by James Runcie
Had Grantchester’s captain poisoned the ball?
‘Did you like Zafar Ali?’ he asked, the next time he saw him.
‘He was the best player in our team.’
‘I didn’t ask about his cricketing ability. I asked if you liked him.’
‘We got on well enough.’
‘Are you aware that he was fond of your niece?’
‘I think it was more of a case that she was fond of him. It was a form of rebellion.’
‘So your family knew about it?’
‘We all knew about it. We didn’t think it was serious until we saw how upset she was when he died. She’s still hardly speaking, you know.’
‘I think it was serious enough for them to be secretly engaged.’
‘I think you must be mistaken, Canon Chambers. If there had been any possibility of that kind of nonsense her parents would have put a stop to it.’
‘She is nineteen years old and I am sure she could find her way to Gretna Green. She does not necessarily need their permission.’
‘She does if she wants their financial support.’
‘I think she was going to help manage the restaurant.’
‘I can’t imagine that. It’s full of Indians. It’s not her culture. His parents would never accept it, let alone Annie’s.’
‘I think they were preparing to welcome her into the family.’
‘The Muslims? I don’t think so.’
‘I admit it might seem unusual.’
‘Unusual, Canon Chambers? It’s not right. If there’s anything being a vet teaches you, it’s about keeping the bloodstock pure. You can no more mix a Christian with a Muslim than you can a Lipizzan Maestoso with a Shetland pony.’
Sidney was fairly sure that Lipizzan horses were originally crossbreeds but didn’t pick him up on his observation. ‘And you are a Christian family, of course.’
‘My sister-in-law does your flower rota week in, week out. You can hardly get more Christian than that.’
‘It’s certainly evidence of fidelity to a cause.’
‘I do have further appointments, Canon Chambers.’
‘I understand. And I must let you get on, Mr Redmond. However, I did want to ask you what happened to the cricket ball after the game. I don’t seem to have been given it.’
‘I don’t know. You were the umpire. It’s your job to pocket it.’
‘Indeed, but I think we all got caught up in the excitement. Did you pick it up, Mr Redmond? The last batsman was LBW.’
‘I think he kicked the ball away. I don’t know what happened to it after that. Why are you asking about that now?’
Although Sidney was convinced that he had never been given the cricket ball he had to accept that there was a slight possibility that he could have forgotten all about it. He was prone to absent-mindedness. There were times when he blamed Mrs Maguire for tidying the vicarage in a manner that defied logic, but even she could not be blamed for the disappearance of so many of his possessions. Although he was proud of being able to think hard when it mattered, his ability to focus on one specific problem frequently meant that everything else was pushed to the periphery of his consciousness. Everyday concerns and responsibilities were then sacrificed on the altar of concentration.
As a result, umbrellas were left on trains, scarves were abandoned on hot days, his favourite pen had been left God knows where because it had begun to leak, and his watch, the strap of which was too tight, had been removed in a library, a school or a bookshop (he couldn’t remember which). The only way he could retain his more valuable possessions was to keep them at home and in close proximity to his desk, but even there, as papers, books, notes and unfinished thoughts mounted alongside plates of biscuits, cups of tea, and even an abandoned whisky glass or two, Sidney was forced to acknowledge that he did, indeed, have a tendency to lose things. It was the price he had to pay for conjecture. How was he expected to remember the minutiae of daily existence when he had so much else to think about?
He prayed to St Anthony of Padua, the patron saint of lost possessions, for solace and guidance but most of the time he simply had to wait for things to turn up; in a less-favoured jacket or a little-used drawer, for example. It was therefore not a complete surprise when, a few days later, he noticed the very cricket ball he had been worrying about lying in Dickens’s basket.
‘How did that get there?’
Leonard Graham was sitting at the kitchen table, reading the appointments section in the Church Times. ‘What do you mean?’
‘The ball.’
‘It’s always been there,’ Leonard replied off-handedly, taking a sip of his tea before turning the page to study a report on Anglican-Orthodox relations.
‘Are you sure?’ Sidney pressed.
‘He was playing with it after the game.’
‘ “Playing with it”?’ Sidney could not understand how they had failed to notice that a key piece of evidence had been left lying around. He acknowledged that he must have been thinking about other things, but he could not quite believe that those ‘other things’ included a meditation on this very ball. How could he have been so stupid?
‘I threw it once and he ran off and collected it. Then he wanted me to do it again and again. I kept it up for a bit but it became so very tiresome. Dickens lives in an eternal present. You wonder how he keeps his enthusiasm. It’s certainly more than I can manage.’
‘When was this?’
‘The day of the match.’
‘And how did you get it?’
‘What?’
‘The BALL.’
Leonard folded up the Church Times, acknowledging that there was little chance that he was going to be left in peace until the enquiry was over. ‘I don’t know, Sidney. I can’t really remember. I think Dickens had it in his mouth.’
‘How?’
‘Andrew Redmond gave it to him to stop him polishing off the sandwiches. His sister made them.’
‘Andrew Redmond!’
‘It’s been in his basket ever since. Haven’t you noticed?’
‘It must have been under his blanket. Perhaps Mrs Maguire . . .’
‘Don’t be absurd, Sidney. She doesn’t go anywhere near that basket.’
‘But how could anyone not have told me? This could be a vital clue!’
‘How was I to know?’
‘A curate obsessed by murder in the prose of Dostoevsky could surely jump to the conclusion that this could be used as a murder weapon.’
Leonard sighed. ‘A cricket ball covered in Dickens’s slobber? Honestly, Sidney, that’s hardly likely, is it?’
‘He doesn’t slobber.’
‘This is ridiculous. I suppose one day you’ll start accusing Dickens of murder.’
‘Of course I won’t. But this is not ridiculous. Don’t you see? Nothing can be discounted. The evidence is all around us.’
Leonard picked up his Church Times and his mug of tea and prepared to leave the room. ‘Am I to assume,’ he asked, ‘that every single piece of information that comes into this vicarage, every statement that is made, whether uttered seriously or lightly, and now every little thing that Dickens happens to pick up, is to be treated as evidence in whatever mystery happens to be preoccupying your very existence? Please don’t tell me that the answer is yes?’
Sidney took the cricket ball to Derek Jarvis for analysis and was depressed to discover that although there was, indeed, a faint trace of thallium on the seam, it was not enough to kill a man and his theory that it had been impregnated was likely to be far too fanciful.
‘It’s an ingenious idea, I will admit,’ Jarvis acknowledged. ‘But you would need to keep reapplying the poison. So unless the perpetrator carried thallium in his cricket whites . . .’
‘I was thinking he could have tampered with his own trousers and then, by rubbing the ball in an ostensible attempt to shine it, he would, in fact, have been secretly applying the poison.’
‘You’ve got the wrong end of the stick h
ere, I’m afraid, Sidney, and you’re going to have to let it go. A man would have to put so much thallium on his trousers they would disintegrate. I agree you could soak the ball overnight in thallium, and even reapply it before your team goes out to bowl, but I can’t see how you could sustain the amount of poison you need to kill a man. It must be something else, equally slow, perhaps, and given over a longer period of time. Do you think it could be a member of Ali’s own family?’
‘They seem so close.’
‘Who nursed him in his final days?’
‘His girlfriend, Annie.’
‘Then you need to find out exactly what she gave him.’
‘I think she just made him cups of tea and sat by his side.’
‘Then you need to get me that tea. I need samples of everything that he took.’
‘Do you think Annie could have poisoned him unwittingly?’
‘Or deliberately.’
‘Surely not? I can’t believe that at all.’
‘Everything is possible. Find out what actually poisoned Mr Ali, then let’s worry about how it got into his body. After that we can start to work out who might have been responsible. It’s not going to be easy, I can tell you.’
‘I can’t think Annie has anything to do with it.’
‘You have to believe every possibility, Sidney.’
‘Well, I won’t believe that.’
‘Then you need to prove otherwise.’
‘I will, Derek. If it’s the last thing I do.’
‘Don’t say that, Sidney. Don’t even joke about it.’
‘I am not joking. I have never been more serious in my life.’
It was so depressing to think that Annie might have been poisoning her beloved unwittingly. If this was the case, then it made Sidney despair at the capacity for human sickness; that a brother and sister could collude not only in the murder of a young man, but also disguise their responsibility by implicating their niece and daughter.
It would have been such an extreme thing to do; to interfere so ruthlessly in the future of a child in their care, justifying their intervention by claiming that they were acting in her own best interests. If challenged, Sidney could already anticipate how they might explain their behaviour. They would probably defend themselves by saying that they were responsible family members who had been forced to take extreme measures to protect Annie’s long-term reputation and her future social and economic wellbeing. They had even been forced into it, under provocation and as a last resort, in response to her wilful adolescent rebellion.
This was a vile lie.
Sidney could imagine their protestations already, when all the time Andrew Redmond and Rosie Thomas had been behaving with extreme prejudice, self-interest, ignorance and hatred.
The selfishness was almost beyond comprehension, and Sidney’s mood alternated between despair and fury. He could find no redeeming feature in the case, and his fears were confirmed on another visit to the Curry Garden. In the final week of his life Zafar Ali had drunk nothing except tea.
‘Annie brought it herself,’ Wasim confirmed.
Sidney was only delaying the inevitable revelation. ‘I wondered if I could have a look at the packet she brought?’
‘It is almost finished.’
‘Have any other members of the family been ill?’
‘No, but we normally have Darjeeling. I think we’ve already told you this. Zafar preferred Earl Grey.’
‘Did he have his own pot?’
Husband and wife looked at each other as if they were worried about giving something away. ‘Yes,’ Shaksi replied. ‘It was a little confusing at times, but that is what we did. Zafar was very particular about his tea.’
‘I will need to have a look at it. Do you think I could take it to the coroner?’
‘You don’t think it was the tea, do you?’
‘I’m not sure.’ Sidney already knew that his attempt to buy time was futile. The truth would soon be out.
‘Mrs Thomas ordered it especially for us. It was a special blend.’
‘And when did she start to provide this for you?’
‘A few weeks before the cricket match. We thought it was kind of her to take such trouble. She didn’t even charge us any money. It was a present; the least she could do, she said.’
Keating told Sidney that there had been plenty of similar cases that year. A man in South London had put rat poison in his wife’s chocolate; a woman in Durham, Mrs Mary Elizabeth Wilson, had been accused of despatching two husbands with elemental phosphorus; and only that week, twelve ounces of potassium cyanide had gone missing from the chemistry labs at Sidney’s old school, Marlborough College.
The following day Rosie Thomas was arrested for the murder of Zafar Ali. She had added antimony both to the lemonade, and then to the tea.
A modest amount, drunk by the family, would cause them some upset but to a man who was already vulnerable from the lemonade, such a topping-up of the poison that was already in his body would eventually prove fatal.
‘So the cricket ball wasn’t to blame,’ Keating told Sidney. ‘Although it wasn’t for want of trying. We’ve brought in Andrew Redmond for questioning. Attempted murder.’
‘Will the charges stick?’
‘Probably more than the poison did to the ball. As Jarvis suspected, the slow release can be activated by contact and saliva but it wasn’t enough to kill a man. Instead the Redmond family decided to build up the amount gradually.’
‘And both brother and sister were in on it?’
‘I think most of the family knew something about it.’
‘Except Annie.’
‘Yes. It was, in a way, an honour killing. You suspected them from the very beginning, though, didn’t you, Sidney?’
‘It’s perfectly natural for a captain to field at mid on, and even to receive the ball and have a little look at it between deliveries, but it’s unusual to give it a shine when the spinners are on. That would help a seam bowler but not a spinner. It seemed an unusual tactic.’
‘He was trying to rub more poison on to the ball?’
‘It seems so.’
‘But he hadn’t perfected the technique. Hence their need to go for the lemonade and then the tea. A triple dose, as it were.’
‘The fact that the ball disappeared after the game is also important. Normally a player always keeps the hat-trick ball, but in this case . . .’
‘He let your dog slobber all over it.’
‘He doesn’t slobber . . .’
‘It was one way of removing all trace of the poison.’ Keating looked up into the night sky as if, for a moment, the mysteries of the universe could be explained within it. ‘It is amazing when you think about it. Three different types of poison; an unholy Trinity, if you like . . .’
‘Or, indeed, a hat trick,’ Sidney replied.
Annie Thomas was devastated by the news. Sidney sat with her at a restaurant table in a darkened room on a summer afternoon of shimmering heat. She had only just begun to dress and leave Zafar’s room. She had not been outside since the day of the funeral. Instead she had helped in the restaurant, working in the kitchen, keeping away from the public and her family, far from anyone who might remind her that her future husband was not likely to return to the restaurant and live above it as if nothing had happened and he had merely been away.
‘My mother must have known that I was killing him. It’s too cruel.’
‘It’s the product of a sick mind.’
‘We should have run away.’
‘Did they warn or threaten you beforehand?’
‘All the time. My family is racist, Canon Chambers, I can’t pretend otherwise, but I didn’t think they would take the law into their own hands. We are supposed to be a responsible family. This is meant to be a decent place. How could they hate me so much?’
‘I don’t think they hated you.’
‘It would have been easier if I had killed myself. Then Zafar wouldn’t have died.’
/> ‘You mustn’t think like this.’
‘How else can I think, Canon Chambers? It’s all my fault.’
‘No. It’s not.’
‘Zafar died because of me. If he hadn’t met me he’d still be alive. That’s what I can’t stop thinking about. You knew right away that something was up, didn’t you? There’s something very wrong about this place, Canon Chambers, very wrong indeed. Why do people do such things?’ she asked.
‘So many reasons,’ Sidney replied. ‘Desperation, loneliness, revenge.’
‘Revenge?’
‘For one’s own lost chances; revenge against life, against fate.’
‘So what should we do?’
‘I think we should still try to make things better; to leave a better world than the one we found. You have already made a difference.’
‘I don’t think I have.’
‘People will remember what has happened. By loving Zafar you have shown that things can change. People will think harder about what love means.’
‘It’s too late, though, isn’t it?’
‘But not for the rest of us, and not for you. That love will live on, Annie.’
She stood up and looked at him directly. ‘Do you think so?’
‘It cannot be undone. It will be remembered.’
Sidney placed his hand on hers. She looked down and let it rest. There was nothing more to be said.
A few weeks later, after the trial, when both Rosie Thomas and Andrew Redmond had escaped the death penalty but been sentenced to life imprisonment, Sidney met Inspector Keating as he was coming back from the station. They had seen enough of each other recently, and would meet again for their regular Thursday-night drink at the Eagle, but the simple act of bumping into one another with nothing urgent to discuss cheered them both up.
‘Canon Chambers,’ Keating smiled. ‘Are you going back into town?’
‘Indeed I am.’
‘Perhaps, then, I can persuade you to accompany me, and delay your journey for a short while, at a local hostelry?’
‘There is a pub near my old college,’ Sidney replied. ‘I believe it is on the way. If I remember rightly, it is called the Eagle. Have you heard tell of such a place?’
