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

be considered material for a sermon, he told himself, and snow might cover sin just as it could conceal suffering.
    He rang the doorbell. As he waited, he remembered Isabel Livingstone as a small, shapely woman with eager brown eyes. Her short hair had begun to grey, perhaps under the pressure of caring for her mother for so long, and she dressed in practical clothes: a white blouse, a green cardigan, a tartan skirt. It was a uniform that never appeared to change and it was hard to tell what age she might be: forty perhaps? Her late-flowering love gave Sidney a quiet hope of his own. After all, if Isabel Livingstone at forty could entrance a doctor might not he have a similar opportunity one day? He remembered the unexpected thrill he had felt when Amanda Kendall had kissed him goodbye at the station and the calm he had felt when he had sat with Hildegard Staunton. How comfortable their silences had been. He really should write to her again, he thought.
    Dr Robinson opened the door. He expressed surprise at Sidney’s visit. ‘I thought we were due to see you at the end of the week?’
    ‘I was passing and thought that I would call in,’ Sidney replied, ‘since it seems that we now have more than a wedding to discuss.’
    ‘Indeed. Isabel is in the kitchen. I was just leaving . . .’
    ‘I came to offer my condolences; and also to say that the church is, of course, at your disposal should you wish to hold the funeral there.’
    ‘Isabel’s mother was not what you might call a churchgoer, Canon Chambers. I am afraid she put herself down for a cremation with the Co-op.’
    Isabel Livingstone emerged from the kitchen. She appeared flustered. Sidney apologised for his intrusion.
    ‘I’m so sorry we hadn’t got round to telling you, Canon Chambers,’ Isabel apologised. ‘But there has been such a lot to do. I thought that some day we would be planning a wedding but I suppose I always knew that we would have a funeral service to sort out first.’
    ‘I am doubly sorry,’ said Sidney, ‘both for your loss and for the unfortunate proximity of events.’
    ‘We did expect it though, didn’t we, darling?’ The doctor put his arm around Isabel’s shoulder and she smiled up at him.
    Sidney thought that they looked good together. ‘I know you move between birth and sickness as much as I do, Dr Robinson . . .’
    Isabel broke free. ‘I’ll put the kettle on.’
    ‘It makes you appreciate the unexpected pleasures of daily life,’ the doctor continued. ‘Every time I wake up I try to be thankful that I have spent the night safely, and I try to look at everything as if I am seeing it for the first time; not that I want to philosophise. Come in, sit down . . .’
    ‘I’m sure you’ve calls to make. Don’t let me keep you . . .’
    ‘They can wait. Isabel needs me, I find. And, of course, I need Isabel.’
    Sidney tried to make conversation as they moved through to a small sitting room with a two-bar fire. ‘It is surprising how often happiness and sadness bump up against each other. It is why I am so opposed to confetti.’
    ‘Confetti?’
    ‘It’s upsetting for those who have to attend a funeral when a wedding has taken place earlier in the day. It reminds the principal mourners of what they have lost.’
    ‘I don’t think my mother would have minded about that,’ Isabel Livingstone interrupted, coming in with the tea tray. ‘She was violently opposed to marriage, as you know. Whenever she heard church bells she covered her ears. Weddings just set her off, didn’t they, Michael?’
    ‘It’s why we didn’t discuss our plans with her, Canon Chambers.’
    ‘Sometimes I think Mother kept on living just to spite us,’ his fiancée continued. Sidney noticed that she was wearing an emerald ring. ‘I had stupidly promised her that I would not marry if she was still alive and so I think she decided to try and outlive me. “Even if I do die first,” she said to me, “I’ll still be watching.” ’
    ‘Perhaps you did not need to keep your promise?’ Sidney replied.
    ‘Are you, a clergyman, suggesting that I should have broken it?’ Isabel asked as she poured from a pot of tea. ‘Sugar?’
    ‘No thank you. If it was forced from you, or if it was a bad promise, why, yes of course.’
    ‘Well, in the end, it was not such a long time to wait. We’ve only known each other properly for seven months,’ the doctor continued. ‘But you know all this, Canon Chambers. Obviously we are not