Sidney Chambers and The Dangers of Temptation
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That left Danny Wilkinson, who swore that, at the time of Pascoe’s death, they had been drinking from the loving cup before resting in a state of trance.
‘And does that cup have any ingredients that the police might consider illegal?’
‘I can’t tell you that.’
‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ Keating snapped.
‘Tell me, Danny,’ Sidney resumed, ‘do you plan to stay here? It will be very different now.’
‘I have nowhere else to go, man.’
‘Your father and mother . . .’
‘I said I have nowhere else.’
‘But you no longer have your leader . . .’
‘Your Church follows a dead man,’ Danny Wilkinson concluded. ‘Here we are living a life of peace and beauty. That’s all there is. All that matters. What we’re waiting for.’
By the time the questioning had been completed, Keating was unimpressed. ‘Peace and beauty, my arse. That’s got to be one of the least tranquil places on earth. They’re all terrified. I don’t believe a word any of them say. I presume you’re going to keep helping me with all this? It probably means seeing a bit more of the boy’s mother, but you won’t mind that.’
Sidney was part of a working party to discuss the Church of England’s attitude to ‘modern morality’, during which everyone spent a great deal of time trying to find the right level of informed tolerance over matters such as sex before marriage, divorce, homosexuality and abortion. After several protracted sessions in dim Westminster basements with lukewarm coffee and stale biscuits, he needed cheering up.
Tubby Hayes was headlining at Johnny’s club in Soho. This meant that Sidney could see one of his favourite sax players and question his brother-in-law about the status of his marriage at the same time.
The band was playing ‘Finky Minky’. Sidney ordered a tomato juice and thought through his approach. He would begin by asking about the main matter in hand, not least because Johnny had been present when Barbara Wilkinson had first arrived to discuss her fears about the farm.
‘I don’t know what it is with those places,’ Johnny began. ‘They give me the creeps.’
‘I think it’s an attempt to opt out of boredom and pursue something other than the norm. I suppose jazz started like that. As did the Church.’
‘You just have to stay true, Sidney: no gimmicks. I hate it when vicars get the guitars out.’
‘I am not wild about that either, I must say. It’s all part of our appeal to “the youth of today” people keep writing about.’
‘Those campfire Christians always look like people who are too scared to have sex.’
‘I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that. Perhaps they are just waiting for the right moment.’
‘That’s what Christianity’s all about, isn’t it: deferred gratification? Waiting for the return of Jesus, hoping for revelation. You’d think they might want to hurry things along a bit.’
‘Some of them do. This cult I was telling you about. They have a “loving cup”.’
‘You think it might be spiked?’
‘I’m afraid so.’
‘And you want me to put out a few feelers? It’ll be a local dealer.’
‘Just the odd discreet word might be helpful.’
Johnny pointed to the band as they swung into ‘Mexican Green’ at the start of the second set. ‘Tubby is no stranger on the scene. Blossom knows people too, but she doesn’t get involved.’
‘The singer?’
‘She’s become a regular here. Everyone loves her.’
‘Jen was saying.’
‘She’s worried we’re having an affair.’
‘And are you?’ Sidney was surprised by his own boldness.
‘So that’s why you’re here.’
‘Not entirely . . .’
‘Blossom’s much older than me and she’s not a woman you mess with. I’ve told Jen there’s nothing going on, but she’s suspicious.’
‘Is your artiste married?’
‘Not any more. But I’m telling you, Sidney, there’s nothing going on. You can meet her if you like. Then you’ll see.’
‘I suppose the late nights can’t have helped.’
‘This is a jazz club, Sidney. What am I supposed to do? Leave after the first set and tuck up early? Come on, let me get you a proper drink.’
As the band launched into ‘Off the Wagon’ and Sidney accepted the addition of vodka to his tomato juice, he had to admit that his resistance to temptation was not always as good as it should have been.
* * *
Barbara Wilkinson’s former husband, Mike, was a strict but efficient Scottish dentist who was keen to instruct his new patient on the importance of ‘a confident mouth’.
‘So much goes into it, Mr Archdeacon: food, air, bacteria. It has to be your front line of defence. All manner of things can unsettle, invade and then fester. Your gums have been open to attack for far too long. In fact, your teeth are failing so fast it’s like the Battle of Bannockburn in there.’
Sidney had not seen a dentist for almost ten years and now remembered why. Mike Wilkinson had a similarly poor attendance record at Sunday services. ‘I went to church once too bloody often,’ he volunteered, referring no doubt to his marriage.
Sidney’s inability to keep to proper standards of oral hygiene meant that he was now in need of a crown, three fillings and some root-canal treatment, not to mention the fact that it was likely he would soon have to have his wisdom teeth extracted.
‘Do you have to knock me out for that?’
‘Not completely,’ Mike Wilkinson explained. ‘It depends on how complicated it is. Some patients do prefer hospital but we can call in an anaesthetist. We do have everything to hand.’
‘Gas and air?’
‘Yes. Sedation too. We try to make sure people hardly notice they’ve been here.’
‘That’s not a story I’ve often heard told.’
‘I shouldn’t worry too much, Mr Archdeacon, although we will have to see you quite a few times. However, one of the side effects of diazepam is amnesia, so you may well forget how many.’
Sidney was not at ease. He worried about the misuse of dentistry. Could, for example, a murderous dentist get away with a slow-acting poison inserted into the body of a filling that might not kill until days or weeks afterwards? How easy would that be to detect?
He lay back in the chair and wondered why he was thinking like this. Who else would imagine that their dentist was a potential murderer?
As he was waiting for the anaesthetic to take effect, Sidney mentioned that he had seen Mike’s son Danny just before Fraser Pascoe’s death.
‘A ghastly business. I was in London at a meeting of the British Endodontic Society at the time. We meet to exchange ideas on all aspects of pulp and root-canal treatment. Dr Angelo Sargenti was giving a paper on the use of N2. Barbara tracked me down and told me.’
‘So you do speak to each other?’
‘Not if we can help it. But when it concerns our son, we have to. Hopefully that’ll put an end to it all. They can’t go on without their leader.’
‘I think they’re going to try. The plan is to live outside the capitalist system.’
‘Then Danny should move to Moscow.’
‘I’m not sure that’s practical.’
‘It’s no more difficult than living without heat or money in a draughty old barn with a collection of messed-up lunatics.’
‘I suppose if you put it like that . . .’
The dentist resumed his work. ‘Let’s see if we’re ready to continue. A little wider please, Mr Archdeacon.’
The drilling began and Mike Wilkinson drew this particular subject of conversation to a close. ‘You can’t force your children to do anything against their will. But you can cut off their source of funds. That’s what I’ve told Barbara. But she’s too weak with Danny. She had a soft spot for Fraser Pascoe too.’
‘Really?’ Sidney mumbled as best he could.
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‘Oh yes. They were quite close at one stage. Then after a couple of months it all fell apart. That’s what happens with Babs. Nothing ever lasts. Rinse and spit please . . .’
That Saturday Sidney took his wife and daughter to lunch with his parents in Highgate. Alec and Iris Chambers had both retired and now that they were well into their seventies they were thinking of selling the family home and moving somewhere smaller and warmer; Devon, Cornwall, or even France. Alec Chambers said that he wanted to ‘throw some ideas around’ but before they did so he would like ‘a bit of a man-to-man’ with his son. Sidney knew it was going to be serious as soon as he was handed a gin and tonic that he hadn’t asked for.
‘Hildegard has told us what’s been going on and we think you need to be very careful indeed.’
‘There has been a murder.’
‘I know. However, we are more concerned about the woman who came on your birthday.’
‘Barbara Wilkinson?’
‘Indeed. I hope you haven’t been tempted to get involved with her problems?’
‘There’s nothing improper, if that’s what you’re worried about.’
‘I was worrying about the proper, let alone the improper.’
‘I don’t appear to have much choice, Dad. She asked for my help, I went to see her son and his spiritual leader was found murdered.’
‘But that is a matter for Keating.’
‘I know. But when parishioners ask for help . . .’
‘Barbara Wilkinson is not, as far as I am aware, a parishioner.’
‘You know what I mean.’
‘No, I don’t. I was wondering if you would have been so eager to help if the boy’s father had come to see you rather than the mother?’
‘I like to think I would; although there is quite a difference in manner between husband and wife.’
‘This has got to stop, Sidney. It’s not fair on Hildegard.’
‘Have you asked her?’
‘I don’t need to. You can’t just go charging in all over again. Unless you’re trying to impress your femme fatale.’
Hildegard popped her head round the study door. ‘Lunch is ready!’
‘Very good,’ Alec Chambers replied loudly but then added, as a final aside to his son, ‘she may very well not mind, but it’s embarrassing for the rest of us. You have a reputation to keep up.’
‘And I do.’
‘We don’t want gossip. Once Anna starts her education, you’ll have to think about that too. Mothers at the school gates.’
‘I don’t think we need to worry about that. Ely is a decent enough place.’
‘You don’t want to give anyone cause. A priest, like a doctor, must be beyond reproach. Didn’t they teach you anything at theological college? If you really must talk to that female again, make sure that it’s in your house and not hers. You can’t be seen going out of other women’s homes. That’s all I’m saying. Now let’s have some lunch.’
Once they were all seated in the dining room, Iris Chambers produced her famous fish pie and Sidney tried to cheer up proceedings by making a jokey reference to Sidney Bechet’s ‘Hold Tight (Want Some Seafood Mama)’. This went unnoticed. Undaunted, he then extended his marine sphere of reference by telling the assembled company that he had recently been to Johnny’s club to see Tubby Hayes play ‘Fishin’ the Blues’.
‘I presume you were “fishing for clues”,’ his mother replied as she served up the fish pie, kale and a dish of carrots that she was trying in a new way: à la julienne.
‘I did ask Johnny about things, if that’s what you want to know.’
‘What things?’ asked Anna.
‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘But,’ Sidney turned to his mother, switching to French, ‘il n’y a rien à faire.’
‘You mean il n’y a pas une affaire?’ his mother asked.
‘Non.’
‘It’s not fair,’ said Anna. ‘Speak in German.’
‘I’m sorry, ma petite,’ Sidney continued, ‘I was distracted by your grandmother’s carrots à la julienne. I will now speak to you only in German.’
‘That won’t last long,’ said Hildegard.
Iris Chambers gave her son an extra helping and was assured that there was nothing to worry about. Sidney was certain Johnny Johnson had been behaving himself. ‘As have I,’ he added quickly, catching his wife’s eye.
‘Guilty conscience?’ she asked.
Sidney tried to concentrate on the matter in hand. He had always been bemused by family secrets and partiality; how assumptions were made, sometimes based on childhood and teenage years that no longer applied when siblings were fully grown adults; how one member of the family might be trusted more than another and that people never knew everything, either about their parents or their children.
‘Are we talking about Sidney or Johnny?’ Alec Chambers enquired.
‘Never you mind,’ his wife answered. ‘Some of this is simply between a mother and a son.’
‘Does it concern Jen?’
‘Zut. C’est fini. The moment has passed.’
‘You promised no more French,’ Anna complained.
Alec Chambers looked to his granddaughter and winked. ‘Don’t worry, poppet. We have our little secrets too, don’t we?’
‘And what are they?’ his wife asked.
‘Zut. C’est fini,’ he replied, and once Anna realised that he was referring to the box of Cadbury’s Lucky Numbers her grandfather had said she could have after lunch, she repeated the phrase again and again until pudding was served.
This was Angel Delight, a new strawberry and cream instant whip that could be made in seconds. ‘I thought you might be amused by the name,’ Iris Chambers told her son, ‘and it’s so easy.’
Her husband began to sing ‘Earth Angel (will you be mine)’ quietly to himself and then increased the volume once he had the attention of the room. Everyone clapped. Sidney couldn’t understand why his mother, who had been so imaginative under rationing and who prided herself in her home cooking, would want to take such an artificial short cut. ‘I remember the trifles you used to make when I was a child: jellies with raspberries; lemon meringue pie on my birthday.’
‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with all that now. Don’t you think it’s a wonderful name? Perhaps the angels scoop it all up when they’ve had enough of playing Bach?’
‘There is no such thing as too much Bach,’ said Hildegard.
When Sidney failed to respond, his mother tried again. ‘You don’t seem to be on top form, my boy. Is it your teeth again?’
‘It’s a bit more than that.’
‘You’re not still being plagued by that ghastly woman?’
‘Pas devant l’enfant,’ Sidney replied.
‘Oh, for goodness sake.’
‘Zut. C’est fini,’ Anna shouted out, only to hear her mother observe:
‘If only it was.’
Shortly after breakfast on the Thursday, Inspector Keating telephoned to say that Dr Allan McDonald had completed the post-mortem and Pascoe’s body had not been drugged. There had been a number of blows, one of which had severed the carotid artery. The resultant bleeding and lack of oxygen to the brain had been the cause of death, but further attempts had then been made to detach the head, which had been kicked away from the body with the force of a footballer’s volley.
The blade of the murder weapon could have been up to sixteen inches long, curved like a sickle or grasshook, and there had been some additional hacking with what might have been a serrated carving knife. Whoever did it would have had blood all over them and so it was imperative to continue searching the area for both weapons and clothing.
Sidney tried not to think too hard about the horrors of the scene. ‘That rules out Barbara Wilkinson, I would have thought.’
‘Unless she was in cahoots with her husband.’
‘The dentist? They hardly speak to each other.’ Even as he said the words, Sidney did not know if this was true.
‘Because of what he was doing to his son?’ Sidney replied. ‘He does have an alibi. That doesn’t stop him or his wife paying someone to do it for them, I suppose.’
‘It’s too messy for a hitman. This was brutal and personal. We need to find out who could have hated Pascoe so much. We’ll have to look a bit harder. In the meantime, there’s no harm in you seeing your lovely lady again, Sidney. Perhaps she’ll tell you a bit more. Give her a bit of your pastoral care.’
‘I’m not sure that would be appropriate.’
Keating managed a sardonic smile. ‘It hasn’t stopped you in the past.’
It had begun to snow, the drifts across the fens covering all the signs of spring. Sidney took Byron, his black Labrador, as well as his bicycle, and caught a late-morning train to Cambridge, determined to get his visit to Barbara Wilkinson over and done with.
Despite the cold outside, her heating was on sufficiently high for her to wear a sleeveless black woollen dress, with her hair in an ‘updo’ style. A soft, dark tendril fell across her eyes. Sidney found himself wanting to move it to one side and touch her cheek. Instead he took her hand as she wept and said that she was frightened of the police. ‘They came asking the most terrible questions.’
‘About Fraser Pascoe?’
‘Danny too. They asked me how much I knew about “free love”. It was insulting.’
‘Fraser Pascoe insisted on celibacy.’
‘But I don’t think that man practised what he preached. I told you that last time.’
‘He was keen on you.’
‘That is not too unusual, Mr Archdeacon, as I’ve said before.’ Still she held his hand.
‘And you didn’t respond to his approach?’