Colin Dexter - Service of all the dead

'Crooks, you mean?'

'In a way they're crooks, yes, but I'm talking about people who are bad inside. They want – strange sort of things to satisfy them. They're not normal – not like most people.' He took a deep breath. 'When I was about your age, younger in fact-'

Peter listened to the little story with apparent unconcern. 'You mean he was a queer, Dad?'

'He was a homosexual. Do you know what that means?'

' 'Course I do.'

'Listen, Peter, if any man ever tries anything like that – anything! – you have nothing at all to do with it. Is that clear? And, what's more, you'll tell me. All right?'

Peter tried so very hard to understand, but the warning seemed remote, dissociated as yet from his own small experience of life.

'You see, Peter, it's not just a question of a man – touching' (the very word was shudderingly repulsive) 'or that sort of thing. It's what people start talking about or – or photographs that kind of-'

Peter's mouth dropped open and the blood froze in his freckled cheeks. So that was what his father was talking about! The last time had been two weeks ago when three of them from the youth club had gone along to the vicarage and sat together on that long, black, shiny settee. It was all a bit strange and exciting, and there had been those photographs – big, black and white, glossy prints that seemed almost clearer than real life. But they weren't just pictures of men, and Mr Lawson had talked about them so – so naturally, somehow. Anyway, he'd often seen pictures like that on the racks in the newsagent's. He felt a growing sense of bewilderment as he stood there by the sink, his hands still clutching the drying-cloth. Then he heard his father's voice, raucous and ugly, in his ears, and felt his father's hand upon his shoulder, shaking him angrily.

'Do you hear me? Tell me about it!'

But the boy didn't tell his father. He just couldn't. What was there to tell anyway?

The coach, a wide luxury hulk of a thing, was due to leave Cornmarket at 7.30 a.m., and Morris joined the group of fussy parents counterchecking on lunch-bags, swimming-gear and pocket-money. Peter was already ensconced between a pair of healthily excited pals on the back seat, and Lawson once more counted heads to satisfy himself that the expedition was fully manned and could at last proceed. As the driver heaved round and round at the huge horizontal steering-wheel, slowly manoeuvring the giant vehicle into Beaumont Street, Morris had his last view of Harry and Brenda Josephs sitting silently together on one of the front seats, of Lawson folding his plastic raincoat and packing it into the overhead rack, and of Peter chatting happily away and like most of the other boys disdaining, or forgetting, to wave farewell. All en route for Bournemouth.

It was 7.45 a.m. by the clock on the south face of St Frideswide's as Morris walked up to Carfax and then through Queen Street and down to the bottom of St Ebbe's, where he stopped in front of a rangy three-storeyed stuccoed building set back from the street behind bright yellow railings. Nailed on to the high wooden gate which guarded the narrow path to the front door was a flaking notice-board announcing in faded capitals st frideswide's church and OXFORD pastorate. The gate itself was half-open; and as Morris stood self-consciously and indecisively in the deserted street a whistling paper-boy rode up on his bicycle and inserted a copy of The Times through the front door. No inside hand withdrew the newspaper, and Morris walked slowly away from the house and just as slowly back. On the top floor a pale yellow strip of neon lighting suggested the presence of someone on the premises, and he walked cautiously up to the front door where he rapped gently on the ugly black knocker. With no sound of movement from within, he tried again, a little louder. There must be someone, surely, in the rambling old vicarage. Students up on the top floor, probably? A housekeeper, perhaps? But again as he held his ear close to the door he could hear no movement; and conscious that his heart was beating fast against his ribs he tried the door. It was locked.

The back of the house was enclosed by a wall some eight or nine feet high; but a pair of gates, with NO PARKING amateurishly painted in white across them, promised access to somewhere, and turning the metal ring Morris found the gate unlocked. He stepped inside. A path led alongside the high stone wall beside an ill-tended stretch of patchy lawn, and quietly closing the gates behind him Morris walked up to the back door, and knocked with a quiet cowardice. No answer. No sound. He turned the door-knob. The door was unlocked. He opened it and went inside. For several seconds he stood stock-still in the wide hallway, his eyes unmoving as an alligator's. Across the hall The Times protruded downwards through the front-door letter-box like the tongue of some leering gargoyle, the whole house as still as death. He forced himself to breathe more naturally and looked around him. A door on his left was standing ajar, and he tiptoed across to look inside. 'Anyone there?' The words were spoken very softly, but they gave him an odd surge of confidence as though, should anyone be there, he was obviously trying to be noticed. And someone was there; or had been, until very recently. On a formica-topped table lay a knife, stickily smeared with butter and marmalade, a solitary plate strewn with toast-crumbs, and a large mug containing the dregs of cold tea. The remains, no doubt, of Lawson's breakfast. But a sudden shudder of fear climbed up Morris's spine as he noticed that the grill on the electric cooker was turned on full, its bars burning a fierce orange-red. Yet there was the same eerie stillness as before, with only the mechanical tick-tock of the kitchen clock to underline the pervasive silence.

Back in the hallway, he walked quietly across to the broad staircase, and as lightly as he could climbed up to the landing. Only one of the doors was open; but one was enough. A black-leather settee was ranged along one side of the room, and the floor was fully carpeted. He walked noiselessly across to the roll-top desk beside the window. It was locked, but the key lay on the top. Inside, two neatly written sheets of paper – on which he read the text and notes for some forthcoming sermon – lay beneath a paper-knife, curiously fashioned in the shape of a crucifix, the slitting-edge, as it seemed to Morris, wickedly (and quite needlessly?) sharp. He tried first the drawers on the left – all of them gliding smoothly open and all of them apparently fulfilling some innocent function; and the same with the top three drawers on the right. But the bottom one was locked, and the key to it was nowhere to be seen.

As a prospective burglar Morris had anticipated the stubbornness of locks and bolts only to the extent of a small chisel which he now took from his pocket. It took him more than ten minutes, and when finally the bottom drawer lay open the surrounding oblong frame was irreparably chipped and bruised. Inside lay an old chocolate-box, and Morris was slipping off the criss-cross of elastic bands when a slight sound caused him to whip round, his eyes wide with terror.

Standing in the doorway was a man with a lathered face, his right hand holding a shaving-brush, his left clutching a dirty pink towel about his neck. For a second Morris felt a shock that partly paralysed his terror, for his immediate impression was that the man was Lawson himself. Yet he knew he must be mistaken, and the logic that for a moment had threatened to disintegrate was swiftly reasserting itself. The man was about the same height and build as Lawson, yes. But the face was thinner and the hair was greyer; nor was the man's voice, when finally he spoke, in any way like Lawson's own, but a voice and a mode of expression that seemed to mask a curious combination of the cultured and the coarse: