C S Lewis and the Country House Murders (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 2) (4 page)

To say that Jack and I were startled would be an understatement. In the words of the great Wodehouse, we were as startled as the man who, while bending over to pick flowers beside the railway line, was struck in the small of the back by the Cornwall Express.

As I looked around for the source of this attack, and for other possible flying missiles, Will emerged from the French windows with a sheepish grin on his young face and a bow in his hand.

‘I say . . . sorry, Tom . . . sorry, sir,’ he said as he walked across the terrace, trying not to look too pleased. ‘But my aim’s jolly good, isn’t it? I got it right between the two of you and into the tree trunk.’

‘You should be scalped, young Will,’ I said, trying to look stern. Will responded by grinning more broadly.

‘We haven’t been introduced,’ said Jack.

‘This scoundrel is Will Dyer, and this gentleman, Will, is my old Oxford tutor, C. S. Lewis.’

‘How do you do, sir? I’m very pleased to meet you.’

Jack was amused by Will’s cheeky charm and responded, ‘So how did you learn such deadly skill with the bow and arrow?’

‘My Uncle Edmund taught me. He knew about these things.’

‘That’s someone I’ve not met, Will,’ I said, ‘although I’ve heard him occasionally mentioned. Who is Uncle Edmund?’

‘He’s dead,’ replied the boy, with the cold indifference of youth. ‘He was mama’s younger brother. He was an explorer.’

‘And whereabouts did he do his exploring?’ asked Jack.

‘Mostly in South America. In the jungles, you know. He brought back jolly interesting things—native weapons, that sort of thing.’

‘And he taught you how to shoot?’ I asked.

‘We used to aim at targets here on the terrace. Uncle Edmund taught me and the Pater to use a slingshot too, and a blowpipe. The slingshot was used by gauchos—it came from Argentina, and the blowpipe came from Brazil. And we’re deadly accurate with all of them. Sometimes Edmund and I would lean out of the window of my bedroom up there, and fire at targets down here on the terrace.’

‘How did he die?’ I asked.

‘One of those tropical diseases,’ said Will with a shrug of the shoulders.

‘Your practice sessions must have made the terrace a rather dangerous spot to be,’ said Jack with a laugh, ‘what with arrows and darts and slingshot pellets raining down on the place.’

‘Of course not!’ responded Will, deeply offended. ‘Me and Uncle Edmund were both very accurate—we never hit anyone we didn’t aim at.’

‘Very comforting words, young Will,’ I said, with the merest hint of sarcasm. And turning to Jack I said, ‘All this talk of objects raining down on the terrace reminds me of
Young Men in Spats.
’

‘Remarkable,’ said Jack. ‘Why, exactly, should the dangers of walking on the terrace remind you of an article of clothing?’

‘No, no,’ I hurried to explain, ‘
Young Men in Spats
is a book I’ve just been reading by P. G. Wodehouse. In it he tells the story of Freddy Widgeon, who was staying in a house much like this when, to his great horror, he saw a tortoiseshell cat attacking the dress shirt he’d laid out to wear for dinner. Uttering a hoarse cry, Freddie scooped up the offending animal and flung it out of the window. Unfortunately, walking on the terrace, and directly in the path of the projectile cat, was his host, Sir Mortimer Prenderby—whose daughter Freddy was hoping to marry. Suffice it to say, having biffed his prospective father-in-law with a flying feline, things did not end well for Freddie.’

Will, having no interest in my literary ramblings, asked, ‘Does that policeman still suspect you of the murder, Tom?’

‘He appears to,’ I replied. ‘In fact, he seems to be obsessed by the notion.’

‘Then he’s stupid,’ Will said firmly.

‘Most encouraging,’ said Jack. ‘You appear to be quite convinced of Mr Morris’s innocence.’

‘I am.’

‘On what grounds?’

‘On the grounds that anyone with a cricket blue from Oxford couldn’t possibly be a murderer.’

‘I see,’ said Jack thoughtfully, ‘this is clearly a line of reasoning the police are yet to explore.’

‘You’re not a bad cricketer yourself, young Will,’ I said. ‘You bowl a very fast swing ball.’

Will grinned broadly as he explained, ‘The last time we played, Mr Lewis, Tom wasn’t quick enough getting out of the way of my demon ball. I hit him right on the hand, near the thumb. It was all purple and swollen after the game. He couldn’t write with it for a week.’

‘Fascinating as these sporting accomplishments are, it’s a different topic I want to hear your opinion on, Will,’ said Jack. ‘Since you are so certain of my friend’s innocence, who do you think is the guilty party? Who committed the murder?’

‘My poisonous brother Douglas, of course, and his equally poisonous girlfriend, Stiffy. It’s just the sort of thing they would do.’

These words made me stop and think. They appeared to be nothing more than fraternal friction—but this was the second time that day we had heard Douglas named as the killer. Why were both Uncle Teddy and young Will accusing Douglas? Were both comments blind prejudice? Or were they seeing something in Douglas’s character that we should be looking into?

Thoughts of Douglas as a murderer—either with or without the aid of Stiffy, his girlfriend or fiancée (I wasn’t sure which)—continued to occupy my mind as I led Jack into the house to show him the library and the work that had occupied me for most of the past year.

The library of Plumwood Hall was a long, narrow room, with tall, narrow windows overlooking the front drive on one side and floor-to-ceiling bookcases on the other. All the bookcases were protected by leaded-glass doors, so even the most ancient of bibliographic memorabilia—or “books” for the slow boy at the back of the class—were in remarkably good condition.

‘Anything of interest in the collection?’ Jack asked.

‘A complete bound set of Addison and Steele’s
Spectator.
First editions of Richardson’s
Pamela
and Fielding’s
Tom Jones
. The original pamphlet edition of Johnson’s
Vanity of Human Wishes.
There’s a large number of old legal texts in heavy leather bindings. All the standard classical authors—some looking as though they were purchased by an early Lord Bosham because the spines would look good on his shelves. I’ve found uncut pages in a number of them.’

‘And?’ asked Jack with a twinkle in his eye. ‘What is the gem of the collection? I can tell from your manner, Morris, that there is some delight here you’ve not yet told me about.’

‘You always could see through me, Jack,’ I said. ‘Only a fortnight ago, digging into a remote shelf in a corner of the room, I found a 1597 quarto of
Romeo and Juliet
.’

‘Have you told your employer of this remarkable find?’

‘Not yet. I wanted to verify it first. In fact, while you’re here I’d like you to take a look at it. And I’ve written to Sotheby’s asking for an estimate of what its value might be. I’m still waiting for their reply. I’ll tell Sir William when I can lay out all the facts and impress him a little.’

Jack wandered slowly down the long length of the room, glancing at the spines that packed the shelves. When he got to the far end he paused, turned around and, looking me straight in the eye, said, ‘And what about you, Morris? How are you coping with all of this?’

Jack always was very direct. It was one of the things I most admired about him, although some saw it as a character defect.

‘I feel like a chap,’ I said slowly, ‘out on a country walk who sees a dark thundercloud form rapidly, and rain begin falling in heavy sheets on the next hillside. He sees the storm moving towards him—but he has nowhere to run. There’s no shelter, no protection from the rapidly advancing downpour of freezing rain.’

After a silence I added quietly, ‘I find myself thinking about death rather a lot.’

Jack just looked at me, with that round, open, honest, caring face of his, so I continued, ‘Well, I was there—right beside her—when Connie’s life was just snuffed out. One moment she was a vibrant personality, a living mind, even if a rather unpleasant one, and the next she had abruptly cancelled all her magazine subscriptions.’

I pictured the moment as I said, ‘It was like seeing the lights go out and the shutters being nailed up over a house that’s just been vacated by its occupant.’

‘There’s always a sense of theft about death,’ said Jack, ‘a sense of a life stolen.’

‘And it’s not just Connie’s death I’m thinking about,’ I continued, determined to spill the beans while I had the courage. ‘It’s also my own.’

‘What!’ snorted Jack. ‘You look perfectly hale and hearty to me, young Morris. Why such morbid thoughts?’

‘If the odious Hyde has his way, my haleness and heartiness won’t help when I’m being led to the gallows by the hangman. Having a spring in my step as I walk to the noose is little comfort,’ I said anxiously. ‘I’m not ready to be annihilated yet.’

‘Is that what you think death is? Annihilation?’

‘That’s what I’m facing—annihilation . . . snuffed out like a flickering flame.’

‘Annihilation?’ he asked again.

‘Jack, be realistic. It must be. Science has told us enough to know that our minds are just electrical impulses running around the synapses in our brains. When the blood supply is turned off and the synapses stop firing, all those electrical impulses cease to be—they are annihilated. That means
we
are annihilated. It must mean that.’

Jack threw back his head and roared with laughter. ‘You really must stop reading those popular science articles in the newspapers, young Morris.’

I said nothing, but I raised my eyebrows, so Jack continued, ‘It’s possible to be scientific without being a materialist. You can be as scientific as you like and still be convinced that materialism is only half the story.’

Somewhere, in the deep recesses of the dark cave where my feelings were hiding, a small, warm candle flame of hope flickered into life.

‘Go on,’ I said.

‘Materialism—the belief that matter is everything, that there is nothing but matter—is a creed, like any other creed. And it must be defended logically, just like any other creed. However, I don’t think it can be. In the end materialism is illogical—so then we have to ask: what is beyond the physical, what is beyond the material? For in that realm lies life after death, and since death is a certainty for all of us, that’s a realm worth exploring.’

‘Hold on, hold on,’ I said, waving my hands and pacing across the room. ‘You’re going much too fast for me. Are you saying that death is not being snuffed out like a candle? That death is not annihilation? That the life, the personality, the memories and all the rest of it of an individual can continue beyond physical death?’

‘That’s exactly what I’m saying.’

‘Then Connie, the Connie I knew, the “Ice Queen”, as young Will called her, still exists? That personality is still intact somewhere? Or somehow? Or in some form?’

‘That’s certainly what I believe. That’s certainly what the creeds of the church have taught for the past two thousand years.’

‘But in the age of science . . .’ I began.

‘Come now, Morris,’ said Jack. ‘We’ve discussed these things before. We’ve agreed that all that science can study is the physical. So if there is anything beyond the physical we need to turn to something other than science to discover it. And I believe there are strong arguments that make it clear to any open mind that the world consists of more than just the material, more than just the physical.’

‘Such as?’

We’d been walking slowly down the full length of the library, and at this point Jack stopped suddenly, flung open the glass door on one of the bookcases and pulled out a volume his eye had spotted.

‘Here we are,’ he chortled with glee, ‘Wordsworth. Now open this little book up to any page and examine whatever poem you find there.’

‘Examine? How?’

‘Ah! That’s exactly the point!’ As he spoke Jack was thumbing through the book until he found ‘Lines Composed above Tintern Abbey’. ‘Now, how would you go about analysing this?’ he said as he thrust the book into my hand.

‘Well . . .’ I said cautiously, suspecting one of Jack’s famous logical traps, ‘. . . just as we did in tutorials. I’d look at the images, at the language, at the flow of ideas . . .’

‘Stop!’ cried Jack. ‘That’s just what I would expect you to do. Now analyse the poem as a materialist.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘Analyse that poem as if matter is all that exists, and that there is nothing other than matter.’

‘In that case . . .’ I began slowly, for I was starting to see Jack’s point, ‘. . . the only matter that exists here for me to analyse is black marks on white paper.’

‘But,’ said Jack, with a gleeful grin on his face, ‘the marks on paper are not the poem. They record the poem. They print the poem. But they are not the poem itself.’

‘Go on,’ I said hesitantly, suspecting Jack was about to launch into one of those rigorous logical arguments of his that would make my brain ache.

‘Wordsworth’s poem can be materially, physically manifested, as it is in this book, as black marks on white paper. Or if someone reads it aloud it would be materially, physically manifested as sound vibrations in the air. Or if somebody memorised it, it would exist materially, physically as those electrical impulses in the brain you spoke of earlier.’