Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night (14 page)

‘There was no relationship. That’s the point. I hate that girl.’

‘Hate?’

‘Yes, hate. I bloody hate her.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Can I have a drink? I think I need one if I’m going to tell you all this.’ Morden stood up. He looked frailer than Sidney had ever seen him before; frailer, and almost frightened. ‘Could you take me to the pub? It should be open by now. I can’t tell you all this on an empty stomach.’

Once Sidney had established all that he needed to know from Morden he recognised that he had to take the initiative. He would leave Leonard Graham to hold the fort back at the vicarage and get this whole arson business out of the way.

He was bicycling towards the Redmond farm and had just passed a bus stop when he realised that the girl standing there was none other than Abigail Redmond. He turned round, propped his bike against the bus-stop pole and started to question her. Abigail was dressed in a tight white cotton blouse with the top two buttons undone, a striped pirouette skirt, short white socks and tennis shoes. She looked bored and was embarrassed to be seen in the presence of a priest. Sidney knew that he would have to make his enquiry simple and direct.

‘I was coming to ask you about the fire.’

Abigail looked into the distance, perhaps imagining that if she could not see him then Sidney would not be there. ‘Nothing to do with me.’

‘I am not saying you started it.’

‘Gary didn’t do it either.’

‘I know that.’

She turned to Sidney as briefly as she could and looked away as soon as she had finished her sentence. ‘Someone put the petrol can there to make people think he did it and that’s no lie.’

‘I’m sure that’s the case. I’ve also come to talk to you about the photographer, Daniel Morden.’

‘That pervert.’

‘I’m not sure he is a pervert.’

‘What would you know about it? You’re a priest. Though Gary says you’re as bad as the others. You’ve been watching me as well and all.’

‘I don’t think everyone’s looking at you, Abigail.’

She took out a cigarette. ‘Could have fooled me.’

‘I’m asking because you went to have your photographs taken by Daniel Morden; and without anyone else knowing.’

Abigail used the time needed to light her cigarette to think about her answer. ‘What’s that to you then?’

‘And you went more than once, didn’t you?’

Abigail exhaled, the smoke only just missing Sidney’s face. ‘So?’

‘You wanted to be a model in London and you asked him to help.’

‘Nothing wrong with that.’

‘Did he tell you what he was going to do with the photographs?’

‘He was going to show them to a few people. See if they were interested. That’s what he said. But nothing happened so I went round again to ask what was going on.’

‘And what happened then?’

‘None of your business.’

‘No. It isn’t. But it might be.’

‘What do you mean by that?’

‘You offered him something more. If he could try a bit harder.’

‘I don’t know what you think that could be.’

‘We both know what it is, Abigail. But Daniel Morden resisted, didn’t he? And you decided you had to do something about that.’

‘I didn’t burn down his studio, if that’s what you’re thinking.’

‘I’m not thinking that at all, Miss Redmond. I am thinking of something very different indeed.’

When he returned to the vicarage Sidney was distracted by the arrival of a letter from Germany. Hildegard had written at last and the omens were good.

Berlin

14 September 1957

My dearest friend

I hope you will come after Christmas. Perhaps this will become a routine? I hope so. I always like to see you. I am most myself. I wish we had more time. I have been thinking that it is my turn to come to you and that I will soon be ready to make a return visit to Grantchester. We should not let the past ruin the present. That is a lesson from the war. It has been long enough now and as long as you are there then I can be strong. Everything is easier when you are with me . . .

Sidney wished he was with her too but instead, after allowing himself a few minutes of romantic reverie, he decided that he really had to see Morden once more.

‘I thought we’d got everything out of the way the last time you came,’ the photographer began. He was dressed in pyjamas under an old Paisley-patterned dressing gown that might have belonged to his father. ‘I haven’t been in bed all day, if that’s what you’re thinking. I got up early to take some photographs. I’m planning on doing my own project about the sunrise.’

‘I see.’

‘It would be a portrait of Britain; not so much about who’s up and who’s going to bed, but what the streets are like in the silence in between; when there’s no one around. I love that time of day. Everything is held up, in stasis, and yet you know that stillness can be broken at any moment. It’s so fragile and transient and the air’s filled with that grey-blue light that can’t decide whether it’s day or night.’

Sidney remembered just such a time during the war. The tanks had stopped in steep fields under the Caumont ridge, just east of the town. The night had been warm and quiet but at first light the shelling and mortaring began. His battalion were due to attack Lutain Wood and Sidney was convinced, despite the beauty of the dawn in a French field so far from home, that he would die that day. It was the first time the fear of death had been so specific, and even though there was nothing unusual about the sniper fire as they advanced through the woodland, he saw a man he had always admired, Captain Campbell, killed in front of him as he got out of his tank to rescue a wounded hull gunner. Sidney ran out to help but the tank was hit again through its heaviest frontal armour, the ammunition exploding and the turret leaping clean off. For a moment he had stood there, frozen in uncertainty, with the detritus of death all around him, anticipating that he was next to be killed. Yet he had survived, and ever since that terrifying stillness in the early morning light, he had determined to live each day as if it was his last; and to recognise the gift of life above the eventual certainty of death. This was the seeding of his decision to become a priest.

‘It’s like seeing the world when no one is looking,’ Morden continued. ‘Nothing is certain and no one is there. The ghosts have left and new people are yet to appear. I’m using the little Minox camera I told you about. I can take photographs without anyone knowing I’m doing it; as if I’ve dropped down from outer space. That’s the effect I’m after: to see the world as if it’s only just been discovered for the first time.’

Sidney thought for a moment before replying. ‘I suppose that you and I are both trying to do the same kind of thing; you’re asking people to stop and look, while I’m asking them to pause and be silent.’

Having expressed his new manifesto, Daniel Morden was not keen to elaborate any further. Sidney recognised that his timing had not been ideal. ‘I am sorry if I am calling at an inconvenient moment.’

‘I was planning on a nap. I’ve done my work for the day. Now I can’t find my cigarillos. I suppose you’ve come to ask me a few more questions?’

‘I’m very sorry, Daniel, but I have reached the conclusion that you started the fire in your studio deliberately.’

The photographer was unsurprised and kept looking for his cigarillos. ‘Yes, I imagined you would be thinking along those lines. It’s the only plausible explanation for your visits. I’m not self-confident enough to believe that you came to hear my memoirs or enjoy my conversational virtuosity.’

‘Although that has been entertaining.’

‘I do prefer pictures,’ Morden replied. ‘Words can only do so much,
Satis verborum
being my motto. I think I told you the first time you came.’

‘You did. “Enough of words.” ’

‘Although you seem to go in for rather a lot of them.’

‘That is a fault of mine, I am afraid. A priest should always begin with silence.’

‘Then you’re not doing too well, my friend.’

‘Although, in this instance, I am not really a priest. I am hoping that you will admit to starting this fire so that the case can be closed and we can get on with our lives.’

‘Well I’m afraid you’re in for a disappointment. Even if you were to make a case, despite my being in London at the time, I can always put it down to carelessness; or the demon drink. There is absolutely nothing to suggest it was started deliberately.’

‘But why did you do it?’ Sidney asked. ‘It was because of Abigail, wasn’t it?’

Morden tried to appear disinterested. ‘Intriguing.’

‘I think Abigail Redmond made some kind of threat. It might have been to tell her boyfriend about an incident that had passed between you, or she might have been tempted to make something up. Her father had already gone to see Benson, and Gary Bell was, I think, no friend of yours. So she knew that she could be in a strong position if . . .’

‘Blackmail,’ Morden interrupted. ‘She was blackmailing me. She said that unless I got her a modelling job in London she would tell her boyfriend and her father that I had given her too much to drink and molested her – or worse.’

‘And none of this happened?’

‘Of course not. I thought I had had enough experience of young girls to know what to do in these types of situation, but even I knew that it would be hard to defend myself against that kind of accusation. She wasn’t asking for a great deal of money. It was just that I didn’t have it.’

‘And you couldn’t get her a modelling job?’

Morden snorted. ‘I don’t think so. I have no influence these days, and she’s too small and chubby.’

‘Even though you sold her photograph to
Sultry
magazine without her knowing?’

‘They’ll take anything . . .’

‘And then she came back. How much did she ask for?’

‘Fifty pounds.’

‘Why didn’t you call her bluff?’

‘I panicked, I suppose.’

‘And the only way you could liquidate the money quickly, apart from selling your mother’s flat, would be to burn down the studio and claim on the insurance?’

‘I can see how easy it is for you to think that.’

‘Then you would also be taking some kind of revenge on Gary Bell at the same time.’

Daniel Morden poured himself a small tumbler of whisky and went through to the kitchen to add water. He called out, ‘Sounds rather good. I wish I’d thought of it.’ He came back into the room. ‘The only thing is that I was in London at the time of the fire.’

‘I know you were,’ Sidney replied, ‘but that doesn’t mean that you didn’t start it.’

‘And how would I do that? The fire investigator didn’t discover any timing device as far as I am aware.’

‘You didn’t need one.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘You had the sun.’

Morden was still standing. He took a sip of his drink. ‘Would you care to elaborate?’

‘It was a hot day in the middle of August,’ Sidney explained. ‘The preceding days had been sweltering; the weather forecasts had predicted that it was likely to get hotter. The windows of the summerhouse faced south. I would suggest that you removed your old silent films from their cans, laying the cellulose nitrate film on the window seat and on the floor. The sun was a natural timing device. The windows became a magnifying glass. You left the summerhouse in the morning, taking the empty film cans to London where you disposed of them. Then you let the sun ignite it all while you were giving your lecture. It was a simple idea. You let nature do the work.’

‘It all sounds rather implausible,’ Morden replied, already finishing his whisky. ‘And I don’t think there is any way of proving this.’

‘No. There was too much destruction.’

‘And Gary Bell’s petrol can?’

‘You placed it there afterwards.’

‘You think so?’

‘I cannot prove anything.’

‘What gave you the idea to think how I might have done it?’

‘Gary Bell saw you taking two films cans away with you. Then I discovered why there is no good print of
Sunrise.
The original negative was destroyed in a fire. It was a famous incident in the history of cinema and yet you never mentioned it. Pointing out that cellulose nitrate was highly flammable was too much of a risk.’

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I will have to tell Inspector Keating what I think. He may not believe me. But I am sure the insurers will.’

‘I don’t think they’re going to pay out, in any case.’

‘You may be liable for prosecution.’

‘I suppose I might. But I don’t have much to live for these days.’

Sidney was surprised by his host’s resignation. ‘But what will you do with the rest of your life, Daniel?’

‘It’s a question of confidence.’ Morden began moving about the flat, looking for whisky, cigarillos and distraction from what he was saying. ‘Once you’ve lost it, often for the smallest, pettiest reason, someone says something or a job doesn’t go your way, then it can be very hard to get back. That’s the great conundrum of ambition: knowing when to acknowledge one’s own mediocrity. I’ll probably sell this flat. It’s depressing being surrounded by memories of your mother. I don’t know why I’ve stayed so long. I thought I might try and see my son again in France. We had such a stupid misunderstanding.’