Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) (9 page)

‘Yes, I am sure it did. Who were his tutors; can you remember?’

‘Well, of course Philip Agnew was there at the time, and, oh my, of course, Isaiah Shaw came in and gave a series of meditations on suffering in the Easter of 1957. He was on the examining body too. Oh, Sidney, you don’t think
.
.
.? Patrick Harland may have been a bit zealous but he’s not behind all this, is he? Benson’s our man, surely; and if not him, then Mr Jay. I can’t imagine a Christian committing all these crimes.’

‘I know. But we may have to. I think I will go and see him.’

‘Then I should come with you. After supper, perhaps?’

Sidney wondered about the nature of inspiration and revenge. Could God be blamed for putting an idea into someone’s head; whether it was the desire to become a priest or its perverse opposite? Could Harland have changed his passion and impetuosity from good to evil? Had there been voices in his head and, if there had, what had they been saying?

Would a man such as Patrick Harland argue that he was fulfilling some supernatural instruction? Was evil, such as murder, a choice or could it be excused by possession, madness? How responsible are we for our actions? How far can we use reason to understand the irrational? Is to understand all to forgive all?

By no means, thought Sidney. We cannot excuse our actions, however evil or possessed, if we have free will; and even if God knows what choices might be made from that free will, his knowledge does not impinge upon our actions.

Leonard left to visit old Mrs Royston who, at the age of ninety-eight, was considering a last minute conversion to Catholicism, and Sidney was just going to telephone Keating and make his suspicions clear when the vicarage doorbell rang. It was Helena Randall. She wanted him to join her immediately. When Sidney asked her why, she pulled a map from her bag and pointed out that the location of each crime scene conformed to a pattern that must have been deliberately designed by the killer.

‘There is a straight line down from where Isaiah Shaw was found on Jesus Green to the place where Jimmy Benson was discovered in Christ’s Lane. If you then take another line from the Round Church where Philip Agnew was killed and bisect the previous vertical, as if you were drawing a cross, you will notice that the fourth point of the crucifix is Westcott House. Your friend Simon Opie will be next: unless we can stop it.’

‘Have you told Geordie?’

‘He’s still at the Benson crime scene. He’s in a panic and won’t listen to anything I say. We have to get to Westcott House immediately. I’ve got my car.’

‘But why do you need me?’

‘Because you’re the only man who understands what’s going on and, if we’re not too late, you can talk the killer down.’

‘You may have too much faith in my abilities.’

‘You’re the one with the faith,’ Helena snapped, before leaning over and opening the car door. ‘Get in.’

Even though they drove with the windows open, the air in Helena’s Morris Minor was uncomfortably oppressive. Sidney didn’t know whether it was the heat of the Cambridge summer or his own fear in the face of evil. Were they about to intercept a murder and, if so, who was the killer: Harland, Jay, Jerome Benson, or somebody they hadn’t yet contemplated? Sidney’s thoughts had become so confused that he had started to suspect everyone.

Helena’s driving was aggressive and she used her horn at every corner, overtaking a tractor on a bend and narrowly missing a cyclist outside Queens’. ‘We’ve been several steps behind all along. I don’t know what Geordie’s been up to.’

‘We pursued Jimmy Benson for too long.’

‘You know who’s behind this, don’t you?’ Helena asked.

‘I have an idea but it’s so perverse I can’t be sure.’

Helena hooted her horn, cut in front of a delivery van, and turned into Market Square, swerving to avoid a pedestrian before accelerating down Sidney Street and into Jesus Lane. Sidney was now too terrified to speak.

At last they pulled up outside Westcott House, and Helena slammed the car door behind her. ‘Where now?’ she asked.

Sidney pointed in the direction of the refectory.

Inside, the crucifix had been taken down from the wall and lay on the floor. The figure of Christ had been removed and replaced by the unconscious body of Simon Opie, who had been tied to it by his arms and legs. A liquid circle surrounded him. Patrick Harland was straddling his chest with a knife in his hand and had made the first incision of the mark of the beast. He stopped when he saw Helena and Sidney.

‘You are not just in time but just too late. I couldn’t wait. I wonder what took you so long. I gave you enough clues.’

‘You left a robin
.
.
.’

‘With a breast as red as this man’s chest is about to be. I hope you appreciate the symbolism.’

‘In the past, the omens have not been left in the homes of the victims.’

‘That would be too obvious, wouldn’t it? Besides, I wanted to test you as a little trio. I know that you two both fancy yourselves as detectives.’

‘We did not set out to investigate these things,’ Sidney replied. ‘But when a good priest is killed
.
.
.’

‘As opposed to a bad priest. Are you sure he was good?’

‘These are dedicated holy men.’

‘We are all flawed, Canon Chambers.’

Helena interrupted. ‘Why did you kill Jimmy Benson?’

‘Because he blabbed to my sister. He said he was worried about me. He thought I was going to do something stupid. Well, there’s a surprise.’

‘Bianca,’ said Sidney.

‘You were very slow, Canon Chambers. I told you her name and even where she lived. Yet you didn’t find the time to see her. I imagine many of your parishioners must feel the same way: neglected.’

‘Jimmy Benson was in love with your sister.’

‘All his life. But he wasn’t suitable. Not good enough, you understand. We like a bit of propriety. That’s why, when we don’t get it, it upsets us. Then we have to force people to give us the respect we deserve: like Mr Opie here.’

‘Don’t touch him,’ Helena shouted.

‘Oh but I already have. Do you think I should stop?’ Harland began carving again. Simon Opie’s body twitched. ‘Don’t worry. He’s still alive.’

‘What have these priests ever done to you?’ Helena asked.

‘What have they not done? That is the question you should be asking.’

‘There’s no need for this.’

‘But there is, Canon Chambers. Mr Opie, here, would not let me become a priest. None of them would. I am the most despised and rejected of men.’

‘But that is no cause to kill. You can still do God’s work. As a lay-reader and as a Christian.’

‘It was not enough. And these men themselves are not good enough to serve.’

‘That is for God to judge.’

‘I cannot wait that long. I have to take the law into my own hands. And what fine strong hands they are, don’t you think? Such clean lines. My father was a butcher. Don’t you think he’d be proud if he could see me now? Perhaps he can gaze in wonder through the flames of hell. That’s how Mr Opie is going to see me. This liquid, as you can see, is petrol. I have a match. The devil has taken possession of a body where Christ should be. Serpents writhe inside me. I must burn them out, kill the devils that you will be purged. You may believe in prayer and fasting and medicine, but you do not know evil as I do. You have failed to heed it and I have shown you what it is like. Now I will show you more; your Church, your life with mine, must burn.’

‘Let us pray first,’ said Sidney.

‘It’s too late for that. There is no God. His only defence is that he does not exist. And without God, everything is permissible.’

‘Without God there is only the terror of absence; a chasm without love.’

‘And I am in that chasm.’

‘Then let me help you out of it.’

‘There is nothing you can do, Canon Chambers.’

‘You won’t even let me pray for you?’

Patrick Harland stopped. ‘You would still do that? After all that I have done?’

‘I pray for everyone.’ Sidney knelt down. ‘Come. Kneel. You too, Miss Randall.’

‘What?’ Helena asked.

‘Please. Kneel down.’

Helena did so.

‘Mr Harland, put your knife aside. Please. Kneel. Close your eyes.’

It was not a request but an order.

‘Let us pray.’

Sidney began the Lord’s Prayer, buying time, hoping for an act of God, anything to stop the evil that lay before them. The important thing, he had been taught, was to lead. This was no time for public doubt. He spoke clearly and loudly, already planning which of the familiar prayers he would say next, asking for mercy, hoping for understanding.

A sparrow flew through the open windows of the hall. Harland looked up, surprised by the interruption, as Sidney kept praying. ‘When the wicked man turneth away from his wickedness that he hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful and right, he shall save his soul alive.’

Then Simon Opie, revived by the words and rescued from death, began to pray from the cross. ‘Rend your heart, and not your garments, and turn unto the Lord your God: for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great kindness, and repenteth him of the evil.’

Harland opened his eyes and looked back at the dying man, praying confidently in the hope of mercy, and began to weep.

Sidney let the tears fall into the silence. Then he walked over to Harland, knelt down beside him, and held him in his arms. ‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘It’s over now.’

A few days later, two couples spent a sunny Saturday together, lunching in the gardens of a local restaurant. Geordie was reflecting on Patrick Harland’s eventual arrest, Simon Opie’s miraculous recovery, and Helena Randall’s quick thinking. She was quite a girl, he continued, and Sidney had to agree, as Cathy and Hildegard smiled indulgently.

On tackling his second pint, the Inspector then began to muse on the trouble caused by religion and asked how a loving God could allow such evil.

‘That is complicated,’ Sidney answered. ‘However, instead of trying to justify the ways of God to man we should perhaps think more of justifying man’s ways to God.’

‘That would take for ever.’

‘An eternity, I suppose.’

‘And so evil people like Harland will still be forgiven in the end?’ Keating asked.

‘Possibly,’ Sidney continued. ‘I’ve been reading a text from the early Middle Ages, the
Vision of Saint Paul
, which is an account of the apostle’s journey into the underworld. There he meets a man engulfed in the fires of purgatory. But the man is not in pain. Instead he is smiling. Why? Because he knows that three thousand years later one of his descendants will become a priest and, at his first Mass, that same priest will pray for him and release him from his suffering. St Paul realises that three thousand years in purgatory is nothing in comparison with eternity. The sinner has taught him the meaning of patience.’

‘I’m not sure I’d be prepared to spend three thousand years in pain. It would be simpler not to sin in the first place.’

‘That is rather the idea,’ Sidney assured his friend.

Keating fetched them all more beer and wondered whether, as he put it, God could ever be happy. ‘He must be a miserable old bugger, really, when you think of the wickedness human beings get up to; all that sin.’

‘That may be true,’ Sidney replied. ‘If God is aware of the human condition then how can he be content? But perhaps we have to think about the divine presence in a different way; not as what he is, but what he is not. In other words, not human, and not liable to emotion. The concept of happiness perhaps has no subject. It exists outside ourselves, unrelated to any specific human being.’

‘Then why do we all want to have it?’

‘Because we are human.’

‘And therefore we suffer.’

‘Yes, Geordie.’

‘So what you are saying is that God does not know happiness; even though he is supposed to be omniscient? I don’t understand how that works.’

‘John Stuart Mill argued that happiness is not something that can be achieved by striving for it. You have to pursue some other goal and “if otherwise fortunately circumstanced you will inhale happiness with the air you breathe.”’

‘So happiness is an accident?’

‘Possibly. Schopenhauer defined it as the temporary absence of pain.’

‘And that is the best we can hope for?’

‘Perhaps, but not necessarily.’

‘Oh, Sidney, this is all too deep for me.’

‘And me. Life still has many pleasures; not least the company of our delightful wives. Let us enjoy that while we may.’

Hildegard leant forward and whispered to Cathy Keating. ‘How do you put up with it all?’ she asked.

‘To tell you the truth, Mrs Chambers, most of the time it’s best to ignore what they get up to. It gives you time to yourself. They’re out of the house and don’t get in the way. That’s the consolation. You’ve no need to be jealous of any of it. They’d be lost without us. They always know what’s best for them in the end.’