Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation (11 page)

He began by congratulating her on saving the situation and preventing a death.

‘It was a close shave, Mr Chambers, I’ll tell you that. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

‘Did you ever fear the animals might turn on you?’

‘Not really. I know those cows. We’ve all grown up together, you might say.’

Sidney suppressed a smile at the young woman’s carefree comparison of herself to a group of heifers. ‘I was just wondering: if someone knew them well, might they be able to predict or even direct their behaviour?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘If two students were playing around, for example, causing mischief, might it be possible for one of them to set the cows on the other?’

‘It would be a risky thing to do. They could just as easily turn on you.’

‘Unless,’ Sidney suggested, ‘the person managed to organise the attack from behind.’

‘But why would anyone want to do that?’

‘To create a distraction.’

‘In order to commit some other crime, you mean? It doesn’t seem possible, Mr Chambers. Unless someone was behind the
victim, with fodder, and the cows thought they were going to be fed. That might work, but not in the summer, when there’s plenty of grazing. Those cows were all full up and enjoying the sunshine until the students started messing about.’

Redmond joined them by the stables and, overhearing this, realised what Sidney was up to. ‘The other day, when you first came round, you mentioned another crime, one that happened while all this was going on. Are you going to tell us what it is?’

Sidney came clean about the theft of the necklace, described what it looked like and asked if Abigail either remembered Olivia wearing it or if she had seen it anywhere on the Meadows in the aftermath of the accident.

‘I can’t say I looked too closely. I was more concerned with saving the boy. Then we had to set the cows right, get them all back together as a herd, check none of them were injured.’

‘I just wondered if a necklace had come off in the mêlée,’ Sidney continued, ‘or even if the boy was carrying it in his pockets.’

‘Are you suggesting that he might have stolen it before the cows got to him?’

‘I’m trying not to rule anything out.’

‘Got his comeuppance if he did,’ said Abigail. ‘But if it was on his person then wouldn’t they have found it in the hospital?’

‘Unless it fell out in the rumpus.’

‘But I would have seen it when we rescued him.’

‘And you didn’t?’

‘No.’

‘Which means it must have been taken from the couple either while they were sleeping or after they had left their things and come to help.’

‘I definitely didn’t see any necklace,’ said Abigail. ‘The boy could have swallowed it, I suppose.’

‘Surely not,’ said Sidney. ‘That would be far too dangerous.’

‘And I don’t think that would be the first thing on his mind, would it, Mr Chambers?’

‘There’s no lengths some folk won’t go to,’ her father added. ‘Stealing jewellery and suing hard-working farmers. Haven’t they got better ways to earn a living?’

‘The necklace has sentimental significance,’ Sidney replied.

‘The kind only the rich can afford. Is that all those people can think about: their jewellery? A boy was nearly killed, his parents are likely to sue, I may go out of business and all they want to talk about is a bloody necklace.’

Emily Hastings was indeed a clergy daughter. Her father was the Vicar of St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol, a well-known figure who used his church as a political debating chamber to campaign for CND and annoy the government. His daughter was a languid, somewhat eccentric figure with a round pale face, shell-rimmed glasses, and long dark hair that was parted in the centre and decorated with a peacock-blue flapper headband. She smoked Balkan Sobranies as they drank Noilly Prat and listened to jazz. Sidney was so dazzled by her company that he ended up discussing the difference between Bechet’s clarinet and saxophone playing for a good fifteen minutes before they got round to recent events on the Meadows. Even then Emily wanted to talk about other things, tactfully removing her copy of Wilhelm Reich’s psychoanalytical book
The Function of the Orgasm
from the floor and putting it back on the shelves.

‘I don’t know why you’ve come to visit me, Mr Archdeacon. Your company is very pleasant, but if it’s about the incident with the cows I am afraid I left before the drama.’

‘So you didn’t witness the incident?’

‘In the distance, but I was already on my way home. I heard a commotion as I was leaving Long Meadow but it was too late to turn back and I wanted to get to Newnham. There wasn’t much about the party that excited me, to be honest. Too many boorish public-school boys who’ve no manners. I’m quite a dull girl really.’

‘I reckon you protest too much.’

‘I don’t know. I had to ask to be taken to a May Ball. Can you imagine the humiliation?’

‘Some people might find that a good thing. You had the ability to choose rather than to be chosen.’

‘I think a man can sense desperation in a woman.’

‘I’m not so sure.’ Sidney was surprised by this shift in tone. ‘Perhaps you have to disguise it as confidence.’

‘Exactly.’ Emily gave her right arm an airy waft. ‘I am sure you can tell this whole thing is an act; a mask; a charade in which I pretend to be someone I’m not.’

‘I think we can all be a little bit guilty of that. Who did you ask?’

‘Richard, as a matter of fact. Well, he won’t be coming with me now, will he?’

‘Had he said yes?’

‘I think I’d served a purpose. It was one way of getting back at Olivia.’

‘She had left him for Alexander?’

‘Without bothering to tell him. I think she let him find out.’

‘At the party?’

‘No, a few days before.’

‘I’m amazed he showed up.’

‘It was his party.’

‘Then I’m surprised she came.’

‘I wasn’t. Olivia has a relaxed attitude to physical proximity. I don’t think she really minds who she sleeps with. She once told me that it was just another form of exercise. Whereas I . . .’

‘Think it might have to involve love?’

‘Affection, at least. We’re not animals; although the veneer of sophistication can be removed by alcohol all too swiftly. Would you like a top-up?’

Sidney thought of his father’s watchful eye and how inappropriate it was to be spending so much time in a young student’s rooms. ‘I’d better not.’

‘You don’t mind if I have one?’

‘Not at all.’

‘There’s something delightfully decadent about getting sloshed on a Tuesday afternoon, don’t you think? Where were we?’

‘The party.’

‘Oh, yes. I didn’t join in the so-called fun because I was dressed for cocktails rather than anything else.’

‘I imagine you looked very stylish.’

‘I was wearing a dark-green sequin dress with a fringe hem. I thought I’d try to blend in with the landscape. The back was too precious to sit down on so close to the river; the ground wasn’t dry enough so I went home when things started getting fruity.’

‘Can you remember what Olivia was wearing?’

‘A powder-blue floaty dress, strappy sandals.’

‘Her necklace?’

‘Oh yes, that.’

‘You saw it?’

‘Everyone did. She wore that colour of dress to set it off. It matched her eyes, she said, not that any of the men looked into them for too long. The necklace gave them the perfect opportunity to stare at her breasts.’

‘Was it the kind of necklace you would have worn?’

‘It’s not really my thing. Too Victorian.’

‘So if, for example, Olivia had offered to lend it to you . . .’

‘I see where you are leading, Mr Archdeacon. I am reading experimental psychology, you know. It’s not the kind of thing I would have wanted to steal. Believe me, I have my own style and my own studies to keep up. I don’t seek out trouble. That seems to be your job.’

Once Sidney had confessed to Amanda what he had been up to in one of their ‘catch-up’ telephone calls, he was warned that Hermione Randall was a well-known socialite and ‘a very forceful woman’.

‘More than you, Amanda?’

‘Definitely. You don’t need to worry about me any more. I’ve lost half my confidence. I think it must be age. That and marriage. People look straight past me these days.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘It’s true. I don’t count. I’m old. I’m invisible. I could get away with all manner of crimes.’

‘Don’t start on that.’

‘I won’t. But it’s true.’

‘So you think someone older could have stolen the necklace? Not a student at all, but an intrepid passer-by?’

‘I don’t know, Sidney; but certainly someone who wasn’t young, giddy and drunk. Perhaps you should ask Henry. He might have been in Cambridge at the time.’

‘Don’t be absurd.’

‘I’m not. He’s been behaving very oddly lately. He works late and keeps disappearing.’

‘He likes his privacy.’

‘I only hope he hasn’t been seeing his ex-wife. I can never quite trust her to keep away.’

Henry had divorced Connie Richmond eight years previously but it hadn’t stopped her sending threatening letters to Amanda in an attempt to disrupt the romance.

‘Do you know we’ve been married nearly three years and I still can’t quite tell what my husband’s thinking. Do you have that with Hildegard?’

‘All the time.’

‘It’s irritating, isn’t it?’

‘I think it’s supposed to keep us interested.’

‘Oh, is that what it is? What if we give up and look for entertainment elsewhere?’

‘That isn’t advisable, Amanda, and well you know it.’

‘It’s what you’re doing, though, isn’t it? It may not be the amorous activity of a bounder or a rake but you’re still away from home, running around the countryside looking for a necklace in a field full of cows and nubile young women. A needle in a haystack is a bit too prosaic for you, isn’t it, Sidney? A needle? Oh no, that’s not valuable enough. A haystack? Too banal. You need a whole field, mad cows, drunk students, young lovers, glamorous women, an angry farmer . . .’

‘Stop it, Amanda.’

‘I’m right, though, aren’t I? You’re enjoying all this.’

‘I’m intrigued. That’s different.’

‘Well, I can’t wait to hear what you make of Hermione Randall. I think you may be about to meet your match.’

Sidney decided that he had better talk through the case with Geordie over a couple of pints in the Eagle. Were the two crimes connected or were they not? And why was there still no sign of the necklace?

‘I don’t know what they’ve all been playing at,’ said Keating as they sat outside in the yard. ‘The whole thing’s just a cock and bull story, without the cock.’

‘Or, indeed, the bull,’ said Sidney. ‘I did have a mad idea that the culprit could have been Richard Lane, who having been spurned by a former girlfriend took the jewel as an act of revenge. but I think that’s too far-fetched.’

‘And we would have found the necklace in his clothing, unless Abigail Redmond picked it up in the aftermath.’

‘She even suggested he swallowed it.’

‘Then they would have found it in the hospital. Blimey, is that how her mind works?’

‘I don’t think she would pick up a necklace from the ground and not tell me about it.’

‘The family’s criminal record says it all.’

‘But not her, Geordie. Abigail’s always been a good girl. I’ve never found her to be envious or irresponsible.’

‘You’ve always had a soft spot for that woman.’

‘I’ve seen her grow up. I think it has to be one of the students.’

‘What about Emily Hastings? From what you tell me, she seems the most likely suspect.’

‘I’ve been thinking about that. It may be a question of timing. If she arrived later than we think, approaching from the town and across Long Meadow, she might have been behind Richard Lane just before the cows attacked.’

‘You mean they could have been going for her?’

‘Possibly.’

‘But they didn’t reach her because they got to the boy instead?’

‘And she managed to escape along the riverbank, possibly getting across in a boat or a punt.’

‘But then she would have been breathless when she met the weird musician.’

‘He’s not that odd.’

‘Did you ask him if she was breathless?’

‘No, not yet. I hadn’t even met her when I first spoke to him.’

‘Then perhaps you should see him again?’

‘I will, Geordie. But even then she would have had to recross the river to steal the necklace when Olivia and Alexander had gone to help. And how would she know it was there? She hadn’t even reached the party.’

‘Unless she’d seen Olivia beforehand.’

‘We need to ask her about that too. We could also search her rooms if you like. I’m sure I could swing it with the principal of Newnham.’

‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves.’

‘Then there is the happy or not-so-happy couple . . .’

Geordie checked his notebook. ‘Olivia Randall and Alexander Farley. I suppose the girl could have kept the necklace all
along, but I don’t think she has the cunning to do that. The new boyfriend is a different matter, though. He could easily have taken it.’

‘But why would he? And how could he have kept it from her?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he wanted it as some kind of proof that he had known her.’

‘But he must have thought Olivia was enough of a catch.’

‘His boat had come in, his icing was on the cake and all his Christmases had come at once. What’s he like?’ Geordie asked. ‘How new a boyfriend is he? How much does he love her? And would he have the means to sell the sapphire? It’s certainly easy enough for him to have taken it as she slept. He’d already removed half her clothes; a necklace wouldn’t have been too much of a challenge. It could even have fallen off in their little tryst. I think you need to get to see him on his own, Sidney, unless you want my help. I don’t seem to have done very much so far and we’re not making a lot of progress with the other students. Who are you talking to next?’

‘I fear that decision is out of my hands. Helena’s mother is about to arrive. Have you ever met her?’

‘Fortunately, not.’

‘Perhaps you’d better keep it that way.’

‘I’ve nothing to hide.’