by James Runcie
Alas, such pleasures were denied to him. It was the thirty-fourth day of Lent. Would it never end?
It would not.
Inspector Keating telephoned. ‘You had better come to the station, Sidney.’
‘Whatever for? Aren’t we seeing each other tonight?’
‘This can’t wait. Another old person has died . . .’
‘Well, it is the time of year. Pneumonia, I suppose.’
Inspector Keating had no time for such musings. ‘Yes, I am perfectly aware that it is winter and that these things are likely but it’s the same bloody doctor and the second ruddy case. We have to sort this out.’
‘It may be a coincidence.’
‘Yes, of course, it may be a coincidence but if it isn’t we can’t have an epidemic of old codgers being helped out of this world. That’s your job . . .’
‘What is the name of the deceased?’
‘Anthony Bryant. He was seventy-one. A good age, but people are living longer these days. Modern medicine, apparently . . .’
‘Give me half an hour, Inspector. The roads are treacherous for my bicycle.’
‘Don’t worry about the roads, Sidney, I’ve sent a car. It will be with you in the next five minutes.’
‘Your business is as urgent as that?’
‘I will brief you at the station. Then the car will take you where you need to go. People are talking and a journalist from the Evening News is already sniffing around. We’ve got to try and stop all this nonsense.’
Sidney sighed. What was he supposed to do? He could hardly find another false pretext to visit the doctor. Perhaps Inspector Keating had other ideas. It was certainly odd for him to send a car. He would have thought that the police had other, more urgent priorities, but then, if the situation was as grim as it sounded, there was nothing more urgent than murder.
He travelled across slushy roads into town with a driver who had clearly been instructed to say nothing. When they pulled up in St Andrews Street Sidney noticed a girl in a duffel coat and a notebook waiting outside the station. She might well have been a student but there was something determined about her. He wondered what she was doing, waiting in the cold, and when Sidney got out of the car, their eyes met and she introduced herself:
‘Helena Randall. Cambridge Evening News.’
A journalist. Sidney had, of course, been expecting a man. ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’
‘Are you Tony Bryant’s priest, by any chance?’
‘Not as far as I am aware,’ Sidney hesitated. How had the press discovered news of the death so quickly?
‘And are you a patient of Dr Michael Robinson?’
Clearly someone had been talking. Sidney was about to answer when the driver of the police car ushered him away. ‘No time for that, Canon Chambers . . .’
‘I’m so sorry. Please excuse me.’
‘My card,’ the girl pressed.
‘Yes of course.’
‘Come on, Canon Chambers.’ Sidney climbed up the stairs into Inspector Keating’s office.
His friend was waiting and went straight to the point. ‘This is a tricky business. It will take time for the coroner to make his report and, in the meantime, there are a lot of frail, elderly people out there. I am tempted to arrest Dr Robinson and get the whole thing over and done with but we don’t have the evidence and I don’t want to cause a stir. I have heard that the talk has already started.’
‘Indeed,’ Sidney replied. ‘My housekeeper has been guilty of it herself.’
‘Now, Sidney, you may not like this but I want you to go and see the doctor.’
‘I have already visited him twice.’
‘You didn’t tell me.’
‘There was nothing to report.’
‘Then you need to go and see him again. Make up whatever excuse you like. Plans for the wedding would do it. I want you to win his trust and find out the truth. Is he getting carried away? If he is, I want you to stop him.’
Sidney resented the way that Inspector Keating was speaking to him as if he was an employee, but this didn’t seem to be the moment to take him up on it. Instead, he checked that they both thought in the same way. ‘And if he is breaking the law then you can arrest him.’
‘Of course. But the situation may be more complicated than that. What if he isn’t breaking the law but bending it? Going so far but stopping just short?’
‘Then he is acting within the law. I would have thought that was perfectly clear.’
‘You know what I mean, Sidney. This man may be putting patients’ lives at risk. I can feel the tension in the community. Something’s not right. People are very worried.’
‘I am sure Dr Robinson has their best interests at heart.’
‘Are you sure, though, Sidney? That’s what I want you to find out. I have a feeling that you also have doubts.’
‘How did you know?’
‘I am a detective . . .’
‘And I am a priest. I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.’
‘Well, I don’t. Perhaps that’s why we are such a good team. One of my men will take you round to Dr Robinson’s surgery. If he’s not there I take it he will be in Chedworth Street with Miss Livingstone. I’d like you to talk to him and report back.’
‘He’ll see through all this, of course. He’ll guess that I have come under your instruction.’
‘There’s nothing to see through. Your visit is perfectly legitimate, unlike the doctor’s methods . . .’
‘We don’t know that, Inspector.’
‘But with your help, Sidney, we soon will.’
Sidney decided that the only way to get a straight answer from Dr Robinson was to ask a few direct questions. He arrived at his surgery at midday and was informed by the receptionist that he would have to wait until the doctor had seen the last of his patients. This left Sidney with half an hour to kill, a period of time in which he tried and failed to amuse himself with back numbers of Punch. Consequently, when Dr Robinson was ready to see him, Sidney was feeling rather impatient.
‘How are your mystery ailments?’ the doctor asked. ‘Any better?’
Sidney had almost forgotten that this was how the conversation would have to begin. ‘I’m sorry. Much better, thank you.’
‘Then what can I do for you?’
‘I have come about the death of Anthony Bryant.’
‘Is he one of your parishioners?’
‘I received a telephone call from Inspector Keating.’
‘If he was that concerned why didn’t he telephone me himself? I can’t understand why he’s roped you into some completely spurious line of inquiry that is entirely without foundation. I have done nothing wrong.’
‘No one is saying that you have.’
‘They seem to be implying it. Why can’t they just come out and say it?’
‘Some members of the family felt that his death came rather more quickly than might have been expected.’
‘And are any of them doctors?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘Old people can’t be expected to survive rampant infections, Canon Chambers, and when death comes, as you know full well, it comes at an unpredictable speed. You can’t anticipate or measure these things. Nor do I think it at all reasonable for a doctor to come under suspicion every time one of his patients dies. Society has to trust the fact that he knows what is best for his patients.’
‘The fact?’
‘Yes, Canon Chambers, the fact; otherwise what is the point of a medical training? I make informed decisions about medicine. I have relatively uninformed opinions about theology and the current state of Her Majesty’s Police Force. These matters I leave to you and your friend the inspector. I put my trust in you. I do not interfere in your world and I expect you not to interfere in mine.’
‘But when people die our worlds collide.’
Dr Robinson leaned back in his chair, let out a long sigh and looked up at the ceiling. Then he spoke once more. ‘I don’t
know if you have seen, Canon Chambers, at first hand, how debilitating a long illness can be; how bleak it is for a patient and how exhausting it is for those who have a duty of care?’
‘I have limited experience in this area, I admit; although I do know what it is like when people want nothing more than to die.’
‘In the war, I suppose.’
‘Yes. It was in the war.’
‘So you know how difficult the decision can be? Some pain cannot be eased. Sometimes there is no hope.’
‘Yes, and there are times when a decision has to be made very quickly.’
Dr Robinson paused before replying. ‘I see you understand the dilemma.’
He was waiting for more. Sidney then found himself telling a story. ‘I was in Italy in 1944,’ he began. ‘It was after the advance on Monte Cassino. We were in the Mignano Gap and had been under heavy mortar fire for three days. We went up the hill, sometimes crawling through the mud, and we faced a machine-gun attack that halved our number. I think I remember the noise more than anything else: the rounds of gunfire, the shouted orders, the cries of the wounded and the dying. Soldiers, my friends, so many of my friends, were howling for their mothers and their sweethearts. Howling. Then, even when we had pulled some of them to relative safety, their pain became unbearable. My commanding officer gave me a loaded revolver and said simply, ‘Do what you have to do.’
‘There was a boy of nineteen; red hair and freckles, and he had lost half his face. He would never be able to put his lips together again. There was no hope. His only sensation was unbearable pain. I stopped the pain. And I’ve never forgotten it. I remember it every day and I pray for him. I ask for God’s mercy.’
Dr Robinson sat quietly and thought about Sidney’s experience in silence. At last, he spoke. ‘I think I can guess why you have been telling me this, Canon Chambers. But I have done nothing wrong. My conscience is clear.’
‘I did not intend to tell you. I only came to meet you, and perhaps to advise you to be careful. Sometimes, I think, we are not always aware of how much we have to live with what we have done in the past. We can’t predict how these things will affect us.’
‘I am always careful, Canon Chambers.’
‘I would be very concerned,’ Sidney continued sternly, ‘if you did anything that might endanger your future, or that of Miss Livingstone, or indeed,’ and here he took a wild gamble, ‘that of your child.’
‘My child? What on earth are you talking about?’
‘I think you know perfectly well, Dr Robinson. I would hate to think that somebody so certain of their actions might leave a wife without a husband and a child without a father. Good day to you.’
Sidney was exhausted. He had not undertaken Holy Orders so that he could consort with policemen and threaten doctors. He had been called to be a messenger, watchman and steward of the Lord. He had a bounden duty to exercise care and diligence in bringing those in his charge to the faith and knowledge of God. And he had made a solemn promise at his ordination that there be no place left in him for error in religion or for viciousness in life. Yet, at this particular moment in time, everything was conspiring against him.
One of the problems of being a vicar, Sidney decided, was that you were always available. Just when you had settled down to writing the parish newsletter there would be a knock at the door or a ring of the telephone with news that could be urgent or trivial. It did not seem to matter which. All that mattered was that his attention was immediately required.
The morning after his unsettling visit to the doctor Sidney was at his desk. On it he had placed the figurine of a little girl feeding chickens that Hildegard Staunton had given him: with Mädchen füttert Hühner inscribed below. He found it curiously consoling and would sometimes break from his work to think about what she might be doing or imagine what advice she might give him. He took out the letter she had written, thanking him for all that he had done, telling him that he would always be welcome in Germany. He only had to ask, and he could arrive at any time.
‘You know that whatever happens in the world,’ she had written, ‘I will always remember your kindness and be grateful. You know that I am here.’
Sidney put down Hildegard’s letter and tried to concentrate. He was trying to work without disturbance before the arrival of Mrs Maguire with her dusting, her conversation and his lunch. Monday was always shepherd’s pie and Sidney was almost looking forward to its simple consoling pleasure when another visitor interrupted him.
It was one of his parishioners, Mrs Agatha Redmond, a farmer’s wife, who often helped out with the floral decoration of the church. A smile played across her ruddy cheeks. ‘It’s a fine morning, Canon Chambers, is it not?’ she began. ‘Nice to see sunshine after the snow.’
Sidney noticed that Mrs Redmond was holding a black Labrador puppy. Already he began to suspect that something was up. ‘Is it about the flower rota?’ he asked.
‘Oh no. It’s nothing of the sort.’
‘Then would you like to come in?’
Agatha Redmond hesitated and then looked down at the puppy. ‘Isn’t he lovely?’
‘Yes,’ Sidney answered uncertainly. ‘I am sure he is. A fine specimen.’
‘I’m glad you think so.’
‘I do,’ Sidney continued as surely as he could. He had never been that keen on dogs. ‘Indeed I do.’
‘Then I’m so pleased,’ Mrs Redmond continued. ‘Because Miss Kendall asked me to give him to you. Isn’t he gorgeous? He’s only eight weeks old.’
‘I didn’t know you knew Miss Kendall?’
‘She met my husband on a train. Then she telephoned.’
‘It’s very odd that she didn’t say anything about it.’
‘She wanted it to be a surprise.’
‘Well, it’s certainly that, Mrs Redmond. Perhaps I am to keep him for her until she comes to collect him?’
‘Oh no, Canon Chambers. I don’t think you understand. This dog is for you. He’s a present.’
For a moment Sidney could not quite take in what was being said to him. ‘But why?’
‘Miss Kendall thought you were rather down in the dumps. She said that you needed cheering up. There’s nothing like a Lab for company, and the black are better for conversation I find.’
Sidney was astounded. He could not understand how Amanda could have done such a thing. Why of all things in the world would he have need of a dog? It was hard enough looking after himself.
‘But I’ve no idea how to . . .’
Mrs Redmond interrupted. ‘I’ve brought a booklet with instructions and there’s a basket for him in the car. The important thing is to get him house-trained as soon as possible. When he’s older, of course, you can take him on your visits. He’ll be very popular.’
‘I dare say . . .’
‘Shall we set up a space in the kitchen? By the back door, I think. I’ll need some newspaper.’ Mrs Redmond picked up a copy of the Church Times. She was quite unstoppable. ‘This will do.’
Sidney gave himself one last chance, ‘But I knew nothing about this. I haven’t the foggiest idea how to look after a dog.’
‘You’ll soon get used to him. Try looking at the vicarage from the puppy’s point of view. You’ll get a whole new perspective on things, Canon Chambers, a dog’s eye view of life. I find it so very consoling. After a while, you’ll wonder how you ever did without him.’
Mrs Redmond put the Labrador down on the floor and the puppy made a last-ditch bid for freedom. ‘Steady now, Archie . . .’
‘He’s called Archie?’
‘You can change the name, of course. But you need to decide soon so he can get used to your commands.’
‘I don’t think I’ve given a command since the Army . . .’
‘Well, perhaps it’s time you resumed, Canon Chambers? There are only five to remember: “come”, “sit”, “stay”, “heel” and “lie down”. You need to be clear and consistent. Then you can add words such as “basket”. Talking of which
I must go and fetch it before I forget. You will keep the vicarage nice and cosy for him, won’t you? It’s quite cold in this kitchen.’
‘It is winter,’ Sidney observed, ‘and I was not expecting a dog.’
Mrs Redmond failed to detect a tone that hovered between despair and irritation. ‘Of course you’ll have to keep him in a limited space until he’s fully house-trained. He’ll need a blanket too. I’ve brought some food to start you off and I think I have got some old toys as well. They might do when I look in later in the week to see how you are getting on . . .’
Sidney sat down on a kitchen chair as Mrs Redmond busied herself around him and then fetched the dog’s basket from her car. ‘It will be like having a child . . .’ he muttered. ‘And without a wife . . .’
Mrs Redmond re-entered the room. ‘I am sure you won’t have any trouble finding a wife, Canon Chambers . . .’
It now appeared that his visitor had selective hearing. ‘People do keep telling me . . .’
‘A handsome man like you . . .’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Of course. Everyone says so. You’d be quite a catch.’
Sidney allowed himself a moment of vanity. He knew that on a good day he had a faint air of Kenneth More about him but he didn’t like to dwell on it.
Mrs Redmond put down the dog basket and looked at him. She had sensed his weak spot. ‘I am sure Miss Kendall might consider it.’
‘I don’t think that’s likely . . .’
‘Oh dear. Never mind.’ Mrs Redmond resumed her preparations. ‘Still, once you get to know Archie I am sure you can tell him your problems instead of Miss Kendall. Then no one else need know . . .’
‘I’m not sure my problems are worth discussing.’
‘It doesn’t matter, Canon Chambers. Archie won’t mind. You can tell him anything. Anything at all . . .’
‘I suppose I can.’
Mrs Redmond began rubbing her hands together, a nervous gesture that indicated her duty was done. ‘I’d better be going now. If you have any problems with him or need any advice just pop round, but I am sure that Archie is going to make a vast improvement to your life.’
