The Dangers of Temptation

Although it was Valentine’s Day, and also his birthday, Sidney Chambers was not in a happy frame of mind. This was due to persistent toothache, his imminent renunciation of alcohol for Lent and the fact that the recent television series All Gas and Gaiters had made fun at the expense of his beloved Church of England, concentrating, quite specifically, on a hapless and drunken archdeacon. This had resulted in much unnecessary teasing from his wife about the similarities between fact and fiction. Could the writers have had anyone specific in mind when they had created such a clueless character? What did Sidney think?

‘Not much,’ had been his reply and, as a result of his grumpiness, Hildegard had asked her husband to spend the morning of his birthday cheering up in his study. In order to do so, he put one of his favourite records on the turntable, Sidney Bechet’s ‘Si tu vois ma mère’, only to discover that, in the words of the great Christian poet George Herbert, ‘music helps not the toothache’.

His family was coming to lunch: his mother and father (who still treated him as a child even though he was forty-six years old), his brother Matt, his sister Jennifer and her husband Johnny Johnson. Further guests included Inspector Geordie Keating and his wife Cathy, Amanda and Henry Richmond, and Sidney’s former curate Leonard Graham. Together with Hildegard, and their four-year-old daughter Anna, this made them a very crowded thirteen at table.

Geordie was amused. ‘You’ll have to be Jesus, Sidney.’

‘Then I wonder who the Judas is.’

Hildegard put down the chicken casserole. ‘Now then, mein Lieber. You promised to be in a better mood.’

‘I am always cheerful . . .’

‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Geordie interrupted.

‘Only, it’s this bloody toothache.’

Anna poked him in the arm. ‘Don’t swear, Daddy. It’s rude.’

‘I’m sorry, everyone. The truth is, I haven’t been myself lately.’

‘Perhaps you haven’t got enough to do?’ Amanda asked.

Sidney was just about to answer that a clergyman’s life was actually far busier and more serious than anyone ever gave him credit for when the doorbell rang. He stood up and left the room. ‘What fresh hell is this?’ he muttered as he walked out into the long central hall that ran down the length of the ground floor. He opened the door to find a startlingly attractive middle-aged woman dressed in a mink coat.

This was Barbara Wilkinson, a divorcee from Grantchester whom Hildegard had always disliked. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything?’ she said. ‘You do remember I was coming . . .’

‘Not to lunch,’ Sidney blustered. He had completely forgotten about her and compounded the offence by being unintentionally bad-mannered.

‘You said midday. I’m afraid I’m a little late.’

‘No, that’s quite all right. It’s only that we are about to eat. Would you like to join us?’

‘I wouldn’t want to intrude.’

‘It would be no trouble.’

‘I can tell by the way you are looking at me that’s not true, Mr Archdeacon.’

There was an awkward pause. Sidney knew that he should try and get rid of the woman but couldn’t do so without being even ruder than he had been already.

‘It won’t take long,’ she continued. ‘Ten minutes at most.’

Hildegard and Amanda emerged from the dining room to fetch a few more things from the kitchen. A series of awkward salutations then had to be made before Sidney was able to steer his visitor down the hall and into the study. He asked his eyebrow-raising wife to keep the casserole warm and promised he would return shortly.

Barbara Wilkinson took off her coat to reveal a long-sleeved blue and white polka-dot dress, cinched at the waist. Had she deliberately dressed up for this encounter, sidney wondered, or was this her usual style? It was flash for Ely, let alone Grantchester.

‘As you may recall,’ she began, ‘I am very troubled about Danny.’

Mrs Wilkinson’s eighteen-year-old son had joined a commune that had recently been established on a farm outside Grantchester. It was run by Fraser Pascoe, an awareness guru, and was called the ‘Family of Love’.

‘Danny has joined of his own free will?’ Sidney asked.

‘He has.’

‘And have you found out anything more? Is the community religious at all?’ Sidney continued, wondering how on earth he was supposed to help.

‘Apparently there was a mystical sect with the same name that flourished round here in the sixteenth century. This is some kind of secular revival. These people say that they have now moved “beyond religion”. I think they chant, shout out and have visions.’

‘Sounds as if they go in for mystical experiences. William Blake sang naked in the garden with his wife.’

‘That’s different. He was a poet. My son is supposed to be going into the City. This is not the kind of thing I had in mind at all. And it’s not like him. He was always such a sensible child. But he’s not been the same since his father left home.’

‘I see.’

‘As you may remember, I have been on my own for the last two years. Mike thought it would be safe to divorce once our son reached sixteen, but Danny’s always been young for his age. I’m so worried. I can’t sleep. I think he’s been brainwashed.’ Mrs Wilkinson took Sidney’s hand. ‘There’s no one else I can turn to. You have to get him out of that dreadful place.’

‘Have you spoken to my successor, the vicar of Grantchester? It is his parish. I wouldn’t like to tread on his toes.’

‘He told me that the joy Danny was experiencing in finding himself was something I should celebrate. Honestly. I could kill the man. It has to be you, Mr Archdeacon. Will you go and see my son?’ She met his eyes, squeezed his hand and let it lie there rather too long.

Sidney promised to do what he could, stood up and saw his guest to the front door just as Anna had been commandeered to rescue him. ‘Please call in whenever you like,’ Barbara Wilkinson concluded. ‘Lunch, dinner, anything, Mr Archdeacon, I am all yours.’

As he closed the door, Sidney could still sense his hand in hers. Scent hung in the air.

He returned to his birthday lunch and was immediately teased. Hildegard remarked that she didn’t understand why some women felt the need to dress so provocatively when visiting a clergyman. Her husband tried to justify the interruption by explaining how he knew Barbara. She was, he said, a vulnerable parishioner whose husband had run off with a dental assistant, leaving her alone with a teenage son.

‘She looks more than capable of looking after herself,’ Amanda replied. ‘Her perfume was so strong I thought your indoor hyacinths had come out early.’

‘It’s Fidji.’

‘You know the name?’

‘I asked her.’

‘Why on earth would you do that?’

‘Curiosity, I suppose.’

‘Then it’s just as well you’re not a cat. You’d have been dead by now.’

Geordie cut in before anyone else could respond. ‘If she’s what you call your “pastoral duties” then I can understand why they take a while.’

Sidney did not want to darken the mood by telling everyone that he really felt he should go and see Danny Wilkinson because he knew that some cults warned of the impending apocalypse so fervently that they encouraged their members to get the whole thing started by killing each other.

‘Anna said grace for you,’ Hildegard reported. ‘It was going to be a surprise. She learned it specially. Sag’s nochmal, Kleine . . .’

A reluctant Anna, disappointed by the earlier absence of her father, repeated her prayer:

‘Komm, Herr Jesu, sei unser Gast

Und segne, was Du uns bescheret hast. Amen.’

The company applauded. Sidney was touched and guilty at the same time. How had he missed the moment? Repeating it later was not the same, he knew, but he kissed and thanked his daughter and said that her words were the best present anyone could have given him.

After lunch they retired to the drawing room for coffee and gifts. Sidney’s father Alec handed over the traditional copy of Wisden, his mother had knitted him an Aran jumper and Amanda produced twelve monogrammed handkerchiefs.

‘SRC – Sidney Robert Chambers – or Senior Roman Catholic if you’re thinking of going over to Rome.’

‘I think that’s unlikely.’

‘I had the same done for Henry. Details matter, Sidney, people notice these things: shoes, handkerchiefs and cufflinks. It’s important to have standards.’

‘I will do my best. Even though we must all fall short.’

‘That’s enough false modesty,’ said his father.

‘Then it seems I can’t win.’

‘That’s the clergyman’s lot, Sidney.’

‘I thought this was supposed to be my birthday?’

He was keen to get a walk in before tea but Mrs Wilkinson’s visit, and her son’s predicament, provoked a long discussion of the historic idealistic farm communities inspired by Tolstoy in Kharkov, Kursk and Voronezh, after which Leonard Graham left to see his old friend Simon Hackford in Cambridge. Inspector Keating then said that both he and Cathy should be heading home and would be happy to give Leonard a lift, while Amanda and Henry said they had to return to London for a social engagement that evening. Johnny Johnson also needed to get back to his jazz club.

The remaining Chambers family decided on a brisk tour past Cherry Hill motte and bailey and along the River Ouse. It was a damp afternoon and there were few signs of spring. Last year’s leaves clung to the hedgerows, while thick sprays of traveller’s joy unfolded over the brambles and dead bracken. Out in the stubble-fields a group of chaffinches picked at the grain left by the gleaners. Clumps of snowdrops were scattered under a hawthorn tree but, as Iris Chambers lamented, there was no hint of either primrose or crocus. Spring was going to be late again.

Jennifer Chambers took her brother aside and asked if he really minded being teased about other women.

‘I’m used to it now.’

‘It doesn’t make you want to change your ways?’

‘I have a clean conscience, Jen.’

‘You don’t think you lead women on?’

‘Not at all.’

‘I don’t know why they find clergymen attractive.’

‘I’m not sure they do.’

‘It must be the air of distracted unavailability.’

‘I don’t cultivate such behaviour, if that’s what you are suggesting.’

‘But you don’t mind the attention when it comes? I’m sure Hildegard does.’

‘I think she prefers to ignore it. She knows I love her more than anyone else.’

‘I hope you tell her. Sometimes you need to keep proving these things. It’s quite easy to lose faith; not only in religion but also in marriage.’

‘Are you worried about something, Jen?’

‘Not really, only it’s sometimes hard to know what men really think.’

‘Johnny?’

Jennifer swept back a strand of hair that hadn’t needed to be tidied and avoided eye contact. ‘There’s this woman at the club. He says there’s nothing in it, but he’s been coming home later and later. I know it’s the jazz world and I’m used to it, but he’s been distracted and irritable. He snaps at me more often.’

‘Is it money worries?’

‘It’s all kinds of anxiety. I overheard him saying that Blossom was a holiday from his everyday life.’

‘Blossom? As in Blossom Dearie?’

‘I don’t know, Sidney. It’s always Blossom this and Blossom that. She’s a jazz singer. Quite a handful, apparently.’

‘They often are.’

‘I only hope she hasn’t turned his head.’

‘I think he’s strong enough to resist.’

‘You were quite keen on a jazzer yourself, I recall.’

‘Gloria Dee?’ Sidney replied. ‘That was a long while ago; and, don’t forget, I wasn’t married at the time.’

‘Then I don’t know how you resisted the temptation. Will you have a word with Johnny when you’re next in the club?’

Why did people take such risks with their happiness? Sidney wondered. He could not imagine anyone wanting someone more lovely than his sister. She could have doubled for Diana Rigg in The Avengers. That was a far better programme than the bloody travesty of All Gas and Gaiters.

After the cake and candles and the final farewells at the station, Hildegard suggested a light supper and an early night. As she applied cold cream to her face in bed, she asked about Barbara Wilkinson, Sidney’s toothache and then remembered that she had wanted to question her husband about Jen. His sister hadn’t been herself. Was anything wrong?

Sidney thought about all the pressures and anxieties of the day. Did he have to tell his wife everything? His birthday had not gone as well as he had hoped. He sighed and put out the light.

‘It’s been a long day.’ he said.

Later that week, and still feeling listless, Sidney sat at his desk with gloomy determination, hoping that work might give him a greater sense of purpose and direction. From the window he watched a bullfinch in the garden, strutting around with a sliver of bark in his beak, waiting to be relieved of his duties and clearly cross that he might have to make his own nest. His strut became ever more furious but pointless, like a vain clergyman in mid-procession up the cathedral nave, convinced that he should have been made a bishop.

Sidney put his hand to his cheek where his tooth throbbed. He thought he caught a ghost of Barbara Wilkinson’s scent in the air, and found himself remembering the warmth of his hand in hers.

Because it was Lent, he was working on a study of conscience and guilt, trying to negotiate his way through the vexed question of human fallibility and the necessary distinction between the sins we can live with and those we can’t. He had read that it might be helpful for a priest, or any other believer, for that matter, to imagine that Jesus was walking alongside you at all times, as if in conversation, on the road to Emmaus perhaps, as guide and conscience.

Sidney was not at all sure he wanted Jesus to be walking alongside him at all times; certainly not when he was with Barbara Wilkinson or having a man-to-man chat with Johnny Johnson in the jazz club. There were times when discretion was needed, moments when surely even Jesus might have to absent himself until things quietened down a bit.

He put down his pen and left to pursue a less meditative type of faith in the form of a visit to the farm where Danny Wilkinson had sequestered himself.

The centre of the commune was a dilapidated farmhouse with a cottage garden, garage, woodshed and barn. An old Land Rover was parked outside and a couple of mongrel dogs ran freely across the front yard. The doors to the barn were almost off their hinges and the outside tap had formed a frozen puddle on the ground below. A cat toyed with a dead yellowhammer. Sidney was on his guard before he had even knocked at the door.

He was greeted by a pale floppy-haired boy dressed in an oversized loose white shirt over jeans. He asked Sidney to sign a book of greeting and wait in the meditation space for their leader. Fraser Pascoe would join Sidney once he had finished his morning trance.

There was nowhere to sit down properly. A series of beanbags and yoga mats surrounded a teak coffee table that displayed an array of self-improving books: Erich Fromm’s The Art of Loving, Aldous Huxley’s The Doors of Perception, Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet, together with Thoreau’s Walden and Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha.

The walls had been painted orange and there was a faint aroma of joss sticks. Sidney noticed a reproduction of William Blake’s painting of the twenty-four elders worshipping God in the Book of Revelation, a ‘Desiderata’ poster and a framed wisdom accreditation certificate from an organisation in India.

Pascoe was a man with a strong handshake and a firm jawline, chiselled cheekbones and dreamy blue eyes that could perhaps have been stolen for the purposes of becoming a cult leader. It was rare for Sidney to dislike someone within minutes of meeting, but Pascoe’s perfumed cleanliness (Tabac aftershave, minty breath, Italian hair oil) was surely too good to be true.

‘Western society is based on converting wants into needs,’ he explained. ‘Here, within the Family of Love, we try to do the opposite, reducing our desires to simple daily necessity.’

‘An admirable idea.’

‘It was, I think, the aim of the early Christians before they were corrupted by the Church.’

‘That’s true. To some extent.’

‘That is a very Anglican answer. “To some extent”.’

‘And one that you might expect from an Anglican priest.’

Pascoe elaborated on the principles of the farm. It was a celibate, self-sufficient, vegetarian community, living entirely off the land, without personal possessions or money. Their aim was to cleanse themselves of capitalist delusion and reach transcendent truth through meditation. ‘The less you think, the freer you are. We open ourselves to divine dictation; a trance before the revelation of all things.’

‘And the revelation will come?’

‘Before the rapture. When all things will be known.’

‘And when might that be?’ Sidney tried not to sound sceptical.

‘That is a secret known only to our adherents, but if you have read the work both of Nostradamus and Hendrik Niclaes and are aware of Mayan astrology then you can make a start. You are, of course, welcome to join us.’

‘And tell me,’ Sidney answered, giving the invitation a duck, ‘how do you achieve the trance-like state necessary for revelation?’

‘Silence, meditation; just like your prayers. The aim is to live beyond the body in pure light.’

‘And how do you find that brightness?’

‘We share a loving cup. We discover ourselves through love.’

‘And is that expressed physically?’

‘That is a question that befits a journalist rather than a clergyman. As I have already explained, Mr Archdeacon, we are a celibate group, uncorrupted by human bondage. I hear you would like to talk to Danny?’

‘If that is allowed.’

‘We are a free community. People come and go as they please.’

‘And you are self-sufficient, I think you said?’

‘Everything people need can be found in the community: food, shelter, safety, companionship and, I hope, wisdom.’

‘Danny’s mother is worried about him.’

‘Barbara Wilkinson is naturally anxious,’ Pascoe continued. ‘A man less charitable than myself might even describe her as neurotic.’

‘Do you know her?’

‘I have had conversations and, in the past, I offered her a way of rest. But she is too attached to the cares of the world. Her son needs space and distance. That is why he is safely with us.’

‘And how did he come to be here?’

‘I am sure he can tell you himself. I believe he is in the kitchen. We are having an onion soup with our home-made bread. As I say, you would be welcome to join us.’

Given his insistent toothache, Sidney thought that simple food might be a comfort but he did not want to prolong his stay. ‘That is kind but I think a conversation will be enough . . .’

‘To allay a mother’s fears. There is nothing frightening about our family, Mr Archdeacon. We live very simply, as you will see. But sometimes people are threatened by simplicity, just as they were by Jesus.’

The kitchen still had an old gas range and the peeling paint was partly disguised by hippy posters preaching love and self-improvement: ‘Your mind is a garden, your thoughts are the seeds; you can grow flowers or you can grow weeds.’ One wall had been covered by a recent fresco of a rainbow over the Himalayas; another depicted a field of daisies with peace signs and psychedelic self-portraits at their centre. Danny Wilkinson was slicing onions, dressed in a simple olive-green crew-neck jumper with jeans and plimsolls. He was of medium height, with a goatee beard and hair that fell to his shoulders in a style that most parents would have described as ‘girls’-length’.

Sidney apologised for the intrusion. ‘I know you are old enough to make up your own mind about the way you live your life.’

‘I certainly wouldn’t follow my mother, man.’

‘She has had a challenging time, I gather.’

‘After Dad left? I knew it was bad before anything happened: the rows, the drinking. My parents were swingers. What do you expect? I think they still are. It’s too much.’

Sidney was momentarily flummoxed by a generational role-reversal in which a trainee hippy appeared to be more moral than his parents. ‘How did you come to be here?’ he asked.

‘Life was doing my head in. A friend saw I needed sorting out.’

‘And who was that?’

‘Tom Raven. You met him when you arrived.’

‘With the large white shirt?’

‘That’s him. He’s the only one who still cares about what he wears.’

Sidney did not bother arguing that an untucked shirt worn over jeans hardly required much effort and continued with his questions. ‘How long do you intend to stay, Danny?’

‘I don’t believe in time any more.’

Pascoe explained. ‘We encourage all our young people to live in the moment. Now is the only reality. The past has gone; the future will come. Father Time has no place here.’

‘I sometimes think it’s advisable to learn lessons from the past and make preparations for the future,’ said Sidney.

Danny repeated what was surely a mantra. ‘Our only reality is now. Love is our truth. Desire is illusion. Simplicity is our only need.’

Sidney had had enough of being lectured. ‘Then I can tell your mother that you are content?’

‘You can tell her that I am discovering a happiness that she’ll never know.’

‘I may not put it quite like that. But I will say, if I may, that she has nothing to worry about.’

‘You can tell her what you like, man. I never want to see her again.’

The train back to Ely was delayed by frozen points. The hold-up only increased Sidney’s sense of unease. Even though Christmas was long gone, it felt as if he was still stuck in the bleakest of midwinters. He wiped a smear across a steamed-up window to reveal a dull view of the scuffed and bruised earth, wind-damaged fences and empty telegraph wires. The landscape looked abandoned, with only a couple of blanketed horses in the paddocks, a solitary crow and a dead fox that had trapped itself under a railing.

He decided to call in on his friend Felix Carpenter, the Dean of Ely, before evensong. ‘I don’t know why I am so irritable,’ he confessed. ‘I think it must be a mixture of cold, toothache and impatience. The visit to the Family of Love has hardly helped. I find those people so difficult. I know it’s not very Christian of me.’

‘Perhaps it is their certainty,’ the dean replied. ‘I am not sure faith comes so easily as they seem to believe.’

‘There’s a smugness to them. I don’t like it and then I become even more annoyed that they seem to have got to me. Do you think I could be jealous?’

‘No, I think you find it simplistic, Sidney. Our faith is born out of the pain and suffering of the Cross. It’s about a little more than sharing a bowl of lentils and doing the odd bit of yoga.’

Cordelia Carpenter came into her husband’s study with tea and digestive biscuits. She asked after Sidney’s toothache and recommended the Maltings dental practice and a Mr Wilkinson in particular. Sidney imagined that this must be Barbara’s former husband and immediately recognised that he could kill two birds with one stone.

It was impossible, Cordelia Carpenter vouchsafed, to concentrate on anything properly while suffering from such pain.

‘Trollope’s novels are full of teeth,’ her husband remembered. ‘I think he never travelled without a toothbrush and seldom described a woman or a girl without referring to their mouth. Of course in those days there was, I think, greater dental variety. People had teeth in gold, tin, ivory, wood and bone. It made them nervous of smiling. Nothing to do with Victorian propriety; they just didn’t want to show their gnashers.’

‘Didn’t they also take them from corpses and reuse them?’ his wife said as she removed the teapot to make a fresh supply.

‘I think so. Had you been alive then, Sidney, you might have had a teeth-related mystery to solve.’

‘I am more than happy to live now,’ their friend replied, eager to return to the subject in hand as soon as Cordelia had left them alone. ‘The Family of Love are taught that there is no such thing as past or future. They live only in the present.’

‘And so they are unlikely to appeal to historians or futurologists.’

‘Their leader is certainly aware of the future. I think there is some preparation for the end of the world; the final rapture.’

‘Has he been kind enough to set a date on it? Pope Innocent III predicted it would end 666 years after the rise of Islam; Martin Luther thought it would be no later than 1600. Recently I have been told it might be 1968, 1975, or even 1984, but I have my doubts. We don’t all live by the same calendar.’

‘I think you have to be one of his adherents to be illuminated . . .’

‘Or indoctrinated. How dangerous do you think they are, Sidney?’

‘I’m not sure. It feels rather creepy, that’s all.’

‘What about their leader? Is he all he’s cracked up to be?’

‘Definitely not. I am sure he is a charlatan.’

‘Has he taken money from the people who stay there?’

‘Probably.’

‘That’s what you need to find out. If you can’t get them on their philosophy, you have to hit them with their economics. If there’s fraud you can bring in Keating.’

‘I can’t see him sharing a loving cup.’

‘Indeed. But I’d like to see them offer. You will look after yourself, won’t you, Sidney? I don’t want you taking on too much.’

‘I’m not sure I’m taking on anything.’

‘At least go to the dentist, as my beloved Cordelia suggests. I always find it easiest, if you want an untroubled life, to do what your wife says. That’s the kind of simplicity that’s easy to follow and you don’t need to go to the trouble of joining a cult.’

Sidney smiled and finished his tea, loving the dean and his wife for their loyalty, generosity of spirit and their unpretentious goodness. Their home was such a welcoming contrast to the commune, with its deep sofas and fresh flowers, its aroma of baking and Brasso, sherry and furniture polish. This was a different, old-fashioned, Church of England timelessness, he thought; the oak and mahogany tables, cabinets, chests and chairs passed down the generations, watched and measured by the reassuring tick and strike of the grandfather clock in the hall.

He was in a far better mood during evensong and returned home almost cheerfully in time for a simple supper of Welsh rarebit and a bit of easy television.

Hildegard had finished her piano teaching for the day and was reading Anna the story of Little Red Riding Hood in the original German. She asked Sidney if he’d like to join them. Perhaps both father and daughter could become bilingual?

Anna laughed. ‘You can be the big bad WOLF, Daddy . . .’

‘I’m not sure I’ve got the teeth for it,’ Sidney smiled indulgently before promising that he would try his best.

On Monday 20th February, the Grantchester churchwarden discovered the dead body of Fraser Pascoe in a field between the farm and the church. He had been decapitated.

There was no sign of a murder weapon. The head lay a few feet from the body, as if someone had taken an almighty swing at the victim while he was walking, but the pathologist reported that it would have required several attempts to sever it from the body and that it was more likely to have been tossed or even kicked aside once it was off.

Inspector Keating was on the scene within an hour, the farm was cordoned off and no one was allowed to leave. Road blocks were set up at Coton Road, Broadway and Mill Way, police went door to door asking for witnesses, and Sidney was summoned that evening.

‘Why didn’t you warn me this might happen?’ Geordie asked. ‘This is the man that woman in the fur coat was telling you about.’

‘I didn’t think it would come to this.’

‘But you were uneasy. I know you, Sidney Chambers. Do you think Barbara Wilkinson could have done it herself? Taking the law into her own hands?’

‘I hardly think she’s responsible. She wouldn’t have the strength.’

‘You’d be surprised. If the axe was sharp enough . . .’

‘You think it was an axe?’

‘What else could it have been? We’ll have to interview every member of that bloody cult. Never mind Mrs Wilkinson, I suppose any one of them could have done it.’

‘Or one of their parents . . .’

‘Or a local madman, for that matter. We have no leads. You’ll talk to the boy; and his dreadful mother, of course. Did you ever get round to meeting the victim?’

‘I didn’t like him at all, Geordie, I must confess. Even the dean said he was a “perfect menace”. Although I wouldn’t put him down as a murderer.’

‘All this religion has a lot to answer for.’

Sidney tried to explain the difference between good and bad religion; that it wasn’t the fault of any individual belief system but misunderstandings by their followers. Even if people fall short of their ideals, it is still better to have them than not.

‘I’m not so sure,’ said Keating. ‘Wouldn’t it be preferable to have no religion at all?’

*    *    *

The next morning Sidney attended a meeting of the Cathedral Chapter in the Lady Chapel. Items on the agenda concerned the maintenance of gravestones in diocesan churchyards, a review of parish tithes for the financial year 1967/1968, forthcoming missionary work in Nigeria, and a discussion of the Church’s attitude to homosexuality in the light of the recent Sexual Offences Act.

Despite the importance of the issues, his attention was unsurprisingly diverted to the carved figurines that decorated the chapel. One hundred and forty-seven statues had been mutilated, vandalised and indeed decapitated by the puritan reformers in the sixteenth century. It was the worst of violent religion, the smashing of images, the stripping of the altars. The stained glass had been destroyed, the walls whitewashed, all colour and imagery removed. A building intended to represent God’s green garden had been razed by fire. This was a living embodiment of religious zealotry.

Had someone approached Pascoe with similar fury? Perhaps the motivation for his murder could have been religious after all?

Sidney thought of the saints, martyrs and other victims of decapitation: John the Baptist, St Alban, the first English Christian martyr, St George and Thomas More. He prayed for them all. He even prayed for Fraser Pascoe.

Then he called in to see Mrs Wilkinson. She was wearing some kind of day-gown and although her make-up was incomplete she still looked vulnerably attractive. Ever since his wife and friends had warned him how compromising the woman might be, he had found himself thinking more and more about her. Sidney told himself to concentrate.

‘I was afraid something like this would happen,’ she said. ‘It’s dreadful.’

‘Have you seen Danny?’

‘I went to the farm but there were police everywhere. My son still won’t talk to me so I wrote him a little card and included some money to help him along. One of the girls said they would take it to him. I am doing my best.’

‘I’m sure you are.’

‘Do the police have any clues as to who might have done such a thing?’

‘There’s nothing they are prepared to say publicly.’

‘And will you involve yourself? I know you are friends with the inspector.’

‘I have come to ask if there is anything I can do.’

‘I am not sure that is the only reason for your visit. You have come to ask me questions.’

‘And I have asked one,’ Sidney replied carefully before repeating himself. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘You can get my son out of there.’

‘I have tried. But now the situation has changed. The police will want to keep them all on site during the investigation. Danny will be a suspect along with the others.’

‘They all worshipped that man. Why would they kill him?’

‘Why would anyone? That’s what the police need to find out.’

‘I suppose you’ve come to tell me that I might be a suspect?’

‘That is a possibility . . .’

‘Even though I am “a weak and feeble woman”?’

‘You never spoke to Fraser Pascoe yourself?’

‘Not recently. Not at all.’

Sidney remembered something the man had said. ‘Didn’t he offer you “a way of rest”?’

‘He made a pass at me, if that’s what you mean.’

‘He claimed they were a celibate community.’

‘That is nonsense in his case, Mr Archdeacon, and he made it perfectly obvious. I am quite used to men making propositions, as I am sure you can imagine.’

‘I can.’

‘In fact, I’m sometimes surprised when they don’t. People are never very subtle about it.’

‘And you refused him?’

‘Of course I did. What kind of woman do you think I am?’

‘Your son . . .’

‘What has he said about me?’

‘I think . . .’ Sidney hesitated. It was too soon to discuss what he had heard of Barbara’s life as a swinger. In any case, it was probably better to give her the benefit of the doubt. ‘I imagine Danny wants some time away from his parents. It’s a process of discovery. I’m sure you know that this is common in adolescence.’

‘But a mother’s love never stops. I am still responsible for him.’

‘I think Danny wants you to let go.’

‘I can’t. He may be in danger.’

‘Is there anything you know that you’re not telling me, Mrs Wilkinson?’

‘Call me Barbara, please. I hate this formality.’

‘Go on . . .’

‘Fraser Pascoe may be dead but I don’t think the trouble is over. It’s my feminine intuition; something I can’t quite explain. Haven’t you felt something similar, Sidney? It makes me shiver. That place is evil; evil masquerading as love. I am convinced that we haven’t seen the last of all this, that there are terrors still to come.’

Sidney returned to the Family of Love. The weather was appropriately sombre, with low and heavy skies, slanting rain and a biting wind that seemed to be blowing hard at him.

Inspector Keating asked Danny Wilkinson about Pascoe’s background. The cult leader had experimented with alternative medicine, learned Transcendental Meditation in San Francisco, studied under a guru in India, and returned to his home country to teach others what he called ‘the way of all knowledge’. His plan had been to let the mind run freely – ‘jazz thinking’ he called it – in order to find the underlying harmony of all religions and link human consciousness to the beginning of creation. Once a moment of eternal union had been achieved then his adherents could be filled with inner light and find themselves at one with the cosmos.

Geordie pretended to find this appealing but, as soon as they had time alone, he asked Sidney how anyone could ever believe in ‘such utter crap’. They then began to interview the residents.

There was Roger Nelson, a burly young man with a forward stoop as a result of a rugby injury at school; Kevin Jenkins, a boy who’d had rickets as a child and whose father still blamed him for failing his eleven-plus; Sam Swinton, who had the requisite air of sullen silence that suited the most obvious suspect; Tom Raven, the boy in the white shirt who appeared remarkably unconcerned, as if recent events had nothing to do with him; and two women, Bea Selby and Rachel Sladen, who claimed that they had been in bed with what they thought was an out-of-body experience but turned out to be flu.

That left Danny Wilkinson, who swore that, at the time of Pascoe’s death, they had been drinking from the loving cup before resting in a state of trance.

‘And does that cup have any ingredients that the police might consider illegal?’

‘I can’t tell you that.’

‘We’ll find out soon enough,’ Keating snapped.

‘Tell me, Danny,’ Sidney resumed, ‘do you plan to stay here? It will be very different now.’

‘I have nowhere else to go, man.’

‘Your father and mother . . .’

‘I said I have nowhere else.’

‘But you no longer have your leader . . .’

‘Your Church follows a dead man,’ Danny Wilkinson concluded. ‘Here we are living a life of peace and beauty. That’s all there is. All that matters. What we’re waiting for.’

By the time the questioning had been completed, Keating was unimpressed. ‘Peace and beauty, my arse. That’s got to be one of the least tranquil places on earth. They’re all terrified. I don’t believe a word any of them say. I presume you’re going to keep helping me with all this? It probably means seeing a bit more of the boy’s mother, but you won’t mind that.’

Sidney was part of a working party to discuss the Church of England’s attitude to ‘modern morality’, during which everyone spent a great deal of time trying to find the right level of informed tolerance over matters such as sex before marriage, divorce, homosexuality and abortion. After several protracted sessions in dim Westminster basements with lukewarm coffee and stale biscuits, he needed cheering up.

Tubby Hayes was headlining at Johnny’s club in Soho. This meant that Sidney could see one of his favourite sax players and question his brother-in-law about the status of his marriage at the same time.

The band was playing ‘Finky Minky’. Sidney ordered a tomato juice and thought through his approach. He would begin by asking about the main matter in hand, not least because Johnny had been present when Barbara Wilkinson had first arrived to discuss her fears about the farm.

‘I don’t know what it is with those places,’ Johnny began. ‘They give me the creeps.’

‘I think it’s an attempt to opt out of boredom and pursue something other than the norm. I suppose jazz started like that. As did the Church.’

‘You just have to stay true, Sidney: no gimmicks. I hate it when vicars get the guitars out.’

‘I am not wild about that either, I must say. It’s all part of our appeal to “the youth of today” people keep writing about.’

‘Those campfire Christians always look like people who are too scared to have sex.’

‘I wouldn’t put it as strongly as that. Perhaps they are just waiting for the right moment.’

‘That’s what Christianity’s all about, isn’t it: deferred gratification? Waiting for the return of Jesus, hoping for revelation. You’d think they might want to hurry things along a bit.’

‘Some of them do. This cult I was telling you about. They have a “loving cup”.’

‘You think it might be spiked?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘And you want me to put out a few feelers? It’ll be a local dealer.’

‘Just the odd discreet word might be helpful.’

Johnny pointed to the band as they swung into ‘Mexican Green’ at the start of the second set. ‘Tubby is no stranger on the scene. Blossom knows people too, but she doesn’t get involved.’

‘The singer?’

‘She’s become a regular here. Everyone loves her.’

‘Jen was saying.’

‘She’s worried we’re having an affair.’

‘And are you?’ Sidney was surprised by his own boldness.

‘So that’s why you’re here.’

‘Not entirely . . .’

‘Blossom’s much older than me and she’s not a woman you mess with. I’ve told Jen there’s nothing going on, but she’s suspicious.’

‘Is your artiste married?’

‘Not any more. But I’m telling you, Sidney, there’s nothing going on. You can meet her if you like. Then you’ll see.’

‘I suppose the late nights can’t have helped.’

‘This is a jazz club, Sidney. What am I supposed to do? Leave after the first set and tuck up early? Come on, let me get you a proper drink.’

As the band launched into ‘Off the Wagon’ and Sidney accepted the addition of vodka to his tomato juice, he had to admit that his resistance to temptation was not always as good as it should have been.

*    *    *

Barbara Wilkinson’s former husband, Mike, was a strict but efficient Scottish dentist who was keen to instruct his new patient on the importance of ‘a confident mouth’.

‘So much goes into it, Mr Archdeacon: food, air, bacteria. It has to be your front line of defence. All manner of things can unsettle, invade and then fester. Your gums have been open to attack for far too long. In fact, your teeth are failing so fast it’s like the Battle of Bannockburn in there.’

Sidney had not seen a dentist for almost ten years and now remembered why. Mike Wilkinson had a similarly poor attendance record at Sunday services. ‘I went to church once too bloody often,’ he volunteered, referring no doubt to his marriage.

Sidney’s inability to keep to proper standards of oral hygiene meant that he was now in need of a crown, three fillings and some root-canal treatment, not to mention the fact that it was likely he would soon have to have his wisdom teeth extracted.

‘Do you have to knock me out for that?’

‘Not completely,’ Mike Wilkinson explained. ‘It depends on how complicated it is. Some patients do prefer hospital but we can call in an anaesthetist. We do have everything to hand.’

‘Gas and air?’

‘Yes. Sedation too. We try to make sure people hardly notice they’ve been here.’

‘That’s not a story I’ve often heard told.’

‘I shouldn’t worry too much, Mr Archdeacon, although we will have to see you quite a few times. However, one of the side effects of diazepam is amnesia, so you may well forget how many.’

Sidney was not at ease. He worried about the misuse of dentistry. Could, for example, a murderous dentist get away with a slow-acting poison inserted into the body of a filling that might not kill until days or weeks afterwards? How easy would that be to detect?

He lay back in the chair and wondered why he was thinking like this. Who else would imagine that their dentist was a potential murderer?

As he was waiting for the anaesthetic to take effect, Sidney mentioned that he had seen Mike’s son Danny just before Fraser Pascoe’s death.

‘A ghastly business. I was in London at a meeting of the British Endodontic Society at the time. We meet to exchange ideas on all aspects of pulp and root-canal treatment. Dr Angelo Sargenti was giving a paper on the use of N2. Barbara tracked me down and told me.’

‘So you do speak to each other?’

‘Not if we can help it. But when it concerns our son, we have to. Hopefully that’ll put an end to it all. They can’t go on without their leader.’

‘I think they’re going to try. The plan is to live outside the capitalist system.’

‘Then Danny should move to Moscow.’

‘I’m not sure that’s practical.’

‘It’s no more difficult than living without heat or money in a draughty old barn with a collection of messed-up lunatics.’

‘I suppose if you put it like that . . .’

The dentist resumed his work. ‘Let’s see if we’re ready to continue. A little wider please, Mr Archdeacon.’

The drilling began and Mike Wilkinson drew this particular subject of conversation to a close. ‘You can’t force your children to do anything against their will. But you can cut off their source of funds. That’s what I’ve told Barbara. But she’s too weak with Danny. She had a soft spot for Fraser Pascoe too.’

‘Really?’ Sidney mumbled as best he could.

‘Oh yes. They were quite close at one stage. Then after a couple of months it all fell apart. That’s what happens with Babs. Nothing ever lasts. Rinse and spit please . . .’

That Saturday Sidney took his wife and daughter to lunch with his parents in Highgate. Alec and Iris Chambers had both retired and now that they were well into their seventies they were thinking of selling the family home and moving somewhere smaller and warmer; Devon, Cornwall, or even France. Alec Chambers said that he wanted to ‘throw some ideas around’ but before they did so he would like ‘a bit of a man-to-man’ with his son. Sidney knew it was going to be serious as soon as he was handed a gin and tonic that he hadn’t asked for.

‘Hildegard has told us what’s been going on and we think you need to be very careful indeed.’

‘There has been a murder.’

‘I know. However, we are more concerned about the woman who came on your birthday.’

‘Barbara Wilkinson?’

‘Indeed. I hope you haven’t been tempted to get involved with her problems?’

‘There’s nothing improper, if that’s what you’re worried about.’

‘I was worrying about the proper, let alone the improper.’

‘I don’t appear to have much choice, Dad. She asked for my help, I went to see her son and his spiritual leader was found murdered.’

‘But that is a matter for Keating.’

‘I know. But when parishioners ask for help . . .’

‘Barbara Wilkinson is not, as far as I am aware, a parishioner.’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘No, I don’t. I was wondering if you would have been so eager to help if the boy’s father had come to see you rather than the mother?’

‘I like to think I would; although there is quite a difference in manner between husband and wife.’

‘This has got to stop, Sidney. It’s not fair on Hildegard.’

‘Have you asked her?’

‘I don’t need to. You can’t just go charging in all over again. Unless you’re trying to impress your femme fatale.’

Hildegard popped her head round the study door. ‘Lunch is ready!’

‘Very good,’ Alec Chambers replied loudly but then added, as a final aside to his son, ‘she may very well not mind, but it’s embarrassing for the rest of us. You have a reputation to keep up.’

‘And I do.’

‘We don’t want gossip. Once Anna starts her education, you’ll have to think about that too. Mothers at the school gates.’

‘I don’t think we need to worry about that. Ely is a decent enough place.’

‘You don’t want to give anyone cause. A priest, like a doctor, must be beyond reproach. Didn’t they teach you anything at theological college? If you really must talk to that female again, make sure that it’s in your house and not hers. You can’t be seen going out of other women’s homes. That’s all I’m saying. Now let’s have some lunch.’

Once they were all seated in the dining room, Iris Chambers produced her famous fish pie and Sidney tried to cheer up proceedings by making a jokey reference to Sidney Bechet’s ‘Hold Tight (Want Some Seafood Mama)’. This went unnoticed. Undaunted, he then extended his marine sphere of reference by telling the assembled company that he had recently been to Johnny’s club to see Tubby Hayes play ‘Fishin’ the Blues’.

‘I presume you were “fishing for clues”,’ his mother replied as she served up the fish pie, kale and a dish of carrots that she was trying in a new way: à la julienne.

‘I did ask Johnny about things, if that’s what you want to know.’

‘What things?’ asked Anna.

‘It doesn’t matter.’

‘But,’ Sidney turned to his mother, switching to French, ‘il n’y a rien à faire.’

‘You mean il n’y a pas une affaire?’ his mother asked.

‘Non.’

‘It’s not fair,’ said Anna. ‘Speak in German.’

‘I’m sorry, ma petite,’ Sidney continued, ‘I was distracted by your grandmother’s carrots à la julienne. I will now speak to you only in German.’

‘That won’t last long,’ said Hildegard.

Iris Chambers gave her son an extra helping and was assured that there was nothing to worry about. Sidney was certain Johnny Johnson had been behaving himself. ‘As have I,’ he added quickly, catching his wife’s eye.

‘Guilty conscience?’ she asked.

Sidney tried to concentrate on the matter in hand. He had always been bemused by family secrets and partiality; how assumptions were made, sometimes based on childhood and teenage years that no longer applied when siblings were fully grown adults; how one member of the family might be trusted more than another and that people never knew everything, either about their parents or their children.

‘Are we talking about Sidney or Johnny?’ Alec Chambers enquired.

‘Never you mind,’ his wife answered. ‘Some of this is simply between a mother and a son.’

‘Does it concern Jen?’

‘Zut. C’est fini. The moment has passed.’

‘You promised no more French,’ Anna complained.

Alec Chambers looked to his granddaughter and winked. ‘Don’t worry, poppet. We have our little secrets too, don’t we?’

‘And what are they?’ his wife asked.

‘Zut. C’est fini,’ he replied, and once Anna realised that he was referring to the box of Cadbury’s Lucky Numbers her grandfather had said she could have after lunch, she repeated the phrase again and again until pudding was served.

This was Angel Delight, a new strawberry and cream instant whip that could be made in seconds. ‘I thought you might be amused by the name,’ Iris Chambers told her son, ‘and it’s so easy.’

Her husband began to sing ‘Earth Angel (will you be mine)’ quietly to himself and then increased the volume once he had the attention of the room. Everyone clapped. Sidney couldn’t understand why his mother, who had been so imaginative under rationing and who prided herself in her home cooking, would want to take such an artificial short cut. ‘I remember the trifles you used to make when I was a child: jellies with raspberries; lemon meringue pie on my birthday.’

‘Oh, I can’t be bothered with all that now. Don’t you think it’s a wonderful name? Perhaps the angels scoop it all up when they’ve had enough of playing Bach?’

‘There is no such thing as too much Bach,’ said Hildegard.

When Sidney failed to respond, his mother tried again. ‘You don’t seem to be on top form, my boy. Is it your teeth again?’

‘It’s a bit more than that.’

‘You’re not still being plagued by that ghastly woman?’

‘Pas devant l’enfant,’ Sidney replied.

‘Oh, for goodness sake.’

‘Zut. C’est fini,’ Anna shouted out, only to hear her mother observe:

‘If only it was.’

Shortly after breakfast on the Thursday, Inspector Keating telephoned to say that Dr Allan McDonald had completed the post-mortem and Pascoe’s body had not been drugged. There had been a number of blows, one of which had severed the carotid artery. The resultant bleeding and lack of oxygen to the brain had been the cause of death, but further attempts had then been made to detach the head, which had been kicked away from the body with the force of a footballer’s volley.

The blade of the murder weapon could have been up to sixteen inches long, curved like a sickle or grasshook, and there had been some additional hacking with what might have been a serrated carving knife. Whoever did it would have had blood all over them and so it was imperative to continue searching the area for both weapons and clothing.

Sidney tried not to think too hard about the horrors of the scene. ‘That rules out Barbara Wilkinson, I would have thought.’

‘Unless she was in cahoots with her husband.’

‘The dentist? They hardly speak to each other.’ Even as he said the words, Sidney did not know if this was true.

‘Decapitation is going it a bit for a dentist, don’t you think? He has so many other methods of murder at his disposal. And why would he want to kill a religious fanatic?’

‘Because of what he was doing to his son?’ Sidney replied. ‘He does have an alibi. That doesn’t stop him or his wife paying someone to do it for them, I suppose.’

‘It’s too messy for a hitman. This was brutal and personal. We need to find out who could have hated Pascoe so much. We’ll have to look a bit harder. In the meantime, there’s no harm in you seeing your lovely lady again, Sidney. Perhaps she’ll tell you a bit more. Give her a bit of your pastoral care.’

‘I’m not sure that would be appropriate.’

Keating managed a sardonic smile. ‘It hasn’t stopped you in the past.’

It had begun to snow, the drifts across the fens covering all the signs of spring. Sidney took Byron, his black Labrador, as well as his bicycle, and caught a late-morning train to Cambridge, determined to get his visit to Barbara Wilkinson over and done with.

Despite the cold outside, her heating was on sufficiently high for her to wear a sleeveless black woollen dress, with her hair in an ‘updo’ style. A soft, dark tendril fell across her eyes. Sidney found himself wanting to move it to one side and touch her cheek. Instead he took her hand as she wept and said that she was frightened of the police. ‘They came asking the most terrible questions.’

‘About Fraser Pascoe?’

‘Danny too. They asked me how much I knew about “free love”. It was insulting.’

‘Fraser Pascoe insisted on celibacy.’

‘But I don’t think that man practised what he preached. I told you that last time.’

‘He was keen on you.’

‘That is not too unusual, Mr Archdeacon, as I’ve said before.’ Still she held his hand.

‘And you didn’t respond to his approach?’

‘Again, I’ve told you, no.’

‘But was there anything about your meetings that might have given rise to speculation?’

‘I can’t do anything about gossip. That’s why your company is so refreshing. I know I am safe. You are beyond reproach.’ She patted his hand and let it go.

Sidney was reassured and disappointed at the same time. There was something curiously fetching about the woman, despite her bare-faced lie. ‘I wanted to ask about something that may not be so easy to discuss.’

‘Oh dear. I hope this is not going to be complicated.’

‘It’s money,’ Sidney said quickly.

‘Oh,’ Barbara recovered. ‘I thought it might be something else.’

‘How much did you give Danny?’

‘I wouldn’t like to say.’

‘Was he stealing from you, Mrs Wilkinson?’

‘you’ve guessed?’

‘how much did he take?’

‘I don’t honestly know. But there was a forged cheque. Fortunately the bank stopped it. They couldn’t believe I would do such a thing.’

‘Do you mind telling me how much it was for?’

‘Five thousand pounds. Payable to Fraser Pascoe.’

‘That’s a vast amount of money.’

‘Now you see why I had to get my son out of there.’

‘But you didn’t go to the police?’

‘I thought if I did that then Danny wouldn’t come home. Now the police are involved I’m afraid he never will. What on earth are we going to do, Sidney? You won’t desert me, will you?’

Before he left Grantchester, Sidney decided that he needed a moment to recover from the unsettling nature of his conversation with Barbara. She had a tentacular way of pulling him into situations he would rather avoid.

What he needed was something predictably reassuring and so he chose to look in on his former housekeeper. Mrs Maguire was much slowed by arthritis, and she was less confident than usual, but she came to life when the subject turned to her assessment of current events. Barbara Wilkinson had only herself to blame.

‘She’s a terrible mother. Everyone comments. People who don’t have to work for a living can get up to all kinds of mischief. The devil makes work for idle hands, and many are the men who’ve benefited from her personal touch. I’m surprised she hasn’t got her claws into you.’

‘I have seen her . . .’

‘You’ve got yourself involved, haven’t you?’

‘Not in any improper way.’

‘I mean with the crime. My sister Gladys was saying they think the murder weapon was a scythe. That would be appropriate, wouldn’t it?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Father Time, of course. The Grim Reaper, cutting Pascoe down to size.’

‘Are Father Time and the Grim Reaper one and the same?’ Sidney asked. ‘I’m never that sure.’

‘Doesn’t matter now the man’s dead. I wonder if he knew what hit him.’

‘They think he was attacked from behind.’

‘He must have known. You can’t do that kind of thing with one blow. He would have staggered about and seen his attacker. It’s bound to be one of those young men. They’ll neither work nor want.’

‘Do you think they’re rich?’

‘Only people with money can afford to say they have no need of it.’

‘That’s very wise, Mrs M.’

His former housekeeper smiled, grateful for the acknowledgement. ‘I’ve always said there’s something dirty at the crossroads. It’s a fraud. All those boys and girls are rich children with trust funds, I’ll bet. Pascoe was raking it in. You need to look for the money, Sidney, isn’t that what they say? Perhaps Mrs Richmond’s husband could help? He works in the City. He must know people.’

‘I can’t see Henry Richmond troubling himself with this.’

‘He owes you a favour, doesn’t he?’

‘I’m not sure he does.’

‘You approved of him. Told Miss Kendall to go ahead and marry him.’

‘Only because there wasn’t anyone else left.’

‘That’s not true, Sidney. You should be ashamed of yourself for saying such things. I always said she’d have made a good wife for you.’

‘You never said anything of the sort. Besides, I’m very happy with Hildegard.’

‘I’ll tell you one thing about Mrs Richmond. She’d have given short shrift to that Wilkinson woman. She wouldn’t have let you near her.’

‘Hildegard is a lot more tolerant, I must confess.’

‘That may be, but I wouldn’t take her for granted.’

‘I don’t.’

‘She’s been spurned once and her last husband was murdered. You don’t want to start giving her ideas.’

‘I really don’t think Hildegard is capable of murder, Mrs M.’

‘You shouldn’t test her, though, Sidney my boy. People can behave very unpredictably when they’re desperate.’

Sidney took Byron for a quick constitutional across the Meadows before their journey home. He was annoyed with himself for getting involved in a situation that was now out of control. He should have told Barbara Wilkinson right at the start that he could do nothing for her. But instead he had been initially attracted to her (he could admit that now) as well as vain and flattered into thinking that only he, the great Sidney Chambers, could sort things out. And now he found himself right in the middle of it all. Never again, he told himself. What he wanted more than anything was a drink with Inspector Keating. What he would do for a pint of Guinness in the Eagle, sitting by the fire on this dire day!

At least it had stopped snowing. He let his Labrador roam free during his cogitations and it must have been a good ten minutes before he realised that he had lost sight of him altogether. This was all he needed. To mislay his ruddy dog on top of everything else! Honestly.

He called and called but Byron gave no reply. Passers-by offered to help and they finally found him nosing his way through a patch of undergrowth. He had been pawing at a swathe of dirty blue-and-white material, but it wasn’t a random item of clothing at all. It was a bloodied cheesecloth shirt wrapped around the blade of what appeared to be the gardener’s scythe from Grantchester church.

After that it was bedlam. Keating and his forensic team set to work while Sidney made phone calls to Henry Richmond about the cult’s finances. He also telephoned the dean to apologise for his absence at evensong before anyone complained.

‘We all understand these are special circumstances, Sidney.’

‘Sometimes I worry things are never normal.’

‘Perhaps there’s no such thing as normality?’ the dean mused. Sidney envied the time his colleague seemed to have available for free-flowing thought.

‘I do hope there is. It isn’t good for me to spend so much of my contemplation suspecting people of murder.’

‘I am afraid that being a priest isn’t about “what’s good for me”, Sidney. It’s about what’s best for the community we serve.’

‘I’m not sure I’m even managing that.’

‘If you are fighting evil, then you are taking steps to help the world become a better place. Try to make your every moment an act of prayer. That is all a priest can do. Take steps. The race is not always to the swift.’

Sidney had got away with his ecclesiastical negligence only to be encouraged to work harder at the practical application of his ethics. There really was no respite, not even when it came to sharing a moment of relaxation with the inspector as soon as the pub was open.

‘You need to question that dentist again.’

‘I think that’s your job, Geordie. If I ask any more leading questions he’s sure to commit an act of excruciating violence. Have you made any progress with the shirt?’

‘It’s a medium size; and so, if it did belong to the murderer, which seems pretty likely given that it is soaked in blood, that rules out the bulky Roger Nelson, and the diminutive Sam Swinton. It’s probably safe to think it wasn’t one of the women, which means the murderer must be Tom Raven, your friend’s son Danny or his dad the dentist.’

‘Unless one of the women deliberately wore a man’s shirt or it’s a stranger after all.’

‘I’m concentrating on those three men for now. It shouldn’t take long for one of them to crack. They’re all behaving as if they’re in the middle of a nervous breakdown.’

‘Perhaps they need help.’

‘And they may get it once we’ve sorted this out. Then, if they haven’t been disowned, we need to get the children back to their families. You said Amanda’s husband might look into the finances?’

‘Companies House. Other records. I’ve also asked him to look for the surnames of the people in the cult. Pascoe might have been working with one of the parents. You never know. But if he’s got assets, Henry says he will find them: provided they are not in Switzerland.’

Geordie offered Sidney and Byron a lift to the station. Before they got into the car, the two men stopped at a makeshift poster advertising a student production of Orestes. Geordie asked what the play was about and was informed that the plot concerned a son who murdered his mother, Clytemnestra, and her lover Aegisthus.

‘Charming.’

‘He’s then pursued by the Furies and goes mad.’

‘Any justice?’ Geordie asked.

‘Funnily enough, there’s a trial with a jury of twelve but they can’t decide. It’s a split vote, but the goddess Athena lets him off.’

‘Extenuating circumstances . . .’

‘His mother was having an affair. He was provoked. A similar thing may have happened here.’

Geordie was doubtful as he got in the car and turned on the ignition. ‘Are you sure? Barbara Wilkinson and Fraser Pascoe hated each other.’

Sidney slammed his passenger door shut. ‘Yes. The kind of hatred that only happens after a relationship. Hell hath no fury and all that . . .’

‘And so if Danny Wilkinson or his father found out about the affair they could have wanted to kill either of them?’

‘Or both.’

‘It seems a bit extreme.’

The two friends drove in silence down King’s Parade. As they passed on into Trumpington Street, Keating asked: ‘Sidney, are you suggesting that Danny Wilkinson might have joined the cult specifically to murder Pascoe in revenge for sleeping with his mother and that he has been faking his cult-like behaviour all along?’

‘It’s not impossible.’

‘Tell you what,’ said Geordie, missing the left turn into Lensfield Road and taking an abrupt right into the Fen Causeway. ‘Let’s go round there now.’

‘Both of us?’

‘Why not?’

‘What about my train? I should be getting back. We’re going the wrong way. Hildegard . . .’

‘Oh don’t worry about her. She’s used to all this.’

‘That doesn’t make it any easier,’ Sidney replied forlornly. ‘I’ve just come from Grantchester. I don’t want to go back there all over again.’

Keating turned towards the village and was overtaken by an ambulance going full pelt. ‘Bloody hell.’

It was heading for the farm. By the time the two men arrived a body was being stretchered away.

Barbara Wilkinson was already there. ‘Someone’s tried to kill Danny,’ she said.

Sidney sometimes wished he had developed a mild form of agoraphobia to keep him at home, since whenever he went out into the world he found himself cast adrift, like a Cambridge Odysseus, wondering when he would ever return to his Penelope.

Danny Wilkinson had either taken an overdose or he had been poisoned. He was not dead but was rushed to hospital to have his stomach pumped. His mother followed the ambulance all the way there. Keating took statements and Sidney offered what consolation he could as Byron slept in the corner. If this was not a straightforward suicide but attempted murder, it could have been performed by any surviving member of the cult.

Keating searched the farm and awaited the toxicology report. There was not much to look for, since the Family of Love, in espousing the cause of poverty, was hippily monastic. There were few clothes, little food and no ready money. The bathroom contained a sliver of soap, a thin ribbed towel with the nap rubbed away and Izal lavatory paper that was so rough it was used only sparingly. But finally, in the cupboard under the stairs, hidden away in the bag of a Hoover that was never used, the police found a supply of ketamine.

‘Here we go,’ said Keating. ‘There aren’t many horses to tranquillise on this particular farm. It must be for the loving cup. Progress at last.’

He began by interviewing Tom Raven. The boy claimed that Danny Wilkinson must have taken an overdose. His friend had always wanted to reach for a higher calm and if that meant death then his attempt had, perhaps, been noble.

‘Unless he didn’t mean to take things so far.’

‘You have been listening to his stupid mother?’

‘I don’t need your advice on who I talk to,’ Keating snapped back. ‘I make my own observations.’

‘Then you probably don’t need my help.’

‘I’ll be the one who decides that.’

Sidney knew that he might be able to lessen the aggression between the two men with a quiet word but decided to remain silent and let his friend press on with further questions about Pascoe’s death. Raven claimed that he always wore white shirts long and loose from Hilditch & Key, and he wouldn’t be seen dead in the blood-soaked cheesecloth specimen discovered on the Meadows. He had never noticed any other member of the farm wearing it either. Perhaps it was a stranger’s and Pascoe’s murder had been a random attack? In any case, he had been visiting his father in London at the time of death, so he couldn’t have committed the crime even if he had wanted to.

‘What about financial gain?’ Keating asked.

‘I have enough money, thanks.’

‘I thought that in this place you weren’t supposed to have any at all?’ Sidney remembered.

‘We all need a running-away fund,’ Tom Raven answered before smirking a little. ‘I am sure your wives have them.’

‘Don’t be cheeky,’ said Keating. ‘What about your so-called friend, Danny Wilkinson?’

‘He’s still my friend.’

‘Did you poison him?’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘You tell us.’

‘I could have done, I suppose. I could have done anything really. But I didn’t. None of us did. We were all together that night, “in harmony”, and then we went to our rooms for jazz thinking.’

‘Separately?’

‘I did.’

‘What about the girls?’

‘What about them?’

‘What was their relationship with Danny like?’

‘It was groovy enough. But I don’t think it was physical, if that’s what you mean. Danny was scared of chicks. Something to do with his mum. You’ll have to ask him. Her too, if you can stand it.’

‘You speak as if you know he will survive.’

‘You think he might not?’ Raven asked.

‘Sometimes, even after a stomach pump, the damage has already been done. It’s either internal bleeding, kidney damage or liver failure: even all three. Do you want that on your conscience?’

‘My conscience is clear enough.’

‘But you are friends,’ Sidney pointed out. ‘Don’t you care about him?’

‘I love him like a brother. But I don’t see why I have to talk to you about it.’

‘Don’t take that tone with us, you little shit.’ Keating exploded at last, getting out of his chair and grabbing Tom Raven by the collar. ‘I don’t see why I have to talk to a spoilt little wazzock like you either but unfortunately that’s my job. I have to do it. You think you can give any answer you like? You make me sick.’

Tom Raven held his ground and remained utterly still. ‘Stay cool, man. There’s no need to get heavy. You don’t want my dad involved.’

‘Don’t think your father can get you out of this.’

‘My dad can get me out of anything.’

‘Is that a challenge?’ Sidney asked.

He rang Hildegard to explain why he was going to be delayed even further. He did not go into details, and he left out the fact that he had promised to look in on Barbara Wilkinson before getting the last train back to Ely.

He tried her home first and found that she had just returned from the hospital. She said she was just about to get ready for bed but knew that she would not be able to sleep. ‘Danny’s all right,’ she said. ‘Thank God. He needs a good night’s rest. They all think it’s a cry for help but I don’t believe that. Someone at the farm was trying to kill him.’

‘And who do you think might do such a thing?’

‘Tom Raven.’

‘Why do you say that?’

‘He got Danny into the cult in the first place.’

‘But they are friends,’ Sidney pointed out. ‘Why would he want to kill your son?’

‘Because Danny knew he killed Pascoe.’

‘And do you have any evidence? Do you even know Tom Raven?’

‘He was always an arrogant little boy. I think he’s behind the whole thing. It’s a money-making racket.’

‘Then why would he want to kill Pascoe? If they were making money and it was all going well . . .’

‘Perhaps his father ordered the murder. I’ve heard he’s a hard man.’

‘All of this is speculation, Mrs Wilkinson.’

‘I can’t help that. Everything keeps going around and around in my head.’

‘Then we should rest.’

‘Would you like to stay the night? There’s a bed in the spare room.’

‘I don’t think that’s wise.’

‘I’ll give you a lift to the station then.’

‘That would be kind.’

The snow and sleet had turned to rain and it was hard to see the road ahead, but Barbara Wilkinson was a good, confident driver, which made Sidney suspicious about her public insecurities. He looked out through the windscreen, allowing the sound of the wipers to give silence a rhythm against the engine of the car, and wondered what on earth he was doing, travelling through the darkness with a woman from whom he was unable to escape.

‘Do you find me disconcerting?’ she asked.

‘Not at all.’

‘You can trust me, you know.’

‘I’m sure I can.’

‘I suppose you don’t want to run any risks.’

‘I think I just need to get home and clear my mind.’

‘I hope I haven’t contributed to the muddle.’

‘Not at all,’ said Sidney before a voice in his head told him that Barbara hadn’t contributed as much as been the cause of the whole damned thing. How on earth had he fallen for the charms of a woman who was clearly trying to manipulate him? It was ridiculous.

‘I’ll make it up to you one day,’ she promised.

‘That won’t be necessary. I’m only doing my job.’

‘I may insist . . .’ Barbara pulled over in front of the station, and gave Sidney a goodnight kiss on the cheek, holding on to him for just a little too long. ‘You’re such a comfort,’ she said.

It was after midnight when Sidney got home. All he wanted to do was pour himself a whisky, put his feet up and listen to a bit of jazz. He might even have time to read a bit of the Bechet autobiography Hildegard had given him for his birthday. Treat It Gentle. Some hope.

He assumed that his wife and daughter were asleep but he found that they were both awake and in their nightgowns. Anna had woken up and was unable to settle, so Hildegard was reading her yet another bedtime story: the tale of ‘Sweetheart Roland’.

‘Heavens above – is that a good idea? Isn’t that the one that begins with the witch cutting her daughter’s head off?’ Sidney asked.

‘It’s just a coincidence and it’s a fairy story. Anna loves it.’

‘I don’t want her growing up and thinking these things are normal.’

‘But in your world,’ his wife replied, ‘they are.’

On Saturday 4th March Sidney went to see Danny Wilkinson in hospital. It was a bleak day that did nothing to improve his spirits as he took in the winter landscape from the train down to Cambridge: the bare hedges, the skeletal trees with their abandoned birds’ nests, the wheat cut short, the last stacks of hay bales, the sheen of green still fragile across the fields.

On arrival the chaplain gave him what he took to be a rather insincere wave, calling out, ‘Here comes trouble.’

‘I think you’ve already got plenty.’

‘Which is why we don’t need any more, Mr Archdeacon. Your reputation precedes you.’

‘I am helping a former parishioner, that is all.’

‘And you expect me to believe that?’

‘I am only going where the Lord takes me.’

Danny had almost recovered. He claimed that he could not remember a thing but that he definitely had not taken an overdose and had not meant to kill himself. What was going on and who could he trust? He didn’t want to spend any time with his mother or father but he could hardly go back to the farm if one of the members was out to get him.

‘Do you have other friends? Relations?’ Sidney asked.

‘There’s Tom’s family. They have a house in London. His dad’s rich and never there.’

‘And you don’t think Tom might have poisoned you?’

‘He’s my best friend.’

‘And he wouldn’t have killed Pascoe either?’

‘No. He was in London at the time. I think he was seeing his dad.’

‘Can you think of anyone who could be behind all this?’ Sidney pressed, wishing he could get past this blank state of denial.

‘The farm was a refuge. We were all happy there. It can’t be any of us.’

‘I know you’ve already told me, but we need to be clear. Can you confirm that you didn’t take the overdose yourself?’

‘I did not.’

‘You’re sure?’

‘Yes.’

‘Will you let your mother see you, Danny? She’s very worried about you.’

The young man closed his eyes and turned his face away.

Henry Richmond responded surprisingly speedily to Sidney’s request for a little financial investigation. He confirmed that the Family of Love operated as a company called Lucis International, and that there were two directors, Fraser Pascoe and Giles Raven, the London accountant who was Tom’s father.

‘And if Pascoe’s dead?’

‘All the money would go to the Raven family. They are the nominated beneficiaries.’

‘And so Tom could be working for his father?’

‘He could indeed. In fact, it seems highly likely. But I think that’s your territory.’

‘And he could be in cahoots with Danny Wilkinson,’ Sidney thought aloud. ‘Although I wonder if they really are best friends: if not, then what is their game?’

‘Perhaps they fell out? They both killed Pascoe to get the money but then Tom tried to poison Danny to get the cash and hoped everyone would think that it was a guilt-ridden suicide attempt?’

Sidney was surprised by Henry’s ability to think through the implications after he had been given so little information about the crime. Perhaps Barbara Wilkinson was right after all?

He took a bus into Soho and found Johnny Johnson at the bar of his club. He seemed unusually mellow, even for him, and after he had revealed that Blossom Dearie was playing once more, Sidney wondered, uncharitably perhaps, if Johnny had been lying all along and the couple had spent the afternoon together.

‘You do seem to have a soft spot for her.’

‘You’re one to talk. How is the lady Barbara?’

‘She is at the heart of a murder investigation.’

‘Well, Blossom Dearie is my main act. I have to look after the talent and she’s quite a handful, believe me. Don’t be nosy, Sidney.’

‘I’m not.’

‘Why are you here then?’

‘I wondered if you had ever come across a young man called Tom Raven?’

‘And how on earth would I know him?’

‘Because his father used to be your dad’s accountant. Giles Raven.’

‘Oh,’ said Johnny, ‘He sails close to the wind, I’ll tell you that. They call him “The Magician”.’

‘I think I can guess why.’

‘He makes money disappear. I wouldn’t mess with him.’

‘Do you think he could make people disappear too?’ Sidney asked.

‘More than likely.’

‘And could you introduce me to him?’

‘I could, Sidney. But I’m not sure I want to.’

‘You’re trying to protect him?’

‘No, Sidney, I’m trying to protect you, you clown. That man’s so rich he doesn’t have to worry about the law. If he’s anything to do with your investigation you won’t be able to pin anything on him; and if he finds out you’re meddling then there’ll be trouble.’

‘I’m used to that.’

‘Not his kind of trouble, I can assure you. Let’s have a drink and listen to some music.’

Blossom Dearie had a light pixie voice with husky undertones of barbed romanticism and she was determined to put down anyone who might make the mistake of patronising her. She opened with ‘Let’s Go Where the Grass is Greener’, continued with ‘You Turn Me On Baby’, sashayed into ‘Peel Me a Grape’ and ended her first set with the satirical cabaret song ‘I’m Hip’, which had the audience laughing at their own pretentious modernity.

Once the first set was over, Sidney told Johnny he really should be going home. ‘Do you stay until the end every night?’ he asked.

‘That’s my job.’

‘Hard on Jen.’

‘She’s pretty cool about it all.’

‘Are you sure?’

Johnny hesitated and then told Sidney that he should go backstage and check Blossom had everything she needed. His brother-in-law could meet her if he wanted. Sidney shook his hand and grinned. ‘Rather you than me. She seems a volatile lady.’

‘That’s nothing unusual round here.’

They were just about to make their final farewell when Johnny suddenly opened up. ‘Jen’s afraid the love’s run out. It hasn’t. I just don’t want to have to force things or pretend. Distractions keep me happy.’

‘As long as it’s not more than a “distraction”. There are limits to my tolerance – and Jen’s.’

‘And I’m not going to test them, Sidney. Please. Don’t worry. I love your sister. She loves me. Marriage is what it is. We can’t all be like you and Hildegard. We’re different. It’s not about passion all the time. Sometimes you just have to let things drift.’

‘“Treat it gentle”, as Sidney Bechet advises.’

‘Yes, although the great saxophonist had his women troubles and spent plenty of time in the nick. I wouldn’t follow his example too closely if I were you.’

Back at Cambridge police station Keating was annoyed. He just couldn’t get anything out of Tom Raven, a boy whose effortless southern English confidence had got under the detective’s Northumbrian working-class skin. ‘We’ve always suspected that cult’s a scam, but it’s proving impossible to nail the bastards.’

‘It seems a very odd way of making money, doesn’t it?’ Sidney observed. ‘You pretend you don’t believe in worldly goods and then cash in.’

‘The Church has been doing it for years.’

Sidney gave his friend enough of a look to force an instant apology.

‘Sorry, that was ungenerous of me. I didn’t mean it.’

‘I think you did. Working in a cathedral like Ely, one can’t deny that the Church has wealth. Fraser Pascoe did have a point. It might be better if we conducted ourselves more monastically.’

‘But the monks were just as bad, Sidney. Isn’t that why their monasteries were all dissolved? People had had enough of them, and went round hacking away at all that wealth and corruption, cutting the heads off the statues in the Lady Chapel and then decapitating human beings as well. They were filled with the passion of the Lord, I seem to remember.’

Sidney tried to concentrate on the motive behind the murder. ‘The Raven family do seem pretty suspect.’

‘Giles Raven, “The Magician”, has already got his lawyers on to us. His son has a very strong alibi. Father and son were both in London at the time of Pascoe’s death. Loads of people saw them. They were at the greyhounds.’

‘That’s unfortunate.’

‘I don’t know, Sidney. When I started out in this job, a senior officer told me that crime was nearly always about sex or money. You just had to follow one or the other. In this case it’s probably both.’

‘Do you think the Wilkinson family are wealthy?’

‘Not any more. Divorce soon sorts that out. And if you start handing out cash to a dodgy cult then you’re asking for trouble.’

‘Which brings us back to Danny Wilkinson.’

Sidney had a little walk around the room to help order his thoughts. ‘You don’t think that in some strange way he’s been trying to save his parents’ marriage? If his mother did have an affair with Pascoe, he then kills her lover, pins the blame on Tom Raven and attempts suicide in the hope that his parents will be so shocked by his unhappiness that they reunite?’

Geordie thought things through. ‘And Danny could have stolen the sedatives from his father. When’s your next appointment? You will have to make it sharpish, Sidney. Unless you want another session with the boy’s mother?’

‘I’d rather leave Barbara Wilkinson to you, if you don’t mind.’

‘You’re lucky I don’t fancy her.’

‘Geordie, I don’t fancy her either. In fact, come to think of it, I can’t stand her.’

‘Oh dear,’ his friend replied. ‘It’s as bad as that, is it?’

*    *    *

Sidney’s prayers to St Apollonia, the patron saint of dentists, to relieve his toothache had gone unanswered. He therefore made further arrangements to see Mike Wilkinson, both to sort out the vexed matter of his teeth and to ask a few more questions about Mike’s wife, his son, and his recent whereabouts. It was not going to be easy, not least because his mouth would be open and anaesthetised, there would be padded wool along his gums and both the sound and no doubt discomfort of continual drilling. There would not be long to ask questions, but as he had deliberately booked the last appointment of the day, he hoped there would be no emergency patients and that the receptionist might have left, giving Sidney the time and privacy for an unofficial interrogation.

Mike Wilkinson saw through the ruse. And although his attitude was curt (a quality often wrongly attributed to his Scottishness) the information post-surgery was revealing. He was sure his son had taken an overdose in a bid to attract his mother’s sympathy and contrition. It turned out that, despite Barbara Wilkinson’s protestations, Danny had been all too aware of her infidelity.

‘Did you tell him?’ Sidney asked.

‘I didn’t need to. He witnessed how his mother behaved.’

‘Children often find their parents embarrassing.’

Mike Wilkinson gave Sidney a weary look, as if he was too tired to spell the whole thing out. ‘It wasn’t just that.’

‘What was it then?’

‘He walked in on Babs and Pascoe. Came home early from school. Wasn’t feeling well. They were in flagrante; too busy to notice him. He ran away and came straight to me. I already knew what Barbara was up to and tried to calm Danny down, but it wasn’t much use. He said he was never going home again, which was complicated, as he was supposed to be at school and we had hopes that he was clever enough to go up to Oxford. That’s all gone now.’

‘So he stayed with you?’

‘Not for long. He was sixteen and his friend Tom had already left to make money in London. I confronted Barbara, told her that Danny wasn’t coming back and that everyone knew about her carrying on. I didn’t say that Danny had walked in on them because I didn’t want her making everything worse with a scene. I didn’t tell her where he was, either. She went mad and denied it all but I think that’s when she ended the relationship. I heard that Pascoe went to India and we all thought that was that, but then he returned and set up his cult.’

‘Which Danny eventually joined . . .’

‘It was either Tom Raven’s idea or his father’s. He probably offered a cut of the money. I think both boys knew the whole thing was a scam.’

‘But it involved living with his mother’s former lover.’

‘That was also his way of getting back at her.’

‘I think there may have been more to it than that,’ said Sidney.

‘I’m not sure if I understand the psychology of it all or even if I want to,’ the dentist replied.

‘Is there anything more?’

‘I don’t think so. There comes a time when you just have to let your boy find his way in life. He turned away from us both, his mum and me, just as we had rejected each other. Barbara was impossible to live with, as I am sure you can imagine. Then she got it into her head that I was having an affair with my assistant – something that was plainly untrue – and I just couldn’t stand it any more. I let her believe it and I left them both. Selfish, I know. But you don’t want to hear about all this. I should get on. Don’t leave it so long next time. There’s enough pain in the world without your teeth adding to the sum of human misery.’

‘I’m sorry to have asked so many questions, Mr Wilkinson. Actually I can feel the sedative wearing off. Do you keep a supply of it at home?’

‘Yes, but it’s strictly controlled, as I am sure you know.’

‘And none of it has gone missing recently?’

‘Not as far as I am aware. If you are suggesting that I’ve either given some to my son or he has stolen from me then you are mistaken. It’s more likely to be his mother’s sleeping tablets.’

‘That would involve going back home and getting them.’

‘It wouldn’t be hard to do that without her noticing.’

‘And if any had disappeared then your wife should have told us.’

‘She may have decided that you didn’t need to know. Babs likes her little games. She can be quite cunning. I think that’s where Danny gets it from.’

‘You mean that both mother and son are capable of deception?’

‘I don’t know, Mr Archdeacon. There are times when I don’t know who anyone is any more. So many people spend their lives trying to become someone they were never intended to be. I try to concentrate on my job and earning enough money for a roof over my head, a car that works and a decent holiday twice a year. It’s simpler that way and it leads to less trouble.’

‘Have you seen your son in hospital?’

‘Of course. I do care about him. It’s been a difficult time.’

‘It has. I’m sorry.’

The dentist stretched out a hand in farewell. ‘I’m hopeful that Danny will be all right in the end. He just needs to find out who he is and get on with his life.’

Sidney shook the man’s hand and tried to find reassuring words but felt, in his heart of hearts, that it was almost certainly too late. The rest of Danny’s life was likely to be entirely different from anything either of his parents had ever hoped for.

Sidney checked with the doctors that their patient was now recovered sufficiently to go home and then alerted Keating. He went to see Danny Wilkinson in his hospital room and told him that the police were convinced he had killed Pascoe in an act of revenge and had then taken an overdose that was intended to look like a murder attempt. Danny, still pale, and propped up on his pillows, seemed shocked. Sidney got to the point straight away: ‘Is there anything I can do to explain your story or stop you going to jail?’

Danny wondered whether to maintain his denial. ‘I don’t think you have any actual witnesses to the murder.’

‘There is plenty of circumstantial evidence. And it was your shirt.’

‘I don’t see how you can know that.’

‘There are your fingerprints on the scythe.’

‘Don’t you think that, if I had done it, on a cold winter day I would have worn gloves?’

‘Not if you wanted to get caught.’

‘Why would I do that?’

‘Perhaps you wanted to send a message to your mother?’

‘My mother?’ Danny’s voice was filled with contempt.

Sidney had had enough. ‘Danny, we all know you did it. The evidence is there. You have no alibi.’

‘I was in my room at the time he left us.’

‘No one saw you. The only thing I don’t understand is why you needed to go through the whole business of joining the cult. Pascoe walked freely around Grantchester. He was an easy target.’

‘And so anyone could have killed him.’

‘Not anyone. You.’

Danny sighed. It was as if he was wearied by his denials at last.

‘Tell me, Danny. It will only get worse if you don’t.’

‘I don’t know. I suppose I don’t care any more.’

‘It must have been an extraordinarily hard decision to take. You must be exhausted. Don’t bear this burden alone.’

‘I had to learn to hate,’ Danny began. ‘I had to despise Pascoe even more than I did already. I had to prepare for so long in order to kill him. I had already had fantasies about punching him in the face or kicking his head in but I wanted to do something so violent that I needed fury and desperation. So I had to see him up close. Let the anger build. If it was to be a crime of passion I was going to show him what that really looked like.’

‘But you had to disguise all those feelings when you were with him.’

‘I let them build up inside. I had never felt so alive than when I thought of that man dead.’

‘And no one else knew?’

‘Tom helped. I talked to Tom.’

‘He knew about your plan?’

‘His dad too.’

‘But surely they warned you that you would be caught?’

‘I said I didn’t care. They said I needed to be clever about it. Tom’s dad knew people. They were going to come up with the perfect murder for me but I couldn’t wait. I remembered the old gardener at the church cutting back the long grass and the hedges and I noticed the shed was never locked. I remembered something from school, As for man, his days are as grass, and grass needs to be cut down, doesn’t it? Thrust in thy sickle, and reap, for the time is come for thee to reap; for the harvest of the earth is ripe.’

‘So you stole the scythe and hid it until the time was right?’

‘I told Pascoe I wanted to talk about the nature of love; what it really meant. He fell for it. That’s a joke. As if he knew about love, real love. He said we should go for a walk. I suggested the river past Byron’s Pool. It was a cold day and there was no one about. I waited until we reached the pool. I had brought a rug and a bit of the loving cup in a flask. We sat down and talked about love and how you had to really trust someone to love them completely. I asked more and more questions because I wanted to see how hypocritical the man was. He went on and on and I almost laughed when he talked about the dangers of betrayal. I could only think about my father and what my mother had done to him. I said I needed a pee and walked off to get the scythe. Pascoe got into one of his crazy yoga positions, closed his eyes and started to meditate. I knew that I would have to attack him from behind and that it would have to be a surprise and this was the opportunity. I took off my coat and jumper so I just had my shirt on. I wanted to have my arms free. The first swing was right into the neck. It was hard to get the blade out. I even thought it might be stuck. I had imagined one blow, like an executioner. Then I realised it would need more and more and I was glad. It would take longer. He would feel more pain. I could take time to enjoy that, knowing that there was no one there to stop me.’

‘Did Pascoe know what was happening?’ Sidney asked. ‘Did he see the “necessary hatred” on your face?’

‘I wasn’t expecting so much blood. The man – I won’t say his name, I’ve always hated it – managed to gargle some kind of plea to stop but I just kept on. I had a little chant going. Thrust in thy sickle and reap. I was almost singing it. In the end it must have taken fourteen or fifteen blows and his eyes kept on blinking at me even after the head was off. That was quite funny. I thought he was still going to say something. The man looked surprised. He didn’t seem to be dead. Yet there it was, a severed head. Still bleeding, still living. I couldn’t believe that he could go on like that. It must have been pulsing for ten or fifteen seconds longer and I wondered whether he was still able to think; if he realised that he was dying and knew why and felt horrified. Did he think those things? Perhaps it was just horror. I looked down and it was almost as if I wanted to make the whole thing last longer. I could have started all over again, or cut his body to pieces, but then I hated myself and it was cold and I knew I had to get away and I didn’t want to look at that stupid face any more and so I kicked his head as far as I could and ran back to where I’d left my stuff.’

‘And that was where you hid your shirt and scythe?’

‘I shoved them into the undergrowth and put my jumper and coat back on. I looked back to check that I had really done all that, that it wasn’t a dream. I wanted to laugh. I had done it, after waiting so long, and no one had been able to stop me. Part of me wanted to take a photograph and post it to my mother. That’ll show her, I thought. But I knew that would incriminate me. So I just looked back and saw the body. I couldn’t see the head any more. Then I got closer and stood over the body and started swearing at it. Then I found his head and kicked it around until I was bored.

‘I went back to my room and lay on the bed and looked at the ceiling. I kept saying the mantra, As for man, his days are as grass. Pascoe taught us to keep a phrase in our heads when we meditate and it felt good to have used one to kill him. I turned his teaching back on him. Thrust in thy sickle. What’s the mantra in your head now, you bastard?’

‘And did you tell Tom what you had done?’

‘He guessed as soon as the police arrived.’

‘And afterwards, I think you took an overdose and pretended that it was a murder attempt. You must have taken sedatives from your father’s practice. Or perhaps they were your mother’s sleeping tablets? I remember when she first came to me she said that she could not sleep.’

‘None of this was hard.’

‘Your mother was frightened you might do something like this and brought me in to try and stop it. Unfortunately she didn’t spell out her concerns as boldly as she thought. Perhaps she was worried she would sound mad.’

‘She is mad.’

‘That may be the case, but she knows you far better than you might like to admit. She had a mother’s intuition, and she was right.’

‘Will I have to see her again?’

‘Very likely, I am afraid, and probably in court.’

As Sidney left the hospital and crossed Grantchester Meadows, he thought about the power of hatred and the nature of revenge. He wasn’t at all sure that violent action had done anything to make Danny Wilkinson feel better, either about his mother or himself. Would there be any redemption at all from this, and what could Sidney have done to prevent it happening? Should he have guessed, on that first visit, that the boy’s membership of the Family of Love was just a front?

He had to see Barbara Wilkinson one last time. She had come to him in distress only a few weeks ago and the least he could do now was to tell her that Danny had confessed to the murder of Fraser Pascoe.

‘What’s he gone and done that for?’ she asked. ‘They must have threatened him. He’s protecting Tom Raven. His dad must be behind this. You can’t honestly think my son is a killer?’

‘He has confessed.’

‘Under duress.’

‘He told me. There was no pressure.’

‘He must be afraid. Let me see him.’

‘I do not think that will help, Mrs Wilkinson. Perhaps you should have been more honest about your relationship with Fraser Pascoe from the start.’

‘I would hardly call it a relationship.’

‘Your son thought it was.’

‘He didn’t know anything about it.’

‘I’m afraid he did.’

‘Well, whatever it was it can’t have anything to do with what happened. I know my son. Why is he confessing to something he couldn’t possibly have done? The fact is that those people tried to kill him. Have they now brainwashed him into thinking he killed Pascoe as well?’

‘You should have been clearer with me from the beginning, Mrs Wilkinson.’

‘You can’t point the finger at me. I told you all you needed to know. I tried to stop all this.’

‘But it wasn’t enough.’

‘What more could I do? I was trying to save my son. What mother could have done more? You can’t blame it all on the past.’

‘For Danny there was no past. He lived with the memory of your actions all the time. I think he still does.’

‘You think this is some kind of revenge?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

‘For Pascoe?’

‘Yes.’

‘But that had nothing to do with him.’

‘He is your son.’

‘You are making a mistake. I’m the only person who tried to help Danny. Now you’re implying that it’s all my fault?’

‘I think the issue of blame can be complicated and it is not always helpful.’

‘Has Danny really confessed?’

‘He has.’

‘Why?’

‘Because he killed Pascoe.’

‘But what about the attempt to murder him?’

‘It was an overdose, designed to deflect attention. Danny took your sleeping tablets. They’ve gone missing, haven’t they?’

Barbara Wilkinson did not answer the question directly. ‘I only came to you because I was frightened all this would happen.’

‘Had Danny been violent in the past?’

‘He has a temper. But he’s clever. He made me believe he was serious about the cult.’

‘It’s strange Pascoe didn’t guess what was going on. You didn’t think of warning him?’

‘Fraser thought that everyone loved him. He believed he could turn hate to love. He could never imagine meeting anyone who wasn’t pleased to see him.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me exactly what you feared when you first came to see me?’

‘I thought you wouldn’t believe me.’

‘Did Danny take your sleeping pills?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘You never told us.’

‘I didn’t want to say anything that might incriminate him. He is still my son. And I won’t accept what anyone says. Do you think the police will blame me too?’

‘I don’t know. Perverting the course of justice is not the best way of going about things.’

‘You won’t put it as strongly as that, surely?’

‘That’s not my decision. I can only tell the truth about what has happened.’

‘Without pity or mercy, it seems.’

‘That has to come after the whole truth . . .’

‘And nothing but the truth.’

‘Remorse follows, then pity, then forgiveness. I think that’s the general order of things, Mrs Wilkinson.’

‘You never called me Barbara.’

‘You have to start with the truth. Everything flows from that.’

Sidney realised he was being harder on her than he had originally meant to be. Perhaps he was making up for all his softness at the start.

By the time he reached the Eagle in order to talk things over with Geordie he had still not made a decision on how much he should say. He should really tell his friend that Mrs Wilkinson had withheld information about the extent of her relationship with Fraser Pascoe, the forged cheque and the sleeping pills. She had also attempted to mislead the police by accusing Tom Raven. Was this enough for a charge of perverting the course of justice? Or should he adopt a more forgiving tone after all that trauma and remember Christ’s words to the woman taken in adultery: ‘Go and sin no more.’

In the end, he told Geordie everything. ‘I thought hell had no fury like a woman scorned,’ his friend began as he handed Sidney an inadequate tomato juice. ‘It turns out that children are even worse. It’s like a Greek tragedy out there.’

‘Well, the Greeks did write the first crime stories. They had murders all over the place.’

‘And they were supposed to be the greatest civilisation known to man. Just shows how little human nature changes.’

Sidney picked up his drink. ‘Barbara Wilkinson and Fraser Pascoe. If they’d known about the results of their affair they’d never have started it.’

‘I don’t know, Sidney. People are reckless. Sometimes these things are unstoppable.’

Geordie had that dangerous look in his eye that meant he was not going to hold back on what he was about to say, whatever the consequences. ‘You got off lightly when you think about it, old boy. Just imagine if it had been you and Babs instead.’

‘That was never a possibility.’

‘You are not going to admit that you were attracted to her when all this began?’

‘Never.’ Sidney stood up to order another round. ‘I love my wife. Restraint has always been my watchword.’

‘As long as you keep saying that.’

‘I mean it.’

‘Do you think you’re bored, Sidney?’

‘No. Too much to think about.’

‘Perhaps we still hanker for the drama of war-time?’

‘I don’t miss the loss of my friends.’

‘It’s funny, though. It seems religion is never quite enough for you.’

‘We have to keep searching. Sometimes people need distractions and moments of respite. They just have to choose the right ones.’

‘Drink is safer than flirtation.’

‘Sometimes one follows the other.’

‘In both cases you have to know when to stop.’

Sidney hesitated. ‘Have you ever given up alcohol, Geordie?’

‘I certainly have.’

‘When?’

‘I can give up for several hours at a time. Now stop getting so anxious about life, faith and women. Buy yourself a pint or a bottle of dog.’

‘Perhaps I will.’

‘You’ve earned it, man. No one’s looking.’

‘I feel a bit bad about it.’

‘If that’s the only temptation you’re submitting to then you’re doing well. Have a chaser while you’re at it.’

‘No, I think that’s too much.’

‘Howay, man, I’ll pay.’

Geordie barged his way past Sidney to the bar and bought beer and whisky for both of them. After they had settled back down in their seats and got out the customary game of backgammon, he mentioned that he thought he had seen Hildegard talking to Barbara Wilkinson in town. ‘But that can’t be right. Your wife wouldn’t bother passing the time of day with a lass like that. Just as well you kept your distance.’

‘I’ve told you, Geordie, there was never any danger of impropriety. I do have some standards. And I love Hildegard.’

‘You had a bit of luck in finding a wife like that. But I suppose you deserve it. You took a risk on a foreigner with a murky past and it paid off.’

‘Hers wasn’t the past that was murky.’

‘As far as you know.’

‘I do know. And, by the way, while we’re on the subject, I’d like to take some of the credit for my marriage.’

‘No one’s going to believe you, Sidney. Hildegard saved you. You may think it’s the other way round and even let people come to that conclusion . . .’

‘I’m just very grateful to be so blessed.’

‘I’m glad you realise. If I behaved like you do Cathy would give me hell.’

‘What do you mean “like you do”?’

‘Being all sympathetic to the ladies.’

‘That’s my job.’

‘No, it’s not. It’s what you like. That’s different. You can’t fool me.’

‘Hildegard knows all this. I tell her everything that’s been going on.’

‘Like hell. Does she do the same?’

‘Not always. I think she likes to retain a bit of mystery.’

‘Most women do. Canny, aren’t they?’

‘Would we have it any other way?’

‘We would not,’ Geordie replied, before downing his pint and contemplating his next move on the board.

‘I am glad we agree then.’

‘You know what they say about marriage? A man can either be right or happy. At least neither of us would be foolish enough to carry on, like Barbara Wilkinson, with someone else in our own home and be discovered by one of our children.’

‘No, we certainly wouldn’t,’ said Sidney, as seriously as he could before catching his friend’s eye. ‘We’d book a hotel room.’

Both men laughed. It was the first time they had done so in ages.