Sidney Chambers and The Forgiveness of Sins (17 page)

Inspector Keating decided the time had come to dole out some advice. ‘You cannot feel responsible for everything that happens, Sidney. All these people were grown adults. In many ways they brought it on themselves.’

‘But I am supposed to help them. It is my duty as a priest.’

‘You cannot bear the burden for all of us. I know that’s what Jesus did, but you, Sidney, despite your popularity, will never be Jesus. That’s one thing I do know; and it’s where my theology stops. We are all human beings, and we’re all buggered.’

‘I’m not sure that’s true.’

‘It’s a good enough place to start. What are you drinking?’

‘The usual.’

‘Good. Keep things clear. Routine is good for you.’

‘I’m not sure about that. I get bored very easily.’

‘I have noticed.’

When Keating returned with the pints he began to improvise on the benefits of playing it straight. ‘But you wouldn’t think it if you read any detective fiction. That’s what drives me crackers. Every Christmas someone thinks it might be a good idea to give me a story by Agatha Christie or Dorothy L. Sayers or some hard-boiled American thriller, and I lose my temper before I am even halfway through. The police are always slow and stupid and can’t do anything right and then a maverick detective who doesn’t play by the book comes along and sorts it all out . . .’

‘It isn’t always like that.’

‘It
is
,’ Keating insisted.
‘
“The book” is there for a reason. Most of the time it works.’

‘But not all the time. Hence the detective novel . . .’

‘The doctor’s always the murderer . . .’

‘Not always . . .’

‘Or the person you least suspect. Or most suspect.’

‘Make up your mind . . .’

‘And the copper ends up being grateful. I think it’s a class thing. The gentleman amateur telling the working-class policeman how it’s all done. It’s snobbery, really.’

‘I hope you don’t think . . .’

‘With you and me? Of course not. Anyway, clergymen are supposed to be classless, aren’t they? Jesus was hardly a toff. And I know how uncomfortable you feel around the aristocracy. You hate going to places like Witchford Hall, don’t you?’

‘I wouldn’t go as far as “hate”, but you’re right. I don’t feel comfortable in those environments. And I certainly didn’t enjoy any part of what we’ve just been through.’

‘You mustn’t blame yourself. That man was a right bastard.’

‘He was still a human being.’

‘You can’t love everyone, Sidney.’

‘I think I am supposed to.’

‘But that’s impossible.’

‘Perhaps being a clergyman, Geordie, like being a policeman or a doctor, involves facing up to the impossible. We have to learn to live without favourites. We belong to everyone and therefore no one. We must serve everyone equally . . .’

Keating was thinking of something else. ‘I do let you off sometimes . . .’

Sidney abandoned his peroration. ‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I don’t bother you with the really nasty stuff.’

‘You mean you protect me?’

‘Of course I do. You lead a very sheltered life, Canon Chambers.’

‘Sheltered? But I’ve been exposed to some of the most horrific crimes in Cambridgeshire for nearly ten years . . .’

‘Well, all I can say is that you’ve probably got about another twenty-five to go.’

‘What?’

‘And those will be the straightforward cases: the ones where we let the amateurs in to make them feel good.’

‘Are you teasing me, Geordie?’

‘I wouldn’t dream of it.’

Sidney downed his drink. ‘I am sure it will all be much calmer by the time I get to Ely. We’ll be living in a cathedral cloister. How much danger can there be in a place like that?’

Geordie stood up to order another round. ‘Let’s see in a year or two. All I can tell you is that if there’s no peace for the wicked then there’s no rest for the good. Either way, man, you’re doomed.’

Fugue

Orlando Richards had never imagined that he would be killed by a piano falling on to his head.

It was just after midday in late July. The Cambridge students were away on their long vacation, it was early closing, and a summer laziness eased its way across a town whose inhabitants sensed that it was far too hot to do any serious work. They should have been on the river, by the seaside, or enjoying one of the new package holidays abroad.

Sidney had walked Byron across the meadows and popped into Corpus for a brief meeting with the bursar. He needed to talk about payment for the tutorials he had taken in the academic year that had just passed and discuss his future. Now that he was going to be an archdeacon he didn’t think he was going to be able to continue with his small amount of teaching. He would no longer have the time to listen to essays on metaphysical poetry, the theology of St Augustine and the influence of the Bible on English literature. Walter Collins said he understood. At least the college could make a small, but much-needed, saving.

Sidney was somewhat surprised. ‘I didn’t know we had any worries about money.’

‘That’s because I make provision for the unexpected.’

The bursar was a man who compensated for any inadequacies in charm with practicality and swiftness. In fact he conducted his business at such speed he managed to convince any gathering that he was the busiest man in the room, that the presence of others was tolerated at best, and that he had far more important things on his mind.

Byron, too, was getting restless, but Sidney was sufficiently interested to continue with the conversation. ‘I did hear that you’ve put up the rents.’

‘Not by much.’

‘Sufficient to cause anxiety.’

He was worried that the poorer members of his congregation who occupied college livings weren’t going to able to afford the increase. Walter Collins assured his colleague that there were discretionary funds for those in need, and that tenants were only evicted as a last resort or when they wilfully refused to pay. It would be better if the archdeacon (elect) concentrated on God and left matters of Mammon to the college.

The meeting was at an end. Sidney knew he had to get home, not least because Hildegard was preparing for her first concert in Cambridge: a serious, almost austere, idea to play the fourteen contrapuncti and four canons of Bach’s
The Art of Fugue
. She had been encouraged to perform, even bullied, she almost complained, by the director of music, Orlando Richards. He had told her that it was about time she brought her light out from under a bushel.

Appropriately, given the fact that the piece was apparently left unfinished when the composer died, Anna had interrupted Hildegard’s playing that morning so that she had had to break off in the middle. This had not gone down well as Sidney had, supposedly, been in charge of childcare at the time and his duty was meant to prevent such an interruption. Consequently he had promised to return early from town so that his wife could make up for her lost practice. He also said that he would not play any jazz while Hildegard was preparing for the concert. Even though she liked jazz, he did not want to put her off. This meant that he had to delay his enjoyment of what he knew was a particularly fine recording that Amanda had found for him in London: Chet Baker’s
The Most Important Jazz Album of 1964/65.

He was leaving Front Court when he stopped to take in an unusual sight: the removal of one piano and the delivery of another to Orlando Richards’s rooms on the second floor. An old Bösendorfer upright was being lowered from the window and a glorious new Steinway B was about to be raised and installed in its place.

Sidney decided to study how it was done because he remembered that they would have to move Hildegard’s piano to Ely soon enough and he needed a reliable firm to take charge of the operation. It was a precarious business, conducted outside, since the internal staircases of the college did not allow sufficient room for turning.

Orlando was waiting nervously below the high windows. He wore a navy suit that was on the baggy side, and a white shirt with an enlarged collar that gave him a little more neck room than normal. He was a man who hated to be either too hot or too cold, plunging his arms into hot water in the winter and cold in the summer, determined to be at room temperature wherever possible. While the bursar was a man of cool efficiency, Orlando was a living advertisement for the artistic temperament: nervous, flamboyant and prone to hysteria. The movement of a piano was, therefore, a highly charged affair.

‘Make sure your dog’s out of the way,’ he shouted before bidding Sidney a tense good morning. ‘Byron must NOT distract the men. I don’t want them tripping on a Labrador.’

A crowd had gathered in Trumpington Street to watch, perhaps remembering Laurel and Hardy’s shenanigans in
The Music Box
, as a foreman shouted out instructions.

‘This new acquisition is very exciting,’ Orlando confided quickly. ‘I’ve never had such a powerful piano. It’s got such a big, bright sound. My touch is going to have to change. I am going to play more orchestrally: Beethoven. Liszt. I can’t wait.’

There was even a photographer present, Colin Larkin, who told Sidney that he was working on a series of images of the British at work and at play. The previous year he had embedded himself in a Bank Holiday fight between mods and rockers at the ‘second battle of Hastings’. He was now planning a suite of photographs that chronicled the construction of a piano from the seasoning of the wood right up to a first performance. He hoped it might find its way into the pages of
Life
magazine.

Six men were involved in the actual removal: a crane operator and handler outside, three at a second-floor window where the glass had been taken out, and Dennis Gaunt, the foreman. The Bösendorfer upright was wrapped in blankets beside the removal lorry, and the boudoir grand was carried to the crane and slid on to a platform.

Three of the men returned to the college and went back upstairs to receive the piano. The head porter came out to check that all was well. Gaunt explained that it was a simple lift on a crane that needed to be as close to the window as possible.

The legs and pedals had been removed and the piano was wrapped and on its side. The crane operator began the lift and one man, Lennie Gaunt, the foreman’s nephew, travelled with the instrument on the platform, holding it close, issuing instructions about the speed of the rise, checking that the three men inside the college were ready.

Just before Lennie reached the second floor, he asked the crane operator to stop. At the same time, the bursar left the Porters’ Lodge and appeared to say something to the foreman before passing dangerously close underneath, muttering that it was ‘probably easier to raise the
Titanic
than move one of your keyboard instruments. Cheaper too.’

Orlando Richards rushed under the piano to tell the bursar to get out of the way. As he did so, Byron trotted over to greet him and Sidney called him back. Dennis Gaunt shouted, ‘Level off and untie.’

His nephew pulled at the ropes holding the piano to the crane.

Then he slipped.

He fell away to the left and down to the ground, scattering some of the crowd. The crane operator made a sudden movement in order to try and correct the balance but miscalculated. The platform tilted and the piano slid away and dropped, hideously, on to the head of Orlando Richards.

There was a scream just before the final crash, a series of loud discordant sounds and then silence.

‘Mary, Mother and Joseph,’ said the head porter.

After the shock of the moment there was a panic of shouting and a babel of instructions as members of the crowd tried to lift the piano away.

Under ten minutes later, the ambulance and the fire brigade arrived. Lennie Gaunt was taken to hospital with a broken leg, the piano was lifted, and the body of Orlando Richards was revealed, as broken as a jointed doll.

There was only one thought in Sidney’s mind. Someone was going to have to tell the victim’s wife.

He had been a clergyman for over fifteen years but he had not become used to bringing news of a death. Perhaps if he had, he told himself, he would be a lesser priest. All that he had learned was to sit the person down and speak calmly, acknowledging that clarity and sympathy were the most important qualities he could offer.

Sidney had been a friend of Cecilia Richards ever since he had arrived in Grantchester. She was a doctor, an unusually tall, poised woman, with ash-blonde hair, a shy smile and a scar that had been on her forehead since childhood. The couple had a six-year-old son, Charlie. He was playing cricket with two friends in the garden, running in and out of the house, asking if they could have more orange squash, and when was Daddy coming home?

‘He’s so like his father,’ Cecilia smiled. ‘Where is he, by the way?’

They were about to go on holiday to the Norfolk Broads and then up to the coast at Cromer. They had friends there and Charlie was the right age for the sea. His mother was going to teach him to sail.

Once Sidney had sat her down and told her what had happened, they did not speak. He prayed but did not suggest that his friend join him. He placed his hand on hers and let the silence take its course.