The Corpse in the Cellar (22 page)

Inspector Crispin expressed his displeasure at this revelation by saying ‘Thank you, sergeant' through gritted teeth. ‘Now,' he continued, ‘we'll go back over your evidence. I want a moment-by-moment account of what happened, and what you observed and what you heard, on the day of the murder.'

And that's what he got. It took us until lunch time and consisted of treading and re-treading over highly familiar territory.

When he was finally satisfied that there was no new information to be squeezed out of us, Inspector Crispin told us we could leave. As we rose to go he added, ‘And don't forget you'll be required at this afternoon's inquest.' I must have looked puzzled because he explained, ‘Into the death of Nicholas Proudfoot. You three discovered the body—your evidence may be required.'

On that coldly formal note we left.

Lunch was once again served in the sunshine on the lawn behind the pub. Mrs Jones had made us a large plate of generous sandwiches filled with slices of cold roast beef and lashings of hot English mustard.

‘Now that's what I call real mustard,' said Warnie with a satisfied snort. The mustard that so delighted him seemed to be clearing my sinuses, turning my tear ducts into flowing cisterns and burning a large hole in the roof of my mouth. I went into the bar and returned with a tray bearing three pints of ale.

As the beer extinguished the fire and I leaned back in my comfortable cane chair, I decided that I wanted to think, and talk, about anything other than baffling murder mysteries and investigations that led to dead ends. So I turned to Jack and said, ‘I wonder if, in the end, this Christian religion that you keep going on about is really part of a greater crossword puzzle—the crossword puzzle of life.'

He told me that was a comparison he'd never heard before and invited me to explain.

‘Perhaps what it gives us are clues to what is hidden in the human heart, and to whatever it is that lies at the heart of the universe. You keep talking about how satisfying you found Christianity, how it answered all your questions. Well, perhaps I've been too harsh. Perhaps Christianity
does
contain some useful clues—but they are buried underneath a lot of supernatural mumbo jumbo.'

I thought for a moment Jack was going to let my ‘mumbo jumbo' crack go through to the keeper. But looking at me kindly, and using the gentle words that turneth away wrath, he said, ‘Perhaps when all the other clues are understood, the supernatural element ceases to be mumbo jumbo and emerges of part of the larger, more complex picture.'

I wasn't going to let him off the hook that easily. ‘You're missing my point,' I insisted.

‘Which is?'

‘That all we should expect from your Christianity is a few clues to the crossword puzzle of life. That's all the Christian belief system in the end delivers—a few clues.'

‘Quite possibly every world view and every belief system attempts to do that,' Jack suggested. ‘They all point to a hunger of the human heart—a hunger we have for meaning and a need to understand our purpose in life. There was certainly a deep longing in my heart when I was an atheist, and I was startled to discover that Christianity satisfied that longing.'

‘So you were looking for something and you didn't know what it was that you were looking for?'

‘It was as though,' said Jack thoughtfully, ‘I kept catching fragments of music, or a haunting melody, heard only faintly when the wind was blowing in the right direction. In Christianity I discovered the entire satisfying symphony.'

‘But my point is a bit different,' I protested. ‘I admit there are some clues around to the universe we live in—more than there used to be—but still not enough. The puzzle is not complete. Perhaps one day modern science will discover enough to tell how the world works and why.'

‘Science will never answer why,' Jack said confidently.

‘That's a bold claim,' I laughed.

‘No, it's just a logical one. You stop and think about what science is and how it functions. What, for example, does science study?'

‘Well, the universe around us. From the largest component to the smallest, from the stars to the molecules.'

‘All of which are . . . ?'

‘I don't understand.'

‘Physical. Science studies the physical universe—it's make-up and its machinery. To understand the mechanisms of the universe we turn to science. But science only studies matter, and the universe is more than matter.'

‘I'm not sure you can say that so confidently. Philosophers have been debating that for centuries, and the more modern science discovers, the more is explicable in terms of matter.'

‘If you don't believe me,' said Jack confidently, ‘then explain poetry in purely material terms.'

I opened my mouth and quickly shut it again. I wasn't sure what to say.

‘Poetry,' continued Jack, ‘is more than matter; it's more than black marks on white paper. Music is more than matter; it's more than vibrations in the air. And the whole of philosophy from Plato onwards has acknowledged that.'

‘So what
can
science do?'

‘It can explain the material universe, what it's made of and how it works. And it does so brilliantly. But beyond the physical universe is the metaphysical. Beyond the black marks on paper is the poem itself.'

I stopped to drink my beer and think about what Jack was saying. After a lengthy silence I said slowly, ‘But there must be more to it than that. Surely science is the peak of the hill the human race has been climbing for centuries. In
The Golden Bough
Frazer shows that ancient humans lived in what he calls the “age of magic”, which evolved into the “age of religion”, and that in turn has developed into the “age of science”. That's progress, isn't it? Isn't science the knowledge the human race has been seeking for and aiming at for millennia?'

Lewis threw back his head and laughed heartily.

‘You certainly know how to ask a big question,' he said, still chuckling. ‘You are walking in my footsteps, young Morris—you are standing where I once stood. As a young atheist I proudly waved my copy of Frazer's big book as proof that all religions and all mythologies were just human inventions—the products of human imagination.'

‘Well, perhaps they—' But I didn't finish the sentence for Lewis was ploughing on.

‘But Frazer's great weakness is that he is writing anthropology. That is to say, he's writing about human beings and the ideas inside their heads. He gives us a vivid description of how he thinks human heads have changed over the years, but he never examines the truth of the ideas inside those heads. The
history
of an idea and the
truth
of an idea are two separate things.'

‘Another beer?' asked Warnie.

‘Not for me thanks,' said Jack, and then he turned his attention back to me. ‘My atheistic foundations were shaken to the core by a friend of mine—a fellow atheist, I should add—who remarked to me in passing how much good evidence there is for the historicity of the gospels.'

‘The point being?'

‘That if the gospels
really happened
—if they are not just some human invention, not the product of human imagination, but something real in our world—that tells us something about our world. Or, as my old atheist friend said, surprisingly it looks as if Frazer's stuff about a “dying god” actually happened once. And if it actually happened it's more than one small clue to your “crossword”—it's the one vital clue.'

Lewis leaned back in the cane chair he was sitting in and smiled benignly at me as he lit his pipe.

I bit into the last of my sandwich. The mustard brought tears to my eyes and I reached for my pint as I swallowed hard.

‘It's certainly true,' Lewis continued, his head now surrounded by a cloud of blue smoke, ‘that from the dawn of history human beings have been trying to make sense of the world—asking questions about how it works and why. And the answers to the “how” questions have moved over the millennia from guesswork to science. That's certainly progress. But the “why” questions are beyond the scope of science to tackle.'

Warnie returned with another pint. He resumed his seat, took a sip, wiped the foam off his moustache, then tilted his head back to enjoy the sun—studiously avoiding our debate.

‘If you asked me how a fountain pen works,' Lewis resumed, ‘I could give you a scientific answer about nibs and ink reserves and the capillary action of liquids that propels the ink to the point of the nib and so on. But if instead of asking
how
you asked
why
—for example, if you asked why this man is writing with this pen on this piece of paper at this time—I would have to talk about intentions. Perhaps he's sitting for an exam, or perhaps he's writing to his fiancé—but the answer is about a mind and its intentions, not about matter and the mechanisms of matter. Do you see the point?'

‘I think I do,' I said. Now this was, I can say looking back on it, a turning point in the whole debate for me. I could see the sense of what Jack was saying and I had to grant him a small victory, so I continued, ‘Science gives us useful and measured, tested information about the material world, but when science has answered every possible question about the material world there's still an unexplained residue left over.'

‘Well put! And that “unexplained residue” beyond the reach of science is the most important thing of all. It's what Plato called the “realm of ideas”, what Aristotle called the “metaphysical”. It's what you might call the realm of pure intelligence—where all intention and purpose is formed. Plato was convinced that there is Mind independent of matter, and no philosopher and no scientist has ever demonstrated that he was wrong.'

‘So how does this tie in with your atheist friend's casual remark that there's historical evidence for the gospels? Even if there is, what difference does it make?'

‘If the gospels are history, then our world is more than the natural, material, physical stuff around us. If the gospels are history, then Mind and matter can mesh in ways that we could never have guessed. If the gospels are history, then our world has been invaded. We live on a visited planet: the metaphysical has invaded the physical. The Mind behind the universe has stepped into human history.'

Lewis paused to puff on his pipe, then resumed, ‘This visitation didn't come in the form of one of those great interplanetary spaceships we read about in Mr Wells's scientific romances. It came in the form of a baby, born to a specific young woman at a specific time in a specific place. That's what Saint Luke demonstrates in his record, by nailing it to history: “And it came to pass in those days, that there went out a decree from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be taxed. (And this taxing was first made when Cyrenius was governor of Syria.)” How remarkable: the Emperor's accountants in Rome want a census so they can impose a taxation levy, and that is used to mark the moment in time when God steps into human history.'

Warnie had finished his pint and dropped off to sleep. A few moments later we heard a sound that might have been a pig drowning in glue. Warnie was snoring.

Jack smiled indulgently and continued making his point. ‘As well as the time being nailed down, so is the place. The town of Bethlehem is not some imaginary spot out of myth and legend; it's not Camelot. It's a dusty little town in Palestine. If you visited the place today you could walk down its streets. Real time, real place, really happened.'

‘And that's the big clue to my crossword puzzle of life?' I asked.

‘It certainly reveals the vital bit science can never discover—the intention, the purpose, behind this world and behind our lives.'

In the silence that followed we were startled to hear the sound of weeping. I looked up towards the window of the pub's kitchen just behind us and saw Ruth Jarvis, the young woman who worked at the bank. She had her head on the shoulder of the publican's wife and was sobbing her heart out.

I turned back towards Jack and saw that he too was looking at what was happening in the kitchen with close interest. I drained the last of my pint and remarked, ‘Emotional moments make me feel uncomfortable.'

‘Nevertheless,' said Jack rising from his chair, ‘I think we should investigate.'