A Caribbean Mystery (Miss Marple 15)

Seldon made a gesture of impatience. ‘Don’t believe in it all so blindly! This tune now, the medium that starts it all, what is it like?’

Hamer hummed it, and Seldon listened with a puzzled frown.

‘Rather like a bit out of the Overture to Rienzi. There is something uplifting about it – it has wings. But I’m not carried off the earth! Now, these flights of yours, are they all exactly the same?’

‘No, no.’ Hamer leaned forward eagerly. ‘They develop. Each time I see a little more. It’s difficult to explain. You see, I’m always conscious of reaching a certain point – the music carries me there – not direct, but a succession of waves, each reaching higher than the last, until the highest point where one can go no further. I stay there until I’m dragged back. It isn’t a place, it’s more a state. Well, not just at first, but after a little while, I began to understand that there were other things all round me waiting until I was able to perceive them. Think of a kitten. It has eyes, but at first it can’t see with them. It’s blind and has to learn to see. Well, that was what it was to me. Mortal eyes and ears were no good to me, but there was something corresponding to them that hadn’t yet been developed – something that wasn’t bodily at all. And little by little that grew . . . there were sensations of light . . . then of sound . . . then of colour . . . All very vague and unformulated. It was more the knowledge of things than seeing or hearing them. First it was light, a light that grew stronger and clearer . . . then sand, great stretches of reddish sand . . . and here and there straight long lines of water like canals –’

Seldon drew in his breath sharply. ‘Canals! That’s interesting. Go on.’

‘But these things didn’t matter – they didn’t count any longer. The real things were the things I couldn’t see yet – but I heard them . . . It was a sound like the rushing of wings . . . somehow, I can’t explain why, it was glorious! There’s nothing like it here. And then came another glory – I saw them – the Wings! Oh, Seldon, the Wings!’

‘But what were they? Men – angels – birds?’

‘I don’t know. I couldn’t see – not yet. But the colour of them! Wing colour – we haven’t got it here – it’s a wonderful colour.’

‘Wing colour?’ repeated Seldon. ‘What’s it like?’ Hamer flung up his hands impatiently. ‘How can I tell you? Explain the colour blue to a blind person! It’s a colour you’ve never seen – Wing colour!’

‘Well?’

‘Well? That’s all. That’s as far as I’ve got. But each time the coming back has been worse – more painful. I can’t understand that. I’m convinced my body never leaves the bed. In this place I get to I’m convinced I’ve got no physical presence. Why should it hurt so confoundly then?’

Seldon shook his head in silence. ‘It’s something awful – the coming back. The pull of it – then the pain, pain in every limb and every nerve, and my ears feel as though they were bursting. Then everything presses so, the weight of it all, the dreadful sense of imprisonment. I want light, air, space – above all space to breathe in! And I want freedom.’

‘And what,’ asked Seldon, ‘of all the other things that used to mean so much to you?’

‘That’s the worst of it. I care for them still as much as, if not more than, ever. And these things, comfort, luxury, pleasure, seem to pull opposite ways to the Wings. It’s a perpetual struggle between them – and I can’t see how it’s going to end.’

Seldon sat silent. The strange tale he had been listening to was fantastic enough in all truth. Was it all a delusion, a wild hallucination – or could it by any possibility be true? And if so, why Hamer, of all men . . . ? Surely the materialist, the man who loved the flesh and denied the spirit, was the last man to see the sights of another world.

Across the table Hamer watched him anxiously. ‘I suppose,’ said Seldon slowly, ‘that you can only wait. Wait and see what happens.’

‘I can’t! I tell you I can’t! Your saying that shows you don’t understand. It’s tearing me in two, this awful struggle – this killing long-drawn-out fight between – between –’ He hesitated.

‘The flesh and the spirit?’ suggested Seldon.

Hamer stared heavily in front of him. ‘I suppose one might call it that. Anyway, it’s unbearable . . . I can’t get free . . .’

Again Bernard Seldon shook his head. He was caught up in the grip of the inexplicable. He made one more suggestion.

‘If I were you,’ he advised, ‘I would get hold of that cripple.’

But as he went home he muttered to himself: ‘Canals – I wonder.’

Silas Hamer went out of the house the following morning with a new determination in his step. He had decided to take Seldon’s advice and find the legless man. Yet inwardly he was convinced that his search would be in vain and that the man would have vanished as completely as though the earth had swallowed him up.

The dark buildings on either side of the passageway shut out the sunlight and left it dark and mysterious. Only in one place, half-way up it, there was a break in the wall, and through it there fell a shaft of golden light that illuminated with radiance a figure sitting on the ground. A figure – yes, it was the man!

The instrument of pipes leaned against the wall beside his crutches, and he was covering the paving stones with designs in coloured chalk. Two were completed, sylvan scenes of marvellous beauty and delicacy, swaying trees and a leaping brook that seemed alive.

And again Hamer doubted. Was this man a mere street musician, a pavement artist? Or was he something more . . .

Suddenly the millionaire’s self-control broke down, and he cried fiercely and angrily: ‘Who are you? For God’s sake, who are you?’

The man’s eyes met his, smiling. ‘Why don’t you answer? Speak, man, speak!’

Then he noticed that the man was drawing with incredible rapidity on a bare slab of stone. Hamer followed the movement with his eyes . . . A few bold strokes, and giant trees took form. Then, seated on a boulder . . . a man . . . playing an instrument of pipes. A man with a strangely beautiful face – and goat’s legs . . .

The cripple’s hand made a swift movement. The man still sat on the rock, but the goat’s legs were gone. Again his eyes met Hamer’s.

‘They were evil,’ he said.

Hamer stared, fascinated. For the face before him was the face of the picture, but strangely and incredibly beautified . . . Purified from all but an intense and exquisite joy of living.

Hamer turned and almost fled down the passageway into the bright sunlight, repeating to himself incessantly: ‘It’s impossible. Impossible . . . I’m mad – dreaming!’ But the face haunted him – the face of Pan . . .

He went into the Park and sat on a chair. It was a deserted hour. A few nursemaids with their charges sat in the shade of the trees, and dotted he

re and there in the stretches of green, like islands in a sea, lay the recumbent forms of men . . .

The words ‘a wretched tramp’ were to Hamer an epitome of misery. But suddenly, today, he envied them . . .

They seemed to him of all created beings the only free ones. The earth beneath them, the sky above them, the world to wander in . . . they were not hemmed in or chained.

Like a flash it came to him that that which bound him so remorse-lessly was the thing he had worshipped and prized above all others – wealth! He had thought it the strongest thing on earth, and now, wrapped round by its golden strength, he saw the truth of his words. It was his money that held him in bondage . . .

But was it? Was that really it? Was there a deeper and more pointed truth that he had not seen? Was it the money or was it his own love of the money? He was bound in fetters of his own making; not wealth itself, but love of wealth was the chain.

He knew now clearly the two forces that were tearing at him, the warm composite strength of materialism that enclosed and surrounded him, and, opposed to it, the clear imperative call – he named it to himself the Call of the Wings.

And while the one fought and clung the other scorned war and would not stoop to struggle. It only called – called unceasingly . . . He heard it so clearly that it almost spoke in words.

‘You cannot make terms with me,’ it seemed to say. ‘For I am above all other things. If you follow my call you must give up all else and cut away the forces that hold you. For only the Free shall follow where I lead . . .’

‘I can’t,’ cried Hamer. ‘I can’t . . .’

A few people turned to look at the big man who sat talking to himself. So sacrifice was being asked of him, the sacrifice of that which was most dear to him, that which was part of himself.

Part of himself – he remembered the man without legs . . .

‘What in the name of Fortune brings you here?’ asked Borrow.

Indeed the East-end mission was an unfamiliar background to Hamer.

‘I’ve listened to a good many sermons,’ said the millionaire, ‘all saying what could be done if you people had funds. I’ve come to tell you this: you can have funds.’