Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page B

sure I would refer to it as “entertaining”.’
    ‘They stayed long enough.’
    Sidney pressed. ‘About the visitor that you saw on the day of Philip’s death . . .’
    ‘He looked very much as they all do. He was very thin and he had a loping gait. You would think that he had become so adept at asking for money that his features had fixed into a permanently servile humility. It was not attractive.’
    ‘But this man might either be responsible for Philip’s death or know something very important. We have to find him.’
    ‘I don’t think that’s our job.’
    ‘It is our duty to share any knowledge with the police. I must insist that you tell my friend Inspector Keating what you know.’
    ‘Very well. But I fear we may be barking up the wrong tree. Rather like your dog, I should imagine.’
    ‘Dickens doesn’t bark very often. Only when he senses something is very wrong.’
    ‘Perhaps he is like his master in that respect, Canon Chambers. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must attend to the candles and check the hassocks are all in the right place. I like to leave things tidy. Good day to you.’
    ‘Mr Harland, you seem to be reluctant to confront some aspects of the way in which our poor friend Philip left this world. What is on your mind, I wonder?’
    ‘Not at all. I merely ask myself if the crime was not perhaps sexually motivated in some way. You know that Mr Agnew was a confirmed bachelor. He never married.’
    ‘But that does not make him a homosexual.’
    ‘We all know that he was.’
    ‘I always think it’s better not to ask,’ Sidney replied.
    ‘Canon Chambers, for a man of such curiosity you seem very squeamish about things that might matter.’
    ‘I don’t see how this could possibly be construed as a sexually motivated crime and this is hardly the place to be talking about it.’
    ‘Then I apologise, Canon Chambers. I was merely making a suggestion.’
    ‘However, I do not shy away from pursuing questions that may lead to some kind of truth. Did Philip Agnew have any particular friends?’
    ‘No. I rather think that was the problem. Because there was not one person, there were many.’
    ‘I’m not sure how you can know that.’
    ‘Trust me, Canon Chambers. I do.’
     
    The next day, Helena Randall stopped Sidney in the street. She wanted his thoughts, both on the murder and on the missing vagrant. He told her firmly that he was not ready to share them because he was inwardly uncertain if this was a deliberate crime against a possibly homosexual priest, or a consciously misleading suggestion by Patrick Harland who might, or might not, have been a spurned lover himself.
    ‘And so,’ Sidney replied, ‘I don’t think I can have much to offer Inspector Keating. In any case, I think we are both peripheral figures in his life . . .’
    ‘You may be, Canon Chambers, but I am not. It’s my job to report. It’s Inspector Keating’s to investigate and solve the case. Perhaps you could remind me of your vocation?’
    ‘I am helping a friend . . .’
    ‘And so am I.’
    ‘I worry that in so doing you may, in fact, be distracting him.’
    ‘You’re being very solicitous.’
    ‘I don’t want to intrude . . .’
    ‘You are intruding. But there’s no need for you to worry about Geordie and me. There’s nothing going on, you know. It’s only a bit of fun.’
    Sidney remembered being with a London girl, Janet, during the war before he went off to fight. His friends had told him that he could not die without knowing a woman first. Then Janet had said the same thing. He shouldn’t worry about making love to her. It was ‘only a bit of fun’.
    It was so long ago and he had never told anyone about it. He wondered what had happened to her: if she still lived in the East End, if she had survived the Blitz, if she was perhaps married with three children, or if she was alive at all.
    Helena looked at him quizzically and he realised he had repeated the words ‘only a bit of fun’ out