by James Runcie
‘I am not sure he would.’
‘It is difficult. The building is wealthy but the people who built it were poor. I know you will say it is all for the greater glory. Soli Deo gloria. As our lives should be.’
‘Indeed, Hildegard,’ Sidney replied. ‘As our lives should be.’
The next morning, on their last full day in Florence, Amanda insisted that everyone came for lunch in one of her favourite restaurants. As the Chambers family set out, they could see that the city was returning to normal; a party of schoolchildren were being taken on a nature trail round the Boboli Gardens, a group of nuns were returning from Mass (one of them was even eating an orange), and a man in a large fur-collared coat waited outside the Pitti Palace for the arrival of a woman who could only be his mistress.
They crossed the river and found themselves in a small, dark trattoria hosted by a weighty proprietor who was happy to display charm to his diners and authoritarianism to his staff. It was not an expensive or pretentious meal, but it was comforting and it felt right: tortellini in brodo, chicken cacciatore, and zabaglione to follow.
Sidney started a mock grissini fight with his daughter, and Amanda suggested that next time they should all meet in Rome. She would make sure Henry joined them. They could make it a long weekend in the spring, when there was no danger of any flooding.
‘Like this poor battered stick of grissini, we have survived,’ Sidney said, ‘in order to fight another day.’
‘Let there be no more fighting,’ Hildegard asked.
‘And no more POLICEMEN!’ Anna announced, striking down Sidney’s breadstick.
The waiter was ready to take their order. ‘Gelato alla fragola,’ Anna called out before asking her mother: ‘Can we paint the man on the horse again?’
Amanda leaned over to Sidney. ‘We’ll make an artist of her yet. Perhaps one day she’ll come back and see those Piero portraits and she’ll remember all this.’
‘It would have been odd if the Etheringtons had only got away with one of them, don’t you think?’
Amanda put down her menu. ‘One is worth nothing without the other.’
Sidney turned to his wife but she was quick to prevent further speech. ‘No sermon please, my darling.’
‘I was about to be very nice to you.’
‘You are always good to me.’
‘We are our own double portrait.’
After the meal, Sidney and Hildegard walked back through the city arm in arm. Amanda showed Anna the shop windows and asked her goddaughter what she wanted for Christmas. They passed the duomo with its gracefully magisterial cupola, and Sidney said that it reminded him of the photograph of St Paul’s Cathedral during the Blitz; when beauty stood out amid the surrounding devastation.
Less than two weeks ago they had sheltered inside that very same building when the rain had first come to Florence. He remembered how Anna had taken his hand and Hildegard had leant in to him, as if he, and he alone, could protect them from storm and thunder and all that might happen in the future. The members of the family were like pillars in a Renaissance cloister, he thought, individually contributing to the whole design. Together they formed something stronger and more beautiful than anything they could achieve on their own. Then, at the end of their lives, the least they might be able to say was that they had understood what it was to take part in something greater than themselves. They had known love. They would defend it against anything that came after it; taking risks in order to care for each other in the face of an indifferent world, working as hard as they could to nurture, preserve and protect what they had found and made. Such a love was too precious to put in jeopardy. It was life itself.
A Note on the Author
James Runcie is an award-winning film-maker and the author of seven novels. Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death, the first in ‘The Grantchester Mysteries’ series, was published in 2012, soon followed by Sidney Chambers and The Perils of the Night, and Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil. In October 2014, ITV launched Grantchester, a prime-time, six-part series starring James Norton as Sidney Chambers. James Runcie lives in London and Edinburgh.
www.jamesruncie.com
www.grantchestermysteries.com
@james_runcie
The Grantchester Mysteries
Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death
Sidney Chambers, the Vicar of Grantchester, is a thirty-two year old bachelor. Sidney is an unconventional clergyman and can go where the police cannot.
Together with his roguish friend Inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney inquires into the suspect suicide of a Cambridge solicitor, a scandalous jewellery theft at a New Year’s Eve dinner party, the unexplained death of a well-known jazz promoter and a shocking art forgery, the disclosure of which puts a close friend in danger. Sidney discovers that being a detective, like being a clergyman, means that you are never off duty...
‘While the diminutive priest detective created by G. K. Chesterton led the way, Sidney Chambers is set fair to be a worthy successor ... this is quite an achievement’
Daily Mail
‘At last, an Anglican Father Brown ... Each tale is beautifully crafted and surprising. I hope for many more volumes’
A. N. Wilson, Spectator
‘A charmingly effective tale of detection ... evoking oodles of churchy village atmosphere, circa 1953, provides a satisfyingly old-fashioned read!’
The Times
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Sidney Chambers and The Perils of the Night
1955. Canon Sidney Chambers, loveable priest and part-time detective, is back. Accompanied by his faithful Labrador, Dickens, and the increasingly exasperated Inspector Geordie Keating, Sidney is called to investigate the unexpected fall of a Cambridge don from the roof of King’s College Chapel, a case of arson at a glamour photographer’s studio and the poisoning of Zafar Ali, Grantchester’s finest spin bowler.
Alongside his sleuthing, Sidney has other problems. Can he decide between his dear friend, the glamorous socialite Amanda Kendall and Hildegard Staunton, the beguiling German widow? To make up his mind Sidney takes a trip abroad, only to find himself trapped in a web of international espionage just as the Berlin Wall is going up.
‘While the diminutive priest detective created by G. K. Chesterton led the way, Sidney Chambers is set fair to be a worthy successor ... this is quite an achievement’
Daily Mail
‘The coziest of cozy murder mysteries’
New York Times Book Review
‘Totally English, beautifully written, perfectly in period and wryly funny. More, please!’
Country Life
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Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil
It is the 1960s and Canon Sidney Chambers is enjoying his first year of married life with his German bride Hildegard. But life in Grantchester rarely stays quiet for long.
Our favourite clerical detective soon attempts to stop a serial killer who has a grievance against the clergy; investigates the disappearance of a famous painting after a distracting display of nudity by a French girl in an art gallery; uncovers the fact that an ‘accidental’ drowning on a film shoot may not have been so accidental after all; and discovers the reasons behind the theft of a baby from a hospital in the run-up to Christmas, 1963.
In the meantime, Sidney wrestles with the problem of evil, attempts to fulfil the demands of Dickens, his faithful Labrador, and contemplates, as always, the nature of love.
The third in ‘The Grantchester Mysteries’ series – six detective novels spanning thirty years of British history – these four longer stories are guaranteed to delight the many fans of Canon Sidney Chambers.
‘We should welcome him to the ranks of classic detectives’
Daily Mail
‘There is no denying the winning charm of these artfully fashioned mysteries’
Independent
‘Runcie is emerging as Grantchester’s answer to Alexander McCall Smith … T
he book brings a dollop of Midsomer Murders to the Church of England, together with a literate charm of its own: civilized entertainment, with dog-collars’
Spectator
www.bloomsbury.com/JamesRuncie
Click here to order
East Fortune
Jack Henderson, estranged from his ex-wife and grown-up daughters, is involved in a horrific accident. His younger brother Douglas begins an affair with a woman he barely knows, risking everything. And Angus, the eldest of the Henderson boys, finds himself suddenly in freefall having unexpectedly been laid off from his job.
As the three brothers head to their childhood home in East Fortune for their annual summer gathering, they brace themselves against sibling rivalries and parental expectations. East Fortune is a moving story about life and love, chance and hope, and how families survive.
‘This gripping novel has only one major flaw – it was far too short – I wanted at least another 200 pages of these people and their lives’ Victoria Hislop
‘East Fortune is wonderfully alive. James Runcie has written a rich, subtle, and often funny book’ Daily Mail
‘He is the simple chronicler of English post-war life, using irony and understatement to lay bare the patterns of ordinary life’ Sunday Telegraph
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Canvey Island
It is 1953 in Canvey Island. Len and Violet are at a dance. Violet’s husband George sits and watches them sway and glide across the dance floor, his mind far away, trapped by a war that ended nearly ten years ago. Meanwhile, at home, a storm rages and Len’s wife Lily and his young son Martin fight for their lives in the raging black torrent. The night ends in a tragedy that will reverberate through their lives. This poignant novel follows the family’s fortunes from the austerity of the post-war years to Churchill’s funeral, from Greenham Common to the onset of Thatcherism and beyond, eloquently capturing the very essence of a transforming England in the decades after the war. It is a triumph of understated emotion, a novel about growing up and growing old, about love, hope and reconciliation.
‘Runcie has captured the truth about love ... Beautifully done’ Sunday Telegraph
‘A tender, intimate account of post-war England which left me both wistful and elated ... So engaging, so well-shaped and so unsparingly, generously truthful’ Jim Crace
‘Runcie’s third novel is a funny, epic, moving story of Thameside folk ... Canvey Island is a beautifully observed, tragi-comic work’ What’s On
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BY THE SAME AUTHOR
The Discovery of Chocolate
The Colour of Heaven
Canvey Island
East Fortune
The Grantchester Mysteries
Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death
Sidney Chambers and The Perils of the Night
Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil
First published in Great Britain 2015
This electronic edition published in 2015 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
Copyright © 2015 by James Runcie
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