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

noticed.’
    ‘I don’t have rivals, Mrs Maguire. I have friends.’
    ‘Call them what you like; but if you hold hands in public there’ll be no stopping the gossip.’
    Sidney was annoyed. What business was it of anyone else? His relationship with Amanda was private. He hated the idea of anyone talking about them. Now he would have to explain something that he didn’t want to explain because he liked it all being vague and inexplicable. ‘I marry other people to each other. I have no plans to marry myself. Miss Kendall is a friend .’
    ‘That’s what I said to them,’ Mrs Maguire continued before stopping to check. ‘So I am right, then?’
    Sidney sighed. The quicker this conversation was brought to a conclusion the better. ‘Of course you are, Mrs Maguire,’ he replied. ‘You always are.’
    That should do it , he thought.
    Unfortunately he was wrong. Encouraged by his response Mrs Maguire put her apron back on and continued, breezily. ‘I know you won’t mind but I’ve been telling everyone. She’s a fashionable woman from London with expensive tastes. You wouldn’t catch the likes of her marrying a clergyman, would you now?’
    She turned the hoover back on and resumed her work. After a few vigorous movements back and forth she looked up to see that Sidney had not moved.
    ‘Did I say the wrong thing?’ she shouted over the noise of her work.
    Sidney said nothing but picked up a stack of books and took them through to the kitchen. On the top of his pile lay The Confessions of St Augustine . It was not going to help.
     
    The next morning Grantchester was visited by yet another dose of persistent sleet, warning that winter was still not at an end. ‘Where are the songs of spring?’ Sidney wondered, forlornly, ‘Ay, where are they?’ There weren’t even any daffodils in bloom. This was a day, Sidney thought, to hunker down; a day for tea and toast and warm fires, for pastime with good company followed by a hearty stew and a good red wine.
    Alas, such pleasures were denied to him. It was the thirty-fourth day of Lent. Would it never end?
    It would not.
    Inspector Keating telephoned. ‘You had better come to the station, Sidney.’
    ‘Whatever for? Aren’t we seeing each other tonight?’
    ‘This can’t wait. Another old person has died . . .’
    ‘Well, it is the time of year. Pneumonia, I suppose.’
    Inspector Keating had no time for such musings. ‘Yes, I am perfectly aware that it is winter and that these things are likely but it’s the same bloody doctor and the second ruddy case. We have to sort this out.’
    ‘It may be a coincidence.’
    ‘Yes, of course, it may be a coincidence but if it isn’t we can’t have an epidemic of old codgers being helped out of this world. That’s your job . . .’
    ‘What is the name of the deceased?’
    ‘Anthony Bryant. He was seventy-one. A good age, but people are living longer these days. Modern medicine, apparently . . .’
    ‘Give me half an hour, Inspector. The roads are treacherous for my bicycle.’
    ‘Don’t worry about the roads, Sidney, I’ve sent a car. It will be with you in the next five minutes.’
    ‘Your business is as urgent as that?’
    ‘I will brief you at the station. Then the car will take you where you need to go. People are talking and a journalist from the Evening News is already sniffing around. We’ve got to try and stop all this nonsense.’
    Sidney sighed. What was he supposed to do? He could hardly find another false pretext to visit the doctor. Perhaps Inspector Keating had other ideas. It was certainly odd for him to send a car. He would have thought that the police had other, more urgent priorities, but then, if the situation was as grim as it sounded, there was nothing more urgent than murder.
    He travelled across slushy roads into town with a driver who had clearly been instructed to say nothing. When they pulled up in St Andrews Street Sidney noticed a girl in a duffle coat and a notebook waiting outside the station. She might well have been a student but there was something determined about her. He wondered what she was doing, waiting in the cold, and when Sidney got out of the car, their eyes met and she introduced herself:
    ‘Helena Randall. Cambridge Evening News .’
    A journalist. Sidney had, of course, been expecting a man. ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’
    ‘Are you Tony Bryant’s priest, by any chance?’
    ‘Not as far as I am aware,’ Sidney hesitated. How had the press