by James Runcie
‘Again, I’ve told you, no.’
‘But was there anything about your meetings that might have given rise to speculation?’
‘I can’t do anything about gossip. That’s why your company is so refreshing. I know I am safe. You are beyond reproach.’ She patted his hand and let it go.
Sidney was reassured and disappointed at the same time. There was something curiously fetching about the woman, despite her bare-faced lie. ‘I wanted to ask about something that may not be so easy to discuss.’
‘Oh dear. I hope this is not going to be complicated.’
‘It’s money,’ Sidney said quickly.
‘Oh,’ Barbara recovered. ‘I thought it might be something else.’
‘How much did you give Danny?’
‘I wouldn’t like to say.’
‘Was he stealing from you, Mrs Wilkinson?’
‘you’ve guessed?’
‘how much did he take?’
‘I don’t honestly know. But there was a forged cheque. Fortunately the bank stopped it. They couldn’t believe I would do such a thing.’
‘Do you mind telling me how much it was for?’
‘Five thousand pounds. Payable to Fraser Pascoe.’
‘That’s a vast amount of money.’
‘Now you see why I had to get my son out of there.’
‘But you didn’t go to the police?’
‘I thought if I did that then Danny wouldn’t come home. Now the police are involved I’m afraid he never will. What on earth are we going to do, Sidney? You won’t desert me, will you?’
Before he left Grantchester, Sidney decided that he needed a moment to recover from the unsettling nature of his conversation with Barbara. She had a tentacular way of pulling him into situations he would rather avoid.
What he needed was something predictably reassuring and so he chose to look in on his former housekeeper. Mrs Maguire was much slowed by arthritis, and she was less confident than usual, but she came to life when the subject turned to her assessment of current events. Barbara Wilkinson had only herself to blame.
‘She’s a terrible mother. Everyone comments. People who don’t have to work for a living can get up to all kinds of mischief. The devil makes work for idle hands, and many are the men who’ve benefited from her personal touch. I’m surprised she hasn’t got her claws into you.’
‘I have seen her . . .’
‘You’ve got yourself involved, haven’t you?’
‘Not in any improper way.’
‘I mean with the crime. My sister Gladys was saying they think the murder weapon was a scythe. That would be appropriate, wouldn’t it?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Father Time, of course. The Grim Reaper, cutting Pascoe down to size.’
‘Are Father Time and the Grim Reaper one and the same?’ Sidney asked. ‘I’m never that sure.’
‘Doesn’t matter now the man’s dead. I wonder if he knew what hit him.’
‘They think he was attacked from behind.’
‘He must have known. You can’t do that kind of thing with one blow. He would have staggered about and seen his attacker. It’s bound to be one of those young men. They’ll neither work nor want.’
‘Do you think they’re rich?’
‘Only people with money can afford to say they have no need of it.’
‘That’s very wise, Mrs M.’
His former housekeeper smiled, grateful for the acknowledgement. ‘I’ve always said there’s something dirty at the crossroads. It’s a fraud. All those boys and girls are rich children with trust funds, I’ll bet. Pascoe was raking it in. You need to look for the money, Sidney, isn’t that what they say? Perhaps Mrs Richmond’s husband could help? He works in the City. He must know people.’
‘I can’t see Henry Richmond troubling himself with this.’
‘He owes you a favour, doesn’t he?’
‘I’m not sure he does.’
‘You approved of him. Told Miss Kendall to go ahead and marry him.’
‘Only because there wasn’t anyone else left.’
‘That’s not true, Sidney. You should be ashamed of yourself for saying such things. I always said she’d have made a good wife for you.’
‘You never said anything of the sort. Besides, I’m very happy with Hildegard.’
‘I’ll tell you one thing about Mrs Richmond. She’d have given short shrift to that Wilkinson woman. She wouldn’t have let you near her.’
‘Hildegard is a lot more tolerant, I must confess.’
‘That may be, but I wouldn’t take her for granted.’
‘I don’t.’
‘She’s been spurned once and her last husband was murdered. You don’t want to start giving her ideas.’
‘I really don’t think Hildegard is capable of murder, Mrs M.’
‘You shouldn’t test her, though, Sidney my boy. People can behave very unpredictably when they’re desperate.’
Sidney took Byron for a quick constitutional across the Meadows before their journey home. He was annoyed with himself for getting involved in a situation that was now out of control. He should have told Barbara Wilkinson right at the start that he could do nothing for her. But instead he had been initially attracted to her (he could admit that now) as well as vain and flattered into thinking that only he, the great Sidney Chambers, could sort things out. And now he found himself right in the middle of it all. Never again, he told himself. What he wanted more than anything was a drink with Inspector Keating. What he would do for a pint of Guinness in the Eagle, sitting by the fire on this dire day!
At least it had stopped snowing. He let his Labrador roam free during his cogitations and it must have been a good ten minutes before he realised that he had lost sight of him altogether. This was all he needed. To mislay his ruddy dog on top of everything else! Honestly.
He called and called but Byron gave no reply. Passers-by offered to help and they finally found him nosing his way through a patch of undergrowth. He had been pawing at a swathe of dirty blue-and-white material, but it wasn’t a random item of clothing at all. It was a bloodied cheesecloth shirt wrapped around the blade of what appeared to be the gardener’s scythe from Grantchester church.
After that it was bedlam. Keating and his forensic team set to work while Sidney made phone calls to Henry Richmond about the cult’s finances. He also telephoned the dean to apologise for his absence at evensong before anyone complained.
‘We all understand these are special circumstances, Sidney.’
‘Sometimes I worry things are never normal.’
‘Perhaps there’s no such thing as normality?’ the dean mused. Sidney envied the time his colleague seemed to have available for free-flowing thought.
‘I do hope there is. It isn’t good for me to spend so much of my contemplation suspecting people of murder.’
‘I am afraid that being a priest isn’t about “what’s good for me”, Sidney. It’s about what’s best for the community we serve.’
‘I’m not sure I’m even managing that.’
‘If you are fighting evil, then you are taking steps to help the world become a better place. Try to make your every moment an act of prayer. That is all a priest can do. Take steps. The race is not always to the swift.’
Sidney had got away with his ecclesiastical negligence only to be encouraged to work harder at the practical application of his ethics. There really was no respite, not even when it came to sharing a moment of relaxation with the inspector as soon as the pub was open.
‘You need to question that dentist again.’
‘I think that’s your job, Geordie. If I ask any more leading questions he’s sure to commit an act of excruciating violence. Have you made any progress with the shirt?’
‘It’s a medium size; and so, if it did belong to the murderer, which seems pretty likely given that it is soaked in blood, that rules out the bulky Roger Nelson, and the diminutive Sam Swinton. It’s probably saf
e to think it wasn’t one of the women, which means the murderer must be Tom Raven, your friend’s son Danny or his dad the dentist.’
‘Unless one of the women deliberately wore a man’s shirt or it’s a stranger after all.’
‘I’m concentrating on those three men for now. It shouldn’t take long for one of them to crack. They’re all behaving as if they’re in the middle of a nervous breakdown.’
‘Perhaps they need help.’
‘And they may get it once we’ve sorted this out. Then, if they haven’t been disowned, we need to get the children back to their families. You said Amanda’s husband might look into the finances?’
‘Companies House. Other records. I’ve also asked him to look for the surnames of the people in the cult. Pascoe might have been working with one of the parents. You never know. But if he’s got assets, Henry says he will find them: provided they are not in Switzerland.’
Geordie offered Sidney and Byron a lift to the station. Before they got into the car, the two men stopped at a makeshift poster advertising a student production of Orestes. Geordie asked what the play was about and was informed that the plot concerned a son who murdered his mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover Aegisthus.
‘Charming.’
‘He’s then pursued by the Furies and goes mad.’
‘Any justice?’ Geordie asked.
‘Funnily enough, there’s a trial with a jury of twelve but they can’t decide. It’s a split vote, but the goddess Athena lets him off.’
‘Extenuating circumstances . . .’
‘His mother was having an affair. He was provoked. A similar thing may have happened here.’
Geordie was doubtful as he got in the car and turned on the ignition. ‘Are you sure? Barbara Wilkinson and Fraser Pascoe hated each other.’
Sidney slammed his passenger door shut. ‘Yes. The kind of hatred that only happens after a relationship. Hell hath no fury and all that . . .’
‘And so if Danny Wilkinson or his father found out about the affair they could have wanted to kill either of them?’
‘Or both.’
‘It seems a bit extreme.’
The two friends drove in silence down King’s Parade. As they passed on into Trumpington Street, Keating asked: ‘Sidney, are you suggesting that Danny Wilkinson might have joined the cult specifically to murder Pascoe in revenge for sleeping with his mother and that he has been faking his cult-like behaviour all along?’
‘It’s not impossible.’
‘Tell you what,’ said Geordie, missing the left turn into Lensfield Road and taking an abrupt right into the Fen Causeway. ‘Let’s go round there now.’
‘Both of us?’
‘Why not?’
‘What about my train? I should be getting back. We’re going the wrong way. Hildegard . . .’
‘Oh don’t worry about her. She’s used to all this.’
‘That doesn’t make it any easier,’ Sidney replied forlornly. ‘I’ve just come from Grantchester. I don’t want to go back there all over again.’
Keating turned towards the village and was overtaken by an ambulance going full pelt. ‘Bloody hell.’
It was heading for the farm. By the time the two men arrived a body was being stretchered away.
Barbara Wilkinson was already there. ‘Someone’s tried to kill Danny,’ she said.
Sidney sometimes wished he had developed a mild form of agoraphobia to keep him at home, since whenever he went out into the world he found himself cast adrift, like a Cambridge Odysseus, wondering when he would ever return to his Penelope.
Danny Wilkinson had either taken an overdose or he had been poisoned. He was not dead but was rushed to hospital to have his stomach pumped. His mother followed the ambulance all the way there. Keating took statements and Sidney offered what consolation he could as Byron slept in the corner. If this was not a straightforward suicide but attempted murder, it could have been performed by any surviving member of the cult.
Keating searched the farm and awaited the toxicology report. There was not much to look for, since the Family of Love, in espousing the cause of poverty, was hippily monastic. There were few clothes, little food and no ready money. The bathroom contained a sliver of soap, a thin ribbed towel with the nap rubbed away and Izal lavatory paper that was so rough it was used only sparingly. But finally, in the cupboard under the stairs, hidden away in the bag of a Hoover that was never used, the police found a supply of ketamine.
‘Here we go,’ said Keating. ‘There aren’t many horses to tranquillise on this particular farm. It must be for the loving cup. Progress at last.’
He began by interviewing Tom Raven. The boy claimed that Danny Wilkinson must have taken an overdose. His friend had always wanted to reach for a higher calm and if that meant death then his attempt had, perhaps, been noble.
‘Unless he didn’t mean to take things so far.’
‘You have been listening to his stupid mother?’
‘I don’t need your advice on who I talk to,’ Keating snapped back. ‘I make my own observations.’
‘Then you probably don’t need my help.’
‘I’ll be the one who decides that.’
Sidney knew that he might be able to lessen the aggression between the two men with a quiet word but decided to remain silent and let his friend press on with further questions about Pascoe’s death. Raven claimed that he always wore white shirts long and loose from Hilditch & Key, and he wouldn’t be seen dead in the blood-soaked cheesecloth specimen discovered on the Meadows. He had never noticed any other member of the farm wearing it either. Perhaps it was a stranger’s and Pascoe’s murder had been a random attack? In any case, he had been visiting his father in London at the time of death, so he couldn’t have committed the crime even if he had wanted to.
‘What about financial gain?’ Keating asked.
‘I have enough money, thanks.’
‘I thought that in this place you weren’t supposed to have any at all?’ Sidney remembered.
‘We all need a running-away fund,’ Tom Raven answered before smirking a little. ‘I am sure your wives have them.’
‘Don’t be cheeky,’ said Keating. ‘What about your so-called friend, Danny Wilkinson?’
‘He’s still my friend.’
‘Did you poison him?’
‘Why would I do that?’
‘You tell us.’
‘I could have done, I suppose. I could have done anything really. But I didn’t. None of us did. We were all together that night, “in harmony”, and then we went to our rooms for jazz thinking.’
‘Separately?’
‘I did.’
‘What about the girls?’
‘What about them?’
‘What was their relationship with Danny like?’
‘It was groovy enough. But I don’t think it was physical, if that’s what you mean. Danny was scared of chicks. Something to do with his mum. You’ll have to ask him. Her too, if you can stand it.’
‘You speak as if you know he will survive.’
‘You think he might not?’ Raven asked.
‘Sometimes, even after a stomach pump, the damage has already been done. It’s either internal bleeding, kidney damage or liver failure: even all three. Do you want that on your conscience?’
‘My conscience is clear enough.’
‘But you are friends,’ Sidney pointed out. ‘Don’t you care about him?’
‘I love him like a brother. But I don’t see why I have to talk to you about it.’
‘Don’t take that tone with us, you little shit.’ Keating exploded at last, getting out of his chair and grabbing Tom Raven by the collar. ‘I don’t see why I have to talk to a spoilt little wazzock like you either but unfortunately that’s my job. I have to do it. You think you can give any answer you like? You make me sick.’
Tom Raven held his ground and remained utterly still. ‘Stay cool, man. There’s no need to get heavy. You don’t want my dad involved.
’
‘Don’t think your father can get you out of this.’
‘My dad can get me out of anything.’
‘Is that a challenge?’ Sidney asked.
He rang Hildegard to explain why he was going to be delayed even further. He did not go into details, and he left out the fact that he had promised to look in on Barbara Wilkinson before getting the last train back to Ely.
He tried her home first and found that she had just returned from the hospital. She said she was just about to get ready for bed but knew that she would not be able to sleep. ‘Danny’s all right,’ she said. ‘Thank God. He needs a good night’s rest. They all think it’s a cry for help but I don’t believe that. Someone at the farm was trying to kill him.’
‘And who do you think might do such a thing?’
‘Tom Raven.’
‘Why do you say that?’
‘He got Danny into the cult in the first place.’
‘But they are friends,’ Sidney pointed out. ‘Why would he want to kill your son?’
‘Because Danny knew he killed Pascoe.’
‘And do you have any evidence? Do you even know Tom Raven?’
‘He was always an arrogant little boy. I think he’s behind the whole thing. It’s a money-making racket.’
‘Then why would he want to kill Pascoe? If they were making money and it was all going well . . .’
‘Perhaps his father ordered the murder. I’ve heard he’s a hard man.’
‘All of this is speculation, Mrs Wilkinson.’
‘I can’t help that. Everything keeps going around and around in my head.’
‘Then we should rest.’
‘Would you like to stay the night? There’s a bed in the spare room.’
‘I don’t think that’s wise.’
‘I’ll give you a lift to the station then.’
‘That would be kind.’
The snow and sleet had turned to rain and it was hard to see the road ahead, but Barbara Wilkinson was a good, confident driver, which made Sidney suspicious about her public insecurities. He looked out through the windscreen, allowing the sound of the wipers to give silence a rhythm against the engine of the car, and wondered what on earth he was doing, travelling through the darkness with a woman from whom he was unable to escape.
