Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death

by James Runcie

  Jazz was Sidney’s treat to himself, and today he was going to share his enjoyment by travelling to London with Inspector Keating to hear the Gloria Dee Quartet in Soho. They were to be Johnny Johnson’s guests as a thank you gesture after the business of the missing ring. Sidney had not felt it necessary to admit that the friend he was bringing was a policeman; nor had he told Keating that Johnny’s father was none other than the reformed burglar Phil ‘the Cat’ Johnson. He did not want to over-excite his friend.

  Gloria Dee had come over from New York City and was already being tipped as the new Bessie Smith. She had the same dramatic presence, together with a voice that could range from supreme tenderness to gospel power. All the reviewers on the jazz scene had praised both the clarity of her diction and her incomparable phrasing and timing.

  Sidney was glad to be so up to the minute in his appreciation of her talents but was nervous whether Geordie would like it. He had him down as a light opera man. He also worried that the inspector would be wary of Soho’s seediness.

  However, as soon as they arrived in London, Keating seemed unusually cheerful. ‘Makes a change from our usual arrangement,’ he told Sidney as they left Leicester Square and crossed into Chinatown. ‘And it’s good to get out of Cambridge. It can feel a bit claustrophobic, don’t you think?’

  ‘I worry that you may find the club just as confined.’

  ‘Sometimes you worry too much.’

  ‘And remember, Geordie, we are off duty. I am not a clergyman and you are not a detective.’

  ‘We are never off duty, Sidney, you know that.’

  ‘Do you mean to say there’s no peace for the wicked?’

  They climbed the stairs up to the club and handed their coats to Colin on the door. As they walked in, Sidney began to feel self-conscious. The club was crowded with men in sharp suits and thin ties who sat close to women in tight blouses, full skirts and dancing shoes. They were smoking and drinking, and mellow with the mood. Although Sidney was dressed in civvies – a grey flannel double-breasted suit with two-tone brogues – he still felt like a clergyman. He wondered whether he should have opted for a Homburg hat, or forsaken the tie which, he realised, was an episcopal purple, but it was too late to worry about that now.

  Johnny Johnson greeted the two men and, after introductions had been made and the beers had been ordered, they sat down to await the evening’s entertainment. A young cocktail waitress with black harlequin glasses approached with a tray of cigarettes. Keating asked for a packet of Players while Sidney declined. As he did so the waitress smiled.

  ‘Stylish suit,’ she said.

  Sidney was cheered. ‘I like your spectacles.’

  ‘Must make a change from all that clobber you have to wear on Sundays.’

  ‘How do you know I’m a priest?’

  ‘My brother pointed you out.’

  Sidney guessed. ‘Are you Johnny’s sister?’

  ‘I’m Claudette.’

  ‘An unusual name . . .’

  ‘I think my parents wanted another boy but Claude’s a funny name too, isn’t it? People call me Claudie, Claudie Johnson. Sure you don’t want a cigarette?’

  ‘No, thanks. There are just the four of you then?’

  ‘Three. My Mum died when I was six. I’m Daddy’s girl. I’m sure he’ll come and say hello.’

  Sidney worried that the inspector might recognise Phil ‘the Cat’, but hoped that a criminal who had done his time should be regarded as an innocent man in the eyes of the law.

  He noticed that Claudette was so pale that her eyes appeared very dark. They were like a pair of jet earrings that had fallen in snow. ‘I’d best move on,’ she continued. ‘But you have a good evening, won’t you, gentlemen? Put the troubles of the world behind you. And if there is any trouble just come and find me.’

  ‘Trouble?’ Inspector Keating asked.

  ‘We get some funny types in here.’ Claudette leaned in so close that Sidney could smell her chewing gum. ‘Some of Dad’s old friends. Money in dark corners, that kind of thing. But if you stay by the bar and keep in the light you’ll be all right.’ Claudette gave him a little wink. ‘Stay cool, OK?’

  ‘I’ll do my best.’

  Inspector Keating looked alarmed. ‘I hope there’s not going to be any nonsense.’

  ‘I wouldn’t worry about that, Geordie.’

  He looked across to see Phil ‘the Cat’ Johnson coming over to greet them. Clearly his daughter had tipped him off. He was a large man with a pockmarked face and a belly like a barrel of beer. He called out to his friends by name as he approached, ordered up drinks and told jokes that he then ruined by laughing through the punch line. ‘Have another beer, Sid. I know what you did for our boy.’

  ‘It was nothing, Mr Johnson.’

  ‘You stuck up for him. That’s more than nothing. Who’s your friend?’

  ‘Geordie Keating,’ the inspector replied.

  ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Geordie. You keeping this clergyman out of trouble?’

  ‘I’m doing my best. Sometimes trouble finds him.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure there won’t be any of that malarkey tonight. The singer’s a corker and the band are great. You both relax and, if there’s anything you need, just come and find me, all right? No one messes with me.’

  ‘I can’t imagine they do,’ Sidney observed.

  ‘They wouldn’t dare!’

  The room began to fill with more people and more smoke, so much so that Sidney worried whether he would actually be able to see Gloria Dee when she came on stage; but, as soon as she emerged from the darkness, his anxiety melted away.

  The first chord sounded on the piano, followed by a walking bass and light drum accompaniment. Sidney did not think he had ever been so exhilarated. Gloria smiled at the audience, shook her body to the rhythm, and began to sing ‘All of Me’.

  She stood at a microphone, only yards in front of him. Her white satin dress accentuated her dark skin and she wore ribbons in her hair. Her voice was like honey, like molasses, like Guinness, like whisky, like wine. She stretched out the vowels of the lyrics, each one a different piece of elastic, and sang little pieces of scat in between the lines, so that it sounded as if she was singing in a language Sidney had never heard before. She was unpredictable, flirtatious, sensual and sad. She sang ‘That Ole Devil Called Love’, ‘T’Aint Nobody’s Business if I Do’, ‘You’re My Thrill’, and the daring number: ‘Judge, Judge, Lordy Mr Judge, Send Me to th’Electric Chair.’

  Inspector Keating leaned over. ‘She’s quite a girl.’

  Sidney thought that this, truly, was heaven. Gloria then sang a song that she said she had composed when the band was on tour in Paris. It was after the explosions at Bikini Atoll in March and she had been thinking about the atomic bomb.

  ‘Four minutes

  Just four minutes to Midnight

  Four minutes

  I just want four more minutes with you

  ‘If the world ends

  Then the world ends

  But all I need

  Is those four minutes

  With you . . .’

  Gloria hummed the next verse and then introduced her band as they took it in turns to play a series of riffs: Jay Jay Lion on piano, Tony Sanders on drums and Milo Masters on bass. Even though he was, he knew, in London, Sidney tried to imagine he was in uptown Harlem, hanging around at the bar with a load of musicians until the last song was sung and the last toot was tooted.

  ‘Hit it, Tiger Tony,’ cried Gloria and there then came the moment that always let the side down: the drum solo. Why were jazz fans so partial to this? Sidney wondered. It was like a sneeze, he decided. You could always tell it was coming but you couldn’t do anything to stop it.

  Tony Sanders did his best but it was still a drum solo. The only bonus was that Gloria Dee wandered out into the audience, singing scat, standing next to Sidney’s table, nodding her approval at her drummer’s industrial enthusiasm.

  Sidney w
as so excited when he realised that Gloria was close that he dared not look. He only needed to know that she was near. The mingled scent of sweat, gardenia and the heady tuberose of her perfume filled his nostrils. Sidney now knew what the word ‘intoxicated’ meant. He wanted this moment, with whom he now thought to be one of the greatest jazz singers in the world by his side, to last for ever. This was what it meant to be alive, Sidney decided, in this place, at this time and listening to this music.

  Then everything changed.

  A girl screamed, her voice piercing the treble line of the music. A man shouted for help. There was a crush for the doors. The house lights came on. The drum solo stopped.

  Phil Johnson barged through the crowds to the back of the club. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked.

  His daughter, Claudette, was lying motionless on the floor outside the Ladies.

  ‘What happened? Somebody tell me what’s going on?’

  A frightened girl backed against the wall. ‘I just found her.’

  ‘Did you see her fall?’

  ‘I don’t know what happened.’

  Phil knelt down beside his daughter. ‘Fetch Amy,’ he shouted. ‘Bring some water. She’s out cold.’ He put his arm under his daughter’s head and tried to lift her up. Then he noticed the marks on her neck. ‘Bloody hell, what’s this? Claudie, wake up; wake up, I say.’

  There was no waking her.

  She appeared to have been strangled.

  Phil Johnson was talking to his daughter. ‘Who’s done this? What’s happened? My little girl, my poor little girl, what have they done to you, Claudie? Get up . . . come on darling . . . get up. Is there a doctor here?’ Then he shouted out. ‘Is anyone a doctor?’

  Keating was already on the case. ‘Get me the telephone,’ he said. ‘Call an ambulance. Then Scotland Yard. No one must leave.’

  Most of the customers stood up from the tables and crowded around to see what had happened. The barman and doormen tried to persuade them back to their places while keeping an eye on the exit.

  There was nothing for them to go back for: no music, no drink, no conversation. The house lights were on: the late-night atmosphere had evaporated.

  ‘Oh no,’ said Sidney, ‘Oh no, oh no, oh no.’ He looked down at the girl’s neck and could already see the bruising. There were fingernail marks under the left angle of the jaw, crescent-shaped abrasions on the skin. He wondered who on earth could have done such a thing. ‘Money in dark corners,’ Claudie had said to him. What had she meant by that?

  A queue formed for the telephone. People could already tell that they were in for a long night. Gloria Dee was poured another drink. ‘The poor baby. What’d she got mixed up in? It don’t make no sense.’

  Sidney wondered whether he would have been more alert if she had not been singing so close to them. Both he and Keating might have seen something, intercepted somebody or been able to avert disaster. But Gloria had been standing next to them. And now Claudette was dead. The murder had probably taken less time than it did to smoke one of her cigarettes.

  Half an hour later Inspector Williams arrived with men from Scotland Yard. He was a big, burly man who looked like a rugby player. He made straight for the manager.

  ‘I hear there’s been trouble, Johnson.’

  ‘It’s my daughter. Some bastard’s got to her.’

  ‘Keep everyone inside. Cover the exits.’

  Keating was by the body.

  ‘Who are you?’ Williams asked.

  ‘Inspector George Keating. Cambridge police. I was in the audience at the time.’

  ‘On duty?’

  ‘Incognito.’

  ‘See anything?’

  ‘Nothing conclusive.’

  ‘Everyone still here?’

  ‘There’s an exit by the bar that we secured. The fire exit is behind the stage. Apart from that there’s a small window in the toilet but no one could get through that. It’s just as well there wasn’t a fire.’

  ‘They should close this place down. So, as far as you know, the murderer is still in the building?’

  ‘He is.’

  ‘He?’

  ‘Or she.’

  ‘I can count on your assistance?’

  ‘Of course. My friend Canon Sidney Chambers may also be of service.’

  ‘I think this is best left to the professionals, don’t you?’

  Sidney took a step back as Williams continued. ‘I can’t imagine a clergyman being good for anything except this poor girl’s funeral.’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ Keating intervened.

  Williams was keen to press on. ‘When do you think the crime took place?’

  ‘We think it must have been during the drum solo. The noise proved a distraction . . .’

  ‘In my experience that’s when most people head for the Gents.’

  ‘This audience clearly wanted to stay.’

  ‘Apart from the murderer. There are some familiar enough faces in the crowd. I’ve spent half my life locking these people up and out they come like cockroaches.’

  Gloria Dee walked up and asked. ‘Have you found the torpedo?’

  ‘The what?’

  ‘The hit man.’

  ‘We’ve only just arrived.’

  ‘How long are we gonna have to hang around?’

  ‘All night, madam,’ Inspector Williams replied.

  ‘I’m used to late, and I’m real sorry for the girl. Sorrier than I can say. But if you’ve got questions can you ask us first? We have to play tomorrow.’

  ‘I’m not so sure about that, madam. We may have to close this place down for a few days.’

  ‘Then how am I supposed to live? They don’t pay if we don’t play.’

  Williams had no time for the questions of other people. ‘This is a murder investigation. We can start our inquiries with you and let you go home. Clearly you are some kind of performer . . .’

  ‘Let me straighten your wig right off. I’m not “some kind”. I’m Gloria Dee.’

  ‘I don’t care who you are. I must follow procedure. We have, at the very least, to get the names and addresses of every person here and establish where they were at the time of the murder. I hear that you were in the audience.’

  ‘I was hitting all sixes, scattin’ away as the boys were playin’. Everyone was havin’ a good time. Then it all went to hell. No matter how many times this kinda thing happens, it still gets to you.’

  ‘You mean this has occurred before?’ Sidney asked. He knew that jazz and violence shared a mutual history. He remembered reading about the stabbing of the bandleader James Reese Europe, and of Chano Pozo, the percussionist killed in a bar-room brawl.

  ‘We’re jazz people. There’s nothin’ I aint seen.’

  ‘Then perhaps you can help?’ Keating asked.

  ‘I don’t know nothin’ ’bout nothin’. I’m just sore the baby got herself killed.’

  ‘Can you think why?’ Inspector Williams continued.

  ‘Why you askin’ me? You’re the police.’

  ‘I’m interested in your opinion.’

  Gloria sighed. ‘If a broad moves in a world of men and darkness she has to watch out. She can’t trust no cat. Maybe the baby turned a man down and he didn’t take it good, or she saw somethin’ she shouldn’t have. Perhaps her Daddy was up to somethin’. It’s got to be love or money. Those things go together the whole damn time.’

  Sidney spoke in the silence. ‘I can’t understand how something so violent could happen to a girl like her . . .’

  ‘I’m not sayin’ it’s her fault . . .’

  The inspector returned to his questions. ‘Whom did you come with tonight?’

  ‘Just the band. Tony on skins, Milo on bass, Jay Jay on piano.’

  ‘Anyone else?’

  ‘There’s Liza, Tony’s girlfriend. She’s around somewhere, and Justin, our driver. He’s a dewdropper.’

  Williams was not interested in finding out that a dewdropper was a man who stayed up all
night. ‘Are they still here?’

  ‘I hope so. I need to get back to the hotel.’

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘I’ve been around. New Orleans. New York City.’

  ‘When are you going back?’

  ‘In a few weeks. I hope you’re not wantin’ me to stay. I have dates at Minton’s.’

  ‘Minton’s?’ Williams asked.

  Sidney explained. ‘It’s a jazz club in New York.’

  Gloria Dee smiled. ‘You been?’

  ‘Alas, no.’

  The singer looked him up and down. ‘You plain clothes?’

  ‘No, not at all. I’m a clergyman.’

  ‘A preacher-man? What you doin’ here?’

  ‘I’m Canon Sidney Chambers.’

  ‘As in Cannonball Adderley?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘He’s a sax player. Eats like a horse. What you drinkin’?’

  ‘I don’t think I can. But I’m sure that in your case . . .’

  ‘If I’m havin’ to wait I’m sure going to drink.’ Gloria turned and walked towards the bar. ‘Give me three shots of bourbon straight,’ she asked.

  Sidney could see Phil Johnson in the distance. He had not moved for a long time. He looked like a man who was stuck in a dream of falling from a high building; someone who knew that he would go on falling for the rest of his life, down towards a ground that was rising to meet him but would never arrive: eternal vertigo.

  Already Sidney knew that when, in the future, people asked him about his children or talked about their own, Phil would have to decide how much to tell them or to remain silent; for if he spoke and told them his story no one who had not experienced anything similar would know what to say. It would be impossible for them to compare any grief of their own with his.

  He heard Inspector Keating’s voice. ‘You can go home, you know.’

  ‘Are you staying?’

  ‘I have to, but you don’t. I can vouch for you.’

  ‘I think the last train has probably gone.’

  ‘Let’s have a look round.’

  They parted the black drapes at the back of the stage and found themselves in the clutter of the green room. It was a mess of instrument cases, scattered music stands and empty bottles of booze. A hat stand held a couple of trilbies and a few raincoats, and one of Gloria Dee’s red satin dresses fell from a hanger that had been attached to a nail in the wall. The place smelled of sweat, cigarettes and alcohol. Billboards of previous concerts, featuring Jimmy Deuchar, Ronnie Scott and Kenny Baker, were peeling from the walls. Justin, Gloria Dee’s driver, was doing a crossword. Liza was pouring herself some rum. ‘I’m just having a teensy weenie pick-me-up.’ She giggled. ‘Now I’m picking up the pick-me-up.’