Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death (28 page)

‘He is.’

‘He?’

‘Or she.’

‘I can count on your assistance?’

‘Of course. My friend Canon Sidney Chambers may also be of service.’

‘I think this is best left to the professionals, don’t you?’

Sidney took a step back as Williams continued. ‘I can’t imagine a clergyman being good for anything except this poor girl’s funeral.’

‘You’d be surprised,’ Keating intervened.

Williams was keen to press on. ‘When do you think the crime took place?’

‘We think it must have been during the drum solo. The noise proved a distraction . . .’

‘In my experience that’s when most people head for the Gents.’

‘This audience clearly wanted to stay.’

‘Apart from the murderer. There are some familiar enough faces in the crowd. I’ve spent half my life locking these people up and out they come like cockroaches.’

Gloria Dee walked up and asked. ‘Have you found the torpedo?’

‘The what?’

‘The hit man.’

‘We’ve only just arrived.’

‘How long are we gonna have to hang around?’

‘All night, madam,’ Inspector Williams replied.

‘I’m used to late, and I’m real sorry for the girl. Sorrier than I can say. But if you’ve got questions can you ask us first? We have to play tomorrow.’

‘I’m not so sure about that, madam. We may have to close this place down for a few days.’

‘Then how am I supposed to live? They don’t pay if we don’t play.’

Williams had no time for the questions of other people. ‘This is a murder investigation. We can start our inquiries with you and let you go home. Clearly you are some kind of performer . . .’

‘Let me straighten your wig right off. I’m not “some kind”. I’m Gloria Dee.’

‘I don’t care who you are. I must follow procedure. We have, at the very least, to get the names and addresses of every person here and establish where they were at the time of the murder. I hear that you were in the audience.’

‘I was hitting all sixes, scattin’ away as the boys were playin’. Everyone was havin’ a good time. Then it all went to hell. No matter how many times this kinda thing happens, it still gets to you.’

‘You mean this has occurred before?’ Sidney asked. He knew that jazz and violence shared a mutual history. He remembered reading about the stabbing of the bandleader James Reese Europe, and of Chano Pozo, the percussionist killed in a bar-room brawl.

‘We’re jazz people. There’s nothin’ I aint seen.’

‘Then perhaps you can help?’ Keating asked.

‘I don’t know nothin’ ’bout nothin’. I’m just sore the baby got herself killed.’

‘Can you think why?’ Inspector Williams continued.

‘Why you askin’ me? You’re the police.’

‘I’m interested in your opinion.’

Gloria sighed. ‘If a broad moves in a world of men and darkness she has to watch out. She can’t trust no cat. Maybe the baby turned a man down and he didn’t take it good, or she saw somethin’ she shouldn’t have. Perhaps her Daddy was up to somethin’. It’s got to be love or money. Those things go together the whole damn time.’

Sidney spoke in the silence. ‘I can’t understand how something so violent could happen to a girl like her . . .’

‘I’m not sayin’ it’s her fault . . .’

The inspector returned to his questions. ‘Whom did you come with tonight?’

‘Just the band. Tony on skins, Milo on bass, Jay Jay on piano.’

‘Anyone else?’

‘There’s Liza, Tony’s girlfriend. She’s around somewhere, and Justin, our driver. He’s a dewdropper.’

Williams was not interested in finding out that a dewdropper was a man who stayed up all night. ‘Are they still here?’

‘I hope so. I need to get back to the hotel.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘I’ve been around. New Orleans. New York City.’

‘When are you going back?’

‘In a few weeks. I hope you’re not wantin’ me to stay. I have dates at Minton’s.’

‘Minton’s?’ Williams asked.

Sidney explained. ‘It’s a jazz club in New York.’

Gloria Dee smiled. ‘You been?’

‘Alas, no.’

The singer looked him up and down. ‘You plain clothes?’

‘No, not at all. I’m a clergyman.’

‘A preacher-man? What you doin’ here?’

‘I’m Canon Sidney Chambers.’

‘As in Cannonball Adderley?’

‘I don’t think so.’

‘He’s a sax player. Eats like a horse. What you drinkin’?’

‘I don’t think I can. But I’m sure that in your case . . .’

‘If I’m havin’ to wait I’m sure going to drink.’ Gloria turned and walked towards the bar. ‘Give me three shots of bourbon straight,’ she asked.

Sidney could see Phil Johnson in the distance. He had not moved for a long time. He looked like a man who was stuck in a dream of falling from a high building; someone who knew that he would go on falling for the rest of his life, down towards a ground that was rising to meet him but would never arrive: eternal vertigo.

Already Sidney knew that when, in the future, people asked him about his children or talked about their own, Phil would have to decide how much to tell them or to remain silent; for if he spoke and told them his story no one who had not experienced anything similar would know what to say. It would be impossible for them to compare any grief of their own with his.

He heard Inspector Keating’s voice. ‘You can go home, you know.’

‘Are you staying?’

‘I have to, but you don’t. I can vouch for you.’

‘I think the last train has probably gone.’

‘Let’s have a look round.’

They parted the black drapes at the back of the stage and found themselves in the clutter of the green room. It was a mess of instrument cases, scattered music stands and empty bottles of booze. A hat stand held a couple of trilbies and a few raincoats, and one of Gloria Dee’s red satin dresses fell from a hanger that had been attached to a nail in the wall. The place smelled of sweat, cigarettes and alcohol. Billboards of previous concerts, featuring Jimmy Deuchar, Ronnie Scott and Kenny Baker, were peeling from the walls. Justin, Gloria Dee’s driver, was doing a crossword. Liza was pouring herself some rum. ‘I’m just having a teensy weenie pick-me-up.’ She giggled. ‘Now I’m picking up the pick-me-up.’

Sidney could tell that she was intoxicated. ‘I need to ask where you were during the concert.’

‘Here,’ Justin replied.

‘All the time?’

Justin set his crossword aside. ‘Sometimes we stand in the wings. For the main numbers.’

‘You never watch from the front?’ Sidney asked.

Liza answered for them both. ‘They send for things all the time: water, towels, drink. It’s quicker if we’re here.’

‘And you were backstage during the drum solo?’

‘We watched that from the wings. Tony’s my boyfriend. The drumming is the best bit.’

‘Don’t tell Miss Dee that,’ Justin added.

‘You’ll be driving them back to the hotel?’ Sidney asked.

‘That’s what I’ve been told to do.’

Inspector Keating stepped in. ‘So we’ll know where to find you if we have any further questions?’

‘I live in Earls Court,’ Justin replied. ‘You can have my address. But, for the moment, I go where Miss Dee goes and I do what Miss Dee says.’

‘I hope she pays you well . . .’

Liza sniggered and waited for Justin to answer. ‘She pays. It’s not always about the money . . .’

Sidney accompanied the inspector back on to the stage, where Phil ‘the Cat’ was sitting on the piano stool. His body was slumped, as if half the bones in his body had been removed. An abandoned roll-up rested between his fingers.

‘Can you think of anyone who would hold anything against your daughter?’ the inspector asked. ‘Anyone with a grudge?’

‘She’s a beautiful girl. All I’ve got. She’s never done anything wrong. None of the boys would touch her.’

‘Was there anything your daughter could have seen?’ Sidney asked.

‘You mean a witness to something? It’s possible.’

‘Was your daughter sweet on anyone?’ Sidney asked.

‘She’s too young for any of that.’

Sidney noticed that Phil referred to his daughter in the present tense.

Inspector Williams continued. ‘So you can’t think of anyone who would want to do her any harm?’

‘No one. I swear to God, Inspector – and in front of this clergyman. Everyone loves my girl. I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say.’

Sidney rested his hand on Phil’s shoulder. ‘I will pray for her.’

‘She was an angel,’ Claudette’s father replied.

Sidney timed the journey from the stage to the Ladies and diagonally across the room. Even with the crowded tables it would have taken little more than a minute to cross. He tried to think how a murderer could have struck so quickly and powerfully and without being seen. It seemed impossible, and yet it had happened. He watched as two ambulance men took Claudette’s body away. There was no beauty or stillness in her death, only absence.

He returned to where he had been sitting and waited as the members of the audience gave their details and statements. Then he put his head in his hands.

Where was God now? he asked himself. Where had He been on the battlefields of Normandy, in the Blitz over London and in the bombed cities of Europe? How could a loving God permit such monumental suffering and what purpose did it serve? And, in contrast with such a widespread human catastrophe, how could God also allow something so small in scale and yet so intimately brutal as the murder of this single girl on this particular night? What could anyone have had against her to provoke such violence? How could there be any reason or justification for her death?

The two friends took the first morning train back to Cambridge. It was already light when they arrived and Sidney had only a few hours before early morning Communion. He would wash and shave and then try to catch some sleep in the afternoon. There was no time to go to bed.

He took Dickens out for his favourite walk across the Meadows but, despite the stillness of the river and the beauty of the light amidst the willows, Sidney’s mood could not lift. He was haunted by the murder and what he might have done to prevent it.

He walked across the graveyard filled with trees of yew, holm oak and cherry, and stopped before a broken column: the grave of a twenty-six-year-old man whose life had been cut short in 1843. He passed the memorial for the twenty-five soldiers from Grantchester who had died in the two wars:

They shall not grow old

As we that are left grow old . . .

Inside the church, he began to pray for the soul of Claudie Johnson and for the sorrows of the world. Today, he decided, he would visit the sick of the parish: Beryl Cooper, who had acute arthritis; Harold Streat, the funeral director, whose elderly father was suffering from dementia; Brenda Hardy, the postman’s wife, who had breast cancer. He had to stay with each one for as long as possible, providing unhurried comfort, calm and companionship. It was the least he could do, and every time he did so, he realised that the sick and the dying could teach him more than he could ever learn amidst the hurly burly of the everyday. The elderly and the sick had a different view of the world; they were already more than halfway on their journey towards the invisible realm where, it had been promised, all things shall be made known.

That afternoon, Sidney’s sister Jennifer telephoned to say that the Johnson family were inconsolable. There was nothing she could do or say that might comfort them. All she could do was offer practical help. Could she therefore ask for her brother’s advice regarding Claudette’s funeral arrangements? There was going to be a post-mortem, and then a service in a London crematorium but, as not one of the Johnson family was a churchgoer, perhaps Sidney could say a few words at the service?

‘I’m sure their vicar will be able to do that, Jennifer.’

‘They don’t have a vicar.’

‘Everyone has a vicar. Whether people choose to use him or not is another matter.’

‘But they like you, Sidney.’

‘Do you know what parish they are in?’

‘Somewhere in Brixton, I think. But Johnny has asked for you. They trust you.’

‘I’ll see what I can do.’

‘Johnny’s father is so upset that he won’t speak.’

‘It will take a long time.’

‘I can’t believe anyone could have done such a thing, Sidney. Claudie was going to be a little sister to me.’

‘So it’s serious with Johnny?’

‘We can’t think about ourselves at the moment.’

Sidney tried to imagine what it might be like to lose a sister. It was almost unthinkable. There was so much that he felt that he still had to share with Jennifer that to lose her so suddenly, as Johnny had lost Claudette, without any farewell, would make him regret all the times in his life that he had taken her for granted or been too preoccupied to see her.