C S Lewis and the Country House Murders (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 2) (30 page)

Will said, ‘He looks a bit like . . .’

Douglas said, with a note of anger in his voice, ‘Uncle Edmund has a headstone in the churchyard. He’s buried there. This man is an imposter.’

Will said, ‘I don’t understand . . .’

‘We’ll explain,’ said Sir William. And he told the story Jack and I had heard the night before from Lady Pamela.

‘Your Uncle Edmund contracted a rare tropical disease in the upper Amazon. I believe it’s some sort of mosquito-borne infection. It was Drax who saved his life by getting him downriver where he could receive medical attention. You can see the marks it’s left on poor Edmund’s face.’ Sir William hesitated, so Lady Pamela took over. ‘It’s also affected his mind,’ she said.

The boys stared, their eyes wide open in astonishment. Edmund staggered slightly and Sir William helped him to a chair. Then he turned back to his sons and resumed telling the story: ‘He had the best medical care—from experts in tropical diseases. But we were told that his case was hopeless and that we should prepare ourselves for his imminent death. So we brought him back to England to die. It’s what he said he wanted. His condition was pitiful, and he was dying, and the Edmund we all knew and loved was, in effect, already dead. So we thought it best to announce his death and give him a fitting farewell.’

Lady Pamela went to the sideboard and filled a plate with toast and scrambled eggs. This she placed on the table in front of Edmund. He stared at the plate as if he’d forgotten what to do with it.

‘We thought,’ Sir William continued, a little reluctantly, scratching his head as he spoke, ‘that it wasn’t fair to Edmund to reveal his true condition. We didn’t want his old friends from the Explorers’ Club coming here and insisting on seeing him. We didn’t want anyone to see him in his unhappy state.’

The two boys had stopped eating, and were staring at their uncle with an astonishment that was slowly turning into comprehension.

‘We thought he’d be dead by now,’ said Lady Pamela. ‘Drax is surprised at how long he’s survived. And I’ve now been persuaded’ (she didn’t say by whom) ‘that, given his failure to succumb to the supposedly fatal effects of the disease, the time has come to tell the truth and bring in new medical consultants. And that’s what we intend to do.’

Will got out of his chair and walked to the confused young man’s side. He laid a gentle hand on his shoulder and said, ‘It’s good to see you again, Uncle Ed. Do you remember teaching me to use those South American weapons? I’m ever so good with them now. You can help me practise out on the terrace again—can’t you, Uncle Ed?’

Sir William patted his younger son on the shoulder and said, ‘It’ll be quite some time before Edmund will be playing with you again, Will.’ Then, after a long pause he added, ‘If ever.’

Douglas looked sullen and growled quietly, ‘I don’t want any of my friends to know about this. If they ever heard that I had a mad uncle . . .’

‘We won’t be publishing Edmund’s condition,’ said Lady Pamela firmly, ‘if that’s what you’re worrying about. We’ll move him from the cottage here into the house. We’ll quietly ask some Harley Street specialists to visit, to examine him and to recommend new treatments that haven’t been tried.’

Douglas continued to look sullen.

Then a thought leaped unbidden into my head, and before I could stop it, it had escaped through my lips. ‘The wild man of the woods!’ I said.

Sir William heaved a deep sigh and said, ‘You’re perfectly correct, Mr Morris. The sightings of the so-called “wild man of the woods” happened on those rare occasions when Edmund was at his most agitated and managed to escape from Drax’s protective custody.’

‘What will happen to Drax?’ asked Will.

‘He’s coming to live in the house as well,’ Lady Pamela replied. ‘Edmund finds comfort in his presence, so he shall continue as the principal carer. Although we may hire a trained nurse to assist him.’

‘That’s super,’ said Will with enthusiasm. ‘I want to get to know Drax better. I want to learn all about South America.’

Just then the silent Uncle Teddy spoke up. ‘It’s not a disease,’ he said, a wild light coming into his usually vacant eyes, ‘it’s hereditary. There’s madness in the family.’

I half expected him to tap himself on the chest and claim to be the living proof of this.

‘Don’t talk nonsense!’ snapped Lady Pamela angrily. ‘You’re not Edmund’s blood relative. He’s from my side of the family, not yours. He has, most remarkably, survived a virulent disease, and he is now going to be given new treatments to help him recover further.’

‘So,’ I said to Jack later that morning, standing in the sunshine in front of
The Cricketers’ Arms
, ‘Edmund is a lucky young man who has survived a death sentence.’

‘Postponed it,’ said Jack between puffs as he got his pipe to light. Then he began walking up the hill into the sun. I fell into step beside him, knowing that he liked nothing better than to combine stimulating conversation and brisk walking.

As we turned off the village street into a country lane, he said, ‘We have to be realists, not fantasists.’

I asked him what he meant.

‘Simply that we must avoid the popular fantasies of our time.’

‘Namely?’

‘That either we shall not die, or that death is so far away we can ignore it, or that since death is inevitable we might as well live as if it will never happen. Pretence about death is the great unspoken taboo; the fantasy at the heart of our modern lives.’

‘Nonsense,’ I protested. ‘It’s normal to suppress thoughts of death since it’s normal to be afraid of death.’

‘Earlier generations of Englishmen didn’t think so. As recently as our Victorian forebears, death was discussed, written about and elaborately marked—both in ceremonies and in marble. That, I would suggest, was because they were still sufficiently influenced by the Christian foundations of our civilisation to be realists about death. Back in the eighteenth century John Wesley said something along these lines: “The world may find fault with our doctrine, but the world cannot deny that our people die well.” Whatever you think of Wesley, he is looking death squarely in the face there. That is the realism our modern world flies from.’

The sun was shining and a fresh breeze was blowing. Above us a blue sky was decorated with wind-torn scraps of cloud. They looked like old posters torn by the wind from billboards and flung into the sky like untethered kites.

‘So, tell me, young Morris, have you come to any conclusion in our debate on death?’

‘At the very least,’ I said cautiously, ‘I’m persuaded that the materialist story is not the whole story. Valuable though our eyes are, they don’t reveal the whole of reality. There is more to reality than our eyes can see. There really is, I now think, a realm beyond the merely material—and that very fact makes our post-mortem survival entirely reasonable.’

‘Not only reasonable, but inevitable,’ said Jack. ‘If your mind, your self-consciousness, is a non-material thing and therefore cannot be snuffed out in the way mere matter can be snuffed out, then your survival beyond death is certain. Your physical body will one day succumb to physical death. But you, the real you, will survive. The only significant question is: how? In what state? Well, or badly?’

‘And you say the people who avoid that question are the fantasists?’

‘Indeed I do. Further, that the people who face it are realists. That’s what makes Christian believers the world’s leading realists.’

‘So Edmund has escaped from an immediate threat of death, but not from the ultimate threat of death that we all must deal with? What he has won is postponement, not ultimate survival?’

‘Quite so. You see, young Morris, without knowing your current state of health, or the medical history of your family, there are two things I know about you that are absolutely true. The first is that you shall die. And the second is that you don’t know when. You may survive to a great old age or you may fall under a bus tomorrow.’

‘You are such a cheerful companion, Jack! You are such fun to be with,’ I laughed.

Jack chortled with pleasure as he said, ‘I’m simply inviting you to change sides—from the fantasists to the realists.’

‘But I am comfortable being an unbeliever. Why should I change?’

‘Because the question is not whether you shall survive death—you shall—but whether you’ll survive it well.’

‘What are the options? What might we find beyond this material world when death bids us depart?’

‘Either a better world or a worse one. Our problem is that as a race of people we are not fit to inhabit a better world; we have filled the one in which we currently dwell with warfare, torture, famine, syphilis, poverty and much that is hideous and repulsive.’

‘Hold hard there for a moment!’ I protested. ‘I’m not responsible for any of those things.’

‘We’ve already travelled down that particular road, young Morris, and we’ve agreed that you are not perfect. I understand this from the inside, because I know how deeply morally imperfect I am.’

‘So what conclusion do you draw?’

‘For the moment let’s call the better world we hope to inhabit when we shuffle off this mortal coil “paradise”.’

‘A common name for it.’

‘Now “paradise” means, by definition, “that which is perfect”. That is what makes it paradise. But if someone as imperfect as I am were admitted into its gates, it would no longer be perfect; it would no longer be paradise. So the better world I hope to inhabit beyond death ceases to be better simply because I’m there. This is clearly a problem. Something needs to be done about it.’

‘I see the dilemma—so where do we find a solution?’

‘It’s already been found. It’s the death of Jesus Christ in our place, as our substitute. On the strength of his death for us, Christ offers to forgive us and cleanse us—to wash us down, to dress us up, to make us presentable and acceptable to God as one of his people. That is the beating heart of Christian realism: “For Christ also hath once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God.” That’s why Jesus could promise the repentant thief on the cross, “Today shalt thou be with me in paradise.”

‘So you see, young Morris, for us to enter a better world—and for it to remain better, even with us in it—we must be either perfect, or else forgiven and changed. The first is not possible, the second is.’

‘Very well,’ I admitted, ‘if I decide I want to be a realist and do what you challenge me to do—to face death and to think about surviving death well—what is the key that opens that particular door?’

‘There is only one door into the better world beyond death, a door labelled “Forgiveness”. And that door is a person—Jesus Christ. That’s what he means when he says, “I am the resurrection and the life: he that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.” That’s how the people I’m calling the world’s leading realists understand death.’

We walked on in silence for a few moments, until I said, ‘How can it possibly be that so many people—perhaps, for all I know, most people—can be fantasists about death? Why is realism not more widespread? Since death is a universal truth, why isn’t realism about death universal?’

Jack gave a deep sigh and shook his head sadly, and in that rumbling voice of his he growled, ‘Deceptions. The world is filled with deceptions—what Pascal calls “distractions”. It’s so easy to be deceived, to be distracted, by the pressures of everyday life—by everyday pleasures and everyday worries—to live for the moment and to plan no further ahead than next week or next month or next year. What people need—what you, I, what all of us need—is to be undeceived.’

‘But how can I be
certain
—I mean
really
certain—about that better world that I might just possibly find on the other side of death?’

Jack smiled and gave me that look he always gave when he thought I was being unnecessarily slow on the uptake. ‘In a walk through the English countryside, it’s possible to be uncertain about the location of the next village, or a particular village you’re looking for. But that’s fine—as long as you know the road that will get you there.

‘Warnie and I were out on a ramble a couple of years ago, planning to make our next stop in a town called Nesfield. Being uncertain, and fearing we were lost, we asked a local farm worker by the side of the road, “How can we get to Nesfield?” Perhaps he hadn’t lived in the district long, or perhaps he’d never travelled more than a mile or two from his home village, but his answer was “I’ve got no idea where Nesfield is—but this is the road that gets you there.” What matters about paradise, young Morris, is knowing whether or not you’re on the road that gets you there.’