Sidney Chambers and The Persistence of Love

by James Runcie

  ‘Perhaps he liked his freedom. Is that why he didn’t join you on your trip?’

  ‘He wanted to stay behind and work on the boat. We were going to go on our own adventure in September; just the two of us. I shouldn’t have left him alone. He must have gone on the walk for a change of air. I still can’t take it in. You kiss your husband goodbye, you don’t really think about it at the time, you’re too busy with everything else you have to worry about, and then when you come back he’s gone and you remember all the things you should have said and all the different ways in which you would have said goodbye if you had known it was going to be for the last time. I can’t even remember if I told him that I loved him. “See you!” – I think those were my last words – and he said, “You’re all right, love.” Then he smiled. I think I was the first to turn away and look back at the river ahead. The journey. I wish I’d watched him for longer now; waited until he was a speck.’

  Stella had been travelling up to the Norfolk Broads on Linda and Tony Clarke’s narrowboat while Lenny stayed and did the repairs to his own. They had made their way up the River Ouse to Denver Sluice, past Downham Market and on to King’s Lynn.

  ‘We were going to return via the old course of the River Nene, but it’s getting a bit shallow there and besides we’d heard the news by then.’

  ‘How did you find out?’

  ‘My sister phoned all the lock-keepers. We were at Salters Lode.’

  ‘So not far?’

  ‘About eighteen miles. It’s half an hour in the car but four by boat.’

  ‘Did she come and get you?’

  ‘Linda came with me. Tony took their boat back. She showed the shock more than I did. I think I was too numb. We went to see the body together. He’d always had a lot of colour to his face had Lenny, first from health and then through drink, but that day it was paler than I had ever seen it. I couldn’t decide if he was an old man or a little boy. He didn’t seem to be anything any more, this body lying in front of me – the figure of a man who had been all that I had ever loved and, at the same time, that infuriating husband I was still learning how to understand. I knew Dr Robinson had told Lenny off about his health often enough – the high blood pressure and the drinking – but I didn’t think he’d drop dead like that. There was no warning.’

  Well there was, Sidney thought, but now was not the time to talk about the doctor. He realised he should be getting going. Byron had fallen asleep and began to make his little dreaming noises, thinking of all the squirrels that had got away.

  ‘I like your dog,’ said Stella.

  ‘He’s slowing up a bit, I’m afraid. Arthritis.’

  ‘Labradors can be prone to it. You have to watch their weight.’

  ‘As we all must do, I suppose.’ Sidney finished his tea. ‘Could I just ask why your husband was out gathering wild flowers? Was that something he did regularly?’

  Stella poured out another cup. ‘He liked to forage. He went out every day, rain or shine. We ate off the land and the river, fishing and shooting, poaching, snaring and netting. Lenny could get you anything: larks, plovers, game birds, you name it. We tried to live as naturally and as cheaply as possible, just like our grandparents did. As you can probably tell, we don’t have much money.’

  ‘Your husband’s selection of flowers still seems a bit odd, don’t you think? Henbane in particular has a terrible smell. I can’t imagine what he would use it for.’

  ‘Do you want me to spell it out?’

  At last, Sidney thought. ‘If you don’t mind . . .’

  ‘You know you can use all those plants for recreational purposes?’

  ‘But they’re poisonous.’

  ‘Not if you know what to do with them. Lenny harvested the seeds and the leaves for his special recipes. You’d be surprised what you can do with deadly nightshade just by rubbing it on your skin. I once thought I could fly. We had the police round thinking we had marijuana, but we showed them that we were just mucking around with sage leaves, magic mushrooms and the roots we’d gathered. There was nothing they could do about it. You know that you can get a version of cocaine from scurvy grass? And there’s nothing like a cup of tea made from angel’s trumpet. That’s one of Tony’s specialities.’

  ‘Mr Clarke?’

  ‘We make all kinds of stuff. I’d let you try some but I wouldn’t like to lead you astray.’

  ‘I think I must have misread the situation, Mrs Goddard.’

  ‘We make our own alcohol too. Linda’s an expert on sloe gin, carrot wine and strawberry wheat beer. Perhaps you’d like to try some of that instead?’

  Sidney continued. ‘Wolfsbane and laburnum, the plants that your husband was gathering, are particularly poisonous. I presume Lenny knew that? I still wonder if he had other intentions?’

  ‘I can’t imagine that he did.’

  ‘And those plants aren’t stimulants.’

  ‘What are you imagining? You don’t think he was planning to do me in, do you? We loved each other.’

  Sidney and Geordie took their pints out to the back garden of the Prince Albert and discussed the results of Lenny Goddard’s post-mortem. The coroner had found traces of aconitine, a neurotoxin commonly found in monkshood. So strong it was once used as an arrow-tip poison, it had almost certainly been mixed with alcohol, probably a sloe gin.

  ‘The questions are if he was aware he had taken it,’ said Geordie, ‘whether there’s any of it left and who gave it to him.’

  ‘The wife and the best friends are expert distillers.’

  ‘We’ll have to ask them.’

  ‘I suppose it could have been a rogue batch.’

  ‘They overdid the stimulants, you mean; an accident?’

  ‘It’s possible.’

  ‘I can’t imagine Lenny swallowed it all deliberately and then went out for a walk as if nothing was wrong.’

  ‘So I think we can rule out suicide,’ said Sidney.

  ‘But surely he would have known something was up?’

  ‘Unless it was a gradual process; a succession of small doses. That’s how the Victorian poisoners did it.’

  ‘Still. He must have felt ill. And if he was aware that he had taken poison, then wouldn’t he have gone to hospital or made himself sick?’ Geordie asked.

  ‘Perhaps he realised what had happened but knew that he still had time to take revenge on whoever did it?’

  ‘How’s the wife?’

  ‘She says she loved him and I believe her. But I can’t understand why Lenny remained behind; why didn’t he go on the boat trip with the rest of them?’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t love his wife as much as she thinks he did? Perhaps there’s someone else? I’ll make some enquiries.’

  ‘I suppose,’ Sidney continued, ‘that she still could have killed him if she’d found out about an infidelity?’

  ‘“Love to hatred turned” . . .’

  ‘But it could, also, just as easily, have been any one of the others.’

  ‘Or all three of them acting together. Or someone entirely different,’ said Geordie. ‘Have you spoken to the Clarke couple yet?’

  ‘I have less of an excuse to visit them.’

  ‘I’m sure you can think of something to occupy their time. Rather convenient, don’t you think, that the widow and the two best friends are all away from the scene of the crime; a joint alibi if ever there was one?’

  ‘Or a coincidence.’

  ‘I don’t believe in them, Sidney. It looks to me like they’re trying too hard. Have a word.’

  Tony Clarke had lived on or near the water for all his life. His father had been one of the last eel trappers. He used to take his young son out in the early mornings. They set off on a long shallow punt through the fenland mists, moored and then waded through the water, pulling out the old baited wicker traps before submerging the new; each one marked with a willow stake. Tony said he knew every bend in the River Ouse, and his boat was filled with nests, rods, traps and fishing equipment, as w
ell as bottles of home-made alcohol, dried herbs, framed fish, a small aquarium and a pet toad in a tank.

  His wife was out walking. ‘I think she’s gone to the wood where you found Lenny. She’s always doing it. She likes to have her thoughts.’

  ‘Leaving you alone.’

  ‘It was how I was brought up, on my own, by the water, paring the willow, waiting for the fish.’

  ‘And did Lenny Goddard like to be alone too? I don’t quite understand why he didn’t come with you on the trip up to the Wash.’

  ‘He said he wanted to work on his own boat.’

  ‘But couldn’t he have done that when he got back?’

  ‘I don’t know. He had his moods. Linda said we shouldn’t make a fuss but leave him be. Besides, we like Stella. She’s company enough.’

  ‘And you didn’t offer to stay and help?’

  ‘Lenny liked to do things his way. He wasn’t even prepared to share a lock, he was that stubborn. I said it was a bit hypocritical for a communist who believed that everything should be held in common, but he just laughed. In a way, I admired him for it. He was his own man. You didn’t ever argue with Lenny.’

  ‘And did people want to?’

  ‘Sometimes; but never on the river. He knew his way around the tides and currents. After my old man died, Lenny was the only person who came close to knowing as much as me. You wouldn’t catch him banging his head on a low tunnel, or snagging his boat in a sluice or doing something daft like fall in and drown.’

  ‘So he was a careful man?’

  ‘On the water, yes. He wasn’t so good on land.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know.’

  ‘Were you surprised by his death?’

  ‘His health was never that good. Weak heart. Drink. Other stuff you don’t need to know about.’

  ‘I think I already do. Your special tea. Some sloe gin, perhaps?’

  ‘That’s all gone now. Like most of my friends. Most of them are dying off these days. That’s why I keep myself to myself. If you practise solitude then you’re ready for it when you’re the last to go.’

  ‘But, still, you went on the boat trip and Lenny didn’t. It seems the wrong way round. I would have thought that you were the one most likely to stay at home.’

  ‘Perhaps I felt like the company?’

  ‘And were the three of you together all the time as you travelled downriver?’

  ‘Not all the time. Sometimes the girls went exploring.’

  ‘Would they ever have had time to get back to Ely without you noticing?’

  ‘Only if they had a car. Why are you asking? I’m not sure why either of them would have wanted to do that.’

  ‘And would you – if you got fed up?’

  ‘There was no need to go off anywhere at any time. The river’s all home. We went down the River Lark and moored there so Stella and Linda could look at the meadow near Prickwillow. They liked to give the dog some proper exercise. I think they even did a bit of skinny-dipping.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure Mrs Goddard had a dog.’

  ‘Whisky. He was a black retriever. The name must have seemed like a good idea at the time. People in pubs always thought it was funny when they first heard it – you don’t want to let him out on the rocks – but Lenny soon got bored of the joke.’

  ‘You say he “was” a black retriever.’

  ‘He disappeared. I thought he’d drowned, but Stella said he was an excellent swimmer and someone must have stolen him. God knows who would want to do that. We last saw him at Eau Brink. Annoying he was, always pestering, wanting food, getting in the way. I’m surprised it took them so long to notice he’d gone. So they reported him missing.’

  ‘And never found him?’

  ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You wouldn’t know?’

  ‘Well, I haven’t seen him. We looked everywhere; asked all the lock-keepers. I can’t imagine anyone stealing him. Perhaps he got run over.’

  ‘So Stella Goddard has lost both her dog and her husband in the space of a few days?’

  ‘That’s right.’

  ‘It’s strange,’ said Sidney, ‘that she didn’t say anything about the dog. We even talked about them; how Labradors are prone to arthritis. She could have mentioned it then.’

  ‘Perhaps she was too upset?’

  ‘Perhaps she was. But still, it’s strange.’

  A week later Lenny Goddard’s body was released to the crematorium. On the coffin was a spray of white roses and lilies on a bed of trailing ivy, Timothy and rye grass. Anna had brought wild flowers too: comfrey and corncockle, harebells and forget-me-nots. Hildegard had doubts about her daughter attending Lenny Goddard’s funeral, but Sidney thought it might be good for her. Younger children are often more resilient than people think, he said. It would help her make sense of what she had seen.

  The ceremony was appropriately personal (English folk songs, an American–Indian lament, a reading of the ‘Desiderata’, a recording of ‘Light My Fire’ which was not as amusing as everyone had thought it was going to be). There were men in denim suits and cowboy boots, women with daisy chains in their hair and dressed in Indian blouses or tie-dyed summer smocks, all looking as if they had stopped off on their way to a festival on the Isle of Wight. If this was the secular future of funerals, Sidney wondered how far the Church of England was going to have to stretch its traditions to keep up.

  He tried to add a note of sober dignity by presiding in a dark suit and dog-collar, offering a welcome, prayers and a short address. He took his text from ‘The Song of Songs’, and spoke about the divine harmony, how both nature and life itself could be seen as a piece of music. It all depended upon the pace, the rhythm and the interpretation. The singer was as important as the song, and what a song Lenny had sung.

  When he finished he admitted to himself that he had not preached at his best. During one paragraph he had looked up and seen Tom Tranton in the congregation, and Sidney couldn’t work out if the smile given back to him was one of encouragement or quiet amusement, as if to say, ‘Come on, we both know you can do better than this.’ Before his next funeral, Sidney decided, he would devote more time to a properly researched and thoughtful tribute, one from the heart that was less distracted by suspicion and investigation.

  Nigel Martin, the funeral director, told Lenny’s widow that the ashes would be ready the next day. Then she could scatter them in the bluebell wood where Lenny had been found. Linda Clarke said she’d go with her for support and company. She was a small woman with a blonde bob, as slight as an English Edith Piaf, wearing a pink gingham dress that made her look like a child who had never grown up.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Stella. ‘I think I’d best be on my own.’

  ‘No, we’ll both come with you,’ said Linda. ‘Won’t we, Tony?’

  ‘If you need the company . . .’

  ‘I’ll be OK on my own,’ their friend replied. ‘But if you want to say your own goodbye . . .’

  ‘We insist,’ said Linda. ‘Four friends still together. Lenny can’t be confined to a box. He belongs to the elements. He’s had the fire, now let’s give him back to the earth and the wind and the water.’

  Afterwards, when told of the plans to scatter the ashes back in the bluebell wood, Geordie was perplexed. ‘If they’ve flung them all over the place, doesn’t that make it difficult when the Lord comes calling at the Resurrection? He’s got a bit of an assembly job on his hands, hasn’t he?’

  ‘Geordie, I have warned you before about applying human parameters to the divine mystery.’

  ‘I know it’s “beyond human understanding”. But you might think he’d give the clergy some extra help so they can at least explain it on a Sunday.’

  ‘You don’t have to come to church.’

  ‘You know I do. I like to be respectable.’

  ‘And it’s perfectly all right to “dwell in mystery”.’

  ‘Well, in that case we’re making
a decent fist of the situation.’

  Instead of attending the wake, the two men went off to the pub.

  ‘Best leave them to it,’ said Geordie.

  It started to rain. On the way, they sheltered for a while outside a dressmaker’s run by identical twins. A card in the window read: ‘Hems taken up. Bridalwear. Mourning.’

  ‘Just about covers everything,’ said Geordie. ‘While we’re stuck here I might as well let you know that the coroner confirms poor old Lenny had so much inside him and such a weak heart that it’s hard to tell what’s what. It may have been nature taking its course. It may have been deliberate. All we know is that his life stopped. But I want us to have a proper think. It doesn’t feel right, does it? They’ve all got the same story. Do you think we’ve missed anything, Sidney?’

  ‘If it was murder, then one of those nearest and dearest to him surely has to be responsible. They all had easy access and any one of them could have done the poisoning. But what’s the motive?’

  ‘I don’t know. Suppose Lenny Goddard was having an affair with Linda Clarke, or they were planning to run off together?’ Geordie mused. ‘His wife finds out and she kills him. Or, he decides to stay with said wife, and lover Linda kills him for staying.’

  ‘Or the husband, Tony Clarke, finds out his best friend is sleeping with his wife and does the necessary.’

  ‘Yet all three of them were away at the same time. If it wasn’t a slow-acting poison administered in advance then how could one of them have got back without the others noticing?’

  ‘Unless all three of them did it?’

  ‘That’s possible too. But why would all three of them have wanted to get rid of Lenny Goddard? What could he have had on them?’

  ‘And why was he collecting the poisonous flowers?’ Sidney asked. ‘We still don’t know about that. And I’m sure there’s something going on with the dog.’

  ‘Perhaps he’s been poisoned as well? He’s not turned up.’