Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) (3 page)

‘You have to remember, Geordie, that we cannot always judge God’s acts by human morality.’

‘But what other standards do we have?’

‘In terms of faith there are truths other than the factual. Mysticism. Metaphor. Imagination. Unknowing. Some people believe that evil is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be encountered and lived through.’

‘Well I’m certainly mystified by this; let alone the appearance of those bloody doves. I presume you’ll work on the case with me?’

‘I don’t appear to have any choice,’ Sidney answered ruefully.

He tried not to let the conversation with the Inspector haunt him but he was still unsettled when he took his Labrador out for his morning constitutional the following day. News of the murder had begun to spread and Sidney thought that he could detect people looking oddly at him, as if they believed that vicars might even be harbingers of murder. He tried to concentrate on his day-to-day duties – the next PCC meeting and the sick members of the parish who needed him to visit – but his mind kept returning to the death of Philip Agnew, one of the kindest of men, who should have ended his life in the serenity of aged holiness rather than being suddenly attacked, suffocated, cruelly mutilated and stabbed to death. Who could have wanted to do such a thing and what could his profession as a priest have done to provoke it?

Dickens was nosing his way gingerly, and with endearingly doggy circumspection, round a sheep which was lying down, very still, at the far end of the field. Sidney could only hope it was not dead, a ‘lamb that was slain’ perhaps, and decided that, for once in his life, he would not investigate but leave things be.

He reconsidered the doves that had been left on his doorstep and was thinking that he should perhaps visit the local taxidermist, Jerome Benson, and seek his opinion, when he saw the man himself walking towards him with a bag slung over his shoulders. He was a little smaller and thinner than Sidney had remembered, with a more roseate face.

‘Do I know you?’ the man replied to the priest’s greeting.

‘I certainly hope so. You will recall we had those conversations a few years ago about Daniel Morden and the fire in the summerhouse?’

‘I think you must mean my brother.’

‘I’m so sorry.’ Sidney realised that he had made an elementary error. ‘You are not
Jerome
Benson, the taxidermist?’

‘No
.
.
.’ The man did not appear to want to volunteer any more information and appeared irritated that he had been stopped. He looked to left and right, working out the quickest way to skirt round Sidney and continue his journey.

‘You are not from these parts?’

‘No.’

‘Visiting? Or perhaps working?’

‘I’m a musician.’

‘My wife is a musician.’

‘Not the same kind, I imagine.’

This was not going well. Sidney was aware that he should wrap up the conversation and move on but could not resist adding, ‘She’s a pianist.’ He paused. ‘She teaches the piano,’ as if Benson’s brother needed an explanation of what she actually did. He was sounding foolish, he knew, and the awkwardness was not improved by the return of Dickens with a ball in his mouth.

‘I do jazz.’

Sidney’s eyes sparkled. If there was one thing he liked talking about it was jazz and the opportunity to do so was all too infrequent. He threw the ball for Dickens to chase and asked, ‘What kind?’

‘I play the horn. When I can.’

‘I’m a great fan of Lester Young,’ Sidney began.

‘I wish I could play like him.’

‘Are you performing round here?’

‘Not at the moment. I’ve come to see an old friend. Staying with my brother. He helps me out when I’m running out of money.’

Sidney checked. ‘Your brother being Mr Jerome Benson?’

‘That’s right.’

‘I imagine it’s hard to make a living from jazz.’

‘You’re right there.’

Sidney was determined to keep cheerful and remain friendly. ‘Where are you going next?’

‘Birmingham. A friend is in a quartet. They’re probably going to ditch the sax player; although they might not when they see me.’

‘I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself.’

‘It’s a tough life. But then no one said it would be sweet.’

Sidney wondered if the man was going to ask him for money. He didn’t carry any with him when he was walking the dog. ‘Jazz has always been the music of hard times, I suppose.’

‘
“
Brother, can you spare a dime. Money gettin’ cheaper
.”
’

‘“
Sixteen Tons
”
.
.
.’

‘My brother’s probably waiting. I should go.’

‘Then I must not detain you, Mr Benson.’

‘Jimmy,’ the man replied. ‘The name’s Jimmy.’

When Sidney returned to the vicarage he found that Hildegard had been wondering where he was. She had been into town and had just met Helena Randall, an ambitious young journalist on The
Cambridge Evening News
, in the market square. The reporter had asked Hildegard whether her husband was investigating the murder of a local vicar and if he had any leads. Could she perhaps come to the vicarage that afternoon and talk about it?

‘Why haven’t you told me anything about this, Sidney?’

‘I didn’t want to alarm you.’

‘I don’t see how you were going to keep it a secret.’

‘I wasn’t expecting you to go into Cambridge.’

‘Is this connected with the doves? Should I be worried?’

‘I knew you would be. That’s why I wanted to keep it quiet.’

‘But if you don’t tell me anything, or if I only hear a little, then I will always think there is more to know.’

‘It’s difficult
.
.
.’

‘Tell me everything,’ she asked.

Although he dreaded doing so, Sidney knew that he still ought to visit Jerome Benson, if only to ask about the dead doves and to discount the possibility that his brother was the vagrant seen near Philip Agnew’s vicarage.

It had been a few years since he had last been inside the ramshackle dwelling on the edge of Grantchester that served as both home and workshop. Dickens, however, remembered it well enough and was scared to enter. The walls of the front room were decorated with traditional examples of the taxidermist’s art and concentrated entirely on fish: a pair of perch, three or four pikes, a thick-lipped mullet, a brown trout, a carp, a roach and a flounder. The inner room was more haunting, featuring picturesque narrative attempts (a fox with pheasant prey, two sword-fighting stoats) and what could only be described as the macabre: a two-headed lamb, a mummified cat, an armadillo holding a soap dish and a model of the human eye.

Benson stood throughout their encounter, restlessly tidying the glue pots, small chisels and pliers which littered his work bench, and was defensive when Sidney began talking about the doves on the doorstep and the sight earlier in the week of what he had imagined to be a dead lamb in the meadows.

‘I am not sure what you are implying, Canon Chambers, but surely I cannot be responsible for every creature that has died? There may be a special providence in the fall of a sparrow, but that is your department rather than mine.’

‘Of course.’

‘As I have told you before, I only use animals that have died naturally. I don’t go round killing them.’

‘I admit that I am unclear about the legal implications of taxidermy.’

‘I recall that you once accused me of shooting an owl.’

‘I did not accuse you
.
.
.’

‘Any illegality involving my art would put me out of business. Please could you get to the point? In the past our conversation has not been as congenial as it could have been and, at the moment, the chance of improvement seems unlikely.’

‘I’m afraid that this encounter may be no better. A vicar in my diocese, Philip Agnew, has been found murdered.’

‘I’m sorry to hear that, but death comes to us all eventually.’

‘Indeed; but the combination of all these events seems strange.’

‘Does it, Canon Chambers? To people who deal with mortality as we do, surely this is little more than nature running its course?’

Sidney changed tack. ‘I wondered. Is your brother still staying with you?’

‘Why do you ask? Have you met him?’

‘I thought he was you.’

‘We are often mistaken for each other. Although Jimmy is a wilder spirit than I am. The police have called him in more than once.’

‘I imagine he has had his troubles.’ Sidney knew that the underlying tenor of their exchange was almost certainly about drugs but neither man was prepared to say so.

‘You probably don’t need me to tell you about them. People suspect Jimmy of all manner of crimes just because he is an outsider.’

‘I do not suspect him of anything, Mr Benson. I gather he is a jazz musician.’

‘That does not give him immunity from prosecution.’

‘It gives him a good start as far as I am concerned.’

‘Not everyone is as open-minded in their assumptions as you, Canon Chambers. He has sometimes been in the wrong place at the wrong time.’

‘Do you know if he ever visited the Reverend Philip Agnew? The priest was a good friend to many troubled souls.’

‘I very much doubt Jimmy was among them. We were brought up as atheists. That may of course be why you appear to us as someone whom we mistrust, and from whom we also expect forgiveness.’

‘That is my primary task. But I must hate the sin even if I love the sinner.’

‘My brother may have sinned, in your terms, but I can tell you that he is not a murderer.’

‘But he will fall under suspicion. He was seen in the area, he is a man of no fixed abode, and he has had his run-ins with the police in the past.’

‘Then that is why he needs support.’

‘Provided that aid is within the confines of the law.’

‘Or, I would argue, natural justice.’ Benson walked towards the door and held it open.

Dickens began to bark at one of the displays. It was a panorama involving a selection of seabirds: a puffin, razorbill, guillemot and red-throated diver. The dog was clearly as unsettled by his immediate environment as Sidney had been by the conversation. There was little more he could get out of the situation and his interlocutor had made it clear that it was time for him to leave. There would be no more information from him that night.

Sidney resumed his parish duties but let the crime worry away at his subconscious. He hoped he might have something helpful to say the next time he saw Inspector Keating and was looking forward to some time on their own. He was therefore more than irritated the following Thursday when he arrived at the Eagle to find that Inspector Keating was already
in situ
with an empty pint glass in front of him and Helena Randall at his side. ‘I was just leaving,’ she smiled.

Sidney was determined not to succumb to her wiles. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you here.’

‘I am not intruding, I hope. We’ve had our little chat, haven’t we, Inspector?’

‘And very pleasant it has been, Miss Randall.’

Helena reached forward and brushed the shoulder of her companion’s jacket. ‘You’ve got a bit of fluff. Is it a dog hair? Someone needs looking after.’

‘I know
.
.
.’ Keating acknowledged.

‘I’m going to have to keep an eye on you,’ said Helena, as she blew the Inspector a kiss and wished both men a pleasant evening.

Sidney raised a metaphorical eyebrow.

‘Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. She’s a good girl.’

‘She works for the newspapers, Geordie. Any secrets can hardly be safe with her.’

‘We have to help each other, Sidney. These are difficult times.’

Sidney was unsure of Helena Randall. She was a woman whose fragility and long, fair pre-Raphaelite hair disguised a steely ambition. She was unnaturally pale, extremely thin (what did she ever eat? he wondered) and her face was held in a state of almost permanent curiosity, with brows raised over unsuitable yellow eye shadow. She had long fingers that either played with her hair or held a poised biro that moved between her thin mouth and a reporter’s notebook. Although she wore a duffel coat it was never seen to be toggled, and the skimpy blouse, thin cardigan and pleated trousers that she wore underneath were hardly sufficient to keep out the cold. As a result, she was frequently prone to sniffles, and even bronchitis, which Sidney had thought that previous winter, uncharacteristically uncharitably, could be construed as a deliberate appeal for sympathy.

Inspector Keating admired her ‘critical intelligence’ (she could, apparently, grasp things before anyone else did) and he was happy to admit that her attractiveness to him resided both in her resemblance to the great Waterhouse painting
The Lady of Shalott
and in her ability to listen with what appeared to be rapt admiration to everything he said.