C S Lewis and the Country House Murders (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 2) (16 page)

‘I think you’re pulling my leg, Mr Lewis,’ said Constable Nile ponderously. ‘And if you are, well, you’re quite mistaken, that’s all I can say.’

‘Have you ever seen this “wild man of the woods” yourself?’ I asked.

‘Only once, at a distance, and he took off before I could get to him.’

‘What do people say about him?’ I continued. ‘Is he a native from South America, covered in tattoos?’

‘No! Of course not!’ said Nile very seriously. Then he opened his eyes wide, and a light went on somewhere behind his eyeballs—it was like seeing the sun’s rays break into the bedroom when you flick back the blinds in the morning. ‘That’s Drax you’re describing, that is.’

‘So you know about Drax?’ said Jack, suddenly interested.

‘I think most folk around here do. Not that we ever see him, of course. He keeps himself to himself. But we know Lady Pamela lets him stay in the old gamekeeper’s cottage.’

‘That’s the isolated cottage out on the moors?’ Jack prompted.

‘Aye, that’s it,’ Nile agreed, nodding earnestly and taking a sip of his brandy and soda.

‘And who lives there with him?’ Jack continued, now looking very interested indeed.

‘What makes you think there’s someone else there?’ said an astonished Nile, his eyebrows shooting up his forehead like startled caterpillars who’ve just heard the heavy footfalls of the gardener approaching with the insect spray.

The policeman recovered from his surprise and added, ‘He’s a solitary bird who lives on his own. That’s a strange idea you’ve got there, Mr Lewis.’

Jack continued to probe, and in response the constable explained that the gossip that had come down to the village from the Hall was that Drax had been Edmund Trelawney’s bearer. I knew that Trelawney was Lady Pamela’s maiden name, so his words made sense to me.

Nile painted a picture of Drax as the faithful servant who carried his master’s packs through the wilds of the deep Amazon jungle. When Edmund became seriously ill, Drax carried the sick man as well as the baggage back to the river. Then he brought Edmund down the Amazon by boat hoping to get him to civilisation and medical treatment—but the Englishman died before they could reach help. The faithful Drax had contacted the family through the British embassy, and then insisted on accompanying the body home.

‘That is extraordinary loyalty,’ said Jack. ‘Most admirable. But why has he stayed? Has there been any gossip as to why he’s not returned to his own people but instead lives alone in a remote cottage on our wet and windswept moors?’

Nile found this question puzzling. ‘Well, this is England, isn’t it? Anyone would rather live here than in some jungle full of savage animals and deadly diseases. I suppose he’ll go back eventually. But you can hardly blame him for enjoying England while he can.’

‘But surely the odd thing is,’ Jack persisted, ‘that’s he not. He’s not travelling to London to see Big Ben and Tower Bridge and the Houses of Parliament. He’s just sitting alone in a cottage on the moors. Would you call that enjoying England?’

Nile gave a knowing smirk. ‘It all depends on the alternative, Mr Lewis. I read an article in the Sunday paper about that there Amazonian jungle. Sounded most unpleasant to me. I think this Drax has found a more comfortable spot, and he probably intends to hang on to it for a while.’

‘And this Drax,’ I interrupted, ‘he’s definitely not the wild man of woods?’

Charlie Nile laughed indulgently. ‘Not a chance, Mr Morris,’ he said. ‘The wild man of the woods has been seen once or twice—on those nights when there’s a full moon you understand—sometimes from not very far away.’

‘And . . . ?’ I said, wanting him to continue.

‘It’s definitely an Englishman. That’s what they say. A fairhaired Englishman. Looking all wild and dishevelled like, but one of us . . . so to speak.’

‘So how do you account for him?’ said Jack, finishing his brandy and soda and leaning back in his armchair. ‘How do you account for this wild man of the woods?’

‘You’ll just laugh at me again if I tell you,’ said Nile cautiously, looking like a man whose rendition of ‘The Road to Mandalay’ has gone down badly at the annual village concert and who is doubtful about risking another tune.

‘I promise you I won’t—I’m asking you quite seriously. Now, tell me: what’s your theory?’

‘Well, sir, to be quite honest, I think he might be one of them tormented souls from the next life.’

‘A ghost?’ I asked.

‘Aye, Mr Morris—a ghost. They do say as how the Black Tower is haunted. That would account for our “local phenomenon”, as you’d probably call it, Mr Lewis. That would explain why the wild man of the woods only turns up rarely and is never seen by daylight.’

‘Is that why the Black Tower is kept locked these days?’ I asked.

Constable Nile expressed surprise. He’d grown up in the district and it was well known that the tower was never locked, he said. If we found it locked now, well, he couldn’t explain that.

Jack asked how long the wild man of the woods had been making appearances. Nile said it had only been in the last eighteen months, and then he said no, I tell a lie, it must be at least two years.

Jack asked: why now? What had stirred up the ghost of a tower built in the last century and not used for many years? Why had the ghostly apparition only recently taken up roaming the woods at night as a professional activity? The constable hummed and stuttered but had no real answer to this.

Despite my interest in local folklore, I steered the village policeman back to the subject of the latest murder at Plumwood Hall.

‘Inspector Crispin told us it looks like another case of cyanide poisoning,’ I said.

‘Did he indeed?’ said Nile, with one of his caterpillar-like eyebrows making a quizzical dance across his forehead as he spoke. Jack rumbled out a comment to the effect that we were on Crispin’s list of people he trusted.

‘Well . . . in that case . . .’ Nile said cautiously, ‘I suppose there’s no harm in my telling you a bit more about it. I suppose it’s all right . . .’

We sat there in silent suspense waiting for Nile to definitely make up his mind as to whether this was a sharing moment or not. He eventually decided it was.

‘The brass are telling us the same thing. Not that they tell us much, mind you. But I heard Dr Henderson talking about cyanide poisoning. The question then, of course, is: how was the cyanide served up to the poor girl? And from what I heard there’s no doubt that it was in the sherry she drank—that glass of dry sherry. They won’t know for sure until there are tests on the glass and the bottle, but both the inspectors seem to think there’s not much room for doubt.’

‘How did it get in there? That must be the next question,’ said Jack.

‘Aye, and I was talking to Sergeant Merrivale about that. He said the problem was that the bottles of sherry and port had been left standing on a small table in the hall outside the butler’s pantry while dinner was served. And dinner service takes quite a long time. That being so, anyone could have got at the bottle of dry sherry and slipped in some cyanide. That’s what Sergeant Merrivale thinks.’

Jack and I continued tossing around ideas about the murders—for we were now thinking in the plural—until quite late that night. Finally we gave up. Jack went up to his room and I returned to the Hall, with an agreement that we’d meet after breakfast the next day and set out some positive steps to take in our investigation.

I slept badly. I tossed and turned all night like a sailor on a tramp steamer trying to settle into his hammock while crossing the South China Sea during a typhoon. I woke feeling like something the cat had dragged in and then had second thoughts about and discarded as inedible.

Having breakfasted on toast and coffee, and not much of either, I turned my back on my duties in the library of Plumwood Hall and set out for the village. I found Jack disposing of a large plate of sausages and scrambled eggs with enthusiasm. The difference in our appetites can be put down to the fact that he was cast as Sherlock Holmes in our little mystery while I had been given the role of Professor Moriarty, homicidal fiend.

‘Jack,’ I said wearily, sinking into the seat opposite him and pouring myself a large cup of tea, ‘what do we do this morning? I’m counting on your giant brain to find a path that will divert me from the hangman’s gallows.’

‘You’re in a grim mood this morning, young Morris,’ he mumbled through a mouthful of breakfast. ‘Sleep badly?’

I acknowledged a lack of acquaintance between myself and the Land of Nod that had been going on for some nights now.

‘Be of good cheer, Morris,’ said Jack, finishing his breakfast as rapidly as he finished every meal and rising from his chair. ‘This morning we shall resume our conversation with the village constable. Charlie Nile was just beginning to get interesting last night when, like most country folk, he left at an early hour to toddle off to bed and get his requisite eight hours.’

We had got him talking about the murders, I remembered, and he had begun to tell us what the police team members were saying amongst themselves. I could see the value in what Jack proposed, so we left the pub and headed off in the direction of the police cottage.

We walked out into weather that was entirely out of sympathy with my inner turmoil. The skies were blue, the sun was shining, the flowers were in bloom and the birds were bellowing away at the top of their little lungs from every tree branch. That’s the problem with the weather; it can never strike the right note. There I was, ready for dark storm clouds and forecasts of gales blowing in from the North Sea, and all the weather could give me was a vacuous smile. My heart was heavily overcast with expectations of low temperatures and high winds—none of which the department of meteorology had managed to mirror.

To make matters worse, the Plumwood police cottage looked like something from a postcard—it was thatched and ivy covered with a flourishing rose garden in front. It appeared that Constable Nile kept the village crime rate down with one hand while raising award-winning roses with the other.

We pushed open the wicket gate and walked up the path towards the front door. As we approached we could hear snatches of conversation drifting out of an open window. Recognising the voices as those of the two inspectors—the local man, Hyde, and Crispin from Scotland Yard—we paused to listen.

‘I’ll issue an arrest warrant if you won’t.’ The voice that was speaking was that of Hyde. I couldn’t actually see the speaker but those poisonous nasal tones could belong to no one else.

I stepped over the herbaceous border onto the neatly trimmed front lawn and looked in through the open window. The two speakers were too deeply engrossed in what was clearly a debate, a clash of iron wills, to notice me. Both were seated in overstuffed armchairs. Hyde was leaning eagerly forward while Crispin was leaning back with his arms folded. On the wall behind Crispin was a framed photograph of His Majesty King George V, while behind Hyde was a glass case full of stuffed birds.

‘You are being much too hasty, Hyde,’ said the Scotland Yard man in measured tones. ‘There is, as yet, not sufficient evidence.’

‘There’s been a second murder!’ snapped Hyde, whose long snout was looking less like a rat on this sunny morning and rather more like a fox—a fox that has found its way into the henhouse with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other and is determined to have a feast while it’s there. ‘How many more murders do there have to be before you act? He needs to be safely behind bars.’

‘The death of Miss Bassett is a great tragedy,’ Crispin agreed. ‘However, I cannot share your certainty, and I cannot act in the absence of clearer evidence.’

‘There is evidence of motive,’ insisted Hyde.

‘Inadequate evidence. The clash between Morris and Mrs Worth was clearly an insignificant, low-voltage affair that could not, by any stretch of the imagination, motivate a murder.’

‘There is evidence of opportunity.’

‘Again, I can’t entirely agree. There is evidence of proximity to the victim in the first murder, but no one saw Morris do anything to tamper with the dead woman’s food. And there is no evidence of opportunity in the second murder.’

‘Everyone had the opportunity to tamper with Miss Bassett’s dry sherry.’

‘Saying “everyone” fails to narrow it down to Morris. And we have no motive for Morris to be involved in the second murder.’

‘As yet. Get him under lock and key and interrogate him intensely. He’ll crack. He’ll tell us why he did it.’

‘If, indeed, he did do it.’

When iron wills clash the sparks fly. At that moment, in the cosy front sitting room of the Plumwood police cottage, there was a cascade of sparks that one might expect in the forge of a demented blacksmith.

What worried me was this stuff about ‘intense interrogation’. Exactly what that involved wasn’t clear, but it sounded rather like having a dentist drill into a badly infected tooth without the benefit of a local anaesthetic while being asked a lot of questions. Or, at least, something along those lines.

‘What more do you want?’ demanded Hyde.

‘I want the method,’ replied Inspector Crispin, with all the authority that came from being part of the Detective Branch of the Metropolitan Police.