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

really. I couldn’t think how to tell you or the words that I was going to use. I don’t know anything at the moment and I’ve had to keep so quiet. I’ve had no one to talk to. Thank you for listening to me.’
    ‘It is what I am called to do,’ said Sidney and immediately wondered whether this was true. It was his first case of adultery, never mind murder.
    Pamela Morton stood up. Sidney noticed that, despite the tears, her mascara had not run. She pushed back that strand of hair again and held out her hand.
    ‘Goodbye, Canon Chambers. You do believe me, don’t you?’
    ‘It was brave to tell me so much.’
    ‘Courage is a quality Stephen said I lacked. If you find out what happened to him then I hope you will inform me first.’ She smiled, sadly, once more. ‘I know where you are.’
    ‘I am always here. Goodbye, Mrs Morton.’
    ‘ Pamela  . . .’
    ‘Goodbye, Pamela.’
    Sidney closed his front door and looked at the watch his father had given him on his ordination. Perhaps there would be time to look in at the wake after all. He returned to his small drawing room with the tired furniture his parents had bought for him at a local auction. The place really did need cheering up, he thought. He gathered the glasses and took them through to the kitchen sink and turned on the hot tap. He liked washing up; the simple act of cleanliness had immediately visible results. He stopped for a moment at the window and watched a robin hopping on the washing line. Soon he would have to get round to his Christmas cards.
    He noticed the lipstick marks on the rim of Pamela Morton’s whisky glass and remembered a poem by Edna St Vincent Millay he had read in the Sunday Times :
     
    ‘What lips my lips have kissed, and where, and why,
    I have forgotten, and what arms have lain
    Under my head till morning; but the rain
    Is full of ghosts tonight . . .’
     
    ‘What a mess people make of their lives,’ he thought.
     
    Sidney’s friend Inspector Keating was not amused. ‘It could hardly be more straightforward,’ he sighed. ‘A man stays on in the office after everyone has gone home. He sets about a decanter of whisky and then blows his brains out. The cleaner finds him in the morning, calls the police, we go in, and that’s it: clear as my wife’s crystal.’
    The two men were sitting at their favourite table in the RAF bar of The Eagle, a pub that was conveniently situated not far from the police station in St Andrews Street. They had become friends after Sidney had taken the funeral of the inspector’s predecessor, and they now met informally after work every Thursday to enjoy a couple of pints of bitter, play a game of backgammon and share confidences. It was one of the few off-duty moments in the week when Sidney could take off his dog collar, put on a pullover and pretend that he was not a priest.
    ‘Sometimes,’ he observed, ‘things can be rather too clear.’
    ‘I agree,’ said the inspector, throwing a five and a three, ‘but the facts of this case are as plain as a pikestaff.’ He spoke with a slight Northumbrian accent, the only remaining evidence of a county he had left at the age of six. ‘So much so, that I cannot believe you are suggesting that we set out on a wild goose chase.’
    ‘I am not suggesting that.’ Sidney was alarmed by his friend’s assumption that he was making a formal request. ‘I am merely raising an eyebrow.’
    Inspector Keating pressed his case. ‘Stephen Staunton’s wife told us that her husband had been depressed. He also drank too much. That’s what the Irish do, of course. His secretary informed us that our man had also started to go to London on a weekly basis and was not in the office as much as he should have been. She even had to cover for him and do some of his more straightforward work; conveyancing and what have you. Then there is the small matter of his recent bank withdrawals; vast sums of money, in cash, which his wife has never seen and no one knows where it has gone. This suggests . . .’
    Sidney threw a double five and moved four of his pieces. ‘I imagine you would think the solicitor was a gambling man . . .’
    ‘I certainly would. And I would also imagine that he might have been using some of his firm’s money to pay for it. If he wasn’t dead I’d probably have to start investigating him for fraud.’ The inspector threw a four and a two and hit one of Sidney’s blots. ‘So I imagine that, when the debts mounted up, and he