Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins

by James Runcie

  ‘And was Paine the intended target?’

  ‘We do not know, but on Prize Day he was likely to enter the complex first.’

  Sidney poured boiling water into the teapot. ‘Not the porter?’

  ‘The doors were unlocked first thing . . .’

  ‘And the explosion wasn’t until just before lunch . . .’

  ‘. . . which means that the perpetrator could have got into the building before the ceremony and left the gas on for three or four hours without anyone noticing. Then, when Paine arrived for Prize Day, the room was primed.’

  ‘And either he was the intended victim or the whole thing was just a prank to blow the place up and create a bit of an impression on Prize Day. Would you like a biscuit?’

  ‘I think I’ll wait for the tea.’

  ‘Would it have required any specialist knowledge?’

  The headmaster was depressed. ‘Not really. Our pupils study electrical circuits in their first year. And chemistry teachers are always blowing things up to get the pupils’ attention in class.’

  ‘But presumably the more dangerous substances are kept under lock and key? I would have thought the Bunsen burners would be too . . .’

  ‘They will be from now on.’

  ‘So,’ Sidney continued, ‘you think that this is more than mere carelessness?’ He could hear that Hildegard was about to come downstairs and he didn’t want to be caught in the act of sleuthing.

  ‘I am afraid so, although we have told the emergency services that someone must have left the gas on by mistake.’

  ‘And they are satisfied?’

  ‘At the moment they are pretending to be, but I hope it will remain a school matter rather than anything that might involve an external investigation.’

  ‘And your insurers will believe you?’

  ‘We may have to pay for the refurbishment out of our reserves.’

  Sidney was surprised. This conversation was going to take longer than he had hoped. ‘You won’t make a claim?’

  ‘I think we can manage. As I say, we’d rather not have too much of an inquiry.’

  ‘I see.’ Sidney poured the tea into four mugs. ‘And why are you telling me this?’

  ‘You do have something of a reputation, Canon Chambers.’

  ‘You are asking me to conduct some unofficial enquiries?’

  ‘I’d like to know whether Trevor Paine was the intended victim.’

  ‘You think the perpetrator was one of the boys or a group of boys? Milk?’

  ‘Thank you. Everyone thinks it was Pearson. He has a grudge against Paine and he’s already been in trouble this term for staging a mock knife fight in the town centre.’

  ‘A free spirit, as it were?’

  ‘Pearson is something of a rebel. But he was playing cricket at the time and he vehemently denies any wrongdoing. He even said that if he had been responsible he would have made a better job of it.’

  ‘And you believe him? Sugar?’

  ‘Two. He makes a valid point. One of his ancestors discovered nitroglycerin and his family ran the cordite factory at Gretna during the Great War. He’s also owned up to anything he’s done wrong in the past. In fact he’s rather proud of his misdemeanours.’

  ‘But you haven’t expelled him?’

  ‘He’s going to be captain of the cricket team next year and we can’t afford to lose him. Besides, he’s done nothing that warrants automatic expulsion. He knows just how far to push us. There are other complications . . .’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘His grandparents are on the board of the Pelouze Trust . . .’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘. . . which gave a generous donation to the science block. Pearson’s hardly likely to want to blow up a building his family helped fund.’

  Sidney changed tack. ‘Did the injured chemistry teacher have any other enemies?’

  The headmaster tested his tea. He looked as if he didn’t like the taste, but it was what he was about to say that concerned him more. ‘There have been insinuations; complaints even.’

  ‘What kind?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘Mr Paine has, in the past, been over-enthusiastic in disciplining boys . . .’

  ‘Corporal punishment?’

  ‘Indeed. “The cane of Paine”.’

  ‘And the accusation is, perhaps, that he enjoys punishing boys rather too much?’

  ‘It’s unfounded, I’m sure of it.’

  ‘But it could be that a boy who had been at the receiving end was responsible for the explosion, or it could even have been a parent, eager to exact a kind of revenge?’ Sidney began to recall a passage from St Paul’s letter to the Thessalonians about ‘fire taking vengeance on them that know not God’.

  ‘It could be,’ the headmaster answered doubtfully. ‘But I am hoping the whole thing is just a prank. That’s why I need your help, Canon Chambers. An inquiry conducted by a sympathetic outsider, a person who has guaranteed impartiality, who is not the police, but recognised by them if we run into difficulty.’

  ‘I’m not sure . . .’

  Hildegard called from upstairs. ‘I HOPE THE TEA IS READY.’

  Geraint Rogers could tell that it was time to conclude. ‘I have already talked to the dean. I have his blessing.’

  ‘You have been very thorough . . .’

  ‘I don’t want anything else to happen.’ He took one last sip of tea and asked what to do with the cup.

  ‘I’ll wash that up,’ said Sidney.

  ‘All this has come at completely the wrong time. I was hoping for promotion. The Millfield job will come up fairly soon. “Boss” Meyer can’t go on for ever. I thought I might have a rather good chance. His father was a clergyman, you know? But after this . . .’

  ‘I will do my best, Headmaster.’ Sidney could not offer much more, so flummoxed was he by his guest’s delusional ambition.

  Upstairs, Anna was teaching Sabine ‘Old Macdonald Had a Farm’.

  Geraint Rogers opened the front door. ‘I can assure you of every assistance. I don’t want this to get out of hand. We are both aware of how rumours can fly. Consequently I would rather we kept this between ourselves. I think I can deal with the police. We’ll put it down as an accident.’

  ‘Even though it wasn’t?’

  ‘I was going to let you decide. Then perhaps I, rather than anyone else, can take the appropriate action. Until that time, I hope I can rely on your discretion.’

  ‘Of course,’ Sidney replied, closing the door and wondering how on earth he was going to keep anything secret as soon as he started talking to the pupils.

  Inspector Keating had been away in London, watching England beat Mexico 2–0 in the World Cup, so when the two friends met for drinks Geordie was more concerned with football than explosives. It was bound to be pyromaniac boys, he thought, and complained, as he had done so often before, about private schools being a law in their own right.

  ‘It’s just like the university,’ he pronounced. ‘They think their rules take precedence over the laws of the land. You can imagine the kind of pupils it turns out. They assume that they don’t have to bother with the rest of us.’

  ‘Not all of them are like that.’

  ‘You are bound to be on their side, Sidney. You went to the same kind of place.’

  ‘Marlborough is, I think you’ll find, a superior establishment.’

  ‘Well, it’s the word “superior” that annoys me.’

  Keating took a hefty swig from his pint and wiped the foam from his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Just because the parents can afford to give them a head start the boys start believing they are entitled to anything.’

  Sidney finished his pint and pointed at Geordie’s, offering replenishment. His friend nodded in assent. ‘Now is not the time to discuss the British educational system.’

  ‘Or its defects. No wonder someone wanted to blow the whole place up.’

  When he returned with the drinks, Sidney asked if they could discuss the
choice of the chemistry lab as the venue for the Prize Day sabotage. Clearly this had the advantage of available materials and the possibility of disguising crime as an accident, but an act of violence might just as easily have been arson in the cricket pavilion or food poisoning in the kitchens. Could there be a particular reason for an attack on the chemistry labs and was Trevor Paine the intended target?

  Keating asked if the teacher had any obvious enemies.

  ‘He has, apparently, already made an accusation. I am going to see him in hospital.’

  ‘I’m not sure about you getting involved in all this, Sidney. That school has an unsavoury history with the clergy.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Keating had the appearance of a man who was reluctant to say what he had to say while simultaneously bursting to spill the beans. ‘I made a telephone call before coming to see you. I guessed this subject might come up.’

  ‘Please tell me what you know.’

  ‘This case,’ Keating began, ‘if it is one, may not be entirely unconnected with Trevor Paine’s friend, the Reverend Kevin Charles Warner, the former chaplain; or “Rev Kev” as he was called at Millingham . . .’

  ‘They informed me that he left the school rather quickly. They implied he had been ill. Was it something different? Did he depart under a cloud?’

  ‘You could say that.’

  ‘Then where is he now?’

  ‘Prison.’

  Sidney was appalled. ‘Why did nobody tell me?’

  ‘I’m sure you can hazard a guess. There had been a great number of complaints about your colleague . . .’

  ‘He’s not my colleague . . .’

  ‘Member of your profession, then.’

  ‘To do with?’

  ‘The usual. You don’t need a teaching qualification in private education. It’s jobs for the boys. Then they close ranks when it all goes to pot.’

  ‘But not in this case.’

  ‘Just about. There had been parental complaints about Rev Kev: interfering with young boys, bullying, and general buggering about. But it took a compromising situation in a public toilet to get him arrested. One of our men was an old boy. Relished the opportunity to see a former teacher get his comeuppance. Not as popular as he thought he was, Rev Kev.’

  ‘Well, I can’t imagine he’ll be any more so in prison. But what has this to do with Trevor Paine?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘They were comrades-in-arms – and a lot more besides.’

  ‘With each other?’

  ‘I think they preferred young boys. Apparently the two men thought they were ancient Greeks. Born at the wrong time into the wrong civilisation . . .’

  ‘I presume that defence was dismissed?’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  ‘Extraordinary how often the traditions of the classical world are misappropriated . . .’

  ‘You say that you are planning a visit?’

  ‘To Mr Paine, yes.’

  ‘I’ll be interested to hear how you get on. Normally these types of places try to keep things quiet. You can hardly hush up an explosion.’

  ‘Do you think that was the point of it, then?’

  ‘I don’t know, Sidney. But you’re the man to find out.’

  There was a little domestic frostiness on Sidney’s return from the pub. This was not, however, because he was later than he said he would be. (Hildegard was used to that.) Nor was it due to any anxiety that he was going to investigate the explosion. Instead, there was a cathedral matter his wife considered more pressing; namely the inappropriate attention Christopher Clough was paying their au pair girl.

  Once they were alone in their bedroom, Hildegard went into detail. The overeager priest was taking Sabine out for a drink the following evening. ‘Perhaps she should have a chaperone? I would go myself but, of course, there is Anna.’

  ‘I could stay at home, perhaps, or I could go for the drink too?’

  ‘We can’t have two clergymen eyeing her up. You’re not judging Miss World.’

  ‘I wouldn’t be assessing her at all.’

  ‘I thought I was getting help. Instead it seems I have a second child. Sabine is distracted by this man, Sidney. He is nervensäge: a nuisance.’

  Hildegard added that the au pair was dreamy and walked about the house in a world of her own. All she liked doing was playing with Anna and her farm.

  ‘That is good, is it not, if Anna likes her? They are becoming friends.’

  It was not enough. Whenever her employer asked her to do anything Sabine said that she was too tired or too busy to concentrate on any domestic tasks. She also had lessons at ‘the college’ that meant she was often away at exactly the time she was needed.

  ‘She hasn’t even started on the ironing. Soon neither of us will have anything to wear.’

  ‘I once heard a sermon about the nakedness of Adam and Eve,’ Sidney mused in an effort to cheer his wife up as he joined her in bed.

  ‘Don’t.’

  ‘The preacher was saying that it wouldn’t take us long to get used to the idea.’

  Hildegard shifted on to her side. ‘If I had wanted to live in a nudist colony, Sidney, I would not have come to England. It’s too cold and the people are ugly.’

  She turned out the bedside light. Sidney decided neither to make any comparison with Germany nor to argue. ‘Well, I only hope that doesn’t apply to me.’ He leaned over and kissed his wife on the mouth, hoping for more.

  The next day he made a point of reassuring Hildegard before leaving to see the chemistry teacher in hospital. ‘Cloughie can’t do too much damage, can he? Sabine’s only just arrived.’

  ‘He’s a very dangerous man.’

  ‘Not in the criminal sense.’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘What do women see in him?’

  ‘Confidence,’ Hildegard answered. ‘People say he is amusing and a little dangerous.’

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘Women are aware he is naughty and they like it. They know there might be trouble but they are bored. They want excitement. And because he is a clergyman there is a safety net. They expect he will be decent in the end, even if he is not. That is his trick. It makes him even more devious.’

  ‘It’s very odd, isn’t it, the people who find clergymen attractive?’

  ‘Be very careful, Sidney . . .’

  ‘I don’t mean me.’

  ‘Would you like me to tell you more?’

  ‘No, I think it’s best not to be too aware of these things. You just have to get on with life. I know you’ll keep me right.’

  ‘I will always inform you, mein Lieber, if there is something to worry about. Women know not to cause any trouble or they will have to answer to me. It is the one time when being German helps. People think I am fiercer than I am. In one flash, like the villain in the pantomime you once took me to, they are worried I will turn into a Nazi.’

  ‘I am not sure people really think like that, Hildegard.’

  ‘You don’t notice. If you did then perhaps you would be more arrogant.’

  ‘More?’

  ‘So many women would fall in love with you. And I would have to stop it.’

  ‘I don’t think any women are likely to fall in love with me,’ Sidney answered, half hoping for a denial.

  ‘And what are you going to do,’ Hildegard asked, ‘when men are attracted to me?’

  ‘I haven’t really thought about that. I am not a jealous man.’

  ‘Perhaps you should be?’

  Sidney looked around for something to distract them both but his wife was looking straight at him, waiting for an answer.

  ‘Is there something you want to tell me?’ he asked. He was feeling decidedly shaky.

  ‘I am teasing you, mein Liebster.’

  ‘It doesn’t feel very affectionate.’

  ‘It is funny. Perhaps I am serious. Or not. You will have to spend more time with me in order to judge.’

  ‘There is nothing I would like mo
re.’

  Hildegard smiled. ‘I am always here. Why do you keep leaving me?’

  ‘That’s a very good question.’

  ‘Then answer it, Mein Lieber.’

  In the kitchen, Sabine was singing her own version of ‘Pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake, baker’s man’ to Anna as they prepared to make gingerbread men. The house was becoming German once more.

  ‘Backe, backe Kuchen,

  Der Bäcker hat gerufen!

  Wer will gute Kuchen backen,

  Der muss haben sieben Sachen:

  Eier und Schmalz,

  Butter und Salz,

  Milch und Mehl,

  Safran macht den Kuchen gel’!

  Hildegard pushed back from her husband. ‘You must go, I know. Visit your patient. Talk to Canon Clough. Then come home with your news. I will miss you.’

  ‘And I you.’

  ‘I’m teaching Adam Barnes later. He’s going to make a start either on a piece of Chopin or Dvořák. I’m going to let him choose. You could ask him a few questions about Prize Day, perhaps?’

  ‘I’m not sure how much he will know. Wasn’t he with you for most of the morning in the music rooms?’

  ‘He was. But he’s a boy at the school and he likes me. He would make a good informant, don’t you think?’

  ‘You are ahead of me, Hildegard.’

  ‘That is where I like to be.’

  ‘Would you mind . . .’

  ‘Keeping him until you return? Of course. Now you can leave. The price is one more kiss.’

  There were times, as he bicycled through the streets of Ely with Byron running by his side, that Sidney wondered what on earth he had done to deserve such a wife. Was it a God-given gift, he thought, made as recompense for his endeavours in helping other people in war and peace? He did not believe that God behaved like that. Life, he thought, should be its own reward. But still, he decided, it would do no harm to be grateful.

  The Tower Hospital was situated on the Cambridge Road and the authorities were as dubious about Sidney’s visits as they had been at Addenbrooke’s. The chaplain had already suggested that Sidney spent so much time there (and, by implication, so much less in the Cathedral Close) that it might be simpler if they swapped jobs.