Service of all the dead Page 4

  When finally he heard the timid knock, he walked to the back door like a man newly ushered through the gates of Paradise.

  'Good afternoon,' said Lawson. 'I hope I've not called at an inconvenient time? I wonder if I can come in and talk to you. It's – er – it's rather important.'

  THE SECOND BOOK OF CHRONICLES

  Chapter Six

  But for his dilatoriness and indecisiveness Detective Chief Inspector Morse would have been cruising among the Greek islands. Three months earlier, in January, he had discussed Easter bookings with the Town and Gown travel agency, taken home a Technicolor brochure, rung up his bank manager to discover the going rate for the drachma, bought a slim Modern Greek phrase-book, and even managed to find his passport again. He had never been to Greece; and now, a bachelor still, forty-seven years old, he retained enough romance in his soul to imagine a lazy liaison with some fading film-star beside the wine-dark waves of the Aegean. But it was not to be. Instead, on this chilly Monday mid-morning in early April, he stood at a bus-stop in north Oxford, with a fortnight's furlough before him, wondering exactly how other people could organise their lives, make decisions, write a letter even.

  Still no bus in sight.

  A heavily pregnant mother pushed a rickety, collapsible pram into the shelter, unstrapped the infant within it, and then stuck her head out to admonish her slightly older offspring, already exhibiting, as it seemed to Morse, the lively potential of a fully fledged criminal. 'Stop frowin' dem bricks, Jason!'

  Jason! Jason and the Argonauts sailing up to the Hellespont… Morse felt he could have done without the reminder – the second reminder, in fact, that morning; for Radio Oxford had just broadcast an interview with the new vicar of St Frideswide's, recently returned from a fortnight in a monastery on the island of Patmos.

  Morse stood aside to allow Jason's formidable mother to enter the bus first. She asked for 'St Frideswide's', and as she fiddled one-handedly in her purse the other passengers watched in helpless silence as the hero of the Argosy wiped his filthy shoes over the nearest seat-cover.

  Morse knew where St Frideswide's was, of course: one of the string of ecclesiastical edifices along Cornmarket… where there had been some rather curious occurrences the previous autumn… when he himself had been away on an eight-week secondment in west Africa…

  'Where to, mate?'

  'Er' (it was more than a year since Morse had been on a bus) 'St Frideswide's, please.' It was as good a stop as any for the Ashmolean, and Morse had promised himself an hour or so in the galleries: it would be good to see the Tiepolo again; and the Giorgione.

  But he saw neither that morning.

  Whilst Mrs Jason was extricating her push-chair from the luggage-rack, the triumphant young vandal himself was already at large in the street, and very soon the bottom half of a notice affixed to the church railings was torn from its moorings.

  ' 'Ow many times 'ave I told you, Jason?' This rhetorical question was accompanied by a clumping clout across the youngster's ears, and the bawling brat was finally dragged away.

  The notice now read: st frideswide's easter jumble sale. That was all. Any details of date, time and place had vanished with the passing of Jason.

  Morse was a believer neither in the existence of God nor in the fixity of the Fates. About such things he never quite knew what he should think; and, like Hardy's, his philosophy of life amounted to little more than a heap of confused impressions, akin to those of a bewildered young boy at a conjuring show. Yet, as he looked back, it seemed somehow pre-ordained that his steps should take him on only one course that morning; and he took that course now as, in obedience to some strangely compelling impulse, he walked the few steps across the pavement and unlatched the door at the north porch of St Frideswide's.

  Chapter Seven

  As a schoolboy, Morse had once paid a few shillings for a book on architecture and had traipsed around a good many churches, earnestly tracing the development of Early English into Gothic. But the enthusiasm, like so many, had been short-lived. And as he stood in the vaulted silence, looking down the central aisle towards the altar, with the heavily curtained vestry to the right behind him, few of the architectural features were familiar any longer; and his mind, whilst not uninformed, remained maddeningly blank – like that of an amnesic ornithologist at a duck-pond. A ring of candles burned around the effigy of some saint or other, and an occasional elongated asterisk of light was reflected in a gleaming flash from an adjacent crucifix. The air was heavy with incense.

  As he walked slowly towards the chancel, Morse realised that he'd been wrong about the silence, though. Somewhere he could hear a quiet, rhythmic scratching noise, like that of a church mouse scampering about in the wainscoting. But the noise was too regular for that; and suddenly Morse knew that he was not alone. A grey head rose above the level of the front pew and nodded neutrally as the visitor stopped alongside. She wiped her pale forehead with the back of her wrist and blew a stray hair from her vision before bending over her work once more, the concentric rings of soap on the wooden floor dissolving beneath her wiping-cloth, the bucket rattling as she moved to the next rectangle.

  'Good morning.' Morse smiled amiably as he looked down at her. 'You don't seem to have got any of those brochure things – you know, telling people what to look at.'

  'No. We ran out last week, but the Vicar's having some more printed.'

  'The Vicar? That's Mr Lawson, isn't it?'

  'No, it isn't.' Her large brown eyes looked up at him cautiously, and she suddenly seemed a good deal younger than he'd thought. 'It's Mr Meiklejohn. He's been here since last November.'

  'I must have been thinking of one of the other churches.'

  'No. Mr Lawson was here.' She hesitated. 'He – he died last October.'

  'Oh dear. I'm sorry about that.'

  For a few seconds there was silence between them.

  'I think you knew he was dead,' said the woman quietly.

  Morse blinked at her happily. 'Did I?'

  'You're another one of those reporters, aren't you?'

  Morse shook his head and told her. He was a police officer attached to the Thames Valley Police H.Q. in Kidlington – not to the City Police in St Aldates; he'd heard vaguely about the case but had never been on it himself; in fact, he'd been out of the country at the time.

  'Were you involved in any way?' he asked.

  'As a matter of fact I was, yes.'

  'Pardon?' She spoke so very quietly now that Morse took a step nearer to her.

  'I was here in the church on the night of the murder.'

  'I see. Do you mind telling me something about it?' She dried her hands along her faded blue jeans, worn almost threadbare at the knees, and stood up. 'Wait a minute.'

  There was a natural elegance about her walk, and Morse's eyes followed her with a slightly quickened interest as she disappeared somewhere at the back of the church, and re-emerged a minute later carrying a brown handbag. She had taken the opportunity to arrange her straggling hair, and Morse began to realise that she must once have been an attractive woman.

  'Here you are.' She handed him a cheap brown envelope containing several cuttings from the Oxford Mail, and Morse sat down in the pew opposite her and carefully unfolded the thin sheets. The first cutting was dated Tuesday, 27 September of the previous year:

  CHURCHWARDEN MURDERED DURING SERVICE

  Whilst the congregation was singing the last hymn, Mr H.A, Josephs was last night stabbed to death in the vestry of St Frideswide's Church, Cornmarket. Chief Inspector Bell of the Oxford City Police, who is in charge of the murder enquiries, told our reporter that Mr Josephs, one of the two churchwardens at St Frideswide's, had just taken the collection and was almost certainly counting it as he was attacked.

  When the police arrived there was no sign of the collection-plate itself or of the money. Inspector Bell said that if robbery had been the sole motive the murder was doubly tragic, since only a dozen or so people had attended the eveni
ng service, and the offertory could have amounted at most only to about two or three pounds.

  Several members of the congregation had heard sounds of some disturbance at the back of the church, but no one suspected that anything was seriously wrong until Mr Josephs had shouted for help. The vicar, the Reverend L. Lawson, immediately suspended the service and summoned the police and the ambulance, but Mr Josephs died before either could arrive.

  The knife used by the murderer was of a dull, golden colour, cast in the shape of a crucifix, with the blade honed to a razor sharpness. Police are anxious to hear from anyone who has knowledge of such a knife.

  Mr Josephs, aged 50, was married and lived in Port Meadow Drive, Wolvercote. He came to Oxford after serving as a regular officer in the Royal Marine Commandos and saw active service in Malaya. Until two years ago he worked for the Inland Revenue Department. There are no children. The inquest is to be held next Monday.

  Morse quickly read through the article again, for there were a couple of things, quite apart from the extraordinary typography of the last paragraph, that puzzled him slightly.

  'Did you know him very well?'

  'Pardon?' The woman stopped her scrubbing and looked across at him.

  'I said did you know Josephs well.'

  A flicker of unease in those brown eyes? Had she heard him the first time?

  'Yes, I knew him quite well. He was a churchwarden here. It says so, doesn't it?'

  Morse let it go and turned his attention to the second cutting, dated Tuesday, 4 October:

  INQUEST RIDDLE

  The inquest on Mr H.A. Josephs, who was stabbed to death last week at St Frideswide's Church, was adjourned yesterday after a twenty-minute hearing, but not before the court had heard some startling new evidence. The post-mortem report on Mr Josephs showed that a lethal quantity of morphine was present in the stomach, but it seemed clear that it was the stab-wound which had been the immediate cause of death.

  Earlier, Mr Paul Morris, of 3 Home Close, Kidlington, had given evidence of formal identification. He had been the organist during the service and was in fact playing the last hymn when Mr Josephs was murdered.

  Another witness. Miss Ruth Rawlinson, of 14 Manning Terrace, Summertown, said that she heard noises coming from the vestry during the singing of the last hymn, and had turned to see Mr Josephs call out and slump beside the vestry curtains.

  Chief Inspector Bell, of the Oxford City Police, informed the Coroner that he was as yet unable to report on any firm developments in the case but that enquiries were proceeding. The Coroner extended his deepest sympathy to Mrs Brenda Josephs, the deceased's wife.

  The funeral service will be held at St Frideswide's on Thursday at 2.30 p.m.

  The narrative was bald, but interesting enough, wasn't it? What was morphine doing in the poor beggar's innards? Somebody must have wanted him out of the way pretty badly, and that somebody had so far got away with it and was still walking around – probably walking around the streets of Oxford – a free man. Or a free woman perhaps, he reminded himself, as he glanced across the aisle.

  Morse looked about him with renewed interest. He was actually sitting a few yards from the scene of the crime, and he tried to imagine it all: the organ playing, the few members of the congregation standing, heads bowed over their hymn-books – one minute, though! Where was the organ? He got to his feet and walked up the broad, shallow steps of the chancel. Yes. There it was, on the left-hand side behind two rows of choir-stalls, with a blue curtain stretched across in front of it to hide the body of the organist; and a mirror, too, fixed just above the high top manual, so that, however much he was concealed from the view of all others, the organist himself could keep an observant eye on the minister and the choir – and on the congregation as well, if he wanted to. If you swung the mirror round a bit… Morse sat himself behind the curtain on the organ-seat and looked into it. He could see the choir-stalls behind him and the main body of the chancel. Mm. Then, like a nervous learner before starting off on a driving test, he began adjusting the mirror, finding that it moved easily and noiselessly: up and down, right and left – wherever he wanted it. First, to the right and slightly down, and he found himself looking straight at the intricately woven gold design on the front of the green altar-cloth; then to the left and down, and he could see the head and shoulders of the cleaning woman, her elbows circling sedulously over the soap-suds; then further still to the left and up slightly, almost as far as the mirror would go – and Morse suddenly stopped, a needle-sharp sensation momentarily flashing across his temples. So very clearly he could now see the front curtains of the vestry, could even see the fold where they would swing back to let the choir on its way; the fold where they had once opened – perhaps only slightly? – to reveal the figure of a man shouting desperately above the swell of the organ notes, a man with a knife stuck firm and deep through his back, a man with only a moment or two to live… What if the organist – Morris, wasn't it? – had actually been looking at the vestry curtains during those fateful, fatal seconds? What if he'd seen something? Something like…

  The rattle of the pail brought his airborne fancies down to earth. What possible reason could Morris have had for turning the mirror to such an improbable angle as he played the last hymn? Forget it! He turned on the smooth bench and looked over the curtain. The cleaner was packing up by the look of things, and he hadn't read the other cuttings yet. But before he got off the bench his mind again took wing and was floating as effortlessly as a kittiwake keeling over the cliffs. It was the organ-curtain… He was himself a man of just over medium height, but even someone three or four inches taller would be fairly well concealed behind that curtain. The back of the head would be showing, but little else; and if Morris was a small man he would have been almost completely concealed. Indeed, as far as the choir and congregation were concerned, the organist might… might not have been Morris at all!

  He walked down the chancel steps. 'Mind if I keep these cuttings? I'll post them back to you, of course.'

  The woman shrugged. 'All right.' It seemed a matter of little concern to her.

  'I don't know your name, I'm afraid,' began Morse, but a small middle-aged man had entered the church and was walking briskly towards them.

  'Morning, Miss Rawlinson.'

  Miss Rawlinson! One of the witnesses at the inquest. Well, well! And the man who had just come in was doubtless Morris, the other witness, for he had already seated himself at the organ, where a few switches were clicked on and where a whirr of some hidden power was followed by a series of gruff bass blasts, as if the instrument were breaking wind.

  'As I say, I can post 'em,' said Morse, 'or pop 'em through your letter-box. 14 Manning Road, isn't it?'

  'Manning Terrace.’

  'Oh yes.' Morse smiled at her good-naturedly. 'Memory's not what it was, I'm afraid. They tell me we lose about 30,000 brain cells a day once we're past thirty.'

  'Just as well we all have plenty to start with, Inspector.' There was perhaps just a hint of mockery in her steady eyes, but Morse's light-heartedness had evoked no reciprocal response.

  ‘I’ll just have a quick word with Mr Morris before- '

  'That's not Mr Morris.'

  'Pardon?'

  'That's Mr Sharpe. He was deputy organist when Mr Morris was here.'

  'And Mr Morris isn't here any longer?' said Morse slowly.

  She shook her head.

  'Do you know where he's gone?'

  Did she? Again there seemed some hesitation in the eyes. 'N-no, I don't. He's left the district. He left last October.'

  'Surely he must have- '

  'He left his post at the school and, well, he just went.'

  'But he must have- '

  She picked up the bucket and prepared to leave. 'Nobody knows where he went.'

  But Morse sensed she was lying. 'It's your duty to tell me, you know, if you've any idea at all where he went.' He spoke now with a quiet authority, and a flush arose in the woman's cheek
s.

  'It's nothing really. Just that he – he left at the same time as someone else. That's all.'

  'And it was fairly easy to put two and two together?'

  She nodded. 'Yes. You see, he left Oxford the same week as Mrs Josephs.'

  Chapter Eight

  Morse left the church and strolled over to the snack bar.

  'One coffee, please,' he said to the girl lounging by the pay-desk.

  'If you go an' si' down, one of the girls'll come.'

  'Oh.' It all seemed a roundabout business.

  He sat and stared abstractedly through the large window, flecked now with drizzle, and watched the people walking to and fro along Cornmarket. Immediately opposite him, fencing in the church and the churchyard, were the sharply pointed, black-painted railings of St Frideswide's, against which a bearded, damp-looking tramp was leaning uncertainly, a bottle of something hanging loosely in his left hand.

  'Order, please?' It was the same waitress.

  'You just had it,' snapped Morse.

  'Im sorry, sir, bu'- '

  'Forget it, luv.'

  He left and walked back across the street.

  'How goes it, brother?'

  The tramp looked at Morse warily through an incongruous pair of dark sun-glasses: unsolicited interest in his well-being was quite clearly no everyday occurrence. 'Could do wiv a cup o' tea, guv.'

  Morse pushed a couple of ten-pence pieces into a surprisingly clean hand. 'Do you usually stand here?'

  'Nah. Usually be'ind Brasenose College. Makes a change, though, don't it?'

  'Some nice kind people come out of the church, do they?'

  'Sometimes.'

  'You know the minister here?'

  'Nah. Tell yer to push off, like as not, this one. Knew the other one, though. Real gent he was, guv. Sometimes 'e'd take yer down to the vicarage an' give yer a real square meal, 'e would.'