Free Inspector Morse 4 - Service Of All The Dead by Colin Dexter

and stepping out on to the stage had probably been about as much of an ordeal as for a sighted person walking through a swamp of crocodiles. Morse suddenly felt very moved, and very humbled. When it came to his turn, he slipped a fifty-pence piece on to the tea-money plate, and hoped that nobody had noticed. He felt oddly out of place there. These were good people, who rejoiced in the simple ties of family and Christian fellowship; who thought of God as a father, and who never in a month of Sabbaths could begin to understand the aberrations of the new theology which thought of Him (if it thought of Him at all) as the present participle of the verb 'to be'. Morse sipped his tea self-consciously, and once more took out his programme and looked for the name of Her Ladyship's butler, whose mother (with what sweet justification!) was feeling so happy and proud. But once again he was interrupted. Meiklejohn was at his shoulder, and with him a diminutive old lady munching a digestive biscuit.
    'Mr.—er?'
    'Morse.'
    'You said you wanted to meet Mrs. Walsh-Atkins?'
    Morse stood above her, acutely conscious of her smallness, and suggested they should sit down back in the hall. He explained who he was, why he was there, and what he wanted to know; and she readily told him of her own part in that dreadful day's events when she'd found Lawson dashed to pieces from the tower, repeating virtually verbatim the words she had used at the inquest.
    Nothing! Morse had learned nothing. Yet he thanked her politely and asked if he could fetch her another cup of tea.
    'One's enough for me these days, Inspector. But I must have left my umbrella somewhere. If you would be kind enough to . . .'
    Morse felt his scalp tingling in the old familiar way. They were seated at a small table at the back of the hall, and there was the umbrella, large as life, lying diagonally across it. There could be little doubt about it: the old lady must be going blind.
    'Do you mind me asking how old you are, Mrs. Walsh-Atkins?'
    'Can you keep a secret, Inspector?'
    'Yes.'
    'So can I,' she whispered.
     
    Whether Morse's decision to patronise the cocktail-lounge of the Randolph was determined by his thirst, or by some wayward wish to find out if Miss Rawlinson might be there, he didn't stop to think. But he recognised no one, left after only one pint, and caught a bus outside the Taylorian. Back home, he poured himself a large neat whisky and put on Vier Letzte Lieder . Marvellous. 'Melismatic', as it said on the sleeve . . .
    It was time for an early night, and he hung up his jacket in the hallway. The programme stuck out of one of the pockets and, third time lucky, he opened it and read it.
    'Her Ladyship's Butler—Mr. John Kinder.' And then his pulse raced as he looked at the top of the cast: 'Her Ladyship, the Hon. Amelia Barker-Barker—Miss Ruth Rawlinson.'
     

CHAPTER ELEVEN

    M EDIUMS AND CLAIRVOYANTS claim enhanced scope for their talents if they can be physically present in a room where the absent ones—the missing or the plain dead—may have left a few stray emanations behind. Murderers, likewise, have the reputation of nursing an uncontrollable urge to revisit the scene of death, and on Sunday morning Morse found himself wondering whether the murderer of Josephs had ever set foot in St. Frideswide's again since the day of his crime. He thought that the answer was probably 'yes', and it was one of the very few positive thoughts he had managed to generate since Friday evening. Somehow his mind had gone completely stale, and on the Saturday he had firmly resolved to abandon all idea of further investigation into a mysterious affair which was none of his business anyway. In the morning he had consulted the Sibyl once more, but had drawn the line at Inverness. In the afternoon he had wasted two idle hours in front of the television set watching the racing from Doncaster. He was restless and bored: there were so many books he could read, so many records he could