Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins (46 page)

As they raced by the railway station, another car full of
carabinieri
joined the chase. The Etheringtons turned on to the Via Bolognese Nuova and drove through the university. They were making for the motorway but, just before they reached it, and having noticed the cars in pursuit, they changed their minds, swerving off to the right and backtracking down towards Fiesole.

Sidney remembered them talking about ‘a divine little farmstead’ when he had first met the couple, and presumed that it was empty: a possible hideaway if they could get rid of the police.

Giovanni was gesturing to the
carabinieri
. It was unclear whether he was asking them to overtake or to back off, but lights were blaring and sirens flashing. The Etheringtons turned off their headlights, swerved up a track and vanished.

Sidney asked Giovanni to pull over. The squad cars braked just in time and there followed a confusion of shouting and gesticulation, blame and explanation.

Sidney ran back and found the turning they had missed. He shouted at everyone to return to their cars and follow the new road. They found the surface increasingly uneven, until the track ran out in front of a remote villa encircled by a few olive trees.

Sir William and his wife were still inside their car when Giovanni and Sidney approached. The English aristocrat was complaining that they should have left earlier. His wife was telling him to shut up. ‘Don’t tell them anything.’

‘What’s the point? They are going to search the car anyway.’

The
carabinieri
asked them to get out. Giovanni told the couple that Sidney would explain everything.

‘He doesn’t need to,’ Lady Victoria replied.

Her husband made one last attempt at friendship. ‘I thought we English were supposed to stick together.’

‘Not in a case like this.’

‘If you hadn’t interfered . . .’

‘You would have been discovered anyway. What were you going to do with the paintings?’

‘What makes you think we have them?’

‘We’ll find them soon enough. But I don’t understand why you’ve done this. You could hardly put them on display, and they’re too famous to sell.’

‘They were going to be for our own use: in our bedroom, if you must know. We’ve given so much to this country we thought we deserved a reward.’

‘A reward? That’s something many of us only look for in heaven.’

‘I suppose you would know all about that.’

‘Not yet, Sir William.’

The
carabinieri
unwrapped a Florentine tray and a box of books to reveal the two paintings and a series of volumes that had been quietly removed from the National Library. They showed them to Sidney and Giovanni, transferred them to their cars and made the necessary arrests.

The Etheringtons were surprisingly unconcerned.

‘We’ll just say it’s been a misunderstanding,’ Victoria explained. ‘No one wants anything as dreary as a court case. The director of the Uffizi is a friend of ours. I’m sure he’ll find a way to forgive us.’

Sidney was aghast. ‘You mean you think you can get away with it?’

‘As we have with everything in this country. Some people are born lucky; some people aren’t. You know the saying:
E meglio nascere fortunati che ricchi
? Well, we are both fortunate
and
rich. And what does it matter? These paintings weren’t on display. Who would miss them? We’re not bad people. We give enough money to charity. It’s only fair we’re treated properly in exchange.’

Sidney was horrified. ‘Treated properly?’

He turned to Giovanni, who affirmed this was the truth. Often people did tend to get away with things. The paintings would be returned and, as long as they were safe, everything else would be considered a nuisance. Why waste time on justice when everything was back to what it was?
Non svegliare il can che dorme
.

Lady Etherington translated: ‘Let sleeping dogs lie.’

‘I am not sure I am prepared to accept that,’ said Sidney.

‘It is the way of the world,’ Sir William answered.

‘Yes, but the world extends beyond the Alps in the north and Sicily in the south.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘There is always the International Criminal Police Organisation at Saint-Cloud in Paris,’ Sidney explained. ‘The head of Interpol happens to be a friend of Amanda’s father.’

‘How do they know we are here?’

‘They don’t. Yet. But Rushworth Hall is very well known, is it not? I presume you were planning to return home. If not, and this is your hideaway, then we know where that is too. Giovanni has disabled your car. We have time. Everything else is in the lap of the gods.
Fortunae cetera mando
, as the saying goes. I prefer Latin to Italian, don’t you?’

Sidney and Giovanni returned to the vicarage in the Via Maggio at a more stately pace. They arrived to discover that Doctor Cannavaro had come back to check on his juvenile patient. He was pleased to report that the flush had left Anna’s cheeks and that she would soon be as pale as an English rose once more.

Sidney thanked him. The doctor said he had done very little. ‘Like you. I try to take away worry. I give reassurance.’

‘And ice cream. Anna has learned to say “
gelato alla fragola
”.’

‘I hope she will return many times. One day perhaps she will see Italy as another home.’

‘That would be delightful. I am also grateful for something else.’

‘Lady Etherington?’ the doctor asked.

‘You knew something was wrong.’

‘I thought she was pretending when she fainted. But to accuse her would not be gallant. I knew that you would understand if I said enough.’

Timothy Jeffers had gone to bed. Francesca had left a saucepan of minestrone on the hob, and there was bread, butter and cheese on the kitchen table with half a bottle of Chianti.

Hildegard lit a candle, served up the soup, and told her husband that he had a lot of explaining to do. He should not expect to get off lightly. At least there was only one day left in Florence and Anna was better. She couldn’t wait to get home.

Sidney was still exhilarated by his adventure and unable to relax as he told his story, standing up and walking about as he ate. He had been shocked by the attitude of the Etheringtons. What made them think they were entitled to take whatever they wanted? He wondered if they thought their experience in Italy gave them an excuse. Perhaps, Sidney began to extemporise, the origins of selfishness and unbridled capitalism lay in the Renaissance? Should the Medicis be blamed for their banking system as much as they were praised for their artistic patronage? Didn’t Dante convey usurers to a deeper place in hell than blasphemers, murderers and violent suicides unable to ward off the whipping winds and flaming fire?

‘You think the Etheringtons should go to hell?’ Hildegard asked.

‘I know that’s not very Christian.’

‘Some people might say that it was exactly Christian.’

‘I am not so sure about hell.’

‘Are you equally uncertain about heaven?’

‘I don’t know. I am concentrating on earth alone at the moment. I can’t stomach the fact that the rich have a different morality. They think they can buy immunity from justice by donating to charity.’

‘At least they are doing something.’

‘But not at any cost or sacrifice. Their lifestyle remains intact.’

‘You expect the wealthy to make themselves poor?’

Sidney thought out loud. ‘What would it be like if everyone was paid the same? How would it work and how much would everyone have to live on? What kind of houses would people live in and how much geographical space could be shared?’

‘Have you been reading that Communist newspaper?’ Hildegard asked.

‘No. I think I’ve always felt like this. But there is something about being away from home. It makes you re-evaluate your thoughts. I don’t think the wealthy do enough.’

‘Be careful what you say, Sidney. Amanda has been kind to us; she has helped pay for this holiday.’

‘Amanda is different.’

‘She is still rich. It does not cost her very much to be a good person.’

‘You mean that we can only be good when we have made a sacrifice of some kind?’

‘Perhaps. A poor person, looking at us now, would think that we too are rich. Look at the cathedral you work in, Sidney. Do you think Jesus would be happy seeing you there?’

‘I am not sure he would.’

‘It is difficult. The building is wealthy but the people who built it were poor. I know you will say it is all for the greater glory.
Soli Deo gloria
. As our lives should be.’

‘Indeed, Hildegard,’ Sidney replied. ‘As our lives should be.’

The next morning, on their last full day in Florence, Amanda insisted that everyone came for lunch in one of her favourite restaurants. As the Chambers family set out, they could see that the city was returning to normal; a party of schoolchildren were being taken on a nature trail round the Boboli Gardens, a group of nuns were returning from Mass (one of them was even eating an orange), and a man in a large fur-collared coat waited outside the Pitti Palace for the arrival of a woman who could only be his mistress.

They crossed the river and found themselves in a small, dark trattoria hosted by a weighty proprietor who was happy to display charm to his diners and authoritarianism to his staff. It was not an expensive or pretentious meal, but it was comforting and it felt right: tortellini
in brodo
, chicken cacciatore, and zabaglione to follow.

Sidney started a mock grissini fight with his daughter, and Amanda suggested that next time they should all meet in Rome. She would make sure Henry joined them. They could make it a long weekend in the spring, when there was no danger of any flooding.

‘Like this poor battered stick of grissini, we have survived,’ Sidney said, ‘in order to fight another day.’

‘Let there be no more fighting,’ Hildegard asked.

‘And no more POLICEMEN!’ Anna announced, striking down Sidney’s breadstick.

The waiter was ready to take their order. ‘
Gelato alla fragola
,’ Anna called out before asking her mother: ‘Can we paint the man on the horse again?’

Amanda leaned over to Sidney. ‘We’ll make an artist of her yet. Perhaps one day she’ll come back and see those Piero portraits and she’ll remember all this.’

‘It would have been odd if the Etheringtons had only got away with one of them, don’t you think?’

Amanda put down her menu. ‘One is worth nothing without the other.’

Sidney turned to his wife but she was quick to prevent further speech. ‘No sermon please, my darling.’

‘I was about to be very nice to you.’

‘You are always good to me.’

‘We are our own double portrait.’

After the meal, Sidney and Hildegard walked back through the city arm in arm. Amanda showed Anna the shop windows and asked her goddaughter what she wanted for Christmas. They passed the
duomo
with its gracefully magisterial cupola, and Sidney said that it reminded him of the photograph of St Paul’s Cathedral during the Blitz; when beauty stood out amid the surrounding devastation.

Less than two weeks ago they had sheltered inside that very same building when the rain had first come to Florence. He remembered how Anna had taken his hand and Hildegard had leant in to him, as if he, and he alone, could protect them from storm and thunder and all that might happen in the future. The members of the family were like pillars in a Renaissance cloister, he thought, individually contributing to the whole design. Together they formed something stronger and more beautiful than anything they could achieve on their own. Then, at the end of their lives, the least they might be able to say was that they had understood what it was to take part in something greater than themselves. They had known love. They would defend it against anything that came after it; taking risks in order to care for each other in the face of an indifferent world, working as hard as they could to nurture, preserve and protect what they had found and made. Such a love was too precious to put in jeopardy. It was life itself.

A Note on the Author

James Runcie is an award-winning film-maker and the author of seven novels.
Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death
, the first in ‘The Grantchester Mysteries’ series, was published in 2012, soon followed by
Sidney Chambers and The Perils of the Night
, and
Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil
. In October 2014, ITV launched
Grantchester
,  a prime-time, six-part series starring James Norton as Sidney Chambers. James Runcie lives in London and Edinburgh.

www.jamesruncie.com

www.grantchestermysteries.com

@james_runcie