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

a five and a four and began to move the checkers away from his home board.
    Inspector Keating threw in response and was delighted to open with a double six. ‘I think it’s going to be my night . . .’
    Sidney smiled. ‘I like it when you have a strong start. It lulls you into a false sense of security.’
    ‘I don’t think you need to worry about that. I’m on the top of my game . . .’
    Sidney threw a three and a two and tried to think tactically. He moved his pieces and said, quietly, but with a hint of friendly menace, ‘Of course I do feel guilty when I keep winning so often . . .’
    The inspector did not rise immediately. He threw a four and a one but noticed that he still had the advantage from his early sixes. ‘Double?’
    ‘Are you sure?’ Sidney asked. ‘I wouldn’t want another victory on my conscience.’
    The inspector smiled. ‘I wouldn’t worry about that.’
    Sidney threw a two and a one and began to realise that he might lose.
    ‘Talking of conscience,’ Inspector Keating continued, in a tone of voice that Sidney both recognised and dreaded, ‘I think I may be facing what you call “a moral dilemma”.’ He threw a three and a six, moved one of his checkers nine points.
    ‘Oh really?’ Sidney threw once more; a four and a three. ‘I have warned you to be careful about such things.’
    ‘The coroner came to see me. Re-double?’
    ‘Of course. I am not afraid. What has happened?’
    ‘It seems a certain lady has asked for her mother to be cremated rather too quickly.’
    ‘A certain lady?’
    ‘It is meant to be confidential.’
    ‘You have my confidence.’
    ‘Isabel Livingstone.’
    ‘I know her, Geordie.’
    ‘I am aware that you do.’ The inspector placed the dice back in the cup and threw again: five and a six. He smiled at the resumption of his fortune.
    ‘I saw her only the other week,’ Sidney remembered. ‘She was with my doctor, Michael Robinson. They are planning to marry. Nice couple, and well suited, I would have thought.’ He took a sip of his disappointing tonic water and tried to remember the conversation. ‘They told me that they had decided to wait for the ceremony until after her mother had died.’
    ‘Don’t you think that is unusual? Most daughters would want their mother at the wedding.’
    ‘They were planning on Easter . . .’
    The inspector rattled his dice. ‘Well, they can have it now if they like . . .’
    ‘We don’t normally conduct marriages in Lent. But I seem to remember that Mrs Livingstone was opposed to the whole idea of matrimony. Her husband had left when Isabel was an infant. After that she had taken a violent dislike of all men.’
    ‘He must have been quite a man to have wrought such havoc.’
    ‘Such a pity, to let resentment fester.’
    ‘Well, it won’t be festering any more.’
    ‘And so she has died? I am surprised I have not been informed.’
    Inspector Keating was matter-of-fact. ‘And so am I. But there may be a reason for that . . .’
    Sidney could see that too many of his opponent’s pieces were in advantageous positions. He was already anticipating a gammon. ‘You hesitate, Inspector . . .’
    ‘I’m sorry . . .’
    ‘You hesitate in a manner that alarms me.’
    George Keating threw his dice and began bearing off but his heart was no longer in the game. He spoke without looking at his friend. ‘The problem is . . . Sidney . . . that I am not sure that Mrs Livingstone’s death was entirely natural . . .’
    ‘I was afraid you were going to say that. You mean?’
    ‘That the lovers might have helped things along? I am afraid I do . . .’
    ‘But it is the winter, and Mrs Livingstone had been in very poor health for a long time,’ Sidney observed. ‘I would have thought she had a pretty pressing appointment with her Maker.’
    ‘Well, I’m afraid that’s not what the coroner seems to think. A friend of Mrs Livingstone came to see him. He asked us to take a look and it’s now become a little more complicated.’ The inspector threw a one and a six and began to bear off his checkers. ‘You remember the Dorothea Waddingham case?’
    ‘The nursing home murderer? You’re not suggesting?’
    ‘In the Waddingham case they found three grains of morphine in the first body they examined and then a fatal dose in the second. Sometimes, doctors and nurses get carried away and death comes on a bit too easily.’
    Sidney threw again even though he knew it was futile. ‘Was Mrs