C S Lewis and the Country House Murders (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 2) (17 page)

‘Method!’ sneered Hyde in a fox-like howl. ‘He’ll tell us that! He’ll tell us how he did it when we get him into interrogation.’

‘No, Hyde—that’s where you’re wrong. It’s up to
us
to tell
him
how he did it. Unless we can do that we have no case. Looked at as a physical problem, as a problem in logistics, it is utterly impossible for the fatal dose of cyanide to have got into that piece of cake that killed Mrs Worth. How do you imagine it was done?’

Hyde looked startled by the question. It had popped up at him like the demon king coming through the stage trapdoor in the pantomime. It was unexpected and he didn’t quite know what to do with it.

Hyde was no longer sitting still. He was writhing in his chintzy armchair as if in the grip of strong emotion. He was like a schoolboy sitting for an examination in ‘reeling and writhing’, as Lewis Carroll would have put it. His eyes had narrowed and his teeth were bared. I expected him, at any moment, to howl like a fox at midnight—a fox on the prowl for something to sink its teeth into. And I was that ‘something’.

‘There’ll be more murders!’ howled Hyde in desperation. ‘We have a killer in our midst. A warrant for his immediate arrest for murder is the only way to protect the community.’

‘The members of this community can sleep safe in their beds,’ replied Crispin, with an edge of irritability in his voice, ‘when we have the real murderer behind bars—kept there by evidence that will stand up in a court of law.’

‘We must act—and act immediately!’

‘Yes, you’re right. We must act to collect evidence so we arrest the right man.’

‘But . . . but . . . but . . .’

‘We’ve been back and forth over this same ground repeatedly, Hyde. I think it’s time we got on with the investigation.’

Jack and I glanced at each other. We both quietly made our way out of the front garden of the police cottage and onto the village street.

‘Well, what about that?’ I said, once we were out of earshot of the arguing inspectors.

‘I think it might be best if we avoided the company of the police for a little while,’ said Jack. ‘Why don’t we go for a walk across the moors?’

Rolling white clouds were scudding across the sky, turning the moors into a patchwork quilt of bright sunshine and cloud shadows with threads of purple heather woven across the whole pattern.

‘Judgment,’ I muttered to myself as we walked.

Jack asked if I had said something, so I repeated, more loudly, ‘Judgment. That’s what Hyde and Crispin are doing back there in that cottage—passing judgment on me. And if a warrant for my arrest is issued I’ll have to appear in the next assizes facing judgment. And you tell me that at the end of life each of us has to face judgment.’

‘Indeed I do.’

‘But how can that be? For me, or anyone, to be called before a court—either an earthly or a heavenly court—and held to judgment there must be some sort of law in place. There needs to be a law, or a system of laws, that I have either broken or kept. Without such law there can be no judgment. There is no law, so whatever happens at death I cannot possibly face judgment.’

‘Morris, I am mightily impressed by your argument. I’m delighted to see that you’re now thinking about these things logically and carefully. Your starting point is exactly right. Unfortunately, your conclusion is totally wrong—but your starting point is excellent.’ Jack was smiling broadly as he spoke, his eyes flashing with fire at the prospect of a lively battle over important ideas.

I thought carefully before I responded, ‘You agree that there can be no judgment without law?’

‘Precisely.’

‘But you reject my conclusion that there
is
no law
therefore
there is no judgment either. Correct?’

‘Indeed. So we are both singing from the same page of the hymnbook—if you’ll excuse my ecclesiastical metaphor.’

‘Happily. But what is the law? What law could possibly apply to all the human beings on Planet Earth? Because that’s what you’d have to have—some sort of universal law. Without that, universal judgment is impossible.’

‘Once again we agree. However, let me remind you that for more than two and a half thousand years philosophers have spoken of just such a law. They usually call it Natural Law.’

‘That’s a medieval concept!’ I protested.

‘It was around for more than a thousand years before Thomas Aquinas and the other medieval philosophers. What’s more, it’s a common sense idea that most people endorse.’

‘Now that I find hard to swallow.’

‘Then swallow harder—because it’s the truth. Picture this: a government passes a law requiring all blue-eyed babies to be killed at birth. This strange government argues that they have abundant sociological research showing that the whole country will be happier and safer if all blue-eyed babies are strangled at birth. So they pass their law. What do you say to that?’

‘That it’s outrageous. That it’s an immoral law.’

‘Exactly! That expression you used, “an immoral law”, points to the fact that there is a higher law by which all human laws are judged. That higher law—that moral sense innate in the human heart—is Natural Law. I would argue, as have many before me, that it exists because our Maker has built it into our natures. But unlike, say, the law of gravity, this is not a law of physical nature but a law of human nature.’

‘Hang on, you’re going too fast. You’re leaping too quickly from our sense of moral outrage at evil to some law that underpins such outrage,’ I protested.

We may have been striding across open moorlands, with a fresh breeze blowing around us, but Jack was back in his study at Oxford and happily in tutorial mode.

‘If my speed concerns you we shall go back over those same steps more slowly.’

We walked past some philosophical cows musing in thoughtful meditation over their lunch, climbed a stile into the next meadow and then Jack resumed.

‘Picture this: a friend borrows a sum of money from you and promises to pay it back in one week. At the end of the week he announces that he’s not repaying the debt, and, in fact, never had any intention of repaying it. Is he breaking the Moral Law—the Natural Law?’

‘Yes, of course he is.’

‘We are just imagining this, but if it really happened to you, you’d be properly outraged.’

‘And with good reason.’

‘Now reverse the situation. You are the one borrowing the money. You need it desperately to help a sick relative. You know you’ll never be able to repay it, and your friend seems to have abundant cash. So the loan is made. At the end of the week you make the announcement that you can’t repay—and you’ll probably never be able to repay, and you knew this when you accepted the loan and made the false promise. Same situation—but in reverse. Are you still outraged?’

‘Perhaps not. In those circumstances I would have good reasons for making a promise I couldn’t keep—namely, helping my sick relative. So my promise-making is dishonest, and in a sense I have misappropriated my friend’s money . . . but I had good reasons for doing so.’

Jack chuckled with glee and almost rubbed his hands together as he said, ‘Can you see what’s happening? You haven’t denied the Moral Law. You haven’t said there is no such thing as Natural Moral Law. You, in fact, accept that you and your friend are both under this same higher law—higher than legislation passed by any parliament—but in your case you say you have reasons that excuse you under the Moral Law that you admit applies.’

Jack then went on to argue that it is this Natural Moral Law under which everyone must be judged after death.

‘At this point Christianity and common sense coincide almost exactly. One thing the scientists tell us is that the universe is remarkably consistent—the law of gravity applies on Planet Earth, throughout our solar system and in the remotest galaxy. This consistency is the product of a consistent, intelligent Mind that lies behind it all. Hence the consistency in the physical laws that govern the universe, the biological laws that govern living bodies, and the moral laws that govern our eternal destinies.’

‘Let me see if I’ve got this right—all human beings in the universe . . .’

‘All sentient moral beings in the universe,’ corrected Jack with a grin, ‘if, that is, there are alien sentient moral beings on other planets.’

I smiled, knowing how fond Jack was of science fiction stories, then resumed, ‘. . . all of us are under a Natural Moral Law against which all of us will be judged at death. Is that it?’

‘Precisely. The word the Bible uses most often for this Moral Law is “righteousness”. Now I’m no Hebraist, but Adam Fox tells me that the Hebrew word translated “righteousness” is one of those picture words.’

I knew what Jack was talking about here because this subject had come up in our tutorials. There are, Jack would explain, many words which contain a hidden metaphor, or picture, out of which they have grown. His favourite example was ‘sinister’ which grew from a word meaning ‘left-handed’. The metaphor hidden inside ‘sinister’ was the picture of a left-handed man who could shake your right hand while stabbing you with his left. Sinister indeed!

‘So what’s the picture here—in the Hebrew word for “righteousness”?’

‘It’s a relational picture. It pictures every human being as existing within a network, or a web, of relationships. So I am my father’s son, my brother’s brother, my friend’s friend, my pupil’s tutor and so on. Each relationship carries with it certain duties and obligations. When I get all of my relationships “right”—when I fulfil all the responsibilities of each relationship—then I am “righteous”. That’s the moral law I’ve been speaking of.’

‘And this is the basis for the judgment we each face one moment after death?’

‘Indeed. Only the righteous, in the terms we’ve just discussed, pass the judgment while all of the unrighteous fail. That is how the sheep are divided from the goats.’

‘Which leaves the question—which is which? How can we know which of us is righteous in the eyes of the heavenly court and which of us is unrighteous?’

‘Oh, that’s easy, young Morris,’ replied Jack, giving me a hearty slap on the back. ‘We’re all unrighteous—every one of us!’

While we had been speaking, we had, it seemed, walked over the moors in a wide arc, and I saw now that we had circled back towards Plumwood Hall. As a result we found ourselves emerging from a belt of trees and striding over the manicured lawns towards the west wing of the house.

The day remained blue and sunny. The man at the Bureau of Meteorology, who has a neat turn of phrase, had talked of a ridge of high pressure extending across most of the United Kingdom. And he had been spot on the money. The thing had not only turned up, it had rolled up its sleeves and got on with the job with an efficiency that could only be admired.

As we drew close to the terrace, Jack reminded me of Detective Inspector Crispin’s rule that the way to solve a murder mystery was by understanding the victim—or, in this case, victims plural. With that in mind, Jack suggested taking a look at their rooms. If, that is, we could get into the house unobserved and do a bit of snooping around.

We crossed the terrace and entered the drawing room. It was as empty as the Gobi Desert on one of its quieter days. So was the hall beyond it, and the large staircase leading to the upper levels and the bedrooms. Jack followed in my footsteps up the stairs and along a corridor, at the end of which I threw open a bedroom door and announced that this had been Connie Worth’s room.

‘I’m rather surprised the police don’t have this room locked up,’ said Jack as we entered, closing the door quietly behind us.

‘Can’t explain that,’ I said, speaking in a hushed voice. ‘Either they think they’ve got everything out of the room that’s here to be got, or else the locking up job was given to our friend Constable Charlie Nile—who seems to think police duties are like exam questions: only the ones that appeal to him are to be attempted.’

I stood in the middle of the room and looked around. It was an ordinary and quite plain bedroom. It seemed to have no special character, and Connie Worth had made no effort to stamp her mark on the room.

‘One of the early Lord Boshams,’ I remarked, ‘in the Tudor period, I believe, is said to have murdered his wife in this room. With a battle-axe.’