Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night

by James Runcie

  Gary took over the conversation once more. ‘What’s the point of that? They’d probably start following her too.’

  ‘They could call Benson in: issue a warning.’

  Abigail Redmond took a drag on her cigarette. ‘My dad says we can sort it out ourselves. He’s going to go round. He says we don’t need the police.’

  Sidney was concerned. ‘I wouldn’t advise taking the law into your own hands.’

  Gary Bell looked him up and down. ‘No, I don’t suppose you would. What do you want from us?’

  ‘I just wanted to clear up the matter of the other evening. I was not, I repeat not, spying on you in any way. I was accosting Benson because I believe he had shot an owl, which is illegal. I also came here because I wanted to ask when you last saw Daniel Morden?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with you? Has something happened to him?’

  ‘I mean before the fire.’

  ‘I saw him that morning. He had called a taxi and he was carrying all his equipment and a couple of round silver cans. I asked if he was going to make a film . . .’

  ‘He was all sweaty,’ Abigail added.

  Gary explained. ‘That’s the drink. If he’d been in there at the time of the fire he’d probably have been too drunk to get out.’

  ‘And have you any idea how the blaze began?’

  Gary Bell stopped work on his bike. ‘The police told me they found one of our petrol cans outside. They asked me questions like they thought I’d done it. If I had I wouldn’t have been so thick as to leave the evidence next to the scene of the crime, would I?’ He turned to Abigail for approval. She nodded, dropped the stub of her cigarette and ground it underneath the sole of her red high heels.

  ‘Yes, I am sure you would not,’ Sidney replied. ‘I was also wondering how well you both knew Mr Morden?’

  ‘Enough to say hello. That’s all it was.’

  ‘And did he never ask to take your photograph, Miss Redmond?’

  Gary Bell interrupted. ‘Why would he want to do that?’

  Abigail was defiant. ‘I don’t pose for no one.’

  As he bicycled round Cambridge, Sidney worried what all this meant. Why would anyone want to burn down a summerhouse of such little value? Could it simply be an insurance fraud or was it something more? Could Gary Bell, or even Abigail Redmond, have started the fire to get Daniel Morden out of the building? Surely it would have been simpler not to renew his lease? Might there be some romantic history between Morden and Abigail, even though she was still so young? And Benson the taxidermist seemed, from what Abigail had said, to be a bit of a stalker; perhaps he was more than that? How well did Morden know him?

  He would have to go back to the photographer. If nothing else, he was sure that Morden had a few good stories in him, and that should be entertaining in itself. Perhaps, since he had worked in Hollywood, he had met some of Sidney’s jazz heroes like Eubie Blake and Noble Sissle. He thought of Benny Goodman in Hollywood Hotel, Bessie Smith in St Louis Blues, Fats Waller in Stormy Weather and even Dooley Wilson in Casablanca.

  It was a Monday afternoon in early September. Morden was glad of the opportunity to reminisce, but he had never enjoyed privileged access to the lives of any of the legendary jazz figures about whom his guest was hoping to hear. ‘Most of them were after my time, I am afraid, Canon Chambers. I was more of a silent-movie man. The talkies did for me as they accounted for so many others.’

  ‘Surely you saw it coming?’

  ‘Of course, but we didn’t go in for too many words. If you take the most famous film I worked on, we were determined to tell the story visually. We tried to use cards as little as possible: in fact on one of Murnau’s other films, The Last Laugh, he only used one card in the whole picture, and that was to explain the ending. He believed the picture alone should tell the story. “Satis verborum” was our motto. “Enough of words!” We wanted the audience to look at film and at life as if it were a dream or a memory. It should appeal to a part of the brain that had only just been discovered. We were very pure about it.’

  Sidney was intrigued. ‘What was the film?’

  ‘Sunrise. It’s about a man who plans to murder his wife. Only he doesn’t. Most of the drama happens on a lake. It’s about forgiveness, I suppose, and it’s beautiful. We used all the qualities of dream; flash backwards and forwards, superimposition, composites, fantasy, multiple exposures.’

  ‘I’d like to see it.’

  ‘The existing print’s not very good because they had to make a new negative so it’s not as sharp as it was when people first saw it. The blacks have gone grey and the soundtrack’s too noisy.’

  ‘A pity.’

  ‘It’s still worth seeing. You can tell it’s a masterpiece.’

  ‘And what did you do after that?’

  ‘I began to direct myself, even though I wasn’t as good as Murnau. Then I had my trouble.’

  ‘I’m sorry. You don’t need to tell me if you don’t want to.’

  ‘It’s a common enough story. The work didn’t go the way I had planned, the demon drink became as much a part of my life as the younger starlets, and I found myself on a plane home.’

  ‘And do you keep your old films?’

  ‘Not here. Watching them made me depressed. They’re stored at the labs where they were processed.’

  ‘I think you took some cans to London on the day of the fire?’

  ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘Gary Bell told me.’

  ‘Him? They were only tests for something I never made.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘I was going to make a new version of Stravinsky’s The Rite of Spring. People thought I was mad. The piece is only half an hour long so it was never going to be very commercial unless I put stuff in between. I had a wonderful dancer. Natasha. She was half-Russian. She was a very pale, amazingly thin young girl, with high cheekbones, and dark, dramatic eyes. The camera adored her but the money ran out. I had to come back to England. We got a house near the Oliviers and pretended everything was all right and I was still a player, but it was a fantasy. Then Emma made her move and I took to my medicine.’ He poured himself a drink.

  ‘Made her move?’

  ‘I came home unexpectedly and there was a man in the house. They didn’t even bother covering it up. I thought they could have made an effort, but Emma never had much imagination. Tim was her first boyfriend. He hadn’t been glamorous enough the first time round. She had wanted more of a “catch”, which is why she chose me; only I didn’t prove to be a big-enough fish, and Tim had worked steadily as a kindly, principled and eventually quite successful stockbroker.’

  ‘And your departure from Los Angeles wasn’t anything to do with young girls: people like Natasha?’

  ‘People assume it’s always about women. There was a girl, as a matter of fact, and although people gossiped I had done nothing wrong. I was more of a mentor to her, a father figure, but everyone jumped to the wrong conclusions and she needed to ditch me in order to save her career.’

  ‘And there was no one afterwards?’

  ‘I suppose, until now, there’s always been someone on the go. I am not a total disaster, Canon Chambers, but there was no one serious after Emma. After she died . . . it was an accident, in a swimming pool at a friend’s house . . . I went to stay with my parents. I’m still with them really. Look at me now, in my dead mother’s flat with hardly a penny to my name.’

  ‘So you’ll be grateful for the insurance money?’

  ‘Yes, but that doesn’t mean I started the fire, if that’s what you’re getting at.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘I think I know you by now. You will remember that I was in London.’

  ‘I do,’ Sidney replied. ‘The police have talked to Gary Bell about the petrol can but I can’t think what he might have got against you?’

  ‘You’re right. It’s more likely to be someone like Jerome Benson.’

  ‘Why him?’
r />   Morden lit another cigarillo. ‘He wanted to watch me photograph girls.’

  ‘And did you let him?’

  ‘Of course not. I have to be discreet. I can’t have people watching.’

  ‘I imagine you can’t. Some of the girls you photograph are quite young, I suppose?’

  Morden was irritated. ‘They have to be sixteen. I can’t tell with some of them, they’re so precocious, but you generally know.’

  ‘And are any of them local girls?’

  ‘I don’t think it would be wise to tell you my clients, Canon Chambers, but some have been local, yes.’

  ‘Abigail Redmond, for example?’

  ‘The name is not familiar; but then, so many of them make up new names. It’s all cash so it doesn’t matter. They pay and send the photographs on to the modelling agencies. They always ask me for advice, or introductions, and I help out when I can but I only have a very limited influence.’

  ‘Do they pay you any extra for that?’

  ‘No, Canon Chambers, I do it out of the goodness of my heart.’

  ‘And you don’t have favourites?’

  ‘Like children, I love them all equally.’

  ‘And you don’t get into any scrapes?’ Sidney persisted.

  ‘Scrapes? I am amused by your euphemism. Are you asking if I get involved with any of the girls in a way of which their parents might disapprove?’

  ‘Yes, although I recognise that this is none of my business.’

  ‘It certainly isn’t. But the answer is “no”. I’m past that stage.’

  ‘You mean that you have been at “that stage” in the past?’

  ‘I like women, Canon Chambers. Don’t tell me you don’t?’

  ‘That can’t have been easy for your wife.’

  ‘You deduce correctly. She even thought I was having an affair with Jane Winton, the girl who played the manicurist in Sunrise. I did point out that she had only just got married.’

  ‘But, as you say, those days are over.’ Sidney knew he could not sustain Morden’s tolerable humour for much longer. ‘Why did you keep going, I wonder?’

  ‘Money, Canon Chambers. That and the fact that I am incapable of doing anything else.’

  ‘It seems quite a step down, if I may say so, from silent films and fashion photography to girls in skimpy dresses?’

  ‘They’re not always that skimpy. Sometimes they don’t wear anything at all. But it doesn’t make much difference. It pays well and, as I say, I need the money. I always need money.’

  Sidney was bemused by his conversation with the photographer but intrigued by the fact that he appeared to know Amanda. He telephoned to check if what he said was true.

  ‘I think he was the one who took my photograph when I was a deb. If that’s the man he was a rather glamorous, but ageing, roué. Has he been up to something?’

  ‘I’m not sure.’

  ‘That man had trouble written all over him, I seem to remember.’

  ‘Did you find him attractive?’

  ‘That’s a very leading question. Men don’t normally ask that kind of thing. They can’t bear to think of the competition. He’s a photographer, Sidney. I think I can do a bit better than that.’

  ‘I keep forgetting that your prospective marriage has necessary social implications.’

  ‘It’s my parents as well as the money, you will remember. I don’t want to be fleeced.’

  Sidney imagined that Morden was a man who could probably run through someone else’s capital at quite a lick. ‘You’re very wise, Amanda.’

  ‘I don’t know why you’re asking me all this. Most of the time I wish the subject was best avoided. I don’t like people defining me by who I might, or might not, love. It’s such a distraction and it gets in the way of work. It’s all very well for you. At least you’ve got someone in mind.’

  ‘I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that.’

  ‘For goodness’ sake, Sidney. I don’t know why you don’t just bow to the inevitable and get on with it. Hildegard sounds perfectly nice and I can tell you can’t stop thinking about her.’

  ‘It’s quite a complicated situation.’

  Sidney returned, momentarily, to the anxiety of his courtship. He worried if it was as right for his potential beloved as it was for him? What if Hildegard’s return to Grantchester would end, in any way, as it had done the first time, in unhappiness? What if he could not give her the redemption he felt she deserved?

  ‘Everything’s complicated if you worry too much about it,’ Amanda replied with certainty. ‘There’s never a right and a wrong time. Look at my brother. He ran off with a divorcee and he’s perfectly happy.’

  ‘I think there’s a difference between a divorcee and a widow.’

  ‘Of course. But there are advantages. They have seen it all before. They have probably learned all the danger signals in a marriage and can head things off before everything falls apart. You can benefit from their experience and learn from them.’

  ‘I suppose that’s true.’

  ‘Sometimes, Sidney, you just have to act hopefully and get on with it.’

  Jerome Benson’s home was a veritable cabinet of curiosities. The walls of the front room were decorated with traditional examples of the taxidermist’s art and concentrated entirely on fish: a pair of perch, three or four pikes, a thick-lipped mullet, a brown trout, a carp, a roach and a flounder. The inner room was stranger, featuring picturesque narrative attempts (a fox with pheasant prey, two sword-fighting stoats) and what could only be described as the macabre: a two-headed lamb, a mummified cat, an armadillo holding a soap dish and a model of the human eye.

  Dickens began to panic at the sight of a sheepdog’s head mounted on a wooden shield and a terrier contained in an oval glass dome. He cowered when Benson moved closer. It was the first time that Sidney had seen his dog so frightened by another human being.

  ‘I imagine that you have come about the owl,’ Benson began, ‘although I thought I cleared the matter up at the time. I can assure you the police are overcome with pressing matters in town and can’t be bothered to drive out two miles to Grantchester to check on a bird of prey.’

  ‘I don’t think that’s the case.’

  ‘I really don’t see why I have to justify my actions, least of all to you. I have a detailed logbook for every specimen and a licence for my taxidermy. I only pick up animals that are already deceased. Of course, friends collect from abroad, and I do deal in Victoriana. I worked for a short while at Cooper and Sons. You may have heard of them?’

  Sidney dimly remembered a childhood visit to Walter Potter’s museum in Cornwall with its bizarre anthropomorphised images of squirrels playing cards, a kittens’ wedding party and rats rescuing each other from a trap.

  ‘I am not familiar with the practice of taxidermy. Do you specialise in certain types of animal?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘Birds,’ Benson answered. ‘Since you ask.’

  ‘Any particular reason?’

  ‘They die so well . . .’

  ‘I was not aware.’

  ‘They lie on their backs with their heads to one side, making a heart shape. I try to make their beauty last for ever.’

  Sidney thought of the photographer Daniel Morden and his desire to create an eternal moment.

  ‘Some of these animals will become extinct, Canon Chambers. That’s the purpose of my craft. The crested sheldrake was last seen in 1916; the Layson honeyeater in 1923; the Cuban red macaw in 1864. Thanks to taxidermy we know what they were like.’

  ‘And the tawny owl?’

  ‘I did not kill that owl, Canon Chambers. It was dying and I was waiting.’

  ‘Then why were you carrying a gun?’

  ‘The law does permit licensed gun owners to shoot any predators or vermin. I also carry it for my own protection. People distrust my wanderings. I have been threatened.’

  ‘On what basis?’

  ‘People seem to think I am not looking at wildlife but at them.’
>
  ‘You mean, courting couples?’

  ‘As I say, I have been threatened. Now I often have to leave my binoculars at home. It arouses less suspicion.’

  ‘But you still wander out at dusk?’

  ‘It is the best time to find many of the things I am looking for and I do have work to do. I also like my liberty.

  Sidney noticed that beside a taxidermy brochure and a price list lying on the table was a copy of the graphically illustrated Sultry magazine. No dead birds in that, he thought ruefully.

  ‘How well did you know Daniel Morden?’ he asked.

  ‘He took the photographs for my brochure. Made it look very professional, I’ll say that for him.’

  ‘Is he a friend?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call him that – but we share similar interests.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘I can’t see that it’s any of your business.’

  ‘Would it, for example, include the photography of young girls?’

  ‘There’s nothing wrong with a beautiful woman.’

  ‘I am not saying that there is; although I didn’t use the word “woman”. I used the word “girl”.’

  ‘I can’t imagine you knowing much about either, Canon Chambers.’

  ‘That is true,’ Sidney acknowledged, in an irritated way, before keeping the conversation going. ‘But I was wondering if it was also, perhaps, something to do with the idea of time passing. I see how these animals are fixed in one moment. Perhaps photography performs a similar function. You see something at its best and you want to preserve it.’

  Benson gave a half-smile. ‘You are on the right lines there.’

  ‘You arrest decay. You believe in beauty. Do you have children, Mr Benson?’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  ‘I’ve spent many hours with parents who find it difficult to accept their offspring are no longer young. They don’t like the fact that they’ve become adults and are now beyond their control. Perhaps they want them to remain children for ever.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know about that.’

  ‘Do you know Abigail Redmond?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘Who’s that?’

  ‘You may not know her by that name. She has a boyfriend with a Triumph Roadster. She was with him the first time we met; after I thought you had shot the owl.’