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

we went but I just wanted to let you know what happened. We’ve calmed down a bit now but we were spitting with rage.’
    ‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
    ‘The concert turned out to be all that modern plink-plonk music you know I can’t stand. We had to have a whole bottle of red wine afterwards . . .’
    ‘The plonk to cope with the plink?’
    ‘Exactly. I’d rather have gone to one of your jazz concerts . . .’
    ‘As bad as that, Amanda?’
    ‘It was atrocious. In the second half a man just sat at the piano and didn’t do anything at all. It was most odd. No one knew what to do or say.’
    ‘Nothing? He must have played something?’
    ‘No! That’s precisely my point. He didn’t play anything. He just sat there.’
    ‘You mean he didn’t tickle the ivories at all?’
    ‘Not a tusk. The piece consisted of the audience coughing and muttering and being embarrassed. We were, apparently, the music. The audience. Can you imagine? And to think we paid five bob to get in.’
    ‘Who was it by?’
    ‘Oh I don’t know, some American: John Cage, I think he was called. He even had the nerve to give it a title. ‘Four minutes, thirty-three seconds.’ Can you imagine? It certainly didn’t feel like four minutes and thirty-three seconds. It felt like an eternity. I never knew four minutes could last so long. It was ridiculous. Four minutes! I kept thinking of all the other things I, or anyone else for that matter, could have done in the same time. Can you believe it, Sidney? It was appalling.’
    Sidney looked out into the dark night and thought of Gloria Dee’s voice, Claudette’s simple vulnerability and the terrible murder. He could not begin to explain to Amanda all that had happened or what he thought and felt.
    ‘Are you still there?’ she asked. ‘You’ve gone all silent. Is there something the matter, Sidney, or are you trying to pretend you’re John Cage? Speak up!’
    ‘I’m still here,’ Sidney replied. ‘I’m always here, Amanda . . .’
    He remembered Gloria Dee’s voice in the darkness:
     
    ‘Four minutes
    Just four minutes to Midnight
    Four minutes
    I just want four more minutes with you
    If the world ends
    Then the world ends
    But all I need
    Is those four minutes
    With you . . .’

The Lost Holbein
    Locket Hall, with its grand E-shaped exterior of Ham Hill stone and mullioned windows, had been built at the beginning of the sixteenth century and was one of the finest stately homes in the vicinity of Cambridge. It was the official seat of the Tevershams, a family able to date their lineage back to the Norman Conquest, and an invitation to attend a social function at the Hall was considered an honour, and even a right amongst those socialites whose bible was Debrett’s. Accustomed to abbeys and cathedrals, Sidney was not as humbled either by aristocracy or architecture as others might have been, but he still felt apprehensive as Mackay, the butler, opened the door and asked him to climb the grand staircase up to the long gallery, where Lord Teversham was entertaining his guests to midsummer drinks.
    Sidney had mixed feelings about the nobility. He enjoyed the spaciousness of their homes and the warmth of their hospitality but he found their sense of entitlement unnerving. ‘And if that isn’t enough,’ he could hear Lord Teversham complaining, ‘the government now wants us to open up to the public. This is my home , for goodness sake, not a tourist attraction. I might as well give it lock, stock and barrel to the National Trust.’
    This was a man who clearly took great pains over his appearance. He was the same height as Sidney, with an angular, matinée-idol jawline and luxuriant silver hair that, despite needing a cut, had been groomed in a manner designed to make bald men tremble. He was dressed in a handmade three-piece suit, with both tie and pocket handkerchief in matching navy blue; while his steel-rimmed pince-nez and silver accessories – cufflinks, fob watch and tie-pin – had all been chosen to set off his coiffure.
    He greeted his guest with manners that were so practised that they came without effort. ‘Canon Chambers, how very good of you to come; you’ll take a dry sherry, I presume . . .’
    ‘That would be most kind,’ Sidney answered. There was no point making a fuss.
    ‘Mackay will see to it. I can’t remember whether you’ve met my sister?’ He gestured into the middle distance where an elegant lady with similar hair was holding court.