 'What was Lawson's motive for killing Josephs?'

  'Blackmail, perhaps?'

  'Josephs had some hold over him?'

  'Something like that.'

  'Any ideas?'

  'There were a few rumours.'

  'Well?'

  'I prefer facts.'

  'Was Lawson buggering the choirboys?’

  'You always did put things so nicely.'

  'What facts, then?'

  'Lawson had made out a cheque for £250 to Josephs a couple of weeks earlier.'

  'I see,' said Morse slowly. 'What else?'

  'Nothing.'

  'Can I look through the files?'

  'Certainly not,'

  Morse spent the next hour in Bell's office looking through the files.

  Considering the limited number of personnel available, the investigations into the deaths of Josephs and Lawson had been reasonably thorough, although there were a few surprising omissions. It would have been interesting, for example, to read the evidence of every single member of the congregation present when Josephs died, but it seemed that several of them had been only casual visitors—two American tourists amongst them—and Lawson had quite innocently informed them that perhaps they needn't stay. Understandable, no doubt—but very careless and quite improper. Unless . . . unless, thought Morse, Lawson wasn't over-anxious for all of them to tell the police what they'd seen? It was sometimes just those little details, just those little inconsistencies . . . Of the statements that were available, all cleanly set out, all neatly typed, only one arrested Morse's attention: the one, duly signed in the dithery hand of Mrs. Emily Walsh-Atkins, attesting to the identification of Lawson.

  'Did you interview this old girl?' asked Morse, pushing the statement across the table.

  'Not personally, no.'

  So far Bell had shown himself a jump or two ahead all round the course, but Morse thought he now saw himself coming through pretty fast on the rails. 'She's as blind as a bloody bat, did you know that? What sort of identification do you think this is? I met her the other night and—'

  Bell looked up slowly from the report he'd been reading. 'Are you suggesting that fellow we found draped over the railings wasn't Lawson?'

  'All I'm suggesting, Bell, is that you must have been pretty hard up for witnesses if you had to rely on her. As I say, she's—'

  'She's as blind as a bat—almost your own words, Morse; and if I remember rightly, exactly the words of my own Sergeant Davies. But don't be too hard on the old dear for wanting to get into the act—it was the most exciting thing that ever happened to her.'

  'But that doesn't mean—

  'Hold your horses, Morse! We only needed one identification for the coroner's court, so we only had one. Right? But we had another witness all ready, and I don't think he's as blind as a bat. If he is, he must have one helluva job when he plays the organ in six sharps.'

  'Oh, I see.' But Morse didn't see. What was Morris doing at St. Frideswide's that morning? Ruth Rawlinson would know, of course. Ruth . . . Huh! Her birthday today, and she would be all dolled up for a date with some lecherous lout . . .

  'Why was Morris at church that morning?'

  'It's a free country, Morse. Perhaps he just wanted to go to church.'

  'Did you find out if he was playing the organ?'

  'As a matter of fact, I did, yes.' Bell was thoroughly enjoying himself again—something he'd seldom experienced in Morse's company before. 'He was playing the organ.'

  After Morse had gone, Bell stared out of his office window for several minutes. Morse was a clever beggar. One or two questions he'd asked had probed a bit deeper than was comfortable; but most cases had a few ragged ends here and there. He tried to switch his mind over to another channel, but he felt hot and sticky; felt he might be sickening for something.

  Ruth Rawlinson had lied to Morse—well, not exactly lied. She did have an assignation on the evening of her birthday; but it wouldn't last for long, thank goodness! And then? And then she could meet Morse—if he still wanted to take her out.

  At 3 p.m. she nervously flicked through the m s in the blue Oxford Area Telephone Directory, and found only one 'Morse' in north Oxford: Morse, E. She didn't know his Christian name, and she vaguely wondered what the 'E' stood for. Irrationally, as she heard the first few rings, she hoped that he wasn't in; and then, as they continued, she prayed that he was.

  But there was no answer.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  FROM THE CITY POLICE H.Q. Morse walked up past Christ Church to Cornmarket. To his left he noticed that the door of Carfax tower stood open, and beside it a notice inviting tourists to ascend and enjoy a panoramic view of Oxford. At the top of the tower he could see four or five people standing against the sky-line and pointing to some of the local landmarks, and a teenage youth actually sitting on the edge, with one of his boots wedged against the next parapet. Morse, feeling a twinge of panic somewhere in his bowels, lowered his eyes and walked on. He joined the small bus-queue just outside Woolworth, thinking again of what he'd just been reading: the life-histories of Josephs and Lawson, the accounts of their deaths, the subsequent investigations. But for the moment the filters of his brain could separate out no new nugget of precious information, and he turned towards St Giles' and looked up at the tower of St. Frideswide's. No one up th
ere, of course . . . Just a minute! Had anyone been up there—recently? Suddenly a curious thought came into his mind—but no, it must be wrong. There'd been something in Bell's file about it: 'Each November a group of volunteers go up to sweep the leaves.' It had just been a thought, that's all.

  A Banbury Road bus nudged into the queue, and Morse sat upstairs. As they passed St. Frideswide's he looked up again at the tower and made a guess at its height: eighty, ninety feet? The trees ahead of him in St Giles' had that long-distance look of green about them as the leaves began to open; and the bus, as it pulled into the lay-by outside the Taylorian Institute, was scraping against some of their budded branches, when something clicked in Morse's mind. How tall were the trees here? Forty, fifty feet? Not much more, certainly. So how in the name of gravity did the autumnal leaves ever manage to dance their way to the top of St. Frideswide's tower? Wasn't there perhaps a simple answer, though. They didn't. The November leaf-sweeping brigade had no need to go up to the main tower at all: they just cleared the lower roofs over the aisle and the Lady Chapel. That must be it. And so the curious thought grew curiouser still: since the time of Lawson's death, when doubtless Bell's minions had sieved every leaf and every fragment of stone, had anyone been up to the roof of the tower?

  The bell pinged for the bus to stop at the Summertown shops; and simultaneously another bell rang in Morse's mind, and he joined the exodus. In Bell's notes (it was all 'bells' now) there'd been a few tactful mentions of Josephs' weakness for gambling on the horses, and the intelligent early suggestion (before Bell's visit to Josephs' bank manager) that the £100 or so found in the dead man's wallet might have had a fairly simple provenance—the licensed betting-office in Summertown.

  Morse pushed open the door and immediately registered some surprise. It was more like a branch of Lloyds Bank than the traditional picture of a bookmaker's premises. A counter faced him along the far wall, with a low grille running the length of it, behind which two young women were taking money and stamping betting-slips. Round the three other walls the racing pages of the daily newspapers were pinned, and in front of them were placed black plastic chairs where clients could sit and study the form-guides and consider their own fancies or the tipsters' selections. There were about fifteen people there, all men—sitting or standing about, their minds keenly concentrated on the state of the going, the weights and the jockeys, their ears intent on the loudspeaker which every few minutes brought them the latest news of the betting direct from the courses. Morse sat down and stared vacantly at a page of the Sporting Chronicle. To his right, a smartly dressed Chinaman twisted the knob on a small machine affixed to the wall and tore off a betting-slip. And from the corner of his eye Morse could see exactly what he wrote: '3.35 Newmarket—£20 win—The Fiddler'. Phew! Surely most of the punters here had to be satisfied with a modest fifty pence or so each way? He turned his head and watched the Chinaman at the pay-in counter, four crisp fivers fanned out neatly in his right hand; watched the girl behind the grille, as she accepted the latest sacrifice with the bland indifference of a Buddhist deity. Two minutes later the loudspeaker woke up again, and without enthusiasm an impersonal voice announced, the 'off'; announced, after a period of silence, the order of the runners at the four-furlong marker; then the winner, the second the third—The Fiddler not amongst them. To Morse, who as a boy had listened to the frenetically exciting race-commentaries of Raymond Glendenning, the whole thing seemed extraordinarily flat, more like an auctioneer selling a Cézanne at Sotheby's.

  The Chinaman resumed his seat beside Morse, and began to tear up his small yellow slip with the exaggerated delicacy of one who practises the art of origami.

  'No luck?' ventured Morse.

  'No,' said the Chinaman, with a polite oriental inclination of the head.

  'You lucky sometimes?'

  'Sometime.' Again the half-smile, the gentle inclination of the head.

  'Come here often?'

  'Often.' And, as if to answer the query on Morse's face, 'Me pretty rich man, you think so?'

  Morse took the plunge. 'I used to know a fellow who came in here most days—fellow called Josephs. Used to wear a brown suit. About fifty.'

  'Here now?'

  'No. He died about six months ago—murdered, poor chap.'

  'Ah. You mean Harree. Yes. Poor Harree. I know heem. We often talk. He murdered, yes. Me verree soiree.'

  'He won quite a bit on the horses, I've heard. Still, some of us are luckier than others.'

  'You wrong. Harree verree unluckee man. Always just not there quite.'

  'He lost a lot of money, you mean?'

  The Chinaman shrugged. 'Perhaps he rich man.' His narrow eyes focused on the 4.00 card at Newmarket, his right hand reaching up automatically for the knob on the wail machine.

  Probably Josephs had been losing money pretty consistently, and not the sort of money he could hope to recoup from the unemployment exchange. Yet he'd got money from somewhere, by some means.

  Morse considered a little wager of his own on the Chinaman's next selection, but squint as he would he couldn't quite see the name, and he left and walked thoughtfully up the hill. It was a pity. A few minutes after Morse had let himself into his flat, the little Chinaman stood smiling a not particularly inscrutable smile at the the pay-out counter. He hadn't really got his English syntax sorted out yet, but perhaps he'd coined as fitting an epitaph for Harry Josephs as any with those five disjointed adverbs: 'Always just not there quite.'

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  'NO, I'M SORRY, INSPECTOR—he isn't.' It was ten-past seven and Mrs. Lewis regretted the interruption to The Archers: she hoped that Morse would either come in or go away. 'Oxford are playing tonight, and he's gone to watch them.'

  The rain had been falling steadily since tea-time, and still pattered the puddles in the Lewises' front drive. 'He must be mad,' said Morse.

  'It's working with you, Inspector. Are you coming in?'

  Morse shook his head and a raindrop dripped from his bare head on to his chin. 'I'll go and see if I can find him.'

  'You must be mad,' muttered Mrs. Lewis.

  Morse drove carefully through the rain up to Headington, the windscreen-wipers sweeping back and forth in clean arcs across the spattered window. It was these damned holidays that upset him! Earlier this Tuesday evening he had sat in his armchair, once again in the grip of a numbing lethargy that minute by minute grew ever more paralysing. The Playhouse offered him a Joe Orton farce, hailed by the critics as a comedy classic. No. The Moulin Rouge announced that the torrid Sandra Bergson was leading a sexy, savage, insatiable all-girl gang in On the Game: an X trailer, no doubt, advertising a U film. No. Every prospect seemed displeasing, and even women, temporarily, seemed vile. Then he'd suddenly thought of Sergeant Lewis.

  It had been no problem parking the Jaguar in Sandfield Road, and Morse now pushed through the stiff turnstile into the Manor Road ground. Only a faithful sprinkling of bedraggled spectators was standing along the west-side terrace, their umbrellas streaked with rain; but the covered terrace at the London Road end was tightly packed with orange-and-black-scarved youngsters, their staccato 'Ox-ford—clap-clap-clap' intermittently echoing across the ground. One row of brilliant floodlights was suddenly switched on, and the wet grass twinkled in a thousand silvery gleams.

  A roar greeted the home team, yellow-shirted, blue-shorted leaning forward against the slanting rain, and kicking and flicking a series of white footballs across the sodden pitch until they shone like polished billiard balls. Behind him, as Morse turned, was the main stand, under cover and under-populated; and he walked back to the entrance and bought himself a transfer ticket.

  By half-time Oxford were two goals down, and in spite of repeated scrutinies of those around him, Morse had still not spotted Lewis. Throughout the first half, when the centre of the pitch and the two goal-mouths had churned up into areas of squelchy morass reminiscent of pictures of Passchendaele, Morse's thoughts had given him little rest. An improbable
, illogical, intuitive notion was growing ever firmer in his mind—a mind now focused almost mesmerically on the tower of St. Frideswide's, and the fact that he himself was quite unable to check his forebodings served only to reinforce their probability. He needed Lewis badly—there could be no doubt of that.

  Greeted by a cacophony of whistles and catcalls, his black top and shorts shining like a skin-diver's suit, the referee came out to inspect the pitch again, and Morse looked at the clock by the giant Scoreboard: 8.20 p.m. Was it really worth staying?

  A firm hand gripped his shoulder from behind. 'You must be mad, sir.'

  Lewis clambered over the back of the seat and sat himself down beside his chief.

  Morse felt indescribably happy. 'Listen, Lewis. I want your help. What about it?'

  'Any time, sir. You know me. But aren't you on—?'

  'Any time?'

  A veil of slow disappointment clouded Lewis' eyes. 'You don't mean—?' He knew exactly what Morse meant.

  'You've lost this one, anyway.'

  'Bit unlucky, weren't we, in the first half?'

  'What are you like on heights?' asked Morse.

  Like the streets around the football ground, St. Giles' was comparatively empty, and the two cars easily found parking-spaces outside St. John's College.

  'Fancy a beefburger, Lewis?'

  'Not for me, sir. The wife'll have the chips on.' Morse smiled contentedly. It was good to be back in harness again; good to be reminded of Mrs. Lewis' chips. Even the rain had slackened, and Morse lifted his face and breathed deeply, ignoring Lewis' repeated questions about their nocturnal mission.

  The large west window of St. Frideswide's glowed with a sombre, yellow light, and from inside could be heard the notes of the organ, muted and melancholy.

  'We going to church?' asked Lewis; and in reply Morse unlatched the north door and walked inside. Immediately on their left as they entered was a brightly-painted statue of the Virgin, illumined by circles of candles, some slim and waning rapidly, some stout and squat, clearly prepared to soldier on throughout the night; and all casting a flickering kaleidoscopic light across the serene features of the Blessed Mother of God.