Chapter Forty

   Statement given by Miss Ruth Rawlinson (continued)

   One Wednesday morning in early September my mother had a bad attack and I decided I had to put off my cleaning visit from the Wednesday morning to the Wednesday evening. But I had keys to the church and could get in whenever I wanted to so a break in my regular routine didn't matter. I locked the door behind me (I almost always used the south door because I could leave my bicycle in the porch there) and I was cleaning the confessional when I heard the north door being unlocked. Paul Morris and Lionel Lawson's brother (as I now knew) Philip came in. For some reason I felt frightened and I sat quietly where I was. I couldn't hear anything they said but it was clear to me that Paul was being blackmailed and that he couldn't and wouldn't pay up very much longer. I didn't understand too much of what was going on and I felt confused and worried. I just kept sitting where I was and I'm not sure exactly what happened next. But a few minutes later it was clear to me that Paul must have gone and that Lionel himself had come into the church because I could now hear the two brothers talking to one another. Again I didn't catch too much of what they were saying but the little I managed to pick up hit me like a thunderbolt. They were talking about murdering Harry Josephs. I was so astounded that the scrubbing-brush I was holding fell clattering to the floor - and they found me. Philip Lawson left almost immediately and then Lionel talked to me for a long long time. I am not prepared even now to disclose everything he told me then but the simple fact is that he begged me for my cooperation. He reminded me of course of my earlier promise to him and he offered to write me a cheque for £5,000 immediately (£5,000!) if I would do as he asked. He said that this payment was for me to keep the upstairs flat free so that his brother Philip could live there for what was likely to be no more than a month at the outside. I felt completely dumbfounded and could hardly begin to realise the implications of all this. At home things were going from bad to worse. The £500 loan from Lionel had all gone and although the flat was now virtually ready our own part of the house was living on borrowed time. According to the builders the whole of the ground floor badly needed rewiring and the water tank was corroded and likely to burst any day. To cap it all the gas central-heating had broken down completely only that very week after a few days of fitful functioning. I had not taken into account either the decoration of the converted kitchen upstairs and the only estimate I'd had on that was a horrifying £200. Just imagine my feelings then! But there was something else. I should have mentioned it much earlier but since it is the one thing in the whole case which inescapably incriminates me you will perhaps understand my reluctance - my refusal almost - to mention it. Lionel explained to me that I could now discharge my obligation to him and that this would involve me in the telling of one lie. No. Even now I am not being quite truthful. He made me swear on my most solemn honour I would tell this one lie. He emphasised repeatedly that it would only be one lie - it would involve me in nothing more than that and he insisted that it would be perfectly simple for me to carry out. I didn't care! I was desperately glad to be able to help him and I agreed without a second's hesitation. My mind was in a complete whirl as I left the church that evening. Of Harry Josephs I tried not to think at all. I suppose I almost managed to persuade myself that I had misheard the whole thing. But of course I hadn't. I knew that for some reason or other Harry Josephs was going to die and that my own commitment to tell one simple lie was quite certainly going to be associated with that (for me) not unwelcome event. Where did Philip Lawson fit in? I couldn't then be sure but if money was involved with me - surely it would be involved with him too. The conviction gradually grew in my mind that Lionel had hired his brother to murder Harry Josephs and if this was the case my own part in the business - my own lie - would have something to do with being with a certain person at a certain time. An alibi. Yes. I began to feel convinced that such was the case - and again I didn't care! During this time I felt no burden of conscience. It was money now that played the tyrant. Sex was no longer the dominating force and even if it had been I had plenty of opportunity. Several times I had met a man in the Randolph cocktail-bar who showed he was obviously attracted towards me. He was a sales consultant for some prestigious firm and I had little doubt that the room he had in the Randolph would leave little to ask for in terms of physical comfort. I suspect he had taken up with another woman but it was me that he really wanted. At this time too I was becoming increasingly mean with money. Now I had far more than ever before in my whole life I found myself not even offering to pay for any drinks and accepting expensive meals and generally being an utterly selfish parasite. I bought no new clothes no perfume no special tit-bits for meals. As I grew mean with money I grew mean in other ways too. The same week I rang Harry Josephs and told him that our weekly date was off because my mother was very ill again. Lying like that was ridiculously easy for me now. Good practice! At home the boiler they said could just about be repaired and so I refused to buy a new one. I regarded the first rewiring estimate as ridiculously high so I got a local odd-job man in to do it for half the price. Not that he made a wonderful success of it. I decided to redecorate the upstairs kitchen myself and I found I thoroughly enjoyed doing it. For years I had put 50p in the collection-plate each Sunday morning. Now I put in 20p. But I still cleaned the church. It was my one pennance and I seemed to take more pride than ever in my self-imposed duties. You will think all of this very strange yet it is exactly how I felt and acted. From the way I have just been talking I am conscious that I have made it sound as if it all took place over a long time. But of course it didn't. It was only just over three weeks until the 26th September.
   On that day the five of us met at 7 p.m. at St Frideswide's: Brenda Josephs and Paul Morris and Lionel Lawson and Philip Lawson and myself. The doors were locked and I received my instructions. The candles were to be lit in the Lady Chapel and prayer books set out as if for thirteen members of a congregation - including the churchwarden's pew! I think that last thing was the worst of all really. Paul was playing something on the organ and he seemed to me to look more strained than any of us. Brenda was standing by the font dressed in a smart two-piece green suit and looking quite expressionless. Lionel was busying himself with what appeared to be the usual preparations for a mass - his face quite normal as far as I could tell. Lionel's brother was just as spruce as when I had last seen him and was sitting in the vestry drinking from a bottle which Lionel had no doubt provided for him. At about 7.15 Lionel asked Brenda and myself to go and stand up at the altar in the Lady Chapel and to stay there until he told us. Almost immediately we heard the key being fitted into the north door and Harry Josephs walked in carrying a fairly large brown-paper parcel under his arm. He looked flushed and excited and it was obvious that he had been drinking quite heavily. He saw the pair of us and nodded - but whether to me or to Brenda I couldn't tell. We sat down on the steps of the altar and I think that both of us were trembling. Then the organ suddenly stopped and Paul came through and pressed his hand lightly on Brenda's shoulder before walking up towards the vestry. For several minutes we could hear the men's mumbled voices and then there was a scuffling of feet followed by a dull low sort of moan. When Lionel fetched us he was dressed in surplice and cope. He was breathing heavily and looked very shaken. He said that when the police came I was to tell them that there had been about a dozen or more in the congregation mostly American visitors and that I had heard Harry cry out for help from the vestry during the playing of the last hymn. Whether Brenda was still with me I can't remember. I just walked slowly down to the vestry in a daze. I could see him clearly. He lay there quite still in his brown suit and the cassock he always wore in church with Lionel Lawson's paper knife stuck deep in his back.
   Of the other deaths in this nightmarish business I know nothing at all. But I am convinced that Lionel himself committed suicide unable to face what he had done. I am only too glad that at least he cannot be accused of the murders of Brenda Josephs and the Morrises. As I now finish this long statement my thoughts are with my mother and I beg of you to look after her for me and to tell her - but I can't think what you can tell her. I suppose it will have to be the truth.
   Signed: ruth rawlinson

   Morse put down the statement and looked at Lewis with some distaste. He had been away from the station for more than six hours and had left word of his whereabouts to no one. It was now 8 p.m., and he looked tired. 'Whoever typed that isn't very fond of commas, is she?'
   'She's a jolly good girl, sir. Wish we had her up at Kidlington.'
   'She can't spell "penance".'
   'She can take about 130 words a minute, though.'
   'Did Miss Rawlinson speak as fast as that?'
   'Pretty fast, yes.'
   'Strange,' said Morse.
   Lewis looked at his chief with an air of weary puzzlement. 'Clears the air a bit, doesn't it, sir?'
   'That?' Morse picked up the statement again, separated the last few sheets, tore them across the middle, and deposited them in the wastepaper basket.
   'But you can't just tear— '
   'What the hell? The factual content of those pages isn't worth a sheet of lavatory paper! If she's decided to persist in her perjury, she'll get twice as long! Surely you can see that, man?'
   Lewis saw very little. He'd been pleased with his day's work - still was; but he, too, felt very tired now and shook his head without bitterness. 'I reckon I could do with a bit of rest, sir.'
   'Rest? What the hell are you talking about? You save my Me for me and all you want to do is indulge in a bit of Egyptian P.T.! Rubbish! We're going to celebrate, you and me.'
   'I think I'd rather— '
   'But don't you want to hear what I've been up to, old friend?' He looked slyly for a minute at Lewis, and then smiled - a smile which but for a slight hint of sadness could have been called wholly triumphant.

THE BOOK OF REVELATION

Chapter Forty-one

   The Friar Bacon stands a little way back from the A40 Northern Ring Road, its name commemorating the great thirteenth-century scientist and philosopher, and its beer pleasing to the critical palate of Chief Inspector Morse. The sign outside this public house depicts a stout, jolly-looking man in Franciscan habit, pouring out what appears at first glance to be a glass of Guinness, but what on closer scrutiny proves to be a quantity of some chemical liquid being poured from one glass phial to another. Well, that's what Morse said. Inside they ordered beer and sat down. And then Morse spoke as follows.
   'There are some extremely odd points in this case, Lewis - or rather there were - each of them in itself suggestive but also puzzling. They puzzled all of us, and perhaps still do to some extent, because by the time we'd finished we'd got no less than five bodies on our hands and we were never in a position to learn what any of the five could have told us. So, if first of all we look for motive, it's likely to be little more than intelligent guesswork, although we've got some little bits of evidence here and there to help us on our way. Let's start with Harry Josephs. He's getting desperately short of money, and what little he manages to get hold of he promptly donates to his bookmaker. Unbeknown to his wife he borrows money from his insurance company against his house - and he's soon through that, too. Then - as I strongly suspect, Lewis - he starts embezzling church funds, of which there are temptingly large sums and to which he has easy access. Then - I'm guessing again - Lionel Lawson must have found out about this; and if he reports the matter we've got the humiliating prospect of a highly respected ex-officer caught pilfering from the till. It would surely be the last straw for a man who's already lost his job and his money, and who's in real danger of losing his wife as well. Then take Lionel Lawson. Rumours are beginning to spread about him - nasty rumours about his relations with the choirboys, and someone soon made him very much aware of them - pretty certainly Paul Morris, whose son Peter was actually in the choir. Again we've got the prospect of public humiliation: a highly respected minister of the C. of E. caught interfering with the choirboys. Then there's Paul Morris himself. He's having what he hopes is a discreet affair with Harry Josephs' wife, but rumours are beginning to spread about that, too, and it's not very long before Harry gets to know what's going on. Next we come to Ruth Rawlinson. She's got her eyes and ears open more than most, and very soon she gets to know a great deal - in fact a great deal more than is good for her. But she's got a good many problems herself, and it's directly because of them that she becomes caught up in the case. Last, there's Lawson's brother, Philip, who as far as I can see only comes permanently on to the Oxford scene last summer. He's been an idle beggar all his life, and he still was then - absolutely on his uppers and looking yet again to his brother for help. Lionel has him to stay at the vicarage, and it isn't long before the old tensions begin to mount again. By the way, Lewis, I'm not making that last bit up, but I'll come back to it later. What have we got then? We've got enough miscellaneous motive here for a multitude of murders. Each of those involved has some cause to fear at least one of the others, and at the same time some hope he might profit from it all. There's enough potential blackmail and hatred to boil up into a very, very ugly situation. The only thing needed to set the whole reaction off is a catalyst, and we know who that catalyst was - the Reverend Lionel Lawson. It's he who's got the one priceless asset in the case - money: about forty thousand pounds of it. What's more, this money means very little to him personally. He's perfectly happy to struggle along on the miserable little stipend he's allowed by the mean-minded Church Commissioners, because whatever weaknesses he may have the love of money is not among 'em. So, he carefully tests the ice, and after a few tentative steps he finds that the ice on the pond is thick enough to hold all of 'em. What does he offer? To his brother Philip - money, and the chance to perpetuate his dissolute life-style for a few more years to come. To Josephs - money, and the chance to clear up his financial affairs and get away to start a new life somewhere else, minus his wife. To Morris - again, doubtless, money, if that's what Morris wanted; but he can also probably ensure that Morris gets Brenda Josephs as well and the chance for both of 'em to get away and start a new life together, with a healthy bank balance into the bargain. To Ruth Rawlinson - money, and the chance to settle once and for all her chronic anxiety over her domestic problems. So Lionel Lawson sets up his scheme, with the others as his willing accomplices. He fixes up a bogus service to celebrate some non-existent feast - and then the deed is done. The witnesses happily perjure themselves and at the same time vouch for one another's alibis. Lionel is standing at the altar. Paul Morris is playing the organ, Ruth Rawlinson is sitting in the congregation, and Brenda Josephs is across the road at the cinema. If they all stick to their stories, they're all in the clear. All the suspicion, of course, is going to fall on brother Philip; but Lionel has told him - and probably told everyone else - that everything has been most carefully arranged for him: within a few minutes of the murder, he will have caught a train from Oxford station and will be on his way to some pre-arranged hotel booking, with several thousand pounds in his pocket for his troubles. And for all that a little suspicion is a cheap price to pay, wouldn't you say?'
   Morse finished his beer and Lewis, who for once had beaten him to it, walked up to the bar. It was quite clear to him, as Morse had said, that there was a whole host of motives in the case interlocking and (if Morse were right) mutually complementary and beneficial. But where did all this hatred against Harry Josephs spring from? All right, the lot of them were getting into a terrible mess, but (again, if Morse were right) money seemed to be coping quite adequately with all their problems. And why, oh, why, all this peculiar palaver in the church? It all seemed a ridiculously complicated and quite unnecessary charade. Why not just kill Josephs and dump his body somewhere? Between them that would have been infinitely simpler, surely? And what about the actual murder itself? Morphine poisoning and a knife in the back. No. It didn't really add up.
   He paid for the beer and walked circumspectly back to their table. He wouldn't be thanked if he slopped as much as a cubic millimetre on to the carpet.
   Morse took a mighty swallow from his beer and continued. 'We've now got to ask ourselves the key question: how can we account for enough hatred - on somebody's part - against Harry Josephs? Because unless we can answer that question we're still groping about in the dark. And closely connected with it we've got to ask ourselves why there was all this clumsy kerfuffle at the phoney service, and also why Josephs was killed twice over. Well, let's deal with the last question first. I'm sure you've heard of those firing squads when you get, say, four men with rifles, all quite happy to shoot the poor fellow tied to the post, but three of 'em have blanks up the barrel and only one has a live bullet. The idea is that none of 'em will ever know which one actually fired the fatal shot. Well, I thought that something of the sort may have happened here. There were three of 'em, remember, and let's say none of 'em is too keen on being solely responsible for the killing. Now, if Josephs, as well as being poisoned and stabbed, had also been bashed on the head, I reckon the evidence would have pointed strongly to my being right. But we learned from the post-mortem that there were two causes of death, and not three. Somebody gives Josephs morphine in some red wine; and then somebody, either the same somebody or somebody else, stabs him in the back. Why bother to kill him twice over? Well, it may well be that two of 'em were involved in the actual murder; a division of labour could have been agreed for the reason I've just mentioned. But there was a far more important reason than that. Are you ready for a bit of a shock, Lewis?'
   'Ready for anything, sir.'
   Morse drained his glass. 'By Jove, the beer's good here!'
   'It's your turn, sir.'
   'Is it?'
   The landlord had come through into the lounge-bar, and for a few minutes Lewis could hear him discussing with Morse the crass stupidity of the selectors of the England football team.
   'These are on the house,' said Morse, planting the two pints carefully on the Morrell's beer-mats. (For a man proposing to treat his junior officer for services rendered, he seemed to Lewis to be getting away with things extremely lightly.) 'Where was I now? Ah, yes. You didn't ask me where I'd been today, did you? Well, I've been up to Rutland again.'
   'Leicestershire, sir.'
   Morse appeared not to hear. 'I made one bad blunder in this case, Lewis. Only one. I listened too much to rumour, and rumour's a terrible thing. If I tell everybody that you're having an affair with that comma-less typist of yours, you'd suddenly find yourself trying like hell to prove you weren't - even though there was absolutely no truth in it. Like they say, you throw enough mud and some of it'll stick. Well, I reckon that's what happened with Lionel Lawson. If he was a homosexual, he must have been one of the very mildest variety, I think. But once the charge had been suggested he found himself in the middle of a good deal of suspicion, and I was one of those prepared to think the worst of him. I even managed to convince myself, without the slightest shred of evidence, that when he was expelled from school it must have been because he was buggering about with some of the younger lads there. But suddenly I began to wonder. What if I'd been quite wrong? What if Lionel Lawson's old headmaster wasn't too unhappy about letting me believe what I did - because the truth of the matter was far worse? I thought I knew what this truth was, and I was right. Today I met Meyer again, as well as Lionel's old housemaster. You see, the Lawson brothers were an extremely odd mixture. There was Lionel, the elder brother, a hard-working, studious swot, not too gifted academically, struggling along and doing his best, bespectacled even then, lacking in any confidence - in short, Lewis, a bit of a bore all round. And then there was Philip, a clever little beggar, with all the natural gifts any boy could ask for - a fine brain, good at games, popular, good-looking, and yet always idle and selfish. And the parents dote on - guess who? - young, glamour-pants Philip. It doesn't require much imagination to see the situation from Lionel's point of view, does it? He's jealous of his brother - increasingly and, finally, furiously jealous. From what I've been able to learn there was a young girl mixed up in it all, when Lionel was eighteen and Philip a year or so younger. She wasn't a brilliant looker by all accounts - but she was Lionel's girl. Until, that is, Philip decided to step in; and probably for no other reason than to spite his brother he took her away from him. It was from that point that the whole of the tragedy dates. At home, one week-end, Lionel Lawson tried to kill his brother. He tried to use the kitchen-knife, and in fact he wounded him quite seriously - in the back. Things were hushed up as far as possible and the police were quite happy to leave the situation in the hands of the school and the parents. Some arrangement was worked out, with both the boys being taken away from the school. No charge was brought, and things, so it seemed, settled down. But the records couldn't be altered, could they, Lewis? The fact was that at the age of eighteen Lionel Lawson had tried unsuccessfully to murder his brother. So if, as I said, we're looking for any festering, insatiable hatred in this case, then we've found it: the hatred that existed between Lionel Lawson and his younger brother.'
   It was all very interesting and suggestive, Lewis could see that; but he couldn't really see how it affected many of the problems in the present case. Morse was going on, though, and the shock he'd spoken of was imminent.
   'At first I thought that Lionel Lawson had killed Harry Josephs and had then faked his own suicide by dressing up his brother in clerical get-up and chucking him from the top of the tower. What could be neater? All you'd want was someone who would agree to a wrong identification of the body, and such a person was readily available in Paul Morris, a man who would have profited twofold from the murder of Josephs: first, by pocketing a considerable sum of money; and, second, by having Josephs' wife for himself. But you made the point to me yourself, Lewis, and you were absolutely right: it's one helluva job to dress up a dead man in someone else's clothes. But it's not an impossible job, is it? Not if you're all prepared for the difficulties and if you've got plenty of time. But in this particular instance you were right, I'm convinced of that. It was Lionel Lawson, not his brother Philip, who fell from the tower last October. In his own conscience Lionel must have realised that he'd done something so terrible and so unforgivable that he just couldn't live with it any longer. So he took his spectacles off, put them in their case - and jumped. And while we're on this identification business, Lewis, I must confess I had my fair share of doubts about whether the body we found on the tower really was Paul Morris. If it wasn't, the possibilities were staggeringly interesting. But, although we've no satisfactory identification as yet, you can take my word for it that it was Paul Morris. Yes, indeed. And so at long last I began to shelve all these fanciful theories, and I just looked at the simple possibility that all of us had completely ignored from the very beginning. Ruth Rawlinson herself came very near to telling the truth and giving the game away in that ridiculous statement of hers when she said that she was prepared to tell one lie - one lie. She told us, as you'll remember, that this lie was about the service in St Frideswide's that never took place, and about her silence in the plotting of Harry Josephs' murder. But listen, Lewis! That wasn't the real lie at all. The real lie was about something else: she lied about the identification of the body lying dead in St Frideswide's vestry that night in September! That was her one big lie. Because, you see, the body found murdered that night was not the body of Harry Josephs at all! It was the body of Lionel Lawson's brother - Philip Lawson.'

Chapter Forty-two

   Extract from the transcript of proceedings held on 4 July at Oxford Crown Court against Miss Ruth Isabel Rawlinson on the charges of perjury and conspiracy, Mr Gilbert Marshall, Q.C., prosecuting for the Crown, Mr Anthony Johns, Q.C., acting for the defence.

   Marshall: Let us turn, if we can, away from these rather nebulous areas of motive, and come to the events of last September, specifically to the evening of Monday the twenty-sixth of that month. The Court will be glad, I know, to hear your own explanation of the events which took place that unholy night.
   Morse: It is my view, sir, that a conspiracy had been formed to murder Mr Philip Lawson, and that this conspiracy involved the Reverend Lionel Lawson, Mr Paul Morris and Mr Harry Josephs. I am quite sure in my own mind that the statement made by the defendant about the events of that evening is substantially correct. Correct, that is, as far as it goes, since I am convinced that Miss Rawlinson was not in a position to know the detailed sequence of events, being neither an active party in, nor an actual witness to, the murder itself.
   Marshall: Try to confine yourself to the question, Inspector, will you? It is for the Court to determine the degree of the defendant's involvement in this crime - not for you. Please continue.
   Morse: If I were to guess the sequence of events that night, sir, it would have to be something like this. Lionel Lawson was able somehow to persuade his brother Philip that it would be greatly to his advantage to be in the church at a certain time that evening. It would have been no great problem to persuade him to drink a glass of red wine whilst they waited there - wine that had already been doctored with morphine. The fact that the man found dead at the church that night could have died, or certainly would have died, of morphine poisoning was clearly established by the post-mortem findings; but the provenance of the morphine itself was never discovered, in spite of extensive police enquiries. However, there was one of the three men who had earlier had direct and daily access to a complete pharmacopoeia, a man who had worked for eighteen months as a chemist's assistant in Oxford. That man, sir, was Harry Josephs. And it was Josephs, who, in my view, not only suggested but actually administered the lethal dose of morphine in the wine.
   Marshall: Can you tell us why, if the man was already dead, it was necessary to stab him into the bargain?
   Morse: I don't think he was already dead, sir, although I agree he would have been unconscious fairly soon after drinking the wine. Whatever happened, though, he had to be dead when the police arrived, because there might always be the outside chance of his recovering and telling the police what he knew. Hence the knife. And so if I may say so, sir, the key question is not why he was stabbed in the back - but why he was given morphine. And in my considered view the reason was this: it was absolutely vital from Lionel Lawson's point of view that his brother's clothes should be changed, and you can't stab a man in the back and then change his clothes without removing the knife and stabbing him again. By arrangement, Josephs had changed from the brown suit which by all accounts he always wore and brought it with him to the church that night. Without any doubt, I should think, the suit was wrapped up in the brown-paper parcel which Miss Rawlinson mentions in her statement. The police would obviously examine the dead man's clothes in the minutest detail, and an actual change of clothes would be the one certain way of making the deception appear absolutely authentic. And so, when Philip Lawson had slumped unconscious in the vestry, his own clothes were removed and Josephs' clothes put on him - a difficult and lengthy job, I should imagine, but there were three of them to do it and time was very much on their side. Then they dressed him in Josephs' cassock and the moment of truth had now arrived for Lionel Lawson. I suspect that he asked the other two to leave him, and then he completed a task which he had attempted once before and in which he had failed so disastrously. He looked down on the brother he had hated for so long, and he stabbed him in the back with his paper-knife. As I say, I don't myself think that Philip Lawson was dead at that point, and the defendant's statement tends to confirm this view, since what she heard must almost certainly have been the dying man's final groans. The police were summoned immediately, the body wrongly identified, both by the defendant and by Paul Morris, and I think you know the rest, sir.
   Marshall: Doesn't all this seem to you an extraordinarily complicated business, Inspector? To me, at least, it seems quite ludicrously so. Why didn't the Reverend Lionel Lawson just murder his brother himself?
   Judge: It is my duty to remind prosecuting counsel that it is not the Reverend Mr Lawson who is on trial in this court, and it is improper for the witness to answer the question in the form in which it has been phrased.
   Marshall: Thank you, m'lord. Will the witness please explain to the Court why, in his view, the Reverend Mr Lawson, supposing him to have been responsible for his brother's death, did not proceed in this matter in a significantly more simple manner?
   Morse: In my opinion, sir, two things were absolutely imperative for the Reverend Lawson. First that his brother should die - a matter which, as you suggest, he could perhaps have coped with singlehandedly all right if he'd tried. But the second imperative need was far trickier, and one which he could never have coped with by himself, however hard he tried. He had to have someone who was willing to be identified as the dead man and who was also prepared to disappear immediately from the Oxford scene. Let me explain, sir, why I think this was so. Philip Lawson had let it be known to several people, including the defendant, for example, that he was Lionel Lawson's brother. So if he had been murdered and identified as the man who had often been seen at the vicarage, in the church, and so on, it would only have been a matter of time before the police discovered his true identity. And once that was known other facts would have been swift to follow. An attempt had already been made upon the man's life once before - with a knife - by his elder brother. Police enquiries would very quickly have been channelled in the right direction and virtually certain suspicion would have centred on the Reverend Lawson. As I say, sir, it was absolutely vital not only that Philip Lawson should die but also that he should be wrongly identified. As the Court now knows, he was indeed wrongly identified - as Harry Josephs; and Harry Josephs himself disappeared from the scene, although as it happens he didn't disappear very far. That same night he moved into the upstairs flat at 14B Manning Terrace, and he lived there until he died. He'd taken Philip Lawson's clothes from the church and no doubt the idea was that he should destroy them. But for various reasons Josephs grew restless—
   Marshall: Before you go on with your evidence, Inspector, I must ask you if it is your view that the defendant's relations with Mr Josephs had ever been in any way more - shall we say? - more intimate than merely providing him with the daily necessities of living?
   Morse: No.
   Marshall: You are aware, no doubt, of the evidence before the Court from an earlier witness of several visits by Mr Josephs to Manning Terrace during the course of last summer?
   Morse: I am, sir.
   Marshall: And it is your view that these visits were of a purely - er - purely social nature?
   Morse: It is, sir.
   Marshall: Please continue, Inspector.
   Morse: I think the idea must have been for Josephs to stay where he was until the dust had settled and then to get right away from Oxford somewhere. But that again has to be guesswork. What is certain is that he very soon learned that the Reverend Lionel Lawson had committed suicide and—
   Marshall: I'm sorry to interrupt you again, but is it your view that in that death, at least, the late Mr Josephs could have had no hand whatsoever?
   Morse: It is, sir. News of Lawson's death, as I say, would have been a big shock to Josephs. He must have wondered what on earth had gone wrong. Specifically he must have wondered many times whether Lawson had left a note and, if so, whether the note in any way incriminated himself and the others. Quite apart from that, though, Josephs had been dependent on Lawson. It was Lawson who had arranged his present hide-out and it was Lawson who was arranging his impending departure from Oxford. But now he was on his own, and he must have felt increasingly isolated. But again that's guesswork. What is clear is that he started going out into Oxford during the early winter months. He wore Philip Lawson's old clothes, with the long dirty greatcoat buttoned up to the neck; he wore a pair of dark glasses; he grew a beard; and he found that he could merge quite anonymously into the Oxford background. It was about this time, too, I think, that he must have realised that there was now only one other person who knew exactly what had taken place in the vestry that September evening; and that person was Paul Morris, a man who had robbed him of his wife, a man who was probably going to live with her after the end of the school term, and a man who had done very nicely out of the whole thing, without actually doing very much at all himself. It is my own view, by the way, sir, that Paul Morris may not have been quite so eager to get away with Mrs Josephs as he had been. But Josephs himself could have no inkling of that, and his hatred of Morris grew, as did his sense of power and his rediscovered capacity for the sort of action he had once known as a captain in the Royal Marine Commandos. On some pretext or other Josephs was able to arrange a meeting with Paul Morris at St Frideswide's, where he killed him and hid his body -though probably not, at that point, on the roof of the tower. Remember that no keys had been found in the clothing of the man murdered in the vestry; and it is clear that Josephs kept them for himself, and was therefore able to use the church for the murders of Paul Morris and his son Peter. Not only that, though. He was compelled to use the church. He was disqualified from driving, and without a licence, of course, he couldn't even hire a car. If he'd had a car, he would probably have tried to dispose of the bodies elsewhere; but in this respect, at least, he was a victim of circumstance. Later the same day - at tea-time in fact - he also arranged to meet Peter Morris, and there can be little doubt that the young boy was also murdered in St Frideswide's. I'm pretty sure his first idea was to hide both bodies in the crypt, and as soon as it was dark he put the boy in a sack and opened the door at the south porch. Everything must have seemed safe enough and he got to the grilled entrance to the crypt in the south churchyard all right - it's only about fifteen yards or so from the door. But then something happened. As he was carrying the body down, the ladder snapped and Josephs must have had an awkward fall. He decided that he couldn't or daren't repeat the process with a much bigger and heavier body; so he changed his plans and carried Paul Morris' body up to the tower roof.
   Marshall: And then he decided to murder his wife?
   Morse: Yes, sir. Whether at this point he knew exactly where she was; whether he had actually been in touch with her; whether he was able to find out anything from Paul Morris - I just don't know. But once the bodies - or just one of them - were found, he was going to make absolutely sure that she didn't talk, either; and, in any case, with Paul Morris now out of the way, his jealous hatred was directing itself ever more insanely against his wife. For the moment, however, he had a dangerous job on his hands. He had to get to the Morrises' house in Kidlington and try to make everything there look as if they'd both left in a reasonably normal manner. It was no problem getting into the house. No keys were found on either of the Morrises, although each of them must have had a latchkey. Once inside—
   Marshall: Yes, yes. Thank you, Inspector. Could you now tell the Court exactly where the defendant fits into your scheme of things?
   Morse: I felt reasonably certain, sir, that Miss Rawlinson would be safe only so long as she herself had no knowledge of the identities of the bodies found in St Frideswide's.
   Marshall: But as soon as she did - tell me if I am wrong, Inspector - Josephs decided that he would also murder the defendant?
   Morse: That is so, sir. As you know, I was an eye-witness to the attempted murder of Miss Rawlinson, and it was only at that point that I was convinced of the true identity of the murderer - when I recognised the tie he tried to strangle her with: the tie of the Royal Marine Commandos.
   Marshall: Yes, very interesting, Inspector. But surely the defendant was always just as much of a threat to the murderer as Brenda Josephs was? Don't you think so? And, if she was, why do you think he treated the two women so differently?
   Morse: I believe that Josephs had grown to hate his wife, sir. I made the point earlier in my evidence.
   Marshall: But he didn't feel the same hatred towards the defendant - is that it?
   Morse: I don't know, sir.
   Marshall: You still wish to maintain that there was no special relationship between the defendant and Mr Josephs?
   Morse: I have nothing to add to my earlier answer, sir.
   Marshall: Very well. Go on, Inspector.
   Morse: As I say, sir, I felt convinced that Josephs would attempt to kill Miss Rawlinson almost immediately, since it must have been clear to him that things were beginning to move very fast indeed, and since Miss Rawlinson was the only person left, apart from himself, who knew something of the truth - far too much of it, he must have felt. So my colleague, Sergeant Lewis, and myself decided we would try to bring the murderer out into the open. We allowed a slightly inaccurate report on the case to appear prominently in the Oxford Mail with the sole purpose of making him suspect that the net was already beginning to close on him. I thought that wherever he was - and remember that I had no idea whatsoever that he was living in the same house as Miss Rawlinson - he was almost certain to use the church once more. He would know exactly the times when Miss Rawlinson would be cleaning there, and he had his plans all ready. In fact, he got to church very early that morning, and managed to ruin the precautions which we had so carefully taken.
   Marshall: But fortunately things worked out all right, Inspector.
   Morse: I suppose you could say that. Thanks to Sergeant Lewis.
   Marshall: I have no more questions.
   Johns: I understand, Inspector, that you heard the conversation between my client and Mr Josephs before the attempt to strangle her was made.
   Morse: I did.
   Johns: In that conversation, did you hear anything which might be considered by the Court to be mitigating evidence in the case against my client?
   Morse: Yes. I heard Miss Rawlinson say that she—
   Judge: Will the witness please speak up for the Court?
   Morse: I heard Miss Rawlinson say that she had decided to go to the police and make a full statement of all she knew.
   Johns: Thank you. No further questions.
   Judge: You may stand down, Inspector.

Chapter Forty-three

   'What beats me,' said Bell, ‘is how many crooks there are around - in a church, too! I always thought those sort of people walked straight down the middle of the paths of righteousness.'
   'Perhaps most of them do,' said Lewis quietly.
   They were sitting in Bell's office just after the verdict and sentence had been passed on Miss Ruth Rawlinson. Guilty; eighteen months' imprisonment.
   'It still beats me,' said Bell.
   Morse was sitting there, too, silently smoking a cigarette. He either smoked addictively or not at all, and had given up the habit for ever on innumerable occasions. He had listened vaguely to the mumbled conversation, and he knew exactly what Bell had meant, but. . . . His favourite Gibbon quotation flashed across his mind, the one concerning the fifteenth-century Pope John XXIII, which had so impressed him as a boy and which he had committed to memory those many years ago: 'The most scandalous charges were suppressed; the vicar of Christ was only accused of piracy, murder, rape, sodomy, and incest.' It was no new thing to realise that the Christian church had a great deal to answer for, with so much blood on the hands of its temporal administrators, and so much hatred and bitterness in the hearts of its spiritual lords. But behind it all, as Morse knew - and transcending it all - stood the simple, historical, unpalatable figure of its founder - an enigma with which Morse's mind had wrestled so earnestly as a youth, and which even now troubled his pervasive scepticism. He remembered his first visit to a service at St Frideswide's, and the woman singing next to him: 'Wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.' Wonderful possibility! The Almighty, as it were, wiping the slate clean and not just forgiving, but forgetting, too. And it was forgetting that was the really hard thing. Morse could find it even in his own cynical soul to forgive - but not to forget. How could he forget? For a few blissful moments on that day in St Frideswide's he had felt such a precious affinity with a woman as he had felt only once before; but their orbits, his and hers, had crossed too late in the day, and she, like all other lost souls, like the Lawsons and Josephs and Morris, had erred and strayed from the ways of acceptable human behaviour. But how could his mind not be haunted by the revelations she had made? Should he go to see her now, as she had asked? If he was to see her, it would have to be very soon.
   Dimly and uninterestedly his mind caught up with the conversation once more: 'Doesn't reflect very well on me, does it, Sergeant? I'm in charge of the case for months, and then Morse here comes along and solves it in a fortnight. Made me look a 'proper Charley, if you ask me.' He shook his head slowly. 'Clever bugger!'
   Lewis tried to say something but he couldn't find the right words. Morse, he knew, had the maddeningly brilliant facility for seeing his way through the dark labyrinths of human motive and human behaviour, and he was proud to be associated with him; proud when Morse had mentioned his name in court that day. But such matters weren't Lewis' forte; he knew that, too. And it was almost a relief - after Morse - to get back to his usual pedestrian and perfunctory duties.
   Morse heard his own name mentioned again and realised that Bell was talking to him.
   'You know, I still don't understand— '
   'Nor do I,' interrupted Morse. Throughout the case he had made so many guesses that he could find no mental reserve to fabricate more. The words of St Paul to the Corinthians were writ large in his brain: 'There is a manifestation and there is a mystery'; and he felt sure that whatever might be puzzling Bell was not likely to be one of the greater mysteries of life. Wasn't one of the real mysteries the source of that poison which had slowly but inexorably dripped and dripped into Lionel Lawson's soul? And that was almost as old as the seed of Adam himself, when Cain and Abel had presented their offerings before the Lord. ...
   'Pardon?'
   'I said the pubs'll soon be open, sir.'
   'Not tonight for me, Lewis. I - er - I don't feel much like it.'
   He got up and walked out of the office without a further word, Lewis staring after him in some bewilderment.
   'Odd bugger!' said Bell; and for the second time within a few minutes Lewis felt he had to agree with him.

   Obviously Ruth had been crying, but she was now recovered, her voice dull and resigned. 'I just wanted to thank you, Inspector, that's all. You've been - you've been so kind to me, and - and I think if anyone could ever understand me it might have been you.'
   'Perhaps so,' said Morse. It was not one of his more memorable utterances.
   'And then— ' She sighed deeply and a film of tears enveloped her lovely eyes. 'I just wanted to say that when you asked me out that time - do you remember? - and when I said - when I— ' Her face betrayed her feelings completely now, and Morse nodded and looked away.
   'Don't worry about it. I know what you're going to say. It's all right. I understand.'
   She forced herself to speak through her tears. 'But I want to say it to you, Inspector. I want you to know that— 'Again, she was unable to go on; and Morse touched her shoulder lightly, just as Paul Morris had touched Brenda Josephs lightly on the shoulder on the night of Philip Lawson's murder. Then he got up and made his way quickly out along the corridor. Yes, he understood - and he forgave her, too. But, unlike the Almighty, he was unable to forget.

   Mrs Emily Walsh-Atkins had been called upon to identify the battered corpse of Harry Josephs. (It was Morse's idea.) She had done so willingly, of course. What an exciting time this last year had been! And the goldfish flashed its tail almost merrily in her mind as she recalled her own part in the tragic events which had centred upon her chosen church. Her name had appeared once more in the Oxford Mail - in the Oxford Times, too - and she had cut out the paragraphs carefully, just as Ruth Rawlinson before her, and kept them in her handbag with the others. One Sunday morning during the hot summer which followed these events, she prayed earnestly for forgiveness for her sins of pride, and the Reverend Keith Meiklejohn, standing benignly beside the north porch, was kept waiting even longer than usual until she finally emerged into the bright sunshine.

   Mrs Alice Rawlinson had been taken to the Old People's Home in Cowley immediately after her daughter's arrest. When Ruth was freed, after serving only eleven of her eighteen months' sentence, the old lady returned to 14A Manning Terrace, still going strong and looking good for several years to come. As she was helped into the ambulance on her way home, one of the young housemen was heard to murmur that anyone who predicted how long a patient had got to live was nothing but a bloody fool.

   A few books had been found in Harry Josephs' upstairs flat at 14B Manning Terrace; and after the case was over these had been given to Oxfam, and were slowly sold, at ridiculously low prices, at the second-hand chanty bookshop in north Oxford. A seventeen-year-old boy (by some curious coincidence, a boy named Peter Morris) bought one of them for five pence in the early summer. He had always been interested in crime, and the large, fat, glossy volume entitled Murder Ink had immediately attracted his attention. That same night whilst browsing through the assorted articles, he came to a piece about suicides on page 349, heavily underlined in red biro: Myopic jumpers invariably remove their eyeglasses and put them in a pocket before jumping.

Chapter Forty-four

   Morse took his holidays later the following year and decided, again, to go to the Greek islands. Yet somehow his passport remained unrenewed in its drawer, and one sunny morning in mid-June the chief inspector caught a bus down from north Oxford into the city. For an hour he wandered contentedly around the Ashmolean where amongst other delights he stood for many minutes in front of the Giorgione and the Tiepolo. Just before midday he walked across to the cocktail-bar at the Randolph and bought a pint of beer, for he would never lend his lips to anything less than that measure. Then another pint. He left at half-past twelve, crossed Cornmarket, and walked into St Frideswide's, The north door creaked no longer, but inside the only sign of life was the flickering candles that burned around the statue of the Virgin. The woman he was seeking was not there. As once before, he decided to walk up to north Oxford, although this time he witnessed no accident at the Marston Ferry cross-roads. Reaching the Summertown shops, he called into the Dew Drop, drank two further pints of beer, and continued on his way. The carpet-shop, from which Brenda Josephs had once observed her husband, had now been taken over by an insurance firm, but otherwise little seemed to have changed. When he came to Manning Terrace, Morse turned into it, paused at one point for a second or two, and then continued along it. At number 14A he stopped, knocked briskly on the door, and stood there waiting.
   'You!'
   'I heard you'd come home.'
   'Well! Come in! Come in! You're the first visitor I've had.'
   'No, I won't do that. I just called by to tell you that I've been thinking a lot about you since you've been - er - away, and you'd blush if I told you what happened in my dreams.'
   'Of course I wouldn't!'
   'Don't take any notice of me - I've had too much beer.'
   'Please come in.'
   'Your mother's there.'
   'Why don't you take me to bed?'
   Her large eyes held his, and in that moment a sparkling mutual joy was born.
   'Can I use your "gents"?'
   'There's one upstairs - it's a "ladies", too.'
   'Upstairs?'
   'Just a minute!'
   She was back almost immediately with a Yale key labelled 14B in her hand.
   'Hadn't you better tell your mother— ?'
   'I don't think so,' she said, and a slow smile spread across her lips as she closed the door of 14A quietly behind her and inserted the key into 14B.
   Morse's eyes followed her slim ankles as she climbed the carpeted stairs ahead of him.
   'Bedroom or lounge?'
   'Let's go into the lounge a few minutes first,' said Morse.
   'There's some whisky here. Do you want a drink?'
   'I want you.'
   'And you can have me. You know that, don't you?'
   Morse took her in his arms as they stood there, and kissed her tenderly on her sweet, full lips. Then, as if the moment were too unbearably blissful to be prolonged, he pressed her body tightly to him and laid his cheek against hers, 'I dreamed about you, too,' she whispered in his ear.
   'Did I behave myself?'
   'I'm afraid so. But you're not going to behave yourself now are you?'
   'Certainly not.'
   'What's your Christian name?' she asked.
   'I'll tell you afterwards,' said Morse quietly, as his fingers lingered lightly on the zip at the back of her brightly patterned summer dress.

Colin Dexter.
THE DEAD OF JERICHO

   For
   Patricia and Joan,
   kindly denizens of Jerich

Map

Prologue

   And I wonder how they should have been together

T. S. Eliot, La Figlia che Piange


   Not remarkably beautiful, he thought. Not, that is to say, if one could ever measure the beauty of a woman on some objective scale: sub specie aeternae pulchritudinis, as it were. Yet several times already, in the hour or so that followed the brisk, perfunctory 'hullos' of their introduction, their eyes had met across the room - and held. And it was after his third glass of slightly superior red plonk that he managed to break away from the small circle of semi-acquaintances with whom he'd so far been standing.
   Easy.
   Mrs Murdoch, a large, forcefully optimistic woman in her late forties, was now pleasantly but firmly directing her guests towards the food set out on tables at the far end of the large lounge, and the man took his opportunity as she passed by.
   'Lovely party!'
   'Glad you could come. You must mix round a bit, though. Have you met— ?'
   'I'll mix. I promise I will - have no fears!'
   'I've told lots of people about you.'
   The man nodded without apparent enthusiasm and looked at her plain, large-featured face. 'You're looking very fit.'
   'Fit as a fiddle.'
   'How about the boys? They must be' (he'd forgotten what they must be) 'er getting on a bit now.'
   'Michael eighteen. Edward seventeen.'
   ’Amazing! Doing their exams soon, I suppose?'
   'Michael's got his A levels next month.' ('Do please go along and help yourself, Rowena.')
   'Clear-minded and confident, is he?'
   'Confidence is a much over-rated quality - don't you agree?'
   'Perhaps you're right,' replied the man, who had never previously considered the proposition. (But had he noticed a flash of unease in Mrs Murdoch's eyes?) 'What's he studying?'
   'Biology. French. Economics.' ('That's right. Please do go along and help yourselves.')
   'Interesting!' replied the man, debating what possible motives could have influenced the lad towards such a curiously uncomplementary combination of disciplines. 'And Edward, what's— ?'
   He heard himself speak the words but his hostess had drifted away to goad some of her guests towards the food, and he found himself alone. The people he had joined earlier were now poised, plates in their hands, over the assortment of cold meats, savouries, and salads, spearing breasts of curried chicken and spooning up the cole slaw. For two minutes he stood facing the nearest wall, appearing earnestly to assess an amateurishly executed water-colour. Then he made his move. She was standing at the back of the queue and he took his place behind her.
   'Looks good, doesn't it?' he ventured. Not a particularly striking or original start. But a start; and a sufficient one.
   'Hungry?' she asked, turning towards him. Was he hungry? At such close quarters she looked more attractive than ever, with her wide hazel eyes, clear skin, and lips already curved in a smile. Was he hungry?
   'I'm a bit hungry,' he said.
   'You probably eat too much.' She splayed her right hand lightly over the front of his white shirt, a shirt he had himself carefully washed and ironed for the party. The fingers were slim and sinewy, the long nails carefully manicured and crimsoned.
   'Not too bad, am I?' He liked the way things were going, and his voice sounded almost schoolboyish.
   She tilted her head to one side in a mock-serious assessment of whatever qualities she might approve in him. 'Not too bad,' she said, pouting her lips provocatively.
   He watched her as she bent her body over the buffet table, watched the curve of her slim bottom as she leant far across to fork a few slices of beetroot - and suddenly felt (as he often felt) a little lost, a little hopeless. She was talking to the man just in front of her now, a man in his mid-twenties, tall, fair-haired, deeply-tanned, with hardly an ounce of superfluous flesh on his frame. And the older man shook his head and smiled ruefully. It had been a nice thought, but now he let it drift away. He was fifty, and age was just about beginning, so he told himself, to cure his heart of tenderness. Just about.
   There were chairs set under the far end of the table, with a few square feet of empty surface on the white table-cloth; and he decided to sit and eat in peace. It would save him the indigestion he almost invariably suffered if he sat in an armchair and ate in the cramped and squatting postures that the other guests were happily adopting. He refilled his glass yet again, pulled out a chair, and started to eat.
   'I think you're the only sensible man in the room,' she said, standing beside him a minute later.
   'I get indigestion,' he said flatly, not bothering to look up at her. It was no good pretending. He might just as well be himself - a bit paunchy, more than a bit balding, on the cemetery side of the semi-century, with one or two unsightly hairs beginning to sprout in his ears. No! It was no use pretending. Go away, my pretty one! Go away and take your fill of flirting from that lecherous young Adonis over there!
   'Mind if I join you?'
   He looked up at her in her cream-coloured, narrow-waisted summer dress, and pulled out the chair next to him.
   'I thought I'd lost you for the evening,' he said after a while.
   She lifted her glass of wine to her lips and then circled the third finger of her left hand smoothly round the inner rim at the point from which she had sipped. 'Didn't you want to lose me?' she said softly, her moist lips close to his ear.
   'No. I wanted to keep you all to myself. But then I'm a selfish beggar.' His voice was bantering, good humoured; but his clear blue eyes remained cold and appraising.
   'You might have rescued me,' she whispered. 'That blond-headed bore across there - Oh, I'm sorry. He's not— ?'
   ‘No. He's no friend of mine.'
   'Nor mine. In fact, I don't really know anyone here.' Her voice had become serious, and for a few minutes they ate in silence.
   'There's a few of 'em here wouldn't mind getting to know you,' he said finally.
   'Mm?' She seemed relaxed again, and smiled. 'Perhaps you're right. But they're all such bores - did you know that?'
   'I'm a bit of a bore myself,' the man said.
   'I don't believe you.'
   'Well, let's say I'm just the same as all the others.'
   'What's that supposed to mean?' There werf traces in her flat 'a's of some north country accent. Lancashire, perhaps?
   'You want me to tell you?'
   'Uh uh.'
   Their eyes held momentarily, as they had done earlier; and then the man looked down at his virtually untouched plate of food. 'I find you very attractive,' he said quietly. 'That's all.'
   She made no reply, and they got on with their eating, thinking their own thoughts. Silently.
   'Not bad, eh?' said the man, wiping his mouth with an orange-coloured paper napkin, and reaching across for one of the wine bottles. 'What can I get you now, madame? There's er fresh fruit salad; there's cream gâteau; there's some sort of caramel whatnot— '
   But as he made to rise she laid her hand en the sleeve of his jacket. 'Let's just sit here and talk a minute. I never seem to be able to eat and talk at the same time - like others can.'
   Indeed, it appeared that most of the other guests were remarkably proficient at such simultaneous skills, for, as the man became suddenly aware, the large room was filled with the chatter and clatter of thirty or so other guests.
   'Drop more wine?' he asked.
   'Haven't I had enough?'
   'As soon as you've had enough, it's time to have a little drop more.'
   She laughed sweetly at him. 'Is that original?'
   'I read it on the back of a match-box.'
   She laughed again, and for a little while they drank their wine.
   'You know what you just said about - about— '
   'Finding you attractive?'
   She nodded.
   'What about it?'
   'Why did you say it?
   The man shrugged in what he trusted was a casual manner. 'No call for any great surprise, is there? I expect hundreds of fellers have told you the same, haven't they? It's not your fault. The Almighty just happened to fashion you wondrously fair - that's all. Why not accept it? It's just the same with me: I happen to be blessed with the most brilliant brain in Oxford. I can't help that either, can I?'
   'You're not answering my question.'
   'No? I thought— '
   'When you said you found me attractive, it wasn't just what you said. It was - it was the way you said it.'
   'Which was?'
   'I don't know. Sort of - well sort of nice, somehow, and sort of sad at the same time.'
   'You shouldn't say "sort of" all the time.'
   'I was trying to tell you something that wasn't easy to put into words, that's all. But I'll shut up if you want me to.'
   He shook his head slowly. 'I dunno. You see where honesty gets you? I tell you I find you attractive. You know why? Because it does me good to look at you, and to sit next to you like this. And shall I tell you something else? I reckon you're getting more attractive all the time. Must be the wine.' His glass was empty again and he reached over for a bottle.
   'Trouble with most men is that "attractive" just means one thing, doesn't it? Slip in between the sheets. Ta very much! Cheerio!'
   'Nothing much wrong with that, is there?'
   'Of course there isn't! But there can be more to it all than that, can't there?'
   'I dunno. I'm no expert on that sort of thing. Wish I were!'
   'But you can like a woman for what she is, can't you - as well as what she looks like?' She turned her head towards him, the dark hair piled high on top, and her eyes shone with an almost fierce tenderness.
   'Will you just tell me— ?' He found himself swallowing hard in the middle of whatever he was going to say and he got no further. She had slipped her right hand under the table and he felt the long soft fingers slowly curling and entwining themselves with his own.
   'Can you just pass that wine across a sec, old chap?' It was one of the older guests, red-faced, pot-bellied, and jovial. 'Sorry to barge in and all that, but a chap needs his booze, eh?'
   Their hands had sprung guiltily apart and remained so, for the other guests were now returning to the tables to make their choice of dessert.
   'Do you think we'd better mix in again?' he asked, without conviction. 'We shall be causing a bit of comment if we're not careful.'
   'That worry you?'
   The man appeared to give his earnest attention to this question for a good many seconds; and then his face relaxed into a boyish grin. 'Do you know,' he said, 'I don't give a bugger. Why the hell shouldn't we sit together all night? Just tell me that, my girl! It's what I want. And if it's what you— '
   'Which it is - as you know! So why not stop pretending, and go and get me some of that gâteau? And here!' She gulped down the rest of her wine. 'You can fill this up while you're at it – right to the top.'
   After finishing their gâteaux, and after twice refusing the offer of coffee, he asked her to tell him something about herself. And she told him.
   She'd been born in Rochdale, had been a hardworking and clever girl at school, and had won a place at Lady Margaret Hall to read modern languages. With a good second-class honours degree behind her, she had left Oxford and worked as the (sole) foreign sales rep of a smallish publishing company at Croydon, a company started from scratch a few years previously by two bright and reasonably ambitious brothers and dealing with text books in English as a foreign language. Just before she'd joined the company an increasing number of contracts had been coming in from overseas, and the need for some more effective liaison with foreign customers was becoming ever more apparent. Hence the appointment. Pretty good job, and not bad money either - especially for someone without the slightest experience in business matters. It had involved a good deal of necessary (and occasionally unnecessary) travel with the elder of the two brothers (Charles, the senior partner), and she had stayed in the job for eight years, enjoying it enormously. Business had boomed, the pay-roll had increased from ten to over twenty, new premises were built, new machinery purchased; and during this time, amid rumours of expenses fiddles and tax avoidance, the workforce had witnessed the arrival of the inevitable Rolls Royce, first a black one, then a light-blue one; and, for a favoured few, there was a spanking little beauty of a yacht moored somewhere up at Reading. Her own salary was each year - sometimes twice a year - increased, and when three years ago she had finally left the company she had amassed a nice little nest-egg of savings, certainly enough for her to envisage a reasonably affluent independence for several years to come. Why had she left? Difficult to say, really. Eight years was quite a long time, and even the most enjoyable job becomes a little less challenging, a little more - more familiar (was that the word?) as the years pass by, with colleagues seeming to grow more predictable and more... Oh! It didn't much matter what they grew! It was far simpler than that: she'd just wanted a change - that was all. So she'd had a change. At Oxford she'd read French and Italian, and through her work with the company she'd become comprehensively fluent in German. So? So she'd joined the staff of a very large (eighteen hundred!) comprehensive school in the east end of London - teaching German. The school was far rougher than she could have imagined. The boys were doubtless good enough at heart, but were blatantly and impertinently obscene, not infrequently (she suspected) exposing themselves on the back rows of their classes. But it was the girls who had been the real trouble, seeing in their new teacher a rival intruder, likely enough to snatch away the coveted affections of the boys and the male staff alike. The staff? Oh, some of them had tried things on a bit with her, especially the married ones; but they weren't a bad lot, really. They'd certainly been given a Herculean task in trying to cure, or at least to curb, the pervasive truancy, the mindless vandalism, and the sheer bloody-mindedness of those truculent adolescents to whom all notions of integrity, scholarship, or even the meanest of the middle-class virtues were equally foreign and repugnant. Well, she'd stuck it out for four terms; and looking back she wished she'd stuck it longer. The boys and girls in her own form had clubbed together generously to buy her an utterly hideous set of wine glasses; and those glasses were the most precious present she'd ever had! She'd cried when they made the presentation - all of them staying behind after final assembly, with one of the boys making a stupidly incompetent, facetious, wonderful little speech. Most of the girls had cried a bit, too, and even one or two of the inveterate exposers had been reduced to words of awkward farewell that were sad, and mildly grateful, and quite unbearably moving. Oh dear! Then? Well, she'd tried one or two other things and, finally - two years ago that is - she'd come back to Oxford, advertised for private pupils, got rather more offers than she could cope with, bought a small house - and well, there she was! There she was at the party.
   She'd missed something out though - the man knew that. He remembered, albeit vaguely, how Mrs Murdoch had introduced her to him; remembered clearly the third finger on her left hand as she'd wiped the inside of her wine glass. Had she missed out a few other facts as well? But he said nothing. Just sat there, half bemused and more than half besotted.
   It was just after midnight. The Murdoch boys had gone to bed and several of the guests had already taken their leave. Most of those who remained were drinking their second or third cups of coffee, but no one came up to interrupt the oddly assorted pair who still sat amidst the wreckage of the trifles and the flans.
   'What about you?' she asked. 'You've managed to get me to do all the talking.'
   'I'm not half as interesting as you are. I'm not! I just want to keep sitting here - next to you, that's all.'
   He'd drunk a prodigious amount of wine, and his voice (as she noticed) was at last becoming slurred. 'Nesht to you, thas aw,' would be the more accurate phonetic equivalents of his last few words; and yet the woman felt a curiously compelling attraction towards this mellowing drunkard, whose hand now sought her own once more and who lightly traced his fingertips across her palm.
   The phone rang at twenty minutes past one.
   Mrs Murdoch placed her hand tactfully on his shoulder and spoke very quietly. 'Call for you.' Her keen eyes had noticed everything, of course; and she was amused and - yes! - quite pleased that things were turning out so sweetly for the pair of them. Pity to interrupt. But, after all, he'd mentioned to her that he might be called away.
   He picked up the receiver in the hallway. 'What?... Lewis? What the hell do you have to...? Oh!... Oh!... All right.' He looked at his wrist-watch. 'Yes! Yes! I said so, didn't I?' He banged down the receiver and walked back into the lounge.
   She sat just as he had left her, her eyes questioning him as he stood there. 'Anything wrong?'
   'No, not really. It's just that I've got to be off, I'm afraid. I'm sorry— '
   'But you've got time to see me home, haven't you? Please?'
   'I'm sorry, I can't. You see, I'm on er on call tonight and— '
   'Are you a doctor or something?'
   'Policeman.'
   'Oh, God!'
   'I'm sorry— '
   'You keep saying that!'
   'Don't let's finish up like this,' he said quietly.
   'No. That would be silly, wouldn't it? I'm sorry, too - for getting cross, I mean. It's just that... ' She looked up at him, her eyes now dull with disappointment. 'Perhaps the fates— '
   'Nonsense! There's no such bloody thing!'
   'Don't you believe in— ?'
   'Can we meet again?'
   She took a diary from her handbag, tore out a page from the back, and quickly wrote: 9 Canal Reach.
   'The car's here,' said Mrs Murdoch.
   The man nodded and turned as if to go. But he had to ask it. 'You're married, aren't you?'
   'Yes, but— '
   'One of the brothers in the company?'
   Was it surprise? Or was it suspicion that flashed momentarily in her eyes before she answered him. 'No, it wasn't. I was married long before that. In fact, I was silly enough to get married when I was nineteen, but— '
   A rather thick-set man walked into the lounge and came diffidently over to them. 'Ready, sir?'
   'Yes.' He turned to look at her for the last time, wanting to tell her something, but unable to find the words.
   'You've got my address?' she whispered.
   He nodded. 'I don't know your name, though.'
   'Anne. Anne Scott.'
   He smiled - almost happily.
   'What's your name?'
   'They call me Morse,' said the policeman.

   Morse fastened his safety-belt as the police car crossed the Banbury Road roundabout and accelerated down the hill towards Kidlington. 'Where do you say you're dragging me to, Lewis?'
   'Woodstock Crescent, sir. Chap's knifed his missus in one of the houses there. No trouble, though. He came into the station a few minutes after he'd killed her.'
   'Doesn't surprise you, Lewis, does it? In the great majority of murder cases the identity of the accused is apparent virtually from the start. You realise that? In about 40 per cent of such cases he's arrested, almost immediately, at or very near the scene of the crime - usually, and mercifully for the likes of you, Lewis, because he hasn't made the slightest effort to escape. Now - let me get it right - in about 50 per cent of cases the victim and the accused have had some prior relationship with each other, often a very close relationship.'
   'Interesting, sir,' said Lewis as he turned off left just opposite the Thames Valley Police HQ. 'You been giving another one of your lectures?'
   'It was all in the paper this morning,' said Morse, surprised to find how soberly he'd spoken.
   The car made its way through a maze of darkened side streets until Morse saw the flashing blue lights of an ambulance outside a mean-looking house in Woodstock Crescent. He slowly unfastened his seat-belt and climbed out. 'By the way, Lewis, do you know where Canal Reach is?'
   'I think so, yes, sir. It's down in Oxford. Down in Jericho.'

BOOK ONE

Chapter One

   A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho

St Luke x. 30


   Oxford's main tourist attractions are reasonably proximate to one another and there are guide books a-plenty, translated into many languages. Thus it is that the day visitor may climb back into his luxury coach after viewing the fine University buildings clustered between The High and the Radcliffe Camera with the gratifying feeling that it has all been a compact, interesting visit to yet another of England's most beautiful cities. It is all very splendid: it is all a bit tiring. And so it is fortunate that the neighbouring Cornmarket can offer to the visitor its string of snack bars, coffee bars and burger bars in which to rest his feet and browse through his recently purchased literature about those other colleges and ecclesiastical edifices, their dates and their benefactors, which thus far have fallen outside his rather arbitrary circumambuiations. But perhaps by noon he's had enough, and quits such culture for the Westgate shopping complex, only a pedestrian precinct away, and built on the old site of St Ebbe's, where the city fathers found the answer to their inner-city obsolescence in the full-scale flattening of the ancient streets of houses, and their replacement by the concrete giants of supermarket stores and municipal offices. Solitudinem faciunt: architecturam appellant.
   But further delights there are round other corners - even as the guide books say. From Cornmarket, for example, the visitor may turn left past the Randolph into the curving sweep of the Regency houses in Beaumont Street, and visit the Ashmolean there and walk round Worcester College gardens. From here he may turn northwards and find himself walking along the lower stretches of Walton Street into an area which has, thus far, escaped the vandals who sit on the City's planning committees. Here, imperceptibly at first, but soon quite unmistakably, the University has been left behind, and even the vast building on the left which houses the Oxford University Press, its lawned quadrangle glimpsed through the high wrought-iron gates, looks bleakly out of place and rather lonely, like some dowager duchess at a discotheque. The occasional visitor may pursue his way even further, past the red and blue lettering of the Phoenix cinema on his left and the blackened-grey walls of the Radcliffe Infirmary on his right; yet much more probably he will now decide to veer again towards the city centre, and in so doing turn his back upon an area of Oxford where gradual renewal, sensitive to the needs of its community, seems finally to have won its battle with the bulldozers.
   This area is called Jericho, a largely residential district, stretching down from the western side of Walton Street to the banks of the canal, and consisting for the most part of mid-nineteenth century, two-storey, terraced houses. Here, in the criss-cross grid of streets with names like 'Wellington' and 'Nelson' and the other mighty heroes, are the dwellings built for those who worked on the wharves or on the railway, at the University Press or at Lucy's iron foundry in Juxon Street. But the visitor to the City Museum in St Aldates will find no Guide to Jericho along the shelves; and even by the oldest of its own inhabitants, the provenance of that charming and mysterious name of 'Jericho' is variously - and dubiously - traced. Some claim that in the early days the whistle of a passing train from the lines across the canal could make the walls come tumbling down; others would point darkly to the synagogue in Richmond Road and talk of sharp and profitable dealings in the former Jewish quarter; yet others lift their eyes to read the legend on a local inn: 'Tarry ye at Jericho until your beards be grown'. But the majority of the area's inhabitants would just look blankly at their interlocutors, as if they had been asked such obviously unanswerable questions as why it was that men were born, or why they should live or die, and fall in love with booze or women.
   It was on Wednesday, October 3rd, almost exactly six months after Mrs Murdoch's party in North Oxford, that Detective Chief Inspector Morse of the Thames Valley Police was driving from Kidlington to Oxford. He turned down into Woodstock Road, turned right into Bainton Road, and then straight down into Walton Street. As he drove the Jaguar carefully through the narrow street, with cars parked either side, he noticed that Sex in the Suburbs was on at the Phoenix; but almost simultaneously the bold white lettering of a street sign caught his eye and any thoughts of an hour or two of technicolour titillation were forgotten: the sign read 'Jericho Street'. He'd thought of Anne Scott occasionally - of course he had! - but the prospect of a complicated liaison with a married woman had not, in the comparatively sober light of morning, carried quite the same appeal it had the night before; and he had not pursued the affair. But he was thinking of her now...
   That morning, in Kidlington, his lecture on Homicide Procedures to a group of earnest, newly-fledged detectives (Constable Walters amongst them) had been received with a polite lack of enthusiasm, and Morse knew that he had been far from good. How glad he was to have the afternoon free! Furthermore, for the first time in many months he had every reason to be in the precincts of Jericho. As a member of the Oxford Book Association he had recently received advanced notice of a talk (Oct. 3rd, 8 p.m.) by Dame Helen Gardner on The New Oxford Book of English Verse; and the prospect of hearing that distinguished Oxford academic was quite sufficient in itself to stir an idle Morse to his first attendance of the year. But, in addition, the Association's committee had appealed to all members for any old books that might be finished with, because before Dame Helen's talk a sale of secondhand books had been arranged in aid of the Association's languishing funds. The previous night, therefore, Morse had decimated his shelves, selecting those thirty or so paperbacks which now lay in a cardboard box in the boot of the Jaguar. All books were to be delivered to the Clarendon Press Institute in Walton Street (where the Association held its meetings) between 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. that day. It was now twenty-five minutes past three.
   For very good reasons, however, the delivery of Morse's offerings was temporarily postponed. Just before the OUP building, Morse turned right and drove slowly down Great Clarendon Street, crossed a couple of intersections, and noticed Canal Street on his right. Surely she must live somewhere very close?
   It had been raining intermittently all day, and heavy spots were spattering his windscreen as he turned into the deserted street and looked around for parking space. Difficult, though. Double yellow lines on one side of the street, with a row of notices on the other - a series of white P's set against their blue backgrounds: 'Resident Permit Holders Only'. True, there was a gap or two here and there; but with a stubborn law-abiding streak within him - and with the added risk of a hefty parking fine - Morse drove on slowly round the maze of streets. Finally, beneath the towering Italianate campanile of St Barnabas' Church, he found an empty space in a stretch of road by the canal, marked off with boxed white lines: 'Waiting limited to 2 hours. Return prohibited within 1 hour'. Morse backed carefully into the space and looked around him. Through an opened gate he glimpsed the blues, browns, and reds of a string of house-boats moored alongside the canal, whilst three unspecified ducks, long-necked and black against the late-afternoon sky, flapped away noisily towards a more northerly stretch of water. He got out of the car and stood in the rain awhile, looking up at the dirtyish yellow tower that dominated the streets. A quick look inside, perhaps? But the door was locked, and Morse was reading the notice explaining that the regrettable cause of it all was adolescent vandalism when he heard the voice behind him.
   'Is this your car?'
   A young, very wet traffic warden, the yellow band round her hat extremely new, was standing beside the Jaguar, trying bravely to write down something on a bedrenched page of her notebook.
   'All right, aren't I?' mumbled Morse defensively, as he walked down the shallow steps of the church towards her.
   'You're over the white line and you'll have to back it up a bit. You've plenty of room.'
   Morse dutifully manoeuvred the Jaguar until it stood more neatly within its white box, and then wound down the window. 'Better?'
   'You ought to lock your doors if you're going to stay here - two hours, remember. A lot of cars get stolen, you know.'
   'Yes, I always lock— '
   'It wasn't locked just now!'
   'I was only seeing if... '
   But the young lady had walked on, apparently unwilling to discuss her edicts further, and was writing out a sodden ticket for one of the hapless non-permit holders just a little way up the street when Morse called out to her.
   'Canal Reach? Do you know it?'
   She pointed back up to Canal Street. 'Round the corner. Third on the left.'

   In Canal Street itself, two parking tickets, folded in cellophane containers, and stuck beneath the windscreen wipers, bore witness to the conscientious young warden's devotion to her duties; and just across the road, on the corner of Victor Street, Morse thought he saw a similar ticket on the windscreen of an incongruously large, light-blue Rolls Royce. But his attention was no longer focused on the problems of parking. A sign to his left announced 'Canal Reach'; and he stopped and wondered. Wondered why exactly he was there and what (if anything) he had to say to her...
   The short, narrow street, with five terraced houses on either side, was rendered inaccessible to motor traffic by three concrete bollards across the entrance, and was sealed off at its far end by the gates of a boat-builder's yard, now standing open. Bicycles were propped beside three of the ten front doors, but there was little other sign of human habitation. Although it was now beginning to grow dark, no light shone behind any of the net-curtained windows, and the little street seemed drab and uninviting. These were doubtless some of the cheaper houses built for those who once had worked on the canal: two up, two down - and that was all. The first house on the left was number 1, and Morse walked down the narrow pavement, past number 3, past number 5, past number 7 - and there he was, standing in front of the last house and feeling strangely nervous and undecided. Instinctively he patted the pocket of his raincoat for a packet of cigarettes, but found he must have left them in the car. Behind him, a car splashed its way along Canal Street, its side-lights already switched on.
   Morse knocked, but there was no answer. Just as well, perhaps? Yet he knocked again, a little louder this time, and stood back to look at the house. The door was painted a rust-red colour, and to its right was the one downstairs window, its crimson curtains drawn across; and just above it, the window of the first floor bedroom where - Just a minute! There was a light. There was a light here. It seemed to Morse that the bedroom door must be open, for he could see a dull glow of light coming from somewhere: coming from the other room across the landing, perhaps? Still he stood there in the drizzling rain and waited, noting as he did so the attractive brickwork of the terrace, with the red stretchers alternating in mottled effect with the grey-blue contrast of the headers.
   But no one answered at the rust-red door.
   Forget it? It was stupid, anyway. He'd swallowed rather too much beer at lunch time, and the slight wave of eroticism which invariably washed over him after such mild excess had no doubt been responsible for his drive through Jericho that day... And then he thought he heard a noise from within the house. She was there. He knocked again, very loudly now, and after waiting half a minute he tried the door. It was open.
   'Hello? Anyone there?' The street door led directly into the surprisingly large downstairs room, carpeted and neatly decorated, and the camera in Morse's mind clicked and clicked again as he looked keenly around.
   'Hello? Anne? Anne?'
   A staircase faced him at the far left-hand corner of the room, and at the foot of the stairs he saw an expensive-looking, light-brown leather jacket, lined with sheep's wool, folded over upon itself, and flecked with recent rain.
   But even leaning slightly forward and straining his ears to the utmost, Morse could hear nothing. It was strange, certainly, her leaving the door unlocked like that. But then he'd just done exactly the same with his own car, had he not? He closed the door quietly behind him and stepped out on to the wet pavement. The house immediately opposite to him was number 10, and he was reflecting vaguely on the vagaries of those responsible for the numbering of street houses when he thought he saw the slightest twitch of the curtains behind its upper-storey window. Perhaps he was mistaken, though... Turning once more, he looked back at the house he had come to visit, and his thoughts lingered longingly on the woman he would never see again...
   It was many seconds later that he noticed the change: the light on the upstairs floor of number 9 was now switched off - and the blood began to tingle in his veins.

Chapter Two

   Towards the door we never opened

T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets


   She seemed on nodding terms with all the great, and by any standards the visit of Dame Helen, emeritus Merton Professor of English Literature, to the Oxford Book Association was an immense success. She wore her learning lightly, yet the depths of scholarship and sensitivity became immediately apparent to the large audience, as with an assurance springing from an infinite familiarity she ranged from Dante down to T. S. Eliot. The texture of the applause which greeted the end of her lecture was tight and electric, the crackling clapping of hands seeming to constitute a continuous crepitation of noise, the palms smiting each other as fast as the wings of a humming bird. Even Morse, whose applause more usually resembled the perfunctory flapping of a large crow in slow flight, was caught up in the spontaneous appreciation, and he earnestly resolved that he would make an immediate attempt to come to terms with the complexities of the Four Quartets. He ought, he knew, to come along more often to talks such as this; keep his mind sharp and fresh - a mind so often dulled these days by cigarettes and alcohol. Surely that's what life was all about? Opening doors; opening doors and peering through them - perhaps even finding the rose gardens there... What were those few lines that Dame Helen had just quoted? Once he had committed them to memory, but until tonight they had been almost forgotten:

   Footfalls echo in the memory
   Down the passage which we did not take
   Towards the door we never opened.

   That was writing for you! Christ, ah!
   Morse recognised no one at the bar and took his beer over to the corner. He would have a couple of pints and get home reasonably early.
   The siren of a police car (or was it an ambulance?) whined past outside in Walton Street, reminding him tantalisingly of the opening of one of the Chopin nocturnes. An accident somewhere, no doubt: shaken, white-faced witnesses and passengers; words slowly recorded in constables' notebooks; the white doors of the open ambulance with the glutinous gouts of dark blood on the upholstery. Ugh! How Morse hated traffic accidents!
   'You look lonely. Mind if I join you?' She was a tall, slim, attractive woman in her early thirties.
   'Delighted!' said a delighted Morse.
   'Good, wasn't she?'
   'Excellent!'
   For several minutes they chatted happily about the Dame, and Morse, watching her large, vivacious eyes, found himself hoping she might not go away.
   'I'm afraid I don't know you,' he said.
   She smiled bewitchingly. 'I know you, though. You're Inspector Morse.'
   'How— ?'
   'It's all right. I'm Annabel, the chairman's wife.'
   'Oh!' The monosyllable was weighted flat with disappointment.
   Another siren wailed its way outside on Walton Street, and Morse found himself trying to decide in which direction it was travelling. Difficult to tell though...
   A few minutes later the bearded chairman pushed his way through from the crowded bar to join them. 'Ready for another drink, Inspector?'
   'No - no. Let me get you one. My pleasure. What will you have— ?'
   'You're not getting anything, Inspector. I would have bought you a drink earlier but I had to take our distinguished speaker back to Eynsham.'
   When the chairman came back with the drinks, he turned immediately to Morse. 'Bit of a traffic jam outside. Some sort of trouble down in Jericho, it seems. Police cars, ambulance, people stopping to see what's up. Still, you must know all about that sort of thing, Inspector.'
   But Morse was listening no longer. He got to his feet, mumbling something about perhaps being needed; and leaving his replenished pint completely ungulped walked swiftly out of the Clarendon Press Institute.
   Turning left into Richmond Road, he noticed with a curiously disengaged mind how the street lights, set on alternate sides at intervals of thirty yards, bent their heads over the street like guardsmen at a catafalque, and how the houses not directly illuminated by the hard white glow assumed a huddled, almost cowering appearance, as if somehow they feared the night. His throat was dry and suddenly he felt like running. Yet with a sense of the inevitable, he knew that he was already far too late; guessed, with a heavy heart, that probably he'd always been too late. As he turned into Canal Street - where the keen wind at the intersection tugged at his thinning hair - there, about one hundred yards ahead of him, there, beneath the looming, ominous bulk of St Barnabas' great tower, was an ambulance, its blue light flashing in the dark, and two white police cars pulled over on to the pavement. Some three or four deep, a ring of local residents circled the entrance to the street, where a tall, uniformed policeman stood guard against the central bollard.
   'I'm afraid you can't— ' But then he recognised Morse. 'Sorry, sir, I didn't— '
   'Who's looking after things?' asked Morse quietly.
   'Chief Inspector Bell, sir.'
   Morse nodded, his eyes lowered, his thoughts as tangled as his hair. He walked along Canal Reach, tapped lightly on the door of number 9, and entered.
   The room seemed strangely familiar to him: the settee immediately on the right, the electric fire along the righthand wall; then the TV set on its octagonal mahogany table, with the two armchairs facing it; on the left the heavy-looking sideboard with the plates upon it, gleaming white with cherry-coloured rings around their sides; and then the back door immediately facing him, just to the right of the stairs and exactly as he had seen it earlier that very day. All these details flashed across Morse's mind in a fraction of a second and the two sets of photographs seemed to fit perfectly. Or almost so. But before he had tune to analyse his recollections, Morse was aware of a very considerable addition to the room in the form of a bulky, plain-clothes man whom Morse thought he vaguely remembered seeing very recently.
   'Bell's here?'
   'In there, sir.' The man pointed to the back door, and Morse felt the old familiar sensation of the blood draining down to his shoulders. 'In there?' he asked feebly.
   'Leads to the kitchen.'
   Of course it did, Morse saw that now. And doubtless there would be a small bathroom and WC behind that, where the rear of the small house had been progressively extended down into the garden plot at the rear, like so many homes he knew. He shook his head weakly and wondered what to do or say. Oh, God! What was he to do?
   'Do you want to go in, sir?'
   'No-o. No. I just happened to be around here - er, at the Clarendon Institute, actually. Talk, you know. We - er - we've just had a talk and I just happened… '
   'Nothing we can do, I'm afraid, sir.'
   'Is she - is she dead?'
   'Been dead a long time. The doc's in there now and he'll probably— '
   'How did she die?'
   'Hanged herself. Stood on a— '
   'How did you hear about it?'
   'Phone call - anonymous one, sir. That's about the only thing that's at all odd if you ask me. You couldn't have seen her from the back unless— '
   'She leave a note?'
   'Not found one yet. Haven't looked much upstairs, though.'
   What do you do, Morse? What do you do?
   'Was - er - was the front door open?'
   The constable (Morse remembered him now - Detective Constable Walters) looked interested. 'Funny you should ask that, sir, because it was open. We just walked straight in - same as anybody else could've done.'
   'Was that door locked?' asked Morse, pointing to the kitchen.
   'No. We thought it was though, first of all. As you can see, sir, it's sagging on its hinges and what with the damp and all that it must have stuck even more. A real push, it needed!'
   He took a step towards the door as though about to illustrate the aforesaid exertion, but Morse gestured him to stop. 'Have you moved anything in here?'
   'Not a thing, sir - well, except the key that was on the middle of the door-mat there.'
   Morse looked up sharply. 'Key?'
   'Yes, sir. Newish-looking sort of key. Looked as if someone had just pushed it through the letter box. It was the first thing we saw, really.'
   Morse turned to go, and on the light-green Marley tiles beside the front door saw a few spots of brownish rain-water. But the gentleman's black umbrella he'd seen there earlier had gone.
   'Have you moved anything here, constable?'
   'You just asked me that, sir.'
   'Oh yes. I - I was just thinking er - well, you know, just thinking.'
   'Sure you don't want to have a word with Chief Inspector Bell, sir?'
   'No. As I say, I just happened…' Morse's words trailed off into feeble mumblings as he opened the door on to the street and stood there hesitantly over the door-sill. 'You haven't been upstairs yet, you say?'
   'Well, not really, sir. You know, we just looked in— '
   'Were there any lights on?'
   'No, sir. Black as night up there, it was. There's two rooms leading off the little landing… '
   Morse nodded. He could visualise the first-floor geography of the house as well as if he'd stayed there - as he might well have stayed there once, not all that long ago; might well have made love in one of the rooms up there himself in the arms of a woman who was now stretched out on the cold, tiled floor of the kitchen. Dead, dead, dead. And - oh Christ! - she'd hanged herself, they said. A warm, attractive, living, loving woman - and she'd hanged herself. Why? Why? Why? For Christ's sake, why?

   As he stood in the middle of the narrow street, Morse was conscious that his brain had virtually seized up, barely capable for the moment of putting two consecutive thoughts together. Lights were blazing behind all the windows except for those of number 10, immediately opposite, against which darkened house there stood an ancient bicycle, with a low saddle and upright handle-bars, firmly chained to the sagging drainpipe. Three slow paces and Morse stood beside it, where he turned and looked up again at the front bedroom of number 9. No light, just as the constable had said. No light at all... Suddenly, Morse found himself sniffing slightly. Fish? He heard a disturbance in the canal behind the Reach as some mallard splashed down into the water. And then he turned and sniffed specifically at the cycle. Fish! Yes, quite certainly it was fish. Someone had brought some fish home from somewhere.
   Morse was conscious of many eyes upon him as he edged his way through the little crowd conversing quietly with one another about the excitement of the night. He turned right to retrace his steps and spotted the telephone kiosk - empty. For no apparent reason he pulled open the stiff door and stepped inside. The floor was littered with waste paper and cigarette stubs, but the instrument itself appeared unvandalised. Picking up the receiver, he heard the buzzing tone, and was quietly replacing it when he noticed that the blue telephone directory was lying open on the little shelf to his right. His eyes were no longer as keen as they once had been, and the light was poor; but the bold black print stood out clearly along the top of the pages: Plumeridge - Pollard - Pollard - Popper. And then - he saw the big capitals in the middle of the right-hand page: POLICE. And under the Police entries he could just make out the familiar details, including one that caught and held his eye: Oxford Central, St Aldates, Oxford 49881. And there was something else, too - or was he imagining it? He sniffed closely at the open pages, and again the blood was tingling across his shoulders. He was right - he knew it! There was the smell of fish.
   Morse walked away from Jericho then, across Walton Street, across Woodstock Road, and thence into Banbury Road and up to his bachelor apartment in North Oxford, where he slumped into an armchair and sat unmoving for almost an hour. He then selected the Barenboim recording of the Mozart Piano Concerto number 21, switched on the gramophone to 'play', and sought to switch his mind away from all terrestrial troubles as the etherial Andante opened. Sometimes, this way, he almost managed to forget.
   But not tonight.