C S Lewis and the Country House Murders (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 2) (32 page)

I made a show of carefully studying the paper from every angle before I replied, ‘It looks pretty right to me. Has it been drawn to scale, I wonder? Because I think my chair should be shown a trifle closer to Mrs Worth’s.’

‘Thank you for that, sir,’ said Hyde, speaking like a volcano trying very hard not to explode. ‘You’ll agree that you were seated next to Mrs Worth—closer, in fact, than anyone else present that afternoon?’

‘I do concede that fact, inspector.’

‘You sat on her left-hand side?’

‘I did, and Uncle Teddy sat on her right. I suppose that makes us two the most likely suspects for slipping cyanide into her slice of fruit cake.’

‘We have eliminated Mr Edward Dyer from our inquiries. So that leaves you, Mr Morris—and only you.’

‘So how do you imagine I got the cyanide into the cake?’

‘Perhaps you’d care to explain that to us yourself, sir?’

‘I can’t, because I didn’t. And no one else saw me do anything at all suspicious. They’ve told you that, haven’t they?’

‘It’s certainly true that whatever gesture or movement you employed in poisoning the cake went unnoticed.’

And so we went on—like a couple of cross-talk comedians in a second-rate music hall—for the next half an hour. At which time relief came in the form of a knock at the door.

‘What is it?’ barked Hyde.

Constable Dixon opened the door nervously and intruded his head and shoulders into the room.

Hyde snapped at him, like a terrier snapping at a rat, ‘I told you I’m not to be disturbed.’

‘It’s Inspector Crispin, sir,’ said the hapless Dixon, ‘and he says he has a note for you from the Chief Constable.’

Hyde looked startled and wary, but said in that case Crispin should probably be admitted. He was. He said nothing, but the Scotland Yard man produced a hand-written note and handed it to Hyde.

Hyde read the note, then read it gain, then read it a third time. Then all the air seemed to go out of him and he shrank like a punctured balloon. He seemed to lose several inches in height as I watched.

For several moments we all sat, or in Crispin’s case stood, like window dummies on display—none of us moving or speaking. Finally Hyde looked up at me and said, ‘You’re free to go.’

Inspector Crispin and Sergeant Merrivale drove us back to Plumwood. The two police officers sat in the front seat, while Jack and I sat in the back. I was bending over tying up my newly restored shoe laces when I asked Jack, ‘How did you manage it?’

‘It was Inspector Crispin here you have to thank. All I did was to inform him that Hyde had swooped.’

‘Well, in that case, many thanks, inspector. I owe you both my liberty and my sanity.’

Crispin chuckled. ‘I don’t think either were ever seriously at risk, Mr Morris.’

‘So what did you do?’ I asked as I looped my tie around my collar and began to construct a Windsor knot.

It seemed that instead of going to the police station to argue with Inspector Hyde he had driven directly to Colonel Weatherly’s home. ‘There,’ he said, ‘I laid out the case as Mr Lewis and I now understand it. The colonel immediately agreed that Hyde’s action amounted to a waste of police time. He scribbled out a note for me, which I took to Hyde, with the result that you saw.’

Most of the rest of that trip was fairly quiet. I felt exhausted by my unhappy experience, Sergeant Merrivale was driving and concentrating on those narrow country roads, and both Jack and Crispin seemed to be deep in thought.

When the police car pulled up in front of Plumwood Hall, Sir William was crossing the lawn, walking his favourite golden retriever.

He pronounced himself glad to see me back and invited Jack to join the family for dinner that night. Jack accepted.

It was a much more agreeable affair than the night before. For a start, Edmund’s return had lifted everyone’s spirits, and Will was still bubbling over with enthusiasm and cheerful chatter. Edmund himself seemed more settled, and although he said little, just being back in familiar surroundings seemed to be doing him some good. He still looked pale and unwell and only nibbled at his food, but he managed to contribute the occasional brief utterance to the dinner table conversation.

Uncle Teddy was also in a high good humour, insisting on telling us tales of the early days of the family biscuit factory.

One thing Oxford does for a man is to teach him the art of small talk, so Jack kept up his end with the occasional anecdote, witty pun or Latin tag.

When dinner was over, Sir William apologised that he had work to do in his office, so Jack and I took our glasses of port and a bowl of nuts to the library and settled down among the books.

Jack, who had obviously spent much less time than I had in the collection, prowled up and down the shelves looking for treasures. I strolled down the longest of the bookcases and one volume caught my eye. It was Trotter’s translation of Pascal’s
Pensées
. Because Jack had referred to Pascal earlier in the day, I pulled it off the shelf and opened it at random.

I threw myself into an armchair, picked up my glass of port and began to read. I hadn’t read more than a page and a half when I was startled to come across much the same point Jack had been making to me that morning.

Pascal ridiculed those who lived without any thought of life’s latter end, and who let themselves be guided by their whims and pleasures without any reflection or sense of discomfort, and who only thought of making themselves happy in the moment. Pascal suggested they were hoping to abolish eternity by turning away their thoughts.

This was a bit too close to the bone for me, so I closed the book and returned it to the shelf. I needed to think about something a bit more cheerful—such as murder.

‘The big puzzle,’ I said to Jack as I helped myself to a handful of nuts, ‘is still surely the method of the first murder. How was it done? Isn’t that the issue?’

Jack turned towards me, his glasses reflecting the golden glow of the desk lamps in the library, making him look like a sparkling and particularly clever Irish pixie.

‘Precisely,’ he said in his rich, rumbling voice. ‘That’s the heart of the matter, young Morris.’

‘And what about who? Whatever mysterious method was used to get cyanide into one slice of freshly baked cake—and only one—who did it? Or, as they say on the back of those yellow-jacketed thrillers Warnie reads: whodunit? Are you any closer to answering that question?’

‘The pieces of the jigsaw puzzle are coming together. There are two clues drawing them together: the blackmail, and the forged poisons book at the village chemist shop.’

‘I can see no connection,’ I said.

‘Isn’t that what you asked
me
to do?’ Jack asked, ‘to find those connections?’

As we talked Jack kept browsing through the shelves. Taking down one highly decorated volume, he remarked that he thought it was much too late a publication to be part of this old collection.

‘It is,’ I agreed, ‘it’s 1904. But apparently some Boshams kept adding—inappropriately, I might add—to a collection that should have been left intact as a record of earlier centuries. I should really have pulled those newer volumes out and put them in a separate case.’

The book in Jack’s hand was
William Tell Told Again
by P. G. Wodehouse.

‘I think Warnie had a copy of this in the nursery at Little Lea—probably the same edition.’ Jack’s face was glowing at the memory as he spoke. Then a dark shadow passed over it. ‘1904 was,’ he said, ‘four years before mother died and everything changed for us.’

There was a long, sombre silence in the library, then Jack seemed to recover himself and said how nice it was to see the old book again, even though it clearly should not have a place in the Plumwood Hall collection.

‘When I found it,’ I said, ‘I rather liked the opening sentence. Even though he’s retelling an old story for children, it has a Wodehousian ring to it. Here, take a look at this.’

I reached out for the book, then thumbed it open and read: ‘Once upon a time, more years ago than anybody can remember, before the first hotel had been built or the first Englishman had taken a photograph of Mont Blanc and brought it home to be pasted in an album and shown after tea to his envious friends, Switzerland belonged to the Emperor of Austria, to do what he liked with.’

I put down the book and said, ‘Now that’s the distinctive Wodehouse voice.’

But Jack was no longer paying attention to my ramblings. He had on his face an intense expression I had seen once or twice before—usually when he felt he had stumbled across a new discovery.

‘William Tell,’ he muttered, more to himself than me. ‘Yes. It’s not very probable. But it’s possible. And if it’s possible it’s how it was done.’

‘What are you going on about?’

‘I need to speak to Crispin at once. Where’s the telephone?’

I took Jack down to the entrance hall and pointed out the instrument. He called
The Cricketers’ Arms
only to be told that the Scotland Yard man was out.

‘I’m going to walk back to the pub to look for Crispin,’ Jack said. ‘You wait for me here; I shouldn’t be long.’

Back in the library I finished the port and nuts and waited for Jack. And waited and waited. At any minute I expected to see him walking up the drive with the two Scotland Yard officers beside him. But many slow minutes passed, then half an hour crawled by, and I became bored.

Finally I concluded they were not coming and I should not expect to see them until the next day.

It was a mild autumn night so I decided to go for a walk. There was a full moon, a large lemon moon floating in a vivid violet-blue sky filling the landscape with silvery brilliance—nocturnal but bright. It was a nice night for a walk in the soft breeze and the glowing moonlight.

Strolling through the darkened and strangely quiet house, I reached the flagged terrace by means of the French windows in the drawing room then set out across the lawn with no particular goal in mind.

Slowly I strolled in the general direction of the kitchen garden and the orchard beyond it. The garden wall was a long way from the house, and to reach it I had to cross the lawn, pass under the old ash tree and go through the rose garden. Beyond the flower beds was a slight rise crowned by the old summer house. And I decided to make that my stopping point.

I mounted the half dozen steps of the small building and dropped into one of the heavy old wooden chairs that were scattered around inside.

Just beyond the summer house, at the bottom of a gentle slope, was a small rivulet that gurgled in the night, flowing rapidly to meet the River Plum at some distant point. Through the open lattice walls I could see the bubbling stream, its many ripples catching the moonlight and reflecting it back like a thousand small bright lights twinkling on and off.

On a shelf not far from where I sat was an oil lamp, and beside it a box of matches. I rose, fiddled with the lamp, lit a match and soon had the summer house filled with a dim but cheerful yellow glow. Then I settled back in the welcoming arms of the old chair and was tempted to nod off for a few moments. In fact, I think I did.

Coming to with a start and looking up, I became aware of a dark figure on the steps, just outside the circle of light cast by the oil lamp. He was smoking a cigar, and the red glow looked like a ship’s lantern gleaming in the distance over dark waves. Then the figure spoke.

‘Evening, Morris.’ It was Sir William. ‘I saw you from my study window going for an evening stroll and I thought I’d join you.’

He climbed the steps of the summer house and sat in another of the large wooden chairs that furnished the place.

‘And I brought a nightcap,’ he said, holding up two glasses and a bottle of Napoleon brandy. He set these down on a small bamboo table, poured a generous helping of brandy into each of the tumblers and handed me one.

‘Your good health,’ he said, raising his glass and taking a sip.

For no particular reason I held my glass up and looked at the moon through it. There was a faint gathering of dust on the rim.

‘This needs rinsing out,’ I complained.

Sir William chuckled. ‘Sorry, these glasses have been sitting in my study for some time. I should have fetched clean ones from the kitchen. Too late to rinse it now—you’re not going waste that good Napoleon, are you?’