Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night

[sawyl]

In keeping with established practices in which I slurp down a whole series of books in one go, here are a few thoughts on Sidney Chambers and the Perils of the Night, the second of James Runcie's collections of Grantchester stories. The book covers a period from January 1955 to August 1961 — taking in both the Soviet space program and the Berlin Wall — and finds Canon Chambers slowly making a few decisions about the direction of his life.

In The Peril of the Night, Canon Sidney Chambers is walking home from the pub on a snowy, windy evening when he sees a group of night climbers attempting one of the pinnacles of King's College Chapel. When one of the group panics Valentine Lyall, a research fellow at Corpus Christi who is leading the attempt, tries to help only to fall to his death. What initially appears to be an open-and-shut case becomes significantly more complicated when it is discovered that one of the suspected climbers vanishes leaving a suspiciously clean set of rooms. Although the story ends fairly abruptly as events pass out of Sidney's purview, the Runcie picks up and resolves the dangling thread in the last story in the collection.

Love and Arson begins with a suspicious fire in a barn being used by louche local photographer Daniel Morden. Sidney wonders whether the fire might have been an insurance job — Morden for the contents or his landlords, the owners of the neighbouring petrol station, for the building itself — or whether jealousy may have been involved — Morden may have been taking candid snaps of the local village girls and may have fallen foul of some of their boyfriends — or whether the local peeping tom and taxidermist might be involved. While there are some fun elements to the story — not least the way the rumour of Sidney's purchase of a copy of Sultry magazine, strictly for research purposes of course, goes through the village like wildfire — this feels a bit like a minor story.

Unholy Week finds Hildegard Staunton visiting Grantchester for Easter, for the first time since her husband was murdered in The Shadow of Death. While Sidney prepares for the college's Easter service, Hildegard practices the piano in the rooms of Orlando Richards, the Professor of Music, who has temporarily decamped to Peterhouse to avoid the noise of rewiring working being carried out at Corpus Christi. But Hildegard's peace is broken when a promising mathematician is found dead in his bath. Unsatisfied that the death is natural, Sidney beings looking into the man's disputes with the college electrician and with his potentially jealous colleagues. I think this is probably my favourite story in the collection, largely thanks to all the Bach references — although I'm not convinced all the BWV numbers are right! — and to the enjoyably eccentric character of Orlando Richards, who seems to have taken Glenn Gould as his role model.

The Hat Trick starts with Sidney umpiring a local cricket match that features many of the established characters. The story takes a sinister turn when their local spin bowler Zafar Ali drops dead shortly after taking a hat trick. Given the circumstances, foul play is suspected and the local coroner — and star batsman — confirms that the man has been poisoned. Pretty sure that the man has been the victim of racist murder Sidney starts looking into the death, but struggles to pin down the exact method used to commit the crime. While the sensibilities of some of the characters feel a little progressive for the late 50s, the story itself is solid and Runcie does an excellent job of describing Sidney's passion for cricket and idea that a match might represent a psychological struggle between the sides akin to a game of chess.

In The Uncertainty Principle, which takes place in April 1961 against the backdrop of Yuri Gagarin's first space flight, Amanda Kendall informs Sidney that she has decided to marry Anthony Cartwright, an up-and-coming physicist, and that she wants him to conduct the ceremony. Meeting Cartwright at yet another of Nigel Thompson's disastrous dinner parties, Sidney agrees to prepare the couple of marriage, only to be repelled by Cartwright's glib, arrogant responses. Unable to determine whether his feelings stem from jealousy or whether Cartwright really is a bounder, Sidney and Amanda have an appalling row in the bar of the Savoy, leaving Sidney with a hard choice to make. I rather like Sidney and Amanda's trajectory in the stories; Amanda's decision to plump for the obviously rather unpleasant Cartwright feels authentic, given her previous experience with Guy Hopkins and her realisation that she and Sidney aren't going to have a future together.

The final story, Appointment in Berlin, finds Sidney in Germany to visit Hildegard Staunton. On arrival he learns that Hildegard has had to travel to Leipzig to deal with a family emergency, and rather unwisely decides to follow her into the East. On the train he bumps into someone he recognises from The Perils of the Night and promptly finds himself hauled in by the Stasi. After an unpleasant few days, Sidney is released and he and Hildegard try to return to West Berlin only to find the crossings closed and the East German Army busy building the foundations of the Wall. Although it's not exactly Le Carré, this is a perfectly acceptable spy story that resolves a couple of major plot points: the fate of the night climbers and Sidney's decision to finally confront his feelings about Hildegard Staunton, something he has been putting off for the best part of seven years.