Sidney Chambers and The Problem of Evil (The Grantchester Mysteries) by James Runcie Page B

for questioning then he might still be alive.’
    ‘You mean it’s his own fault? He was scared.’
    ‘Did he tell you that he was?’
    ‘He didn’t need to tell me. He ran off.’
    ‘Do you know where he went?’
    ‘No I don’t. How much longer is this going to take?’
    Sidney sat down on a low bench. ‘Quite a few priests like jazz. I am sure that if he’d spoken to one or two of them, and asked them for help, he would have been given charity; either food or a bed for the night.’
    ‘He didn’t go round killing them, I’ll tell you that much.’
    ‘But perhaps he knew who did?’
    ‘You won’t get that from me.’
    ‘Is that because you are the very man we are looking for?’ Keating asked.
    ‘Don’t be daft. Why would I want to kill my own brother?’
    ‘I don’t think you did. But I think Jimmy knew his killer. He recognised the danger that he was in,’ Sidney continued. ‘There’s something we’re not being told.’
    ‘How can you be so sure?’
    ‘Because if he did not have a secret then he would have had nothing to fear. Do you think he met both Philip Agnew and Isaiah Shaw?’
    ‘It’s unlikely he knew one priest; let alone two.’
    ‘You mentioned love.’ Sidney said quietly.
    ‘There was a girl.’
    ‘Who was she?’
    ‘She’s called Bianca. Jimmy was always cagey about her. I don’t know where she lives. Somewhere round here.’
    ‘So your brother is not a homosexual after all?’ Keating pressed.
    ‘No. Although I don’t see how that can have anything to do with it.’
    ‘We think it can, Mr Benson. We think this could be a hate crime.’
    ‘My brother didn’t hate anyone; not homosexuals nor vicars. He just didn’t fit in. Neither of us did. But we don’t do harm. The world is full of hypocrisy, don’t you find, Canon Chambers? Sometimes those that look as if they’ve slept in a hedge do so because they really have slept in a hedge. They’ve got no money. They’re down on their luck. What you see is what you get. But then that’s not the case with so-called respectable people at all, is it? You can’t ever tell what they think or what they’re doing. They’ve got so much on the surface you can’t even begin to know what’s going on underneath.’
    ‘And what do you think is “going on underneath”, Mr Benson?’
    ‘The power of all evil, Canon Chambers. That covers it, by my reckoning. The power of all evil.’
     
    The theological college of Westcott House was an unassuming nineteenth-century building in Jesus Lane, with an old Tudor brick courtyard and a refectory that contained a life-size image of the Crucifixion. Simon Opie, or Princeps , ran the college as erratically and eccentrically as he drove his car, never appearing to concentrate on the job in hand. He divided his time between his study, the chapel and the aviary he had built in the college gardens.
    Opie had written one great classic work of theology in his youth, An Enquiry into Suffering and Omnipotence , and despite his inability to settle down to anything for any great length of time, he had a deep knowledge of human deviance and the nature of evil. If anyone would know how to deal wisely with the problems that they were facing and form some kind of psychological profile of the killer then it was surely Sidney’s former tutor.
    Many of his students regarded the man as a latter-day St Francis, who preached to the birds in the valley of Spoleto, praising God for making them the most noble of creatures, quietening them when they were noisy, invoking them as evidence for the glory of God’s creation; and indeed Sidney could hardly stop his friend talking about his fine collection of cockatiels, kakarikies and rosellas.
    ‘I named the first generation after the church fathers,’ Simon Opie explained, ‘but then I thought that it was all getting a little pretentious. You can’t really have a parakeet called Polycarp of Smyrna or a budgie called Tertullian.’
    ‘I think I’d name them