by Colin Dexter
'Coleridge was very interested in candles,' said Morse. But before he could further enlighten Lewis on such enigmatic subject-matter a tall, shadowy figure emerged from the gloom, swathed in a black cassock.
'I'm afraid the service is over, gentlemen.'
'That's handy,' said Morse. 'We want to go up the tower.'
'I beg your pardon.'
'Who are you?' asked Morse brusquely.
'I am the verger,' said the tall man, 'and I'm afraid there's no possibility whatsoever of your going up to the tower.'
Ten minutes later with the verger's key, and the verger's torch, and the verger's warning that the whole thing was highly irregular, Morse found himself on the first few steps of the ascent—a narrow, steep, scalloped stairway that circled closely upwards to the tower above. With Lewis immediately behind he shone the torch ahead of him, and, increasingly breathless from exertion and apprehension, gritted his teeth and climbed. Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven . . . On the sixty-third step a small narrow window loomed on the left, and Morse shut his eyes, hugging the right-hand wall ever more closely; and ten steps higher, steps still religiously counted, he reached the inexorable conclusion that he would climb one step higher, make an immediate U-turn, descend to the bottom, and take Lewis for a pint in the Randolph. A cold sweat had broken out on his forehead, and the planes registering the vertical and horizontal realities were merging and sliding and slanting into a terrifying tilt. He craved only one thing now: to stand four-square on the solid ground outside this abominable tower and to watch the blessedly terrestrial traffic moving along St Giles'. To stand? No, to sit there; to lie there even, the members of his body seeking to embrace at every point the solid, fixed contours of the flat and comforting earth.
'Here you are, Lewis. You take the torch. I'm—I'm right behind you.'
Lewis set off ahead of him, easily, confidently, two steps at a time, upwards into the spiralling blackness; and Morse followed. Above the bell chamber, up and up, another window and another dizzying glimpse of the ground so far below—and Morse with a supreme effort of will thought only of one step upwards at a time, his whole being concentrating itself into the purely physical activity of lifting each leg alternately, like a victim of locomotor ataxia.
'Here we are, then,' said Lewis brightly, shining the torch on a tow door just above them. "This must be the roof, I think.'
The door was not locked and Lewis stepped through it, leaving Morse to sit down on the threshold, breathing heavily, his back tight against the door-jamb and his hands tight against his clammy forehead. When finally he dared to look about him, he saw the tessellated coping of the tower framed against the evening sky and then, almost fatally, he saw the dark clouds hurrying across the pale moon, saw the pale moon hurrying behind the dark clouds, saw the tower itself leaning and drifting against the sky, and his head reeled vertiginously, his gut contracted, and twice he retched emptily—and prayed that Lewis had not heard him.
From the north side of the tower Lewis looked down and across the broad, tree-lined expanse of St. Giles'. Immediately below him, some eighty or ninety feet, he guessed, he could just make out the spiked railing that surrounded the north porch, and beyond it the moonlit graves in the little churchyard. Nothing much of interest. He shone the torch across the tower itself. Each of the four sides was about ten or twelve yards in length, with a gully running alongside the outer walls, and a flat, narrow walk, about a yard in width, between these walls and the leaded roof which rose from each side in a shallow pyramid, its apex some eight or nine feet high, on which a wooden post supported a slightly crooked weathervane.
He walked back to the door. 'You all right, sir?'
'Yes, fine. Just not so fit as you, that's all.'
'You'll get a touch of the old Farmer Giles sitting there, sir.'
'Find anything?'
Lewis shook his head.
'You looked all round?'
'Not exactly, no. But why don't you tell me what we're supposed to be looking for?' Then, as Morse made no reply: 'You sure you're all right, sir?'
'Go and—go and have a look all the way round, will you? I'll—er—I'll be all right in a minute.'
'What's wrong, sir?'
'I'm scared of bloody heights, you stupid sod!' snarled Morse.
Lewis said nothing more. He'd worked with Morse many times before, and treated his outbursts rather as he had once treated the saddeningly bitchy bouts of temper from his own teenage daughters. Nevertheless, it still hurt a bit.
He shone the torch along the southern side of the tower and slowly made his way along. Pigeon-droppings littered the narrow walk, and the gully on this side was blocked somewhere, for two or three inches of water had built up at the south-east corner. Lewis took hold of the outer fabric of the tower as he tried to peer round the east side, but the stonework was friable and insecure. Gingerly he leaned his weight against the slope of the central roofing, and shone the torch round. 'Oh Christ!' he said softly to himself.
There, stretched parallel to the east wall, was the body of a man—although even then Lewis realised that the only evidence for supposing the body to be that of a man was the tattered, sodden suit in which the corpse was dressed, and the hair on the head which was not that of a woman. But the face itself had been picked almost clean to the hideous skull; and it was upon this non-face that Lewis forced himself to shine his torch again. Twice in all—but no more.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
AT LUNCH-TIME ON the following day, Morse sat alone in The Bulldog, just opposite Christ Church, and scanned an early copy of the Oxford Mail. Although the main headline and three full columns of the front page were given over to COMPONENTS STRIKE HITS COWLEY MEN, 'Body Found on Church Tower' had been dramatic enough news to find itself half-way down the left-hand column. But Morse didn't bother to read it. After all, he'd been sitting there in Bell's office a couple of hours previously when one of the Mail's correspondents had rung through and when Bell's replies had been guarded and strictly factual: 'No, we don't know who he is.' 'Yes, I did say a "he".' 'What? Quite a long time, yes. Quite a long time.' 'I can't say at the minute, no. They're holding the post-mortem this afternoon. Good headline for you, eh? P.M. THIS P.M.' 'No, I can't tell you who found him.' 'Could be a link-up, I suppose, yes.' 'No, that's the lot. Ring up tomorrow if you like. I might have a bit more for you then.' At the time Morse had felt that this last suggestion was a bit on the optimistic side, and he still felt so now. He turned to the back page and read the sports headline: UNITED COME UNSTUCK ON PITCH LIKE GLUE. But he didn't read that account, either. The truth was that he felt extremely puzzled, and needed time to think.
Nothing had been found in the dead man's pockets, and the only information imparted by the dark-grey suit, the underclothing, and the light-blue tie was 'Burton', 'St. Michael' and 'Munro Spun' respectively. Morse himself had declined to view what Bell had called 'a sticky, putrescent mess', and had envied the perky sang-froid of the police surgeon who reported that whoever he was he wasn't quite such a gruesome sight as some of the bodies they used to fish out of the water at Gravesend. One thing was clear. It was going to be a tricky job to identify the corpse: tricky for Bell, that was. And Bell had not been in the best of humours as he'd glared across the table at Morse and reminded him that he must have some idea who the fellow was. It was Morse who had taken Lewis to the exact spot, wasn't it? And if he was pretty sure he was going to find a corpse he must have got a jolly good idea whose corpse it was!
But Morse hadn't—it was as simple as that. A peculiar combination of circumstances had concentrated his thoughts on to the tower of St. Frideswide's, and all he'd done (whatever Bell suspected) was to obey a compelling instinct which had proved too strong even for his chronic acrophobia. But he'd not expected to find a corpse up there, had he? Or had he? When Lewis had shouted the grim discovery over the roof to him, Morse's mind had immediately jumped to the shadowy figure of the tramp and his miserably thin pickings from the collection-pla
te. All along he'd felt that it should have been comparatively easy for the police to pick up such a character. People like that had to depend almost entirely on charitable and welfare services of some kind, and were usually well known to the authorities wherever they went. Yet extensive enquiries had led nowhere, and might there not have been a very very simple reason for that?
Morse bought himself another pint and watched the glass as the cloudy sedimentation slowly cleared; and when he sat down again his brain seemed to have cleared a little, too. No; it wasn't the tramp they'd found, Morse felt sure of that. It was the clothes, really—especially that light-blue tie. Light-blue . . . Cambridge . . . graduates . . . teachers . . . Morris . . .
Bell was still in his office.
'What happened to Paul Morris?' asked Morse.
'Beggered off with Josephs' wife, like as not.'
'You don't know?'
Bell shook his head. He looked tired and drawn. 'We tried, but—'
'Did you find her?'
Again Bell shook his head. 'We didn't push things too far. You know how it is. What with Morris teaching at the same school as his son and—'
'His what? You didn't tell me Morris had a son!'
Bell sighed deeply. 'Look, Morse. Whadya want from me? You find me another body last night, and I'm deeply grateful, aren't I? That'll be another half-dozen of my lads out of circulation. And I've just had a call to say somebody's been fished out of the river at Folly Bridge, and we've got more trouble with some squatters down in Jericho.' He took out a handkerchief and sneezed heavily. 'And I'm sickening for the flu, and you want me to go chasing after some fellow who was known to be seein' Josephs' missus pretty regularly long before—'
'Really?' said Morse. 'Why didn't I read that in the report?'
'Come off it!'
'He could have killed Josephs. Jealousy! Best motive of the lot.'
'He was sittin'—playin' the bleedin' organ—when—' Bell sneezed noisily again.
Morse settled back in his chair, for some unfathomable reason looking very pleased with himself. 'You still think it really was Lawson you found on the railings?'
'I told you, Morse, we had two identifications.'
'Oh yes, I remember. One from a blind woman and one from the man who ran away with Brenda Josephs, wasn't it?'
'Why don't you go home?'
'You know,' said Morse quietly, 'when you've finished with your squatters, you'd better get a squad of lads to dig up old Lawson's coffin, because I reckon—just reckon, mind—that you might not find old Lawson in it.' Morse's face beamed with a mischievous pleasure, and he got up to go.
'That's a bloody fool's thing to say.'
'Is it?'
'Not all that easy, either,' It was Bell who was enjoying himself now.
'No?'
'No. You see, they cremated him.'
The news appeared to occasion little surprise or disappointment on Morse's face. 'I knew a minister once—'
'Well, well!' mumbled Bell.
'—who had one of his feet amputated in the First World War. He got it stuck in a tank, and they had to get him out quick because the thing was on fire. So they left his foot there.'
'Very interesting.'
'He was very old when I knew him,' continued Morse. 'One foot already in the grave.'
Bell pushed his own chair back and got up. ’Tell me about it some other time.'
'He was in a discussion one day about the respective merits of burial and cremation, and the old boy said he didn't mind two hoots what they did with him. He said he'd sort of got a foot in both camps.'
Bell shook his head in slow bewilderment. What the hell was that supposed to mean?
'By the way,' said Morse. 'What was the name of Paul Morris' son?'
'Peter, I think. Why—?'
But Morse left without enlightening Bell on the point.
P.M. THIS P.M., Bell had said; and as he drove the Jaguar up to Carfax the initials kept repeating themselves to his mind: postmortem, post meridiem, prime minister, Paul McCartney, Post Master, putrefying mess, Perry Mason, Provost Marshal, Peter Morris . . . The lights were red at the end of Cornmarket, and as Morse sat waiting there for them to change he looked up yet again at the tower of St. Frideswide's looming overhead, and at the great west window which only last night had glowed in the dark when he and Lewis . . . On a sudden impulse he pulled round the corner into Beaumont Street and parked his car outside the Randolph. A uniformed young flunkey pounced upon him immediately.
'You can't leave your car here.'
'I can leave the bloody car where I like,' snapped Morse. 'And next time you speak to me, lad, just call me "sir", all right?'
The north porch was locked, with a notice pinned to it: 'Due to several acts of wanton vandalism during the past few months, we regret that the church will now be closed to the public from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. on weekdays.' Morse felt he would have liked to recast the whole sentence, but he satisfied himself by crossing through 'due' and writing 'owing'.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
MORSE RAPPED BRISKLY on the door marked 'Enquiries', put his head round the door, and nodded 'Hello' to a nice-looking school secretary.
'Can I help you, sir?'
'Headmaster in?'
'Is he expecting you?'
'Doubt it,' said Morse. He walked across the narrow office tapped once on the study door and entered.
Phillipson, headmaster of the Roger Bacon School, was only too pleased to be of help.
Paul Morris, it seemed, had been a music master of the first water. During his short stay at the school, he'd been popular both with his teaching colleagues and with his pupils, and his G.C.E. O-Level and A-Level results had been encouragingly good. Everyone had been mystified—for a start anyway—when he'd left so suddenly, without telling a soul; right in the middle of term, too, on (Phillipson consulted his previous year's diary) 26 October, a Wednesday. He had turned up for school perfectly normally in the morning and presumably gone off, as he often did on Wednesdays, to have lunch at home. And that was the last they'd seen of him. His son, Peter, had left the school just after lessons finished at a quarter to four, and that was the last they'd seen of him. The next day several members of staff had pointed out that both of them were absent from school, and no doubt someone would have gone round to the Morris residence if it hadn't been for a call from the Oxford City Police. It seemed that some anonymous neighbour had tipped them off that Morris and his son had left Kidlington and gone off to join a woman ('I suppose you know all about this, Inspector?')—a Mrs. Josephs. Inspector Bell had called personally to see Phillipson and told him that a few enquiries had already been made, and that several of Morris' neighbours had seen a car answering the description of Mrs. Josephs' Allegro parked somewhere nearby several times during the previous months. In fact, the police had learned from other sources that in all probability Morris and Mrs. Josephs had been lovers for some time. Anyway, Bell had asked Phillipson to soft-pedal the whole thing; make up some story about Morris having to be away for the rest of the term—death of one of his parents—anything he liked. Which Phillipson had done. A temporary stand-in had taken over Morris' classes for the remainder of the autumn term, and a new woman appointed from January. The police had visited the house that Morris had rented furnished, and found that most of the personal effects had been taken away, although for some reason a fair number of books and expensive record-player had been left behind. And that was all, really. Phillipson had heard nothing more from that day to this. To the best of his knowledge no one had received any communication from Morris at all. He had not applied for a reference, and perhaps, in the circumstances, was unlikely to do so.
Not once had Morse interrupted Phillipson, and when finally he did say something it was totally irrelevant. 'Any sherry in that cupboard, Headmaster?'
Ten minutes later Morse left the headmaster's study and leaned over the young secretary's shoulder.
'Making out a cheque for me, miss?'
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br /> '"Mrs."; Mrs. Clarke.' She wound the yellow cheque from the typewriter carriage, placed it face downwards on her desk, and glared at Morse defiantly. His lack of manners when he'd come in had been bad enough, but—
'You look pretty when you're cross,' said Morse.
Phillipson called her through to his study. 'I've got to go out, Mrs. Clarke. Take Chief Inspector Morse along to the first-year-sixth music group, will you? And wash up these glasses when you get back, please.'
Tight-lipped and red-cheeked, Mrs. Clarke led the way along the corridors and up to the music-room door. 'In there,' she said.
Morse turned to face her and laid his right hand very gently on her shoulder, his blue eyes looking straight into hers. 'Thank you, Mrs. Clarke,' he said quietly. 'I'm awfully sorry if I made you angry. Please forgive me.'
As she walked back down the steps, she felt suddenly and marvellously pleased with life. Why had she been so silly? She found herself wishing that he would call her back about something. And he did.
'When do the staff get their cheques, Mrs. Clarke?'
‘On the last Friday in the month. I always type them the day before.'
'You weren't typing them just now, then?'
'No. We're breaking up tomorrow, and I was just typing an expenses cheque for Mr. Phillipson. He had a meeting in London yesterday.'
'I hope he's not on the fiddle.'
She smiled sweetly. 'No, Inspector. He's a very nice man.'
'You're very nice, too, you know,' said Morse.
She was blushing as she turned away, and Morse felt inordinately envious of Mr. Clarke as he watched the secretary's legs disappearing down the stairs. Last Friday in the month, she'd said. That would have been 28 October, and Morris had left two days before his cheque was due. Very strange!