Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night

by James Runcie

  ‘You mean the father stole his son’s girl?’

  ‘I’m not sure it got as far as that. But the son said he had had enough of his dad’s flirting. Couldn’t stand him trying to impress her. He told her all about his time in Hollywood and I think the girl thought he could make her a film star. You hear it all the time: women taken in by predatory older men.’

  ‘It could have been the girl’s fault; leading him on?’

  ‘You can’t be too friendly with teenagers, Sidney. Daniel Morden still seems a bit creepy to me. I can also see you don’t like Benson. I don’t care for him very much either, but I can’t understand why he would burn down the summerhouse.’

  ‘No . . .’

  ‘I understand that you don’t dislike Morden, but the fact that you think he is a lovable rogue with a good heart doesn’t make him innocent any more than Benson is guilty.’

  ‘I am not saying Morden is perfect.’

  ‘We need to find out more about him.’

  ‘I thought you were more suspicious of Gary Bell? After all, he has publicly stated that he didn’t like Morden. He thinks everyone is eyeing up his sweetheart, and he could have set fire to the place in order to scare him off and claim on the insurance at the same time. He is the more straightforward suspect.’

  ‘But he wouldn’t have been so careless as to leave a petrol can lying about. Furthermore, the fire investigator is convinced that this is not a petrol-based fire. Something else is going on here, Sidney, and I need you to help me find out.’

  ‘Are you sure you want me to remain involved?’

  ‘Of course I do; besides, it’ll help clear your name.’

  ‘Has it been so very sullied?’

  ‘It’s just tittle-tattle about mucky magazines and young girls, Sidney, but we need to put a stop to it. Buy me another pint and I’ll tell you how we’re going to do it. You’re going to have to make a few more of your famous pastoral visits.’

  The following evening, Sidney and Leonard went to the cinema. The film on offer was Alfred Hitchcock’s Rear Window. They had been expecting a tense thriller and were surprised by the slow beginning. The plot concentrated almost entirely on Jimmy Stewart’s reluctance to marry Grace Kelly. He was not ready, he vouchsafed, and feared that any commitment would limit his opportunities for adventure. His maid, Stella, told him that he had ‘a hormone deficiency’ since the bikini-clad bombshells exercising outside his window hadn’t raised his temperature by a single degree.

  Sidney sensed Leonard Graham’s bafflement at the thought of being excited by women, but he himself was thrilled when Grace Kelly finally arrived wearing an eleven-hundred-dollar outfit and a string of pearls.

  Unfortunately, the subject was still marriage. ‘You don’t think either one of us could change?’ Grace asked Jimmy with a devastatingly candid gaze. Sidney sighed.

  After half an hour there was still no sign of murder, and Sidney’s thoughts began to drift again to love, marriage and commitment. By the time he woke from his reverie a private detective had arrived on the scene and ridiculed Jimmy Stewart’s work as an ‘amateur sleuth’.

  Leonard leant across and whispered, ‘This is alarmingly familiar.’

  ‘At least we have not had to deal with a case of dismemberment.’

  ‘Not yet.’

  ‘Benson confines himself to animals.’

  ‘Only as far as we know,’ Leonard replied before being hushed by people in the row behind.

  Of course Benson may well have been nothing more than an eccentric loner, and it was wrong to suspect a man simply on the grounds of his demeanour, but there was still something troubling about him.

  The next day, Sidney decided to go and see if Daniel Morden was at home and if he would be prepared to answer a few more questions. He timed his visit for midday on Saturday 7 September, after, he assumed, the photographer had got up but before his first drink. They could even go to the nearest pub, since it was unlikely that Morden would refuse an offer of hospitality.

  The photographer was amused by his visitor. ‘It’s an unexpected bonus that you keep coming to see me, Canon Chambers, I must say. You should know that I was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Once a Catholic . . .’

  ‘Give me a child until the age of seven . . .’

  ‘And I will show you the man. Ignatius Loyola. I think I have learned to subdue my fears of eternal damnation and the fiery flames.’

  Sidney seized the chance to raise his subject. ‘I suppose you will have had enough of fire in this life.’

  ‘Yes, indeed. And that is why you have come, I suppose. It can’t be the joy of my company.’ Morden lit up a cigarillo.

  ‘I like hearing you talk about photography. The stopping of time, the creation of a moment, the preservation of memory . . .’

  ‘You have to be careful about that.’

  Sidney remembered the albums his parents had collated, filled with images of themselves and their three children: himself as a baby in his mother’s arms, the siblings on the back of a toboggan, his father shying away from a snowball, his mother trying on a gas mask, his place on the extreme right of the back row of Marlborough’s cricketing First XI, his sister with her friend Amanda on the way to a ball at the Lansdowne Club, and the army line-up that contained three of his dead friends.

  ‘You mean that we treat photography too objectively?’ he asked.

  ‘It is only the record of a moment,’ Morden replied. ‘And only one vision, deliberately framed to exclude, without any awareness of what has happened before or after . . .’

  ‘But that doesn’t make it unreliable.’

  ‘Memory is unreliable, Canon Chambers. That’s the problem. We remake each memory every time we recall it. It’s a constructive and adaptive process.’

  ‘I am aware of its fallibility.’

  ‘You must be aware of its duplicity. Photography is something different. It has a separate, distinct reality.’

  ‘So you have to separate the image from its representation?’ Sidney asked, feeling that he was getting lost.

  ‘That is what people are teaching in the universities these days.’

  ‘So a photograph of, for example, a young girl is not so much the record of a specific time in her life but a separate work of art?’

  ‘That’s the idea; although such concepts are rather too elevated for the work I do.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t imagine that someone like Abigail Redmond was aware of such a distinction. Did she know that you were going to publish semi-naked photographs of her?’

  ‘Not exactly, no.’

  ‘So you sold them on?’

  ‘Anyone who takes their clothes off for a photographer must know that she’s not the only person who’s going to see the final result. That would be naïve in the extreme: and one thing about Abigail Redmond is that she is not naive.’

  ‘So you did know her name?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘When we first met you said that you didn’t know her name. She poses as Candy Sweet. But in fact, you knew her name all along.’

  ‘It’s hard to remember everything. Sometimes you’d rather forget. Memory, again . . .’

  ‘Did Abigail ask for any special treatment?’

  ‘She made a few advances, I think, but then they all do. They are so desperate to escape. They don’t want to be wives or secretaries. They want to go to London, but most of the time it’s just a pipe dream. There are so many girls, and very few come up to the mark.’

  ‘Was Abigail one of them?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘I told her that she needed to slim down and that her nose was a bit squat but she wouldn’t listen. She was convinced she was going to be a glamour model. From the way she dresses, I think she still believes that. How little she knows of life.’

  ‘So she was angry when you told her that you didn’t think she had what it takes?’

  ‘Yes. I’d say she was.’

  ‘Angry enough to burn down your studio?’

  �
��Probably.’

  ‘You don’t seem very concerned about this line of enquiry, Mr Morden. Are you sure you are telling me everything you know?’

  ‘You want my life story?’

  ‘No, just the facts as they pertain to this case. I am not sure you have been honest with me about your relationship with Abigail Redmond.’

  ‘There was no relationship. That’s the point. I hate that girl.’

  ‘Hate?’

  ‘Yes, hate. I bloody hate her.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Can I have a drink? I think I need one if I’m going to tell you all this.’ Morden stood up. He looked frailer than Sidney had ever seen him before; frailer, and almost frightened. ‘Could you take me to the pub? It should be open by now. I can’t tell you all this on an empty stomach.’

  Once Sidney had established all that he needed to know from Morden he recognised that he had to take the initiative. He would leave Leonard Graham to hold the fort back at the vicarage and get this whole arson business out of the way.

  He was bicycling towards the Redmond farm and had just passed a bus stop when he realised that the girl standing there was none other than Abigail Redmond. He turned round, propped his bike against the bus-stop pole and started to question her. Abigail was dressed in a tight white cotton blouse with the top two buttons undone, a striped pirouette skirt, short white socks and tennis shoes. She looked bored and was embarrassed to be seen in the presence of a priest. Sidney knew that he would have to make his enquiry simple and direct.

  ‘I was coming to ask you about the fire.’

  Abigail looked into the distance, perhaps imagining that if she could not see him then Sidney would not be there. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

  ‘I am not saying you started it.’

  ‘Gary didn’t do it either.’

  ‘I know that.’

  She turned to Sidney as briefly as she could and looked away as soon as she had finished her sentence. ‘Someone put the petrol can there to make people think he did it and that’s no lie.’

  ‘I’m sure that’s the case. I’ve also come to talk to you about the photographer, Daniel Morden.’

  ‘That pervert.’

  ‘I’m not sure he is a pervert.’

  ‘What would you know about it? You’re a priest. Though Gary says you’re as bad as the others. You’ve been watching me as well and all.’

  ‘I don’t think everyone’s looking at you, Abigail.’

  She took out a cigarette. ‘Could have fooled me.’

  ‘I’m asking because you went to have your photographs taken by Daniel Morden; and without anyone else knowing.’

  Abigail used the time needed to light her cigarette to think about her answer. ‘What’s that to you then?’

  ‘And you went more than once, didn’t you?’

  Abigail exhaled, the smoke only just missing Sidney’s face. ‘So?’

  ‘You wanted to be a model in London and you asked him to help.’

  ‘Nothing wrong with that.’

  ‘Did he tell you what he was going to do with the photographs?’

  ‘He was going to show them to a few people. See if they were interested. That’s what he said. But nothing happened so I went round again to ask what was going on.’

  ‘And what happened then?’

  ‘None of your business.’

  ‘No. It isn’t. But it might be.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’

  ‘You offered him something more. If he could try a bit harder.’

  ‘I don’t know what you think that could be.’

  ‘We both know what it is, Abigail. But Daniel Morden resisted, didn’t he? And you decided you had to do something about that.’

  ‘I didn’t burn down his studio, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

  ‘I’m not thinking that at all, Miss Redmond. I am thinking of something very different indeed.’

  When he returned to the vicarage Sidney was distracted by the arrival of a letter from Germany. Hildegard had written at last and the omens were good.

  Berlin

  14 September 1957

  My dearest friend

  I hope you will come after Christmas. Perhaps this will become a routine? I hope so. I always like to see you. I am most myself. I wish we had more time. I have been thinking that it is my turn to come to you and that I will soon be ready to make a return visit to Grantchester. We should not let the past ruin the present. That is a lesson from the war. It has been long enough now and as long as you are there then I can be strong. Everything is easier when you are with me . . .

  Sidney wished he was with her too but instead, after allowing himself a few minutes of romantic reverie, he decided that he really had to see Morden once more.

  ‘I thought we’d got everything out of the way the last time you came,’ the photographer began. He was dressed in pyjamas under an old Paisley-patterned dressing gown that might have belonged to his father. ‘I haven’t been in bed all day, if that’s what you’re thinking. I got up early to take some photographs. I’m planning on doing my own project about the sunrise.’

  ‘I see.’

  ‘It would be a portrait of Britain; not so much about who’s up and who’s going to bed, but what the streets are like in the silence in between; when there’s no one around. I love that time of day. Everything is held up, in stasis, and yet you know that stillness can be broken at any moment. It’s so fragile and transient and the air’s filled with that grey-blue light that can’t decide whether it’s day or night.’

  Sidney remembered just such a time during the war. The tanks had stopped in steep fields under the Caumont ridge, just east of the town. The night had been warm and quiet but at first light the shelling and mortaring began. His battalion were due to attack Lutain Wood and Sidney was convinced, despite the beauty of the dawn in a French field so far from home, that he would die that day. It was the first time the fear of death had been so specific, and even though there was nothing unusual about the sniper fire as they advanced through the woodland, he saw a man he had always admired, Captain Campbell, killed in front of him as he got out of his tank to rescue a wounded hull gunner. Sidney ran out to help but the tank was hit again through its heaviest frontal armour, the ammunition exploding and the turret leaping clean off. For a moment he had stood there, frozen in uncertainty, with the detritus of death all around him, anticipating that he was next to be killed. Yet he had survived, and ever since that terrifying stillness in the early morning light, he had determined to live each day as if it was his last; and to recognise the gift of life above the eventual certainty of death. This was the seeding of his decision to become a priest.

  ‘It’s like seeing the world when no one is looking,’ Morden continued. ‘Nothing is certain and no one is there. The ghosts have left and new people are yet to appear. I’m using the little Minox camera I told you about. I can take photographs without anyone knowing I’m doing it; as if I’ve dropped down from outer space. That’s the effect I’m after: to see the world as if it’s only just been discovered for the first time.’

  Sidney thought for a moment before replying. ‘I suppose that you and I are both trying to do the same kind of thing; you’re asking people to stop and look, while I’m asking them to pause and be silent.’

  Having expressed his new manifesto, Daniel Morden was not keen to elaborate any further. Sidney recognised that his timing had not been ideal. ‘I am sorry if I am calling at an inconvenient moment.’

  ‘I was planning on a nap. I’ve done my work for the day. Now I can’t find my cigarillos. I suppose you’ve come to ask me a few more questions?’

  ‘I’m very sorry, Daniel, but I have reached the conclusion that you started the fire in your studio deliberately.’

  The photographer was unsurprised and kept looking for his cigarillos. ‘Yes, I imagined you would be thinking along those lines. It’s the only plausible explanation for your visits. I’m not self-confident eno
ugh to believe that you came to hear my memoirs or enjoy my conversational virtuosity.’

  ‘Although that has been entertaining.’

  ‘I do prefer pictures,’ Morden replied. ‘Words can only do so much, Satis verborum being my motto. I think I told you the first time you came.’

  ‘You did. “Enough of words.” ’

  ‘Although you seem to go in for rather a lot of them.’

  ‘That is a fault of mine, I am afraid. A priest should always begin with silence.’

  ‘Then you’re not doing too well, my friend.’

  ‘Although, in this instance, I am not really a priest. I am hoping that you will admit to starting this fire so that the case can be closed and we can get on with our lives.’

  ‘Well I’m afraid you’re in for a disappointment. Even if you were to make a case, despite my being in London at the time, I can always put it down to carelessness; or the demon drink. There is absolutely nothing to suggest it was started deliberately.’

  ‘But why did you do it?’ Sidney asked. ‘It was because of Abigail, wasn’t it?’

  Morden tried to appear disinterested. ‘Intriguing.’

  ‘I think Abigail Redmond made some kind of threat. It might have been to tell her boyfriend about an incident that had passed between you, or she might have been tempted to make something up. Her father had already gone to see Benson, and Gary Bell was, I think, no friend of yours. So she knew that she could be in a strong position if . . .’

  ‘Blackmail,’ Morden interrupted. ‘She was blackmailing me. She said that unless I got her a modelling job in London she would tell her boyfriend and her father that I had given her too much to drink and molested her – or worse.’

  ‘And none of this happened?’

  ‘Of course not. I thought I had had enough experience of young girls to know what to do in these types of situation, but even I knew that it would be hard to defend myself against that kind of accusation. She wasn’t asking for a great deal of money. It was just that I didn’t have it.’

  ‘And you couldn’t get her a modelling job?’