Read Online Sidney Chambers and the Shadow of Death by James Runcie - Free Book Online

have done it? Clive Morton could have had a financial motive and Hildegard Staunton certainly had cause for resentment.
    Sidney was unsettled by his feelings. On approaching the Staunton residence he had felt depressed and ill at ease, but as soon as he had sat down with Hildegard he had not wanted to leave. Had her tragedy made him pity her, or were his feelings more than sympathy for her fate? Had he even, he wondered, become so fond of her that he could not believe that she could ever make a man so miserable that he would want to kill himself?
    Sidney watched the low sharp light of the day start to disappear behind the trees and remembered that he had no lights on his bicycle.
    He would have to get back.
    He returned home, poured himself the smallest of Johnnie Walker’s against the chill of the night, and looked at Stephen Staunton’s suicide note once more. Then, as the whisky took care of his anxieties, the beginnings of an idea started to emerge.
    He picked up the pocket diary and looked at the seemingly random arrangements of mornings and afternoons that had been added in pencil.
    How could he have been so slow? It annoyed him beyond measure. To have taken the information at face value; to believe what people wanted him to believe! How had he allowed himself to be taken in?
    He realised that he needed to see Pamela Morton once more, and urgently, but when he telephoned it was her husband who answered. Struck by a sudden moment of nerves, Sidney put down the receiver.
    The next day, he sent her a note but it was late the following afternoon before she called on him in person. After he had poured them both cups of tea, Sidney leaned forward in his chair and said: ‘I think, after all this time, that I might be making progress.’
    Pamela Morton was still, surprisingly, ungrateful. ‘Well, that would make a pleasant change.’
    ‘It has not been easy, Mrs Morton, and I do think it might have been simpler if you had gone straight to the police rather than a clergyman who is ill-equipped to deal with these matters . . .’
    ‘There is no need to be defensive, Canon Chambers. I know you would not have summoned me to your home if you did not have something to tell me. Is there the faintest chance that you might actually believe me?’
    I have always believed you, Mrs Morton . . .’
    ‘I have told you before. Pamela  . . .’
    Sidney ignored her request. ‘Although I do need to ask you to account for your movements . . .’
    ‘On the day of the murder? You don’t think I’m a suspect? That would be rich.’
    ‘No, I am not saying that.’
    ‘But you might be suggesting it .’
    ‘Well, it would be a good way of throwing an investigator off the scent; to suggest a murder that no one has considered to be murder; to open a case that was never going to be opened. Perhaps one would only do that if one wanted to frame someone else?’
    ‘And do you think that is what I might have been doing?’
    ‘I don’t wish to insult you, Mrs Morton. . ..’
    ‘You’re doing a pretty good job so far . . .’
    ‘I have to think about every possibility: your husband, for example.’
    ‘Yes, I can see why he might be a suspect but I can assure you he knows nothing. He’s too busy playing golf. He’s obsessed. The hobby is worse than gambling.’
    ‘That’s as may be. But I need you to be both specific and honest.’
    ‘That’s how I’ve always been.’
    ‘Then I must ask you to remember where you were on the evenings of September the first, second, eighth, fifteenth and twenty-second, and the two nights of October the fifth and sixth.’
    ‘You expect me to remember all that?’
    ‘It’s very important . . . Pamela . . .’
    ‘And you want to know now?’
    ‘There is only one thing about these dates that interests me . . .’
    ‘October the sixth is the night before Stephen died. I certainly saw him then. I will always remember it. I told him that we just had to get through the winter. If we could just get