Unbecoming Habits (The Simon Bognor Mysteries Book 1) Page 3

  There was a note pinned to the dust jacket of the book and Bognor read it first. ‘Benedictine I know, but the principles are not dissimilar, and you will find Dom Cuthbert most stimulating. A.’ There was a lot of the schoolmaster in Anselm—he half expected to be examined on the contents of these things when they next met. He put the book on one side and turned to the manual. Its brevity was attractive.

  He opened it at random and found a section headed ‘Works.’

  ‘The active works by which the Brothers seek to serve their Master begin with the house and in the garden,’ he read. ‘The sweeping, dusting and other menial offices, as well as certain forms of manual work, are apportioned among them so that each may contribute his share to the work of the household, and the cost of his own living. All Brothers must be capable of engaging in some form of manual work.

  ‘All must consider the interests of the Community in its work for God and study strict economy. Brothers will do their own work as far as possible. The idle Brother has no place in the Community.’

  Just like school, thought Bognor. He shivered slightly and glanced at the Holman Hunt. Flipping through the manual he suddenly came to a typewritten supplement at the back. ‘Notes for the laity’ it was headed. There followed a paragraph about the abiding love and charity of the Sacred Brethren, their perpetual and unstinting hospitality and the very natural curiosity of their usually ignorant guests. ‘It is the purpose of these notes,’ wrote the anonymous author, whom Bognor guessed to be Anselm himself, ‘to attempt answers to some of the more frequent and commonplace queries which are made. Nevertheless the Brothers are here to help in whatever way is possible and so guests are asked not to shrink from approaching anyone in their quest for knowledge.’ Bognor was suitably encouraged. He laughed at the final sentence, confirmation, in his view, of authorship. ‘Contrary to secular belief,’ it ran, ‘curiosity is never idle.’

  The next page contained an account of the regime, which certainly looked spartan. The first service, a combination of Matins and Prime, began at 5.45, and the public celebration of belief continued at irregular intervals through Communion, Terce, Sext, None, Evensong, to Compline at nine. At nine there was a rule of silence till morning when the cycle began again.

  However, there was more to the Community than communal prayer. Bognor, who was conscientiously annotating as he read, found that ‘the Brothers must guard with jealous watchfulness the times of private prayer. They must remember that corporate worship is not a substitute for the quiet communion of the individual soul with God, and they must strive to go forward to ever fuller enjoyment of such communion, till they are living in so constant a remembrance of God’s presence that they do indeed “pray without ceasing”.’ Bognor, who was a cheerful agnostic, wondered what it meant. Further on he got some sort of reward. Although the brothers, being friars, were rather more gregarious than some of their monkish counterparts, their day seemed to include a lot of silence. From time to time there were silent lunches, silent breakfasts, teas and suppers as well as the all-night silence from Compline to Prime. During the meals it was evidently the custom for some book of an improving nature to be read out loud by one of the brothers. As if this frequent though spasmodic ban on conversation was not enough there were special week-end retreats and quiet days when there was no talking at all. Bognor wondered what happened when the telephone rang.

  Then there was work. Most of this seemed to happen between the end of breakfast at nine and the beginning of Sext at 12.15. The majority of the brothers formed a pool of basic labour—gardeners and cooks, hewers of wood and fetchers of water. A few had specialist jobs like honey or library which exempted them from the more menial functions. The only time in which they were really encouraged to take any relaxation seemed to be the period immediately after lunch. As far as Bognor could make out this consisted principally of walking about and communing with nature.

  It wasn’t the life for him and it couldn’t have been much of a life for Collingdale. So much prayer and introspection, so much heartiness and outdoor living, although obviously there were diversions. Those who drove made occasional excursions in the van to Woodstock, those who were able sometimes went to local parishes to preach or conduct retreats or perhaps to help out a vicar or curate who was sick or needed a holiday, but in the main it seemed to consist of a primitive struggle to live off the soil and a little charity, coupled with incessant conversation with God. Bognor wondered if He often got bored. The aspect which he found most sympathetic was the establishment of mission stations round the world, which presumably provided education for the underprivileged even if it was accompanied by a certain bias.

  His eye stopped briefly at the final paragraph on page 16. ‘It is the purpose of Christ our Master to work miracles through His servants; and, if they will but be emptied of self and utterly surrender to Him, they will become chosen vessels of His Spirit and effective instruments of His mighty working.’

  He looked again at the appalling sepia of the Light of the World and pondered. Reading through this comfortable though curious religious exposition, he had almost forgotten that he was here on a murder hunt. Someone, he reflected, was going to have to be emptied of a little more self and, compounding the sacrilege, would be surrendering to him, not his Master. For the time being the written word had yielded enough. He decided to take a walk. There was plenty of time before Compline. He turned out of the Friary grounds and started to walk down the lane away from Great Ogridge. He must have been going for more than half an hour when the steep hedges on either side of him fell away and he was in a small jumble of houses with a post office and a pub uncompromisingly named the Boot. The rich smell of cow dung was all about him and the dung itself plastered the road with a thick layer of brown. The door of the Boot, from which most of the paint had long since vanished, was also splattered with the stuff and the pub (licensee one Geo. Hey) was a picture of meanness and decrepitude. However, the walk had made him thirsty and a pub was a good place for gossip.

  Inside it was dark and the very definite smell of cow mingled with stale beer and cigarettes. Two farm hands in caps and light khaki trousers conversed in incomprehensible dialect. They wore braces and shirts which had been designed to go with stiff collars, and might have done on Sundays long ago. He ordered a pint and asked the barman (who soon transpired to be none other than Mr. Hey himself) to join him. Mr. Hey said he didn’t mind if he did and his was a mild-and-bitter, thank you very much, and was he staying in these parts or just passing through.

  The idea of this particular hamlet being on the way anywhere hadn’t occurred to Bognor who admitted staying at the Friary. Mr. Hey looked at him with suspicion. After a bit he said, ‘You don’t look like one of them.’

  ‘That’s the second time today someone’s said that. You’re right. I’m not.’

  ‘You don’t even look as if you’re on what they call “retreat”,’ said Mr. Hey, his initial approval slowly returning.

  ‘Not in a very full sense. I’m studying.’

  ‘Ah. Studying what?’

  ‘Oh, you could say I was researching into the significance of monastic life in Britain.’

  Mr. Hey’s eyes narrowed and he appeared to be cogitating.

  ‘Could tell you some funny things about that lot. If you were interested.’

  ‘What sort of things?’

  Mr. Hey leant across the bar and lowered his voice.

  ‘Not all they might be, them,’ he said ambiguously. ‘Not some of them, anyway.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bognor implied interest.

  ‘Oh yes. I could tell you a thing or two. Take those vows, for instance. What is it? Chastity and poverty and obedience, well…’ He was lowering his voice to new depths when the door opened and a middle-aged man in lightweight cotton jacket and open-neck shirt came in.

  ‘Usual, please, George,’ he said, adding a terse but not unfriendly ‘Evening’ to the company in general. He put the canvas duffel bag he’d been carrying over his sho
ulder on the floor beside the bar stool. Mr. Hey poured a double whisky and added a single measure of water. The newcomer took a considerable sip.

  ‘Busy?’ he enquired, without appearing to be interested in the reply, which also had the tired air of oft-repeated ritual.

  Mr. Hey clearly regarded the duffelbagger as a valued customer, which judging by the rapidity with which the second Scotch followed the first he certainly was. Bognor practised the unaccustomed art of detection. The man was comfortably off. The shirt was silk. The pound notes peeled off in a thick roll and he was smoking Perfectos Finos. Rather a lot of them. He and Mr. Hey talked about the weather and cricket and the price of whisky.

  After a few minutes Bognor finished his pint, told Mr. Hey that he was looking forward to a chat some other time, and set off back to the Friary for Compline.

  He made it with time to spare and was sitting in his tubular steel chair before even the first of the friars came in. The chapel had atmosphere, of that there was no question. The low rafters, the little niches with statues of the saints and the dull plain wooden crosses—fourteen of them—signifying the stations of the cross. Bognor tried to remember them. Condemnation was the first, then actually being given the cross, then falling for the first time under the weight of the cross—he got stuck around the middle and couldn’t remember which came first, the cross being given to Simon of Cyrene or Jesus’ face being wiped by Veronica. He was wrestling with the problem as the first of the friars entered. He was an old man with a stick and Bognor switched anxiously from the problems of Veronica’s handkerchief to the more immediate ones of murder and espionage. He wondered if this was one of his suspects. The old man shuffled in past him and then reaching the middle of the chapel turned to face the altar on his right, made a fumbled genuflection and went to his place in the stalls. A few seconds later another younger man followed whom Simon recognised. It was Brother Paul. He smiled briefly and then performed an altogether crisper obeisance towards the altar before kneeling in his place. After Paul the friars came faster. Old and young, fidgety and arthritic, decisive and athletic, faces that suggested a Victorian missionary zeal and others that seemed totally introspective and withdrawn; clever-looking men and stupid, men with vacuous expressions and men with darting observant eyes. Only two that he knew—Brother Barnabas, gauche and almost tripping on the step into the stalls. Brother Barnabas, reflected Bognor, could never have pulled a man’s crucifix with his bare hands until the man wearing the crucifix choked and died. He shuddered at the thought. And Father Anselm, the last to arrive, his coming signalling the beginning of the service. Bognor still found him irritatingly obsequious, but he had a presence of sorts. As he sat at his place nearest the altar a brown-clad figure rose from the stalls opposite him and intoned in bass ‘The Lord Almighty grant us a quiet night and a perfect end.’

  As he sat, a friar almost immediately opposite him stood and chanted, this time tenor, ‘Brethren, be sober, be vigilant, because your adversary the devil, as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour; whom resist steadfast in the faith.’ Bognor was entranced. Despite the actual modernity of the chapel itself and the fact that he had seen one of the men in front of him riding in a Land Rover that same afternoon, the whole effect was medieval. If it made industrial espionage seem less likely, it gave murder a greater probability.

  The Community progressed in plainsong through a variety of prayers and responses and then four different psalms concluding with the Nunc Dimittis, a confession and a Lord’s Prayer.

  For Bognor, whose recollections were exclusively of hymns like sea-shanties sung by five hundred schoolboys, it was a strange experience. He wondered if the tenor who sang of the devil as a roaring lion had a murder on his conscience. He was a square robust man, about Bognor’s own age. Or the bass, tall, stooping, late forties, who had asked for a quiet night.

  There was a lull and he realised with a start that the friars were kneeling in silent prayer; then silence was broken by Father Anselm’s voice calling on ‘Our Lord, who at the hour of Compline didst rest in the sepulchre and didst thereby sanctify the grave to be a bed of hope to thy people’. Another pause and then a rustling as every man stood and pulled his cowl about his head and slipped his hands into his sleeves. A clip of Eisenstein passed through his mind as he stood watching. Slowly the men, faces hidden, hands unseen as if in muffs, filed past him and into the dark outside. They were no longer recognisable as individuals. Each one looked like his brother and the high point of the cowls gave the normally comfortable brown habits a new and sinister dimension. They looked like a rural English Ku-Klux-Klan.

  He waited a few moments after the last figure had shuffled past him into the night and got up to go. Outside he stood in the courtyard and stared up at the clear sky. He picked out Orion and this time remembered his Hardy. Betelgueuse and Aldebaran were there shining brightly. Obviously a good part of the country for stars. The reminder that things didn’t change and the occasional sight of a shadowy friar performing some final task before bed made him uneasy. He rather wished he had decided to stay nights in a local pub, but he would never solve a crime unless he was on the scene itself.

  Turning away from these depressing thoughts he headed back to his poky cell. As he passed the building he noticed that most of the lights were on and thought nothing of it. Turning down the corridor he stopped outside his room and was mildly surprised to see that there was light coming from under the door. He must have forgotten to turn the light off. Unlike him. Usually so punctilious.

  Still only half apprehensive he opened the door.

  The brown figure on the bed exhaled a small balloon of expensive cigarette smoke, and Bognor noticed the packet of Perfectos Finos open on the chest of drawers.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said. ‘I’m Father Xavier.’

  ‘Good God!’ said Simon shutting the door slowly and standing in front of it.

  ‘It occurred to me,’ said Father Xavier, ‘that when you eventually identified me as the solitary drinker in the Boot you might perhaps begin to harbour some unworthy suspicions. So I thought I’d better seek you out and explain myself before you started to attribute poor Luke’s death to some drunken excess on my part. So here I am. Do sit down. Would you like a drink? I took the precaution of buying a bottle from our friend Mr. Hey—who incidentally will provide you with a great deal of rumour and speculation but very little in the way of fact. I would personally treat his information with caution but then you’ll hardly need me to warn you about that. I’m sorry. I’m talking too much. Would you like to ask some questions? Fire away.’

  He leant back against the wall behind the bed and waited. He was enjoying the situation, the eyes half shut showed deep crow’s feet at the corners. Bognor poured a slug of whisky into a tooth mug and decided against going down the passage to get water. He sat down.

  ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that there was a rule of silence between Compline and Matins?’

  ‘I have an idea there’s a rule about drink.’

  ‘I would have thought so. You don’t seem to be awfully good about rules.’

  ‘No.’

  There was a pause. Eventually Bognor said, ‘How exactly do you think you can help?’

  ‘I suppose primarily by eliminating myself as a suspect and then by giving you a certain amount of accurate and truthful information. You won’t get a great deal from that tight-lipped hypocrite Anselm.’

  ‘O.K.,’ said Bognor, groping. ‘Tell me what you think I ought to know.’

  Father Xavier stubbed out his cigarette and took another drink. ‘People in intelligence organisations always work in curiously elliptical ways. I came across a few in North Africa. There’s an opaqueness about them which can be irritating. Most of them were dons on sabbatical. Fancied themselves to death. Nowadays I suppose you’re career men.’

  Bognor smiled and said nothing.

  ‘Anyway,’ the maverick Friar continued, ‘you will not, contrary to the protestations of our
respected Abbot, find this a happy or indeed a noticeably religious community. I don’t for myself believe that there are more than half a dozen of us with a genuine sense of vocation. I know one who’s wanted by the French police on a pederasty charge but other than that I don’t believe there are any actual criminals here. Or weren’t until the Brother Luke business. Now that was interesting. No sense of vocation. No apparent need to escape from anything. No obvious weakness. He was one of yours, wasn’t he?’

  Bognor was entirely unprepared for the observation.

  ‘I couldn’t tell you even if he were, which of course he wasn’t,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid our operations aren’t as cloak and dagger as that. We’re much more conventional.’

  ‘Have it your own way,’ said Father Xavier, ‘but if you don’t admit that he was one of yours we do get rather bogged down on motive.’

  ‘In this instance,’ said Bognor, ‘I expect the motive to come last of all. In any case.’ He tried to be brisker. ‘Where were you when Luke died?’

  ‘Do you have a precise time in mind?’

  ‘Some time that morning. We can’t be certain.’

  ‘I was in the library and then I slipped down to the Boot for a quick one. George Hey will confirm that.’

  ‘Anyone with you in the library?’

  ‘Anselm for about five minutes, changing a book. Brother Bede for an hour.’

  ‘What were you doing?’

  ‘Cataloguing. It’s my job. Bede helps.’

  Bognor struggled with the alibi which seemed insubstantial. He admitted to an excursion to the village. Since it was a twenty-minute walk each way, that gave him plenty of time for a quick murder. But it would do for the time being. The two men were silent for a moment, it was very still outside and Bognor, used to the traffic and the aeroplanes of London, found it unnerving. He started to remark on it, but Father Xavier waved him quiet.

  ‘Shhh,’ he said. ‘Listen.’ They both sat silently straining for a noise, but there wasn’t a sound. Somewhere, probably up on the hill, a car changed gear. It was a long way away.