The Floating Body (10 page)

‘Keep your boys quieter, Morris!’ he snapped. ‘All this noise is disturbing my class next door.’

I apologised and hushed my class, insisting they continue their debate in lower tones.

At the end of third school I took my place in the hall for the school lunch. Unfortunately, we masters ate the same lunch as the boys, which that day was sausages and mashed potatoes followed by treacle pudding.

At the head table Dr Rogers told us that he had asked Henry Beard, our Classics Master, to take all the mathematics classes until the end of term—which was only two weeks away—and he was rewriting the timetable to accommodate this.

Beard, always a sullen and unhappy man at the best of times, then grumbled in a loud stage whisper, ‘I wasn’t
asked
, you understand—I was simply
told
I had to!’

‘My dear Mr Beard,’ said the Head Master in his heartiest manner, ‘you are the only member of our current staff who has actually taught mathematics in the past. So it must, I’m afraid, be you. And, after all, it is only two weeks.’

‘Two weeks of being overworked is still two weeks,’ grumbled Beard.

Our History Master, Geoffrey Douglas, was sitting next to the grumpy Beard and tried to cheer him up.

‘Come along, Henry,’ he said warmly, ‘you’re wife’s away at the moment, so you must have some free time in the evenings to do the extra prep.’

‘Extra! Aye, that’s the word. It’s an extra burden is what it is.’

Dr Rogers ignored this exchange and went on to explain that he was making urgent contact with a retired mathematics teacher of his acquaintance to take the role for the next term, while the job was advertised and a full-time replacement for Dave Fowler was being found.

When I went back to my rooms after lunch, I found Warnie in my front sitting room, seated in an armchair, reading a copy of Wisden.

‘Ah, there you are, old chap. I’ve been waiting for you,’ he said. ‘We’ve been invited—or possibly summoned—to a meeting with the police.’

I asked him when and where, and he explained it was to be in the police cottage in the town in an hour’s time. Then I asked him if he knew who would be there.

‘Well, apart from us eyewitnesses, I gather all the police chappies involved in the case.’

So it was that three-quarters of an hour later Jack, Warnie and I were walking down Nesfield’s high street in the direction of the police cottage.

In the front parlour we found Constable Butler serving cups of tea and a plate of digestive biscuits to Detective Inspector Locke, Sergeant Drake and Dr Green.

‘Gentlemen, thank you for coming,’ said the inspector. Then he cleared his throat and said hesitantly, ‘This is, I realise, an unorthodox procedure—but this is an entirely unorthodox murder, and I thought it best to have something of a brainstorming session.’

He looked around the room slowly, perhaps waiting for objections, and then resumed, ‘Dr Green, please get us started by bringing everyone up to date with the findings from your post-mortem.’

The doctor put down his cup of tea and said, ‘Inspector Locke has my official report, but in summary I can tell you that it was a combination of the knife wound and the fall that killed poor Mr Fowler. The knife wound alone would have been sufficient given enough time. My estimate is that he was already dying from the trauma of the wound and from loss of blood, and probably losing consciousness, when he fell. But it was the fall that finished him off. He suffered a severe blow to the back of the head. And that blunt force trauma, added to the physical damage and the blood loss from the deep knife wound, resulted in his death.’

‘And the time of death, doctor?’ said Inspector Locke. ‘Tell everyone your conclusion about the time of death.’

‘In all probability death occurred at precisely the time you gentlemen,’ said Green, nodding towards Jack and myself, ‘say that you saw him attacked and saw him fall.’

‘How did he fall? In what position or posture?’ asked Jack. ‘You talked yesterday about the position of the body—did you draw any conclusions as to how he hit the ground?’

‘On his back,’ replied the doctor. ‘I have no doubt about that. I found small pieces of gravel embedded in his back—so he fell, on his back, face up, onto a gravel surface.’

‘But the body was face down when we found it,’ Warnie protested.

Inspector Locke came in at this point. ‘You’re beginning to see the dimensions of our problem. Clearly the body was moved. But when? And how?’

‘I think he bounced,’ muttered Warnie, almost to himself. ‘Poor fellah came down with a terrible thump and then he bounced. Sort of thing a chappie in my regiment used to call a “dead cat bounce”. Only explanation.’

Jack gave a rather grim chuckle as he said, ‘Then he must have bounced to a considerable height, old fellow, bearing in mind he was invisible when Morris and I reached the spot just a minute or so after he fell.’

‘Oh, ah, yes,’ mumbled Warnie. ‘See what you mean. That’s tricky, isn’t it? Quite a puzzle, eh?’

‘In fact, it’s the time element that makes it all so tricky,’ Inspector Locke said. ‘You two’—again he nodded in the direction of Jack and myself—‘saw the wound inflicted (although exactly how that was done we don’t as yet know), and you saw the wound bleeding freely. Then you saw him fall over the far edge of the roof.’

‘And we ran to the spot as quickly as we could,’ I volunteered.

‘I have no doubt,’ the inspector agreed, ‘that you ran to his aid rapidly. The distance involved is not great. Sergeant Drake and I have timed how long it would take to climb quickly down the stairs from the organ loft, exit the cathedral, run across the cathedral close, go through the archway and emerge from the doorway onto the road behind the school. We think it can’t possibly have taken more than a minute and a half. Even walking briskly you’d do it in two.’

‘At the most, I would have thought,’ Jack added. ‘So the time period available for something to happen to the body is remarkably short.’

‘So the method is a puzzle,’ agreed Locke, ‘but so is the motive.’

‘Ah, yes,’ Warnie said, ‘method, motive and opportunity—that’s what they all talk about in those detective novels I read . . . Agatha Christie and the rest . . . f’rinstance, Austin Freeman’s Dr Thorndyke is always saying it . . . method, motive and opportunity.’

Sexton Locke nodded in agreement. ‘And with the method remaining obscure, Drake and I turned our attention to motive—without, I’m sad to say, any greater success. Mr Fowler started with the school only at the beginning of this term, I believe. Is that correct, Mr Morris?’

‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘On the same day as myself.’

‘So he’s hardly been here long enough to make enemies, one would have thought. We’re trying to track down his antecedents—his family background and where he was before he came here—so far without success.’

‘That surprises me,’ said Jack. ‘I would assume his references and details of his previous employment would be in the school office.’

Inspector Locke ran his fingers through his hair in a gesture of frustration as a deep frown furrowed his brow. Then he said, ‘There’s a Scotland Yard officer, an old friend of mine, in the vicinity at the moment, and I’m hoping to consult him on this matter. He’s a brilliant detective, so he may be able to help.’

Inspector Locke’s brainstorming session continued for another half an hour but without producing any concrete results.

When it broke up and we spilled back out onto the high street, Warnie announced that he was heading for
The Pelican
to see if he could find some locals interested in a game of darts. Jack and I turned up the hill and began walking slowly towards the cathedral.

‘Jack, let me ask you a question,’ I said as we walked, ‘and I want an honest answer.’

‘Would I ever give you any other kind?’ Jack replied with a warm smile on his face. ‘Ask away, young Morris, ask away.’

‘Do you think I am fundamentally a bad person?’

‘It all depends on what you mean by “bad”, my dear Morris,’ replied Jack, making the same move he so often made in tutorials of going back to first principles and insisting on clear definitions.

‘You know what I mean by “bad”, Jack. When we speak of someone having a “bad character” we know exactly what we’re saying—there’s no ambiguity.’

‘Actually, I think there is room for doubt and ambiguity,’ Jack insisted. ‘Since Chaucer’s day we’ve used “bad” to mean “of defective quality or worth”. And any such judgment depends upon the standard being used in doing the judging. When we describe someone as a “bad character”, we mean his behaviour is defective, that is to say, he doesn’t come up to the standard of most of our circle of acquaintance: he doesn’t behave in the way most of our group think is proper.’

‘But you seem to have been arguing,’ I insisted, ‘in this latest “great war” of ours, that
all
of us are “bad” in some way—basically defective and deficient in character. Yet we don’t judge absolutely everyone around us as being a “bad character”, so how can that be?’

‘There is much in what you say, Morris,’ Jack responded, using the words he employed in tutorials to express high praise. ‘Let me explain by painting a picture for you. Imagine a tribe of pygmies living in the deepest, most remote jungles of central Africa. Among that tribe some are regarded as short and some as tall—quite correctly, in fact, since by their own tribal height standards some are, indeed, short or tall. Now imagine that tribe being encountered by Dr Livingstone or some other European explorer. By European standards he will see
all
the tribe as short. In much the same way, we distinguish among ourselves those of our acquaintance we call “good chaps” because they hit the mark of the general standard of acceptable behaviour. And there are some we call “bad” because their behaviour misses that mark. But when we encounter God, we discover that our mark was not nearly high enough.’

‘In God’s eyes we are all moral pygmies?’

‘It sounds harsh when put as bluntly as that, but you’re perfectly correct. We settle for lower standards because we are people of lower standards.’

‘Which is why our murderer, in this case, is merely acting out of those lower standards of human behaviour inherent somewhere deep in all of us?’

‘Precisely. Society and our own consciences both impose restraints on us, which results in us suppressing some of our impulses and acting like men in “the state of nature”, to use Hobbes’ expression.’

‘And sufficiently provoked in some way, our true nature explodes through those restraints and violence results?’ I asked.

Jack agreed.

‘You almost make it sound,’ I continued, ‘as if we’ve inherited something defective and corrupt in our natures from our parents. Is that what you mean?’

By this time we had reached the top of the high street, but instead of walking through the gates into the cathedral close, we turned to one side to walk down a long, gentle slope to where the River Ness was making its lazy way around the town.

Jack lit his pipe, and then said, ‘For the past fifty years or so there has been a movement called eugenics.’

‘A rather unpleasant movement I would have thought,’ I commented.

‘I’m not recommending it, merely using it as an illustration,’ Jack explained. ‘The eugenics movement wants only people who will produce the finest offspring to be allowed to breed. They seem to think that if those they call the “criminal classes” were not allowed to have children, criminality itself could be bred out of the human race. The whole concept is both absurd and unworkable. However . . .’

‘Ah, now we get to the point,’ I said, rubbing my hands in anticipation of the idea Jack was about to spring.

‘However, the word “eugenics” itself may enlighten us. It was coined only, as I said, about fifty years ago—put together from two Greek roots: from the word meaning “to produce” or “to breed” with the prefix
eus
, meaning—well you remember your Greek, don’t you, Morris?’

‘Of course—
eus
means “good”.’

‘So “eugenics” means “good breeding” or “well bred”. On that model, I think, we can coin another word that means the opposite—a word that means “badly bred” or “bad breeding” in the sense of inheriting bad characteristics.’

‘What would such a word look like?’

‘If we take the Greek word
kakos
, meaning “bad” or “evil”, we could coin the word “cacogenics”—and say that everyone in the human race is the product of “cacogenics”. We have all inherited corruption from our parents just as pygmies inherit short stature from theirs.’

‘And this goes back to having the right standard to judge against?’ I asked.

‘You follow my meaning exactly, Morris,’ said Jack with a warm smile.

‘You claim . . .’ I began.

‘No, Christianity claims,’ Jack interrupted.

‘All right, then, Christianity claims that by God’s standards we are all born with some corruption within, which means that our human nature is damaged? We can’t see it because we’re all damaged in the same way?’

Jack clapped me on the shoulder and chortled, ‘You always were one of my brightest students, young Morris. Among us damaged people I would call you a young man of “good character”, not “bad character”. That’s the answer to the question you asked a moment ago. But we’re still all fundamentally defective in some way.’

‘In what way? What is the defect, the corruption, the damage in our souls?’

‘We Christians call that defect “sin”.’

‘So it’s all about sex then?’ I asked.

Jack hooted with laughter. ‘Morris, there are still parts of your brain that belong to the world of the university undergraduate. Of course “sin” is not just about sex. Our English word “sin” translates the Greek word
hamartia
in the New Testament. Now, you remember your Greek, so what does
hamartia
mean?’

‘I think
hamartia
means “missing the mark” or something of that sort.’

‘Indeed. It means missing the bullseye, missing the target. And the target in question is not socially acceptable behaviour but rather what God as our Loving Maker and Ruler requires of us.
Hamartia
, or sin, in fact means totally ignoring what God requires of us, plans for us and provides for us. And that fact gives us a clear, two-word definition of “sin”.’