Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation

by James Runcie

  ‘It’s a wonder you survived.’

  ‘The nurses said there was so much blood that it had all clogged up and they had to cut my clothes away. It was a cream linen suit. I’ve got a broken leg, collarbone and cracked ribs. I don’t know how the cows missed my head. They say it’ll take months to get better. I was planning on going to India.’

  Sidney asked if anyone else had been near the cows at the time.

  ‘Everyone was lying down on the grass, playing some kind of weird game of listening to grasshoppers. We even started imitating them at one point, I seem to remember. But we were really just drinking away and having a good laugh. I was looking for my friend Emily. Olivia and Alexander had just wandered off to find a secluded spot.’

  ‘I don’t know if you’ve heard about Olivia’s necklace?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘No one’s told me anything. But then I’ve been so out of it.’

  ‘Has no one been to see you?’

  ‘They haven’t allowed anyone in except my parents.’

  ‘I am sure your friends will come.’

  ‘It’s the end of term. You know what it’s like.’

  ‘What about Emily Hastings? Alexander Farley? Olivia Randall?’

  ‘I suppose so. But it’s been a bit complicated . . .’

  ‘Do you mean, Olivia?’

  ‘Well, yes. She’s lovely. But she’s a bit of a lunatic.’

  ‘Do you think so?’

  ‘She makes things up.’

  ‘You’ve not been sweet on her yourself?’

  ‘She thinks everyone’s in love with her or, if they’re not, they should be. It’s a pain. I’m keener on Emily, to be honest, but she’s out of my league and I’m hardly in a fit state to do anything about it now. Missed the boat on that one.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ said Sidney. ‘Life is long.’

  ‘Nearly wasn’t, though, was it? Bloody cows. And why me? Do you think they singled me out? I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I was just trying to cross a field.’

  ‘I don’t think anyone tried to set them against you. That would be a hard thing to do, I imagine. I assume it was simply a case of bad luck.’

  ‘You’re not wrong.’

  ‘I am sorry,’ Sidney continued, ‘but could I just ask one thing before I go? The main party was in Little Fen. The cows were in Trench Meadow which is on the way back towards Cambridge. Were you actually leaving the party when this happened?’

  ‘I thought I heard Emily calling, some more friends arriving, but I was mistaken. I was hot and confused and the drink was stronger than we all thought. God knows what was in it.’

  ‘I understand. I must let you rest.’

  ‘What were you saying about a necklace?’ the boy asked.

  ‘It doesn’t matter,’ Sidney replied. ‘It can wait.’

  As he left the hospital he wondered if Richard could have been responsible for the theft after all. Could the cows have set upon him after he had stolen the necklace and while he was making his escape; taking some kind of short cut that had gone disastrously wrong?

  Because Sidney was due to dine at High Table that evening he decided to pay the Master of Corpus a quick visit. It was a while since they had spoken and he thought he could use the opportunity to find out if Richard Lane’s parents were well off, if their decision to sue Harding Redmond was unalterable and whether their son might be in need of money.

  The master was concerned about the boy’s health and stated how predictable it was that there always seemed to be some kind of post-exam disaster when the students were winding down at the end of their university career. It was similar to coming down off a mountain: the descent was always more perilous than the ascent.

  Sidney discovered that, like Alexander Farley, Richard Lane had been reading law (his father was a QC) and he didn’t appear to have any financial worries. He had been a diligent pupil, spoken at the Union, written the odd article for Varsity and had caused little trouble during his time at Cambridge.

  ‘I’m sorry he’s sustained such an attack,’ the master said, ‘but they tell me he’s likely to make a full recovery. He’ll be able to continue his training in the autumn. I gather there was a related incident?’

  ‘I am not sure about “related”.’

  ‘Inspector Keating let slip that it wasn’t just the business of the cows that interested him. A priceless jewel, I hear?’

  ‘I don’t think it’s priceless.’

  ‘The girl’s mother told me that it was a family heirloom which could never be replaced.’

  Sidney tried not to be surprised. ‘Mrs Randall knows about the theft?’

  ‘Hermione is a friend of mine. I thought it was only right to tell her. We were in an amateur production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream in Vienna before the war. It’s where she met her husband. We were ex-pats together. Geoffrey’s a great Shakespearean; named his daughters after famous heroines. Helena and Olivia. I’ve got a daughter called Rosalind, although everyone calls her Lindy. It’s good to keep Shakespeare in the bloodline, don’t you think?’

  As ever, Sidney was keen to stick to the point. ‘The girls were hoping that they would find the necklace before their mother discovered it was missing. Then she would never have needed to know.’

  ‘Well it’s too late for subterfuge. Hermione is not one to waste any time. I think she’ll be here the day after tomorrow.

  ‘That won’t go down well with her daughters.’

  ‘It’s not the daughters we need to worry about. Their mother is a very formidable woman.’

  * * *

  Sidney was unsure how far his responsibilities extended. If Keating was already on to the theft and Hermione Randall was about to turn up, he didn’t see what more he could do to help proceedings. However, he did take up Harding Redmond’s offer to talk to his daughter Abigail. He had always admired the girl’s free-spirited, untutored perceptiveness and what had eventually become a firm moral stance.

  He began by congratulating her on saving the situation and preventing a death.

  ‘It was a close shave, Mr Chambers, I’ll tell you that. I’ve never seen anything like it.’

  ‘Did you ever fear the animals might turn on you?’

  ‘Not really. I know those cows. We’ve all grown up together, you might say.’

  Sidney suppressed a smile at the young woman’s carefree comparison of herself to a group of heifers. ‘I was just wondering: if someone knew them well, might they be able to predict or even direct their behaviour?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘If two students were playing around, for example, causing mischief, might it be possible for one of them to set the cows on the other?’

  ‘It would be a risky thing to do. They could just as easily turn on you.’

  ‘Unless,’ Sidney suggested, ‘the person managed to organise the attack from behind.’

  ‘But why would anyone want to do that?’

  ‘To create a distraction.’

  ‘In order to commit some other crime, you mean? It doesn’t seem possible, Mr Chambers. Unless someone was behind the victim, with fodder, and the cows thought they were going to be fed. That might work, but not in the summer, when there’s plenty of grazing. Those cows were all full up and enjoying the sunshine until the students started messing about.’

  Redmond joined them by the stables and, overhearing this, realised what Sidney was up to. ‘The other day, when you first came round, you mentioned another crime, one that happened while all this was going on. Are you going to tell us what it is?’

  Sidney came clean about the theft of the necklace, described what it looked like and asked if Abigail either remembered Olivia wearing it or if she had seen it anywhere on the Meadows in the aftermath of the accident.

  ‘I can’t say I looked too closely. I was more concerned with saving the boy. Then we had to set the cows right, get them all back together as a herd, check none of them were injured.’

  ‘I just wondered if a neck
lace had come off in the mêlée,’ Sidney continued, ‘or even if the boy was carrying it in his pockets.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that he might have stolen it before the cows got to him?’

  ‘I’m trying not to rule anything out.’

  ‘Got his comeuppance if he did,’ said Abigail. ‘But if it was on his person then wouldn’t they have found it in the hospital?’

  ‘Unless it fell out in the rumpus.’

  ‘But I would have seen it when we rescued him.’

  ‘And you didn’t?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Which means it must have been taken from the couple either while they were sleeping or after they had left their things and come to help.’

  ‘I definitely didn’t see any necklace,’ said Abigail. ‘The boy could have swallowed it, I suppose.’

  ‘Surely not,’ said Sidney. ‘That would be far too dangerous.’

  ‘And I don’t think that would be the first thing on his mind, would it, Mr Chambers?’

  ‘There’s no lengths some folk won’t go to,’ her father added. ‘Stealing jewellery and suing hard-working farmers. Haven’t they got better ways to earn a living?’

  ‘The necklace has sentimental significance,’ Sidney replied.

  ‘The kind only the rich can afford. Is that all those people can think about: their jewellery? A boy was nearly killed, his parents are likely to sue, I may go out of business and all they want to talk about is a bloody necklace.’

  Emily Hastings was indeed a clergy daughter. Her father was the Vicar of St Mary Redcliffe in Bristol, a well-known figure who used his church as a political debating chamber to campaign for CND and annoy the government. His daughter was a languid, somewhat eccentric figure with a round pale face, shell-rimmed glasses, and long dark hair that was parted in the centre and decorated with a peacock-blue flapper headband. She smoked Balkan Sobranies as they drank Noilly Prat and listened to jazz. Sidney was so dazzled by her company that he ended up discussing the difference between Bechet’s clarinet and saxophone playing for a good fifteen minutes before they got round to recent events on the Meadows. Even then Emily wanted to talk about other things, tactfully removing her copy of Wilhelm Reich’s psychoanalytical book The Function of the Orgasm from the floor and putting it back on the shelves.

  ‘I don’t know why you’ve come to visit me, Mr Archdeacon. Your company is very pleasant, but if it’s about the incident with the cows I am afraid I left before the drama.’

  ‘So you didn’t witness the incident?’

  ‘In the distance, but I was already on my way home. I heard a commotion as I was leaving Long Meadow but it was too late to turn back and I wanted to get to Newnham. There wasn’t much about the party that excited me, to be honest. Too many boorish public-school boys who’ve no manners. I’m quite a dull girl really.’

  ‘I reckon you protest too much.’

  ‘I don’t know. I had to ask to be taken to a May Ball. Can you imagine the humiliation?’

  ‘Some people might find that a good thing. You had the ability to choose rather than to be chosen.’

  ‘I think a man can sense desperation in a woman.’

  ‘I’m not so sure.’ Sidney was surprised by this shift in tone. ‘Perhaps you have to disguise it as confidence.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Emily gave her right arm an airy waft. ‘I am sure you can tell this whole thing is an act; a mask; a charade in which I pretend to be someone I’m not.’

  ‘I think we can all be a little bit guilty of that. Who did you ask?’

  ‘Richard, as a matter of fact. Well, he won’t be coming with me now, will he?’

  ‘Had he said yes?’

  ‘I think I’d served a purpose. It was one way of getting back at Olivia.’

  ‘She had left him for Alexander?’

  ‘Without bothering to tell him. I think she let him find out.’

  ‘At the party?’

  ‘No, a few days before.’

  ‘I’m amazed he showed up.’

  ‘It was his party.’

  ‘Then I’m surprised she came.’

  ‘I wasn’t. Olivia has a relaxed attitude to physical proximity. I don’t think she really minds who she sleeps with. She once told me that it was just another form of exercise. Whereas I . . .’

  ‘Think it might have to involve love?’

  ‘Affection, at least. We’re not animals; although the veneer of sophistication can be removed by alcohol all too swiftly. Would you like a top-up?’

  Sidney thought of his father’s watchful eye and how inappropriate it was to be spending so much time in a young student’s rooms. ‘I’d better not.’

  ‘You don’t mind if I have one?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  ‘There’s something delightfully decadent about getting sloshed on a Tuesday afternoon, don’t you think? Where were we?’

  ‘The party.’

  ‘Oh, yes. I didn’t join in the so-called fun because I was dressed for cocktails rather than anything else.’

  ‘I imagine you looked very stylish.’

  ‘I was wearing a dark-green sequin dress with a fringe hem. I thought I’d try to blend in with the landscape. The back was too precious to sit down on so close to the river; the ground wasn’t dry enough so I went home when things started getting fruity.’

  ‘Can you remember what Olivia was wearing?’

  ‘A powder-blue floaty dress, strappy sandals.’

  ‘Her necklace?’

  ‘Oh yes, that.’

  ‘You saw it?’

  ‘Everyone did. She wore that colour of dress to set it off. It matched her eyes, she said, not that any of the men looked into them for too long. The necklace gave them the perfect opportunity to stare at her breasts.’

  ‘Was it the kind of necklace you would have worn?’

  ‘It’s not really my thing. Too Victorian.’

  ‘So if, for example, Olivia had offered to lend it to you . . .’

  ‘I see where you are leading, Mr Archdeacon. I am reading experimental psychology, you know. It’s not the kind of thing I would have wanted to steal. Believe me, I have my own style and my own studies to keep up. I don’t seek out trouble. That seems to be your job.’

  Once Sidney had confessed to Amanda what he had been up to in one of their ‘catch-up’ telephone calls, he was warned that Hermione Randall was a well-known socialite and ‘a very forceful woman’.

  ‘More than you, Amanda?’

  ‘Definitely. You don’t need to worry about me any more. I’ve lost half my confidence. I think it must be age. That and marriage. People look straight past me these days.’

  ‘Nonsense.’

  ‘It’s true. I don’t count. I’m old. I’m invisible. I could get away with all manner of crimes.’

  ‘Don’t start on that.’

  ‘I won’t. But it’s true.’

  ‘So you think someone older could have stolen the necklace? Not a student at all, but an intrepid passer-by?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sidney; but certainly someone who wasn’t young, giddy and drunk. Perhaps you should ask Henry. He might have been in Cambridge at the time.’

  ‘Don’t be absurd.’

  ‘I’m not. He’s been behaving very oddly lately. He works late and keeps disappearing.’

  ‘He likes his privacy.’

  ‘I only hope he hasn’t been seeing his ex-wife. I can never quite trust her to keep away.’

  Henry had divorced Connie Richmond eight years previously but it hadn’t stopped her sending threatening letters to Amanda in an attempt to disrupt the romance.

  ‘Do you know we’ve been married nearly three years and I still can’t quite tell what my husband’s thinking. Do you have that with Hildegard?’

  ‘All the time.’

  ‘It’s irritating, isn’t it?’

  ‘I think it’s supposed to keep us interested.’

  ‘Oh, is that what it is? What if we give up and look for entertainment el
sewhere?’

  ‘That isn’t advisable, Amanda, and well you know it.’

  ‘It’s what you’re doing, though, isn’t it? It may not be the amorous activity of a bounder or a rake but you’re still away from home, running around the countryside looking for a necklace in a field full of cows and nubile young women. A needle in a haystack is a bit too prosaic for you, isn’t it, Sidney? A needle? Oh no, that’s not valuable enough. A haystack? Too banal. You need a whole field, mad cows, drunk students, young lovers, glamorous women, an angry farmer . . .’

  ‘Stop it, Amanda.’

  ‘I’m right, though, aren’t I? You’re enjoying all this.’

  ‘I’m intrigued. That’s different.’

  ‘Well, I can’t wait to hear what you make of Hermione Randall. I think you may be about to meet your match.’

  Sidney decided that he had better talk through the case with Geordie over a couple of pints in the Eagle. Were the two crimes connected or were they not? And why was there still no sign of the necklace?

  ‘I don’t know what they’ve all been playing at,’ said Keating as they sat outside in the yard. ‘The whole thing’s just a cock and bull story, without the cock.’

  ‘Or, indeed, the bull,’ said Sidney. ‘I did have a mad idea that the culprit could have been Richard Lane, who having been spurned by a former girlfriend took the jewel as an act of revenge. but I think that’s too far-fetched.’

  ‘And we would have found the necklace in his clothing, unless Abigail Redmond picked it up in the aftermath.’

  ‘She even suggested he swallowed it.’

  ‘Then they would have found it in the hospital. Blimey, is that how her mind works?’

  ‘I don’t think she would pick up a necklace from the ground and not tell me about it.’

  ‘The family’s criminal record says it all.’

  ‘But not her, Geordie. Abigail’s always been a good girl. I’ve never found her to be envious or irresponsible.’

  ‘You’ve always had a soft spot for that woman.’