Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) (2 page)

Sidney put his arm round his wife, looked down, and then turned to see Simon Opie’s Humber recede into the distance. He told Hildegard to go into the house. He did not want her to be distressed. He tried to think of the most natural and least upsetting explanation for the dead birds at his front door. Perhaps his beloved Labrador Dickens had found them, or they had been left as a present from Jerome Benson, the local taxidermist? Did people eat doves? he thought wildly. Perhaps they were like quail or duck? Could he separate the idea of a dove as a symbol of peace from its culinary potential? He inspected the birds for signs of shot but there were none; nor were their necks broken. In fact it was no clearer how they had died than why they were on his doorstep. The only certainty was that this was not an accident: two doves, slain and laid out for discovery. There was no note.

He fetched a spade from the shed and buried the birds in the garden, praying not only for their souls but also, as he remembered the solemn ceremony of dedication that afternoon, for peace; in his own life and in the wider world.

Hildegard tried to banish the vision of the doves, so still and dead, by making some ham sandwiches and a pot of tea. A cheerful Leonard Graham had popped in to see how the day had gone. He asked if Sidney had ‘passed on the news’.

‘What news?’ Hildegard asked, having been unable to concentrate on anything Sidney’s curate had said.

‘I’m going to be a vicar.’

‘Where?’ Hildegard asked.

‘It’s a parish in North London. Holloway. A bit different from here.’

‘I had no idea.’

‘Didn’t Sidney tell you?’

His colleague looked abashed. ‘I was waiting for the right moment.’

‘You forgot.’

‘Of course I didn’t forget.’

‘Cup of tea, Leonard?’ Hildegard asked. She stood by the window, unable to settle.

Sidney looked at the book his curate was carrying. ‘You’ll have to pack up your Dostoevsky in your old kit bag.’

‘But I don’t think I’ll be smiling.’

‘No, perhaps not.’ Sidney could not forget the dead birds. ‘Leonard, there’s something I need to ask you. Is this the first time you’ve been to the vicarage today?’

‘I was here earlier. Why?’

‘It’s just that Hildegard found a couple of doves on the doorstep.’

‘A gift?’

Hildegard handed him his tea. ‘Not a very welcome one.’

‘I think you can cook doves, you know. The Russians have a dove-like dish with white cabbage.
Golubtsy
, I think it’s called
.
.
.’

‘Yes, I can believe that,’ Sidney cut in. ‘But this looked very different.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘I’m not sure.’

‘An omen? Surely not?’

‘Possibly, but I can’t imagine why. I don’t think I’ve done anything wrong; at least not recently.’

‘Are you going to tell Inspector Keating?’

‘I thought I might.’

‘Sidney
.
.
.’ Hildegard interjected.

‘Just to be on the safe side. Even if we have to solve the mystery ourselves.’

Hildegard put her arms round her husband’s neck. ‘Perhaps we should ignore them. I don’t want you getting into any trouble,
meine Liebe
. I know what you’re like.’

Sidney kissed his wife on the cheek, and held a lock of her hair in his hand. ‘Please don’t worry, my darling.’

Leonard was always touched by these small demonstrations of love between Sidney and his new wife. He saw that it was time to go. ‘I am sure there’s a perfectly plausible explanation. But I should leave you love-birds to it,’ Leonard observed before realising, as he walked down the vicarage path, that it was not the most helpful remark he could have made in the circumstances.

It was almost eleven o’clock. Sidney turned on the wireless and listened to the news on the Home Service. As well as telling listeners that it was Marshal Tito of Yugoslavia’s birthday, that Soviet ships were monitoring nuclear testing by the United States at Christmas Island, and that Sussex had beaten Pakistan by seven wickets, there was also a report of the Queen’s attendance, accompanied by Princess Margaret and Lord Snowden, at the service they had attended that very morning.

Sidney sat at his desk in his study, looked over his correspondence, and then knelt at his prie-dieu to say his prayers. He asked for mercy, forgiveness and understanding, and prayed that the birds that had been left on his doorstep were not a sign of more ominous things to come.

‘O God, from whom all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do proceed; give unto Thy servants that peace which the world cannot give
.
.
.’

Hildegard always liked to be first into bed and Sidney listened to her humming as she climbed the stairs; at first he thought it was a German folk song until he recognised ‘The man I love’. It was extraordinary that he was that man. No matter how badly a day went, or how worried he was, he knew that she loved him absolutely and that he loved her. It was the most precious thing in his life and he would do nothing to harm it.

Hildegard was almost asleep when he finally came upstairs, giving her husband a drowsy kiss before turning away from him, on to her side. Sidney listened to his wife’s breathing as she fell asleep. It was erratic and rose in volume the deeper she slept (had she begun to snore?) and Sidney worried then that one day he might be in her presence when her breathing stopped altogether. They had only been married for six months but he could no longer bear any time they spent apart. He had never felt that his existence on this earth could be so complete. He was even afraid of his own happiness. He worried that it might not endure; he almost expected it not to last, perhaps believing that he didn’t deserve it, and it was all an elaborate joke to make the pain of any eventual loss far worse. Strange, he thought, that a man could not trust contentment or appreciate it for what it was.

Sidney tried to let his own breathing fall in with hers, imagining his wife’s rhythm could help him sleep and they would be synchronised through the night. But Hildegard’s breathing was fitful, filled with long silences that were then broken by a loud shudder as if she was dreaming so deeply she had forgotten how to inhale and only remembered just in time. Sometimes she gave a little cry, or adjusted her position, lying first on her back before turning towards him, oblivious, lost in dreams or the past, unaware of any waking present, safe from danger, warm in the half-light.

It was love, he thought, to lie like this, listening to his wife so near.

Contentment was a gift that Sidney knew was hard won, but he was grateful for it, and he fell asleep musing on other small areas of life where he felt simply, and easily, at peace with the world; not least the regular Thursday evening backgammon session in the RAF bar of the Eagle with Inspector Keating.

They arrived at the pub together and in the rain. Even though it was almost June, Geordie was fed up he still had to wear a battered raincoat and worried that he was beginning to appear middle-aged. After they had got in the first of their regulation two pints and sat down by the window he complained that his grey hairs were edging remorselessly upwards, his belt had loosened not one but two notches in the last few years, and that his need for reading glasses made him look like a civil servant. ‘And not a very well-dressed one, either.’ He sighed.

‘That’s true,’ Sidney said absent-mindedly as he laid out the backgammon board.

‘Are you agreeing I’m scruffy, Sidney?’

‘Your clothes are well-lived in.’

‘That’s because the only people who get new clothes on my salary are the children. Not that I see that much of them.’

‘The demands of the job.’

‘It never stops, you know.’

Sidney told his friend about the two doves that they had discovered on his doorstep and was alarmed when Keating began to take a particular interest. He assumed that he would have been accused of being overly suspicious but in fact the reverse was the case. The Inspector was all ears.

‘This worries me, Sidney. I think you need to be very careful here.’

‘I am always careful.’

‘No, this is serious. I don’t quite know
.
.
.’

‘You hesitate, Geordie.’

‘I am afraid I do. I have been wondering whether to tell you this or not.’

‘I thought we had no secrets from each other?’

‘That is the idea, and I know the news will get out anyway so you had better hear it from me first. The fact is that there has been a murder: a dead body has been discovered in the Round Church.’

‘That’s terrible.’

‘It is.’

‘And are you sure that there were no natural causes?’

‘No, Sidney, I am afraid not. The victim had been suffocated. We don’t know how long it took or how conscious he was when it happened but he also seems to have been tortured; a pattern was scored on his chest with a knife.’

‘What kind of pattern?’

‘Like an animal’s claw. It’s definitely some kind of insignia. The pathologist says he has never seen anything like it.’

‘The mark of the beast?’

‘Perhaps. I’m not sure what that looks like.’

‘This is so upsetting. And I wonder, do you believe this may have any connection with the doves I have just been telling you about?’

‘Yes, well, I’m afraid that’s the thing
.
.
.’

‘You are being unusually evasive, Geordie.’

‘The victim of the crime was a vicar.’

‘No.’

‘He’s called Philip Agnew. I am sure you must know him.’

‘Good heavens,’ Sidney replied. ‘I saw him only last Friday at the service in Coventry.’

‘What was he like?’

‘Sidney paused, still moved and saddened by the news of Agnew’s death. ‘He was a very good man. A holy man; almost too good for the world.’

The victim had been a bachelor in late middle age, a man who welcomed the homeless into his church, and who gave most of his money to the poor. He had believed that the Church should be a ‘work of art’ and an ‘offering of love’ rather than an institution or a ‘cause’. His was a frugal life, and he denied himself both meat and alcohol in an attempt to stay alert, believing that the wiles of Satan must be fought with a clear head and a light stomach. Sidney had once heard him preach a sermon based on five words in the gospel before Christ’s arrest in the garden of Gethsemane: ‘And then there was night.’ Philip Agnew had argued that the sentence was not a simple description of the time of day and the rise of darkness at the moment of the arrest but an announcement of impending and absolute evil.

Sidney took a sip of his beer. It was less consoling than it had been when he had started it. ‘This is terrible. Do you have any suspects?’

‘There had been reports of a vagrant in the area. It’s possible the vicar had looked after him for a while. We are carrying out investigations on his whereabouts, of course
.
.
.’

‘And in the meantime you suspect there may be a killer on the loose?’

‘There’s definitely a murderer in this area, and he may or may not have it in for vicars. I’ll need your help.’

‘I wouldn’t want Hildegard to be troubled by this.’

‘She already knows about the doves
.
.
.’

‘Yes, but hearing about Mr Agnew will alarm her.’

‘I think it’s the talk of Cambridge already. It will alarm everyone, Sidney. That’s why we have to find this vagrant.’

‘It seems improbable, though, that he would
.
.
.’

‘Who else can it be?’

‘I mean it is unlikely that a vagrant would go as far as carving something on a man’s breast, don’t you think? Stabbing is one thing, for money or in a kind of wild revenge against his life. But the carving of a symbol
.
.
. This seems different. The mark of the beast
.
.
.’

‘Steady, Sidney
.
.
.’

‘The Book of Revelation; the coming of the end of the world. It could be the work of a man with delusions
.
.
.’

‘Which doesn’t rule out a tramp.’

‘No, but the motivation may be more complicated than it first appears.’

‘It’s always more complicated than it first appears. That is the nature of crime, Sidney. It’s not in the perpetrator’s interest to make it easy for us.’

‘And there is no obvious motive? No money missing or anything untoward?’

‘Nothing that stands out. Perhaps it’s simple wickedness.’ The Inspector rose to order a second pint. ‘It makes you think, though; why a loving God allows the killing of one of his own? It’s evil. Why doesn’t he intervene to stop it? I thought that was what prayer was all about.’