Sidney Chambers and The Shadow of Death (The Grantchester Mysteries)

you.’
    Nigel and Juliette Thompson accompanied Daphne into the hall, where they said their goodbyes. A further, fruitless, search around the room ensued, and after everyone had ostentatiously opened their pockets and satisfied Guy Hopkins that they were not thieves, Jennifer and Johnny left too. They asked if Sidney wanted to come along to a jazz club with them and although her brother was tempted, he thought it better if everyone calmed down and went home.
    ‘I suppose I’ll be doing the driving,’ Mary Dowland said to her drunk husband.
    ‘Despite my celebratory consumption, I am perfectly capable of driving a car,’ her husband explained. ‘There is nothing to it. And, on a night such as this, what more can possibly go wrong?’
     
    Sidney spent what, on a clergy stipend, was a small fortune on a cab and stayed the night with his parents. It was strange to be back in his childhood home. No matter how often he tried to explain the nature of his vocation and the daily routine of his job, Alec and Iris Chambers regarded their son with an air of amused perplexity. They couldn’t seem to understand how they could have produced a child who had become a priest.
    They found it easier to talk to him as if he was still a diligent seventeen-year-old over whom they still had a measure of control. Whenever Sidney came to stay he was expected to fit in with their daily lives as if he had neither left nor grown up, assisting his father with The Times crossword and his mother with the preparation of the vegetables. Iris Chambers had hinted more than once that it was about time that she was a grandmother, but since neither Sidney, nor Jennifer, nor their brother Matthew, had made any progress in this area of life the three siblings were treated as children every time they came home.
    Matthew was considered to be something of a night owl, and always excused himself from the family gatherings at lunchtime, but Jennifer was expected and she arrived late and in something of a state. She threw down her bags in the hall and exchanged half-hearted New Year greetings with her mother.
    Alec came out of his study to greet her. He had put on his new Christmas jumper and still had his pipe in his right hand. ‘What on earth is the matter?’ he asked.
    ‘Has Sidney not told you about last night?’
    ‘Told us what?’
    ‘As far as I can see,’ Sidney replied, ‘there is nothing, so far, to report. A misplaced ring is bound to turn up.’
    ‘Well it hasn’t,’ Jennifer answered forcefully, before throwing herself down on the sofa. ‘The whole thing is a disaster . . . .’
    Her mother sat down in a neighbouring armchair. ‘You will have to explain, dear.’
    ‘Sidney can do it. I am too upset.’
    There was a small pause in which her mother stood up again and began to head towards the kitchen. ‘Perhaps then, Sidney, you would like to finish laying the table and tell me what happened?’
    Alec Chambers was having none of it. ‘But then I don’t get to hear the story!’
    Jennifer interrupted. ‘It’s very simple. Amanda was given an engagement ring last night.’
    ‘By whom?’ her father asked.
    ‘Guy Hopkins.’
    ‘And who might he be?’
    ‘So Amanda is engaged?’ her mother cut in.
    ‘I don’t know.’
    ‘You don’t know?’
    ‘That is not the point.’
    ‘I would have thought that is very much the point.’
    ‘You never let me finish,’ Jennifer complained.
    Alec Chambers was trying to understand his daughter’s story. ‘Is this the ring that is missing?’
    ‘What was it like?’ Iris asked.
    ‘It doesn’t really matter what it’s like. The fact is that it’s gone. Amanda passed it round the table for everyone to admire. She never got it back. The whole evening was a fiasco. Champagne everywhere.’
    ‘Was it very expensive?’ her mother asked.
    Her father would not let Jennifer answer. ‘You mean to say that the ring was lost in a welter of champagne?’
    Sidney tried to reassure everyone. ‘I am sure there is a perfectly innocent explanation. It must have either fallen through the floorboards or someone has been absent-minded and misplaced it when the champagne bottle was smashed.’
    ‘What a profligate waste,’ Iris tutted.
    ‘An accident, I hope?’ Alec asked.
    Jennifer ploughed on. ‘Johnny thinks someone’s stolen it.’
    ‘Does he, indeed?’
    ‘But you were amongst friends,’ her mother cut in. ‘Surely that’s impossible?’
    Alec continued. ‘I presume you