C S Lewis and the Country House Murders (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 2) (5 page)

‘So far so good,’ I said cautiously. ‘A poem can have different forms of material existence—as marks on paper, or vibrations in the air, or impulses in the brain. Yes, I can see that.’

‘But what is it that’s expressed in those different physical forms? What is the “it” that they record? What is the thing each of those expressions has in common? What is the poem itself? The marks on paper are not the poem—they just record it. The vibrations in the air when the poem is read aloud are not the poem—they’re just the sound of the poem. The impulses in the brain when the poem is memorised are not the poem—they’re just the brain’s recording of the poem. So what is the “it” they record or express? What is the poem itself?’

My brain was starting to ache as predicted, so I just nodded.

‘You see there are four things here, not three: the ink marks on paper, the sound vibrations in the air, the electrical impulses in the brain plus that fourth thing that is the cause of the other three: the poem itself. The real thing, the poem itself, is a non-material entity—it’s not a physical thing at all. It can be physically expressed or recorded, but the thing itself is not its physical recordings or expressions—it’s something else. And it’s that “something else” that is recorded or expressed. Are you with me so far?’

‘I think so.’

‘The example of the poem demonstrates that there exists at least one thing that is a non-material, non-physical entity—namely, the blend of ideas, feelings, words and images that make up this poem. Ideas are non-physical and the unique blend of ideas that comprises this particular poem is a non-physical entity. In other words: non-physical entities exist. Consequently, it’s clear that the world consists of more than just the material, more than just the physical.’

Jack grinned broadly as he slapped me on the shoulder and continued, ‘The poem is more than—it exists independently of—marks or vibrations or impulses. In just the same way, the human personality is expressed in physical matter but is something much more than physical matter. Your personality, Morris, your being—the real you—is, just like the poem, a non-material, non-physical entity.’

Jack lowered his booming voice and said more warmly and intimately, ‘The real Tom Morris, the “you” inside you, doesn’t need a lump of damp, squashy brain tissue to exist. The poem is something other than the paper just as the human personality, the human mind, is something other than the brain. The poem can survive the destruction of the paper, and the human personality can survive the dissolution of the body.’

Silently I absorbed the enormous idea he had just sketched out, as Jack continued, ‘Life after death, Morris—life after death!’

When I remained silent he added, ‘At least consider the possibility.’

I was about to reply when the library door was flung open and Lady Pamela stood framed in the doorway. As she advanced towards us, Jack turned to me and said quietly, ‘We shall resume this discussion another time. Agreed?’

‘Agreed.’

Lady Pamela’s face was grim as she walked the length of that long room towards us.

‘Ah, Mr Morris, here you are,’ she said coldly. ‘I see you’ve brought a friend of yours into our house.’

‘Lady Pamela, may I introduce my old Oxford tutor, C. S. Lewis.’

‘How do you do, Mr Lewis? And what is the purpose of your visit?’

She was shorter than both Jack and me yet somehow she contrived to look down on us. Some sort of optical illusion, I suppose.

‘I’m here,’ said Jack affably, ‘because of the recent tragedy in your house, and the shadow this may cast over my young friend, Mr Morris.’

Lady Pamela sniffed audibly and said, ‘I’m quite sure the police are perfectly capable of conducting their own affairs without assistance from members of the public.’

She somehow managed to make ‘members of the public’ sound like an unsavoury group to belong to—as if it consisted mainly of garbage collectors, street sweepers and pickpockets.

‘Actually,’ I began defensively, ‘on a previous occasion Jack was able to help—’

‘Oh, I’m sure,’ she interrupted, ‘that on rare occasions rank amateurs will have something to contribute. But I suggest that for the time being we leave this to the professionals.’

She made me feel as if I was twelve years old and had been caught flicking ink balls at my little sister. I went pink and began to stutter as I explained, ‘We did meet Sir William down in the village and he encouraged Mr Lewis to visit.’

She glared at me. She had a glare that could kill a charging bull elephant at fifty paces. Her glare had been known to penetrate stone walls and cause solid objects to spontaneously burst into flames. It was a glare Attila the Hun might have been able to withstand, but only when surrounded by most of his army.

Jack smiled warmly and said, ‘If I am in the way or underfoot, Lady Pamela, please just bid me depart and I shall leave at once.’

Lady Pamela dismissed this attempt at affable humility with one wave of her hand as she muttered coldly, ‘If my husband said you can be here, then, of course, you must.’

‘It seems,’ said Jack enthusiastically, ‘that the police have settled on the foolish notion that Morris here might be guilty of murder. I know Morris well, and I’m here to defend his character by showing how any circumstances that might count against him are not as black as they first appear.’

‘You must, of course, do whatever you think is best for your friend.’

I thought Lady Pamela was about to turn and leave the library, but she was stopped by a question from Jack: ‘What about yourself, Lady Pamela? Are you as confident of Tom Morris’s innocence as your husband appears to be?’

‘I’m sure I really couldn’t say,’ she replied, looking me up and down as if I were a streak of mildew staining the wallpaper. ‘He’s always struck me as a nice enough young man and seems to be a competent scholar at this business’ (she dismissed the whole library with a sweeping gesture of her right hand) ‘but of course one can never really know with people, can one?’

This was clearly Lady Pamela the grocer’s daughter working hard at giving the performance she imagined an earl’s daughter might give.

Jack ignored the performance and pursued the questions he wanted answered. ‘Could you tell me something about your cousin, Lady Pamela—the murder victim, Mrs Constance Worth. What was she like? Did she have enemies?’

‘I don’t care to discuss Connie outside of the family.’

‘But she wasn’t popular, was she?’ I said, trying to push her towards an answer.

She focussed her high voltage glare on me again before replying, ‘She was family. And family is family.’

‘Often the key to unravelling a murder,’ said Jack, entirely undeterred, ‘is understanding the victim. One must presume she was not chosen at random. So who chose her? And why? Was she, as young Morris suggests, generally unpopular?’

Instead of focussing her death ray glare on Jack, Lady Pamela took a deep breath, and in the manner of someone explaining a simple fact to a slow child, said, ‘Poor Connie was a widow. At least she was presumed to be widow.’

‘Presumed?’ asked Jack.

‘Her husband disappeared just over a year ago. Connie and Charles were visiting us here when Charles went out for a walk. He loved walking and generally walked alone. He never came back, and his body was never discovered. The police traced his steps as far as they could, which wasn’t very far. Finally they presumed that he’d walked across towards the coast. Some of the clifftops there are very dangerous. If he’d fallen, his body could have been carried out to sea.’

‘That must have put your cousin in quite an awkward position,’ Jack suggested.

‘Oh, I suppose so,’ Lady Pamela replied irritably. ‘It was certainly awkward financially. It was Charles who had all the money. With no body, his will, leaving all his money and all his property to Connie, couldn’t go through probate, so poor Connie was rather dependent on the charity of family.’

‘Which is why she was here?’

Lady Pamela did not say anything but there was a slight nod.

Again she turned to leave and again Jack stopped her with a question. ‘On the subject of family, we were talking to your son Will a short time ago—or, rather, he was talking to us—about your late brother Edmund.’

I chimed in and said, ‘I was rather surprised—I’ve never heard much about Edmund.’

‘There’s no reason why you should,’ she snapped. ‘You are here as a visiting scholar—you are not actually a member of the family.’

Both Jack and I waited to see if she would add anything, but her lips remained firmly and grimly closed.

‘Will said that Edmund is dead . . .’ I began, after a long silence.

‘There is no reason why I should discuss any members of my family with you,’ she repeated.

At this point Jack boomed in with his hearty voice to say, ‘Uncle Teddy seems like a delightful old chap.’

Lady Pamela actually smiled. ‘Poor old Uncle Teddy,’ she said. ‘He’s harmless. We like to indulge him.’

‘Do his experiments at inventing ever come to anything?’ asked Jack.

‘Of course not! He’s just playing around. He has the mind of a child. He never does anyone any harm.’

Jack opened his mouth to ask another question, but before he could speak Lady Pamela said, ‘I have household affairs I must be about. Nice to have met you, Mr Lewis. And I trust, Mr Morris, that your work in our library is close to being concluded.’

She didn’t wait for a response but turned on her heel and stalked out of the room.

When she was gone I turned to Jack and asked, ‘Anything useful there?’

‘Quite a bit. We need to find out more about the history of Connie Worth. Do you think some of the younger members of the family might tell us?’

‘Possibly. Will would certainly tell whatever he knows, but it might not be much.’

‘Second,’ Jack resumed, ‘did you notice how quickly she dropped the topic of her late brother Edmund? Whatever happened to him she certainly doesn’t want to talk about it. And third, it was striking that she twice in the space of two sentences told us that Uncle Teddy was “harmless”. Did she think we needed to hear that? Is she afraid that Uncle Teddy’s dottiness might take a homicidal turn? Why this stress on how “harmless” he is?’

‘A more practical question now,’ said Jack, abruptly changing the topic. ‘The question of how the poison got into the cake.’

‘What do you suggest?’ I asked.

‘Tracing the progress of the cake from the oven to the table.’

So I led Jack out of the library, down the corridor and through the green baize door that led to the servants’ part of Plumwood Hall. Here, towards the back of the house, was the huge kitchen presided over by the cook, Mrs Buckingham.

She was a small, bossy woman—no more than five foot tall. In fact, she was probably about five foot in every direction, a round bun of a woman—but an unbaked bun. She had the pale grey, puffy look of unbaked dough—and the sprinkling of flour that always covered her person added to this impression.

I introduced her to Jack, who sniffed the kitchen aromas appreciatively and said, ‘There is nothing nicer than the smell of baking bread.’

Mrs Buckingham beamed so brightly she resembled the Cheshire cat in Alice—all smile, and almost nothing but smile.

‘Mrs B’s bread is magical, Jack,’ I said. ‘Golden crust on the outside, soft and warm on the inside.’

‘May I make a confession to you, Mrs Buckingham?’ said Jack. ‘When I was a small boy my brother Warren and I would sometimes sneak into the kitchen and break open a freshly baked loaf to eat the soft, warm bread out of the middle.’

The cook wagged an admonitory finger at him and said, ‘Just like all small boys. And if you’d tried that in my kitchen you’d have got a good walloping with a wooden spoon.’

Jack roared with laughter as he said, ‘And thoroughly deserved it would have been too. As all small boys know, the trick is not to get caught. Now, Mrs Buckingham, the problem we face at the moment is that there is every likelihood the murderer of Mrs Worth will also not be caught. So would you mind if I asked you a few questions about that day?’

The cook trembled slightly, like a lump of dough on a tray being shaken. ‘I get goosebumps on my goosebumps just thinking about that day. Whoever that person was—that awful murdering person—how dare he use one of my cakes to commit his crime! How dare he!’