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

‘What possible motive could I have to murder Connie? My murdering Connie Worth is about as likely as my trekking to the North Pole—naked, while chatting to a polar bear and whistling “Old Lang Syne”. And I don’t even like the songs of Robbie Burns! In fact, I’d be more likely to murder Robbie Burns than Connie Worth.

‘The man is a complete idiot. Inspector Hyde, I mean, not Robbie Burns. However, to be fair, I understand his problem. It’s a question of who put the cyanide in the cake and how they did it.

‘The problem is that we each one of us around that table ate a slice of Mrs Buckingham’s delicious dark fruit cake, and only Connie died. So the question is: how? How did a massive, fatal dose of cyanide get into the slice of cake she ate when there wasn’t a trace of cyanide in the rest of the cake?’

I kept scribbling away, describing the situation that afternoon three days earlier: seven of us sitting around the small, marble-topped table; each of us eating a piece of dark fruit cake; six people showing no symptoms while the seventh was dead within minutes of taking a bite.

‘The village doctor (I wrote) is Dr George Henderson—a fussy, careful little man. As he checked for Connie’s pulse and breathing and pronounced her dead, he had Lady Pamela hovering by his side squawking like a pirate’s parrot during a storm at sea. She bleated about poor Connie having died from a sudden heart attack or a sudden stroke . . . or from a sudden something.

‘Henderson actually pulled a pad out of his Gladstone bag to write out a death certificate and then thought better of it. It took him a long time to get Lady Pamela to accept that in cases of sudden death it was important to be certain and not to jump to conclusions. Of course, a conclusion was exactly what Lady Pamela wanted jumped at—preferably jumped at, hurdled and quickly left behind. Connie was only staying in the house thanks to the family’s sense of obligation, as Lady Pamela’s cousin. No one particularly liked her, and Lady Pamela just wanted her death cleared away and forgotten about—like a mess the dog has made on the drawing-room floor.

‘Dr Henderson asked me how quickly death had occurred after the first symptoms appeared. I guessed about five or ten minutes. He looked at the pink flush on Connie’s face and even smelled the vomit on the lawn. Then he took Lady Pamela to one side and quietly explained that he would have to inform the police of the death. At that point I thought there might be a second murder—that Lady Pamela might attack Dr Henderson with the nearest available blunt instrument. However, he survived her horrified reaction and made the phone call.

‘That was when the fun and games began. Inspector Hyde arrived with the local village bobby in tow to take notes—a nice chap named Charlie Nile. Hyde questioned everyone, made a diagram of the seating plan at the afternoon tea table and confiscated the rest of the fruit cake.’

At that point I lay down my pen and looked up out of the window facing the little writing table in my bedroom. Three days earlier the sky had been sunny; now it was filled with menacing clouds. The rolling, thick, purple-grey thunderheads seemed to express my own gloomy frame of mind. It was late in the day and the sun was close to the western horizon. The blood-red glow of sunset, with scattered splashes of gold, reflected from the underside of the clouds, making them look like a city hanging upside down in the sky.

As I watched, the heaviest clouds rolled apart to reveal clear sky filled with the red-tinted golden glow of the setting sun. An omen, I told myself—a sign that there was light at the end of the gloomy tunnel of storms.

‘The day after Connie’s death (I wrote) we were told that she’d died from a massive dose of cyanide. Then yesterday Inspector Hyde rolled up with the news that the only cyanide was in the slice of fruit cake Connie had bitten into, while the rest of the cake was completely clear of contamination. Even his slow-working brain had deduced that this must mean the cyanide had been added after the cake had been cut. So who had tampered with Connie’s slice of cake? We were all questioned and no one admitted to touching Connie’s cake, which is hardly surprising. But, in addition, no one had seen anyone else touch the cake on Connie’s plate.

‘That’s when Inspector Hyde turned his attention to me. Since I was sitting beside Connie, he reasoned, I must have, by some sleight of hand, slipped a fatal dose of cyanide into her cake while no one was looking. I pointed out that while I was on Connie’s left hand, Uncle Teddy was seated at her right hand and had as much opportunity as I did. This was dismissed out of hand. Uncle Teddy is well known in the district as a harmless old eccentric so absent-minded and muddled he must have been dropped on his head as a baby.

‘So, reasoned the rodent-like inspector, I must be a homicidal maniac who murdered a woman I hardly knew, for absolutely no reason, employing a method not unknown to medical science—but, still, it must be me. He is ignoring every other possible aspect of his investigation and pestering me day and night. When he’s not asking me questions, he stands in the distance eyeing me suspiciously or asking everyone else in the household about me.

‘Which brings me to the rest of the household. Quite frankly I am as puzzled as Inspector Hyde—since none of the family had reasons I know of for wanting Connie dead, and I can’t imagine any of them committing murder.

‘Lady Pamela is the matriarch who runs the house. I was once told she was a grocer’s daughter before she married Billy Dyer. But then Billy Dyer turned his father’s small biscuit factory into a mass production masterpiece churning out
Dyer’s Digestive Biscuits
. The inclination of the citizens of these islands to want a digestive biscuit with every cup of tea has turned Dyer into a self-made millionaire, and a generous donor to political parties and fashionable charities. The result was that he collected a knighthood in the King’s Birthday honours list some years ago. That made the former grocer’s daughter into Lady William Dyer. She instantly became a bigger snob than if she had been the daughter of a long line of earls going back to William the Conqueror. But I still can’t see her as a murderer.

‘She and Sir William have two sons. Douglas is up at Oxford in his first year. He turned up a few days ago, as soon as Hilary Term ended, with a girl in tow. This is Stephanie Basset. My own theory is that when she looks at the rather pimply and unattractive Douglas, all she sees is the beautiful money he’ll inherit one day. The younger son, Will, is rather more likable. He’s also back here from his school for the term break. I can’t conceive of any rhyme or reason for these youngsters to commit murder.

‘The Uncle Teddy who has featured prominently in this correspondence is an interesting old bird. Strictly speaking he’s only Sir William’s uncle, but everyone is instructed to address him as uncle as he likes the title. He was the younger brother of Sir William’s father, and he thinks of himself as an inventor—especially of new ways of making biscuits. Biscuit obsession seems to run in the family. Part of the stable block has been converted for his use. He calls it his “laboratory” and spends his days there conducting experiments he imagines will become new products for the giant biscuit factory Sir William manages. None of his experiments, it seems, ever produces anything practical. And Sir William is careful to keep him well away from the factory, and from having anything to do with real biscuit making.

‘You would have to agree, Jack, it’s a pretty dud cast of suspects. Which is why Inspector Hyde has fastened upon me as the most likely of the lot. I expect him to produce the handcuffs and lead me away in irons any day now.’

Jack’s telegram was a delightful surprise: ‘Arriving two o’clock train. Meet me at station.’ So as the slow local train wheezed and clanked its way into the Plumwood railway station, I was standing on the small platform. A bundle of afternoon newspapers was thrown onto the platform from the guard’s van at the rear, and a door opened on the passenger carriage.

Only one passenger alighted—a man dressed like a moderately successful farmer: old grey Harris Tweed jacket, with leather patches in the elbows; trousers of thickish grey flannel, uncreased and very out at the knees; stout brown walking boots; and an old grey felt hat. Underneath the hat was a round, ruddy, cheerful face. It was my old Oxford tutor, C. S. Lewis, known to all his friends as ‘Jack’. He was carrying a single, battered suitcase.

He grinned broadly as he shook my hand. ‘Morris, you old chump, what mess have you managed to get yourself into this time?’ Then he laughed heartily and added, ‘Nothing that can’t be sorted out in short order, I warrant.’

We fell into step side by side as we walked out of the station and down the main street of the small village. ‘Thanks for coming, Jack,’ I said.

‘Had no choice,’ he boomed, in his robust voice. ‘How would it look for me if one of my former pupils became a convict in irons?’

I laughed at his pretence of having come entirely out of self-interest, but added, ‘This is a case of murder, Jack. It’s not the prison cell and the leg irons that loom but the hangman’s noose.’

‘Don’t be so gloomy, Morris. The hempen rope and the sudden drop are not in your future, I assure you.’

‘It’s Inspector Hyde you need to assure, not me. He’s the one who’s refusing to look at any aspect of the case except the Tom Morris angle.’

‘I do recall Hyde as a man inclined to adopt the narrow view.’

By now we were standing in front of
The Cricketers’ Arms
, the only pub in Plumwood.

‘I told Alfred Rose you were coming, so he’ll have a room ready.’

No sooner had I said these words than the publican appeared at the front door—like the cuckoo popping out of the little door in the cuckoo clock at precisely the right time.

‘Mr Lewis,’ he beamed, ‘welcome back. Nice to see you again, sir. And how is your brother?’

Rose had a remarkable memory for customers, even those he had not seen for the better part of a year.

‘Warnie is doing very nicely,’ said Jack, handing his suitcase over to the publican. ‘And he sends his regards to you, Morris. He instructed me to get you swiftly and smartly untangled from whatever web you’ve fallen into.’

Warnie was Jack’s brother, Major Warren Lewis, now retired from the British Army and living with Jack at their cottage,
The Kilns
, in Oxford.

‘Dreadful business, this murder up at the hall, Mr Lewis,’ said the publican. Then as we all stepped into the public bar he bellowed, ‘Ronnie—come and take this gentleman’s suitcase up to his room.’ Ronnie Fish, barman and general dogsbody, emerged from the cellar, blinking in the daylight like a startled mouse, and took charge of Jack’s suitcase.

As he disappeared up the stairs with this modest item of luggage, Alfred Rose said, ‘Now, gentlemen—some refreshments before you settle in?’

He had stepped behind the bar as he uttered these words, but Jack turned down the implied offer of a pint and asked instead for a cup of tea—a large cup of tea.

Jack and I sank into the armchairs by the fireplace at one end of the bar. It was such an unseasonably warm day for March the fire had not been lit, but the chairs were the most comfortable in the room.

‘Now then, Mr Lewis,’ said the publican as he returned carrying a tea tray, with a teapot under a knitted cosy and cups and saucers, ‘who slipped the cyanide into Mrs Worth’s cake?’

Jack chuckled and said, ‘I assume the murder is the only topic of conversation in the village?’

Rose nodded in vigorous agreement. ‘Most exciting thing to happen in this village since the Great Plague of 1665. So, Mr Lewis, who’s your hot tip as the most likely suspect?’

Pouring his cup of tea, Jack said, ‘Solving a murder is not like solving a crossword—it’s not done in minutes. You must at least give me time to examine the cryptic clues first.’

When the publican had wandered off and left us alone, Jack asked me for the latest news.

‘Inspector Hyde still thinks of nothing but how to get me facing a charge of murder at the next assizes.’

‘Narrow minded, as I said. He’s rather like a small boy looking through a gap in the paling fence around a playing field: he doesn’t see much of the game. Well, we must find a way to get him thinking in other directions. The stumbling block, I take it, is still the puzzle of how the poison got into the cake.’

‘Mrs Buckingham, the splendid cook up at Plumwood Hall, has been in tears over the matter. Her kitchen has been searched by the police from top to bottom. They failed to find a single trace of cyanide, but of course that was always going to be a hopeless search since the cake, fresh from the oven, was completely uncontaminated—except for that one slice.’

‘So, freshly baked and perfectly fit for human consumption?’

‘Except for a single slice which, Dr Henderson told me, contained enough potassium cyanide to kill a horse—and a fairly robust horse in training for a major racing event at that. There was not even a hint of cyanide in the remainder of the cake.’

Jack finished his tea and said, ‘That puzzle must wait until we know more. In the meantime, any chance that I might inspect the scene of the crime and meet the cast of this village melodrama?’