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

down beside his chief.
    Morse felt indescribably happy. 'Listen, Lewis. I want your help. What about it?'
    'Any time, sir. You know me. But aren't you on—?'
    ' Any time?'
    A veil of slow disappointment clouded Lewis' eyes. 'You don't mean—?' He knew exactly what Morse meant.
    'You've lost this one, anyway.'
    'Bit unlucky, weren't we, in the first half?'
    'What are you like on heights?' asked Morse.
     
    Like the streets around the football ground, St. Giles' was comparatively empty, and the two cars easily found parking-spaces outside St. John's College.
    'Fancy a beefburger, Lewis?'
    'Not for me, sir. The wife'll have the chips on.' Morse smiled contentedly. It was good to be back in harness again; good to be reminded of Mrs. Lewis' chips. Even the rain had slackened, and Morse lifted his face and breathed deeply, ignoring Lewis' repeated questions about their nocturnal mission.
    The large west window of St. Frideswide's glowed with a sombre, yellow light, and from inside could be heard the notes of the organ, muted and melancholy.
    'We going to church?' asked Lewis; and in reply Morse unlatched the north door and walked inside. Immediately on their left as they entered was a brightly-painted statue of the Virgin, illumined by circles of candles, some slim and waning rapidly, some stout and squat, clearly prepared to soldier on throughout the night; and all casting a flickering kaleidoscopic light across the serene features of the Blessed Mother of God.
    'Coleridge was very interested in candles,' said Morse. But before he could further enlighten Lewis on such enigmatic subject-matter a tall, shadowy figure emerged from the gloom, swathed in a black cassock.
    'I'm afraid the service is over, gentlemen.'
    'That's handy,' said Morse. 'We want to go up the tower.'
    'I beg your pardon.'
    'Who are you?' asked Morse brusquely.
    'I am the verger,' said the tall man, 'and I'm afraid there's no possibility whatsoever of your going up to the tower.'
    Ten minutes later with the verger's key, and the verger's torch, and the verger's warning that the whole thing was highly irregular, Morse found himself on the first few steps of the ascent—a narrow, steep, scalloped stairway that circled closely upwards to the tower above. With Lewis immediately behind he shone the torch ahead of him, and, increasingly breathless from exertion and apprehension, gritted his teeth and climbed. Fifty-five, fifty-six, fifty-seven . . . On the sixty-third step a small narrow window loomed on the left, and Morse shut his eyes, hugging the right-hand wall ever more closely; and ten steps higher, steps still religiously counted, he reached the inexorable conclusion that he would climb one step higher, make an immediate U-turn, descend to the bottom, and take Lewis for a pint in the Randolph. A cold sweat had broken out on his forehead, and the planes registering the vertical and horizontal realities were merging and sliding and slanting into a terrifying tilt. He craved only one thing now: to stand four-square on the solid ground outside this abominable tower and to watch the blessedly terrestrial traffic moving along St Giles'. To stand? No, to sit there; to lie there even, the members of his body seeking to embrace at every point the solid, fixed contours of the flat and comforting earth.
    'Here you are, Lewis. You take the torch. I'm—I'm right behind you.'
    Lewis set off ahead of him, easily, confidently, two steps at a time, upwards into the spiralling blackness; and Morse followed. Above the bell chamber, up and up, another window and another dizzying glimpse of the ground so far below—and Morse with a supreme effort of will thought only of one step upwards at a time, his whole being concentrating itself into the purely physical activity of lifting each leg alternately, like a victim of locomotor ataxia.
    'Here we are, then,' said Lewis brightly, shining the torch on a tow door just above them. "This must be the roof, I think.'
    The door was not