Chapter Twenty

   At 4.30 p.m. on the Friday of the same week, Ruth Rawlinson wheeled her bicycle through the narrow passageway and propped it against the side of the lawn-mower in the cluttered garden-shed. Really, she must tidy up that shed again soon. She took a white Sainsbury carrier-bag from the cycle-basket, and walked back round to the front door. The Oxford Mail was in the letter-box, and she quietly withdrew it.
   Just a little bit today, but still on page one:

   CORPSE STILL UNIDENTIFIED
   Police still have no positive clue about the identity of the body found on the tower-roof of St Frideswide's Church. Chief Inspector Morse today repeated that the dead man was probably in his late thirties, and revealed that he was wearing a dark-grey suit, white shin and light-blue tie. Anyone who may have any information is asked to contact the St Aldates Police Station, Oxford 49881. Enquiries have not as yet established any link with the still unsolved murder of Mr Harry Josephs in the same church last year.

   Ruth's body gave an involuntary little jerk as she read the article. 'Anyone who may have. . . . ' Oh God! She had information enough, hadn't she? Too much information; and the knowledge was weighing ever more heavily upon her conscience. And was Morse in charge now?
   As she inserted the Yale key, Ruth realised (yet again) how sickeningly predictable would be the dialogue of the next few minutes.
   'Is that you, Ruthie dear?'
   Who else, you silly old crow? 'Yes, Mother.'
   'Is the paper come?'
   You know it's come. Your sharp old ears don't miss a scratch, do they? 'Yes, Mother.'
   'Bring it with you, dear.'
   Ruth put the heavy carrier-bag down on the kitchen-table, draped her mackintosh over a chair and walked into the lounge. She bent down to kiss her mother lightly on an icy cheek, placed the newspaper on her lap, and turned up the gas-fire. 'You never have this high enough, you know, Mother. It's been a lot colder this week and you've got to keep yourself warm.'
   'We've got to be careful with the bills, dear.'
   Don't start on that again! Ruth mustered up all her reserves of patience and filial forbearance. 'You finished the book?'
   'Yes, dear. Very ingenious.' But her attention was fixed on the evening paper. 'Anything more about the murder?'
   'I don't know. I didn't know it was a murder anyway.'
   'Don't be childish, dear.' Her eyes had pounced upon the article and she appeared to read it with ghoulish satisfaction. 'That man who came here, Ruthie - they've put him in charge.'
   'Have they?'
   'He knows far more than he's letting on - you mark my words.'
   'You think so?'
   The old girl nodded wisely in her chair. 'You can still learn a few things from your old mother, you know.' 'Such as what?'
   'You remember that tramp fellow who murdered Harry Josephs?'
   'Who said he murdered— ?'
   'No need to get cross, dear. You know you're interested. You still keep all the newspaper clippings, I know that.'
   You nosey old bitch! 'Mother, you must not go looking through my handbag again. I've told you before. One of these days— '
   ‘I’ll find something I shouldn't? Is that it?'
   Ruth looked savagely into the curly blue line of flame at the bottom of the gas-fire, and counted ten. There were some days now when she could hardly trust herself to speak.
   'Well, that's who it is,' said her mother.
   'Pardon?'
   'The man up the tower, dear. It's the tramp.'
   'Bit elegantly dressed for a tramp, wouldn't you say, Mother? White shirt and a— '
   'I thought you said you hadn't seen the paper, dear.' The charge was levelled with a silky tongue.
   Ruth took a deep breath. 'I just thought you'd like to find it for yourself, that's all.'
   'You're beginning to tell me quite a few little lies, Ruthie, and you've got to stop it.'
   Ruth looked up sharply. What was that supposed to mean? Surely her mother couldn't know about...?
   'You're talking nonsense, Mother.'
   'So you don't think it is the tramp?'
   'A tramp wouldn't be wearing clothes like that.'
   'People can change clothes, can't they?'
   'You've been reading too many detective stories.'
   'You could kill someone and then change his clothes.'
   'Of course you couldn't.' Again Ruth was watching her mother carefully- 'Not just like that anyway. You make it sound like dressing up a doll or something.'
   'It would be difficult, dear, I know that. But, then, life is full of difficulties, isn't it? It's not impossible, that's all I'm saying.'
   'I've got two nice little steaks from Salisbury's, I thought we'd have a few chips with them.'
   'You could always change a man's clothes before you killed him.'
   'What? Don't be so silly! You don't identify a body by the clothes. It's the face and things like that. You can't change— '
   'What if there's nothing left of his face, dear?' asked Mrs Rawlinson sweetly, as if reporting that she'd eaten the last piece of Cheddar from the pantry.
   Ruth walked over to the window, anxious to bring the conversation to a close. It was distasteful and, yes, worrying. And perhaps her mother wasn't getting quite so senile after all.... In her mind's eye Ruth still had a clear picture of the 'tramp' her mother had been talking of, the man she'd known (though she'd never actually been told) to be Lionel Lawson's brother, the man who had usually looked exactly what he was - a worthless, feckless parasite, reeking of alcohol, dirty and degraded. Not quite always, though. There had been two occasions when she'd seen him looking more than presentable: hair neatly groomed, face shaven freshly, finger-nails clean, and a decently respectable suit on his back. On those occasions the family resemblance between the two brothers had been quite remarkable….
   '...if they ask me, which doubtless they won't— ' Mrs Rawlinson had been chattering non-stop throughout, and her words at last drifted through to Ruth's consciousness.
   'What would you tell them?'
   'I've told you. Haven't you been listening to me, dear? Is there something wrong?'
   Yes, there's a lot wrong. You, for a start. And if you're not careful, Mother dear, I'll strangle you one of these days dress you up in someone else's clothes, carry your skinny little body up to the top of the tower, and let the birds have a second helping! 'Wrong? Of course there isn't. I'll go and get tea.'
   Rotten, black blotches appeared under the skin of the first potato she was peeling, and she took another from the bag she had just bought - a bag marked with the words 'Buy British' under a large Union Jack. Red, white and blue. . . . And she thought of Paul Morris seated on the organ-bench, with his red hood, white shirt and blue tie; Paul Morris, who (as everyone believed) had run off with Brenda Josephs. But he hadn't, had he? Someone had made very, very sure that he hadn't; someone who was sitting somewhere - even now! - planning, gloating, profiting, in some way, from the whole dreadful business. The trouble was that there weren't many people left. In fact, if you counted the heads of those that were left, there was really only one who could conceivably. . . . Surely not, though. Surely Brenda Josephs could have nothing to do with it, could she?
   Ruth shook her head with conviction, and peeled the next potato.

Chapter Twenty-one

   Although her husband (unbeknown to her) had borrowed on the mortgage of their house in Wolvercote, Mrs Brenda Josephs was now comfortably placed financially, and the nurses' hostel in the General Hospital on the outskirts of Shrewsbury provided more than adequate accommodation. On Paul's specific instructions, she had not written to him once, and she had received only that one letter from him, religiously guarded under the lining of her handbag, much of which she knew by heart: ' . . . and above all don't be impatient, my darling. It will take time, perhaps quite a lot of time, and whatever happens we must be careful. As far as I can see there is nothing to worry us, and we must keep it that way. Just be patient and all will be well. I long to see you again and to feel your beautiful body next to mine. I love you, Brenda you know that, and soon we shall be able to start a completely new life together. Be discreet always, and do nothing until you hear from me again. Burn this letter - now!'

   Brenda had been working since 7.30 a.m. on the women's surgical ward, and it was now 4.15 p.m. Her Friday evening and the whole of Saturday were free, and she leaned back in one of the armchairs in the nurses' common room and lit a cigarette. Since leaving Oxford her life (albeit without Paul) had been fuller and freer than she could ever have hoped or imagined. She had made new friends and taken up new interests. She had been made aware, too happily aware, of how attractive she remained to the opposite sex. Only a week after her appointment (she had given, as her referee, the name of the matron for whom she had worked prior to her nursing at the Radcliffe) one of the young married doctors had said to her, 'Would you like to come to bed with me, Brenda?' Just like that! She smiled now as she recollected the incident, and an unworthy thought, not for the first time, strayed across the threshold of her mind. Did she really want Paul all that badly now? With that son of his, Peter? He was a nice enough young boy, but.... She stubbed out her cigarette and reached for the Guardian. There was an hour and a half to wait before the evening meal, and she settled down to a leisurely perusal of the day's news. Inflation figures seemed mildly encouraging for a change; but the unemployment figures were not, and she knew only too well what unemployment could do to a man's soul. Middle East peace talks were still taking place, but civil wars in various parts of Africa seemed to be threatening the delicate balance between the superpowers. In the Home News, at the bottom of page three, there was a brief item on the discovery of a body on the tower of an Oxford church; but Brenda didn't reach it. The young doctor sat down beside her, unnecessarily but not distressingly close.
   'Hello, beautiful! What about us doing the crossword together?'
   He took the paper from her, folded it over to the crossword, and undipped a biro from the top pocket of his white coat.
   'I'm not much good at crosswords,' said Brenda.
   'I bet you're good in bed, though.'
   'If you're going to— '
   'One across. Six letters. "Girl takes gun to district attorney." What's that, do you think?'
   'No idea.'
   'Just a minute! What about BRENDA? Fits, doesn't it? Gun - "bren"; district attorney - "D.A." Voilà!'
   Brenda snatched the paper and looked at the clue: Girl in bed - censored. 'You're making it up,' she laughed.
   'Lovely word "bed", isn't it?' He printed the letters of 'Brenda' on the margin of the paper, and then neatly ringed the three letters 'b', 'e', 'd' in sequence. 'Any hope for me yet?'
   'You're a married man.'
   'And you ran away.' He underlined the three remaining letters 'r', 'a', 'n', and turned impishly towards her. 'No one'll know. We'll just nip up to your room and— '
   'Don't be silly!'
   'I'm not silly. I can't help it, can I, if I lust after you every time I see you in your uniform?' His tone was light and playful, but he suddenly became more serious as the door opened and two young nurses came in. He spoke softly now. 'Don't get cross with me if I keep trying, will you? Promise?'
   'Promise,' whispered Brenda.
   He wrote banned into the squares for 1 Across, and read out the clue for 1 Down. But Brenda wasn't listening. She didn't wish to be seen sitting so closely to the young doctor as this, and soon made up an excuse to go to her room, where she lay back on her single bed and stared long and hard at the ceiling. The door was locked behind her, and no one would have known, would they? Just as he'd said. If only.... She could hardly bring herself to read her own thoughts. If only he'd just walk up the stairs, knock on the door and ask her again, in his simple, hopeful, uncomplicated way, she knew that she would invite him in, and lie down - just as she lay there now - gladly unresistant as he unfastened the white buttons down the front of her uniform.
   She felt tired, and the room was excessively stuffy - the radiator too hot to touch. Gradually she dozed off, and when she awoke her mouth was very dry. Something had woken her; and now she heard the gently reiterated knock-knock at the door. How long had she slept for? Her watch told her it was 5.45 p.m. She fluffed her hair, straightened her uniform, lightly smeared on a little lipstick and, with a little flutter of excitement in her tummy, walked across to the door of her room, newly painted in dazzling white gloss.

   * * *
   It was lying by the same door that a member of the cleaning staff found her the next morning. Somehow she had managed to crawl across from the centre of the small room; and it was clear that her fingers had groped in vain for the handle of the door, for the lower panels were smeared with the blood coughed up from her throat. No one seemed to know exactly where she came from, but the letter the police found beneath the lining of her handbag suggested strongly that she was, or had been, on the most intimate terms with a man called 'Paul', who had given his address only as 'Kidlington', and who had urged the recipient to burn the evidence immediately.

Chapter Twenty-two

   It was on Saturday morning, and in the middle of page two of the long-delayed post-mortem report on the corpse found on the tower, that Morse came to the conclusion he might just as well be reading the Chinese People's Daily. He appreciated, of course, the need for some technical jargon, but there was no chance whatsoever for a non-medical man to unjumble such a farrago of physiological labellings. The first paragraph had been fairly plain sailing, though, and Morse handed the report over to Lewis:

   The body is that of an adult Caucasian male, brachycephalic. Height: 5 ft 8 1/2 in. Age: not easy to assess with accuracy, but most likely between 35 and 40. Hair: light brown, probably cut a week or so before death. Eyes: colouring impossible to determine. Teeth: remarkably good, strongly enamelled, with only one filling (posterior left six). Physical peculiarities: none observable, although it cannot be assumed that there were no such peculiarities, since the largest patch of skin, taken from the lower instep (left), measures only. ...

   Lewis passed the report back, for he had little wish to be reminded too vividly of the sight picked out so recently by the narrow beam of the verger's torch. Moreover, his next job promised to be quite gruesome enough for one morning, and for the next half-hour he sifted through the half-dozen transparent plastic bags containing the remnants of the dead man's clothes. Morse himself declined to assist in the unsavoury operation and expressed only mild interest when he heard a subdued whistle of triumph from his subordinate.
   'Let me guess, Lewis. You've found a label with his name and telephone number.'
   'As good as, sir.' In a pair of tweezers, he held up a small rectangular bus-ticket. 'It was in the breast-pocket of the jacket - 30p fare on 26 October. I reckon the fare from Kidlington to Oxford's about 30p — '
   'Probably gone up by now,' muttered Morse.
   ' — and surely' (Lewis' eyes suddenly sparkled with excitement) 'that was the day when Paul Morris disappeared, wasn't it?'
   'Never my strong point - dates,' said Morse.
   For the moment, however, nothing was going to dampen Lewis' enthusiasm. 'Pity his teeth were so good, sir. He's probably not been near a dentist for years. Still, we ought to be able to— '
   'You're taking an awful lot for granted, you know. We neither of us have the slightest proof about who the fellow is, agreed? And until— '
   'No, we haven't. But there's not much sense in closing our eyes to the obvious.'
   'Which is?'
   'That the man we found is Paul Morris,' replied Lewis with firm confidence.
   'Just because a young girl in one of his classes says he used to wear a dark suit — '
   'And a blue tie.'
   '— and a blue tie, all right, that makes him Paul Morris, you say? Lewis! You're getting as bad as I am.'
   'Do you think I'm wrong?'
   'No, no. I wouldn't say that. I'm just a little more cautious than you, shall we say?'
   This was ridiculous. Morse, as Lewis knew only too well, was a man prepared to take the most prodigious leaps into the dark; and yet here he was now - utterly blind to the few simple facts that lay staring him in the face in broad daylight. Forget it, though!
   It took Lewis no more than ten minutes to discover that Paul Morris had been a patient at the Kidlington Health Centre, and after a little quiet but urgent pressure the senior partner of that consortium was reading through the details on his medical card.
   'Well?' asked Morse, as Lewis cradled the receiver.
   'Fits pretty well. Thirty-eight years old, five feet nine inches, light-brown hair— '
   'Fits a lot of people. Medium height, medium colouring, medium— '
   'Don't you want to find out who he is?' Lewis stood up and looked down at Morse with unwonted exasperation in his voice. 'I'm sorry if all this doesn't fit in with any clever little theory you've thought up, but we've got to make some sort of start, haven't we?'
   Morse said nothing for a few moments, and when he did speak his quiet words made Lewis feel ashamed of the tetchiness which had marked his own.
   'Surely you can understand, can't you, Lewis, why I'm hoping that rotting corpse isn't Paul Morris? You see, if it is, I'm afraid we'd better start looking round pretty quickly, hadn't we? We'd better start looking round for yet another corpse, my old friend - a corpse aged about twelve.'

   Like Bell, the landlord of 3 Home Close, Kidlington, had flu, but he gave Morse a sneezy blessing to look over the property, rented out (since Morris left) to a young married couple with one baby daughter. But no one answered Lewis' repeated knockings. 'Probably shopping,' he said as he sat down again next to Morse in the front of the police car.
   Morse nodded and looked vaguely around him. The small crescent had been built some time in the early 1930s - a dozen or so red-brick, semi-detached properties, now beginning to look their age, with the supports of their slatted wooden fences virtually sopped and sapped away. Tell me, Lewis,' he said suddenly. 'Who do you think murdered Josephs?'
   'I know it's not a very original idea, sir, but I should think it must have been this down-and-out fellow. Like as not he decided to pinch the collection-money, and Josephs got in his way, and he knifed him. Another possibility— '
   'But why didn't Josephs yell the place down?'
   'He did try to shout for help, sir, if you remember. Couldn't make himself heard above the organ, perhaps.'
   'You could be right, you know,' said Morse, almost earnestly as if he'd suddenly woken up to the fact that the obvious way of looking at things wasn't necessarily the wrong one. 'What about Lawson? Who killed him?'
   'You know better than I do, sir, that the majority of murderers either give themselves up or commit suicide. There's surely not much doubt that Lawson committed suicide.'
   'But Lawson didn't kill Josephs, did he? You just said— '
   'I was going on to say, sir, that there was another possibility. I don't think Lawson himself actually killed Josephs, but I think he may have been responsible for killing him.'
   'You do?' Morse looked across at his subordinate with genuine interest. 'I think you'd better take it a bit more slowly, Lewis. You're leaving me a long way behind, I'm afraid.'
   Lewis allowed himself a mild grin of modest gratification. It wasn't often that Morse was the back-marker - just the opposite in fact: he was usually about three or four jumps ahead of his stable-companion. 'I think there's more than a possibility, sir, that Lawson got this down-and-out fellow to kill Josephs - probably by giving him money.'
   'But why should Lawson want to kill Josephs?'
   'Josephs must have had some hold over him.'
   'And Lawson must have had some hold on this down-and-out fellow.'
   'How right you are, sir!'
   'Am I?' Morse looked across in a semi-bewildered way at his sergeant. He remembered how when he was taking his eleven-plus examination he was seated next to a boy renowned for his vacuous imbecility, and how this same boy had solved the tenth anagram whilst Morse himself was still puzzling over the third.
   'As I see it,' continued Lewis, 'Lawson must have been looking after him all ways: meals, clothes, bed, everything.'
   'He must have been like a sort of brother to him, you mean?'
   Lewis looked at Morse curiously. 'Bit more than that, wasn't he, sir?'
   'Pardon?'
   'I said it was a bit more than being like a brother to him. He was a brother, surely.'
   'You mustn't believe every piece of gossip you hear.'
   'And you mustn't automatically disbelieve it, either.'
   ‘If only we had a bit more to go on, Lewis!' And then the truth hit him, as it usually did, with a flash of blinding simplicity. Any corroboration he'd wanted had been lying under his nose since his visit with Lewis to Stamford, and a shiver of excitement ran along his sculp as at last he spotted it. 'Swanpole' had appeared several times in Bell's files as the probable name of the man who had been befriended by the Reverend Lionel Lawson, the man who had so strangely disappeared after the murder of Josephs. But, if all the rumors were right, that man's real name was Philip Edward Lawson, and whether you were a rather timid little fellow trying your eleven-plus question-paper, or whether you were a souring middle-aged detective sitting in a panda-car, Swanpole was an anagram of P. E. Lawson.
   'I reckon this'll be mother and infant,' said Lewis under his breath. And indeed the heavily pregnant, dowdily dressed young woman dragging a two-year-old child along the pavement duly announced that she herself was the present occupier of 3 Home Close and that this was her daughter, Eve. Yes, she said, since the landlord had no objections, they could come in and have a look round the house. With pleasure.
   Morse declined the offer of a cup of tea, and went out into the back garden. Clearly someone had been very busy, for the whole plot showed every evidence of a systematic and recent digging-over; and in the small garden-shed the tines of the fork and the bottom half of the spade were polished to a silvery smoothness.
   'I see your husband's keen on growing his own veg.,' said Morse lightly, as he wiped his shoes on the mat by the back door.
   She nodded. 'It was all grass before we came, but, you know, with the price of things these days— '
   'Looks as if he's been doing a bit of double-digging.'
   'That's it. Took him ages, but he says it's the only way.'
   Morse, who hardly knew a sweet pea from a broad bean, nodded wisely, and gratefully decided he could forget about the garden.
   'Mind if we have a quick look upstairs?'
   'No. Go ahead. We only use two of the bedrooms - like the people who was here before us did. But - well, you never know....' Morse glanced down at her swollen belly and wondered how many bedrooms she might need before her carrying days were over.
   Young Eve's bower, the smallest of the bedrooms, was redolent of urine, and Morse screwed up his nose in distaste as he cursorily bent down over the uncarpeted floorboards. A dozen Donald Ducks on the newly decorated walls seemed to mock his aimless investigations, and he quickly left the room and closed the door behind him.
   'Nothing in either of the other rooms, sir,' said Lewis, joining Morse on the narrow landing, where the walls had been painted in a light Portland beige, with the woodwork cleanly finished off in white gloss. Morse, thinking the colours a good match, looked up at the ceiling - and whistled softly. Immediately above his head was a small rectangular trap-door, some 3 feet by 2 1/2 feet, painted as lovingly as the rest of the woodwork.
   'You got a step-ladder?' Morse shouted downstairs.
   Two minutes later Lewis was poking his head over the dusty beams and shining a torch around the rafters. Here and there a little of the early afternoon light filtered through ill-fitting joints in the tiles, yet the surprisingly large roof-space seemed dismal and darkly silent as Lewis took his weight on his wrists, gently levered himself up into the loft, and warily trod from beam to beam. A large trunk occupied the space between the trap-door and the chimney-stack, and as Lewis opened the lid and shone his torch on the slightly mildewed covers of the books inside a black, fat-bellied spider scurried its way out of reach. But Lewis was no arachnophobe, and quickly satisfying himself that the trunk was packed only with books he prodded around amid the rest of the débris: a furled Union Jack on a long blue pole, its colours faded now and forlorn; an old camp-bed probably dating from the Baden-Powell era; a brand-new lavatory-pan, patched (for some unfathomable purpose) with strips of gummed brown paper; an antiquated carpet-sweeper; two rolls of yellow insulation material; and a large roll of something else - surely? - pushed up tight between the beams and the roof-angle. Bending forward as low as he could, and groping in front of him, Lewis managed to reach the bundle, where his finger-tips prodded something soft and where his torch-light shone on to a black shoe sticking out of one end, the toe-cap filmed with a layer of grey dust.
   'Anything there?' Lewis heard the quiet urgent voice from below, but said nothing. The string tying the bundle together broke as he tugged at it, and there unrolled before him a collection of good-quality clothes: trousers, shirts, underclothes, socks, shoes and half a dozen ties - one of them a light Cambridge blue.
   Lewis' grim face appeared suddenly framed in the darkened rectangle. 'You'd better come up and have a look, sir.'
   They found another roll of clothes then, containing very much the same sort of items as the first. But the trousers were smaller, as indeed were all the other garments, and the two pairs of shoes looked as if they might have fitted a boy of about eleven or twelve. There was a tie, too. Just the one. A brand-new tie, with alternate stripes of red and grey: the tie worn by the pupils of the Roger Bacon Comprehensive School.

Chapter Twenty-three

   A good many of the gradually swelling congregation were acid-faced spinsters of some fifty or sixty summers, several of whom glanced round curiously at the two strangers who sat on the back row of the central pews, next to the empty seat now clearly marked churchwarden. Lewis both looked and felt extraordinarily uncomfortable, whilst Morse appeared to gaze round him with bland assurance.
   'We do what everybody else does, understand?' whispered Morse, as the five-minute bell ceased its monotonous melancholy toll, and the choir set out in procession from the vestry and down the main aisle, followed by the incense-swinger and the boat-boy, the acolytes and torch-bearers, the master of ceremonies, and three eminent personages, similarly but not identically dressed, the last wearing, amongst other things, alb, biretta and chasuble - the ABC of ecclesiastical rig as far as Morse as yet had mastered it. In the chancel, the dramatis personae dispersed to their appropriate stations with practised alacrity, and suddenly all was order once more. Ruth Rawlinson, in a black, square choir-hat, took her place just beneath a stone-carved angel, and the assembled choir now launched into the Mass. During this time the churchwarden slipped noiselessly into his seat, and handed Morse a little scrap of paper: 'Setting, Iste Confessor — Palestrina'; at which Morse nodded wisely before passing it on to Lewis.
   At half-time, one of the eminent personages temporarily doffed his chasuble and ascended the circular steps of the pulpit to admonish his flock against the dangers and follies of fornication. But Morse sat throughout as one to whom the admonition was not immediately applicable. Once or twice earlier his eyes had caught Ruth's, but all the female members of the choir were now sheltered from view behind a stout octagonal pillar, and he leaned back and contemplated the lozenge-shaped panes of stained glass - deepest ruby, smoky blue and brightest emerald - his mind drifting back to his own childhood, when he had sung in the choir himself....
   Lewis, too, though for different reasons, very soon lost all interest in fornication. Being, in any case, the sort of man who had seldom cast any lascivious glances over his neighbour's wife, he let his mind wander quietly over the case instead, and asked himself once more whether Morse had been right in his insistence that another visit to a church service would be certain to spark off a few flashes of association, 'to give the hooked atoms a shake', as Morse had put it - whatever that might mean....
   It took some twenty minutes for the preacher to exhaust his anti-carnal exhortations; after which he descended from the pulpit, disappeared from view through a screen in the side of the Lady Chapel, before re-emerging, chasuble redonned, at the top of the main chancel. This was the cue for the other two members of the triumvirate to rise and to march in step towards the altar where they joined their brother. The choir had already picked up their Palestrina scores once more, and amid much genuflexion, crossing and embracing the Mass was approaching its climactic moment. 'Take, eat, this is my body,' said the celebrant, and his two assistants suddenly bowed towards the altar with a perfect synchronisation of movement and gesture - just as if the two were one. Yes, just as if the two were one.... And there drifted into Morse's memory that occasion when as a young boy he'd been taken to a music-hall show with his parents. One of the acts had featured a woman dancing in front of a huge mirror, and for the first few minutes he had been unable to fathom it out at all. She wasn't a particularly nimble-bodied thing, and yet the audience had seemed enthralled by her performance. Then his mind had clicked: the dancer wasn't in front of a mirror at all! The apparent reflection was in reality another woman, dancing precisely the same steps, making precisely the same gestures, dressed in precisely the same costume. There were two women - not one. So? So, if there had been two dancers, could there not have been two priests on the night when Josephs was murdered?
   The kittiwake was soaring once again. . . .
   Five minutes after the final benediction, the church was empty. A cassocked youth had finally snuffed out the last candle in the galaxy, and even the zealous Mrs Walsh-Atkins had departed. Missa est ecclesia.
   Morse stood up, slid the slim red Order of Service into his raincoat pocket, and strolled with Lewis into the Lady Chapel, where he stood reading a brass plaque affixed to the south wall:

   In the vaults beneath are interred the terrestrial remains of Jn. Baldwin Esq., honourable benefactor and faithful servant of this parish. Died 1732. Aged 68 yrs. Requiescat in pace.

   Meiklejohn smiled without joy as he approached them, surplice over his left arm. 'Anything else we can do for you, gentlemen?'
   'We want a spare set of keys,' said Morse.
   'Well, there is a spare set,' said Meiklejohn, frowning slightly. 'Can you tell me why— ?'
   'It's just that we'd like to get in when the church is locked, that's all.'
   'Yes, I see.' He shook his head sadly. 'We've had a lot of senseless vandalism recently - mostly schoolchildren, I'm afraid. I sometimes wonder. . . . '
   'We shall only need 'em for a few days.'
   Meiklejohn led them into the vestry, climbed on to a chair, and lifted a bunch of keys from a hook underneath the top of the curtain. 'Let me have them back as soon as you can, please. There are only four sets now, and someone's always wanting them — for bell-ringing, that sort of thing.'
   Morse looked at the keys before pocketing them: old-fashioned keys, one large, three much smaller, all of them curiously and finely wrought.
   'Shall we lock the door behind us?' asked Morse. It was meant to be lightly jocular, but succeeded only in sounding facetious and irreverent.
   'No, thank you,' replied the minister quietly. 'We get quite a lot of visitors on Sundays, and they like to come here and be quiet, and to think about life - even to pray, perhaps.'
   Neither Morse nor Lewis had been on his knees throughout the service; and Lewis, at least, left the church feeling just a little guilty, just a little humbled; it was as if he had turned his back on a holy offering.
   'C'm on,' said Morse, 'we're wasting good drinking-time.'

   At 12.25 p.m. the same day, a call from the Shrewsbury Constabulary came through to the Thames Valley Police H.Q. in Kidlington, where the acting desk-sergeant took down the message carefully. He didn't think the name rang any bells, but he'd put the message through the appropriate channels. It was only after he'd put the phone down that he realised he hadn't the faintest idea what 'the appropriate channels' were.

Chapter Twenty-four

   Morse was lingering longer than usual, and it was Lewis who drained his glass first.
   'You feeling well, sir?'
   Morse put the Order of Service back in his pocket, and finished his beer in three or four gargantuan gulps. 'Never better, Lewis. Fill 'em up.'
   'Your round, I think, sir.'
   'Oh.'
   Morse leaned his elbows beside the replenished pints and continued. 'Who murdered Harry Josephs? That's the key question really, isn't it?'
   Lewis nodded. 'I had a bit of an idea during the service— '
   'No more ideas, please! I've got far too many already. Listen! The prime suspect's got to be the fellow Bell tried to trace. Agreed? The fellow who'd stayed several times at Lawson's vicarage, who was at the church when Josephs was murdered, and who disappeared afterwards. Agreed? We're not quite certain about it but there's every chance that this fellow was Lionel Lawson's brother, Philip Lawson. He's hard up and he's a wino. He sees some ready cash on the collection-plate and he decides to pinch it. Josephs tries to stop him, and gets a knife in the back for his trouble. Any problems?'
   'How did Philip Lawson come to have the knife?'
   'He'd seen it lying around the vicarage, and he decided to pocket it.'
   'Just on the off chance?'
   'That's it,' said Morse, as he turned unblinking towards Lewis.
   'But there were only a dozen or so people at the service, and the collection wouldn't have come to more than a couple of quid.'
   'That's it.'
   'Why not wait till one of the Sunday-morning services? Then he'd have the chance of fifty-odd quid.'
   'Yes. That's true.'
   'Why didn't he, then?'
   'I dunno.'
   'But no one actually saw him in the vestry.'
   'He skipped it as soon as he'd knifed Josephs.'
   'Surely someone would have seen him - or heard him?'
   'Perhaps he just hid in the vestry - behind the curtain.'
   'Impossible!'
   'Behind the door to the tower, then,' suggested Morse. 'Perhaps he went up to the tower — hid in the bell-chamber — hid on the roof — I dunno.'
   'But that door was locked when the police arrived - so it says in the report.'
   'Easy. He locked it from the inside.'
   'You mean he had - he had the key?'
   'You say you read the report, Lewis. Well? You must have seen the inventory of what they found in Josephs' pockets.'
   The light slowly dawned in Lewis' mind, and he could see Morse watching him, a hint of mild amusement in the inspector's pale-blue eyes.
   'You mean - they didn't find any keys,' he said at last.
   'No keys.'
   'You think he took them out of Josephs' pocket?'
   'Nothing to stop him.'
   'But — but if he looked through Josephs' pockets, why didn't he find the money? The hundred quid?'
   'Aren't you assuming,' asked Morse quietly, 'that that was all there was to find. What if, say, there'd been a thousand?'
   'You mean— ?' But Lewis wasn't sure what he meant.
   'I mean that everyone, almost everyone, Lewis, is going to think what you did: that the murderer didn't search through Josephs' pockets. It puts everyone on the wrong scent, doesn't it? Makes it look as if it's petty crime — as you say, a few pennies off the collection-plate. You see, perhaps our murderer wasn't really much worried about how he was going to commit the crime - he thought he could get away with that. What he didn't want was anyone looking too closely at the motive.'
   Lewis was growing increasingly perplexed. 'Just a minute, sir. You say he wasn't much worried about how he murdered Josephs. But how did he? Josephs was poisoned as well as stabbed.'
   'Perhaps he just gave him a swig of booze - doctored booze.'
   Again Lewis felt the disconcerting conviction that Morse was playing a game with him. One or two of the points the chief had just made were more like those flashes of insight he'd learned to expect. But surely Morse could do better than this? He could do better himself.
   'Josephs could have been poisoned when he took communion, sir.'
   'You think so?' Morse's eyes were smiling again. 'How do you figure that out?' 'I reckon the churchwarden is usually the last person to take communion — '
   'Like this morning, yes.'
   ' — and so this tramp fellow is kneeling there next to him and he slips something into the wine.'
   'How did he carry the poison?'
   'He could have had it in one of those rings. You just unscrew the top — '
   'You watch too much television,' said Morse.
   ' — and sprinkle it in the wine.'
   'It would be a whitish powder, Lewis, and it wouldn't dissolve immediately. So the Rev. Lionel would see it floating on top. Is that what you're saying?'
   'Perhaps he had his eyes closed. There's a lot of praying and all that sort of thing when— '
   'And Josephs himself? Was he doing a lot of praying and all that sort of thing?'
   'Could have been.'
   'Why wasn't Lawson poisoned, then? It's the minister's job to finish off any wine that's left and, as you say, Josephs was pretty certainly the last customer.'
   'Perhaps Josephs swigged the lot,' suggested Lewis hopefully; and then his eyes irradiated a sudden excitement. 'Or perhaps, sir — or perhaps the two of them, the two Lawson brothers, were in it together. That would answer quite a lot of questions, wouldn't it?'
   Morse smiled contentedly at his colleague. 'You know, Lewis, you get brighter all the time. I think it must be my company that does it.'
   He pushed his glass across the table. 'Your turn, isn't it?'
   He looked around him as Lewis waited patiently to be served: it was half-past one and Sunday lunch-time trade was at its peak. A man with a rough beard, dressed in a long ex-army coat, had just shuffled through the entrance and was standing apprehensively by the bar; a man in latish middle-age, it seemed, wearing that incongruous pair of sun-glasses, and grasping an empty flagon of cider in his hand. Morse left his seat and walked over to him.
   'We met before, remember?'
   The man looked slowly at Morse and shook his head. 'Sorry, mate.'
   'Life not treating you so good?'
   'Nah.'
   'Been roughing it long?'
   'Last back-end.'
   'You ever know a fellow called Swanpole?'
   'Nah. Sorry, mate.'
   'Doesn't matter. I used to know him, that's all.'
   'I knew somebody who did,' said the tramp quietly. 'Somebody who knew the fellah you was just talking about.'
   'Yes?' Morse fumbled in his pockets and pushed a fifty-pence piece into the man's hand.
   'The old boy I used to go round with — 'e mentioned that name recently. "Swanny" - that's what they called 'im, but 'e's not round these parts any more.'
   'What about the old boy? Is he still around?'
   'Nah. 'E's dead. Died o' pneumonia - yesterday.'
   'Oh.'
   Morse walked back thoughtfully to the table, and a few minutes later watched a little sadly as the landlord showed the tramp the way to the exit. Clearly there was no welcome for the poor fellow's custom here, and no cider slowly to be sipped on one of the city's benches that Sunday afternoon; not from this pub anyway.
   'One of your pals?' grinned Lewis, as he placed two more pints on the table.
   'I don't think he's got any pals.'
   'Perhaps if Lawson were still alive— '
   'He's just the man we've got to talk about, Lewis — suspect number two. Agreed?'
   'You mean he suddenly disappeared from in front of the altar, murdered Josephs, and then came and carried on with the service?'
   'Something like that.'
   The beer was good, and Lewis leaned back, quite happy to listen.
   'Come on, sir. I know you're dying to tell me.'
   'First, let's just follow up your idea about the poisoned chalice. There are too many improbabilities in the way you looked at it. But what if the Rev. Lionel himself put the morphine in the wine? What then? After his brother's had a swig, he can pretend that the chalice is empty, turn round to the altar, slip in the powder, pour in a drop more wine, give it a quick stir - no problem! Or else he could have had two chalices - one of 'em already doctored - and just put the one down and pick up the other. Easier still! Mark my words, Lewis. If it was either of the two brothers who poisoned Josephs, I reckon the odds are pretty heavily on the Rev. Lionel.'
   'Let me get it straight, sir. According to you, Lionel Lawson tried to kill Josephs, only to find that someone had done a far neater job a few minutes later - with a knife. Right?' Lewis shook his head. 'Not on, sir, is it?'
   'Why not? The Rev. Lionel knows that Josephs'll go straight to the vestry, and that in a few minutes he's going to be very dead. There's one helluva dose of morphine in the communion wine and the strong probability is that Josephs is going to die all nice and peaceful like, because morphine poisoning isn't a painful death - just the opposite. In which case, Josephs' death may well pose a few problems; but no one's going to be able to pin the murder on the Rev. Lionel. The chalice has been carefully washed out and dried, in strict accord with ecclesiastical etiquette — a wonderful example of a criminal actually being encouraged to destroy the evidence of his crime. Beautiful idea! But then things began to go askew. Josephs must have guessed that something was desperately wrong with him, and before he collapsed in the vestry he just managed to drag himself to the curtains and shout for help — a shout that all the congregation heard. But someone, someone, Lewis, was watching that vestry like a hawk — the Rev. Lionel himself. And as soon as he saw Josephs there he was off down the aisle like an avenging Fury; and he was down there in the vestry before anyone else had the nous or the guts to move; and once inside he stabbed Josephs viciously in the back, turned to face the congregation, and told 'em all that Josephs was lying there — murdered.' (Morse mentally congratulated himself on an account that was rather more colourful and dramatic than Bell's prosaic reconstruction of exactly the same events.)
   'He'd have got blood all over him,' protested Lewis.
   'Wouldn't have mattered much if he'd been wearing the sort of outfit they were wearing this morning.'
   Lewis thought back to the morning service and those deep-crimson vestments - the colour of dark-red blood.... 'But why finish Josephs off with a knife? He'd be almost dead by then?'
   'Lionel was frightened that Josephs would accuse him of doing the poisoning. Almost certainly Josephs would have guessed what had happened.'
   'Probably everyone else would, too.'
   'Ah! But if you stabbed Josephs in the back as well, people are going to ask who did that, aren't they?'
   'Yes. And they're going to think that was Lawson, too. After all, it was Lawson's knife.'
   'No one knew that at the time,' said Morse defensively.
   'Did Bell think that's how it happened?'
   Morse nodded. 'Yes, he did.'
   'And do you, sir?'
   Morse seemed to be weighing the odds in the mental balance 'No,' he said finally.
   Lewis leaned back in his chair. 'You know, when you come to think of it, it's a bit improbable that a minister's going to murder one of his own congregation, isn't it? That sort of thing doesn't happen in real life.'
   'I rather hope it does,' said Morse quietly.
   'Pardon, sir?'
   'I said I rather hope it does happen. You asked me if Lionel Lawson killed Josephs in a particular way, and I said I didn't think so. But I reckon it was Lionel Lawson who killed Josephs, though in a rather more simple way. He just walked down to the vestry, knifed poor old Harry Josephs— '
   'And then he walked back!'
   'You've got it!'
   Lewis' eyes rolled towards the tobacco-stained ceiling and he began to wonder if the beer had not robbed the inspector of his wits.
   'With all the congregation watching him, I suppose.'
   'Oh, no. They didn't see him.'
   'They didn't?'
   'No. The service at which Josephs was killed was held in the Lady Chapel. Now, if you remember, there's an archway in the screen separating this chapel from the central chancel, and I reckon that after the bread and wine had been dished out Lawson took a few of the utensils across from the altar in the Lady Chapel to the main altar - they're always doing that sort of thing, these priests.' (Lewis was hardly listening any more, and the landlord was wiping the tables, collecting glasses and emptying the ash-trays.) 'You want to know how he performed this remarkable feat, Lewis? Well, as I see it, the Rev. Lionel and his brother had got everything worked out, and that night the pair of 'em were all dressed up in identical ecclesiastical clobber. Now, when the Rev. Lionel walked out of the Lady Chapel for a few seconds, it wasn't the Rev. Lionel who walked back! There are only a few prayerful old souls in the congregation, and for that vital period the man standing in front of the altar, kneeling there, praying there, but never actually facing the congregation, is brother Philip! What do you think, Lewis? You think anyone looking up could have suspected the truth?'
   'Perhaps Philip Lawson was bald.'
   'Doubt it. Whether you go bald depends on your grandfather.'
   'If you say so, sir.' Lewis was growing increasingly sceptical about all this jiggery-pokery with duplicate chalices and chasubles; and, anyway, he was anxious to be off home. He stood up and took his leave.
   Morse remained where he was, the forefinger of his left hand marrying little droplets of spilt beer on the table-top. Like Lewis, he was far from happy about his possible reconstructions of Josephs' murder. But one idea was growing even firmer in his mind: there must have been some collaboration somewhere. And, like as not, that collaboration had involved the two brothers. But how? For several minutes Morse's thoughts were chasing round after their own tails. For the thousandth time he asked himself where he ought to start, and for the thousandth time he told himself that he had to decide who had killed Harry Josephs. All right! Assume it was the Rev. Lionel - on the grounds that something must have driven him to suicide. But what if it wasn't Lionel who had thrown himself from the tower? What if it was Philip who had been thrown? Yes, that would have been very neat.... But there was a virtually insuperable objection to such a theory. The Rev. Lionel would have to dress up his brother's body in his own clothes, his own black clerical front, his dog-collar - everything. And that, in such a short space of time after the morning service, was plain physically impossible! But what if...? Yes! What if Lionel had somehow managed to persuade his brother to change clothes? Was it possible? Phew! Of course it was! It wasn't just possible - it was eminently probable. And why? Because Philip Lawson had already done it before. He'd agreed to dress up in his brother's vestments so that he could stand at the altar whilst Josephs was being murdered! Doubtless he'd been wonderfully well rewarded for his troubles on that occasion. So why not agree to a second little charade? Of course he would have agreed - little thinking he'd be dressing up for his own funeral. But with one seemingly insuperable problem out of the way, another one had taken its place: two people had positively identified the body that had fallen from the tower. Was that a real problem, though? Had Mrs Walsh-Atkins really had the stomach to look all that carefully at a face that was as smashed and bleeding as the rest of that mutilated body? Had her presence outside the church just been an accidental fluke? Because someone else had been there had he not? Someone all ready to testify to the identity - the false identity - of the corpse: Paul Morris. And Paul Morris had subsequently been murdered because he knew too much: knew specifically, that the Reverend Lionel Lawson was not only still in the land of the living, but was also a murderer, to boot! A double-murderer. A triple-murderer....
   'Do you mind drinking up, sir?' said the landlord. 'We often get the police round here on Sunday mornings.'

Chapter Twenty-five

   On the same day, just after eight o'clock in the evening, a middle-aged man, his white shirt open at the neck, sat waiting in a brightly lit, well-furnished room. He was lounging back on a deep sofa, its chintz covers printed in a russet-and-white floral design, from which, smoking a king-sized Benson & Hedges cigarette, he vaguely watched the television. She was a little late tonight; but he had no doubts that she would come, for she needed him just as much as he needed her. Sometimes, he suspected, even more so. A bottle of claret, already opened, and two wine-glasses stood on the coffee-table beside him, and through the half-opened bedroom door he could see the hypotenuse of white sheet drawn back from the pillows.
   Come on, girl!
   It was eight-ten when the key (she had a key - of course she did!) scraped gently in the Yale lock and she entered. Although a steady drizzle persisted outside, her pale-blue mackintosh seemed completely dry as she slipped it from her shoulders, folded it neatly across its waist, and put it over the back of an armchair. The white cotton blouse she wore was drawn tight across her breasts, and the close-fitting black skirt clung to the curve of her thighs. She said nothing for a while; merely looked at him, her eyes reflecting no affection and no joy - just a simmering animal sensuality. She walked across the room and stood in front of him - provocatively.
   'You told me you were going to stop smoking.'
   'Sit down and stop moaning, woman. Christ! You make me feel sexy in that outfit.'
   The woman did exactly as she was told, almost as if she would do anything he asked without demur; almost as if she thrived on the brusque crudity of his commands. There were no tender words of preliminary love-play on either side, yet she sat close to him as he poured two full glasses of wine, and he felt the pressure of her black-stockinged leg (good girl - she'd remembered!) against his own. In token of some vestigial respect they clinked their glasses together, and she leaned back against the sofa.
   'Been watching the telly all night?' Her question was commonplace, uninterested.
   'I didn't get back till half-past six.'
   She turned to look at him for the first time. 'You're a fool going out like that. Especially on Sundays. Don't you realise— ?'
   'Calm down, woman! I'm not a fool, and you know it. Nobody's seen me slipping out of here yet. And what if they did? Nobody's going to recognise me now.' He leaned across her and his fingers deftly unfastened the top button of her blouse. And then the next button.
   As always with this man, the woman experienced that curious admixture of revulsion and attraction - compulsive combination! Until so very recently a virgin, she was newly aware of herself as a physical object, newly conscious of the power of her body. She lay back passively as he fondled her far beyond the point which a few months previously would have been either pleasing or permissible; and she seemed almost mesmerised as he pulled her up from the sofa and led the way through to the bedroom.
   Their coitus was not exceptionally memorable - certainly not ecstatic; but it was satisfactory and satisfying. It usually was. As usual, too, the woman now lay between the sheets silently, feeling cheap and humiliated. It was not only her body that was naked, but her soul, too; and instinctively she drew the top of the sheet up to her neck and prayed that for a little while at least he would keep his hands and eyes away from her. How she despised him! Yet not one half, not one quarter as much as she had learned to despise herself.
   It had got to stop. She hated the man and the power he had come to wield over her - yet she needed him, needed the firm virility of his body. He had kept himself wonderfully fit... but, then, that wasn't... wasn't surprising... not really... not really....
   Briefly she fell asleep.

   He spoke to her as she stood by the door, the mackintosh loosely over her shoulders. 'Same time on Wednesday?'
   Once more the humiliation of it all settled heavily upon her, and her lip was shaking as she replied.
   'It's got to stop! You know it has!'
   'Stop?' His mouth was set in a conceited sneer. 'You couldn't stop. You know that as well as I do.'
   'I can stop seeing you whenever I like, and there's nothing you or anybody else— '
   'Isn't there? You're in this as deeply as I am - don't you ever forget that!'
   She shook her head, almost wildly. 'You said you'd be going away. You promised!'
   'And I shall be. I'll be going very soon now, my girl, and that's the truth. But until I do go, I keep seeing you - understand? I see you when I want, as often as I want. And don't tell me you don't enjoy it, because you do! And you know you do.'
   Yes, she knew it, and she felt her eyes prickling with hurt at his cruel words. How could she do this? How could she hate a man so much - and yet allow him to make love to her? No! It just couldn't go on like this! And the solution to all her troubles was so childishly simple: she just had to go and see Morse, that was all; tell him everything and face the consequences, whatever they were. She still had a bit of courage left, didn't she?
   The man was watching her carefully, half-guessing what was going through her mind. He was used to taking swift decisions — he always had been; and he saw his next moves as clearly as if he were a grandmaster playing chess with a novice. He had known all along that he would have to deal with her sooner or later; and, although he had hoped it would be later, he realised now that the game must be finished quickly. For him, sex had always come — would always come - a poor second to power.
   He walked over to her, and his face for once seemed kind and understanding as he placed his hands so very lightly on her shoulder, his eyes looking searchingly into hers. 'All right, Ruth,' he said quietly. 'I'll not be a nuisance to you any more. Come and sit down a minute. I want to talk to you.' Gently he took her arm and led her unresisting to the sofa. 'I won't make any more demands on you, Ruth — I promise I won't. We'll stop seeing each other, if that's what you really want. I can't bear to see you unhappy like this.'
   It had been many weeks since he had spoken to her in such a way, and for a while, in the context of her wider grief, she felt infinitely grateful for his words.
   'As I say, I'll be going away soon and then you can forget me, and we can both try to forget what we've done. The wrong we've done - because it was wrong, wasn't it? Not about us going to bed together - I don't mean that. That was something lovely for me - something I shall never regret - and I'd hoped... I'd hoped it was lovely for you, too. But never mind that. Just promise me one thing, Ruth, will you? If you ever want to come to me - while I'm here, I mean - please come! Please! You know I'll be wanting you - and waiting.'
   She nodded, and the tears trickled down her cheeks at the bitter-sweet joy of his words as he cradled her head against his shoulder and held her firmly to him.
   She stayed there for what seemed to her a long, long time; yet for him it was little more than a functional interspace, his cold eyes staring over her shoulder at the hateful wallpaper behind the television. He would have to kill her, of course: that decision had been taken long ago anyway. What he was quite unable to understand was the delay. Surely the police were not so stupid as they seemed? Nothing so far - why? - about the Shrewsbury murder. Nothing definite about the body on the tower. Nothing at all about the boy.....
   'Your mother all right?' He asked it almost tenderly.
   She nodded and sniffed. It was time she was back home with that mother of hers.
   'Still cleaning the church?'
   She nodded again, continued her sniffing, and finally broke away from him.
   'Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays?'
   'Just Mondays and Wednesdays now, I'm getting a bit slack in my old age.'
   'Still in the mornings?'
   'Mm. I usually go about ten. And I've been going for a drink in the Randolph when I've finished, I'm afraid.' She laughed nervously, and blew her nose loudly into her sopping handkerchief. 'I could do with a quick drink now if— '
   'Of course.' He fetched a bottle of Teacher's whisky from the sideboard and poured a good measure into her wine-glass 'Here you are. You'll feel better soon. You feel better now, don't you?'
   'Yes, I do.' She took a sip of the whisky. 'You — you remember when I asked you whether you knew anything about — about what they found up on the church tower?'
   'I remember.'
   'You said you hadn't any idea at all— '
   'And I hadn't - haven't. Not the faintest idea. But I expect the police will find out.'
   'They just say they're - they're making enquiries.'
   'They've not been bothering you again, have they?'
   She breathed deeply and stood up. 'No. Not that I could tell them anything about that.'
   For a moment she thought of Morse with his piercing eyes. Sad eyes, though, as if they were always looking for something and never quite finding it. A clever man, as she realised, and a nice man, too. Why, oh why, hadn't someone like Morse found her many years ago?
   'What are you thinking about?' His voice was almost brusque again.
   'Me? Oh, just thinking how nice you can be when you want. That's all.'
   She wanted to get away from him now. It was as if freedom beckoned her from behind the locked door, but he was close behind her and his hands were once again fondling her body; and soon he had forced her to the floor where, within a few inches of the door, he penetrated her once again, snorting as he did so like some animal, whilst she for her part stared joylessly at a hair-line crack upon the ceiling.

Chapter Twenty-six

   'They tell me you can start a fibroblast from the commercial banger,' said Morse, rubbing his hands delightedly over the crowded plate of sausages, eggs and chips which Mrs Lewis had placed before him. It was half-past eight on the same Sunday evening.
   'What's a fibroblast?' asked Lewis.
   'Something to do with taking a bit of tissue and keeping it alive. Frightening really. Perhaps you could keep a bit of somebody alive - well, indefinitely, I suppose. Sort of immortality of the body.' He broke the surface of one of his eggs and dipped a golden-brown chip into the pale-yellow yolk.
   'You won't mind if I have the telly on?' Mrs Lewis sat down with a cup of tea, and the set was clicked on. 'I don't really care what they do to me when I'm gone, Inspector, just as long as they make absolutely certain that I'm dead, that's all.'
   It was an old fear - a fear that had prompted some of the wealthier Victorians to arrange all sorts of elaborate contraptions inside their coffins so that any corpse, revivified contrary to the expectations of the physicians, could signal from its subterranean interment immediate intelligence of any return to consciousness. It was a fear, too, that had driven Poe to write about such things with so grisly a fascination; and Morse refrained from mentioning the fact that those whose most pressing anxiety was they might be lowered living into their graves could have their minds set at rest: the disturbing medical truth was they quite certainly would be so lowered.
   'What's on?' mumbled Morse, his mouth full of food.
   But Mrs Lewis didn't hear him. Already, Svengali-like, the television held her in its holy trance.
   Ten minutes later Lewis sat checking his football pools from the Sunday Express, and Morse leaned back on the sofa and closed his eyes, his mind preoccupied with death and people being lowered... lowered into their graves....

   Where - where was he?
   Morse's head and shoulders jerked backwards, and he blinked himself awake. Lewis was still engrossed in the back page of the Sunday Express, and on the television screen a head butler was walking sedately down some stairs to a wine-cellar.
   That was it! Silently Morse cursed himself for his own stupidity. The answer had stared him in the face that very same morning: 'In the vaults beneath are interred the terrestrial remains....' A wave of excitement set his senses tingling as he stood up and drew back the edge of the curtain from the window. It was dark now, and the pane was spattered with fine drizzle. Things could wait, surely? What on earth was going to be gained by another nocturnal visit to a dark, deserted church, that couldn't wait until the light of the morning? But inevitably Morse knew that he couldn't wait and wouldn't wait.
   'Sorry about this, Mrs Lewis, but I shall have to take the old man away again, I'm afraid. We shouldn't be long, though; and thanks again for the meal.'
   Mrs Lewis said nothing, and fetched her husband's shoes from the kitchen. Lewis himself said nothing, either, but folded the newspaper away and resigned himself to the fact that his Lit-plan permutations had once more failed to land him a fortune. It was the 'bankers' that always let him down, those virtual certainties round which the plan had to be constructed. Like this case, he thought, as he pulled on his shoes: no real certainties at all. Not in his own mind anyway; and from what Morse had said at lunch-time no real certainties in his mind, either. And where the Dickens, he wondered, were they off to now?

   As it happened, the church was neither dark nor deserted, and the main door at the north porch creaked open to reveal a suffused light over the quiet interior.
   'Do you think the murderer's here, sir - confessing his sins?'
   'I reckon somebody's confessing something,' muttered Morse.
   His ears had caught the faintest murmurings and he pointed to the closed curtains of the confessional, set into the north wall.
   Almost immediately an attractive young woman emerged, her sins presumably forgiven, and with eyes averted from the two detectives click-clacked her way out of the church.
   'Nice-looking girl, sir.'
   'Mm. She may have what you want, Lewis; but do you want what she's got?'
   'Pardon, sir?'
   The Reverend Canon Meiklejohn was walking silently towards them on his rubber-soled shoes, removing a long, green-embroidered stole from round his neck.
   'Which of you wants to be first, gentlemen?'
   'I'm afraid I've not been sinning much today,' said Morse. 'In fact there's many a day when I hardly get through any sinning at all.'
   'We're all sinners, you know that,' said Meiklejohn seriously. 'Sin, alas, is the natural state of our unregenerate humanity— '
   'Is there a crypt under the church?' asked Morse.
   Meiklejohn's eyes narrowed slightly. 'Well, yes, there is, but — er — no one goes down there. Not as far as I know anyway. In fact I'm told that no one's been down there for ten years or so. The steps look as if they've rotted away and— '
   Again Morse interrupted him. 'How can we get down there?'
   Meiklejohn was not in the habit of being spoken to so sharply, and a look of slight annoyance crossed his face. 'I'm afraid you can't, gentlemen. Not now anyway. I'm due at Pusey House in about— ' He looked down at his wristwatch.
   'You don't really need me to remind you what we're here for, do you, sir? And it's not to inspect your Norman font, is it? We're investigating a murder - a series of murders - and as police officers we've every right to expect a bit of co-operation from the public. And for the minute you're the public. All right? Now. How do we get down there?'
   Meikiejohn breathed deeply. It had been a long day and he was beginning to feel very tired. 'Do you really have to talk to me as if I were a naughty child, Inspector? I'll just get my coat, if you don't mind.'
   He walked off to the vestry, and when he returned Morse noticed the shabbiness of the thick, dark overcoat; the shabbiness, too, of the wrinkled black shoes.
   'We shall need this,' said Meiklejohn, pointing to a twenty-foot ladder against the south porch.
   With a marked lack of professionalism, Morse and Lewis manoeuvred the long ladder awkwardly out of the south door, through the narrow gate immediately opposite, and into the churchyard, where they followed Meiklejohn over the wet grass along the south side of the outer church wall. A street lamp threw a thin light on to the irregular rows of gravestones to their right, but the wall itself was in the deepest gloom.
   'Here we are,' said Meiklejohn. He stood darkly over a horizontal iron grille, about six feet by three feet, which rested on the stone sides of a rectangular shaft cut into the ground. Through the grille-bars, originally painted black but now brown-flaked with rust, the torch-light picked out the bottom of the cavity, about twelve feet below, littered with the débris of paper bags and cigarette-packets. To the side of the shaft furthest from the church wall was affixed a rickety-looking wooden ladder, and parallel to it an iron hand-rail ran steeply down. Set just beneath the church wall was a small door: the entrance to the vaults.
   For a minute or so the three men looked down at the black hole, similar thoughts passing through the mind of each of them. Why not wait until the sane and wholesome light of morning - a light that would dissipate all notions of grinning skulls and gruesome skeletons? But no. Morse put his hands beneath the bars of the grille and lifted it aside easily and lightly.
   'Are you sure no one's been down here for ten years?' he asked. Lewis bent down in the darkness and felt the rungs of the ladder.
   'Feels pretty firm, sir.'
   'Let's play it safe, Lewis. We don't really want any more corpses if we can help it.'
   Meiklejohn watched as they eased down the ladder, and when it was resting firmly on its fellow Lewis took the torch and slowly and carefully made his way down.
   'I reckon someone's been down here fairly recently, sir. One of the steps near the bottom here's broken, and it doesn't look as if it happened all that long ago.'
   'Some of these hooligans, I expect,' said Meiklejohn to Morse. 'Some of them would do anything for what they call a "kick". But look, Inspector, I really must be going. I'm sorry if I - er.... '
   'Forget it,' said Morse. 'We'll let you know if we find anything.'
   'Are you - are you expecting to find something?' Was he? In all honesty the answer was 'yes' - he was expecting to find the body of a young boy called Peter Morris, 'Not really, sir. We just have to check out every possibility, though.'
   Lewis' voice sounded once more from the black hollow. 'The door's locked, sir. Can you— ?'
   Morse dropped his set of keys down. 'See if one of these fits.'
   'If it doesn't,' said Meiklejohn, 'I'm afraid you really will have to wait until the morning. My set of keys is just the same as yours and— '
   'We're in, Meredith,' shouted Lewis from the depths.
   'You get off, then, sir,' said Morse to Meiklejohn. 'As I say, we'll let you know if - er - if....'
   'Thank you. Let's just pray you don't, Inspector. This is all such a terrible business already that— '
   'Goodnight, sir.'
   With infinite pains and circumspection Morse eased himself on to the ladder, and with nervously iterated entreaties that Lewis make sure he was holding 'the bloody thing' firmly he gradually descended into the shaft with the slow-motion movements of a trainee tight-rope walker. He noted, as Lewis had just done, that the third rung from the bottom of the original wooden ladder had been snapped roughly in the middle, the left-hand half of it drooping at an angle of some forty-five degrees. And, judging from the yellowish-looking splintering at the jagged fracture, someone's foot had gone through the rung comparatively recently. Someone fairly heavy; or someone not so heavy, perhaps - with an extra weight upon his shoulder.
   'Do you think there are any rats down here?' asked Morse.
   'Shouldn't think so. Nothing to feed on, is there?'
   'Bodies, perhaps?' Morse thought yet again of leaving the grim mission until the morning, and experienced a little shudder of fear as he looked up at the rectangle of faint light above his head, half-expecting some ghoulish figure to appear in the aperture, grinning horridly down on him. He breathed deeply.
   'In we go, Lewis.'
   The door creaked whiningly on its rusted hinges as inch by inch Lewis pushed it open, and Morse splayed his torch nervously to one side and then to the other. It was immediately clear that the main supporting pillars of the upper structure of the church extended down to the vaults, forming a series of stone recesses and dividing the subterranean area into cellar-like rooms that seemed (at least to Lewis) far from weird or spooky. In fact the second alcove on the left could hardly have been less conducive to thoughts of some skeletal spectre haunting these nether regions. For within its walls, dry-surfaced and secure, was no more than a large heap of coke (doubtless for the church's earlier heating system) with a long-handled spatulate instrument laid across it.
   '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 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, 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:

   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.
   'Can I help you?' asked Meiklejohn.
   'What?' The man started nervously. 'Cor, you frightened me, guv.'
   'Please do have a look around. You're most welcome.'
   'Sorright. I just - I just wanted to - er....'
   'I can show you around myself in a minute if you can—'
   'Nah. Sorright, guv.' He shuffled out, and Meiklejohn raised his eyebrows to the young man. The ladder was ready again now and he put his right hand up to the rung just above his head - and then stopped.
   'You remember my predecessor here - poor Mr Lawson? He had a way with these down-and-outs, they tell me. Often used to have one or two of them staying with him for a few days. You probably know that anyway. Perhaps I should make more of an effort than I do. Still, we're all different, Thomas. Just as the good Lord made us.' He smiled, rather sadly, and began to climb. 'Perhaps poor Mr Lawson wasn't very good at changing light-bulbs, eh?'
   Thomas managed a ghostly-weak smile in response and took up his guardian rôle on the bottom rung, his eyes once more averted from the fast-disappearing soles of the vicar's black shoes. Funny, really! He'd joined St Frideswide's church just over a year ago (he was an undergraduate at Hertford College) and he remembered the previous vicar very well indeed. He thought he remembered other things, too. For example, he thought he remembered the tramp who'd just walked in. Hadn't he seen him in church once or twice?