by James Runcie
They arrived at the pub together and in the rain. Even though it was almost June, Geordie was fed up he still had to wear a battered raincoat and worried that he was beginning to appear middle-aged. After they had got in the first of their regulation two pints and sat down by the window he complained that his grey hairs were edging remorselessly upwards, his belt had loosened not one but two notches in the last few years, and that his need for reading glasses made him look like a civil servant. ‘And not a very well-dressed one, either.’ He sighed.
‘That’s true,’ Sidney said absent-mindedly as he laid out the backgammon board.
‘Are you agreeing I’m scruffy, Sidney?’
‘Your clothes are well-lived in.’
‘That’s because the only people who get new clothes on my salary are the children. Not that I see that much of them.’
‘The demands of the job.’
‘It never stops, you know.’
Sidney told his friend about the two doves that they had discovered on his doorstep and was alarmed when Keating began to take a particular interest. He assumed that he would have been accused of being overly suspicious but in fact the reverse was the case. The Inspector was all ears.
‘This worries me, Sidney. I think you need to be very careful here.’
‘I am always careful.’
‘No, this is serious. I don’t quite know . . .’
‘You hesitate, Geordie.’
‘I am afraid I do. I have been wondering whether to tell you this or not.’
‘I thought we had no secrets from each other?’
‘That is the idea, and I know the news will get out anyway so you had better hear it from me first. The fact is that there has been a murder: a dead body has been discovered in the Round Church.’
‘That’s terrible.’
‘It is.’
‘And are you sure that there were no natural causes?’
‘No, Sidney, I am afraid not. The victim had been suffocated. We don’t know how long it took or how conscious he was when it happened but he also seems to have been tortured; a pattern was scored on his chest with a knife.’
‘What kind of pattern?’
‘Like an animal’s claw. It’s definitely some kind of insignia. The pathologist says he has never seen anything like it.’
‘The mark of the beast?’
‘Perhaps. I’m not sure what that looks like.’
‘This is so upsetting. And I wonder, do you believe this may have any connection with the doves I have just been telling you about?’
‘Yes, well, I’m afraid that’s the thing . . .’
‘You are being unusually evasive, Geordie.’
‘The victim of the crime was a vicar.’
‘No.’
‘He’s called Philip Agnew. I am sure you must know him.’
‘Good heavens,’ Sidney replied. ‘I saw him only last Friday at the service in Coventry.’
‘What was he like?’
‘Sidney paused, still moved and saddened by the news of Agnew’s death. ‘He was a very good man. A holy man; almost too good for the world.’
The victim had been a bachelor in late middle age, a man who welcomed the homeless into his church, and who gave most of his money to the poor. He had believed that the Church should be a ‘work of art’ and an ‘offering of love’ rather than an institution or a ‘cause’. His was a frugal life, and he denied himself both meat and alcohol in an attempt to stay alert, believing that the wiles of Satan must be fought with a clear head and a light stomach. Sidney had once heard him preach a sermon based on five words in the gospel before Christ’s arrest in the garden of Gethsemane: ‘And then there was night.’ Philip Agnew had argued that the sentence was not a simple description of the time of day and the rise of darkness at the moment of the arrest but an announcement of impending and absolute evil.
Sidney took a sip of his beer. It was less consoling than it had been when he had started it. ‘This is terrible. Do you have any suspects?’
‘There had been reports of a vagrant in the area. It’s possible the vicar had looked after him for a while. We are carrying out investigations on his whereabouts, of course . . .’
‘And in the meantime you suspect there may be a killer on the loose?’
‘There’s definitely a murderer in this area, and he may or may not have it in for vicars. I’ll need your help.’
‘I wouldn’t want Hildegard to be troubled by this.’
‘She already knows about the doves . . .’
‘Yes, but hearing about Mr Agnew will alarm her.’
‘I think it’s the talk of Cambridge already. It will alarm everyone, Sidney. That’s why we have to find this vagrant.’
‘It seems improbable, though, that he would . . .’
‘Who else can it be?’
‘I mean it is unlikely that a vagrant would go as far as carving something on a man’s breast, don’t you think? Stabbing is one thing, for money or in a kind of wild revenge against his life. But the carving of a symbol . . . This seems different. The mark of the beast . . .’
‘Steady, Sidney . . .’
‘The Book of Revelation; the coming of the end of the world. It could be the work of a man with delusions . . .’
‘Which doesn’t rule out a tramp.’
‘No, but the motivation may be more complicated than it first appears.’
‘It’s always more complicated than it first appears. That is the nature of crime, Sidney. It’s not in the perpetrator’s interest to make it easy for us.’
‘And there is no obvious motive? No money missing or anything untoward?’
‘Nothing that stands out. Perhaps it’s simple wickedness.’ The Inspector rose to order a second pint. ‘It makes you think, though; why a loving God allows the killing of one of his own? It’s evil. Why doesn’t he intervene to stop it? I thought that was what prayer was all about.’
‘You have to remember, Geordie, that we cannot always judge God’s acts by human morality.’
‘But what other standards do we have?’
‘In terms of faith there are truths other than the factual. Mysticism. Metaphor. Imagination. Unknowing. Some people believe that evil is not a problem to be solved but a mystery to be encountered and lived through.’
‘Well I’m certainly mystified by this; let alone the appearance of those bloody doves. I presume you’ll work on the case with me?’
‘I don’t appear to have any choice,’ Sidney answered ruefully.
He tried not to let the conversation with the Inspector haunt him but he was still unsettled when he took his Labrador out for his morning constitutional the following day. News of the murder had begun to spread and Sidney thought that he could detect people looking oddly at him, as if they believed that vicars might even be harbingers of murder. He tried to concentrate on his day-to-day duties – the next PCC meeting and the sick members of the parish who needed him to visit – but his mind kept returning to the death of Philip Agnew, one of the kindest of men, who should have ended his life in the serenity of aged holiness rather than being suddenly attacked, suffocated, cruelly mutilated and stabbed to death. Who could have wanted to do such a thing and what could his profession as a priest have done to provoke it?
Dickens was nosing his way gingerly, and with endearingly doggy circumspection, round a sheep which was lying down, very still, at the far end of the field. Sidney could only hope it was not dead, a ‘lamb that was slain’ perhaps, and decided that, for once in his life, he would not investigate but leave things be.
He reconsidered the doves that had been left on his doorstep and was thinking that he should perhaps visit the local taxidermist, Jerome Benson, and seek his opinion, when he saw the man himself walking towards him with a bag slung over his shoulders. He was a little smaller and thinner than Sidney had remembered, with a more roseate face.
‘Do I know you?’ the man replied to the priest’s greeting.
‘I certainly hop
e so. You will recall we had those conversations a few years ago about Daniel Morden and the fire in the summerhouse?’
‘I think you must mean my brother.’
‘I’m so sorry.’ Sidney realised that he had made an elementary error. ‘You are not Jerome Benson, the taxidermist?’
‘No . . .’ The man did not appear to want to volunteer any more information and appeared irritated that he had been stopped. He looked to left and right, working out the quickest way to skirt round Sidney and continue his journey.
‘You are not from these parts?’
‘No.’
‘Visiting? Or perhaps working?’
‘I’m a musician.’
‘My wife is a musician.’
‘Not the same kind, I imagine.’
This was not going well. Sidney was aware that he should wrap up the conversation and move on but could not resist adding, ‘She’s a pianist.’ He paused. ‘She teaches the piano,’ as if Benson’s brother needed an explanation of what she actually did. He was sounding foolish, he knew, and the awkwardness was not improved by the return of Dickens with a ball in his mouth.
‘I do jazz.’
Sidney’s eyes sparkled. If there was one thing he liked talking about it was jazz and the opportunity to do so was all too infrequent. He threw the ball for Dickens to chase and asked, ‘What kind?’
‘I play the horn. When I can.’
‘I’m a great fan of Lester Young,’ Sidney began.
‘I wish I could play like him.’
‘Are you performing round here?’
‘Not at the moment. I’ve come to see an old friend. Staying with my brother. He helps me out when I’m running out of money.’
Sidney checked. ‘Your brother being Mr Jerome Benson?’
‘That’s right.’
‘I imagine it’s hard to make a living from jazz.’
‘You’re right there.’
Sidney was determined to keep cheerful and remain friendly. ‘Where are you going next?’
‘Birmingham. A friend is in a quartet. They’re probably going to ditch the sax player; although they might not when they see me.’
‘I wouldn’t be so hard on yourself.’
‘It’s a tough life. But then no one said it would be sweet.’
Sidney wondered if the man was going to ask him for money. He didn’t carry any with him when he was walking the dog. ‘Jazz has always been the music of hard times, I suppose.’
‘ “Brother, can you spare a dime. Money gettin’ cheaper.” ’
‘“Sixteen Tons” . . .’
‘My brother’s probably waiting. I should go.’
‘Then I must not detain you, Mr Benson.’
‘Jimmy,’ the man replied. ‘The name’s Jimmy.’
When Sidney returned to the vicarage he found that Hildegard had been wondering where he was. She had been into town and had just met Helena Randall, an ambitious young journalist on The Cambridge Evening News, in the market square. The reporter had asked Hildegard whether her husband was investigating the murder of a local vicar and if he had any leads. Could she perhaps come to the vicarage that afternoon and talk about it?
‘Why haven’t you told me anything about this, Sidney?’
‘I didn’t want to alarm you.’
‘I don’t see how you were going to keep it a secret.’
‘I wasn’t expecting you to go into Cambridge.’
‘Is this connected with the doves? Should I be worried?’
‘I knew you would be. That’s why I wanted to keep it quiet.’
‘But if you don’t tell me anything, or if I only hear a little, then I will always think there is more to know.’
‘It’s difficult . . .’
‘Tell me everything,’ she asked.
Although he dreaded doing so, Sidney knew that he still ought to visit Jerome Benson, if only to ask about the dead doves and to discount the possibility that his brother was the vagrant seen near Philip Agnew’s vicarage.
It had been a few years since he had last been inside the ramshackle dwelling on the edge of Grantchester that served as both home and workshop. Dickens, however, remembered it well enough and was scared to enter. 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 more haunting, 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.
Benson stood throughout their encounter, restlessly tidying the glue pots, small chisels and pliers which littered his work bench, and was defensive when Sidney began talking about the doves on the doorstep and the sight earlier in the week of what he had imagined to be a dead lamb in the meadows.
‘I am not sure what you are implying, Canon Chambers, but surely I cannot be responsible for every creature that has died? There may be a special providence in the fall of a sparrow, but that is your department rather than mine.’
‘Of course.’
‘As I have told you before, I only use animals that have died naturally. I don’t go round killing them.’
‘I admit that I am unclear about the legal implications of taxidermy.’
‘I recall that you once accused me of shooting an owl.’
‘I did not accuse you . . .’
‘Any illegality involving my art would put me out of business. Please could you get to the point? In the past our conversation has not been as congenial as it could have been and, at the moment, the chance of improvement seems unlikely.’
‘I’m afraid that this encounter may be no better. A vicar in my diocese, Philip Agnew, has been found murdered.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that, but death comes to us all eventually.’
‘Indeed; but the combination of all these events seems strange.’
‘Does it, Canon Chambers? To people who deal with mortality as we do, surely this is little more than nature running its course?’
Sidney changed tack. ‘I wondered. Is your brother still staying with you?’
‘Why do you ask? Have you met him?’
‘I thought he was you.’
‘We are often mistaken for each other. Although Jimmy is a wilder spirit than I am. The police have called him in more than once.’
‘I imagine he has had his troubles.’ Sidney knew that the underlying tenor of their exchange was almost certainly about drugs but neither man was prepared to say so.
‘You probably don’t need me to tell you about them. People suspect Jimmy of all manner of crimes just because he is an outsider.’
‘I do not suspect him of anything, Mr Benson. I gather he is a jazz musician.’
‘That does not give him immunity from prosecution.’
‘It gives him a good start as far as I am concerned.’
‘Not everyone is as open-minded in their assumptions as you, Canon Chambers. He has sometimes been in the wrong place at the wrong time.’
‘Do you know if he ever visited the Reverend Philip Agnew? The priest was a good friend to many troubled souls.’
‘I very much doubt Jimmy was among them. We were brought up as atheists. That may of course be why you appear to us as someone whom we mistrust, and from whom we also expect forgiveness.’
‘That is my primary task. But I must hate the sin even if I love the sinner.’
‘My brother may have sinned, in your terms, but I can tell you that he is not a murderer.’
‘But he will fall under suspicion. He was seen in the area, he is a man of no fixed abode, and he has had his run-ins with the police in the past.’
‘Then that is why he needs support.’
‘Provided that aid is within the confines of the law.’
‘Or, I would argue, natural justice.’ Bens
on walked towards the door and held it open.
Dickens began to bark at one of the displays. It was a panorama involving a selection of seabirds: a puffin, razorbill, guillemot and red-throated diver. The dog was clearly as unsettled by his immediate environment as Sidney had been by the conversation. There was little more he could get out of the situation and his interlocutor had made it clear that it was time for him to leave. There would be no more information from him that night.
Sidney resumed his parish duties but let the crime worry away at his subconscious. He hoped he might have something helpful to say the next time he saw Inspector Keating and was looking forward to some time on their own. He was therefore more than irritated the following Thursday when he arrived at the Eagle to find that Inspector Keating was already in situ with an empty pint glass in front of him and Helena Randall at his side. ‘I was just leaving,’ she smiled.
Sidney was determined not to succumb to her wiles. ‘I wasn’t expecting to see you here.’
‘I am not intruding, I hope. We’ve had our little chat, haven’t we, Inspector?’
‘And very pleasant it has been, Miss Randall.’
Helena reached forward and brushed the shoulder of her companion’s jacket. ‘You’ve got a bit of fluff. Is it a dog hair? Someone needs looking after.’
‘I know . . .’ Keating acknowledged.
‘I’m going to have to keep an eye on you,’ said Helena, as she blew the Inspector a kiss and wished both men a pleasant evening.
Sidney raised a metaphorical eyebrow.
‘Whatever you’re thinking, don’t. She’s a good girl.’
‘She works for the newspapers, Geordie. Any secrets can hardly be safe with her.’
‘We have to help each other, Sidney. These are difficult times.’
Sidney was unsure of Helena Randall. She was a woman whose fragility and long, fair pre-Raphaelite hair disguised a steely ambition. She was unnaturally pale, extremely thin (what did she ever eat? he wondered) and her face was held in a state of almost permanent curiosity, with brows raised over unsuitable yellow eye shadow. She had long fingers that either played with her hair or held a poised biro that moved between her thin mouth and a reporter’s notebook. Although she wore a duffel coat it was never seen to be toggled, and the skimpy blouse, thin cardigan and pleated trousers that she wore underneath were hardly sufficient to keep out the cold. As a result, she was frequently prone to sniffles, and even bronchitis, which Sidney had thought that previous winter, uncharacteristically uncharitably, could be construed as a deliberate appeal for sympathy.
