Saturday 8 May, 1971
May was Sidney’s best-loved month. After an overture of daffodils and tulips, the summer orchestra tuned to the sound of blackbirds, wood pigeons and the returning swifts. Each day outpaced its predecessor with new provision: an acceleration of green, a stretching light. The smell of wild garlic rose up in the hedgebanks. Warmth returned, and Hildegard served up the first asparagus of the year, with salmon, early peas, mint and new potatoes, followed by Sidney’s favourite fruit: rhubarb, poached with ginger and honey.
Now aged seven and a half, Anna was just finishing her first year of Junior School and she was in the middle of a wild-flower project inspired by W. Keble Martin’s Concise British Flora in Colour. Two years before, she had written to the author for advice, and the ninety-year-old priest had replied on a postcard to say that the natural world offered endless discovery, infinite possibilities. If she learned to appreciate the landscape around her then she would never be bored or lonely. Curiosity would keep her young.
Father and daughter were out walking through Nine Acre Wood by the River Ouse with Byron, their beloved Labrador, alongside them. They ambled past the oak and ash trees, tall by a stream edged with swathes of ramsons and marsh marigolds, then went on through high cow parsley and flowering crab apple until they reached a sunlit clearing filled with early wood violets, herb Robert, meadow buttercups and sanicle.
This was a time for simple pleasures; a father, a lively young daughter and their dog out together in the countryside. A fringe had just been cut into Anna’s short blonde hair and she was dressed tomboyishly, in dungarees over a long-sleeved yellow T-shirt. She put the flowers she had gathered in a hessian shopping bag: pink campion, ragged Robin, shepherd’s-purse and germander speedwell. She liked getting home and making arrangements in glasses of water and painting them before putting them in her new press. Sometimes she was hesitant about doing so. She didn’t like the flowers dying sooner than they needed to.
They stopped to rest, taking in the next vista and removing the sticky willy that had attached itself to their legs. They laughed when Byron attempted to chase a squirrel up a tree. He was so busy looking up that he ran straight into the trunk.
It was only when they were checking and consoling him that they noticed a strange shape under a group of silver birch ahead. By the stream, and next to a clump of monkshood and a swathe of bluebells that had yet to come into full flower, was the body of a man. He was not lying in the comfortable arrangement of someone asleep or at rest but the skewed position of a person who had either suffered a heart attack or been felled by an assailant. He lay on his front, the bulk of his face hidden by an Australian bush hat, and he was wearing a well-worn anorak, jeans and hiking boots. A long grey ponytail, tied with an elastic band, stretched across his right shoulder and by his gloved hands (Gloves, Sidney thought, in May?) lay a basket of wild flowers.
‘Is he dead, Daddy?’
‘He might be sleeping.’
‘I think he’s dead.’
‘Stay back, darling.’
‘I want to see him.’
Sidney knelt down and checked for signs of life. There were none.
‘What are we going to do?’ Anna asked.
‘The first thing is to pray for him.’
‘So he is dead?’
‘I am afraid so.’
‘I’m scared.’
‘Don’t be.’
‘Is he in heaven?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Aren’t you supposed to know?’
Any words spoken in the silence seemed an affront to the dead.
Sidney stretched out his left arm and gathered his daughter to him. She knelt down beside him, put her hands together and closed her eyes.
Her father prayed: ‘Go forth upon thy journey from this world, O Christian soul, in the name of God the Father Almighty who created thee; in the name of Jesus Christ who suffered for thee; in the name of the Holy Spirit who strengthened thee; in communion with the blessed saints, and aided by angels and archangels, and all the armies of the heavenly host. May thy portion this day be in peace, and thy dwelling in the heavenly Jerusalem. Amen.’
Sidney turned to his daughter. ‘We need to fetch help. Let’s see if we can go back to the road and find a phone box.’
‘Do you know who he is, Daddy?’
The man seemed familiar but Sidney couldn’t quite place him. Just before he walked away, he remembered the gloves and looked at the basket the man had been carrying. It contained blue drifts of wolfsbane interspersed with old man’s beard, sun spurge, racemes of yellow laburnum, black bryony, corncockle, foxgloves and cuckoo pint. There was a small bunch of creamy yellow euphonium-shaped flowers with deep purple-netted veins and broad leaves with white sticky hairs. Sidney realised it must be henbane, part of the deadly nightshade family, and asked himself one perplexing question: why were all the plants the man had been gathering poisonous?
His old friend and colleague, Inspector Keating, arrived within the hour. ‘Take Anna and the dog home,’ he said. ‘This is no place for a child.’
Sidney had tried to distract his daughter by collecting more wild flowers as they waited near the roadside, but it was hard to think of anything other than the drama of the dead man. He wondered how often she would ask him about the discovery of the body and whether he could downplay the situation, concentrating on other matters, pretending nothing unusual had happened in the hope that Anna was still so young that she might one day think the whole thing had been a dream.
When they got home and told Hildegard, all in a rush so that it was hard to take in, Anna asked again if the man would go to heaven and what it was like.
‘It’s a place without fear, my darling,’ said Sidney, ‘where people who have worried so much in life find a happiness that they had never been able to imagine.’
‘Why can’t they? If they could imagine it, wouldn’t more people want to go there?’
Although it was possible the man had died from natural causes, and there was probably a good enough reason for the plants he had been gathering, Sidney could not help but brood on the nature of fate, the chance of discovery and the possible sequence of events that had led up to that moment. He went to his study where he began to pray, seeking some kind of guidance, the beginning of understanding. Was it a sin to be so suspicious so frequently, or was he using the natural intuition that God had given him? Was his role as an accidental detective making him less loving and less effective as a priest?
Byron slept under the kitchen table as Hildegard tried to distract their daughter from what she had seen with cooking and baking. She taught Anna how to bake Leipziger Lerche, the family’s favourite German cupcake. Sidney referred to them as ‘posh Bakewell tarts’ and they cooked them in the same way Hildegard’s mother had always done, roasting the almonds in the oven before wrapping them in a towel and bashing them to bits with a rolling pin. Anna helped to fold, knead and roll out the pastry before cutting it out and lining the special moulds they had brought back from their last trip to Germany. She placed a little slip of marzipan and a dollop of apricot jam in the bottom of each case and her mother let her ladle in scoops of the filling. Hildegard then re-rolled the remaining pastry and cut it into narrow lengths. Anna laid two strips into a cross on the top of each filled case, creating a partial lid, before they were put in the oven for twenty minutes. As the buns baked, Hildegard went over to the piano in the drawing room and made up songs with her daughter. Sidney smiled as he watched how lovingly and cleverly his wife distracted Anna from the memory of the dead body under a tree.
That night he tucked his daughter in. He sat on the edge of the bed, finding room amidst the dolls, teddies and knitted animals. Anna sniffed at her special little rabbit as her father read from Tom’s Midnight Garden. They had reached that part of the story where the hero can no longer find his dream garden and his friend Hatty has disappeared. What is real and who are the ghosts? Anna asked. Was the man they had found today already a ghost?
Outside it began to rain. Sidney could not help but feel responsible for bringing Anna’s childhood closer to an end with the first sight of a dead body. When they reached the closing of the chapter, and Anna was about to snuggle down to sleep, she stopped to listen to the rain against the hard dark glass.
‘Look, Daddy,’ she said, ‘the windows are crying.’
Two days later Inspector Keating came up to Ely for a couple of pints in the Prince Albert. The dead man had been identified as Lenny Goddard, a local folk-singer, poet, forager, painter, decorator, real-ale drinker, knife sharpener and odd-job man. He lived on a houseboat on the Great Ouse, and he was married to one of Sidney’s former parishioners.
‘Stella Goddard. She says you know her.’
‘I do, now you come to mention it. I think she’s his third wife. She must be quite a bit younger than Lenny. She used to be a folk-singer too. I must have heard them sing together at some point, but it was in pubs or at summer parties when I was probably concentrating on something else. I thought I’d seen him before but I just didn’t recognise him. He’s aged quite badly.’
‘Well, now he’s died quite badly. I didn’t know you were such a folkie. You’re normally more of a jazz man.’
‘I don’t mind the odd ballad. I just think you need to watch out when they put their fingers over one ear.’
‘Or poison in each other’s stomachs.’
‘You are suspicious?’
‘I know you are. You mentioned the flowers he was gathering. We’ve had them checked and you’re right. There’s enough there to kill a whole village.’
‘So I suppose you’d like me to ask a few questions, Geordie?’
‘Word will get round. People will come and express their sympathy. It’s been a horrible thing for Anna, a shocking discovery. You must be perplexed.’
‘I am.’
‘You can’t understand it. You’ll have to go and see the widow, and perhaps some of the people closest to Lenny. They’ll be upset. You’ll be upset. Things will come out. You know the drill.’
Sidney went first to Anna’s school to tell them what had happened and ask them to make allowances if she behaved a little oddly in the coming days. Her form teacher, Tom Tranton, was a small and portly botanist who had instigated the annual tradition of the Junior School wild-flower project and he affectionately referred to his pupils as ‘the seedlings’. He sported a pair of dark-green corduroy trousers and a mustard-coloured pullover that looked as if it hadn’t been taken off since 1954. This was worn under an old tweed jacket with so many rips and tears that he often joked that he slept outdoors. (‘I’ve just come from the hedge! Woke up next to a lovely little grasshopper. We had quite a conversation. They do love a natter.’)
Like a primary-school Keble Martin, Tom Tranton was famous amongst his former pupils for meticulous botanical drawings on the blackboard that displayed plant life and the process of photosynthesis. Everyone thought it a shame when he wiped the board clean.
‘That is nature for you, boys and girls. So much of life disappears in the winter. But it all comes back in the spring. Remember that. There may be death, but there is also life. Always.’
As a not-so-secret atheist, Tranton held his prayer book upside down in chapel as a tribute to Darwin, and was keen to tell his pupils that all human beings, no matter what their status, were made up of the same constituent elements.
‘Even the Archbishop of Canterbury,’ he insisted, ‘is sixty per cent water.’
Born in 1910, he was now teaching the grandchildren of his first pupils and he had introduced Lenny Goddard to botany in the late 1930s.
‘I showed him how to dig up horseradish; even though it used to be illegal to do that round here. That boy was a natural chemist.’
Sidney asked how easy it would be to make poison from the flowers Lenny had been collecting.
‘I thought you were here to talk about Anna?’
‘I might as well kill two birds with one stone.’
‘You know that’s not technically possible, don’t you?’
‘Could you answer my question?’
Tranton was unperturbed. ‘Monkshood is one of the most poisonous plants in the country. Henbane contains toxic tropane alkaloids that can dampen the nervous system and cause paralysis. It’s quite easy to cause a lot of damage if you know your chemistry. But it takes a bit of work to kill someone.’
‘And would Lenny Goddard be capable of that?’
‘I should say so. But it’s not in his nature. He was a gentle soul. Popular too. I can’t imagine him having any enemies, if you’re thinking along those lines. His only vice was that he was too easily led astray.’
‘Might he have been gathering them for someone else to make the poison on his behalf?’
‘You are ascribing very malign intentions to the man, Mr Chambers. Perhaps the flowers were intended as decoration, or for something entirely different?’
‘Lenny Goddard was not the type of man to go round poisoning people. He was a folk-singer and a bit of a hippy. I can’t imagine anyone wanting to harm him, or him wanting to hurt anyone else for that matter.’
‘Then why those flowers?’
‘Perhaps you’d better ask his wife.’
‘Do you know something I don’t, Tom?’
‘Rather a lot, probably. Is there anything specific you have in mind?’
The Goddards’ houseboat was moored south of Ely, on the edge of Wicken Fen, at Pope’s Corner. Lenny had taken it out of the water to re-blacken the hull after an eel had wrapped itself around the bow’s thruster tube. Removed from the river, the boat looked as if it too was in the middle of a post-mortem.
Sidney wondered if the sense of absence could spread through a boat as quickly as it could fill a house. He told Lenny’s widow that he had come to listen and to offer any support he could. He spoke to her about the pain of loss; that no matter how much we might fear or anticipate death, its finality always silenced us and reminded us of our own mortality. Grief could not be rushed. Attention had to be paid.
As Stella Goddard made him a cup of tea, Sidney surveyed the possessions that must have belonged to the dead man – guitars, books, sheet music, clothes hanging out to dry, a display of wild flowers, a half-finished painting of a sunset, Tupperware boxes filled with herbs, and a hookah pipe on the table. There was a dog bowl and three cans of Pedigree Chum, but no sign of an animal on deck.
Stella was smaller than he had remembered, slighter, with paler skin and darker hair, and brown eyes that could soon spark up into argument. She wore a floral blouse with a long denim skirt. It was functional clothing meant for a life on the water, her only concession to fashion being the brown woven-leather espadrille wedges, chosen to give her extra height.
‘I’ve often wondered what it might be like to live on a boat,’ said Sidney.
‘It’s harder work than anyone thinks it is. But once you’re used to it you can’t imagine living any other way. I’m sorry that you and your daughter discovered the body. I was on a trip downriver. Is she all right?’
‘That’s kind of you to think of her at a time like this. It’s hard to tell. I’m never quite sure what’s going on in her head, even though she’s only seven.’
‘Little girls like their secrets.’
‘Have you thought about the funeral? Is there anything I can do?’
‘We want a private cremation, and then the ashes scattered in the bluebell wood where he was found. It was his favourite place. I’ve been thinking a little bit about it. It’s almost ironic. Perhaps Lenny had an instinctive fear that he was going to die and went there on purpose?’
‘Was he worried about his health?’
‘It was bad enough without him worrying about it,’ Stella replied. ‘Still, it’s strange . . .’
‘I’m sorry. It’s impossible to define a loss at first. I suppose that’s why we use the word.’
‘Lost to decide what to think or do? Lost for something to say? There doesn’t seem much point in anything any more. I like to think of him with a smile on his face amidst the wild flowers. Sometimes we used to go out at dawn with the dew on the grass and dance barefoot. Lenny always said that he liked the way I moved. When I was little I wanted to be a ballet dancer.’
‘But you didn’t become one?’
‘My feet grew too big. I’ve got over it now. Lenny didn’t think it mattered – not being what you originally wanted to be. You had to discover what you could be instead and be content with that. Anyway, he was never that good a dancer himself. He could never find the right balance. He kept you so tight and close that you could hardly move and then when he loosened up, he let you whirl away from him. That sums him up, I suppose. Never could hold on to him.’
‘Perhaps he liked his freedom. Is that why he didn’t join you on your trip?’
‘He wanted to stay behind and work on the boat. We were going to go on our own adventure in September; just the two of us. I shouldn’t have left him alone. He must have gone on the walk for a change of air. I still can’t take it in. You kiss your husband goodbye, you don’t really think about it at the time, you’re too busy with everything else you have to worry about, and then when you come back he’s gone and you remember all the things you should have said and all the different ways in which you would have said goodbye if you had known it was going to be for the last time. I can’t even remember if I told him that I loved him. “See you!” – I think those were my last words – and he said, “You’re all right, love.” Then he smiled. I think I was the first to turn away and look back at the river ahead. The journey. I wish I’d watched him for longer now; waited until he was a speck.’
Stella had been travelling up to the Norfolk Broads on Linda and Tony Clarke’s narrowboat while Lenny stayed and did the repairs to his own. They had made their way up the River Ouse to Denver Sluice, past Downham Market and on to King’s Lynn.
‘We were going to return via the old course of the River Nene, but it’s getting a bit shallow there and besides we’d heard the news by then.’
‘How did you find out?’
‘My sister phoned all the lock-keepers. We were at Salters Lode.’
‘So not far?’
‘About eighteen miles. It’s half an hour in the car but four by boat.’
‘Did she come and get you?’
‘Linda came with me. Tony took their boat back. She showed the shock more than I did. I think I was too numb. We went to see the body together. He’d always had a lot of colour to his face had Lenny, first from health and then through drink, but that day it was paler than I had ever seen it. I couldn’t decide if he was an old man or a little boy. He didn’t seem to be anything any more, this body lying in front of me – the figure of a man who had been all that I had ever loved and, at the same time, that infuriating husband I was still learning how to understand. I knew Dr Robinson had told Lenny off about his health often enough – the high blood pressure and the drinking – but I didn’t think he’d drop dead like that. There was no warning.’
Well there was, Sidney thought, but now was not the time to talk about the doctor. He realised he should be getting going. Byron had fallen asleep and began to make his little dreaming noises, thinking of all the squirrels that had got away.
‘I like your dog,’ said Stella.
‘He’s slowing up a bit, I’m afraid. Arthritis.’
‘Labradors can be prone to it. You have to watch their weight.’
‘As we all must do, I suppose.’ Sidney finished his tea. ‘Could I just ask why your husband was out gathering wild flowers? Was that something he did regularly?’
Stella poured out another cup. ‘He liked to forage. He went out every day, rain or shine. We ate off the land and the river, fishing and shooting, poaching, snaring and netting. Lenny could get you anything: larks, plovers, game birds, you name it. We tried to live as naturally and as cheaply as possible, just like our grandparents did. As you can probably tell, we don’t have much money.’
‘Your husband’s selection of flowers still seems a bit odd, don’t you think? Henbane in particular has a terrible smell. I can’t imagine what he would use it for.’
‘Do you want me to spell it out?’
At last, Sidney thought. ‘If you don’t mind . . .’
‘You know you can use all those plants for recreational purposes?’
‘But they’re poisonous.’
‘Not if you know what to do with them. Lenny harvested the seeds and the leaves for his special recipes. You’d be surprised what you can do with deadly nightshade just by rubbing it on your skin. I once thought I could fly. We had the police round thinking we had marijuana, but we showed them that we were just mucking around with sage leaves, magic mushrooms and the roots we’d gathered. There was nothing they could do about it. You know that you can get a version of cocaine from scurvy grass? And there’s nothing like a cup of tea made from angel’s trumpet. That’s one of Tony’s specialities.’
‘Mr Clarke?’
‘We make all kinds of stuff. I’d let you try some but I wouldn’t like to lead you astray.’
‘I think I must have misread the situation, Mrs Goddard.’
‘We make our own alcohol too. Linda’s an expert on sloe gin, carrot wine and strawberry wheat beer. Perhaps you’d like to try some of that instead?’
Sidney continued. ‘Wolfsbane and laburnum, the plants that your husband was gathering, are particularly poisonous. I presume Lenny knew that? I still wonder if he had other intentions?’
‘I can’t imagine that he did.’
‘And those plants aren’t stimulants.’
‘What are you imagining? You don’t think he was planning to do me in, do you? We loved each other.’
Sidney and Geordie took their pints out to the back garden of the Prince Albert and discussed the results of Lenny Goddard’s post-mortem. The coroner had found traces of aconitine, a neurotoxin commonly found in monkshood. So strong it was once used as an arrow-tip poison, it had almost certainly been mixed with alcohol, probably a sloe gin.
‘The questions are if he was aware he had taken it,’ said Geordie, ‘whether there’s any of it left and who gave it to him.’
‘The wife and the best friends are expert distillers.’
‘We’ll have to ask them.’
‘I suppose it could have been a rogue batch.’
‘They overdid the stimulants, you mean; an accident?’
‘It’s possible.’
‘I can’t imagine Lenny swallowed it all deliberately and then went out for a walk as if nothing was wrong.’
‘So I think we can rule out suicide,’ said Sidney.
‘But surely he would have known something was up?’
‘Unless it was a gradual process; a succession of small doses. That’s how the Victorian poisoners did it.’
‘Still. He must have felt ill. And if he was aware that he had taken poison, then wouldn’t he have gone to hospital or made himself sick?’ Geordie asked.
‘Perhaps he realised what had happened but knew that he still had time to take revenge on whoever did it?’
‘How’s the wife?’
‘She says she loved him and I believe her. But I can’t understand why Lenny remained behind; why didn’t he go on the boat trip with the rest of them?’
‘Perhaps he didn’t love his wife as much as she thinks he did? Perhaps there’s someone else? I’ll make some enquiries.’
‘I suppose,’ Sidney continued, ‘that she still could have killed him if she’d found out about an infidelity?’
‘“Love to hatred turned” . . .’
‘But it could, also, just as easily, have been any one of the others.’
‘Or all three of them acting together. Or someone entirely different,’ said Geordie. ‘Have you spoken to the Clarke couple yet?’
‘I have less of an excuse to visit them.’
‘I’m sure you can think of something to occupy their time. Rather convenient, don’t you think, that the widow and the two best friends are all away from the scene of the crime; a joint alibi if ever there was one?’
‘Or a coincidence.’
‘I don’t believe in them, Sidney. It looks to me like they’re trying too hard. Have a word.’
Tony Clarke had lived on or near the water for all his life. His father had been one of the last eel trappers. He used to take his young son out in the early mornings. They set off on a long shallow punt through the fenland mists, moored and then waded through the water, pulling out the old baited wicker traps before submerging the new; each one marked with a willow stake. Tony said he knew every bend in the River Ouse, and his boat was filled with nests, rods, traps and fishing equipment, as well as bottles of home-made alcohol, dried herbs, framed fish, a small aquarium and a pet toad in a tank.
His wife was out walking. ‘I think she’s gone to the wood where you found Lenny. She’s always doing it. She likes to have her thoughts.’
‘Leaving you alone.’
‘It was how I was brought up, on my own, by the water, paring the willow, waiting for the fish.’
‘And did Lenny Goddard like to be alone too? I don’t quite understand why he didn’t come with you on the trip up to the Wash.’
‘He said he wanted to work on his own boat.’
‘But couldn’t he have done that when he got back?’
‘I don’t know. He had his moods. Linda said we shouldn’t make a fuss but leave him be. Besides, we like Stella. She’s company enough.’
‘And you didn’t offer to stay and help?’
‘Lenny liked to do things his way. He wasn’t even prepared to share a lock, he was that stubborn. I said it was a bit hypocritical for a communist who believed that everything should be held in common, but he just laughed. In a way, I admired him for it. He was his own man. You didn’t ever argue with Lenny.’
‘And did people want to?’
‘Sometimes; but never on the river. He knew his way around the tides and currents. After my old man died, Lenny was the only person who came close to knowing as much as me. You wouldn’t catch him banging his head on a low tunnel, or snagging his boat in a sluice or doing something daft like fall in and drown.’
‘So he was a careful man?’
‘On the water, yes. He wasn’t so good on land.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘Oh, I don’t know.’
‘Were you surprised by his death?’
‘His health was never that good. Weak heart. Drink. Other stuff you don’t need to know about.’
‘I think I already do. Your special tea. Some sloe gin, perhaps?’
‘That’s all gone now. Like most of my friends. Most of them are dying off these days. That’s why I keep myself to myself. If you practise solitude then you’re ready for it when you’re the last to go.’
‘But, still, you went on the boat trip and Lenny didn’t. It seems the wrong way round. I would have thought that you were the one most likely to stay at home.’
‘Perhaps I felt like the company?’
‘And were the three of you together all the time as you travelled downriver?’
‘Not all the time. Sometimes the girls went exploring.’
‘Would they ever have had time to get back to Ely without you noticing?’
‘Only if they had a car. Why are you asking? I’m not sure why either of them would have wanted to do that.’
‘And would you – if you got fed up?’
‘There was no need to go off anywhere at any time. The river’s all home. We went down the River Lark and moored there so Stella and Linda could look at the meadow near Prickwillow. They liked to give the dog some proper exercise. I think they even did a bit of skinny-dipping.’
‘I wasn’t sure Mrs Goddard had a dog.’
‘Whisky. He was a black retriever. The name must have seemed like a good idea at the time. People in pubs always thought it was funny when they first heard it – you don’t want to let him out on the rocks – but Lenny soon got bored of the joke.’
‘You say he “was” a black retriever.’
‘He disappeared. I thought he’d drowned, but Stella said he was an excellent swimmer and someone must have stolen him. God knows who would want to do that. We last saw him at Eau Brink. Annoying he was, always pestering, wanting food, getting in the way. I’m surprised it took them so long to notice he’d gone. So they reported him missing.’
‘And never found him?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘You wouldn’t know?’
‘Well, I haven’t seen him. We looked everywhere; asked all the lock-keepers. I can’t imagine anyone stealing him. Perhaps he got run over.’
‘So Stella Goddard has lost both her dog and her husband in the space of a few days?’
‘That’s right.’
‘It’s strange,’ said Sidney, ‘that she didn’t say anything about the dog. We even talked about them; how Labradors are prone to arthritis. She could have mentioned it then.’
‘Perhaps she was too upset?’
‘Perhaps she was. But still, it’s strange.’
A week later Lenny Goddard’s body was released to the crematorium. On the coffin was a spray of white roses and lilies on a bed of trailing ivy, Timothy and rye grass. Anna had brought wild flowers too: comfrey and corncockle, harebells and forget-me-nots. Hildegard had doubts about her daughter attending Lenny Goddard’s funeral, but Sidney thought it might be good for her. Younger children are often more resilient than people think, he said. It would help her make sense of what she had seen.
The ceremony was appropriately personal (English folk songs, an American–Indian lament, a reading of the ‘Desiderata’, a recording of ‘Light My Fire’ which was not as amusing as everyone had thought it was going to be). There were men in denim suits and cowboy boots, women with daisy chains in their hair and dressed in Indian blouses or tie-dyed summer smocks, all looking as if they had stopped off on their way to a festival on the Isle of Wight. If this was the secular future of funerals, Sidney wondered how far the Church of England was going to have to stretch its traditions to keep up.
He tried to add a note of sober dignity by presiding in a dark suit and dog-collar, offering a welcome, prayers and a short address. He took his text from ‘The Song of Songs’, and spoke about the divine harmony, how both nature and life itself could be seen as a piece of music. It all depended upon the pace, the rhythm and the interpretation. The singer was as important as the song, and what a song Lenny had sung.
When he finished he admitted to himself that he had not preached at his best. During one paragraph he had looked up and seen Tom Tranton in the congregation, and Sidney couldn’t work out if the smile given back to him was one of encouragement or quiet amusement, as if to say, ‘Come on, we both know you can do better than this.’ Before his next funeral, Sidney decided, he would devote more time to a properly researched and thoughtful tribute, one from the heart that was less distracted by suspicion and investigation.
Nigel Martin, the funeral director, told Lenny’s widow that the ashes would be ready the next day. Then she could scatter them in the bluebell wood where Lenny had been found. Linda Clarke said she’d go with her for support and company. She was a small woman with a blonde bob, as slight as an English Edith Piaf, wearing a pink gingham dress that made her look like a child who had never grown up.
‘It’s all right,’ said Stella. ‘I think I’d best be on my own.’
‘No, we’ll both come with you,’ said Linda. ‘Won’t we, Tony?’
‘If you need the company . . .’
‘I’ll be OK on my own,’ their friend replied. ‘But if you want to say your own goodbye . . .’
‘We insist,’ said Linda. ‘Four friends still together. Lenny can’t be confined to a box. He belongs to the elements. He’s had the fire, now let’s give him back to the earth and the wind and the water.’
Afterwards, when told of the plans to scatter the ashes back in the bluebell wood, Geordie was perplexed. ‘If they’ve flung them all over the place, doesn’t that make it difficult when the Lord comes calling at the Resurrection? He’s got a bit of an assembly job on his hands, hasn’t he?’
‘Geordie, I have warned you before about applying human parameters to the divine mystery.’
‘I know it’s “beyond human understanding”. But you might think he’d give the clergy some extra help so they can at least explain it on a Sunday.’
‘You don’t have to come to church.’
‘You know I do. I like to be respectable.’
‘And it’s perfectly all right to “dwell in mystery”.’
‘Well, in that case we’re making a decent fist of the situation.’
Instead of attending the wake, the two men went off to the pub.
‘Best leave them to it,’ said Geordie.
It started to rain. On the way, they sheltered for a while outside a dressmaker’s run by identical twins. A card in the window read: ‘Hems taken up. Bridalwear. Mourning.’
‘Just about covers everything,’ said Geordie. ‘While we’re stuck here I might as well let you know that the coroner confirms poor old Lenny had so much inside him and such a weak heart that it’s hard to tell what’s what. It may have been nature taking its course. It may have been deliberate. All we know is that his life stopped. But I want us to have a proper think. It doesn’t feel right, does it? They’ve all got the same story. Do you think we’ve missed anything, Sidney?’
‘If it was murder, then one of those nearest and dearest to him surely has to be responsible. They all had easy access and any one of them could have done the poisoning. But what’s the motive?’
‘I don’t know. Suppose Lenny Goddard was having an affair with Linda Clarke, or they were planning to run off together?’ Geordie mused. ‘His wife finds out and she kills him. Or, he decides to stay with said wife, and lover Linda kills him for staying.’
‘Or the husband, Tony Clarke, finds out his best friend is sleeping with his wife and does the necessary.’
‘Yet all three of them were away at the same time. If it wasn’t a slow-acting poison administered in advance then how could one of them have got back without the others noticing?’
‘Unless all three of them did it?’
‘That’s possible too. But why would all three of them have wanted to get rid of Lenny Goddard? What could he have had on them?’
‘And why was he collecting the poisonous flowers?’ Sidney asked. ‘We still don’t know about that. And I’m sure there’s something going on with the dog.’
‘Perhaps he’s been poisoned as well? He’s not turned up.’
‘But they reported him missing. Was that just to give themselves an alibi?’
‘It’s certainly worked. I’ve had that checked. King’s Lynn. All three of them were there.’
‘One of them could have come back on the train.’
‘They seem very keen to cover for each other. We can’t even be sure they had the dog with them in the first place.’
‘Do you think it could be something to do with money, Geordie?’
‘They didn’t have very much.’
‘Or drugs?’
‘They made their own. But perhaps they sold them? It could be some kind of revenge from other people selling drugs in the area. I’ve put the word out.’
‘It goes round and round in your head if you let it,’ said Sidney. ‘I don’t suppose they could all just be thoroughly nice and decent people?’
‘Not a chance. There’s even the possibility that our man could have killed himself in order to frame the others; or perhaps he just miscalculated on one of his chemical adventures?’
‘An accidental overdose? Tranton will know about that.’
‘I don’t suppose the teacher could be a suspect?’ Geordie asked.
‘Why would he want to kill an old pupil? He’s a lovely man.’
‘Everyone’s lovely when they like you, Sidney. I think we need to go back to the wood and have a think there. I’ll pick you up at three tomorrow afternoon. You can bring Byron. He might find something.’
‘I should collect Anna from school.’
‘Can’t Hildegard do it?’
‘She’s teaching. She’s got pupils in for some exam at the Royal Academy of Music. I’m on childcare duties. If I forget, then I’ll be the next dead body you find.’
‘I’ll come at half-one then. If we take up too much time I’ll put on the blue light and we can fetch Anna in the police car. She’ll like that.’
‘She almost certainly won’t.’
It had rained again the next morning, but a swift wind blew the clouds to the east and the day had improved so much that by the afternoon it was hard to remember its gloomy start. Then, when they parked the car and started off on the walk to the bluebell wood, Sidney confessed that his mood was not so variable. He was still feeling guilty about exposing his daughter to suffering and for being preoccupied with the world of crime.
‘Imagine how I feel,’ said Geordie.
‘And how do your children cope? They seem to have done all right.’
‘We have just about survived each other. There’s been nothing dramatic so far. They all have quite boring girlfriends and boyfriends.’
‘Some people would consider that a relief.’
‘I don’t know, Sidney. You can’t legislate for your children.’
‘Not really. You can’t learn from other people because they don’t have your kids and they haven’t made your mistakes. Perhaps the secret of parenting is to be as kind as you can, plough on and hope for the best. Then there comes a moment when your children no longer need you and you get your freedom back. The only thing is that by then you don’t want so much liberty because you’re too knackered to know what to do with it. You discover that you’re in the world of Shakespeare’s seven ages of man or in the middle of the last reel of a film that you didn’t even know you’d been starring in. Then, soon enough, it’s all over. What’s wrong? Are you listening to me?’
Sidney was not.
‘Look,’ he said.
Half submerged in the waters below the bluebell wood was the dead body of a woman dressed in black. It was Stella Goddard. An empty box of ashes lay abandoned on the riverbank.
Sidney and Geordie made their way to the Clarke boat. Linda couldn’t believe the news. She said she had only just left Stella in the woodland. Now she had to be told several times about her death.
‘It’s not possible. You’re lying. It can’t be true. You’re making this up.’
Her husband came up on the deck. ‘What’s going on?’ he asked. He looked as if he had just woken up.
Stella had asked for a few moments alone after they had scattered the ashes, just so that she could take in the moment. She had told Linda and Tony to go on ahead. After an hour or two they had started to worry but knew that their friend might like more time. How could she now be dead?
‘Did you see anyone else in the wood?’ Sidney asked.
‘There was a family with children. No one we knew. We had to wait for a bit. We didn’t want anyone to see us. It had to be private.’
‘And afterwards,’ Geordie wanted to know, ‘you didn’t hear or see anything suspicious?’
‘Nothing.’
‘And did you come straight home?’
‘I did,’ said Tony. ‘I had to see the man from Mason’s. The engine needs servicing. Linda went for a walk.’
‘I went downriver,’ his wife continued. ‘I wanted to remember Lenny in my own way. We had so many walks together in the past few years. I wanted to imagine him by my side.’
‘They were childhood sweethearts,’ said Tony.
‘We didn’t know that,’ said Keating.
‘It doesn’t make any difference now.’
‘And you didn’t mind, Mr Clarke?’
‘It was a long time ago. We’ve all got a past.’
‘It’s good to stay friends,’ said Linda. ‘And that’s what we all were. The four of us made our own family. And now, look, it’s just the two of us, me and Tony. I can’t believe it.’
‘But you weren’t together after you had scattered the ashes?’ Sidney checked.
‘Tony wanted to get on. He doesn’t like to dwell on things. It upsets him.’
Sidney asked about Stella’s state of mind.
‘What do you think?’ Tony asked. ‘You’re the clergyman. You must have seen grief before.’
‘I think,’ Geordie cut in, ‘we’d both like to know if Mrs Goddard had ever had suicidal feelings.’
‘Is that what it looks like?’ Tony asked.
‘I don’t think her death can be that,’ said Linda. ‘Stella was strong. She was determined to do her husband justice; to have a last goodbye. She wouldn’t have given up straight away like that.’
‘Sometimes it’s hard to tell what people are thinking,’ said Geordie.
‘Not with Stella. She had always known Lenny’s health was frail. She had been half expecting him to die soon and she’d already done most of her mourning in advance. That’s what you try to do when you know. We’d talked about a longer river trip next year and Lenny had said: “Don’t mind me. I’ll probably be gone by then. You have a good time without me.” And do you know what Stella replied? “We will, you old bastard.” And then we all laughed.’
‘And were you planning on taking this river trip as well, Mr Clarke?’
‘He was my best mate.’
‘Even though he once loved your wife?’
‘That doesn’t matter. As I said, all that is in the past. I love her. She loves me.’
‘I can’t understand how Stella’s gone,’ said Linda. ‘We went swimming together just about every day and if she’d meant to go in the river she wouldn’t have been wearing any clothes. She preferred skinny-dipping. Stella wouldn’t have swum in a dress.’
‘Even if she had wanted to kill herself?’
‘Especially then,’ said Linda. ‘She loved the feeling of the water against her skin.’
‘She wouldn’t have minded the embarrassment?’
‘She wouldn’t have cared. But it’s not that. It can’t be that. It must have been an accident. She was in mourning. But she still had us. We loved her. She knew that. We’d just told her so.’
‘And you didn’t think it was a mistake to leave her on her own?’
‘She asked to be by herself. I think we’ve all wanted a bit of solitude at one time or another in the past few days – just to take it all in. It’s all been so shocking. And now it’s even worse.’
Linda hesitated and then asked: ‘Can I see her? I don’t think I can believe anything unless I do.’
‘We can arrange that. You could come too, Mr Clarke?’
‘I’ll stay here if you don’t mind,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen enough death for one lifetime.’
Sidney was desperate for a return to the routine of his regular religious duties and the distraction of a day off. He suggested a family picnic by the river. He would prepare it himself, he said: cucumber sandwiches, hard-boiled eggs, a pork pie, new young tomatoes, lemonade and the last of the Leipziger Lerche that Anna had made with her mother. They could have ice cream on the way home. It was time to do something good to make up for the bad, he said. Simple pleasures.
‘After all, what else can go wrong?’ he asked.
Anna brought her new camera, an Instamatic, and asked if they could stop by the ponies in the field. She hadn’t forgotten her mother’s promise of a present to make up for her horrible experience and she was now asking what kind of pony she might have – Fell or Dale, Exmoor, Welsh Mountain, Highland or Shetland – rather than whether she could have one at all.
Impressed by his daughter’s negotiating skills, Sidney changed the subject by pointing to a narrow grass slope in the distance. ‘Let’s play roly-poly,’ he said. ‘Last one there’s a nincompoop.’
The three of them ran towards the little hillock, got to the top and rolled over and over down the slope, laughing and becoming dizzy and all ending up in a heap. At only one point did Sidney fear that they might come across yet another dead body. Was this now his life, he wondered, always to have such dread in prospect?
Byron seldom barked but he did now, confused by this onset of high spirits, and worried that the family might have hurt themselves. He went up to each one to check that they were still alive. Then they laid out the food and began to eat, careful to ration the amount they handed over to Byron, never forgetting that time in younger life when he had run across Grantchester Meadows and destroyed a chocolate cake that had been carefully placed at the centre of a picnic rug.
‘You know, Sidney, you can be quite good at family life when you want to be,’ said Hildegard.
‘This is what I want it to be like all the time,’ her husband replied. ‘Sometimes I wish it wouldn’t stop.’ He cupped his hands. ‘That we could hold it all here like this. A summer’s day, you and me, a young daughter who never grows up and never knows suffering. If we could hold on to it all for just a bit longer.’
‘Enjoy the moment,’ said Hildegard, taking his hand. ‘It is precious because it is rare.’
‘Lord, behold our family here assembled,’ said Sidney, offering up a quiet grace before they ate. He was quoting the prayer Robert Louis Stevenson said every day. ‘We thank thee for this place in which we dwell; for the love that unites us; for the peace accorded us this day; for the hope with which we expect the morrow; for the health, the work, the food and the bright skies that make our lives delightful . . .’
Anna’s teacher, Tom Tranton, passed by on his bicycle. He gave a merry wave and then doubled back, circling round them, pretending for a moment that his bicycle had a mind of its own and that he could not control it. Then he asked Sidney if he could have a quiet word. He had just heard about Stella Goddard’s death and had been thinking.
‘I know that you and your daughter discovered Lenny was collecting a particularly suspicious group of wild flowers, including digitalis,’ he began, ‘but I still cannot believe he had any malice in him. I wondered if you might consider a different theory; that the poor man did not intend to do any evil but to stop it?’
‘How?’
‘Suppose he suspected that he had been poisoned and was trying to find an antidote? One way of fighting aconitine poisoning is to administer a combination of atropine with either digitalis or strophanthin at maximum strength to act on the heart. You can’t get strophanthin so easily, but if you know your way around your henbane and your foxgloves you can use their poison to reverse the dose. Perhaps that’s why he was gathering those flowers?’
‘Why didn’t he just telephone the doctor?’
‘Lenny always thought he knew best. And, if he suspected that someone he loved was trying to poison him, then perhaps he didn’t want to say so in order to save them from suspicion?’
‘So he knew?’ Sidney asked.
‘I think he did.’
‘And you suspect his wife?’
‘Or a lover. Or a lover’s husband. Or an enemy hitherto unknown. But somebody he loved enough to forgive – and perhaps even to prevent them being incriminated. You could think of it as a last act of love.’
‘That sounds too good to be true.’
‘Have you found out if Stella Goddard had been drugged before she was drowned – either by herself or others?’
‘We don’t know that yet. I am not the police.’
‘Yet you police our morals, Sidney, and if the Bible is to be believed, God’s judgement is more lasting than that of any man.’
‘I know you don’t believe in such things.’
‘Oh, I believe in judgement, but not for all eternity. There’s no need to scare people with stories they can’t imagine or, more likely, with something that doesn’t exist. Sometimes I think I’m quite looking forward to oblivion: somewhere there’s no trouble.’
‘I think that’s what Tony Clarke’s after.’
‘I don’t think he’ll get much of that with the wife he’s got. I remember her as a little girl. Such concentration in biology lessons. The way she dissected a frog . . . she knows her chemistry too. They all do. Where she is now?’
‘Seeing the dead body.’
‘Leaving Mr Clarke on his own?’
‘He just wants a quiet life.’
‘Unfortunately, Sidney, there is no such thing as a quiet life. Even the smallest atom has to keep in a state of flux. It’s impossible for any life form to discover a state of constant equilibrium. Take the haemoglobin molecule and its violent oscillations . . .’
‘I’m not so sure I need to know about that, Tom . . .’
‘Life exists only in so far as it evolves in time as a never-ending stream of events. The story never concludes. Nature has no morality. That’s why we need you, Sidney. But I’m afraid I must take my leave. You need your family and I need my life. Embrace the chaos. Adieu!’
As soon as he got home, Sidney decided to telephone Geordie and ask if Linda Clarke had returned to her boat. It might be an idea, he suggested, to follow her and keep a watch on her husband.
‘Don’t worry,’ his friend replied. ‘That’s all in hand.’
‘Only, I was thinking of popping in.’
‘Oh you were, were you?’
‘I just had a few more questions.’
‘Then it promises to be quite a party. I was just out the door myself.’
‘I’m going to call on Tom Tranton first,’ said Sidney. ‘There’s just one more thing I want to ask him.’
‘Is it about the dog?’
‘How did you guess?’
‘Because I’m the one that’s the detective.’
It was a warm summer evening and people were sitting out on the decks of their boats, drinking beer or mugs of tea, playing guitars, waiting for the stars to come out on a three-quarter moon. Sidney and Geordie passed a half-hearted game of French cricket being played in the last of the light and a pair of lovers lay on the long grass, beside a weeping willow, stroking each other’s hair.
The Clarke boat was moored further away on a darker stretch past a bend in the river. There were lanterns on board, a table laid out for supper, drinks on deck and the unmistakable aroma of a barbecue.
Music was playing – easy listening, perhaps a bit of Radio 2 – and, as they approached, Sidney and Geordie could hear laughter. For a moment they wondered whether they had made a mistake. This, perhaps, was a couple trying to return to normal after the death of their best friends. Linda emerged wearing the longest chiffon scarf Sidney had ever seen. ‘I saw a natterjack this afternoon,’ she was saying. ‘They’re quite rare. They have this beautiful yellow stripe down the spine. It’s the same colour as my scarf. Would you like another drink?’
Her husband was tending the barbecue. ‘I don’t mind. I feel a bit funny.’
‘I hope it’s not one of your turns.’
‘You can talk . . .’
‘Can we be of assistance?’ Geordie asked, as he and Sidney arrived on the quay.
‘What do you want now?’ Tony answered, moving the meat to one side.
‘I hope we haven’t interrupted anything.’
‘What does it look like?’
‘Is there any news?’ said Linda.
‘I think we’d like another of our chats.’
Sidney announced that he wanted to talk about friendship. Could Linda and Tony remind them how long they had all known each other?
‘Lenny, Linda and I were at school together,’ said Tony. ‘You know that. All taught by Tranton.’
‘And why do you volunteer that now?’
‘Because he’s been poking his nose in.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘He came to see us,’ said Linda. ‘And he was at the funeral.’
‘What did he want to know?’
‘How we were keeping. But I think he really came to snoop.’ She turned to Geordie. ‘Did you send him?’
‘No, I didn’t,’ said Geordie.
‘Did he talk about frogs?’ Sidney asked.
‘Why would he do that?’
‘Because he remembered you, Mrs Clarke, dissecting one at school.’
‘I don’t see what that’s got to do with anything . . .’ Tony cut in before his wife could answer.
‘Bufotenine,’ said Sidney.
‘I don’t think I know it,’ Linda replied.
‘I think you do.’
Her husband was perplexed. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘You extract it from amanita mushrooms and from the skin and venom of toads. According to Tranton you were something of a zoologist at school, Mrs Clarke, and then, when you went to university, you became an expert in herpetology . . .’
‘The study of amphibians,’ Geordie continued, ‘frogs, newts, salamanders and . . .’
‘Toads. Yes, I know what herpetology is.’
‘And now,’ the inspector concluded, ‘so do we. It’s how the dog died, isn’t it? All he had to do was play with a toad, lick it or catch it in his mouth, and that’s it. Cardiac arrest. More common at night, apparently, when everyone else is asleep. Easier to get rid of the body.’
‘The dog died by accident,’ said Linda. ‘I didn’t know he was going to try and eat a toad.’
‘And you didn’t tell the others because reporting him missing would give you an alibi.’
‘I didn’t say anything to the others because I didn’t want to upset them. It was a horrible death. I thought if we just assumed he had run away it would be kinder.’
‘You wanted to be kind?’ Geordie asked.
‘I hope so, Inspector.’
Sidney turned to Tony Clarke. ‘Did you know about this?’
‘No, I did not. But I don’t like asking too many questions. Then you don’t have to worry about the answers.’
‘So you’ve never asked your wife about her feelings for Lenny Goddard?’
Linda spoke out. ‘This is none of your business,’ she said. ‘A woman can love someone else without it getting in the way of her marriage. You don’t always have to bring everything out into the open, Mr Chambers. I’m sure you must have friendships with women yourself.’
‘I do.’
‘And your wife doesn’t mind?’
‘She doesn’t say anything.’
‘Well, then,’ said Tony Clarke. ‘Neither do I.’
‘As long as no one wants anything more . . .’ Geordie added.
‘Sometimes,’ said Linda, ‘love can be beyond the physical. People don’t understand that but it’s true. You go past the body to find something deeper. Truer.’
‘And you had that with Lenny?’ Sidney asked.
‘I wouldn’t want to attempt to describe it.’
‘But you did want your relationship to be exclusive?’
‘It already was.’
‘He was married.’
‘We understood each other. We had a past together. We were more than married.’
Sidney pressed on. ‘I don’t think you were, Mrs Clarke. I think you were having a relationship and Lenny stopped it. That’s why he didn’t join you downriver. He wanted to be on his own.’
‘That’s not true.’
Geordie was losing patience. ‘Perhaps he wanted to be shot of the lot of you.’
‘Never.’
‘We think you poisoned him. If you couldn’t have him, no one else could – not least his wife.’
Tony Clarke had had enough. ‘Linda is not the type of woman to poison her friends. She loved them.’
‘We’re not saying she didn’t,’ Sidney continued. ‘Lenny Goddard guessed what had been happening – that you had been poisoning him slowly, over several weeks – and tried to find the antidote because he still loved you enough to protect you, Mrs Clarke. Perhaps he felt guilty? Then Stella drowned herself in grief. Unless, of course, you poisoned her too? We’re still waiting for the post-mortem. I’m not sure about the dog. That may not have been an accident either.’
‘This is a lot of supposition,’ said Linda.
‘But once we find the bufotenine, everything will follow.’
Tony turned to his wife. ‘Is this true?’ Linda Clarke remained silent, but he continued to focus on her alone. ‘I don’t know why you needed to do all that. Everything was fine. We could have just carried on. Didn’t I love you enough?’
‘Perhaps I’ve always wanted too much,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t know. Perhaps I wanted everything.’
‘I thought you loved me.’
‘I do.’
‘But not enough.’
‘Differently,’ said Linda. ‘Lenny said he was going to go away. He said it was too stifling. He couldn’t cope. He was going to leave and go as far away as he could and he was just going to be with Stella. They were planning to start again. He said he couldn’t bear to live with me being so close. We loved each other too much. He couldn’t breathe, he said. And I told him I couldn’t live without him.’
‘But that’s what you’ve done,’ said Sidney. ‘You’ve made that come true.’
‘You should have told me,’ said Tony. ‘Why did you keep this from me? I could have helped you. I could have understood.’
Linda looked out over the night water and spoke to no one but herself. ‘Now Lenny’s gone I can love him without any fear of losing him. A dead man can’t reject you. I can love as I have always wanted. No one can stop me and he can’t ignore me or leave me. Stella can’t provoke me. She’s gone. There’s no widow to claim his memory. I can have Lenny to myself. And that love won’t end. And I won’t ever doubt it. Even in prison. Even in death.’
Sidney and Geordie drove back into Ely together. ‘You’d think we’d get better at this, wouldn’t you?’ the inspector began. ‘But it could have been any of them. Do you think Tranton knew all along?’
‘He told me about the poison. It was up to us to prove it.’
‘I’m not sure we have yet.’
‘Do you know if we will?’
‘I hope so. By the way, I wonder if, in time, Linda Clarke would have poisoned her husband as well?’
‘I do think that’s possible, Geordie.’
‘So at least we’ve stopped one thing. I don’t suppose you fancy a quick pint before last orders? Hildegard won’t mind, will she?’
‘She’s had ten years of this already. She’ll probably be asleep by now.’
‘By the time I get back to Cambridge, Cathy will definitely be out for the count. She’s been so tired recently. So why break the habit of a lifetime? We could even fit in a game of backgammon . . .’
‘I can’t believe we’re still doing all this,’ Sidney replied.
‘What’s wrong with you, man, what else would you be doing?’
The next night Sidney and Anna read a Tintin story and were amused to find their namesake, an Inspector Chambers, in The Seven Crystal Balls. The inspector shot the intruder who put Professor Tarragon into a coma and called police headquarters when Professor Calculus was kidnapped. He was a dark, angry man with a toothbrush moustache who appeared in only two or three frames, dressed in a traditional trench coat and looking nothing like Sidney or his father. Still, it could have been worse. The only clergyman they had spotted in the series so far was the Reverend Peacock in Cigars of the Pharaoh, a bemused and elderly hanger-on who turned out to be a member of an international gang of drug traffickers.
It was light behind the curtains and the room had a dusky air. Sidney prayed with his daughter, tucked her in and kissed her goodnight. Then he left the door slightly ajar so that she would not be afraid if she woke up later, when darkness was at the full.
‘Does a story always have to be true?’ she asked, just as he was leaving. Anna was always good at delaying tactics to prolong bedtime.
‘I think it has to be truthful even if it didn’t really happen,’ said Sidney from the doorway. ‘You have to care about the story you are telling and then make people believe it.’
‘But can you sometimes make it become true if you work hard enough? Is that why people pray? To force their stories to come true?’
‘Or to make them better.’
‘Even if they’re not true?’
‘They can be true in spirit if not in fact.’
‘What’s the difference?’
‘That might take a long time to explain; a whole life . . .’
‘Can you come and read me something else – a story with a happy ending? Then I don’t mind if it’s true or not.’
She finished her wild-flower collection just before the end of term, filling her scrapbook with the blues of periwinkle and lady’s-smock, the yellows of celandine and marsh marigolds, the pinks of cuckoo pint and rosebay willowherb, each with little descriptions. ‘Gorse is too spiky,’ she wrote, together with ‘My mum’s favourite’ next to the sweet violet, and even a little picture of a skull and crossbones by a foxglove: ‘Warning: poison’.
Linda Clarke was arrested and charged. Yes, poison, she said. She had wanted Lenny for herself, but he had refused to leave his wife. Love had turned to hate, then to vengeance and on to despair, murder, fantasy and illusion. Her husband had known and loved her through it all, but she had been too determined to accept what he had to offer, pursuing an idealised vision of a past with someone else; what she thought had been, and always would be, a better love, even if it was one that was entirely without a future.
All that devotion or passion or shame or humiliation or obsession – whatever it was – made Sidney think about the waste of misdirected adoration and the persistence of desire; and how important it was, perhaps, to recognise the quieter, humbler, lasting love of a marriage like his own, one that took its place beside his and Hildegard’s side so often that it came and survived almost without them noticing, waiting patiently for acknowledgement.
The bluebells were long gone now, replaced by the wild flowers of June and July: figwort and field roses, giant hogweed, musk-mallow and montbretia, tansy, vervain and sweetbriar; the height of summer, the fullness of light.