'Let me get it straight, sir. According to you, Lionel Lawson tried to kill Josephs, only to find that someone had done a far neater job a few minutes later – with a knife. Right?' Lewis shook his head. 'Not on, sir, is it?'
'Why not? The Rev. Lionel knows that Josephs'll go straight to the vestry, and that in a few minutes he's going to be very dead. There's one helluva dose of morphine in the communion wine and the strong probability is that Josephs is going to die all nice and peaceful like, because morphine poisoning isn't a painful death – just the opposite. In which case, Josephs' death may well pose a few problems; but no one's going to be able to pin the murder on the Rev. Lionel. The chalice has been carefully washed out and dried, in strict accord with ecclesiastical etiquette – a wonderful example of a criminal actually being encouraged to destroy the evidence of his crime. Beautiful idea! But then things began to go askew. Josephs must have guessed that something was desperately wrong with him, and before he collapsed in the vestry he just managed to drag himself to the curtains and shout for help – a shout that all the congregation heard. But someone, someone, Lewis, was watching that vestry like a hawk – the Rev. Lionel himself. And as soon as he saw Josephs there he was off down the aisle like an avenging Fury; and he was down there in the vestry before anyone else had the nous or the guts to move; and once inside he stabbed Josephs viciously in the back, turned to face the congregation, and told 'em all that Josephs was lying there – murdered.' (Morse mentally congratulated himself on an account that was rather more colourful and dramatic than Bell 's prosaic reconstruction of exactly the same events.)
'He'd have got blood all over him,' protested Lewis.
'Wouldn't have mattered much if he'd been wearing the sort of outfit they were wearing this morning.'
Lewis thought back to the morning service and those deep-crimson vestments – the colour of dark-red blood… 'But why finish Josephs off with a knife? He'd be almost dead by then?'
'Lionel was frightened that Josephs would accuse him of doing the poisoning. Almost certainly Josephs would have guessed what had happened.'
'Probably everyone else would, too.'
'Ah! But if you stabbed Josephs in the back as well, people are going to ask who did that, aren't they?'
'Yes. And they're going to think that was Lawson, too. After all, it was Lawson's knife.'
'No one knew that at the time,' said Morse defensively.
'Did Bell think that's how it happened?'
Morse nodded. 'Yes, he did.'
'And do you, sir?'
Morse seemed to be weighing the odds in the mental balance 'No,' he said finally.
Lewis leaned back in his chair. 'You know, when you come to think of it, it's a bit improbable that a minister's going to murder one of his own congregation, isn't it? That sort of thing doesn't happen in real life.'
'I rather hope it does,' said Morse quietly.
'Pardon, sir?'
'I said I rather hope it does happen. You asked me if Lionel Lawson killed Josephs in a particular way, and I said I didn't think so. But I reckon it was Lionel Lawson who killed Josephs, though in a rather more simple way. He just walked down to the vestry, knifed poor old Harry Josephs- '
'And then he walked back!'
'You've got it!'
Lewis' eyes rolled towards the tobacco-stained ceiling and he began to wonder if the beer had not robbed the inspector of his wits.
'With all the congregation watching him, I suppose.'
'Oh, no. They didn't see him.'
'They didn't?'
'No. The service at which Josephs was killed was held in the Lady Chapel. Now, if you remember, there's an archway in the screen separating this chapel from the central chancel, and I reckon that after the bread and wine had been dished out Lawson took a few of the utensils across from the altar in the Lady Chapel to the main altar – they're always doing that sort of thing, these priests.' (Lewis was hardly listening any more, and the landlord was wiping the tables, collecting glasses and emptying the ash-trays.) 'You want to know how he performed this remarkable feat, Lewis? Well, as I see it, the Rev. Lionel and his brother had got everything worked out, and that night the pair of 'em were all dressed up in identical ecclesiastical clobber. Now, when the Rev. Lionel walked out of the Lady Chapel for a few seconds, it wasn't the Rev. Lionel who walked back! There are only a few prayerful old souls in the congregation, and for that vital period the man standing in front of the altar, kneeling there, praying there, but never actually facing the congregation, is brother Philip! What do you think, Lewis? You think anyone looking up could have suspected the truth?'
'Perhaps Philip Lawson was bald.'
'Doubt it. Whether you go bald depends on your grandfather.'
'If you say so, sir.' Lewis was growing increasingly sceptical about all this jiggery-pokery with duplicate chalices and chasubles; and, anyway, he was anxious to be off home. He stood up and took his leave.
Morse remained where he was, the forefinger of his left hand marrying little droplets of spilt beer on the table-top. Like Lewis, he was far from happy about his possible reconstructions of Josephs' murder. But one idea was growing even firmer in his mind: there must have been some collaboration somewhere. And, like as not, that collaboration had involved the two brothers. But how? For several minutes Morse's thoughts were chasing round after their own tails. For the thousandth time he asked himself where he ought to start, and for the thousandth time he told himself that he had to decide who had killed Harry Josephs. All right! Assume it was the Rev. Lionel – on the grounds that something must have driven him to suicide. But what if it wasn't Lionel who had thrown himself from the tower? What if it was Philip who had been thrown? Yes, that would have been very neat… But there was a virtually insuperable objection to such a theory. The Rev. Lionel would have to dress up his brother's body in his own clothes, his own black clerical front, his dog-collar – everything. And that, in such a short space of time after the morning service, was plain physically impossible! But what if…? Yes! What if Lionel had somehow managed to persuade his brother to change clothes? Was it possible? Phew! Of course it was! It wasn't just possible – it was eminently probable. And why? Because Philip Lawson had already done it before. He'd agreed to dress up in his brother's vestments so that he could stand at the altar whilst Josephs was being murdered! Doubtless he'd been wonderfully well rewarded for his troubles on that occasion. So why not agree to a second little charade? Of course he would have agreed – little thinking he'd be dressing up for his own funeral. But with one seemingly insuperable problem out of the way, another one had taken its place: two people had positively identified the body that had fallen from the tower. Was that a real problem, though? Had Mrs Walsh-Atkins really had the stomach to look all that carefully at a face that was as smashed and bleeding as the rest of that mutilated body? Had her presence outside the church just been an accidental fluke? Because someone else had been there had he not? Someone all ready to testify to the identity – the false identity – of the corpse: Paul Morris. And Paul Morris had subsequently been murdered because he knew too much: knew specifically, that the Reverend Lionel Lawson was not only still in the land of the living, but was also a murderer, to boot! A double-murderer. A triple-murderer…
'Do you mind drinking up, sir?' said the landlord. 'We often get the police round here on Sunday mornings.'