Sidney Chambers and The Persistence of Love

by James Runcie

  ‘But they reported him missing. Was that just to give themselves an alibi?’

  ‘It’s certainly worked. I’ve had that checked. King’s Lynn. All three of them were there.’

  ‘One of them could have come back on the train.’

  ‘They seem very keen to cover for each other. We can’t even be sure they had the dog with them in the first place.’

  ‘Do you think it could be something to do with money, Geordie?’

  ‘They didn’t have very much.’

  ‘Or drugs?’

  ‘They made their own. But perhaps they sold them? It could be some kind of revenge from other people selling drugs in the area. I’ve put the word out.’

  ‘It goes round and round in your head if you let it,’ said Sidney. ‘I don’t suppose they could all just be thoroughly nice and decent people?’

  ‘Not a chance. There’s even the possibility that our man could have killed himself in order to frame the others; or perhaps he just miscalculated on one of his chemical adventures?’

  ‘An accidental overdose? Tranton will know about that.’

  ‘I don’t suppose the teacher could be a suspect?’ Geordie asked.

  ‘Why would he want to kill an old pupil? He’s a lovely man.’

  ‘Everyone’s lovely when they like you, Sidney. I think we need to go back to the wood and have a think there. I’ll pick you up at three tomorrow afternoon. You can bring Byron. He might find something.’

  ‘I should collect Anna from school.’

  ‘Can’t Hildegard do it?’

  ‘She’s teaching. She’s got pupils in for some exam at the Royal Academy of Music. I’m on childcare duties. If I forget, then I’ll be the next dead body you find.’

  ‘I’ll come at half-one then. If we take up too much time I’ll put on the blue light and we can fetch Anna in the police car. She’ll like that.’

  ‘She almost certainly won’t.’

  It had rained again the next morning, but a swift wind blew the clouds to the east and the day had improved so much that by the afternoon it was hard to remember its gloomy start. Then, when they parked the car and started off on the walk to the bluebell wood, Sidney confessed that his mood was not so variable. He was still feeling guilty about exposing his daughter to suffering and for being preoccupied with the world of crime.

  ‘Imagine how I feel,’ said Geordie.

  ‘And how do your children cope? They seem to have done all right.’

  ‘We have just about survived each other. There’s been nothing dramatic so far. They all have quite boring girlfriends and boyfriends.’

  ‘Some people would consider that a relief.’

  ‘I don’t know, Sidney. You can’t legislate for your children.’

  ‘Have you got any tips?’

  ‘Not really. You can’t learn from other people because they don’t have your kids and they haven’t made your mistakes. Perhaps the secret of parenting is to be as kind as you can, plough on and hope for the best. Then there comes a moment when your children no longer need you and you get your freedom back. The only thing is that by then you don’t want so much liberty because you’re too knackered to know what to do with it. You discover that you’re in the world of Shakespeare’s seven ages of man or in the middle of the last reel of a film that you didn’t even know you’d been starring in. Then, soon enough, it’s all over. What’s wrong? Are you listening to me?’

  Sidney was not.

  ‘Look,’ he said.

  Half submerged in the waters below the bluebell wood was the dead body of a woman dressed in black. It was Stella Goddard. An empty box of ashes lay abandoned on the riverbank.

  Sidney and Geordie made their way to the Clarke boat. Linda couldn’t believe the news. She said she had only just left Stella in the woodland. Now she had to be told several times about her death.

  ‘It’s not possible. You’re lying. It can’t be true. You’re making this up.’

  Her husband came up on the deck. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. He looked as if he had just woken up.

  Stella had asked for a few moments alone after they had scattered the ashes, just so that she could take in the moment. She had told Linda and Tony to go on ahead. After an hour or two they had started to worry but knew that their friend might like more time. How could she now be dead?

  ‘Did you see anyone else in the wood?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘There was a family with children. No one we knew. We had to wait for a bit. We didn’t want anyone to see us. It had to be private.’

  ‘And afterwards,’ Geordie wanted to know, ‘you didn’t hear or see anything suspicious?’

  ‘Nothing.’

  ‘And did you come straight home?’

  ‘I did,’ said Tony. ‘I had to see the man from Mason’s. The engine needs servicing. Linda went for a walk.’

  ‘I went downriver,’ his wife continued. ‘I wanted to remember Lenny in my own way. We had so many walks together in the past few years. I wanted to imagine him by my side.’

  ‘They were childhood sweethearts,’ said Tony.

  ‘We didn’t know that,’ said Keating.

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference now.’

  ‘And you didn’t mind, Mr Clarke?’

  ‘It was a long time ago. We’ve all got a past.’

  ‘It’s good to stay friends,’ said Linda. ‘And that’s what we all were. The four of us made our own family. And now, look, it’s just the two of us, me and Tony. I can’t believe it.’

  ‘But you weren’t together after you had scattered the ashes?’ Sidney checked.

  ‘Tony wanted to get on. He doesn’t like to dwell on things. It upsets him.’

  Sidney asked about Stella’s state of mind.

  ‘What do you think?’ Tony asked. ‘You’re the clergyman. You must have seen grief before.’

  ‘I think,’ Geordie cut in, ‘we’d both like to know if Mrs Goddard had ever had suicidal feelings.’

  ‘Is that what it looks like?’ Tony asked.

  ‘I don’t think her death can be that,’ said Linda. ‘Stella was strong. She was determined to do her husband justice; to have a last goodbye. She wouldn’t have given up straight away like that.’

  ‘Sometimes it’s hard to tell what people are thinking,’ said Geordie.

  ‘Not with Stella. She had always known Lenny’s health was frail. She had been half expecting him to die soon and she’d already done most of her mourning in advance. That’s what you try to do when you know. We’d talked about a longer river trip next year and Lenny had said: “Don’t mind me. I’ll probably be gone by then. You have a good time without me.” And do you know what Stella replied? “We will, you old bastard.” And then we all laughed.’

  ‘And were you planning on taking this river trip as well, Mr Clarke?’

  ‘He was my best mate.’

  ‘Even though he once loved your wife?’

  ‘That doesn’t matter. As I said, all that is in the past. I love her. She loves me.’

  ‘I can’t understand how Stella’s gone,’ said Linda. ‘We went swimming together just about every day and if she’d meant to go in the river she wouldn’t have been wearing any clothes. She preferred skinny-dipping. Stella wouldn’t have swum in a dress.’

  ‘Even if she had wanted to kill herself?’

  ‘Especially then,’ said Linda. ‘She loved the feeling of the water against her skin.’

  ‘She wouldn’t have minded the embarrassment?’

  ‘She wouldn’t have cared. But it’s not that. It can’t be that. It must have been an accident. She was in mourning. But she still had us. We loved her. She knew that. We’d just told her so.’

  ‘And you didn’t think it was a mistake to leave her on her own?’

  ‘She asked to be by herself. I think we’ve all wanted a bit of solitude at one time or another in the past few days – just to take it all in. It’s all been so shocking. And now it’s even worse.’

 
; Linda hesitated and then asked: ‘Can I see her? I don’t think I can believe anything unless I do.’

  ‘We can arrange that. You could come too, Mr Clarke?’

  ‘I’ll stay here if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen enough death for one lifetime.’

  Sidney was desperate for a return to the routine of his regular religious duties and the distraction of a day off. He suggested a family picnic by the river. He would prepare it himself, he said: cucumber sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, a pork pie, new young tomatoes, lemonade and the last of the Leipziger Lerche that Anna had made with her mother. They could have ice cream on the way home. It was time to do something good to make up for the bad, he said. Simple pleasures.

  ‘After all, what else can go wrong?’ he asked.

  Anna brought her new camera, an Instamatic, and asked if they could stop by the ponies in the field. She hadn’t forgotten her mother’s promise of a present to make up for her horrible experience and she was now asking what kind of pony she might have – Fell or Dale, Exmoor, Welsh Mountain, Highland or Shetland – rather than whether she could have one at all.

  Impressed by his daughter’s negotiating skills, Sidney changed the subject by pointing to a narrow grass slope in the distance. ‘Let’s play roly-poly,’ he said. ‘Last one there’s a nincompoop.’

  The three of them ran towards the little hillock, got to the top and rolled over and over down the slope, laughing and becoming dizzy and all ending up in a heap. At only one point did Sidney fear that they might come across yet another dead body. Was this now his life, he wondered, always to have such dread in prospect?

  Byron seldom barked but he did now, confused by this onset of high spirits, and worried that the family might have hurt themselves. He went up to each one to check that they were still alive. Then they laid out the food and began to eat, careful to ration the amount they handed over to Byron, never forgetting that time in younger life when he had run across Grantchester Meadows and destroyed a chocolate cake that had been carefully placed at the centre of a picnic rug.

  ‘You know, Sidney, you can be quite good at family life when you want to be,’ said Hildegard.

  ‘This is what I want it to be like all the time,’ her husband replied. ‘Sometimes I wish it wouldn’t stop.’ He cupped his hands. ‘That we could hold it all here like this. A summer’s day, you and me, a young daughter who never grows up and never knows suffering. If we could hold on to it all for just a bit longer.’

  ‘Enjoy the moment,’ said Hildegard, taking his hand. ‘It is precious because it is rare.’

  ‘Lord, behold our family here assembled,’ said Sidney, offering up a quiet grace before they ate. He was quoting the prayer Robert Louis Stevenson said every day. ‘We thank thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food and the bright skies that make our lives delightful . . .’

  Anna’s teacher, Tom Tranton, passed by on his bicycle. He gave a merry wave and then doubled back, circling round them, pretending for a moment that his bicycle had a mind of its own and that he could not control it. Then he asked Sidney if he could have a quiet word. He had just heard about Stella Goddard’s death and had been thinking.

  ‘I know that you and your daughter discovered Lenny was collecting a particularly suspicious group of wild flowers, including digitalis,’ he began, ‘but I still cannot believe he had any malice in him. I wondered if you might consider a different theory; that the poor man did not intend to do any evil but to stop it?’

  ‘How?’

  ‘Suppose he suspected that he had been poisoned and was trying to find an antidote? One way of fighting aconitine poisoning is to administer a combination of atropine with either digitalis or strophanthin at maximum strength to act on the heart. You can’t get strophanthin so easily, but if you know your way around your henbane and your foxgloves you can use their poison to reverse the dose. Perhaps that’s why he was gathering those flowers?’

  ‘Why didn’t he just telephone the doctor?’

  ‘Lenny always thought he knew best. And, if he suspected that someone he loved was trying to poison him, then perhaps he didn’t want to say so in order to save them from suspicion?’

  ‘So he knew?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘I think he did.’

  ‘And you suspect his wife?’

  ‘Or a lover. Or a lover’s husband. Or an enemy hitherto unknown. But somebody he loved enough to forgive – and perhaps even to prevent them being incriminated. You could think of it as a last act of love.’

  ‘That sounds too good to be true.’

  ‘Have you found out if Stella Goddard had been drugged before she was drowned – either by herself or others?’

  ‘We don’t know that yet. I am not the police.’

  ‘Yet you police our morals, Sidney, and if the Bible is to be believed, God’s judgement is more lasting than that of any man.’

  ‘I know you don’t believe in such things.’

  ‘Oh, I believe in judgement, but not for all eternity. There’s no need to scare people with stories they can’t imagine or, more likely, with something that doesn’t exist. Sometimes I think I’m quite looking forward to oblivion: somewhere there’s no trouble.’

  ‘I think that’s what Tony Clarke’s after.’

  ‘I don’t think he’ll get much of that with the wife he’s got. I remember her as a little girl. Such concentration in biology lessons. The way she dissected a frog . . . she knows her chemistry too. They all do. Where she is now?’

  ‘Seeing the dead body.’

  ‘Leaving Mr Clarke on his own?’

  ‘He just wants a quiet life.’

  ‘Unfortunately, Sidney, there is no such thing as a quiet life. Even the smallest atom has to keep in a state of flux. It’s impossible for any life form to discover a state of constant equilibrium. Take the haemoglobin molecule and its violent oscillations . . .’

  ‘I’m not so sure I need to know about that, Tom . . .’

  ‘Life exists only in so far as it evolves in time as a never-ending stream of events. The story never concludes. Nature has no morality. That’s why we need you, Sidney. But I’m afraid I must take my leave. You need your family and I need my life. Embrace the chaos. Adieu!’

  As soon as he got home, Sidney decided to telephone Geordie and ask if Linda Clarke had returned to her boat. It might be an idea, he suggested, to follow her and keep a watch on her husband.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ his friend replied. ‘That’s all in hand.’

  ‘Only, I was thinking of popping in.’

  ‘Oh you were, were you?’

  ‘I just had a few more questions.’

  ‘Then it promises to be quite a party. I was just out the door myself.’

  ‘I’m going to call on Tom Tranton first,’ said Sidney. ‘There’s just one more thing I want to ask him.’

  ‘Is it about the dog?’

  ‘How did you guess?’

  ‘Because I’m the one that’s the detective.’

  It was a warm summer evening and people were sitting out on the decks of their boats, drinking beer or mugs of tea, playing guitars, waiting for the stars to come out on a three-quarter moon. Sidney and Geordie passed a half-hearted game of French cricket being played in the last of the light and a pair of lovers lay on the long grass, beside a weeping willow, stroking each other’s hair.

  The Clarke boat was moored further away on a darker stretch past a bend in the river. There were lanterns on board, a table laid out for supper, drinks on deck and the unmistakable aroma of a barbecue.

  Music was playing – easy listening, perhaps a bit of Radio 2 – and, as they approached, Sidney and Geordie could hear laughter. For a moment they wondered whether they had made a mistake. This, perhaps, was a couple trying to return to normal after the death of their best friends. Linda emerged wearing the longest chiffon scarf Sidney had ev
er seen. ‘I saw a natterjack this afternoon,’ she was saying. ‘They’re quite rare. They have this beautiful yellow stripe down the spine. It’s the same colour as my scarf. Would you like another drink?’

  Her husband was tending the barbecue. ‘I don’t mind. I feel a bit funny.’

  ‘I hope it’s not one of your turns.’

  ‘You can talk . . .’

  ‘Can we be of assistance?’ Geordie asked, as he and Sidney arrived on the quay.

  ‘What do you want now?’ Tony answered, moving the meat to one side.

  ‘I hope we haven’t interrupted anything.’

  ‘What does it look like?’

  ‘Is there any news?’ said Linda.

  ‘I think we’d like another of our chats.’

  Sidney announced that he wanted to talk about friendship. Could Linda and Tony remind them how long they had all known each other?

  ‘Lenny, Linda and I were at school together,’ said Tony. ‘You know that. All taught by Tranton.’

  ‘And why do you volunteer that now?’

  ‘Because he’s been poking his nose in.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘He came to see us,’ said Linda. ‘And he was at the funeral.’

  ‘What did he want to know?’

  ‘How we were keeping. But I think he really came to snoop.’ She turned to Geordie. ‘Did you send him?’

  ‘No, I didn’t,’ said Geordie.

  ‘Did he talk about frogs?’ Sidney asked.

  ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘Because he remembered you, Mrs Clarke, dissecting one at school.’

  ‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything . . .’ Tony cut in before his wife could answer.

  ‘Bufotenine,’ said Sidney.

  ‘I don’t think I know it,’ Linda replied.

  ‘I think you do.’

  Her husband was perplexed. ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘You extract it from amanita mushrooms and from the skin and venom of toads. According to Tranton you were something of a zoologist at school, Mrs Clarke, and then, when you went to university, you became an expert in herpetology . . .’

  ‘The study of amphibians,’ Geordie continued, ‘frogs, newts, salamanders and . . .’