“So?”
“So we’ve got to be careful, Simon.”
“You told him Dad was here?”
“Had to! He’d have soon found out.”
“What’s wrong, sis?”
“Nothing’s wrong. But I’m a bit frightened of him, and when he sees you—”
“Seizure? What? Say it again.”
“If he sees you, Simon, you did not come round last Wednesday. You did not come—”
“I heard you! I stayed at home and watched the telly. What was on, by the way?”
“Look it up in the Radio Times! And stop being—!”
A knock on the consulting-room door caused Sarah to replace the receiver hurriedly, almost hoping that another outpatient had passed out in Reception. But the knock was only a polite reminder that Dr. Harrison’s A.M. schedule was now running over half an hour late.
Yet even as the next outpatient was ushered in, Dr. Sarah Harrison found herself wondering exactly what Chief Inspector Morse was thinking (doing?) at that very moment.
Turning right from the front entrance of the Radcliffe Infirmary, Morse began walking slowly down toward St. Giles, noting that the time was 10:40 — twenty minutes before the pubs were due to open. Yet since drink was now definitely out for the duration, such an observation was of little moment.
The Oratory was on his right, a building he’d seldom paid attention to before, although he must have walked past it so many, many times. But apart from that wonderful line of cathedrals down the eastern side of England — Durham, York, Lincoln, Peterborough, Ely — the architecture of ecclesiastical edifices had never meant as much as they should have to Morse; and the reason why he now checked his step remains inexplicable.
He entered and looked around him: all surprisingly large and imposing, with a faint, seductive smell of incense, and statues of assorted saints around him, with tiers of candles lit beside their sandaled, holy feet.
A youngish woman had come in behind him, a Marks & Spencer carrier bag in her left hand. She dipped her right hand into the little font of blessed water there, then crossed herself and knelt in one of the rear pews. Morse envied her, for she looked so much at home there: looked as if she knew herself and her Lord so well, and was wholly familiar with all the trappings of prayer and the promises of forgiveness. She didn’t stay long, and Morse guessed that the cause of her brief sojourn was probably the paucity of any sins worthy of confession. As she left, Morse could see some of the contents of the carrier bag: a Hovis loaf and a bottle of red plonk.
Bread and wine.
The door clicked to behind her, and Morse stepped over to meet St. Anthony, wondering whence had sprung that oddly intrusive “h.” According to the textual blurb at the base of the statue, this great and good man was clearly capable of performing quite incredible miracles for those who almost had sufficient faith. Morse picked up a candle from the box there and stuck it in an empty socket on the top row. At which point (it appeared) most worshipers would have prayed fervently for a miracle. But Morse wasn’t at all sure what miracle he wanted. Nevertheless the elegant, elongated candle was of importance to him; and on some semi-irrational impulse he took a second candle and placed it beside the first. Together, side by side, they seemed to give a much stronger light than both of them separate.
A notice suggested an appropriate donation per candle, and Morse pushed a £1 coin into the slot in the wall behind St. Anthony. Half of bitter. Then, remembering that he’d doubled his investment, the reluctant hagio-later pushed in a second £1 coin. A whole pint.
As he walked down to St. Giles, the man who had virtually no faith in the Almighty and even less in miracles noted that the past few minutes had slipped by quickly. It was now just after 11 A.M.; and when he came in sight of the Bird and Baby on his right, he saw that the front door was open.
He went in.
Chapter thirty-seven
Careless talk costs lives.
I think men who have a pierced ear are better prepared for marriage. They’ve experienced pain and bought jewelry.
(Rita Rudner)
Five days after Morse had declined the free draw for a miracle at the Oratory, at noon, at Lower Swinstead, at the bar of the Maiden’s Arms, Tom Biffen stood leaning forward on his tattooed arms. Very quiet so far for a Saturday. Just the two hardy perennials, horns already locked over their continuous cribbage; and the pale-faced, ear-pierced, greasy-haired youth already squaring up to the fruit machine.
It was twenty minutes later that the fourth customer arrived.
“Usual?”
The newcomer nodded and placed the requisite monies on the counter. The white van in the car park economically proclaimed the newcomer’s profession: “J. Barron, Builder.”
“Not out at Debbie’s today, John?”
“What do you think? The day after the funeral?”
“No. Have you seen her since Harry...?”
“No. Well, I wouldn’t have gone last weekend anyway, would I? Thought they’d like being on their own, like — you know, the day after they’d let him out and all that.”
“No.”
The youth was standing beside them, a £10 note folded lengthways between the index and middle fingers of his right hand.
“You’re taking all me change,” complained Biffen as he exchanged the note for ten £1 coins from the till.
“You’ll have bugger all left for the honeymoon,” ventured the builder; but the youth, unhearing or uncaring, had already walked back to what was perhaps the first great love of his life.
At the bar a few low-voiced confidences were being exchanged.
“When’s the wedding, Biff?”
“Five weeks today.”
“Nice bit o’skirt?”
“Yeah. Dental receptionist down in Oxford somewhere.”
“Glad one of ‘em’s earning!” The builder half-turned toward the unremunerative machine. “Nobody earns much of a living on them things.”
“Except the Company,” corrected the landlord.
“Except Tom Biffen,” corrected one of the cribbagers.
The landlord grunted.
Odd really. Most men in their latish seventies would ever have been susceptible to deafness, arthritis, baldness, sciatica, hemorrhoids, incontinence, impotence, cataracts, dementia, and all the rest. And perhaps (for all the landlord knew) the two old codgers suffered from every single one of them — except quite certainly the first.
Biffen lowered his voice: “Did you get to the crematorium?”
“No. Family, wasn’t it? I wasn’t exactly a friend of the family.”
“I thought you builders and plumbers were friends of everybody, especially a strapping young fellow like you?”
“Young?”
But the landlord had a point. John Barron, tall and well built, with dark close-cropped hair and clean-cut features, certainly looked younger than his forty-one years; and what appeared a genuinely open smile appealed to all the local ladies — except his wife, who had been known occasionally to feel jealous.
“What exactly are you doing for Debbie?”
“In the back passage, off the kitchen — you know, the old coal shed and the old loo. Knocking ‘em into one so she can get her washing machine in — retiling the floor — replastering the walls — new electrical sockets — usual sort of thing.”
“Just at weekends?”
“Yeah, well...”
“Bit o’ moonlighting? Cash payment?”
For a second or two Barron’s mouth tightened distastefully, but he made no direct reply. “I was hoping to finish it off before Harry was out.”