Death in the opening chapter

TWENTY

He was getting somewhere, even though he didn’t know where. Even the arrival was far from assured. He felt as if this meandering interrogation was going to end in a conclusion, but he still didn’t know what it was, nor even if it would be useful or germane.

He shifted tack.

‘Do you think your husband’s death had anything to do with the literary festival? Or was it just a coincidence?’

Again she smiled.

‘The timing is interesting,’ she said. ‘If he had died at any other time, it would have been unlikely to attract attention. As it… well… who can say? Part of your role is to avoid publicity, keep things tidy and orderly, to avoid fuss. On the other hand, I sense that you want to establish the truth. The two may coincide. Or not. Who knows?’

‘I don’t think that answers my question,’ he said. ‘One of my problems is to establish whether this tragedy could have occurred at any time, or whether it took place specifically because it was the eve of the festival. What do you think?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said.

‘But what do you Thinking and knowing aren’t the same. One is an opinion and the other is a statement of fact. If you can produce the latter, then that’s great, but I suspect you can’t. In which case, I’ll have to make do with something more speculative. Obviously, that’s not as helpful, but it’s better than nothing.’ think?

‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I really am, but I don’t have an opinion.’

He shifted tack again.

‘When I talked to the bishop,’ he said, ‘I got the impression that Sebastian was going through some kind of crisis. He was suddenly doubting his belief. Personally, I don’t see that there is any relation between this crisis of confidence and the festival. I could be wrong, of course, but I don’t see any connection. What do you think, though? Was the bishop right? Was the crisis real? Was it significant? Did it have anything to do with the festival. With books? With literature? With being a Fludd?’

Dorcas seemed anguished and confused.

‘Ebenezer shouldn’t have told you. He only knew about it because he was in a privileged position. It was as if it had been in the confessional. Not that I’m a papist, or anything so vulgar.’

The word ‘papist’ sounded ludicrously pejorative and old-fashioned to his ecumenical ears. She made ‘vulgar’ sound vulgar too. He was moderately surprised to hear the bishop referred to with quite such easy familiarity. Three words in about the same number of sentences. He wondered if he was becoming lexicographically threatened.

‘Do you think your husband killed himself?’ he asked. ‘It’s a simple question, and you’re in the best position to answer. I have to tell you that there is a lot of pressure to decide that he did. It’s neater. May not be true, but it’s tidy, and why not? If he was murdered by someone else, it’s not going to help him. Nothing we do will bring him back.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘I suppose not. He would have preferred it that way.’

‘Sorry?’ said Bognor, not understanding. ‘What would he have preferred and why?’

‘He never liked fuss. If he had to be dead, he’d rather just be buried and forgotten. That was his style, and nothing in that respect had changed.’

‘What other things had changed?’ This time Bognor knew – or thought he knew – what the answer should be. On the other hand, he didn’t know whether the widow would want to give it.

There was a long pause, which seemed to confirm his suspicions. Dorcas knew. He knew too, because he had been told by his friend the Rt Rev. Ebenezer. On the other hand, the answer was likely to prove embarrassing and did not necessarily show her in the best light. It might help Bognor, but it could hardly help the Reverend Sebastian. He was beyond help.

‘What other things had changed?’ he repeated.

‘I heard you the first time,’ she said. He wondered if she had been similarly crisp with her husband, the vicar. She seemed so mild; a wet blanket of a woman; one of nature’s hearth rugs. Women, he thought to himself, were surprisingly deceptive. On the whole, he didn’t accept generalizations about the difference between the sexes, not least because Monica, aka Lady Bognor, was not a woman in the accepted sense. Maybe Dorcas Fludd came into a similar category. He doubted it, but all things were possible, especially, he thought ruefully, where women, and more particularly wives, were concerned.

‘I’m thinking about your question,’ she said, by way of explanation. This did little or nothing to soften the blow. It was probably true and certainly was, in the sense that she had heard the question first time round. His concern was whether she was concocting a plausible lie, or thinking of how best to tell the truth. He was beginning not to trust her.

‘Sebastian was having doubts,’ she said, confirming what he had already been told by the bishop.

‘He doesn’t sound the most certain person in the world,’ he said. ‘I’ve always found the ability to see several sides of any question appealing.’

She took time to respond to these assertions.

‘I know what you mean,’ she said eventually, ‘and a certain doubtfulness may be attractive in a human being, in a general sense. It’s not helpful in a priest. Particularly when it concerns one’s vocation.’

‘And did it?’

More time for thought. He found this profoundly irritating, but knew that interrupting the silence was playing into her hands. Much better to remain quiet and let her answer his question. She made him wait, but replied in the end. He had no idea whether it was worth the wait, but it was better than nothing and better than interrupting. Of that much he was reasonably sure.

‘You could say so,’ she said at last. ‘Sebastian was having serious misgivings about God.’ She smiled wistfully. ‘Not clever for a vicar. Sebastian had always shown a remarkably definite belief in the Father Almighty. You could say that this was a necessity. In any event, he used to be rocksteady about that. It was odd, because in almost every other respect, he was a dreadful ditherer. I was the one who took the important decisions. I always acted sensibly and quickly, and I hardly ever changed my mind. Sebastian simply couldn’t make his up, except where God was concerned. He always used to be absolutely steady about that, until he changed and religion became as much of a muddle for him as everything else.’

‘What exactly do you mean by “everything else”?’ he asked, and this time there was no hesitation about the answer.

‘Oh, income tax, VAT, church flowers, holy dusters.’ She laughed. ‘The literary festival. Everything. Life, nuts and bolts.’

‘You?’ This was daring, intrusive, OTT. He knew this, and saw her mood change immediately. She pinkened.

‘He used to be certain about me, much more so than I was about him. I loved him, but I could always see the flaws. The dithering, for instance. He never mentioned my flaws. He always said I was beautiful. He used to believe that I was the best thing that ever happened to him. He accepted the fact that we couldn’t have children. But then, at the same time he started to doubt his vocation, he began to doubt me, and to question the nature of love, the sanctity of marriage and,’ she became even pinker, ‘well, everything.’

‘And sex?’ Bognor really was pushing his luck now. He knew this, but in for a penny in for a pound, what the hell? The length of her silence and the almost impossible reddening of her cheeks made him think he had, indeed, gone too far, but, to his surprise, she answered, and even though the response was delayed, it was, as far as he could judge, honest. It was certainly explicit.

‘We used to have quite a lot of sex,’ she said. ‘I don’t know if we were any good, because we’d only ever known each other in a, well, in a carnal sense. But we suited each other and we enjoyed it. It was meaningful, of course, but fun too. We used to laugh quite a lot in bed. We had a lot of innocent fun. Nothing untoward, I don’t think, but tremendous fun.’ She grew wistful again. ‘Then that stopped. He said it was “wrong”, said it was a sin. So, we stopped. For the last few months, we even had separate bedrooms. We never even cuddled. I couldn’t help wondering if there was someone else, but I don’t think so. It was just him. Or rather not him. He wasn’t himself.’

Bognor, inevitably perhaps, thought of himself and Monica. Childless. Faithful. Laughter in bed. Surprisingly sexy. No one else would have suspected. They would have thought it mildly perverse, but then sex was like that. He remembered the sex education talk from his headmaster when he was twelve, and how his best friend had whispered to him incredulously just after, ‘Do you realize that he and Mrs Fothergill have actually done that?’ It seemed grotesque, quite beyond imagining, but sex was like that. However enjoyable and entertaining it might be for you and your partner, it was unimaginable and mildly disgusting in others. The idea of the late Reverend Sebastian and Dorcas even in a missionary position was either laughable or nauseating, depending on one’s viewpoint. At any rate, it was beyond Bognor’s ken, just as was his own coupling with Monica.

‘So, your husband suddenly developed misgivings about sex and about God,’ said Bognor. ‘Do you think this sudden access of doubt would have been enough to drive him to take his own life?’

Dorcas seemed to give the idea some thought.

‘I wouldn’t have said Sebastian was into suicide,’ she said. ‘You have to be certain of something to kill yourself, and I wouldn’t have said Sebby was like that. On the other hand, I would never have believed he could have had second thoughts about God… or sex.’

‘So, whatever else he may have thought about things, he remained pretty certain about his doubts.’

Simon was rather pleased with this, which while not sufficiently polished to qualify as an aphorism, contained enough unexpectedness to be worth the work. The idea of certainty about doubt was appealing, as well as paradoxical.

‘You could say that,’ she conceded, ‘and in a way, it simply made him a more consistent character. He was in a quandary about absolutely everything, which was not originally the case. It could have driven him to killing himself, though I’d be surprised. On the other hand, his life was full of surprises, so why not his death?’

‘Seems a slightly melodramatic way of doing it,’ said Bognor. ‘He could have taken an overdose, or slit his wrists in the bath.’

‘Perhaps he wanted people to notice,’ she said. ‘Nobody paid much attention to him while he was alive, so why not do a celebrity-style death. It would surprise everyone and possibly draw attention to whatever he wanted people to be drawn to.’

‘Which was?’ No one had found a note. There was no indication of what he was planning to preach from the pulpit.

‘Ebenezer took away his notes for the sermon,’ she said as if reading his mind. ‘He said it might be helpful and that, in any case, no one else would understand. If they claimed to, they would be guilty of getting everything wrong.’

‘How did the bishop get hold of the notes?’

‘Sebastian…’ and then she went pink and checked herself again, ‘gave them to him,’ she said, after what seemed like another long moment of thought. ‘It seemed only right. They were God’s business, and it seemed only proper that they should be shared by his servants and not by enemies.’

Bognor made a mental note to ask about the state of Dorcas’ own beliefs.

‘I hadn’t realized that the bishop was on the scene so fast,’ he said.

‘I didn’t say he was,’ she said, flustered.

‘That’s not what I said. Or questioned,’ said Bognor.

He supposed he had better have another, perhaps more formal, word with the bishop.

‘Does he still have your husband’s notes for the sermon?’ he asked.

Another silence, and then she nodded. ‘I can’t think he hasn’t,’ she said, ‘but you’d better ask. I simply don’t know.’

‘I will,’ he said. And he would.