C S Lewis and the Body in the Basement (C S Lewis Mysteries Book 1) (18 page)

‘Could an ordinary object have been used as a weapon? Perhaps the blade of a pair of scissors?’

‘We tested all such objects in the bank for traces of blood and found none. As you know, it is virtually impossible to remove all traces of blood from a weapon. Minute traces are sure to remain. Based on our tests I am certain we have not yet seen the weapon. The search continues.’

Then Inspector Crispin was called and asked to give an account of the current state of the police investigation. In as few words as possible he explained that inquiries were continuing and that several lines of investigation were being pursued. He was asked if he believed the death could have been self-inflicted.

‘Out of the question,’ he said firmly, and went through the medical and scene of crime evidence to explain why.

The coroner gave his final directions to the jury, who immediately returned a verdict of ‘murder by person or persons unknown’. This being what the coroner wanted, he tapped the table with his pen once more and declared the hearing closed.

We found ourselves being jostled out of the church hall and into the town square by the crowd that had filled the public gallery. As we walked back towards
The Boar’s Head
, I noticed Constable Dixon keeping a discreet eye on us from a distance—proof that we were still under official observation. Warnie and I chatted about what had happened at the inquest, but Jack, I noticed, seemed to be lost in silent thought.

When the crowd had thinned out, and as we were drawing nearer to the pub, I said, ‘Well, now—about tonight. I have two questions. First, how do I get out? And second, what do I ask Amelia Proudfoot if I manage to find her?’

‘Taking them in reverse order,’ said Jack, ‘I want you to ask Mrs Proudfoot about her personal relationship with each of the people at the bank: Franklin Grimm, Ruth Jarvis, Edmund Ravenswood and Edith Ravenswood.’

‘Just that?’ I was surprised. ‘No more?’

‘Just that,’ Jack said firmly. ‘That will give me the missing final piece of the puzzle. As to how you get out, well, I think we might assign Warnie the task of scouting around the pub and finding a back way out. That should be right up your street, old chap.’

Warnie chuckled and said, ‘I’m good at talking to folk in pubs—and getting them talking. Leave it to me. I’ll have the information before we’ve finished eating our tea.’

And Warnie was as good as his word. At some point he disappeared into the bowels of the pub, only to reappear fifteen minutes later just as a roast dinner was being served for us in the snug.

‘Well?’ asked Jack through a mouthful of roast duck.

‘I played my usual role,’ chuckled Warnie, ‘of the old bumbler who has no idea of where he’s got to. And I found out exactly what we need to know.’

He paused to chew and swallow and then resumed, ‘There’s a back door that opens out of the kitchen. It gives on to a narrow alley behind the pub. At night it’s latched and bolted from the inside. If you slip out that way, young Morris, leaving the door closed and bolted behind you, no one will know you’ve gone. I’ll lock up behind you as you leave.’

‘But once the pub’s locked up I won’t be able to get back in,’ I protested.

‘You won’t need to, remember?’ said Jack. ‘You’ll be catching the milk train to the coast and you won’t be back here until well after the pub has opened tomorrow morning.’

This loomed before me as a most unattractive prospect. I drowned my sorrows in roast duck and potatoes swimming in thick gravy.

After dinner Warnie drifted into the public bar where I could see, through the open doorway, that he was roped into a game of darts with the locals. Jack and I lingered in the snug over a glass of brandy.

‘“Person or persons unknown”,’ I said. ‘That was the best verdict that was possible at today’s inquest. And sometimes that’s the best, the most intelligent, verdict that’s available to us in these big questions we’ve been discussing.’

‘Ah, we’re back to the God question,’ Jack said, with the gleam of eager combat in his eye. ‘And has your thinking progressed any further?’

‘I’ve decided that the best verdict it’s possible to bring in is an open one.’

‘Meaning agnosticism?’

‘Meaning that we admit when there’s not enough evidence to decide one way or the other. That’s when we bring in a verdict that is the philosophical equivalent of “person or persons unknown”. It’s the only honest thing to do.’

‘But the point of today’s verdict was to continue the inquiry. It was an interim verdict, not a final one. Inspector Crispin is not about to say, “Well, there you are then: persons or persons unknown. That settles the matter, so I can now move on to another case.” Rather the point of an open verdict is to say: gather more evidence, do more thinking.’

‘I still think I’d like to keep an open mind.’

‘Forever?’

To avoid replying I took a sip of brandy and Jack responded by continuing, ‘G. K. Chesterton is a very dangerous writer for a young atheist or agnostic to read; he keeps planting explosive ideas in the mind. When I was still an atheist I read his remark that the purpose of having an open mind is rather like having an open mouth—in order to close it on something solid. So would you admit, young Tom, that an “open verdict” can only ever be an interim position?’

‘And I’ve decided there’s another problem,’ I responded, rapidly changing the subject to avoid answering this challenge, ‘another problem with this whole field of thinking.’

‘Meaning?’

‘With this whole category of religion.’

‘The problem being . . . ?’

‘What religion has brought to our world. It’s religion that gave us the Spanish Inquisition and the Crusades and persecutions in which so-called “heretics” were burned at the stake. Religion has divided families and divided nations. Europe was torn apart by the Hundred Years’ War—and that was over religion. Galileo was persecuted by religion for his science. Religious superstition stood in the way of the birth of modern science until it was pushed aside by the weight of the evidence.’

‘And the other side of the ledger?’

‘I can’t see that there is one. I mean to say, what good has religion ever done anyone? I can’t see that there’s any answer to that charge. So let’s hear how you get out of that one, Jack.’ I sat back in my seat, rather pleased with myself, mopping up the last of the gravy with a piece of bread.

‘My first objection would be that your label—your whole category of “religion”—is so wide and so vague that it’s not possible to make the huge sweeping statements about it that you do.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘Well, you speak of “religion” as if it were one thing. That’s like treating a subject such as—well, sport, let’s say, as if it were one thing. Now I’m no sportsman, but even I know that it would be possible to build a case for saying that all sport is evil and all sport should be banned based on the worse examples.’

‘I don’t follow you.’

‘Well, think for a moment. If I talked about sports such as dog fighting and cock fighting; if I talked about brutal bare-knuckle boxing; if I talked about the totally unnecessary risks and dangers that people expose themselves to in some sports—I could start to build up a case that whatever this thing called “sport” is, it must be something evil. I could talk about how the supporters of different football teams so easily seem to fall from jeering at each other to fighting each other. I could talk about international competition as evidence that sports divide nations and divide communities. I could cite examples of cheating in sport to show that sport brings out the worst in people. It would be an unfair and unbalanced catalogue, of course, but it wouldn’t be hard to make some sort of case against this whole vague category of “sport”. And that’s exactly what you’ve done in the case of your very large, vague category of “religion”.’

I was still thinking about how to reply to this when Jack went on, ‘Instead of making a case against a category as vague as “religion”, you’d be much more persuasive if you made your case against Buddhism, and against Hinduism, and then against Islam, and then against Christianity . . . and so on. And I think you’d find that your case would be quite different in each example.’

‘Such as?’ I challenged.

‘Well, I doubt that you could make a case that Buddhism was war-like, for instance. As far as I know, and I admit my knowledge is limited, Buddhism is an almost entirely pacific belief system. However, on the other side of the ledger you could argue that the Buddhist belief in reincarnation has had the effect of discouraging the foundation of charities for the disabled. Apparently Buddhists believe that if you’re born with a disability you’re being punished for the sins—the “bad karma”, I think they’d call it—of a previous life. Given that belief, you can readily see why there were few charities in most Buddhist countries until the arrival of Christian missionaries.’

‘But—’ I began. However, Jack had up a head of steam and kept going.

‘The Hindu practice of
sati
, the burning of a widow on her husband’s funeral pyre, was stopped by the arrival of Christianity in India.’

‘Let’s see if I’ve got this right—you’re arguing that every time I use the word “religion”, I’m pointing at such a wide range of things I’m not hitting my target, and what I should be doing is investigating, and criticising, specific religions for their specific faults.’

‘Exactly. Picking out the worst examples and claiming that you’ve wiped out the whole category of “religion” is like quoting the worst greeting card verse and using that to attack the whole category of “poetry”, or focusing on frankly awful popular tunes and claiming this shows that “music” is all awful.’

‘Actually, you’re beginning to make sense,’ I admitted as I poured another glass of brandy. ‘All this talk about “religion” is now looking intellectually lazy. The thing to do would be to focus on a particular, specific religion.’

‘That would certainly be the intelligent and well-informed thing to do. But I think I’d go even further than that, since your real target is not “religion” at all, but Christianity. I got the impression when you were rattling off your charges against what you called “religion” it was really Christianity that you were taking aim at. If that’s so, it’s better to say so. Don’t disguise your attack on Christianity by woolly thinking about “religion”. Be specific, and try to land some knock-out blows on the reasonableness of Christianity.’

‘Then let’s agree that our debate is not about “religion” but about the reasonableness of Christianity. That said, it’s still the case that the catalogue of evils I rattled off can be laid at the door of Christianity.’

‘I’m not sure it can,’ said Jack. ‘Even you must admit that your list is highly selective and carefully omits the rest of the story.’

‘In what sense?’

‘Well, Christianity invented the concept of the hospital. It was Christianity that invented the university. Christianity both provided and encouraged education. It’s simply a fact of history that it was Christianity—the ideas contained in the Bible—that gave rise to charities. And your argument about science, it seems to me, is simply wrong as a matter of history. The people who argued against Galileo didn’t do so because they were Christians but because they were, philosophically, Aristotelians, and Galileo’s science disproved Aristotle. The relationship between science and Christianity is the exact opposite of what you claimed. In reality, it was Christianity that gave rise to modern science. The founders of modern science, Newton, Boyle, Copernicus, Galileo himself and countless others, were devout Christian believers. They pursued their science
because
they believed the world to be intelligently designed; hence there was a design to be discovered.’

‘I’ll need to look into the history of that,’ I muttered over the top my brandy glass. ‘But—but—can Christianity be reasonable if wars have been fought in its name?’

‘It depends what you mean by Christianity.’

‘I don’t follow.’

‘If a medieval prince wants to expand his territory and declares war on a neighbour claiming that he is doing so in the name of Christianity, would such an action be consistent with the Christian faith that he claims to be waging war in the name of, or wouldn’t it?’

‘That . . . I think . . . would depend on what counts as genuine Christian faith.’

‘And surely the way to establish that would be to go back to the teachings of Jesus. If you’re trying to weigh up whether genuine Christian belief is reasonable or not you need to look at the founder of the faith, and not at some medieval prince—who may, or may not, have been well taught in Christian things, and who may, or may not, have been abiding by what he was taught.’

‘But surely if the Church, or one of the major denominations, acts in a certain way . . . ’

‘Don’t try that argument on me because I won’t respond to it. I’m not interested in defending, or attacking, any of the major denominations or churches. It’s the core, the common faith, the historical faith taught by the Founder that I believe can be shown to be entirely reasonable.’

‘And in the case of wars and torture?’

‘Jesus told Peter to put away his sword, and he told Pontius Pilate, “My kingdom is not of this world.” Let’s examine critically, and intelligently, the reasonableness of the Christianity of Jesus. Surely that gets us to the heart of the matter.’