Unbecoming Habits (The Simon Bognor Mysteries Book 1) Read online

  Father Anselm, who had obviously heard this moving speech many times before, muttered an excuse and left. Quickly.

  Father Simon, however, was delighted to have an audience and appeared not to notice that the Father Minister had left. He became increasingly fluent, dwelt at length on the joys of his first visit to Rumania and to Poland, and his meetings with the church people there. On the subject of his fellow exporters and more particularly on that of his official hosts he was more guarded. There had, he gave one to understand, been excesses: a great deal of slivowic in Rumania and vodka in Poland, and not every member of the party had behaved well. There had been women, unfortunate souls, no doubt forced to prostitute their bodies by their Communist masters. A hazard of dictatorship, feared Father Simon, but whatever the reason, they were prostitutes and some of the British had behaved less than properly. Naturally he regretted it as a man of the Church, but also as a patriot.

  ‘It’s all,’ he said, lowering his voice to previously hidden depths, ‘on microfilm.’

  Bognor nodded. There were still ten minutes before lunch.

  He asked if Father Anselm had ever been on one of these expeditions, and Father Simon said yes, of course, but that the two of them had never been together. It wasn’t usual for any exporter to send more than one representative—something to do with the notorious meanness of Lord Wharfedale and the declining circulation and shrinking profits of his frightful newspapers. Usually it was Simon or Anselm but others had been occasionally.

  ‘Poor Luke,’ said Father Simon. ‘He knew Bucharest quite well.’

  ‘Oh.’ Bognor knew that. As Collingdale he had had at least two spells there in the past five years, but how the hell did Father Simon know that? It sounded as if Collingdale had been careless.

  ‘We had some very stimulating conversations,’ Father Simon went on. ‘He was interested in the honey… Like you.’ He gave Bognor a searching look and smiled.

  ‘It’s an absorbing subject,’ said Bognor. ‘How much do you produce?’

  ‘John would have to tell you that. Not enough, I’m afraid. The season lasts only about twelve weeks.’ He looked conspiratorial. ‘There have been times when we here have been reduced to eating Canadian.’

  Bognor looked suitably shocked. ‘Well, thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll have a chat with Father John as soon as I can. I hope you find your labels before long.’

  Father Simon immediately looked troubled again. The chance of delivering his speech on the export business to a new audience had produced a state verging on euphoria, but now he was back in one of twitch. ‘We’ve never been late before,’ he said. ‘I do hope Anselm isn’t going to upset everyone. I must stick them on by next week.’

  They got up to go across to lunch.

  ‘You stick them all on?’ asked Bognor. ‘That’s a lot of spit.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Father Simon, not smiling.

  ‘And then parcel them up and that’s that.’

  ‘Just about. After they’ve been checked by Father Anselm.’

  ‘He checks them?’

  ‘Yes. It’s just a formality, of course, but it is his responsibility in the end.’

  They were almost late for lunch. Heads turned as they entered the refectory still talking, and Bognor was conscious of a sea of inquisitive pink faces looking at him with undisguised suspicion mingled with incipient dislike. Father Simon slipped away immediately to his place and Bognor himself was deftly propelled to another position by a smiling Father Anselm.

  ‘Not too busy for a light lunch, I hope?’ he enquired softly.

  Bognor gave him a flattering smile and looked to see who his neighbours were. One was the nervous and rotund Brother Barnabas who favoured him with a jerky nod, but the other was unfamiliar. This was odd since he was a strikingly good-looking man in his early thirties, tall with thick black hair brushed back from a widow’s peak. Bognor was wondering why he hadn’t noticed him when there was a breathless coughing and the chubby figure of Father Xavier pushed into the room and took up a position immediately opposite him. Father Anselm stared at him for a moment with unconcealed dislike and said an expressionless grace: ‘Benedictus, Benedicat Beniesum Christum Dominum Nostrum.’

  There was a moment’s pause and then as Anselm scraped back his big high-backed chair at the end of the top table the room erupted into activity. Long benches were lifted back from the tables and friars girded up their habits, to straddle them before sitting down. He had a sudden glimpse of white calves and Clark’s sandals before the whole community was sitting with its elbows on the tables talking to its neighbour. The silence of breakfast was broken in an outburst of noisy chatter.

  ‘I don’t know what people do to washbasins,’ said Brother Barnabas pouring him water from a brown earthenware jug. ‘The filth is fantastic. You need a lot of elbow grease and Vim to get that lot clean I can tell you.’ He seemed to have acquired some overnight self-confidence. ‘Oh, I don’t suppose you’ve met Brother Aldhelm, have you?’ He leant across Bognor to the handsome man with the widow’s peak. ‘Aldhelm, old cock, this is Mr. Bognor.’

  ‘Oh, just Simon, please,’ he said.

  ‘Learnt anything?’ enquired Xavier, tearing a home-made crust with both hands.

  ‘Nothing spectacular…’ he smiled. ‘By the way. You said something about knowing Intelligence people in North Africa. Were you in Intelligence yourself?’

  The bloodshot eyes looked across the table with mild curiosity but, as far as Bognor could see, nothing approaching alarm or confusion.

  ‘’Fraid not,’ he said. ‘Footslog. I was with the Holy Boys, which was oddly prophetic, don’t you think?’

  ‘Holy Boys?’

  ‘The Norfolks. They were in the Peninsula and the idiot Spanish were misled by their cap badges. They had Britannia on it, and the locals thought she was the Virgin Mary. Rather a good joke actually.’

  ‘It strikes me as being in remarkably poor taste.’ It was Aldhelm who had spoken and he blushed slightly.

  ‘I wouldn’t have thought you were in any position to pontificate on the subject of taste,’ said Xavier knowingly.

  Brother Barnabas giggled. ‘That’s a bit below the belt, Father,’ he said, and then giggled again. ‘Oh dear. What an unfortunate turn of phrase!’

  The situation was saved, momentarily at least, by the arrival of the first course. Food was being served by about half a dozen of the friars, chosen, Bognor presumed, on some sort of rota basis. They brought steaming enamel bowls to the head of each table and deposited them on the straw mats. Then the friar seated there started to ladle, and the bowls of hot liquid were passed along the table from hand to hand.

  The first bowl reached Brother Barnabas in mid-giggle.

  ‘Oh Cripes,’ he said, sniggering and sniffing in unison. ‘It’s Brother Bede’s Broth again. Time they took him out of the kitchen and put him back in the garden.’

  He passed it on to Bognor who passed it on to Aldhelm. It looked all right to him, even if it did seem to rely rather heavily on potatoes. He said so.

  ‘Oh take no notice of them,’ said Brother Aldhelm sourly. ‘They don’t seem able to take anything seriously. Except for Barnabas and his permanent spring cleaning. Isn’t that right, Barnie?’

  Brother Barnabas giggled again, more nervously this time.

  ‘I don’t think it’s a crime to take a pride in cleanliness,’ he said, sniffing:

  ‘A servant with this clause

  Makes drudgery divine;

  Who sweeps a room as for Thy laws

  Makes that and th’action fine.’

  He passed on another bowl of soup while the others digested this pearl. Bognor’s principal thought was that the words sounded rather better in Barnabas’ flat Yorkshire than the last time he had heard them, which was when he had heard himself singing them, along with several hundred other male voices. It must have been during his national service. The next bowl of soup he kept.

  ‘Anyway,’ it was Brother Barn
abas again. ‘When all’s said and done, it’s the likes of us keep the world going. You may be very well educated, but education on its own never buttered any parsnips. It’s hard slog and grind that makes things tick, hard slog and grind.’ He slurped at his soup and made a face.

  Bognor started to eat and looked around at the community. Everyone to his own taste, he mused, and sighed wistfully for the sophistication of his London club.

  Thanks to Xavier’s cocoa-break lecture, he could name quite a number of the brothers. And now that he had met Aldhelm, there were only two suspects he couldn’t identify: Bede and Vivian. Bede presumably wouldn’t be in the refectory at this moment since he was responsible for the soup. As for Vivian, all he had established from Inspector Pinney’s notes was that he was responsible for the maintenance of the Friary’s Dormobile. He had apparently worked in a garage before his conversion to the life monastic. It had been Inspector Pinney’s opinion that the conversion had more than a little to do with the man’s sexual proclivities, and Xavier’s revelation about his friendship with Barnabas tended to confirm this, though what on earth he could find attractive about Barnabas was impossible to guess. He wondered which of the greedy soup drinkers was Vivian and would have liked to ask if he could have been sure of not antagonising Barnabas.

  Conversation drifted away from prickly antagonisms and settled in to the everyday at which Barnabas was a past master. So indeed was Aldhelm, and curiously it was Xavier who was excluded. It was easy to see why Anselm had placed Bognor between these two as the talk shifted with remarkable lethargy from food (problems of low budget, high-protein catering) through bed-making (necessity or otherwise of hospital corners) to the weather (ritual amazement at vagaries of English climate). There was, despite the banality of what Aldhelm was saying, a sensuousness about him which Bognor found disturbing.

  As noisy conversation filled the refectory the community ate its way through the soup and toad-in-the-hole and a jam pudding composed almost entirely of suet. A singular meal considering that the temperature was still over 80.

  Not until Bognor conceded victory to the absurd pudding did anyone say anything which interested him.

  ‘Are we fully booked for this week-end?’ asked Aldhelm. ‘Couple of empty beds,’ said Barnabas. ‘Depends if the Visitor comes.’

  ‘What have you got planned for the week-end then?’ asked Bognor.

  ‘Just a routine retreat,’ said Aldhelm. ‘You know what that means, I suppose?’

  ‘Yes, thanks. What sort of people do you normally get?’

  ‘You’d be surprised,’ said Aldhelm.

  ‘All sorts,’ said Barnabas.

  ‘Quasi-cosmopolitan riff raff with theological pretensions,’ said Xavier.

  Further discussion on this point was brought to an end by the insistent jangling of a small handbell. Looking up Bognor saw that it was being rung by the Abbot in an attempt to draw attention to himself and induce silence. When he had achieved both he coughed and began to speak from notes attached to a foolscap clipboard.

  ‘Just one or two points,’ he said. ‘There will be a tree-felling party in Simpson’s copse this afternoon during the rest period. Volunteers please assemble in the yard at 2 p.m. sharp.’

  He rustled the papers. ‘Brother Vivian will be taking the minibus in to Woodstock this afternoon. Anyone with letters to post or any requests for toothpaste or shaving things let Vivian have them before…’ He peered round the room, looking for Vivian… ‘before 2.30, that’s right, is it, Vivian?’

  A robust, rather swarthy man halfway down the second table said yes. ‘Depending,’ he added in a country accent Bognor couldn’t place, ‘on whether I can fix the petrol pump proper, or not.’

  Father Anselm was momentarily nonplussed. ‘Quite,’ he said after a pause. He put his clipboard back on the table and looked earnest.

  ‘A more general matter,’ he said. ‘I heard this morning from our Visitor, the Bishop of Woodstock, and he has said that he will be attending this week-end’s retreat and preaching in chapel on Sunday evening. I need hardly say that in view of recent unfortunate circumstances it is more than ever important that we put on a very good show indeed. Politeness, austerity, prayer, none of these in themselves is enough. It is vital that the inner sanctity which is the core of this community should make itself evident, and that we should at all times demonstrate our dedication to our Founder Wilfrid, and to God the Father, God the Son and God the Holy Ghost.’ He shut his eyes for the final sentence and crossed himself.

  It wasn’t the end of the meal. Father Anselm sat down again and plates were piled up, jugs removed and conversation resumed. Bognor looked at his watch. It was almost time for his interview with Batty Thomas. He looked across the room to the far end of the third table where the ‘guests’ were sitting dominating the room with raucous conversation. He ran an eye up and down the line and failed to find Thomas; retraced more slowly and still didn’t see him. He looked at his watch again. Only about a minute to go. Perhaps Thomas had managed to sneak out before the final grace. He looked towards Anselm and saw to his relief that he was standing up to bring the meal to its end. Another scraping of benches, a crisp ‘Benedictus Benedicata’ and a rather undignified jostle towards the door.

  Bognor, despite an uneasy but irrational feeling that haste was necessary, refused to join in the scramble. Together with Father Anselm he was the last person to emerge into the courtyard. Once he did it was immediately clear that his unease was well founded. Something unpleasant had happened.

  3

  ‘SHIT,’ SAID BOGNOR UNDER his breath. It was a numbing feeling he hadn’t had for years. It was the sudden recognition that a vital clue, the guarantee of a ‘quiet night and a perfect end’, had been snuffed out. Given ordinary luck he should have had the whole business solved and tidied up in ten minutes, after Batty Thomas had revealed the murderer’s identity. That, however, was not to be because over in the far corner of the yard a milling crowd of friars was hauling frantically at the rope which hung down into the well. Intuition, as much as the sodden brimless panama hat which lay by the wellside, told Bognor what to expect. In seconds he had traversed the thirty yards of courtyard and was standing by the well just as the corpse of Batty Thomas was pulled, dripping with blood and water, from the shaft. A final heave on the rope and the body, together with the bucket, landed in a wet flabby heap on the paving stones. Like a big cod, thought Bognor, looking on with dismay. Any thought of sympathy for the dead man was far from his mind as he stood staring at the wet, bloody mess stretched out on the stone. He wondered what Collingdale or Sir Erris or even Parkinson would have done in his place. If only Anselm hadn’t interrupted them at just that moment… He was lost in this self-recrimination when he realised that there was an awed silence and that everyone, even Father Anselm, was looking to him for a lead. The thought of death might have been a commonplace to the brothers, but the reality was still upsetting.

  ‘He must have fallen,’ said Bognor, kneeling down in the widening pool of blood and water. He turned the body on to its back and closed the eyes clumsily but effectively. Looking up, he saw that Anselm was hovering above him, hands clasped, apparently in reasonable control of himself.

  ‘There’s not much point,’ said Bognor, trying hard to emulate him, ‘but you’d better get a doctor. He could hardly be more dead than he is. If he wasn’t dead from this,’ he indicated the wounds on the head, ‘he’d be dead from drowning. Or shock. But you’d better get a doctor all the same. And fetch Inspector Pinney.’

  Anselm nodded and turned towards his office. Bognor straightened. He felt sick but he had a job to do. ‘Who found him?’ He addressed the crowd in general. There was a confused murmur and then Father Simon spoke.

  ‘I think several of us noticed something was wrong,’ he said. ‘You see, normally the rope is kept wound tight and the bucket is easily visible. Well, when John and I got out of lunch we noticed that it had been left in a lowered position. So, anyway, Vivian an
d myself and two of the others came to have a look. We thought it was just a mistake…’

  He looked at Bognor, eyes pleading for some easy way out, but Bognor could think of nothing to say. ‘And,’ he went on, ‘when we looked down, we saw… well, we saw this… Poor old Tom.’ He shuffled his feet and peered at his sandals.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Brother Vivian. ‘That’s how it was.’

  There was a silence. Bognor looked round at the brothers. Practically all of them must have been there. They looked embarrassed more than shocked. It was as if something mildly tasteless had interrupted their routine, as if a telegram had arrived in the middle of Matins or someone had dried up in mid-sermon. They were still standing there, Bognor looking at them, the friars looking anywhere but at him, when a car swept noisily into the yard and stopped. Inspector Pinney was back from lunch. The sun baked down, rooks cawed in the nearby beeches, and the Inspector’s boots hammered across the stones.

  ‘Trouble, sir?’ His face, a few degrees redder after a largely liquid lunch, betrayed little concern, but he took in the corpse and the crowd in one unwavering movement.

  ‘A little.’ Bognor felt hugely relieved. He addressed the brothers again. ‘I would prefer it if you could wait here a few moments,’ he said. ‘Just while I have a word with the Inspector here.’ He motioned Pinney into the shade of an outbuilding, and the two of them bent their faces towards each other.

  ‘Not nice,’ said Bognor.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘Question everyone. Get statements. Same with the doctor.’

  ‘I know the drill,’ said Pinney drily. ‘It’s not my first corpse.’

  Bognor looked hard at the solid Dorset face and wondered if the personality matched the appearance. Apart from the possible over-indulgence in beer he decided Pinney had better be trusted.

  ‘The doctor,’ he went on, ‘will be as non-committal as possible. It doesn’t matter. I’m fairly certain what killed him, and I doubt whether anything but a detailed post mortem will tell us whether he was pushed or whether he fell. As far as we’re concerned, Inspector, he fell.