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

heard were slamming doors, Guy storming out with a bottle of my finest port in his hand and Amanda collapsed in a heap. I tell you, Sidney, it’s not easy to find yourself in a house with your wife shivering with fear in the bedroom and one of your guests crying on the sofa downstairs. Poor Amanda: what a night it must have been. And Juliette can’t sleep at all. She keeps coming down and searching the room, trying to remember where she put the ring.’
    The door opened. It was Amanda. Sidney noticed that she had changed her hairstyle, pinning her dark hair back. ‘You are not telling him about my row with Guy, I hope? It is confidential.’
    ‘If we are to avoid going to the police then nothing is confidential.’
    ‘I can talk to him about the police. I am sure he will have calmed down, even if I have not.’
    Sidney held Amanda’s look. ‘You will not forgive him?’
    ‘I am not one who subscribes to the theory of in vino veritas but I cannot marry someone who insults me in the house of my friends.’
    ‘Has he apologised?’
    ‘He telephoned and tried his best but then kept repeating “three hundred and twenty-five guineas, Amanda”, the very phrase that had set me off in the first place. He seems to think that the monetary value of the ring excused his behaviour.’
    At this moment the telephone rang. ‘I’m sorry,’ Nigel apologised. ‘I think I had better answer.’
    Amanda looked at Sidney. ‘Would you like me to stay?’ she asked.
    ‘If there is any light that you can shed on last night I would be grateful.’
    She sat down next to him and, almost absent-mindedly, looked down at her ringless left hand. He had expected her to choose a seat opposite and at a distance and found her proximity and her intimacy unsettling. She had a brittle, challenging presence, and he could smell her perfume. It was the same fragrance as that worn by a girl he had met in Paris at the end of the war: Voile d’Arpège .
    She put her hand by her side. ‘I’d like to think the ring may just be lost. I try to think the best of people and I don’t want to blame anyone, apart from Guy, of course.’
    ‘I don’t think he can have done it.’
    ‘When I really hate him I think he might have done it as some kind of insurance swindle but I don’t think he’s capable of that. He’s too stupid.’
    ‘I wouldn’t say he was stupid. He chose you.’
    ‘Anyone can do that,’ Amanda replied. ‘He was probably after my money.’
    ‘Are you very well off?’ Sidney asked.
    ‘Very, as a matter of fact; but I try not to let people know too much. It gets in the way and you start suspecting their motives. That is why it is easier to mix with rich people. It’s not something that I feel proud about. Although, truth to tell, I could have bought the bloody ring myself . . .’
    The grandfather clock in the hall struck the hour. It was four o’clock.
    Sidney tried to imagine what it must have been like to have a proposal made and withdrawn in the same evening, with the ring stolen and a public argument following. Many women, given that course of events, would have taken to their beds or fled back to their parents. ‘You seem more angry than upset,’ he said gently.
    ‘I’m furious with myself for not realising what Guy was like. My head was turned by his good looks and his courtship but the man turns out to be appalling. And to accuse me of deliberately losing the thing! I wish I had now. That would serve him right.’
    ‘So who do you think took it?’ Sidney asked.
    ‘Are you going to talk to Johnny Johnson?’
    ‘I am hoping to talk to everyone.’
    ‘The Dowlands have gone down to Cornwall for a few days so you won’t have much luck there. I suppose most people think it’s Johnny since no one, myself included, can bear to think it’s Juliette. And that’s where the ring was last seen. But it’s horrible to think like this. Loyalty should be at the heart of friendship, don’t you think?’
    ‘I don’t think it counts for much without it. It’s a question of trust.’
    Amanda met his eyes and did not look away. ‘So, Sidney, what are you going to do now?’
    ‘I think Jennifer is taking me to meet up with Johnny at a jazz club tonight. It’s a good excuse to talk to him, as I’m rather fond of jazz and I’d like to hear some music before I go back to Grantchester.’
    ‘When do you return there?
    ‘I have to prepare for Sunday, Amanda.’
    ‘But you’ve only just had Christmas. Can’t you