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

wanted to go dancing instead.’
    Sidney tried to imagine Hildegard Staunton in a bombed-out German ballroom, dancing among the ruins. She shifted position on the sofa and adjusted the fall of her housecoat. Perhaps she did not want to tell her story, Sidney wondered, but the fact that she would not look him in the eye made it clear that she intended to continue. Her speech, despite its softness, demanded attention.
    ‘Sometimes we went out into the countryside and spent the nights drinking white wine under the apple trees. We taught them to sing “Einmal am Rhein” and the Ulstermen gave us “The Star of County Down.” I liked the way Stephen sang that song. And when he talked about his home in Northern Ireland, he described it so well that I thought that this could be my refuge from all that had happened in the war. We would live by the sea, he said, in Carrickfergus, perhaps. We were going to walk by the shores of Lough Neagh, and listen to the cry of the curlews as they flew over the water. His voice had so much charm. I believed everything he told me. But we never did go to Ireland. The opportunity was here. And so our marriage began with something I had not been expecting. I never imagined that we would live in an English village. Being German is not so easy, of course.’
    ‘You speak very good English.’
    ‘I try hard. But German people are looked on with suspicion, as I am sure you know. I can see what they are thinking still, so soon after the war. How can I blame them? I cannot tell everyone that I meet that my father was never a Nazi, that he was shot at a Communist protest when I was six years old. I do not think I have done anything wrong. But it is difficult for us to live after such a war.’
    ‘It is hard for everyone.’
    Hildegard stopped and remembered what she had forgotten. ‘Would you like some tea, Canon Chambers?’
    ‘That would be kind.’
    ‘I am not very good at making it. Stephen used to find it amusing. More often he drank whiskey.’
    ‘I am rather partial to Scotch myself.’
    ‘His was Irish, of course.’
    ‘Ah yes,’ Sidney remembered. ‘With a different taste and a different spelling.’
    Hildegard Staunton continued. ‘It was Bushmills. Stephen called it the oldest whiskey in the world. It reminded him of home: a Protestant whiskey, he always said, from County Antrim. His brother sends over two cases a year, one on Stephen’s birthday and the other at Christmas. That is, two bottles a month. It was not enough. Perhaps that is why he went up to London before he died. It wasn’t for business. It was to collect more whiskey. We couldn’t find Bushmills in Cambridge and he wouldn’t drink anything else.’
    ‘Never?’
    ‘He said he would prefer to drink water. Or gin. And when he did that he drank it like water in any case.’ Hildegard gave a sad smile. ‘Perhaps you would like sherry instead of tea. Priests often have sherry, I think?’
    Sidney did not want to have to explain his dislike. ‘That would be kind . . .’
    Mrs Staunton moved to the glass cabinet on the sideboard. There were not many books, Sidney thought, but he noticed an upright Bechstein piano and some tasteful reproductions of landscape paintings. There was also a collection of German porcelain, including a fiddler wooing a dancing lady, and a Harlequin twisting a pug dog’s tail. Most of the figurines were of children: a boy in a pink jacket playing the flute, a girl in the same coloured top with a basket of flowers, a little ballerina, brothers and sisters sharing a picnic table.
    Sidney remembered his reason for coming. ‘I’m sorry if I am intruding. But I like to think that you are one of my parishioners . . .’
    ‘I am Lutheran, as you know. We are not regular churchgoers.’
    ‘You would always be welcome.’
    ‘ Kinder, Küche, Kirche .’ Hildegard smiled. ‘The German tradition. I am afraid I am not very good at any of them.’
    ‘I thought if there was anything I could do . . .’
    ‘You took my husband’s funeral. That was enough, especially under the circumstances.’
    ‘They were difficult.’
    ‘And after so much death in the war. To choose to die in such a deliberate way after you have survived. It’s hard to understand. I am sure you disapprove.’
    ‘We do believe that life is sacred, given by God.’
    ‘And therefore God should take it away.’
    ‘I am afraid so.’
    ‘And if there is no God?’
    ‘I cannot think that.’
    ‘No. As a priest that