C S Lewis and the Country House Murders (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 2) (9 page)

With those words the two Scotland Yard detectives walked back up the hill towards the pub.

Turning to my old tutor and friend beside me I said in despair, ‘What is going on, Jack . . . what is going on?’

He clapped me on the shoulder and in his warmest, friendliest tone said, ‘Come along—let’s take a walk and talk this over.’

In silence we walked down the narrow, winding road out of the village. After some minutes we left the roadway, climbing over a stile at a break in the high hedge at the roadside, and headed off across the moors. We continued to walk in silence until we were well away from any habitation and striding across the purple heather-covered expanse of the moorland.

All the while my thoughts were swirling turbulently in my brain. Finally I said, ‘She’s lying. She must be lying.’

‘Of course she is,’ said Jack complacently. ‘It was obvious to anyone listening to her voice or watching her nervous manner that she was lying. And not very well, either.’

‘Why didn’t you say something? You pretty much left me to my own devices back in that shop,’ I protested.

Jack turned towards me and smiled as he pulled his pipe out of his pocket.

‘I was busy, young Morris,’ he said as he protected the match flame from the wind to light his pipe, ‘busy listening to that girl’s voice and watching her nervous manner.’

‘But you let Inspector Crispin believe . . .’ I was spluttering again.

‘Crispin is no fool,’ Jack responded. ‘I’m confident he reached exactly the same conclusion I did. Of course, if Inspector Hyde had been there you would be behind bars by now. Fortunately, he wasn’t. But be assured that Crispin no more believed her story than I did. And, also like me, he is now puzzling over what it means.’

A chill wind had sprung up and the sun was close to the western horizon. I did up all the buttons on my jacket and from some deep inner pocket Jack produced a scarf which he wound around his neck.

‘Now let’s walk,’ he said. ‘Let this breeze blow away the cobwebs as we work out what’s behind that’s girl’s peculiar actions.’

For a while we tossed back and forth possible explanations for the girl’s lies. I was wondering who might have put her up to it, while Jack speculated as to why.

‘Clearly you have been selected to play the role of scapegoat in this melodrama. And if the real murderer feels in need of such a distraction then the real murderer fears exposure. Why? What discovery are the police close to that might point towards the real killer? And why select you as the red herring?’

‘And what’s Ruth Eggelston’s role in this?’ I asked. ‘How was she persuaded to falsify the poisons book and then lie about it?’

Jack turned towards me with a wide grin and said, ‘Fascinating puzzle, isn’t it?’

‘Not the word I’d use,’ I growled.

Eventually Jack decided that we needed more information before we could reach a rational conclusion, and insisted that we drop the topic in the meantime.

I sank into a glum silence—sulking, I suppose. Jack responded by setting out to cheer me up.

‘Come along, Morris, let’s talk about something else entirely—something that will oil the wheels of your brain and get you thinking vigorously of something other than the coils of this plot you seem to be caught in.’

‘If you wish,’ I replied, a little reluctantly.

‘What were we debating back in the library? Oh yes, death. Or rather, immortality: the probability of post-mortem survival.’

I could see what he was doing—engaging me in a philosophical debate to stop me worrying about my immediate predicament. Clearly he meant well, so I went along with him.

‘Yes, that’s right,’ I said. ‘And I suppose I have no difficulty accepting that the physical world around us is not the whole of reality. But even so . . . is it likely, is it
probable
, that this visible body of mine is, let’s say, an instrument being used by an invisible soul, an invisible person within? After all, I seem very dependent on this material, visible body.’

‘Similarly,’ Jack responded with enthusiasm, ‘a scientist may be dependent—in fact, completely and totally dependent—on his instruments. A scientist can see, know and manipulate the microscopic world only through his scientific instruments. The scientist
uses
his instruments, but it’s not true that he
is
his instruments.’

‘Are you suggesting that the real me within is
using
my body the same way a scientist uses his instruments? But surely appearances are against that,’ I suggested, struggling with the whole line of his argument. ‘Surely ordinary appearances are against your claim that the real Tom Morris is an invisible something—mind, soul, whatever—that is operating inside my brain, inside my body.’

Jack puffed his pipe thoughtfully and then said, ‘Yes, I agree that appearances
are
against it. But then appearances are against the idea that infection is spread by invisible bacteria, that fatal disease can be spread by a virus invisible to the naked eye. The best physicians and surgeons of earlier centuries laughed at the idea that the greatest risks to human health were invisible to them. Nevertheless, it’s the truth.’

‘But can we be certain that the mind and the brain are not identical? That inside me are two things: the visible brain the surgeon can see when he cuts into my skull
and
the invisible mind that is operating the brain like a mechanic operating a piece of machinery?’

‘Well, think of the facts. The people with the biggest and best minds don’t have the biggest brains. Sherlock Holmes, I seem to recall, was impressed by the size of Professor Moriarty’s forehead and from that deduced that the evil professor must have a large brain—and that was the cause of his powerful mind. All such ideas have now been discarded. This Einstein chap we read about in the newspapers clearly has an extremely powerful mind, but his physical brain is exactly the same size as others with half his thinking capacity. Ergo, the mind and brain are not the same thing.’

‘That’s a point, I suppose.’

‘And Dr Havard was telling me quite recently about a paper he read in
The Lancet
which apparently demonstrates that destruction of part of the brain does not necessarily mean destruction of part of the mind. He tells me that some sufferers from a stroke recover fully, and medical science now knows this happens because another part of the brain takes over the functions of the damaged part. This could not happen if the mind and brain were the same thing. Damage to the grey matter, the “little grey cells” your friend Poirot talks about, is just damage to the machinery. The operator of the machinery, the mind, the soul, remains intact and, in some cases, able to carry on working through a different part of the machine.’

‘Don’t blame Poirot on me! It’s your brother Warnie who reads all the detective novels.’

‘Stop trying to dodge the issue, Morris,’ hooted Jack good- naturedly. ‘Do you grant my point?’

‘Yes, I suppose I do,’ I admitted reluctantly. ‘But even so, surely the mind or soul or whatever you call it
needs
the brain—so that when the brain dies, the mind, the soul, must cease to exist.’

‘Does the mechanic cease to exist when the machinery breaks down? The very idea is illogical. Think of the caterpillar in its cocoon. Once it’s completed its transformation into a butterfly it discards the cocoon—it no longer needs it. When the chicken emerges from the egg, it discards the empty shell as no longer needed. There is a pattern in nature telling us that the life within continues, indeed thrives, after it discards the shell, the cocoon, in which it began.’

‘What about evolution?’

‘Evolution does not present a single difficulty in the way of seeing the self as separate from the body. The physical body may well be the product of an evolutionary process, but the self is from the metaphysical realm, from the realm beyond nature. One thing we can be sure of is that evolutionary theory has no relevance to the non-physical—what Socrates called “the higher part of man”.’

I didn’t reply immediately as I needed my breath to climb over a break in a dry-stone wall. Then I reached out to help Jack over. We stood at the bottom of a slope of heather- covered moorland. Above us, at the top of the slope, stood the crumbling remains of an old stone tower.

I was puffing as we clambered up the slope, but I managed to ask, ‘Well, what is the relationship between the two—between the physical body and “the higher part of man”, to use Socrates’ phrase?’

‘Let me give you the answer Socrates would have given,’ said Jack, pausing to catch his breath. ‘In his Athenian death cell, waiting for the fatal cup of hemlock, this question was discussed. Some of the old philosopher’s friends compared man to a harp and man’s mental life to the melody played on the strings of the harp. The physical body, they said, is the instrument that gives voice to the music of the mind. And the music, they said, cannot outlast the destruction of the harp. But Socrates insisted that man is neither the harp nor the tune played on the harp. Rather, he said, man is the harpist who plays the tune upon the strings. The harpist depends on the harp to make music, but not for his existence, since the player may leave one instrument and find another. A good image of life after death, young Morris.’

At this point he ran out of breath, and I didn’t try to reply as we both puffed up the last, and steepest, part of the slope.

This brought us to the foot of the crumbling stone tower. I flopped down on a large block of stone and leaned back against the tower wall. Jack, now flushed and warm from walking, unwound his scarf and tapped the ashes out of his pipe.

‘What is this place?’ he asked when he’d caught his breath.

‘The locals call it “Bosham’s Folly”. Although I’ve heard the more superstitious among them call it the “Black Tower”.’

‘It’s made from a darkish basalt rock so “Black Tower” I understand. But why “Bosham’s Folly”?’

‘It was built by an earlier Lord Bosham. I think about a hundred and fifty years ago, more or less. The family call it the Hunting Tower because that was its original purpose—to serve as a base for parties from Plumwood Hall when they were grouse shooting on the moors. But it hasn’t been used for years.’

I rose from where I was seated and walked slowly around the base of the tower.

‘Jack . . . around here,’ I called out from the far side. ‘Look—a door,’ I said when he joined me. ‘The view of the landscape from the top of this tower would, I think, be quite wonderful. It should be possible to see as far as the coast.’

With these words I tried the heavy wooden door but found it securely locked. I shook it and it rattled in its doorframe but refused to open. I remarked that it was unfortunate that the tower was locked up, and offered to ask at the house for a key, to give us a goal for our next walk on the moors.

Then, with dusk drawing in around us, we retraced our steps and headed back towards the village.

By the time we had regained the road to the village a dim, purple twilight had fallen. The cries of night birds had begun, and in the distance an owl hooted. As we rounded a bend in the road I saw that an early moon had crept over the horizon, adding a dim, silver shine among the purple shadows. The wind had died and the night was still and calm, but wisps of cloud were drifting blackly over the face of the moon, and as I scanned the dark blue of the evening sky I saw a threatening bank of clouds beginning to build.

‘Might be rain in those,’ I muttered. ‘We should hurry along.’

Hedges towered on either side of the road, and behind the hedges tall trees reached out their crooked, clawed arms like threatening giants.

The brisk walking had warmed us up, and I unbuttoned my jacket. In the dying evening light my cheek brushed against the twigs of an overhanging branch, and I flinched and pulled back—as if it were the legs of a large, black spider that I had felt so briefly.

A dull, red glow was coming from Jack’s pipe and he was puffing contentedly. I was pleased to have his rugged good sense and robust honesty beside me, for—whether from our earlier conversation about the fate of the dead or not—a sense of the uncanny had crept upon me.