Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) (6 page)

‘It’s a matter of reputation. You don’t want to be seen with her in off-duty situations that might be compromising. Your wife
.
.
.’

‘What’s Cathy got to do with it?’

Sidney realised he had put his foot in it and that it was now too late to retract. Why had he brought Geordie’s wife into the conversation?

‘She’s worried,’ he answered, rather too firmly, remembering how his father had once told him to be particularly emphatic when you already know that you are in the wrong.

‘Have you been talking to my wife?’

‘I bumped into her outside the butcher’s.’

‘That’s very convenient.’

‘It was a coincidence, I can assure you. We had a very good chat.’

‘My marriage is private, Sidney, as is yours,’ Keating snapped. ‘That’s one thing I can teach you: stay out of any relationship that’s not your own. You never know what goes on in other people’s bedrooms and never will. What we have to do is solve this bloody case before it gets even more out of hand than it is already.’ He slapped a half-crown on the bar. ‘Now get me a pint, for God’s sake, and have one yourself. You look like you need it and we have to sort this out.’

Later that evening, as Sidney cycled slowly back to Grantchester, he considered the choice of birds in the case. Dead doves could simply be a warning of a shattered peace. Surely, he thought, a raven should have been next, the bird that never returned to Noah’s ark, scavenger of carrion, and, in some cultures, the ghost of a murder victim. So, why a blackbird? And did it provide any clues as to who might be the next victim? A journalist perhaps, since his own warning placement of doves had preceded the death of Philip Agnew, a man in the same profession as Sidney. He decided to make a few enquiries about the editor of the
Cambridge Evening News
and, even though he knew such thoughts were despicable, he might also find out if the man was married. Although he did not like Patrick Harland’s insinuations, he could not ignore them, especially if a hatred of homosexuals were to prove a motive for murder.

Hildegard was working her way through a particularly stormy bit of Beethoven when he arrived home and Sidney was just thinking that it would be safest to let her get on with it and tiptoe to his study when she stopped playing and called him into the drawing-room.

She did not move from the piano. Her hands lay on the silent keys and she stared at him over the music rest as he stood in the doorway. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked.

‘I was a little delayed coming home.’

‘So
.
.
. have you walked Dickens?’

‘No. Why? Have you?’

‘I just want to know what you have been doing?’

‘I’ve been out and about. The usual things. I can’t really remember all the details but I’m home now. There’s no need to worry.’

‘Don’t be evasive. I just want to know where you have been this evening?’

‘I was with Geordie. You know that.’

‘The whole time?’

‘Yes, just about.’

‘You didn’t see anyone else?’

‘Not really.’

‘Sidney, I want you to think very hard about this.’

‘I’ve got so much else to worry about. There have been developments.’

‘You can say that again. What were you doing with Mrs Keating?’

‘Oh, that? I just met her outside the butcher’s. It was nothing.’

‘Nothing? I think you gave her a little kiss.’

‘She gave me one. I haven’t done anything wrong, Hildegard.’

‘You are sure?’

Sidney hesitated. ‘I suppose someone has said something. Is this Mrs Maguire being helpful?’

‘I’m grateful to her. She saw it all.’

‘It was a peck on the cheek, nothing more.’

‘People will talk.’

‘I could hardly cut her dead. Besides, it is my job to give pastoral care.’

‘When people are sick and distressed. There’s nothing wrong with Cathy Keating.’

‘You are right. There isn’t.’

‘Then why did she kiss you?’

‘Because I promised to help her. It’s difficult to explain, my darling.’

‘Have a try.’

‘I’m worried about Geordie, if you must know. He seems to have taken a shine to a local journalist.’

‘The one I met?’

‘Yes. Helena Randall.’

‘His wife is more attractive.’

‘Yes, that’s what I think.’

Hildegard smiled at her husband. He had walked right into her trap. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ she asked.

Dickens brought them his favourite shoe, then his old red sock and finally his squeaky rabbit, forcing the couple to think of other things and take him for a brief walk to the end of the road and back, before the ritual of evening cocoa.

All was calm once more, and Hildegard had gone up to bed when the fragile peace of the vicarage was broken by a knock on the door from a police officer. He had time for neither friendliness nor formality. Earlier that evening, the body of another clergyman, Isaiah Shaw, had been discovered on Jesus Green. At first it appeared that it was suicide. He had hung himself from a tree. Then the same hatched stab marks were found on his chest: the mark of the beast.

Sidney asked for a few moments alone before accompanying the police officer to the station. He went upstairs, kissed his sleeping wife, and left her a note in case she woke up.

Even though it was almost midnight, he wanted to pray before he did anything else. He knelt briefly at his prie-dieu and remembered the dead.

Isaiah Shaw had been a studious, hard-working clergyman with skeletal features, a slightly hooked nose, and dark recessed eyes that gave the appearance of never seeing daylight. He was a somewhat tortured man who was perhaps too sensitive to his own flaws, and who took to the bottle when he worried how far he fell short of living in God’s image. He felt the cold easily, complained of poor circulation and was well known in clerical circles for greeting friends and neighbours with ‘the icy hand of doom’. This was unfortunate because although he had neither small talk nor a sense of humour, preferring books to people, Sidney recognised that Isaiah’s heart was in the right place and that his patient, prayerful worship of God and the saving of souls was far more important than easy popularity.

He had also had his troubles: a dead wife (cancer at thirty-two) and an estranged son who worked as a builder, with no interest in his father’s vocation to the point where Isaiah had once confessed to Sidney that he was not sure if he had ever been ‘the right father for the boy’.

Sidney was desperately sad as he made his way to the police station to talk to Inspector Keating. He was then asked if he wanted any protection. ‘There’s a full-scale manhunt for Jimmy Benson on now and we have to remember that he’s met you already and knows where you live. The doves were an omen. The blackbird was a warning. Miss Randall has been provided with an officer of her own. I could give you one of my constables.’

‘That would look like favouritism. You can’t protect every priest.’

‘But you have been warned specifically, Sidney. There were dead doves outside your door. It would give Hildegard some reassurance.’

‘I think a police presence might alarm her even more.’

‘I will need to know where you are at all times.’

‘That shouldn’t be too hard.’

‘And I’ll certainly ask my men to keep a look-out. I don’t want to lose you, Sidney.’

‘Or anybody else, for that matter. This is evil, Geordie, pure evil.’

The following evening, Sidney confided his darkest anxieties to his curate. He did not want to appear frightened in front of his wife or his parishioners but he was fearful none the less. ‘Perhaps this is something we can’t ever fully comprehend, Leonard; evil without any rational explanation.’

‘I am never quite sure, Sidney, if people are wicked from birth or if they become so. I’m interested in how the good can turn or become possessed.’

‘Or if evil can be disguised or hidden beneath an apparent normality; that humanity pivots between the two.’

‘“This supernatural soliciting cannot be ill, cannot be good.”’

‘
Macbeth
. Exactly.’

Hildegard called out that supper was nearly ready. If the men could come and lay the table that would be helpful.

Leonard continued. ‘I have always been interested in the theory that we are not made in God’s image at all. Instead we are deliberately created incomplete.’

‘That is not the traditional Augustinian position, of course,’ Sidney pointed out. ‘As you recall, according to the great church father, we are creatures who have sinned, whether literally or metaphorically, thereby disrupting God’s plans. We have fallen from grace.’

‘But if we are now born sinners, if we have already sinned, why then should each generation be punished for the wickedness of their fathers, yea, even unto the end of time?’

Sidney thought for a minute. ‘Because it underpins the idea of redemption.’

‘But why should we have to redeem ourselves? Are not human beings created innocent rather than sinners?’

‘As you know, there is an alternative argument.’

‘I remember this from theological college; it’s the idea that we are created neither innocent nor guilty but immature, and yet to be fully formed. One has to decide if human beings were once good (and have fallen) or if they have
yet to be
good? Perhaps this life is not meant to be lived as punishment for the evils of the past (and therefore is our chance to make amends) but is, instead, a vale of soul-making that offers us the chance to
evolve
into goodness? In this tradition, humankind is still in the process of creation. We look forwards to a future life instead of backwards to a life for which we must atone. Life becomes a classroom, or a laboratory, in which we acquire moral discipline as we live, testing both good and evil.’

‘Are you coming?’ Hildegard called once more. ‘I am dishing up.’

Leonard showed no sign of moving. ‘God is then fully aware of evil; it is not the work of the devil or any other agency.’

‘He is responsible for evil?’

‘He has to be. He accepts it as the price of soul-making.’

‘Even if there are casualties?’

‘It is, of course, a perilous adventure in intellectual freedom. But the key question to ask, and perhaps the foundation for Christian theodicy, is this: can there be a future good, “set free from its bondage to decay”, that is so eternal and so complete that it compensates for all previous suffering and wickedness?’

‘A heaven that makes up for the hell of life on earth?’

‘Not exactly heaven, but a state of perpetual grace.’

‘That is a long promise. I’m not sure how we can ever justify pain and suffering, cruelty and wickedness by an end-state; however good that might be.’

‘THE SUPPER WILL BE COLD WHEN IT IS SUPPOSED TO BE HOT.’

‘We are on our way,’ Sidney answered.

Leonard kept talking. ‘Dostoevsky asked this in
The Brothers Karamazov
; could an architect build a heaven based on the unavenged torture of a baby?’

‘ “No, I would not consent, said Alyosha softly.” I have read it, Leonard. But Christianity is predicated on the idea of waiting: as Christ waits in the garden of Gethsemane, embracing the agony of suffering, as a father waits for his prodigal son, as we wait for those who matter to us and those we love, and as God waits with man for the secret of the world’s power of meaning; its wonder and terror, vastness and delicacy, good and evil.’

‘AND I WAIT WITH YOUR DINNER,’ Hildegard answered as they entered the kitchen. ‘You men. I think I am going to start pretending supper is ready when it is not. It is the only way to get you here on time.’

‘I am sure this will be delicious, my darling,’ Sidney replied before looking at the confection on the table. ‘Shepherd’s pie! What a treat.’

‘It’s your favourite and so I’d like to know what have you been talking about that’s so important?’

‘Ah,’ said Leonard. ‘Let me fetch the Worcester sauce.’

Sidney confessed. ‘We have been discussing the problem of good and evil.’

‘I see.’ Hildegard met his look and made her challenge public. ‘I imagine that you have been referring to the murders?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘I should have guessed.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘You know that I was thinking as I was cooking,’ Hildegard mused. ‘Even though Isaiah Shaw was married, do you think the murderer could have been mistaken about him?’

‘Do you mean people might have thought him queer?’ Sidney asked.

‘It being a potential motive for murder.’

‘That and, it seems, a hatred of priests.’

Leonard poured out the water. ‘Why do people despise us so?’ His companions were not sure that he was talking exclusively about the priesthood but let the remark pass. ‘We are only trying to do good.’