Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death

by James Runcie

  ‘The vision of loveliness has returned,’ he declared, with a triumphant and generous gesture that suggested his guest was appearing on the London stage. ‘Aphrodite is in our midst once more.’

  ‘You flatter me, Lord Teversham.’

  ‘I tell only the truth. And you must call me Dominic.’

  Cicely Teversham hugged her tightly, and Ben Blackwood kissed her for the first time. ‘Welcome back.’

  ‘Champagne! I think . . .’ Lord Teversham called to his butler. ‘We can’t be having anything as prosaic as sherry on a day like this.’ He shook Sidney by the hand. ‘I imagine you must be sick of the sight of sherry, eh?’

  Sidney smiled. At last people were beginning to get the message. ‘It does have its limitations.’

  ‘Then why don’t you ever say?’

  ‘I don’t want to appear rude.’

  Amanda touched him on the shoulder. ‘Oh, Sidney, don’t be such a saint. Let’s get on with the champagne.’

  Mackay poured out the glasses while Lord Teversham made a little announcement. ‘Miss Kendall, before we go into luncheon we have a surprise for you.’

  ‘I’m not sure I like surprises any more.’

  ‘I think this one will amuse you. Come into the Long Gallery. You too, Canon Chambers. Bring your glasses. Ben will explain.’

  They walked out into the Long Gallery and stopped in front of the painting of Anne Boleyn. It looked darker than Amanda had remembered from before. Perhaps it was because the weather had turned for the worse. It was a dull and sombre day and the picture was illuminated only from the windows.

  Amanda took a step closer.

  ‘What do you think?’ Lord Teversham asked.

  Amanda paused. ‘Isn’t this still the forgery?’

  ‘It is. I knew that you would be able to tell. You are clever.’

  ‘Then where is the original?’

  Lord Teversham opened the door beside him that led into a small anteroom. ‘Step this way.’ He pointed to a large packing case ‘It is here.’

  ‘I don’t understand.’

  Lord Teversham laid a gentle hand on Amanda’s shoulder. ‘I have been on the telephone to the Director of the National Gallery. He knows what you have done. He reminded me that the painting was priceless. Then he started to tell me about the tax advantages of gifting the painting to the nation. He could take care of it and have it on permanent loan while I am alive, and he could take care of it in such a way that the picture would never be endangered again. I listened to him very carefully . . .’ Lord Teversham smiled.

  ‘And then?’ Amanda asked.

  ‘I thought of you and all that you had gone through. And I thought of what I do. Nothing much happens in Locket Hall, you know? I have my lovely sister, and I have Ben. I shoot, and I have parties, but what have I actually done with my life? Nothing. What will I be remembered for? Nothing. This is one small thing I can do. I am giving the painting to you, Miss Kendall, or rather I am donating it to your employer.’

  ‘Oh . . .’ said Amanda. She inadvertently took Sidney’s hand and he squeezed it. Then she began to cry. ‘That’s so kind.’

  ‘It is nothing, my dear.’

  ‘It is everything. I’m sorry. I cry so often these days. I can’t help it.’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with crying.’

  She let go of Sidney’s hand.

  He remembered her lying on the hospital bed, and then, her bruised and broken body on the lavatory floor. He had never felt so protective of anyone before.

  Amanda gave Lord Teversham a kiss on both cheeks. Then she took Ben’s hand. ‘Did you have something to do with this?’ she asked.

  ‘We all decided it was for the best,’ said Cicely, opening her arms.

  Amanda collapsed into her embrace.

  ‘There, there,’ said Lord Teversham. ‘We can’t go on like this otherwise we will all start blubbing. We need a good bit of roast beef and Yorkshire pudding and some heady red wine. I have a rather good Mouton Rothschild from ’49. Do you know the vintage, Canon Chambers?’

  ‘I can’t think of anything more appropriate,’ Sidney bluffed.

  They walked through to the dining room, where Mackay was waiting. He placed Amanda to Lord Teversham’s right and luncheon was served.

  The host was keen to hear the full story of the kidnap. ‘How frightening it must have been, Miss Kendall. Has Phillips confessed?’

  ‘I believe he has.’

  ‘He sounds a very unnerving man,’ Cicely added. ‘He must have had a very odd upbringing.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Amanda quietly. ‘Although, would you mind if we didn’t talk about it? I’m still finding it rather hard.’

  ‘Of course.’ Lord Teversham turned to Ben. ‘It’s surprising we didn’t notice that the man was mad in the first place. Perhaps it’s because we spend so much time with eccentrics in our own family. My uncle thought that pine nuts made you invisible. He used to come down to breakfast naked.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s the same thing’, Cicely said. ‘Mr Phillips must have been a different kettle of fish altogether.’

  ‘But that doesn’t mean we should take pity on him,’ Lord Teversham continued. ‘What do you say, Canon Chambers? Even madmen deserve our forgiveness? Surely in some cases people are beyond mercy? There is so much evil in the world.’

  ‘That is true, of course.’ Sidney answered.

  ‘You are thinking, I see.’

  ‘It is not the right time to discuss my thoughts.’

  ‘Go on.’

  Sidney looked at Amanda who smiled encouragingly. ‘He always has something interesting to say.’

  ‘I don’t know about that,’ her friend began, but he recognised that he should move the subject of the conversation away from Amanda’s ordeal. ‘People often ask me about the problem of evil,’ he began, ‘but there is, of course, another way of looking at it.’

  ‘Which is?’ Lord Teversham asked.

  ‘The problem of good. If we are all animals why are some of us good, kind, altruistic when we do not have to be? The capacity to behave morally is as interesting as the will to behave badly.’

  ‘Ah, the question of the selfish good,’ Ben intervened.

  ‘But that is not always the case.’ Sidney replied. ‘Some people are selfless. They are good without any expectation of reward. It is almost, or perhaps it really is, natural to them.’

  ‘You do always think the best of people,’ Amanda replied. ‘If you’d been kept prisoner by someone as vile as that man you might feel a bit differently. Just thinking of him makes me feel sick.’

  ‘Then let’s not,’ said Lord Teversham.

  Sidney explained. ‘Amanda’s been rather off her food ever since. I just think it’s an interesting dilemma that people overlook . . .’

  Cicely Teversham began to clear the plates. ‘I see you managed the beef all right, Amanda.’

  ‘It was delicious, thank you, and it’s so kind of you both to loan the painting. You know that you can come to the National Gallery and see it whenever you like?’

  Lord Teversham handed his sister his plate. It was unclear where the butler had gone. ‘Perhaps we should crack on with pudding,’ he continued. ‘I think Cook has organised one of her specials. It’s a childhood favourite of mine and now that the tiresome business of rationing is over we have it as much as we like. I hope you will crave my indulgence. I think we’ve also got a rather agreeable dessert wine to go with it.’ He stood up to look for it. ‘Let me see if it is here; a rather fruity little Gaillac, I believe.’

  Cicely stood up at the same time and moved over to a silver serving dish on the sideboard. She took off the lid. ‘Banana fritters!’ she announced. ‘How wonderful. Can I help you to a couple, Miss Kendall?’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ Amanda apologised, ‘I don’t think I’ll be having any pudding.’

  ‘Are you sure?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘What ever is the matter?’ Lord Teversham asked. ‘Don’
t you like bananas?’

  Honourable Men

  Sidney was talking to himself again. ‘Vanity, vanity, all is vanity, saith the Preacher,’ he muttered as he walked towards the Arts Theatre for the first rehearsal of a modern-dress production of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

  Why had he agreed to take part, he wondered? At least his was only a small part, that of Artemidorus, ‘sophist of Cnidos’, who tries to warn Caesar that a group of conspirators are about to kill him. There were two scenes, very few lines and, as Inspector Keating pointed out, ‘you can be in the pub by the interval’.

  Sidney had convinced himself that his performance was more to do with civic responsibility than with pride. This was, after all, the theme of the play: how to live an honourable life and protect the greater good. To take part in such a drama, he said to himself, was no more than his duty. There was no point in getting into a state or worrying about what people might think. In any case, his ego, he reassured himself, was far smaller than that of Julius Caesar: a man who had, in fact, been assassinated precisely because of vanity.

  Derek Jarvis, the coroner, was the director. He had decided to set the play in the 1930s and make much of the similarities between Julius Caesar and Mussolini. The part of Caesar was taken by Lord Teversham with his sister, Cicely Teversham, as Caesar’s wife, and Ben Blackwood as Mark Antony.

  As soon as he discovered that he was going to be dressed as an Italian blackshirt Sidney forbade both Amanda and Inspector Keating from attending a performance. There was only so much teasing he could take. Why couldn’t they have done South Pacific instead, he wondered? Then he could have persuaded Amanda to join the chorus and appear in a hula skirt. It would be a lot more entertaining than sharing the stage with a collection of amateur thespians dressed up as fascists.

  ‘I thought you did enough performing in church,’ Keating had teased. ‘You want to watch it. People will start talking.’

  ‘I think I am on safe ground.’

  ‘This is the way they draw you in, Sidney. Next year you’ll be in the panto. I can just see you as Widow Twanky.’

  ‘I will be doing no such thing,’ Sidney replied, his sense of humour deserting him. ‘This will be my only appearance on the boards.’

  Mrs Maguire had been equally sceptical. ‘People will think you’ve got too much time on your hands, Canon Chambers. Either that or you are showing off. No one likes a show-off.’

  ‘I am doing it to feel part of the community,’ Sidney replied, ‘that is all.’

  ‘You are already part of the community. You should be out walking the dog instead of consorting with people who should know better.’

  ‘But then,’ Leonard Graham chipped in unhelpfully, ‘if they did The Two Gentlemen of Verona Dickens could take a starring role as the dog Crab. There would be no trouble catching him “a pissing” under the Duke’s table. He does it often enough.’

  ‘There’s no need to be vulgar,’ said Mrs Maguire.

  ‘My dear Mrs Maguire, I am quoting from Shakespeare. It’s bawdy rather than vulgar.’

  ‘I don’t care what it is. It’s still rude. But at least it would get that wretched animal out of the house and spare the lino.’ Mrs Maguire still refused to call Dickens by his name. Clearly it was going to take her a long time to recover from the latest incident of the laddered stocking.

  Mrs Maguire was, however, correct in her analysis of how much time the production would take. Sidney spent hours in rehearsal simply hanging about. He had never realised that most of an actor’s life involved waiting around. It made him tense. He remembered the impatience of the prayer – ‘Come Lord, quickly come’ – and thought that this was a sentiment that could be applied to the all too secular Lord Teversham, who frequently missed his entrances, and who had so much difficulty in remembering his lines that his scenes took far longer than anyone else’s. Indeed, Sidney thought, such was the intolerance of the other cast members that he began to wonder if they might even take a modicum of pleasure in seeing their local aristocrat lying in a pool of blood.

  There were six weeks of rehearsal before the first night in late October, and much discussion about the inherent themes of the play, such as honour, pride, loyalty and political opportunism. Sidney found it an instructive process, as these were qualities that could also prove useful in understanding the machinations of many a priest in the Church of England.

  By the time the first night arrived, he was more than prepared. He strode on to the stage, pressed the letter warning Julius Caesar about the conspirators into Lord Teversham’s hands, and infused his lines with as much menace as he could muster.

  ‘Delay not, Caesar,’ he hissed. ‘Read it instantly.’

  Lord Teversham looked at Sidney but then answered by looking straight out to the audience. ‘What, is the fellow mad?’

  This double-take had not been part of the rehearsal process and was closer to pantomime than politics. The audience laughed and Sidney realised, with horror, that he had been upstaged. He had intended to inspire both anxiety and fear but it now appeared that he was little more than a figure of fun. How could Lord Teversham have done this to him? Was it on purpose or by accident? He left the stage feeling humiliated and watched the rest of the scene from the wings.

  Moments later, the conspirators moved in for the kill, kneeling round the aged would-be emperor. Lord Teversham stretched out an Imperial arm, and intoned, impossibly slowly: ‘Doth not Brutus bootless kneel?’

  Clive Morton, dressed in a black outfit that would have looked more at place in a nightclub than a battlefield, leaped up, grabbed Lord Teversham’s neck from behind, and shouted ‘Speak hands for me!’ before stabbing him in the back.

  The other actors rose as one from their kneeling positions to conclude the murderous deed. Simon Hackford pulled back the slouching body by the collar, held the gasping form upright and stabbed Lord Teversham once more in the chest.

  His victim gasped. ‘Et tu, Brute? Then fall Caesar.’

  Lord Teversham clutched his heart, staggered forward to the front of the stage, and fell to his side. As he collapsed the conspirators threw their knives on to the ground. The scattered clatter of metal on the floor was intended to accentuate the drama of the death.

  One of the disadvantages of the cast wearing black, rather than the traditional white toga, was the fact that it took far longer for Caesar’s blood to show; and, although a stomach sachet had been appropriately punctured, it was only when the conspirators came forward to smear their hands with Caesar’s blood that the audience was made aware of the amount of gore involved.

  Each actor took off his gloves and knelt before Lord Teversham’s prostrate form. A servant arrived to ask that Antony ‘may safely come’ and Ben Blackwood arrived on stage and took his place by Caesar’s corpse.

  ‘O mighty Caesar! Dost thou lie so low?

  Are all they conquests, glories, triumphs, spoils,

  Shrunk to this little measure?’

  His performance had lost the feyness Sidney had noticed in rehearsals and Ben commanded the stage. He took off his gloves and shook hands with the conspirators. The blood on their hands stained his. He knelt over Caesar’s body. He was on the verge of tears, choking so much that he could hardly get through his lines:

  ‘Thou art the ruins of the noblest man

  That ever lived in the tide of times . . .’

  He finished his speech and asked the servant to help him with the body. Then, after he had taken it into the wings and laid it down he hesitated. Lord Teversham had not risen like an actor who had finished his scene but lay motionless. Ben put his head against the heart of his friend and checked the blood once more.

  The plebeians took to the stage, picking up the knives the conspirators had thrown down, ready to commit revenge.

  Ben Blackwood looked up at Sidney in horror. ‘Curtain!’ he said urgently. ‘Curtain and house lights. For God’s sake!’

  ‘Typical,’ muttered Inspector Keating after he had been summo
ned from his home, leaving his wife and three sleeping children behind. ‘It could have been any of them.’

  ‘Or all of them, I suppose,’ said Sidney. He was already feeling defeated by the events of the evening.

  ‘Steady on. This isn’t Murder on the Orient Express. Only one blade did the damage.’

  ‘But who carried it? That is what we need to know. And where is it now?’

  ‘If it is in this building my men will find it. No one who took part in the play will be allowed to leave . . .’

  Sidney realised that the design of the play was going to hamper the investigation since its fascist theme had necessitated each of the assassins wearing black shirts, black boots, and, crucially, black leather gloves. There were no fingerprints from the murder itself, and all the plebeians had handled the knives in the ensuing tumult. The actors playing Marcus Brutus, Cassius, Decius Brutus, Metellus, Cinna, Casca, Ligarius and Trebonius were all suspects.

  The stage area was sealed off and the investigation began. Inspector Keating called Sidney aside. ‘I’m assuming that I will have your help on this case?’

  ‘As a member of the cast I am of course a witness. And, I suppose, a suspect.’

  ‘Now you are being plain daft.’

  ‘I would hope to be one of the first to be ruled out of your investigation.’

  ‘You can take that as read. Where do we start?’

  ‘With the director: Derek Jarvis. He should know what everyone was supposed to be doing and who was meant to stab Lord Teversham and where. He’s quite thorough about that kind of thing.’

  ‘I can’t imagine that the coroner is best pleased to have his night of theatrical triumph ruined by his professional duty. As soon as we know the angle of the crucial blow we will have to do a re-enactment.’

  ‘Tonight?’

  ‘Tomorrow. Once we have heard everyone’s statements. It’s going to be a long evening. You must be getting used to these by now.’

  ‘They are,’ Sidney agreed, ‘becoming alarmingly familiar.’

  Police were stationed at the public entrance and the stage door. The cast was asked to wait in the auditorium while the stage and backstage areas were searched for the murder weapon. The coroner made a preliminary examination of Lord Teversham and organised his removal to the mortuary. His distraught sister had been in the audience and accompanied the body. Ben was alone in the bar. Frank Blackwood gave him a stiff drink and wrapped him in a blanket. He sat in the corner, shivering, without saying a word, unable to leave until the police had taken his statement, a hipflask of brandy beside him.