Death in the Opening Chapter Read online

  All this flashed through Bognor’s mind, as he realized that he had insulted the pathologist and the only way out was for him to apologize. If he did, the matter should be resolved and the stand-off would cease to be Mexican, in the generally accepted sense.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, but the pathologist was not to be defused so easily. As far as he was concerned, the stand-off was indeed Mexican and there was no way out.

  ‘People like you always say things like that,’ he said.

  ‘I only apologized.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said the pathologist. ‘Typical. You think you can be as rude as you bloody well like, and that you can then apologize, which makes it all right. Well, it doesn’t. Life isn’t like that.’

  ‘No,’ said Bognor, feeling even more confused. ‘You’re right. It isn’t. Maybe I should make myself plain.’

  ‘I wish,’ said the pathologist.

  ‘What I mean,’ said Bognor, sighing inwardly, because he knew this was going to make a bad situation worse, ‘is that I believe that murder and its solution is, on the whole, and as a general rule, not a rational matter, and, as such, is not susceptible to rational analysis.’

  ‘I disagree,’ said the pathologist.

  ‘Of course you do,’ said Bognor, irritating his opponent still more. ‘That’s your job. I wouldn’t expect anything else.’

  ‘Just because murder is usually committed in a non-rational, whimsical manner and for similar reasons, doesn’t mean to say that it’s not subject to rational scientific laws. That’s what my colleagues and I provide.’

  ‘Up to a point,’ agreed Bognor. ‘But, with respect, it’s quite a limited point.’

  ‘What do you mean by that?’ The pathologist didn’t really want to know. He was buying argumentative moments. Calling an intellectual time out.

  ‘What I mean,’ said Bognor speaking very slowly, as if to a foreigner, halfwit or small child, ‘is that death isn’t about scalpels and dissection, and positions of bodies and times of death; it’s about matters of far greater importance and far greater complexity.’ He seemed briefly to backtrack but didn’t, in fact. ‘I concede,’ he admitted, ‘that people, such as yourself, have a part to play in an investigation such as this, but it’s a small part, a subsidiary part and not even necessarily a relevant part.’

  ‘I don’t agree,’ said the pathologist, desperately.

  ‘Well, if you think you can tell who killed the Reverend Sebastian Fludd because of what you have found in his stomach, or the sort of knot used to tie the rope to the beam, or to any one of a number of sexy but silly things you have discovered because of your so-called scientific procedures, then you are even more ridiculous than I think you are. Thank you for your report, which is required by law and by convention, and will no doubt make very interesting reading, but will be of no help whatever in determining who killed the dead man or why.’

  ‘You . . . you . . . amateur,’ said the pathologist, making the word sound as insulting and pejorative as he could. It would only have been worse if he had inserted the word Mexican as a qualifying adjective.

  ‘Well, on that note,’ said Bognor, ‘it only remains for me to take formal delivery of your report, to take official cognizance of what you say, and to assure you that your professional competence will be noted in the usual and correct manner. I may say, in passing, that nothing you have said or written is of the slightest use or relevance to my enquiries. Nevertheless, I acknowledge, that for all sorts of reasons, I am required to listen to what you say and to read your findings. This I have done, this I shall do, but I have more important things to do, and so, without more ado, I will say, again, thank you very much, leave you to your own devices and see myself out.’

  Which he did.

  He felt he had won the battle, but he was very much afraid he had lost the war.

  EIGHTEEN

  Martin Allgood, the once trendy, once sexy, once promising writer-in-residence, was Bognor’s next interviewee. He reminded Bognor of a footballer who had once been on the books of Arsenal or Manchester United, but had never entirely lived up to his transfer fee, and was now eking out his days playing for someone like Scunthorpe United or Crewe Alexandra, which, in many respects, the Fludd Literary Festival resembled. Inwardly, Sir Simon allowed himself a quiet chuckle at the notion of the Fludd Festival as the bookish equivalent of Crewe Alexandra. He corrected himself in mid-laugh, however – more like Plymouth Argyle, with Allgood in the role of Paul Mariner. That, though, was inaccurate and unfair to many of those concerned. Mariner was the manager, after all, and Bognor had once seen him in his pomp, as the striker of a high-flying Ipswich Town. Martin Allgood had never had a pomp – only promise. Still, he reminded Bognor of a footballer who had never quite made the grade. Not unlike the brigadier. Once upon a time, the brigadier had kept a field marshal’s swagger stick hidden promisingly in his knapsack. However, he had never had occasion to use it once he had been passed over as a mere brigadier. It was a bit the same with Allgood. No Nobel Prizes for him; nor even an evening with Candia McWilliam and Colin Thubron at the Royal Society of Literature or PEN. Martin Allgood was a bit of an also-ran, which was why, let’s face it, he was the Writer-in-Residence at the Fludd Festival of Literature and the Arts.

  It didn’t seem to have dented his self-confidence, however. Better a big fish in a small pond, than no sort of fish at all. And his publicist may have been ignorant and stupid, but her breasts were pert and her cheekbones high, and she was probably very good in bed. Good enough for Martin Allgood, anyway, and she was all his, at least for the duration of the festival. She came with the board, the lodging and the billing, all of which were of a tolerably high order, even if the Fludd Festival wasn’t in the Premiership, even if the eponymous Flanagan had been a bit of a fraud, even if Allgood wasn’t even, truth be told, good enough to be superannuated. As he had said at dinner: ‘Beats work.’

  He didn’t like the clergy any more than the brigadier, but he didn’t call them ‘sky pilots’, referring to them instead, quaintly, as ‘God botherers’. This signified his background of minor public school (‘Kimbolton, actually’), decent but unfashionable red-brick university (Hull) and a moderate chip on the shoulder. Incidentally, he claimed to have been a protégé of Philip Larkin at Hull, and there seemed to be no one willing or able to contradict him, least of all Larkin, who was dead.

  So, he didn’t care much for ‘God botherers’, though you could take them or leave them, even though he was inclined to leave them, and, no, he hadn’t known the late reverend, and he was, natch, sorry, the old stiff had snuffed it, but there you go, one of those things he supposed, and it wasn’t, after all, quite as bad for God botherers who believed in a life after death, unlike most people, and the Reverend Sebastian could at least bother God in person, tweak his long white beard, make fun of the long white socks he stuffed into his Clarks’ sandals and the aerated white bread with which he made his Marmite sandwiches. Heaven was, he was reliably informed by those who knew, full of long white beards, Clarks’ sandals and Marmite sandwiches. A bit like an old British Rail waiting room in a station where you changed on to a picturesque railway line destined for hiking country. ‘Carlisle, eh . . . all change for Settle. Cool, eh?’

  The publicist’s name was Tracey, he thought. Could be Kelley. Or Britney. It ended in ‘ey’. He was pretty certain about that. More hairdresser than publisher, he agreed, even in the publicity department, though nowadays you couldn’t really tell the difference, and she was good in bed, which was where they had been yesterday between five and seven, in the four-poster in Azalea, with a bottle of bubbly, and, cool, eh?, and he supposed we only had Tracey or Kelley or Britney’s word for it, which wasn’t a lot to go on, but it was all he had, so there it was. Unless you can count room service, but they had brought up the champagne nearer four than five, which he remembered because it was well before the final football results on TV, and Stoke did really well, he had always supported them since he was at school. C
ool. He used the word a fair bit, which dated him more than a bit, and was the day before yesterday’s word, just as he was the day before yesterday’s writer, if he had a period, but if you really wanted to know the best was yet to come, and he was working on something right now, which was going to be well, er, well, maybe he was going to say ‘cool’, but that was a word he’d been caught out for using at least once before, and it wouldn’t happen again, if he could help it, know what I mean?

  Talked a lot, Martin Allgood.

  ‘So, you’d never met the vicar?’ asked Bognor, during one of the infrequent lulls in the monologue.

  Allgood couldn’t say he had, though he’d clapped eyes on him a couple of times out and about, seeing as he, Allgood, had already been in Mallborne a day or two, organizing workshops in the school, and for the local writers’ group who met every Thursday evening and had been reading Rubbish as their set text. Rubbish was the book which Monica had asked about, and which had confirmed Allgood’s promise and secured him his place among the twenty most promising British writers of his generation. It had appeared quite a long time ago.

  ‘I’m afraid I haven’t read Rubbish,’ admitted Bognor.

  ‘Me neither,’ said Allgood. ‘Nor what’s her face, though she isn’t exactly into books, really. The ladies from the writers’ group had read it, though. All of them. Seemed to like it, too. Asked all sorts of intelligent questions. But they seemed a bit disappointed when I told them I didn’t know what the most important six rules of successful best-seller writing were. They had Jeffrey Archer down a month or so ago, and he reeled them straight off pat, then repeated them word for word, so they could take notes.’

  For a moment, Allgood looked almost wistful at the thought of Jeffrey Archer’s six rules of successful best-seller writing, about which he had known so distressingly little. Then he brightened.

  ‘Do you reckon he topped himself, or got someone else to do the dirty deed? Or was it a hostile third party?’ he asked, and sat back, expecting some sort of answer.

  ‘The convention is,’ Bognor said stiffly, ‘that I ask the questions and you answer them. That’s the way it is.’

  He was painfully aware that he was sounding pompous, so tried lightening the mood. ‘That’s what the book says,’ he said. ‘It’s a bit like the Jeffrey Archer rules of best-seller writing. If you play according to the rules, you do as the rules say.’ He lowered his voice. ‘I’m afraid, though,’ he conceded, ‘that I’m not awfully clever when it comes to rules. I can never remember what they’re supposed to be, and when I do remember, I tend to pay no attention.’

  ‘Bit like me,’ said Allgood. ‘Effort and sweat, and all that kind of stuff, is a bit of a nuisance, as well. Don’t care for that, either.’

  ‘No,’ Bognor agreed, ‘I know what you mean.’ He thought for a moment. Then, as if coming to a momentous decision, he said, ‘To be absolutely honest, at the moment, I don’t have a clue who did it. I just have a feeling that someone did.’

  ‘Well,’ said Allgood, ‘he’s dead, isn’t he? These things don’t just happen.’

  ‘I don’t know so much,’ said Bognor, ‘he could have had a stroke or a heart attack. These things happen. Act of God. Takes everyone by surprise. Most of all the dear, dead departed.’

  ‘And if it were a stroke or a heart attack,’ said Allgood, apparently thinking out loud, ‘the death would have a certain elegant appropriateness. A bit like one’s employer suddenly firing one. I mean, if God wanted to fire one of his workers, he wouldn’t have to fire them, he’d just reel them in. Wasn’t He supposed to be a fisher of men?’

  ‘I hadn’t thought of it like that,’ said Bognor, truthfully. He hadn’t. ‘So, you’re telling me you didn’t kill the vicar,’ he said after a pause.

  Allgood seemed to give the idea his full attention, worrying at it like a dog with one of those bone-shaped toys. Eventually, he said, ‘I don’t see that I did. I mean, why?

  You need some sort of a reason. I grant you, I had the opportunity, because you wouldn’t trust the sexy little hairdresser further than you could throw her, if you see what I mean. But you need some kind of motive, and I don’t think I have one. I could probably make one up, mind. That’s what I’m paid to do.’ He brightened. ‘We could make it the main topic of my next workshop. Think of a motive for my murdering the vicar. That would be fun.’

  ‘Not especially,’ said Bognor. ‘In fact, you could even argue that doing so would be obstructing the course of justice.’

  ‘In which case, you’d be completely justified in throwing the book at me,’ said the writer, ‘except that it sounds suspiciously like a book of rules. The sort of thing someone like Archer would have put together. And you don’t believe in rule books and things like it. So you’d be unlikely to throw it at me.’

  ‘Touché,’ said Bognor, wondering momentarily if he should read Rubbish. Monica hadn’t ventured an opinion on it, though it was not in her nature to finish books she didn’t like. Nor to begin them without a serious recommendation from someone she trusted.

  ‘Interesting,’ said Allgood, as if he had only just realized that the death of the vicar raised questions that ought to be answered. Not questions that had a desperate need to be answered, especially if you felt like the squire and valued orderliness above justice. If, on the other hand, you were naturally anarchic and had a belief in right and wrong, however laid back and unconventional that might be, then the sudden death of the Reverend Fludd posed questions that could be amusing to answer. Particularly in a closed society at a time like this.

  ‘I’d like to see it all debated,’ said Allgood. ‘Not least because I can think of any one of a number of people who would like to see no such thing.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ Bognor looked at the writer with an interest which bordered on affection. He found himself in broad agreement.

  ‘You believe in entertainment, not in justice?’

  ‘Something like that,’ said Allgood. ‘Though, I don’t see that the two are necessarily exclusive. If you can have entertaining justice, I’m doubly in favour. My sense is that most people are keener on boring injustice. I’d never thought of the truth being fun, but I’m beginning to think I may be wrong. In this case, it could be rather merry to overturn a few conventional apple carts in the search for a murderer. And if you decided to pull a decent veil over the whole affair and say that the Reverend Sebastian knocked himself off while the balance of his mind was disturbed, that could be awfully dull.’

  ‘Neat though?’

  Allgood thought some more, a process which required an effort he obviously did not enjoy.

  ‘I don’t think I do neat,’ he said at length. ‘Truth, justice and all that stuff strike me as a bit prissy, but neatness is really uncool.’

  It was Bognor’s turn to think for a while.

  Eventually he said, ‘You may just have given me a motive.’

  ‘How so?’ the author wanted to know.

  ‘You could have killed the vicar in order to cause mischief,’ he said. ‘To create disorder.’

  ‘Sounds a bit extreme,’ said Allgood, ‘but worth a thought. Worth a thought.’

  NINETEEN

  Dorcas was tearful.

  This was only to be expected, but it did not make the occasion any easier. Bognor hated talking to the newly bereaved and simply didn’t buy into the widely held belief that such meetings were in any sense therapeutic. In his experience, which was considerable, they were invariably sticky, seldom very relevant and nearly always yielded unpleasant and unexpected new truths.

  Dorcas was plain, which, he supposed, didn’t help, and her skin was mottled from grief and tears. She was not dressed in widow’s weeds, but in various drab colours and shapes that Bognor assumed were par for her course, and had little or nothing to do with her recent loss.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said, sitting down in a high-backed Victorian armchair. The cottage was comfortable enough, but had an air of impermanence which suggested that it went
with the job and was not the vicar’s own. He presumed it was also in Sir Branwell’s gift. ‘I know this is a difficult time.’

  Clichés were often the best way of dealing with such interviews. They were like the traditional form of church service. They had been around a long time and carried the patina of familiarity. They had also withstood the test of former use. They worked, which was why they were still trotted out.

  ‘I quite understand,’ she said. ‘You have a job to do. Would you like tea? Or something stronger? A glass of sherry, perhaps?’

  Tea or sherry were also ritual comforts in such situations, and had been for almost as long as the verbal clichés. They were almost as much of a British middle-class response as Hymns Ancient and Modern or the Book of Common Prayer. They were invaluable crutches in much the same way, and owed as much to their familiarity as to any therapeutic or medicinal properties. When the going gets tough, the tough get going was a popular saying, but the British truism was that when the going gets tough, one turns to tea or sherry, hymns or prayers. Everyone to their own, but it was in this that a certain sort of true Brit found solace.

  Bognor said he’d like tea, please. Black, no sugar. A habit he had picked up many years ago on a job in Sweden, involving the gift department of NK in Stockholm. Fre Roos had called him in after representations had been made by the man who handled the British side of the store’s business. Wrapping paper had played a crucial part in the business and he was helped inordinately by his command of the English language, which was even better than that of the average Swede. The average Swede spoke better English than the average Englishman, but Bognor also spoke better English than the average Englishman.