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

weekend.’
    ‘Does she have any particular friend?’
    ‘She is unattached as far as I can ascertain. There are a few regulars. One of them sends her a sonnet every day.’
    ‘Good heavens.’
    ‘There have been so many that she’s stopped reading them. There are at least thirty on the mantelpiece in a pile.’
    ‘Are they any good?’
    ‘No. They are dreadful. Although the name Daphne is difficult to rhyme, I suppose.’
    Sidney thought for a moment. ‘Didn’t Swift write a poem to a Daphne?’ he asked. ‘I seem to remember he referred to her as “An Agreeable Young Lady, but Extremely Lean”.’
    Leonard Graham smiled somewhat mischievously and his moustache followed the curvature of his upper lip. He really should shave that off, thought Sidney.
    ‘That would be appropriate,’ Leonard answered. ‘Daphne Young reminds me of a whippet. She hardly eats a thing.’
    Sidney remembered the poem:
     
    ‘What Pride a Female Heart enflames!
    How endless are Ambition’s Aims!
    Cease haughty Nymph; the Fates decree
    Death must not be a Spouse for thee . . .’
     
    He drank his beer. ‘Someone should write a book about the dedicatees of the great poets.’
    Leonard Graham smiled. ‘Or their demise.’
    Sidney considered the matter. ‘Death of the poets. A valediction.’
    ‘I’ve always found it strange that so many of them meet their Maker in unusual circumstances. Matthew Arnold, for example, died while leaping over a hedge . . .’
    ‘I suppose he did,’ Sidney replied. ‘And didn’t the Chinese poet Li Po drown while trying to kiss the reflection of the moon in water?’
    ‘Pushkin and Lermontov were both killed in duels . . .’
    Sidney began to recall his classical education, ‘Aeschylus was felled by a falling tortoise.’
    ‘Euripides was mauled by a pack of wild dogs . . .’
    ‘Neither of them strictly poets, of course . . .’ Sidney cautioned.
    ‘Although if the criteria was broadened to writers in general then we could have a field day,’ Leonard Graham continued. ‘Edgar Allan Poe was found in another person’s clothes.’
    ‘And Sherwood Anderson swallowed a toothpick. But we are getting distracted, my good friend. Tell me about your landlady’s father. I gather she is on her way to see him.’
    ‘He lives in Brighton, as she has informed you. Miss Young is very solicitous in her visits. I think she organises his finances and gives him pocket money; a reversal of roles at the end of a life.’
    ‘It is interesting that he was once a jeweller.’
    ‘You are surely not suspecting my landlady of theft? She is quite a well-known psychologist.’
    ‘I find it uncomfortable when people are keen to pin the blame on others. But I agree that it is unlikely. Furthermore Daphne Young was seated at the wrong end of the dinner table. She has told you what happened last night?’
    ‘Not in detail.’
    ‘Then I will, if I may, go through it all with you.’
    ‘It seems strange for a priest to be so involved.’
    ‘Indeed it is, but I would find it helpful to talk it over with someone who might have an objective view.’
    ‘I am no detective, Canon Chambers.’
    ‘Neither am I, Leonard, but, under the circs, I have to make the best of things. Let me begin . . .’
    After he had described the events of the previous evening Sidney returned to the subject of Daphne Young’s keenness to implicate Johnny Johnson. ‘There was quite a commotion after the champagne bottle had been dropped. I think almost any of the guests could have snaffled the ring at the time as very few people were sober, apart, of course, from Johnny Johnson . . .’
    ‘Why, of course?’
    ‘He does not drink. Which, curiously, puts him at a disadvantage. He was sitting next to Juliette Thompson and she had the ring. Her husband dropped the champagne bottle next to them. It would be quite simple for Johnson to act coldly and clearly amidst the confusion.’
    ‘Unless, of course, the bottle was dropped deliberately?’
    ‘It’s a possibility.’
    ‘The wife could have taken the ring?’
    ‘She could indeed . . .’
    ‘Knowing Johnny Johnson would be our chief suspect?’
    ‘That would be too calculated, I feel. I think this was an opportunistic crime.’
    ‘You are convinced it took place amidst the confusion of the champagne bottle?’
    Sidney tried to clear his head but ending up thinking aloud. ‘Unless of course Nigel Thompson dropped the bottle to warn his wife? It was a distraction to stop