C S Lewis and the Country House Murders (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 2) (3 page)

‘Come on,’ I replied, swallowing the last of my tea and rising from my armchair, ‘we’ll walk up to the hall—it’s not far, just on the outskirts of the village.’

We stepped out into the sunshine, Jack paused to light his pipe, and then we started down the village street. Just ahead of us my employer, Sir William Dyer, appeared, coming out of the village post office and about to duck into the village chemist’s shop. But when he saw me he stopped and walked over.

‘Morning, young Tom. Glorious day.’

I took the hint that he wanted to be introduced to the visitor beside me.

‘Sir William, this is my old Oxford tutor, C. S. Lewis.’

‘Delighted to meet you, Mr Lewis. You here to give aid and comfort to young Tom in his hour of need?’

‘Something along those lines.’

‘Shocking murder, of course—shocking, shocking. Dreadful business. But I think Hyde is an idiot. He’s making it clear to everyone that Tom is his main suspect. His only suspect. Rubbish. Complete rubbish. This young man’s a scholar, not a killer. I’ve told Hyde that too. But he won’t listen. Man’s an idiot. You have my full support, Tom, and complete confidence.’

‘Thank you, Sir William,’ I muttered.

‘You taking Mr Lewis up to the hall for a look around?’

‘That’s the idea,’ I agreed.

‘And you must come to dinner at the hall one night, Mr Lewis,’ said Sir William affably, ‘while you’re in the district. Our son Douglas is up at Oxford; I’m sure he’d be delighted to meet you.’

Then Sir William wandered off, slapping me on the shoulder while assuring me I should dismiss all concerns that I might soon be facing a capital charge.

As my employer disappeared into the chemist’s shop, Jack chuckled quietly and said, ‘Odd way of cheering you up—by reminding you of the dark clouds.’

‘Yes, he’s a bit like the old friend you meet who greets you by telling you how ill you look,’ I agreed. ‘Eeyore would recognise in Sir William a kindred soul.’

Just beyond the last row of cottages, at one end of the village street, stood two stone pedestals topped with carved lions. These flanked the driveway leading onto the grounds of Plumwood Hall.

The broad gravel drive was lined with poplars and wove around a grove of elm trees.

‘Remarkable weather for March,’ said Jack as we strode through the dappled sunlight. ‘Reminds me of a pupil who once argued that every country has a climate except for England. England, he said, only has
weather
.’ He paused to look up at the sky, then added, ‘So today we suffer with this warmth and sunshine. I much prefer the cold.’

Just then a figure came crashing out of the undergrowth to our left and stumbled onto the road. It was Uncle Teddy, looking wilder than ever, his clothes untidy and twigs caught in his hair.

He looked at me and blinked. I could see the slow process of recognition and identification going on behind his grey eyes.

‘Eh? Ah, oh it’s you, young Thomas.’

‘Well spotted, Uncle Teddy. And this is my friend, Mr Lewis.’

Jack extended a hand in greeting. Uncle Teddy finally decided to shake it after examining it for some moments as if it were a doubtful specimen under a microscope. Teddy was always rather slow to take to visitors. So after shaking Jack’s hand he turned to me, as a familiar face, and simply pretended Jack wasn’t there.

‘What do you think of these, Tom? Eh? Eh?’

He opened his clenched right fist to reveal half a dozen very small, very bright red berries.

‘They’re . . .’ I began, trying to work out what kind of response might be appropriate. But Uncle Teddy wasn’t waiting for my answer.

‘Highly acidic. Very good food acid, these. Should have a clarifying effect on the formula.’

And with that cryptic statement he simply stopped talking. So I asked, ‘What formula, Uncle Teddy?’

‘Eh? Eh? Formula? Oh, yes, yes, I have a new formula I’m working on. It’s all organic chemistry, you know . . . all chemistry.’

‘May I ask you a question, sir?’ boomed Jack, in that lecture room voice that couldn’t be ignored.

Uncle Teddy spun around, startled by this reminder that there was someone else present. He squinted suspiciously and then said, ‘What question? What, what, what?’

‘About the murder,’ continued Jack. ‘You were there when it happened. In fact, as I understand it you were sitting beside the victim. So should my friend Morris here have done anything suspicious, such as sprinkling a large quantity of poison on the victim’s cake, you would have noticed. So did you?’

‘Did I what?’

‘Did you notice anything suspicious? Did you see Morris tampering with the victim’s slice of cake?’

‘No,’ said Uncle Teddy, shaking his head vigorously. ‘No, no, no, no. Nothing like that happened. Nothing at all. I told that policeman the same thing.’

‘Good for you, Uncle Teddy,’ I said. ‘Inspector Hyde insists on regarding me as guilty despite your testimony. But thank you anyway.’

‘Huh,’ grunted Teddy, ‘that policeman wouldn’t listen to me. I told him it was all chemistry . . . organic chemistry. I told him to investigate the chemistry. He didn’t seem interested.’

Jack intervened again to ask, ‘So, who do you regard as the most likely guilty party, sir? Do you have a favoured suspect?’

A cunning look passed over Uncle Teddy’s face, like a cloud passing over the face of the sun. For a moment the cheerful, dotty old man disappeared and was replaced by a cunning, calculating schemer with wild eyes.

‘Douglas,’ hissed Teddy. ‘Look closely at Douglas. That’s my answer.’

‘And why is that?’ asked Jack.

‘I don’t like him,’ replied Teddy, the dark look again shadowing his face. ‘Never have done. Plays tricks on me. Even when he was a small boy he was nasty. This will be one of Douglas’s practical jokes gone wrong.’

I couldn’t imagine any practical joke that would involve potassium cyanide. At the same time Uncle Teddy’s words brought back a memory—of Douglas and Stiffy with their heads together giggling as the cake was served.

For a moment I was back on the day of the murder, reliving the nightmare. When I pulled myself together and returned to the present moment, Uncle Teddy had fallen silent and was staring down at the small red berries in his hand—as if surprised to find them there.

‘More,’ said Teddy at length. ‘I shall need some more.’ And with those words he walked rapidly off the gravel drive and plunged once more into the undergrowth. For a while we could hear him thrashing about, then the sights and sounds faded away.

We continued up the drive, following its slow, graceful curves, until the trees around us were replaced by rolling, manicured lawns, and there, ahead of us, was the house itself.

The main part of the building was said to be Elizabethan, with Georgian extensions and stables at the back, and late Victorian refurbishments and plumbing inside. The gravel drive now became a broad circle that swept up to the front door.

Just as we reached the house the door flew open and Inspector Hyde bounced down the steps like an impatient rubber ball. When he saw me standing on the drive he almost skidded to a halt on the gravel.

There was a slightly uncomfortable silence, an aggressive silence on his part, an apprehensive one on mine. Then he said, ‘Good, good, you’re here.’

‘Where did you expect me to be?’

He narrowed his eyes, bared his teeth and breathed heavily. His impersonation of a weasel was becoming more uncanny by the minute. I’m sure any passing stoat would have cheerfully hailed him, calling out, ‘Hey cousin! Nice to see you again. And keep all those non-weasels in line.’

‘I ordered you not to leave the district,’ he said, if heavy breathing counts as speaking, ‘and I’m pleased to see you’re obeying orders.’

‘Inspector Hyde, may I introduce my friend, Mr Lewis. He’s—’

But Hyde interrupted me. ‘I’ve met Mr Lewis before. He interfered in a murder inquiry and hampered police in the course of their duties.’

‘And he solved the murder,’ I pointed out.

‘I’m delighted to see you again,’ said Jack, his round face beaming and his voice at its heartiest and cheeriest.

Hyde ground his teeth in silence for a moment and then growled, ‘Just see you don’t do it again. Don’t stick your oar into an official police investigation. Your theorising is all very well in Oxford, but it’s not welcome here.’

Time to give this pompous man a jab in the ribs, I thought, so I cheerfully asked, ‘So how is the investigation going then?’

The inspector took a few rapid paces down the drive and then turned, spinning in the gravel, and snapped, ‘Scotland Yard is being called in. The Chief Constable has called them in. There was no need. I was on top of the case. I
am
on top of the case. I have my suspect and I’m collecting my evidence. But if Colonel Weatherly wants to call in Scotland Yard that’s . . . well, that’s his prerogative.’

He became quite red in the face during this short speech. Having delivered it, he strode purposefully down the drive and disappeared from view.

‘My guess, young Morris,’ chortled Jack as Hyde vanished around the curve of the drive, ‘is that the Chief Constable has been urging him to call in Scotland Yard since day one. Our friend Hyde is a man for writing rosters and organising traffic duty, not solving puzzles. Now, shall we examine the scene of the crime?’

I led Jack around the corner of the house to the south wing. There, just outside the French windows leading into the drawing room, was the paved terrace and the spreading lawn where we had that fateful tea on the day of the murder. The small marble-topped table was still there, but someone, the gardener presumably, had put the cane chairs away—probably in a garden shed out of the weather.

Jack walked over to the table on the lawn and stood looking down on it for a moment.

‘Now, young Morris, talk me through the seating arrangements.’

So I stood in each of the places around the table where the chairs had been arranged that afternoon, saying such things as ‘I was here’ and (shuffling to my right) ‘Connie was here’ and so on, until I had, Magellan-like, circumnavigated that small world.

‘And the cake was where exactly?’

‘Right in the middle of the table.’

‘Who cut it?’

‘Lady Pamela.’

‘So it came to the table uncut?’

‘It arrived whole. In fact, it was still slightly warm so it can’t have been long out of the oven.’

‘How, exactly, did this cutting proceed?’

‘Well, it was a log-shaped cake so Lady Pamela cut across one end. The end slice can be a bit dry so she put that to one side, then proceeded to cut one slice at a time, and pass it, on a small plate with a cake fork, to the intended recipient.’

‘In what order?’

‘Douglas’s girlfriend got the first slice. Stephanie Bassett, known to one and all as Stiffy, has genuine blue blood, unlike the nouveau riche Lady Pamela. I think the Dyers are quite keen on a match between her and their son, so she is always favoured with attention. Douglas was served next, and then Will—mainly because Will was loudly demanding his slice of the cake, as growing boys are wont to do. Then Lady Pamela served Uncle Teddy, Connie, herself and me last of all. I am only the scholar in residence—not a servant, but not really a proper guest either, so my place is at the end of queue.’

‘Hard to see how a fatal dose of cyanide could get into one slice—a slice freshly cut off the cake—and be totally absent from all the others. What do we know about the cyanide in the slice the victim ate? Was it spread evenly throughout the slice? Or in concentrated clumps?’

‘I’ve heard nothing,’ I admitted.

‘Well perhaps,’ said Jack, filling his pipe, ‘if we ask nicely, this local GP chappie . . .’

‘Dr Henderson.’

‘. . . yes, will tell us.’

Just behind where the table stood was an ancient oak. When in full leaf it provided welcome shade from the summer sun. March was too early for the tree to have begun shooting, so above us were only bare, gnarled and twisted branches.

As we stood there, Jack smoking and thinking and me waiting for his flash of insight, an arrow whistled between us and thudded into the grey trunk of the ancient tree.