Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night (13 page)

‘I think Morden’s more interested in younger girls.’

‘That doesn’t mean the older women in the parish won’t take a fancy to him. I’d have thought that he was getting on a bit for girls and beggars can’t be choosers. I should know.’

‘I’m interested you should be seeing an academic, Amanda. You know that they very seldom have any money?’

‘That doesn’t matter. Anthony has status. That’s all my parents seem to care about.’

‘You shouldn’t be marrying anyone to please your parents.’

‘I’m not planning on marrying anyone
yet
, Sidney. I was just saying he had
potential.
A girl has to be vigilant for she never knows the day nor the hour. Isn’t that what the good book says?’

‘I think that’s a reference to the kingdom of heaven, Amanda.’

‘From the parable of the wise and foolish virgins, I seem to remember, and there’s even a bridegroom in the story so I think you’ll find that was rather clever of me.’

‘I would expect little else.’

‘Although I’ll thank you not to make any mischievous remarks about my virginity.’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

Sidney promised that he would do his best to attend the London concert and that he would make enquiries about Cartwright even if it was yet another thing to do. He made himself a cup of tea, and settled down to read a few chapters of Angus Wilson’s
Anglo-Saxon Attitudes
before bedtime. After twenty minutes, he acknowledged that he could not concentrate and went into his study. There he began to make a list. He drew a dividing line down the centre of a piece of paper and wrote down his parish duties on the left, and his thoughts about the arson case on the right. When he had finished he could see that his forthcoming tasks as a detective were twice as long as those involving the priesthood. There could be no clearer example of how his priorities had changed.

He had to put the arson case to one side and make a start on Sunday’s sermon. It was the eleventh Sunday after Trinity and the text was from St Mark’s Gospel. He opened his Bible and pulled out a fresh piece of paper from the stand. Then, before he began to theorise on the feeding of the five thousand, he changed his mind and wrote a letter.

The Vicarage

Grantchester

4 September 1957

My dear Hildegard

It was so wonderful to see you in Germany that life in Grantchester seems very strange without you. I know it will be hard for you to think of visiting a place that does not contain too many happy memories, but I would like you to know, once more, that you will always be welcome. Having said that, I must confess that it is a strange place and that I have become involved in yet another complicated criminal investigation. I can see you smiling and shaking your head as I write. When it has all settled down, as I am sure it will, perhaps I could come and see you once more, either in the autumn, or just after Christmas? It would be good to see more of the Rhine, enjoy your company, and even improve my very faulty German. The trip would also be a welcome respite from the curious machinations of my parishioners!

Please give my best regards to your sister, who I very much enjoyed meeting, and do let me know more of your news. How many piano pupils do you have these days? Is Berlin very changed? Have you met many new friends?

I seem to live two different lives: one when I am with you, and the other when I am not. I hope that you will not be too alarmed when I say that I miss you and that I wish you were here with me now. I think of you every time I hear the music of Bach and, indeed, whenever I hear music at all.

With warmest wishes, and as ever,

Sidney

Inspector Keating was relaxed and almost amused by the gossip surrounding his friend when they met for their regular evening of backgammon. ‘I wouldn’t take it too seriously if I were you,’ he smiled as he placed Sidney’s drink in front of him. The froth foamed over the lip.

‘But you’re not me,’ Sidney replied indignantly.

‘No, you’re a one-off; and a million miles from these chaps. We’ve been looking into all of them, you know. Benson’s had a few warnings, Gary Bell went a bit further with a girl than she wanted but then the accusation was withdrawn, and Daniel Morden has certainly had a chequered past. We even found his son.’

‘In France?’

Keating was rather pleased with this bit of news. ‘He’s called Jonathan. We got him on the blower.’

‘Really?’

‘They do have telephones across the Channel, Sidney.’

‘I am aware of that. What did you find out?’

‘Well, for one thing, we discovered why Jonathan Morden is not speaking to his father. Turns out one of his girlfriends took rather a shine to his dad.’

‘You mean the father stole his son’s girl?’

‘I’m not sure it got as far as that. But the son said he had had enough of his dad’s flirting. Couldn’t stand him trying to impress her. He told her all about his time in Hollywood and I think the girl thought he could make her a film star. You hear it all the time: women taken in by predatory older men.’

‘It could have been the girl’s fault; leading him on?’

‘You can’t be too friendly with teenagers, Sidney. Daniel Morden still seems a bit creepy to me. I can also see you don’t like Benson. I don’t care for him very much either, but I can’t understand why he would burn down the summerhouse.’

‘No . . .’

‘I understand that you don’t dislike Morden, but the fact that you think he is a lovable rogue with a good heart doesn’t make him innocent any more than Benson is guilty.’

‘I am not saying Morden is perfect.’

‘We need to find out more about him.’

‘I thought you were more suspicious of Gary Bell? After all, he has publicly stated that he didn’t like Morden. He thinks everyone is eyeing up his sweetheart, and he could have set fire to the place in order to scare him off and claim on the insurance at the same time. He is the more straightforward suspect.’

‘But he wouldn’t have been so careless as to leave a petrol can lying about. Furthermore, the fire investigator is convinced that this is not a petrol-based fire. Something else is going on here, Sidney, and I need you to help me find out.’

‘Are you sure you want me to remain involved?’

‘Of course I do; besides, it’ll help clear your name.’

‘Has it been so very sullied?’

‘It’s just tittle-tattle about mucky magazines and young girls, Sidney, but we need to put a stop to it. Buy me another pint and I’ll tell you how we’re going to do it. You’re going to have to make a few more of your famous pastoral visits.’

The following evening, Sidney and Leonard went to the cinema. The film on offer was Alfred Hitchcock’s
Rear Window
. They had been expecting a tense thriller and were surprised by the slow beginning. The plot concentrated almost entirely on Jimmy Stewart’s reluctance to marry Grace Kelly. He was not ready, he vouchsafed, and feared that any commitment would limit his opportunities for adventure. His maid, Stella, told him that he had ‘a hormone deficiency’ since the bikini-clad bombshells exercising outside his window hadn’t raised his temperature by a single degree.

Sidney sensed Leonard Graham’s bafflement at the thought of being excited by women, but he himself was thrilled when Grace Kelly finally arrived wearing an eleven-hundred-dollar outfit and a string of pearls.

Unfortunately, the subject was still marriage. ‘You don’t think either one of us could change?’ Grace asked Jimmy with a devastatingly candid gaze. Sidney sighed.

After half an hour there was still no sign of murder, and Sidney’s thoughts began to drift again to love, marriage and commitment. By the time he woke from his reverie a private detective had arrived on the scene and ridiculed Jimmy Stewart’s work as an ‘amateur sleuth’.

Leonard leant across and whispered, ‘This is alarmingly familiar.’

‘At least we have not had to deal with a case of dismemberment.’

‘Not yet.’

‘Benson confines himself to animals.’

‘Only as far as we know,’ Leonard replied before being hushed by people in the row behind.

Of course Benson may well have been nothing more than an eccentric loner, and it was wrong to suspect a man simply on the grounds of his demeanour, but there was still something troubling about him.

The next day, Sidney decided to go and see if Daniel Morden was at home and if he would be prepared to answer a few more questions. He timed his visit for midday on Saturday 7 September, after, he assumed, the photographer had got up but before his first drink. They could even go to the nearest pub, since it was unlikely that Morden would refuse an offer of hospitality.

The photographer was amused by his visitor. ‘It’s an unexpected bonus that you keep coming to see me, Canon Chambers, I must say. You should know that I was brought up as a Roman Catholic. Once a Catholic . . .’

‘Give me a child until the age of seven . . .’

‘
And I will show you the man.
Ignatius Loyola. I think I have learned to subdue my fears of eternal damnation and the fiery flames.’

Sidney seized the chance to raise his subject. ‘I suppose you will have had enough of fire in this life.’

‘Yes, indeed. And that is why you have come, I suppose. It can’t be the joy of my company.’ Morden lit up a cigarillo.

‘I like hearing you talk about photography. The stopping of time, the creation of a moment, the preservation of memory . . .’

‘You have to be careful about that.’

Sidney remembered the albums his parents had collated, filled with images of themselves and their three children: himself as a baby in his mother’s arms, the siblings on the back of a toboggan, his father shying away from a snowball, his mother trying on a gas mask, his place on the extreme right of the back row of Marlborough’s cricketing First XI, his sister with her friend Amanda on the way to a ball at the Lansdowne Club, and the army line-up that contained three of his dead friends.

‘You mean that we treat photography too objectively?’ he asked.

‘It is
only
the record of a moment,’ Morden replied. ‘And only one vision, deliberately framed to exclude, without any awareness of what has happened before or after . . .’

‘But that doesn’t make it unreliable.’

‘
Memory
is unreliable, Canon Chambers. That’s the problem. We remake each memory every time we recall it. It’s a constructive and adaptive process.’

‘I am aware of its fallibility.’

‘You must be aware of its duplicity. Photography is something different. It has a separate, distinct reality.’

‘So you have to separate the image from its representation?’ Sidney asked, feeling that he was getting lost.

‘That is what people are teaching in the universities these days.’

‘So a photograph of, for example, a young girl is not so much the record of a specific time in her life but a separate work of art?’

‘That’s the idea; although such concepts are rather too elevated for the work I do.’

‘Yes, I don’t imagine that someone like Abigail Redmond was aware of such a distinction. Did she know that you were going to publish semi-naked photographs of her?’

‘Not exactly, no.’

‘So you sold them on?’

‘Anyone who takes their clothes off for a photographer must know that she’s not the only person who’s going to see the final result. That would be naïve in the extreme: and one thing about Abigail Redmond is that she is not naive.’

‘So you did know her name?’

‘I’m sorry?’

‘When we first met you said that you didn’t know her name. She poses as Candy Sweet. But in fact, you knew her name all along.’

‘It’s hard to remember everything. Sometimes you’d rather forget. Memory, again . . .’

‘Did Abigail ask for any special treatment?’

‘She made a few advances, I think, but then they all do. They are so desperate to escape. They don’t want to be wives or secretaries. They want to go to London, but most of the time it’s just a pipe dream. There are so many girls, and very few come up to the mark.’

‘Was Abigail one of them?’ Sidney asked.

‘I told her that she needed to slim down and that her nose was a bit squat but she wouldn’t listen. She was convinced she was going to be a glamour model. From the way she dresses, I think she still believes that. How little she knows of life.’

‘So she was angry when you told her that you didn’t think she had what it takes?’

‘Yes. I’d say she was.’

‘Angry enough to burn down your studio?’

‘Probably.’

‘You don’t seem very concerned about this line of enquiry, Mr Morden. Are you sure you are telling me everything you know?’

‘You want my life story?’

‘No, just the facts as they pertain to this case. I am not sure you have been honest with me about your relationship with Abigail Redmond.’