Death in the opening chapter

TWENTY-SIX

The demolition of Brigadier and Mrs Blenkinsop was over in short order. The motive was new; the alibi always on the flimsy side; but the intrinsic probability limited. This was, admittedly, down to intuition and would not hold water in court. Over the years, however, it had stood Bognor in good stead. He simply did not see the Blenkinsops as a ruthless killing machine. It also seemed significant that there was no sign of opposition. Whether or not the vicar had departed entirely of his own volition was still a matter of conjecture. There was no sign of a fight. And, in Bognor’s opinion at least, the vicar would have fought the brigadier and his wife.

‘I absolutely agree,’ said Camilla, ‘that you have produced a number of people who disliked vicars in general and this one in particular. But most of them live outside the town. I think you’ll find the average Mallburnian remarkably tolerant. The philosophy here has always been “live and let live”. Even if the locals shared the average metropolitan dislike of poor little Sebastian, I don’t think they wished him any particular harm. Only seriously zealous and peculiar people listen to sermons, or pay any attention to what the padre says. Anglicanism is a minority business. You’ll find much more passion in Southall or Bradford. Muslims and Sikhs take religion pretty seriously. You could say that even Jews and Catholics are the same. The C of E has always been a great deal more restrained. And nowhere more so, dare I say it, than in Mallborne.’

‘And she speaks as an outsider herself.’

This, in a manner of speaking, was true. Camilla’s father had been an academic at the University of Edinburgh. She came, if she came from anywhere, from the Kingdom of Fife. She was not a Mallburnian; not even English.

‘And Allgood certainly isn’t from these parts,’ said Bognor, moving on to the next most serious suspect.

‘Probably from the same part of Essex as the cook,’ said Fludd.

‘What have you got against Essex?’ asked Monica. ‘Parts of it are perfectly nice, and some quite acceptable people come from there: Constable, Paul Jennings, Ruth Rendell. Some people would even include Randolph Churchill. Not me, I agree, but some would. I’d be surprised if you’d even been there.’

‘Went for cricket once,’ said Fludd, sharpish. ‘Chelmsford. Rain. Only a couple of overs. No runs. Bailey batting.’

This was almost, but not quite, a non-sequitur.

‘Whatever, Allgood seems to have made everything up.’ This was Bognor, claiming inside knowledge. After all, he had the advantage of a post-performance personal talk.

‘Hmmm,’ said Branwell. ‘Plagiarism is a dodgy area.’

‘Who said anything about plagiarism?’ asked Bognor. ‘My feeling about Allgood is that he’s perfectly original. A plagiarist is someone who borrows from someone else.’

‘Steals,’ said Monica. ‘A plagiarist is one who steals.’

‘Novelists are always being advised to write about what they know. That means real life. And that means that writers of fiction steal their material from what actually happens. Which is why so many novels are a pale imitation of life itself. Allgood’s included.’

‘But you’ve never read an Allgood,’ said Monica. ‘So how could you possibly know?’

‘I’ve read the reviews,’ said Branwell, ‘and I’ve heard him talk. That’s good enough for me.’

‘You surely don’t believe what you read in the papers?’ asked Monica, full of assumed incredulity. ‘Any more than what you hear at literary festivals. It may not be plagiarized but it’s certainly not the truth.’

‘Whatever that is,’ said her husband. He spoke morosely.

‘Oh, come on, Simon,’ said Sir Branwell, ‘You’ve done a terrific job of going through the motions. You’ve interviewed all sorts of people with tremendous tact and circumspection, and we haven’t had a jawnalist within sniffing distance. We’re incredibly grateful. A real busman’s holiday for you. I’m truly grateful. We all are. We can bury poor little Sebastian, let him rest in peace, draw a line in the sand and move on. Thanks, largely, to you.’

And, so, thought Bognor, that was it. He felt used, soiled, unconvinced. This was not a new feeling. Far from it. That was partly why he felt so distressed. Not for the first time, he had failed to prove what he believed. Worse than that, he had become a sort of establishment fall-guy, giving a spurious respectability to a cover-up. Perhaps he was mistaken; maybe the vicar had killed himself in this melodramatic fashion, at this inconvenient time. In any event, Bognor had been there to pour oil, to give everything an orderly respectability. In doing so, he had connived in a deception and done what authority wished.

‘I always said,’ said Sir Branwell, rubbing it in, ‘that it was suicide. I have to say that it’s gratifying to be proved right by an expert.’

‘Nothing like consistency,’ commented Sir Simon.

To which Sir Branwell, completely unfazed, said that he had always been taught that inconsistency was the better part of politeness, just as discretion was the better part of valour. Or words to that effect.

Bognor also winced at the use of the word ‘expert’. It was not used ironically but that was its effect on him. All his life he had striven for what was right, whereas the world and his wife wanted only what was expedient. There were occasions on which Bognor felt as if he were in a macabre spaghetti western, holed up in some impregnable eyrie with only a few bullets left for his carbine and a cyanide bullet to kill himself rather than surrender. In the plain below, the enemy was the world itself – an unlikely fusion of the US Cavalry and the Apache; of Burt Lancaster, Henry Fonda and sundry bit-part actors in feathers and make-up; an impossible coalition of good and bad, in which only he was more than window dressing. His was the voice in the wilderness. Everyone else but him was out of step. He would sell his life as dearly as possible, but in the end he would bite the lethal capsule and die an unlamented and unnoticed death.

In real life, he had taken a knighthood and become head of department. He would retire gracelessly and frequent the London Library and his gentleman’s club, where he would bore away at the centre table – a figure to be avoided, pitied and ridiculed. His would be a life of convention. What had once promised so much, had turned to ashes. Worse still, he was a living excuse for evil. The world was a worse place for his existence, but he gave it respectability, for he was a safe pair of hands, a man of integrity, an Apocrypha graduate.

He felt desolate and his friend was rubbing salt in his wounds.

‘Just because I couldn’t prove otherwise, doesn’t mean that the vicar committed suicide.’

‘Of course not,’ said Sir Branwell. ‘Cheer up and have another biscuit. Enjoy the rest of the festival. Relax.’

Upstairs in their vast, chilly bedroom Bognor flipped through the pages of his programme and told himself that he had failed.

His wife, however, seemed elated.

‘I think I’ve cracked it,’ she said. ‘I was barking up completely the wrong tree. Because the clue was on a hymn board, I immediately assumed I’d find the answer in Hymns Ancient and Modern, whereas it was in the Bible itself. I should have known. Even the revised version of the hymnal stops in the six hundreds, so anything beginning with a seven and a nine had to come from somewhere else. QED. So the hymn board wasn’t advertising hymns. It wasn’t intended as a public instruction for the congregation, more of a private message. Bit like a crossword clue.’

‘You’ve lost me,’ said Bognor, ‘and it doesn’t matter. We record some sort of open verdict, bury the poor padre and move on. There is a line in the sand, or whatever the appropriate cliche is. Your solution is too late. Probably wrong, as well. In any case, it couldn’t matter less. I’ve screwed up, but I’ve screwed up in a way that suits the Fludds and the chief constable and Dorcas and Ebenezer, and everyone else in the world. But I still have a sneaky feeling…’

He sighed. The refrain was frequent. Just when you had reached the peak of the mountain, you realized it was an illusion, and you had another climb to make. It was an ascent too far. He had been here before. Often.

‘It was Dorcas and Ebenezer that muddled me,’ said Monica. She had heard these mournful blatherings before. Many times. She had come to accept them, even to expect them. Her husband seemed not to understand that it was never too late for justice, and that in the end his wife would triumph. She always did. ‘Especially Ebenezer,’ continued Lady B., breezily seeming not to notice that Simon had uttered. ‘I mean, there is so much in the hymnal which has to do with Ebenezer. Ton-y-botel, all that Welshness, Williams and Jones, and at least three different sets of words. As you know, the Welsh are only any good, once in a blue moon, for rugby football, singing and seaweed. Bit like the so-called Welsh language. It’s just noise. Like all those pointless points in a Methodist sermon. They go on and on, the preacher is mesmerizing, but at the end of the day, you can’t remember a word he said. It’s just so much hot air. Same here. All red herrings of one sort or another. Nothing to do with Hymns A and M.’

‘I am familiar with the tune Ebenezer.’ Bognor tried to sound icy and knowledgeable, but failed at both. Still, he felt piqued, and he did know whereof he spoke. ‘T.G. Williams,’ he said, ‘aka Thomas. 1890 to 1944. Once to every man and nation. Hail thou once despised Jesus. Not in any way to be mixed up with the often omitted line about raising “mine Ebenezer”, which means “stone of help”. It may have been an old folk song. Could have been washed up in a bottle. I think Williams was a plagiarist to be absolutely honest. Anyway, you’re saying that the hymn is a red herring. So, what have you discovered that works?’

He was dredging up something he had been taught in Divinity at his private school many years before. It sounded good to him now, just as it did when he was little. He hoped his wife would not know enough to contradict him. But maybe it was irrelevant. Like him.

‘Aha,’ she said, ‘I’ll only tell you if you cheer up.’ She was truculent, buoyed up by her ability to find the answer and solve the conundrum. Not for nothing was she a whizz at Sudoku.

‘I’m perfectly cheerful,’ he lied. He always felt like this, in what should have been moments of connubial bliss. It didn’t matter that he would present the solution as if it had been all his own work. He and Monica knew otherwise. They understood the truism that behind every good man, there was a woman at least as good. From time to time, Bognor pretended otherwise. Even if it were teamwork, there was a team leader and an ordinary team member, and he knew enough to understand that he was not the team leader.

‘Well, all right, I’ll tell you anyway. There were four hymns listed, OK?’

‘OK.’

She paused, smiled, and shivered.

‘Two of them were ordinary, common-or-garden real hymns. The other two are significant. The last two aren’t hymns at all. They’re both biblical references. One is from the first Book of Samuel and the other is from the Acts of the Apostles. One is about Ebenezer and the other is about Dorcas. Geddit?’

Bognor wasn’t sure. He wasn’t sure of anything any longer. His wife, however, seemed certain of all the answers and she had the bit between her teeth. He was happy to leave it to her. He had little or no alternative since, in any case, she would not allow him one.

‘Carry on,’ he said, lethargically, managing to imply dangerously that she was going to carry on, no matter what.

She looked at him exasperated, but was obviously too excited to care.

‘One was nine-three-six. That’s chapter nine of the Acts, verse thirty-six. The first of the verses telling the story of Dorcas being raised from the dead by St Peter. Except that she’s really called Tabitha. Dorcas is the translation. “Now there was at Joppa a certain disciple named Tabitha, which by interpretation is called Dorcas.” Those are the exact words!’

‘Right,’ he said, ‘and the other is the passage introducing Ebenezer in the first Book of Samuel.’

‘Correct,’ she said, exultantly. ‘Not hymns at all. Seven-one-two, if you remember. In other words, chapter seven, verse twelve, where Samuel says he’s erecting a stone of remembrance to commemorate a defeat for the Philistines between Mizpah and Shen. “Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpeh and Shen and called the name of it Ebenezer”.’

‘Fascinating,’ said Bognor. ‘So it’s been staring us in the face all the time?’

‘You could say that, yes.’ His wife wore the expression of one who has just conquered a particularly difficult crossword clue.

‘Ebenezer and Dorcas using the hymn board for anyone quick enough and well versed enough in scripture, as it were,’ said Bognor.

‘So, not your average scene of crime officer,’ agreed Monica. ‘Nor your average pathologist. Adam Dalgleish, perhaps. Or Peter Wimsey. But not in real life.’

‘Your “average pathologist” wouldn’t have visited the scene of crime,’ said Bognor, a shade pedantically. ‘It’s one reason I’m so sceptical about pathology, autopsies and post-mortem examinations. They’ve never yet told me anything I didn’t know already, and often significantly less as of now. I knew I didn’t like the pathologist. Solving the clues of the hymn board needed someone like you. Like us.’

His wife smirked and said nothing. There was no need.

Dorcas was drinking Bovril when Bognor arrived. He had a feeling that Dorcas was always drinking Bovril, and in a metaphorical sense he was, perhaps, right. The Bovril was in a blue and white mug of a hooped design known as Cornish, and it was scaldingly hot. Dorcas’s ancestors would have drunk Bovril too, but they would have called it ‘Beef tea’.

She did not offer Bognor anything, but asked him if he would like to sit, which he did.

For a while, he remained silent, his gaze held by a sampler, early Victorian, framed on the wall opposite.

She sat too and sipped Bovril. She too did not speak.

In the hall, a grandmother clock ticked noisily and struck a quarter past, whirring before it did so.

‘Sebastian wasn’t dead when you entered the church,’ he said. It was a statement, not a question. He was not expecting an answer, let alone a ‘no’.

She bent her head.

‘You cracked the code.’

Same thing. A statement. Not a question.

‘We cracked the code. I cracked the code. Not difficult. Particularly not when one realized one wasn’t dealing with hymns but the Bible.’ He was being shameless. Left to his own devices he would almost certainly have been none the wiser. Without Monica, he would have assumed that all four sets of numbers referred to hymns.

‘The Bible?’

She needed to know that his deduction was based on legwork and knowledge, not fluke.

‘Yes.’ he said. He was being economical with the truth, and they both knew it.

The silence should have been awkward but instead it seemed oddly companionable.

Presently, the vicar’s widow said, ‘It was Ebenezer’s idea.’

‘Ebenezer’s?’

‘Yes.’ After a while, she added, by way of explanation, ‘He wanted it to be easy but not too easy. He was anxious that our presence should be known but not to everyone. He seemed to think that the information should be privileged. Given only to people who were privy to a little knowledge and had at least an elementary grasp of deductive principles.’

‘I see,’ said Bognor. He didn’t but it did not seem to matter. He thought it meant that Ebenezer wanted them to know but not the world and his wife. It was the work of an elitist.

‘Poor Sebastian,’ she said. ‘He’d given up really. Everything was suddenly too much.’

‘Really? Most people thought he was pretty much on top of things. He was intending to deliver his sermon, after all. That doesn’t sound like someone who’s given up.’ Bognor was bothered by this. The dead vicar did not give the posthumous impression that he thought that day would be his last. He was preparing his sermon. That meant that he hoped to deliver it.

‘Maybe only those who knew him intimately quite realized. He was surprisingly good at keeping up appearances. That mattered right to the end. He didn’t want anyone to know that he was exhausted. I sometimes think, late at night, that it was other people’s opinions that killed him. They mattered far more than they should.’ He couldn’t work out if she were telling the truth. If not, she was a clever liar. More probably, she wasn’t entirely certain, but was making her story up as she went along. Sometimes, Sebastian wished he were dead; sometimes not. That, alas, was human nature. Even vicars lacked consistency.

‘Part of the price of being in the public eye,’ he said, wondering if being the Vicar of St Teath’s in Mallborne was the same as being ‘in the public eye’. ‘Other people,’ he continued, ‘have opinions. They seem to believe they have a right to them. And people who are sensitive think they matter.’

‘He was certainly sensitive, poor love,’ she said, and shook her head. ‘He cared. Cared too much, especially about what others thought, or what he thought they thought.’ She smiled wistfully, as if to herself. ‘He was his own enemy, in that respect. Cared too much. But you can’t change human nature. He was always vivid when it came to others. He saw them in Technicolor but he was monochrome himself. So very monochrome. Maybe it was the greyness that killed him. Black and white, even. If he had seen things in colour perhaps he would have survived.’

They both mused. Bognor decided privately that she was slightly deranged, making little or no sense. Greyness and sensitivity suggested something that would not stand up in a court of law, and would cause a jury to have palpitations. A small part of him, however, thought it might just contain a kernel of truth.

‘Dorcas was dead,’ she said, ‘until Saint Peter brought her back to life. Do you think that can be true? Or was she asleep? Or comatose? I don’t think Peter had the gift. Saint or not. I suppose it’s possible, though. People must have thought she was dead and that she was then alive, and that Peter had performed the miracle. Sleight of hand, I suppose. Do you think Peter wanted to be thought capable of such a thing? Or was it an embarrassment?’

The doorbell sounded before Bognor could answer. Which he might not have done anyway, not having a plausible response. This felt horribly like religious mania and he was ill-equipped to cope. Mrs Fludd left. Presumably to open the door, and there were indeterminate noises off. Bognor felt he should have strained to catch any verbal exchanges but could not, honestly, be bothered. Eventually, the bishop entered. He was holding Dorcas’ hand and looking as near bashful as a bishop can. A coy cleric.

‘So you caught the clue,’ he said. ‘Took your time.’

‘I still don’t understand.’

Ebenezer smiled at him patronizingly. Only bishops could smile at senior civil servants like that. Bognor felt at once furious and very small. Young even.

‘I – we – wanted someone to find out,’ said the bishop, ‘but not just anyone.’

Bognor frowned. It seemed tricksy to him but then the whole thing seemed contrived. ‘Why not just take pills or slit your wrists in the bath?’

‘You’re thinking it’s all a touch melodramatic,’ said Ebenezer, ‘and maybe it is. Sebastian wanted to go out with a flourish, if not exactly a bang. So maybe we played along too much.’

‘I’m not with you,’ said Bognor. ‘Are you saying it was Sebastian’s own wish?’ He was groping. It sounded very much as if Ebenezer was suggesting that Dorcas and he had connived in the death. That would make it assisted suicide. A hanging judge would impose a gaol sentence. A liberal might let him off. Or, at least, put them on some form of report.

‘In so far as he was capable of making up what you choose to call – in what, if I might say, is a perverse, layman’s phraseology “his mind” – then, yes. It was his wish. It was time to go.’

‘Who says?’

‘We do,’ said Dorcas. ‘All three of us.’

Bognor did not like this at all. He could see where it was going to end. The bishop was going to pull rank and tell him he had no jurisdiction; that it was a matter for Sebastian and God, with a little help from his friends. Bognor felt increasingly patronized. It was like being back at school, and being told he was too young and inexperienced to have a view. This was a matter for adults, and he was still a child. The bishop and Dorcas were invoking a higher authority. He, however, dealt in more mundane matters. He had to. It was what he was paid for.

‘What about the book?’ he asked, floundering. ‘Did he write a book? Allgood had a story about a book. Used it in his talk. What about the brigadier and the 13th Mobile? Was there a debagging? Did it prey on his mind? Did Brandon’s father know something? Did he talk? And what about Vicenza Book, and her mum? What did he really think about them and their sexual antics? What about the harvest supper and Gunther? There are so many unanswered questions…’

He stopped in mid-sentence, aware that Dorcas and Ebenezer, the dead man’s widow and the dead man’s boss, were looking at him with something that veered between contempt and pity. He also realized that while he had a confession of sorts, it was not one that would stand up in court; nor one that would be admitted outside these walls. Dorcas and Ebenezer had helped the vicar on his way. They might have tied the knot; they might have kicked the stool. But it was what the dead man wanted. Correction, it was what Dorcas and Ebenezer said he wanted, and they knew Sebastian better than anyone, certainly far better than any judge and any jury. Bognor knew that he couldn’t recommend a prosecution. He knew that if he did such a thing, it would be thrown out. Not only that, but he would be ridiculed and vilified for daring to suggest that he knew better than the dead man’s wife and the dead man’s bishop, better even than the dead man’s God. Even so, he did have a sneaking feeling that this was true and that he was right.

Bognor was not happy.

‘I know what you’re about to say,’ he said. ‘You are about to say that Sebastian had lost his faith; that he had lost the capacity to love; that he had lost the capacity to believe. You are going to tell me that it is not my business, nor that of any man on earth. You are going to tell me that this is something which can only be determined in another place. You are about to tell me that my idea of justice and truth is nothing when measured against the eternal verities. You’re saying that I and my fellow man are not qualified, that this is best left to something or someone else.’

There was another silence.

Bognor broke it. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’ he asked, and, even as he asked the question, he knew that he would not receive an answer until he too stood at the pearly gates in which he did not believe. If then. He had an uneasy feeling that St Peter, or his stand-in, would also be shtum.

They both looked at him patiently, sympathetically but condescendingly.

‘I’ll let myself out,’ he said. Neither the bishop nor Dorcas moved. And he left, cheeks stinging but not from the cold.