The Floating Body (23 page)

I chewed this over in silence for a while as we climbed over a stile and into a sloping field that led down to the river’s edge.

‘Do you think,’ I asked at length, ‘that most people would acknowledge the mixed component—good
and
evil—in human nature?’

‘I don’t know about “most”,’ Jack said, ‘but certainly many have done so, and many still do.’

‘For instance?’ I challenged.

‘Perhaps the most famous example,’ said Jack, ‘is in Stevenson.’ He stopped to relight his pipe and then resumed, ‘Have you ever read his
Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
?’

‘I confess I haven’t. The only Stevenson I ever read was
Treasure Island
and that was when I was a boy. Is it a good novel?’

‘Not bad. It’s not long—perhaps little more than an extended short story—but once read it grips the imagination. Hence its popularity.’

‘Well, I certainly know the premise behind the story: the concept of the good man who takes some sort of chemical potion and turns into a cold, callous, murdering fiend.’

‘Yes, even for those who’ve never read it the expression “Jekyll and Hyde” has become proverbial.’

We reached the water’s edge at this point and turned onto the towpath that followed the curve of the stream towards the town of Nesfield.

‘The story begins with an encounter,’ Jack said as he puffed vigorously on his pipe, ‘with an exceedingly ugly and brutal young man, Edward Hyde, who in his haste tramples over a young child. It turns out that this Hyde has a mysterious connection with kindly old Dr Henry Jekyll, who had made a will in Hyde’s favour. Later Hyde is seen to commit a murder—beating a man to death with a heavy cane. The police come searching for Hyde. He’s vanished, but he’s left behind his heavy cane—the murder weapon. This turns out to be the property of Dr Jekyll.’

A flock of wild ducks came swooping in over our heads. They circled slowly against the wind and then landed in feathery splashes on the gently flowing waters of the River Ness. They looked around as if checking their surroundings. Apparently satisfied that all was in order and no dangers loomed, they began ducking their heads under the surface—feeding on the water weeds that grew densely along the river bed.

We watched in silence for a moment, and then Jack resumed his tale. ‘Well, old Dr Jekyll assures his friends that Hyde has gone, and that all connections with him have been severed. Dr Jekyll resumes his old life, but the improvement doesn’t last. His servants become alarmed when he locks himself in his laboratory and refuses to come out. His friends eventually break in to discover Hyde, wearing Jekyll’s clothing, dead from suicide.’

‘And as I understand it,’ I said, ‘the friends quickly discover that the two—Hyde and Jekyll—were the same man.’

‘Yes. Jekyll left a letter explaining everything. He had discovered a medical potion of some sort that allowed him to transform himself, both body and mind, to unleash the suppressed and ugly self-indulgent side of his nature. The “science” in the story is pure fiction, of course, but it works as a device to make Stevenson’s point about every man being, in truth, two men: one better and one worse.’

‘Is he making a moral point or a psychological point?’

‘Oh, there can be no real doubt that his point is a moral one. Apparently the seeds of the story came to him in a nightmare. But dissatisfied with it as a mere story, he rewrote it intending an allegory.’

‘The point being that I am
both
Jekyll
and
Hyde?’

‘And so am I, and so are we all. That’s the brokenness that exists in human nature.’

‘So it’s not just a matter of bad life experiences making bad people?’

‘No indeed. There is that seed within us all that, given sufficient provocation or a lack of restraint, will flower into evil deeds.’

‘Such as killing Dave Fowler?’

‘Such as murder, yes. But not just murder. We all of us do evil deeds every day. For the most part these are small in scale and non-criminal. But we still succeed in hurting other people in the process.’

‘And this is from within us? This is not some dark shadow that comes on us from without?’

‘Precisely. Remember that Jesus said, “For from within, out of the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders.” And I think, in our most honest moments, we all know this is true of ourselves.’

Then Jack burst out into his typical hearty laughter as he added, ‘I certainly know it’s true of me!’

I was becoming a little uncomfortable with where the conversation was going, so I did what I always do in such circumstances—I deflected.

‘Come on, Jack, it’s almost lunchtime, and this afternoon I have exam papers to mark. We should be getting back to the school.’

In acknowledgment of the continued presence of our Speech Night guests, the Head Master invited us to dinner that night. When I say ‘us’, I mean Jack, Warnie and all the masters and their wives (those that had wives).

This had the delightful (for me) result of giving me one night free from eating the standard school dinner served up to the boys. That night was ‘cottage pie night’—meaning brown, vaguely beefy slosh topped with white gooey slosh. I was more than happy to give that a miss for properly cooked roast beef and Yorkshire pudding.

When the company was gathered in the formal dining room of the Head Master’s house, Dr Rogers tapped a spoon on his wine glass. A respectful silence fell, and the Head launched into his little speech.

‘This year’s Speech Night, I think we can all agree, was an unqualified success. And for this we can thank our speaker, Mr C. S. Lewis of Magdalen College, Oxford.’

A small ripple of applause followed this formal statement.

‘It has been a delight having Mr Lewis and his brother, Major Lewis, staying with us here at Nesfield Cathedral School. And we are more than happy, of course, to extend our hospitality for as long as the . . . ah . . . the police deem it necessary to have their . . . ah . . . witnesses close at hand. That goes without saying.’

Which is why, of course, the Head Master said it.

‘For as long, as I say, as it is deemed necessary. Nevertheless, it seems appropriate to think of our gathering here tonight as a farewell dinner to both Mr Lewis and Major Lewis. Not, of course, that they will be leaving at the crack of dawn tomorrow. Ha, ha.’

That odd little sound at the end was a signal that the Head Master had made a joke. A very small joke. And a joke that was not actually funny, as such. But a joke nonetheless.

‘However, I’m sure the police will very soon . . . ah . . . release them to return to their home in Oxford. Hence, tonight’s little farewell “do”. So if you will kindly take you seats around the table, our cook tells us that the staff are ready to serve up.’

‘Is,’ said Jack to me
sotto voce
as we shuffled towards our places, like cattle shuffling towards their evening feed in the barn.

I raised an eyebrow, so Jack said, ‘The staff “is” ready to serve up.’

‘Collective noun singular,’ I responded, also in a low voice.

Once we were settled in our designated places I found myself between Warnie and our History Master, Geoffrey Douglas.

This gave me the interesting experience—during the Brown Windsor Soup phase of the proceedings—of hearing the extraordinary sound effects that resulted when Douglas collided with the soup in question. His method of consumption sounded like a buffalo pulling its hoof, very slowly, out of a bog. He carried on this interesting performance oblivious to the looks he was getting from around the table.

The Head Master sought to distract us from the liquid sounds rolling around the room by telling a long anecdote about someone called Lord Worpseldon. This old buffoon was, I gathered, a member of the school council. The anecdote, I think, was meant to be amusing and it may even, at some point, have reached a punchline. However, I didn’t have a sufficient attention span to discover the point of the whole thing.

Seated opposite me was Henry Beard, looking as grumpy and dyspeptic as ever. So deeply was he sunk in gloom that he reminded me of one of my fellow students when I was an undergraduate. The look on Beard’s face exactly resembled the look on my friend’s face as he stood in the dock of the magistrate’s court, heavily hung-over, waiting to be slapped with a five pound fine for nicking a policeman’s helmet on boat race night.

Then it was, I suppose, inevitable that sooner or later someone would raise the topic of Dave Fowler’s murder.

It was McKell who did it.

‘Are the police any closer?’ he asked, addressing his question to Jack who was seated beside the Head Master at the head of the table. ‘Any closer, that is, to solving Fowler’s murder?’

I thought it was like his cheek to ask since I had decided that he was almost certainly the murderer. Either him or the odious Muriel. Or possibly both of them together.

‘Really, McKell!’ protested the Head. ‘Do we need to discuss such . . . such . . . grubby matters over dinner?’

‘It’s what is occupying all our minds,’ said McKell, speaking, I thought, more sharply than he normally spoke to the Head. ‘And until it’s settled it will be impossible for life to get back to normal—both for us and for the boys.’

Dr Rogers wearily shook his grey head and muttered, ‘I suppose you’re right.’

‘Well, Mr Lewis,’ McKell continued, ‘you seem to be particularly friendly with the police—can you tell us anything about how their investigations are proceeding.’

‘I’m not privy to their secrets,’ boomed Jack robustly as plates of roast beef, Yorkshire pudding, baked potatoes and peas were slid in front of us by the domestic staff.

‘However,’ he continued, still apparently explaining the obvious to the dull boy at the back of the room, ‘Detective Inspector Sexton Locke strikes me as a most intelligent and capable officer who has the matter well in hand. And a friend of mine, Inspector Gideon Crispin of Scotland Yard, is in the district and is lending his long experience to the investigation as a consultant. I would not be surprised if an arrest was made in the next day or two.’

Really, I thought? Personally I would have been astonished if an arrest was made in the next month or two. What did Jack know that I didn’t?

The conversation rolled on, reviewing the familiar—indeed, overly familiar—facts of the case and puzzling once again how Fowler was killed and how his corpse had floated unseen for some hours before hitting the ground.

As this was happening I glanced across the table at young Samantha Beard. And I was surprised. When Jack and I had broken the news to her of Fowler’s murder, she was grief stricken, unable to contain her tears. There was no sign of that now. What I could see in her young face could only be called terror.

She had gone white, was glancing down at her plate and was avoiding eye contact with anyone in the room. In fact, she stopped eating, seemingly frozen to the spot. Her face, her whole demeanour, suggested to me that she was paralysed with fear. But fear of whom? Did she fear that our unknown murderer might strike again?

Later, after the dessert, the ladies left the room, and over the port and nuts we gentlemen rose from our seats and ambled about, chatting quietly in small groups.

This was how I came to find myself in a quiet corner, in front of a bookcase, with Jack. In the relaxed, late evening atmosphere I began rambling on about Conway and Wynyard and the problem they continued to be for the school.

In the course of my monologue I mentioned that McKell had given them his boots to clean. The effect on Jack was electrifying.

‘Are you sure they didn’t take the boots?’ he asked.

‘No, McKell definitely handed them over to be cleaned,’ I explained. ‘He told me so.’

‘I have to go into town,’ said Jack grimly.

‘Now? At this time of night?’

‘Immediately. It shouldn’t be hard to find Crispin—he told me he’s staying at
The Pelican
.’

‘But what do you need Crispin for? And why so urgently?’

‘Because the smuggled diamonds are now in the jeweller’s shop in Nesfield, and Crispin must act swiftly before they’re shipped to London to be disposed of.’

The next time I saw Jack was the following morning after chapel. I was at chapel because I was rostered to supervise the younger boys, and Jack was there because he liked to be there: ‘flying the flag’, he called it.

‘Well?’ I said as we walked across the cobblestones of the cathedral close after chapel had ended. ‘What did Crispin say?’

‘He saw immediately the significance of what had happened.’

‘But what
had
happened?’ I almost squeaked in utter amazement. ‘McKell gave his boots to Conway and Wynyard to be cleaned. How can that possibly be significant?’

But at that point Jack fell silent. He closed up as tightly as a deep-sea clam nodding off for its nightly eight hours. I knew there was no point in trying to prise information out of him when he had decided not to give it, so I changed the subject.

‘Back to the School Bounders—Conway and Wynyard. How on earth, Jack, do we get them to change?’

‘What would you like to see happen?’

‘I’d like them to see the light!’ I protested. ‘I’d like them to see there’s a better way to be part of any human society than the way they’ve chosen.’

‘Your goal is a modest one, young Morris. To achieve it, all you need do is to show them that society is organised in such a way that certain behaviours are rewarded while other behaviours are not. In the end, the Conways and Wynyards of this world are not very bright. Their corrupt souls are obvious because they haven’t the wit to hide them.’

‘We, on the other hand—you and I—well, I suppose we have learned to be cleverer, more cunning, in the face we show the world.’

‘You always were very fast to see the point, old chap,’ said Jack with a warm smile. ‘Yes, but we have to be honest enough to admit that “good” behaviour, socially acceptable behaviour, is not enough.’

‘Enough for what?’

‘Enough to satisfy our deepest longings. The corruption that’s eating away at the human heart needs to be dealt with more deeply, more effectively, more powerfully. By the way, my dear chap, do you need to go on class shortly?’