Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night (31 page)

‘Indeed I am.’

‘Perhaps, then, I can persuade you to accompany me, and delay your journey for a short while, at a local hostelry?’

‘There is a pub near my old college,’ Sidney replied. ‘I believe it is on the way. If I remember rightly, it is called the Eagle. Have you heard tell of such a place?’

‘I am not sure that I have. Perhaps you could point me in the right direction?’

‘It would be a pleasure.’

It was a beautiful summer evening and once they had ordered the drinks and sat down, Inspector Keating used the opportunity to reflect on recent events. ‘What a bloody terrible business.’

‘Awful.’

‘That poor girl. Have you seen her?’

‘I don’t think I’ve done much good. She never wants to see her mother again.’

‘I can understand that.’

Sidney replied without hesitation. ‘Although I, of course, have to believe that it’s never too late for redemption. I only wish I could have worked out what was going on a little earlier.’

‘I don’t know if you would have saved Mr Ali’s life, Sidney. It was a slow process.’

‘I should have looked more carefully and thought about what was going on: the lemonade, the tea, the cricket ball – all that sleight of hand.’

‘The disguised delivery . . .’

‘I sometimes think, Geordie, that we can learn a lot from cricket. There are so many ways in which it echoes the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.’

‘It takes too long though. Football: ninety minutes, perfect. Rugby: eighty minutes, even better. You wouldn’t catch me going to a Test match. Five days! It seems an eternity.’

‘I think for some cricketers that’s the point. They think they are in heaven.’

‘Well it’s not my idea of paradise, that’s for sure.’

The two men enjoyed a companionable silence, resting from the rigours of detection. A group of graduate students were laughing at the next table, enjoying all the romantic promise of youth. He noticed that one of them had a cricketing jumper draped over his shoulders. ‘You know, I once met an old soldier who claimed that he taught Hitler to play cricket.’

‘Really?’ Sidney asked.

‘It was during the First War. My acquaintance, I won’t call him a friend as he was a bit of a fascist, had been a prisoner of war. Hitler was recovering from his wounds in a nearby hospital. One day he saw them playing and he asked for the rules of the game.’

‘I suppose he found it hard to follow?’

‘He thought he could use it to train up his men, give them a bit of discipline.’

Sidney took another sip of beer. ‘I wonder if the war might have been different if the Germans had played cricket. It doesn’t seem likely, does it?’

‘No, it never caught on. Apparently Hitler found the game “insufficiently violent”. Although he might have thought differently if he’d come to Cambridge.’

‘Indeed,’ Sidney concurred grimly.

The Uncertainty Principle

In April 1961, two weeks after an Easter weekend when he had been out walking Dickens under a moon so full and bright that you could almost read
The Times
at midnight, Sidney was sitting at home, listening to reports on the radio of Yuri Gagarin’s voyage into outer space. One account mentioned that the Russian cosmonaut had complained about his inability to find God. He had looked and looked, he had apparently said, but could see no sign of his creator. Sidney expressed irritation at this glib propaganda but Leonard Graham was not worried. He replied that there was a greater chance of finding aliens floating around in spaceships than there was of encountering a physical manifestation of God in the galaxy. ‘I don’t know if you have heard of the Fermi Paradox?’ he asked.

‘I most certainly have not.’

‘Enrico Fermi . . .’

‘An Italian?’

‘A naturalised American, I believe. Fermi has suggested that, given the age of the universe and its vast number of stars, extraterrestrial life should be quite common.’

‘And does he have any evidence for this assertion?’

‘Scientists are looking at various equations to assess the mathematical probability, things like the rate of star formation in the galaxy; the fraction of stars with planets and the number per star that are habitable; the fraction of those planets which develop life, the fraction of intelligent life, and the further fraction of detectable technological intelligent life; and finally the length of time such civilisations are detectable.’

‘How do you know all this?’

‘I heard Amanda’s friend Tony talking about it the last time I was in London.’

‘Ah,’ Sidney replied. ‘Him.’

‘Amanda’s friend Tony’ had been on the periphery of Sidney’s radar but they had never met even though Leonard had been to one of his public lectures. A professor at the University of London, Dr Anthony Cartwright had written several books on the nature of time and was in his forties. He had met Amanda at a London dinner party a few years ago (she had even asked Sidney to make a few enquiries amongst his Corpus colleagues but things had soon ‘gone off the boil’ and she hadn’t followed it up). Recently, however, Cartwright had re-emerged on the London scene and he had already taken Amanda to both the opera and the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Sidney was used to his friend’s array of suitors and had assumed that none of them would ever come up to the mark. Amanda’s usual line in polite society was that if she promised herself to one man now then she might run the risk of missing out on ‘someone better’ in a few years’ time, although most of the available men these days were, she vouchsafed, ‘the wrong side of hopeless’. Privately, she often told Sidney that it was simpler to concentrate on the reliability of her profession rather than the vagaries of the masculine whim. He was therefore under the impression that, despite her public protestations, Amanda actually preferred the freedom of the single life.

Now, however, there was news. Sidney’s telephone rang at eleven o’clock at night. Dickens looked up, sensing that this might delay his nocturnal constitutional and Leonard raised an eyebrow. Sidney picked up the receiver to hear Amanda start on a story that contained no introduction. ‘Tony has asked me to marry him and I have accepted.’

Sidney was so nonplussed that it took him a moment to realise that ‘Tony’ must be Dr Anthony Cartwright and could only offer a hesitant answer while he bought more time. ‘Congratulations. That’s marvellous, isn’t it?’

‘It is.’ Amanda paused, expecting more. Sidney said nothing.

‘Obviously we want you to take the ceremony.’

‘You mean you’d like it in Grantchester?’

‘No, of course not. That’s too far for all my friends and we don’t know anyone there. We’re having it at Holy Trinity, Sloane Street.’

‘Where they already have a vicar. I think it’s Lionel Tulis . . .’ Sidney wondered why Amanda had decided to do this. It was too sudden.

‘He won’t mind. We’ve even booked a date. It’s July the eighth.’

‘I am sure the vicar will mind, Amanda. That is quite a church.’

‘I’ll sort him out.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t.’

‘What’s wrong, Sidney? I hope you’re happy for me.’

‘Of course I’m pleased,’ Sidney replied without conviction. He hoped he could somehow persuade Hildegard to come to the ceremony. If not, he would have to ask Keating. ‘Perhaps I could just preach the sermon?’ he offered.

‘No, Sidney, I want you to marry us. That’s the whole point. We agreed, you remember?’

‘I can’t remember agreeing to anything.’

‘Well, agree with me now. I don’t care what you do as long as you approve.’

‘I thought I had power of veto?’

‘Not in this case. I’ll be glad to get it out of the way. People have been nagging me to marry for years and I don’t mind telling you that it’s rather a relief to get it over and done with.’

Sidney was unsettled by her practical tone. ‘You do love him, don’t you?’

‘Of course.’

‘It’s just that you don’t sound . . .’

‘I’m trying not to be
nervous
about it, Sidney. Can’t you tell? Of course I love him. He’s got the most amazing mind.’

‘Well then . . .’

‘I think I need something a bit more than “Well then . . .” ’

‘I haven’t met him, Amanda. It feels a bit sudden.’

‘One of us has to get on with it. You’ve been hanging about for years.’

‘This isn’t about me.’

‘No, it most definitely is not. When would you like to come and meet him? I expect you’ll want to give us all that marriage preparation, won’t you?’

Sidney noticed that Leonard was still in the room and that he had been listening. That was almost as irritating as the telephone call. He needed to get out and walk Dickens. ‘Pastoral advice is customary when people are preparing for matrimony.’

‘Obviously you don’t need to tell us anything about sex. I think we can manage perfectly well judging by the way Tony kisses me and I don’t want it to be embarrassing, either for you or for us.’

Sidney blanched at the revelation of information he did not require. ‘I will have to talk to you about the solemnity of the occasion and what you plan to do about children.’

‘Tony says he doesn’t want any.’

‘That doesn’t mean we don’t have to discuss it. What about you, Amanda?’

‘I don’t mind. It’s whatever Tony wants. He’s besotted. Are you coming to dinner with Nigel and Juliette a week on Saturday? We could meet there.’

The last time he had been to dinner with his friends Amanda’s previous engagement ring had been stolen. Sidney presumed she now had another one to match the new man in her life. ‘It’s a bit difficult, coming down from Cambridge.’

‘What’s difficult about it? Honestly, Sidney, people do it all the time.’

‘I’ve got a lot on.’

‘But nothing crucial, surely? There must be some respite from all your murders. In any case, what could be more important than meeting the man with whom I’m going to spend the rest of my life?’

Nigel Thompson and his wife Juliette lived in St John’s Wood. Sidney’s sister Jennifer had also been invited to the dinner party with her boyfriend Johnny Johnson. Juliette asked Sidney if he wanted to ‘bring anyone special’ since she had heard news of Hildegard. When her guest informed her that Hildegard was in Germany, she offered to invite a different eighth person to make up the numbers but Sidney was insistent that he wanted to speak to Amanda and her new fiancé without distraction.

The food was quietly stylish and unpretentious (mackerel pâté with melba toast, a chicken casserole with green beans and toasted almonds, a lemon tart) because the guests had not come to assess the cuisine but Anthony Cartwright. He obliged them by talking about himself throughout the meal.

Despite the fact that he had managed to ensnare an attractive fiancée, Cartwright was not a man who set much store by appearances. He wore a three-piece tweed suit that was probably worn every day; he had a thin, long face with small, pale-blue eyes, a tight little mouth and a chin that compensated for his reduced features by jutting forward. Sidney thought that he could have done with a beard to soften the impact of the jawline, but conversation was clearly more important than his looks and he spoke with a lifetime of assuming that he was the cleverest man in the room. He didn’t offer any questions but waited to be asked himself, regarding the time in which others were speaking as an opportunity to prepare for his next salvo.

Amanda was girlish in his presence and anxious to please. ‘We are such opposites we should complement each other perfectly,’ she laughed.

Cartwright was eager to point out that he was a key member of a research team in America, and that he would be spending most of his vacations across the Atlantic, engaging in vital enquiries into the nature of movement, velocity, time and space.

‘Which suits me very well,’ Amanda smiled, reaching out to hold her fiancé’s hand. ‘I can continue my independent life in London while Tony masters the secrets of the universe. You will hardly notice the difference.’

‘And what is the nature of your research?’ Sidney asked.

‘I wouldn’t expect a priest to understand, Canon Chambers,’ Tony Cartwright replied.

‘Try me,’ Sidney bristled.

The professor took a patronising sigh before telling the assembled party that he was working on an extrapolation of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, a theory which stated that the position and the velocity of an object cannot both be measured exactly and at the same time.

‘And why is that?’ Juliette asked.

Cartwright was irritated to be interrupted but continued. The act of measuring precisely the velocity of a subatomic particle, such as an electron, he explained, will always knock it about in an unpredictable way, so that the simultaneous measurement of its position has no validity. He was therefore seeking funding to build a sophisticated (and expensive) resonator circuit that could not only measure position and velocity more exactly and more sensitively, but also quantify the size of what he called a ‘superposition principle’, in which a particle could simultaneously exist in two places.