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

death penalty, won’t it?’
    ‘Most likely,’ said Sidney. ‘Unless you plead insanity or show a considerable degree of remorse.’
    ‘I have no remorse. I am glad that I did what I did.’
    ‘Then I’m sorry,’ said Sidney.
    ‘On the contrary. I suppose it is I who should apologise. I feel no guilt. If I did it would make it easier for you.’
    ‘There are very few things about my job that are easy,’ Sidney replied. ‘I’m only sad that someone of your intelligence should have such a distorted sense of justice.’
    ‘I’m sad too. I’ve been sad for quite a few years now.’
    ‘There is a different way of thinking.’
    ‘A Christian way? I don’t think so.’
    Sidney stood up. He had thought that he should stay and try to find some repentance in Justin but he knew that it would take longer than a single evening to seek out the remains of his conscience. ‘I’m afraid I must go,’ he said. ‘It’s already late.’
    ‘Not too late for a night hawk like you . . .’
    ‘There is my job.’
    ‘I wonder how you find the time.’
    ‘I will pray for you,’ said Sidney.
    ‘I don’t think your prayers will make much difference, Canon Chambers.’ Justin Wild appeared to hesitate. ‘But thank you all the same.’ He gave a nervous smile.
    Sidney gave a little bow. It had become a custom, a signal that the conversation was at an end.
    He walked through Fitzrovia to Kings Cross. There was a clear sky of midnight blue with a three-quarter moon. Sidney wanted to enjoy the stillness of the night. For some moments in a life, he thought, perhaps no recovery was possible. A life could be stained, as simply as surely as that, and no amount of peace or prayer could provide lasting comfort. He remembered the words of George Herbert: ‘Living well is the best revenge.’ That may have been wise advice, but for Justin Wild it had proved impossible. Forgiveness was, Sidney knew, far harder to reconcile than vengeance.
     
    As soon as he returned to Grantchester, he poured himself a large whisky and lay down on his none too comfortable sofa. His Labrador snuggled up beside him. As he did so, Sidney patted him on the back and began to talk to him. Dickens yawned, stretched and laid his head on Sidney’s knee. He told him how it had been a testing few weeks and now, surely, he could return to his vocation. He ought to give jazz and crime a rest. It was hard enough doing one job in which he was never off duty; but to combine it with investigations on behalf of Inspector Keating was another matter entirely.
    He decided to unwind by reading some poetry and picked out a volume of George Herbert from his bookshelf. He began to read from ‘The Temple’, a poem in which Father Time pays the narrator a visit.
    In the poem, the old man’s scythe is dull and his role in human life has changed. Since the coming of Christ, and the promise of eternal life, he is no longer an executioner but a gardener:
     
    An usher to convey our souls
    Beyond the utmost starres and poles
     
    Sidney remembered how strikingly original the poem was. For George Herbert, the time we spend on earth is not all too brief and transient but too long: because it detains human beings from a life outside time and with God.
    Sidney decided to preach on the subject. He would outline the differences between our time and God’s time. Human beings live in the threefold present: the memory of the past, the expectation of the future and a perpetual ‘now’ that passes as soon as it is thought. God, however, is not bound by time. He is outside it. And so our bounded life moves from the world of time to the eternal world of the timeless.
    Sidney cast the book of poetry aside and lifted Dickens’s head from his lap. He would have to make a note of these thoughts because they would be forgotten by the morning. He moved towards his desk. Almost immediately the telephone rang.
    It was two o’clock in the morning. Sidney only hoped that it was not another death.
    ‘It’s me . . .’
    Amanda.
    ‘Is anything the matter?’ Sidney asked.
    ‘Nothing at all. I’m only telephoning to tell you the most ridiculous thing . . .’
    ‘It’s nothing serious?’
    ‘Nothing serious whatsoever. I’m sorry it’s so late. I did try before but there was no answer. Where were you?’
    ‘It doesn’t matter, Amanda . . .’
    ‘I’m only telephoning because we couldn’t wait to tell you. Jenny and I have been to the most absurd concert. I can’t think why