Read Online Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) by James Runcie - Free Book Online Page B

find out more about her husband. We have no idea of who he is or what he is like but perhaps he has something against priests?’
    ‘It’s a bit of a long shot and it’s hard to see how we can justify a visit. He’s not in our parish. Surely he will smell a rat?’
    ‘That is true. But he could very well be our man. If only we had more information.’
    ‘Do you not think we are out of our depth, Sidney?’
    ‘The police need all the help they can get.’
    ‘But neither you nor I, nor Miss Randall for that matter, are trained detectives.’
    ‘But we are trained priests, and priests have been the victims. Miss Randall is an investigative journalist.’
    ‘I see your position towards her is softening.’
    ‘She’s very bright.’
    ‘That’s what Keating says. I wouldn’t admit as much to Hildegard.’
    ‘What do you mean? She approves of intelligence in a woman.’
    ‘When a man praises a woman’s intelligence, Sidney, he is normally acknowledging how attractive he finds her.’
    ‘The intelligence being part of the attraction.’
    ‘Yes, but only a part. Be careful.’
    ‘I don’t think you need worry about my having the wrong kind of feelings. But it’s kind of you to be concerned. I know you’re not so interested in women yourself, Leonard.’
    ‘They do interest me. It’s simply that I don’t understand them. I think I must be scared of them.’
    ‘They can be distracting, of course.’
    ‘You mean Miss Randall has been distracting?’
    ‘Don’t start on that all over again. I’d rather talk to you about biscuits.’
    ‘I think we have had a tinful of that, Sidney. But what do you think about the religious aspect to all this? Do you think it could be a case of demonic possession of some kind; or that it is being made to look like that? I am remembering the animal sacrifices as well as the murders.’
    ‘Perhaps it could be someone who is theologically aware?’
    ‘You don’t mean a fellow priest?’
    ‘No, Leonard, but someone who might once have been a priest; or someone who thinks he has been treated badly; rejected, perhaps, personally, sexually, or even from the priesthood itself.’
    ‘A former ordinand who turned against us?’
    ‘Having been rejected. And that expulsion from our midst then fuelled his resentment and his fury?’
    ‘I don’t know, Sidney, I am thinking aloud. I need more time to consider.’
    ‘I am not sure Inspector Keating is up for waiting. Can you tell me a little more about Patrick Harland?’
    ‘Why are you asking about him? He is an over-enthusiast for God rather than the devil.’
    ‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Sidney replied.
    ‘You don’t think he can have anything to do with this, do you? He trained as a priest.’
    ‘But he didn’t become one. Simon Opie told me he had a nervous breakdown.’
    ‘Something like that. An occupational hazard for evangelicals who run out of certainty.’
    ‘He was a late convert?’
    ‘God has spoken to him, yes. He had a road-to-Damascus moment on the A1, I believe.’
    ‘A near-death experience?’ Sidney asked.
    ‘A blinding light. And a voice telling him to turn back. He was on his way to join his father’s firm in the Potteries but he gave it all up to work with the poor. He wanted to do something more profitable than make plates.’
    ‘You don’t mean “ profitable ” ; you mean socially useful.’
    ‘Yes. He wanted to change the world.’
    ‘How do you know all this, Leonard?’
    ‘Some of his behaviour was cited in our tutorials as an example of how not to be a clergyman.’
    ‘The idea being that just because you think you have been given the gift of revelation, it doesn’t give you carte blanche to become a cleric?’
    ‘Or that it was even revelation in the first place,’ Leonard continued. ‘It could have been a fantasy; or even a migraine. Harland was never named but I knew that it was him. One of the tutors let it slip when we were talking about the difference between