Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) by James Runcie Read Free Book Online

working her way through a particularly stormy bit of Beethoven when he arrived home and Sidney was just thinking that it would be safest to let her get on with it and tiptoe to his study when she stopped playing and called him into the drawing-room.
    She did not move from the piano. Her hands lay on the silent keys and she stared at him over the music rest as he stood in the doorway. ‘Where have you been?’ she asked.
    ‘I was a little delayed coming home.’
    ‘So . . . have you walked Dickens?’
    ‘No. Why? Have you?’
    ‘I just want to know what you have been doing?’
    ‘I’ve been out and about. The usual things. I can’t really remember all the details but I’m home now. There’s no need to worry.’
    ‘Don’t be evasive. I just want to know where you have been this evening?’
    ‘I was with Geordie. You know that.’
    ‘The whole time?’
    ‘Yes, just about.’
    ‘You didn’t see anyone else?’
    ‘Not really.’
    ‘Sidney, I want you to think very hard about this.’
    ‘I’ve got so much else to worry about. There have been developments.’
    ‘You can say that again. What were you doing with Mrs Keating?’
    ‘Oh, that? I just met her outside the butcher’s. It was nothing.’
    ‘Nothing? I think you gave her a little kiss.’
    ‘She gave me one. I haven’t done anything wrong, Hildegard.’
    ‘You are sure?’
    Sidney hesitated. ‘I suppose someone has said something. Is this Mrs Maguire being helpful?’
    ‘I’m grateful to her. She saw it all.’
    ‘It was a peck on the cheek, nothing more.’
    ‘People will talk.’
    ‘I could hardly cut her dead. Besides, it is my job to give pastoral care.’
    ‘When people are sick and distressed. There’s nothing wrong with Cathy Keating.’
    ‘You are right. There isn’t.’
    ‘Then why did she kiss you?’
    ‘Because I promised to help her. It’s difficult to explain, my darling.’
    ‘Have a try.’
    ‘I’m worried about Geordie, if you must know. He seems to have taken a shine to a local journalist.’
    ‘The one I met?’
    ‘Yes. Helena Randall.’
    ‘His wife is more attractive.’
    ‘Yes, that’s what I think.’
    Hildegard smiled at her husband. He had walked right into her trap. ‘What am I going to do with you?’ she asked.
    Dickens brought them his favourite shoe, then his old red sock and finally his squeaky rabbit, forcing the couple to think of other things and take him for a brief walk to the end of the road and back, before the ritual of evening cocoa.
    All was calm once more, and Hildegard had gone up to bed when the fragile peace of the vicarage was broken by a knock on the door from a police officer. He had time for neither friendliness nor formality. Earlier that evening, the body of another clergyman, Isaiah Shaw, had been discovered on Jesus Green. At first it appeared that it was suicide. He had hung himself from a tree. Then the same hatched stab marks were found on his chest: the mark of the beast.
    Sidney asked for a few moments alone before accompanying the police officer to the station. He went upstairs, kissed his sleeping wife, and left her a note in case she woke up.
    Even though it was almost midnight, he wanted to pray before he did anything else. He knelt briefly at his prie-dieu and remembered the dead.
    Isaiah Shaw had been a studious, hard-working clergyman with skeletal features, a slightly hooked nose, and dark recessed eyes that gave the appearance of never seeing daylight. He was a somewhat tortured man who was perhaps too sensitive to his own flaws, and who took to the bottle when he worried how far he fell short of living in God’s image. He felt the cold easily, complained of poor circulation and was well known in clerical circles for greeting friends and neighbours with ‘the icy hand of doom’. This was unfortunate because although he had neither small talk nor a sense of humour, preferring books to people, Sidney recognised that Isaiah’s heart was in the right place and