Unbecoming Habits (The Simon Bognor Mysteries Book 1) Page 6

  ‘It doesn’t matter whether it’s accident or suicide, I just want no suggestion of foul play. One murder is quite enough for the time being. So. Play it very, very quietly.’

  Inspector Pinney looked at him for a moment, then turned to take in the crowd of friars now talking eagerly and excitedly among themselves, and returned to his superior.

  ‘Right you are, sir. Just leave it to me.’

  ‘Good.’

  The Inspector walked heavily across to the friars and the corpse. Someone had brought a sheet, and draped it roughly over Lord Camberley’s son. The edge had soaked up the blood and well water like blotting paper, so that there was a rough rusty stain on it like a handkerchief after a nose bleed. Bognor shivered slightly. He’d better go and consult Sir Erris.

  It was excruciatingly hot, he realised, as he walked down the path towards his room. He wiped the back of his hand across his forehead and was surprised to find that it was wet with sweat, not all of it due to the heat. Right now he envied Inspector Pinney his beer. He could do with a large Scotch, but there wasn’t time and in any case it was time for some incisive, logical thinking.

  Inside the room he took off his jacket and flung it on the bed, then crossed to open the window, leant out for a second and inhaled country air rich with roses and silage, underlaid with something less usual, which after a moment’s thought he identified tentatively as incense. Two murders in three days, he thought to himself. Two murders, two murderers? He wasn’t so sure.

  He drew his head back into the room and decided to make some notes. When he was more than usually perplexed he always made notes. They were usually inane but they comforted him, and sometimes he derived inspiration from them. It was only when he went to the chest of drawers that he saw the letter. God knows why he hadn’t seen it before, because it was lying in the middle of the chest’s surface on its own, a plain buff envelope with the words ‘Mr. Simon Bognor’ written across it in spidery semi-literate biro.

  He picked it up, read the address through a second time, speculated a moment and tore it open. Inside, the letter was scrawled on lined paper which looked as if it might have been taken from a school exercise book. The writing was the same malformed stuff, puerile almost to the point of being contrived.

  ‘Dear Mr. Bognor,’ it said, ‘I’m sorry about this only I couldn’t live any more having done it. You see I killed Brother Luke. I don’t know why. I couldn’t help myself. Please tell my father and Father Anselm and everybody.’ Underneath the one word ‘Tom’, underlined with a shaky flourish.

  Bognor read it a second time, folded it, put it in his inside jacket pocket. Then he made some notes.

  ‘1,’ he pencilled. ‘Fake. 2. Why? 3. To shift blame. 4. From whom? 5. From murderer.’ He sighed and screwed up the paper. ‘X murdered Collingdale and was seen by Batty Tom,’ he wrote. ‘So X murdered Batty Tom before he could talk to me.’ That was all right as far as it went. ‘Batty Tom was killed during lunch,’ he continued. ‘Everyone eating lunch has an alibi.’ That was better. ‘Make a list of those without alibis.’ Much better.

  Outside he blinked in the brightness and walked back to the yard. In one corner a knot of men in the same motley dress that had characterised the cocoa break were standing about with axes and saws; in another a pair of feet, Vivian’s presumably, protruded from under the Community Dormobile; by the well the body had gone, leaving a fast-drying brown patch. Inspector Pinney sat on the wall nearby talking to Father Simon and making notes. As Bognor approached, the Friar turned and shuffled away towards the main house.

  ‘Suicide,’ said Bognor. ‘I’ve had a little note. Spread it around but go on with the statements. Make a list of everyone who was helping cook or dish up lunch; but don’t let anyone know what you’re doing. I’ll be back in a couple of hours. I’ll be with Sir Erris if you want me.’

  Inspector Pinney scratched at the brown patch with the toe of his shoe. ‘Right you are,’ he said. ‘Suicide it is. Until you say otherwise. Bloody silly way to kill yourself, though.’ Bognor flushed. ‘They didn’t call him Batty Thomas for nothing,’ he said.

  The tree-felling party was moving off as he walked towards the Land Rover and a murmur of gentle conversation reached him across the stones.

  From the chapel came the sound of inexpert fingers playing All Things Bright and Beautiful on the piano; a fat friar with red hair padded across towards Inspector Pinney. He smelt the incense again, nearer this time, and stopped himself quickly as he realised that he was humming in accompaniment to the piano player. It was hardly appropriate.

  The Land Rover started first time and he swung it out of the gates and up the hill over-revving it dramatically as he waved at the tree-felling party standing out of his way, backs pressed against the high green bank. He caught a glimpse of Brother Barnabas’s face grinning vacantly from among the buttercups and daisies, a handkerchief knotted at all four corners protecting him from the heat of the afternoon sun. Then they were gone, vanished in dust and exhaust fumes, as he lunged up the hill.

  It was a remarkably steep hill, something he had hardly noticed on his arrival the day before, and he had to change down twice inexpertly before he reached the top and turned left on the road which led through Great Ogridge and then on to Woodstock. Poor Old Thomas, he thought to himself, realising guiltily that it was the first time his feelings had turned towards the dead person himself. He hoped it was a sign of professionalism to regard victims as ciphers but he couldn’t help regretting it. Poor Thomas. A sad little life with a pretty squalid end, and almost certainly an end which was none of his own doing.

  He was musing in this vein and driving the vehicle in a deplorably ham-fisted way when he glanced along the road, which at that point was clearly visible for almost a mile, and saw a brown blob in the distance. As it grew closer he identified it as one of the brothers sitting on a staddlestone under a chestnut tree. To have got that far since lunch, particularly having climbed the hill, he must have walked fast. He changed down and slowed, muttering to himself about friars who spent all their time hitch-hiking. It wasn’t Paul, however, but his new acquaintance Brother Aldhelm, like Brother Barnabas another man who couldn’t have done the second murder, might have done the first and had been at the Friary long enough to smuggle secrets. He started a process of mental note-taking.

  ‘Hop in,’ he said, leaning across and opening the door.

  ‘Very kind of you, but I’m O.K. Just walking.’

  ‘Oh. You look shattered.’ He did too. He was very red, and still panting slightly. The sweat stood out on his face in large drops and there were dark marks under his arms where more perspiration had soaked through on to his habit. Bognor was reminded of another stain he had seen only recently.

  ‘You saw what happened to Batty Thomas?’ asked Bognor.

  ‘Yes I did.’ He seemed nervous, impatient too. ‘Look, if you don’t mind I’d rather be left alone.’

  ‘Sure you don’t want a lift? You don’t look as if you could walk much further.’

  ‘Yes. Quite sure. Please leave me alone.’ There was no mistaking the urgency in his voice this time. Bognor was intrigued.

  ‘I did ask people to stay in the yard to help Inspector Pinney.’

  ‘I’m sorry I didn’t hear.’

  ‘I’m sorry too. It might have been important.’

  ‘Look, please. I’d like to be left alone. Please.’

  Bognor was exasperated. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘But Inspector Pinney or I will want a word later. We are dealing with a murder, you know.’

  ‘Of course I know. Now please.’ He slammed the door shut, and slumped back on to the staddlestone. Bognor pushed the machine back into gear, and shouted back, ‘Later then. Don’t kill yourself!’ and drove off, realising too late the inappropriateness of his idiom.

  Driving into Great Ogridge he noticed to his irritation that the petrol gauge showed empty. Sir Erris might have left him a full tank, it would have been embarrassing to have got strand
ed in the middle of the Oxfordshire countryside only an hour after a murder. He was just getting really apprehensive when, the other side of the villages, he saw a modern service station, and turned in. They took Barclaycard.

  ‘Fill her up, please,’ he said to the attendant, a middle-aged bucolic figure looking absurdly out of place in the ostentatious white uniform provided by the petrol company. ‘And check the oil and water if you could.’ He left the Land Rover to the inexpert attentions of this man and wandered idly across the forecourt to the side of the road, where he bent down to pick a long stalk of grass, put it in his mouth and chewed ruminatively. The road was empty and it was astonishingly quiet.

  ‘Oil and water O.K., sir. And she took more’n ten gallons.’ The strong country accents broke in on his thoughts and he turned back to the twentieth century.

  ‘I’ll pay by card,’ he said handing it over. The man marched to the plate-glassed office while Bognor followed more slowly. His feet crunched on the gravel and he heard a car driving fast and noisily through the village. The brakes squealed distinctly though it must still have been a mile away. ‘Sounds like an Italian,’ he thought moodily. The man came out of his office with the form ready to fill in.

  ‘Someone driving awful fast,’ he said handing over the pieces of paper and shading his eyes to watch the Jehu drive past. Bognor paused, pen poised, and waited with him. It was certainly being driven very fast; there was another squeal as it turned the bend about a hundred yards away followed by a brief and a powerful roar as it was let out into gear and accelerated. The two men caught little more than a glimpse as it hurtled past, a red blur, and disappeared still accelerating.

  ‘E-Type Jag,’ said the man with satisfaction, like a child who has just spotted a particularly interesting engine.

  ‘Oh,’ said Bognor who knew nothing about cars. ‘Sure?’

  ‘I’m sure, sir.’

  Bognor gazed down the road frowning. He signed the papers and handed them over with a florin tip, acknowledging the salute which was almost a tugged forelock.

  ‘Wish I was sure,’ he said, as he levered himself into the driving seat and let out the clutch. He hadn’t been looking at the car as it passed. He was more interested in the occupant, and as it turned out there were two. The driver had been obscured by the passenger, though he was almost sure it was a woman. But it was the passenger who intrigued him. He was wearing that rich brown with which he was increasingly familiar; and although the car had been moving at more than sixty he could have sworn it was Brother Aldhelm.

  It was tea-time when he arrived at the Old Rectory, which was not in fact a particularly old Rectory and would have been more accurately described as the Former Rectory. It was large and Victorian but had good views looking across the valley to the south. Sir Erris was on the lawn in grubby white flannels, a red and yellow tie holding up the trousers and a wide-brimmed grey hat in felt keeping the sun out of his eyes. As Bognor approached he was bent, legs apart and rather stiff, over an ancient croquet mallet with which he was taking studious aim at a hoop some ten yards distant. He heard Bognor approach and motioned him to silence with an impatient flap of the right hand. Bognor froze. There was an agonising silence and then a sharp crack. The faded yellow ball sped across the lawn, hit a worm cast, veered to the right and struck the right hand post of the hoop off which it cannoned at right angles fetching up three feet short of a herbaceous border.

  ‘Fuck,’ said Sir Erris.

  ‘Bad luck,’ said Bognor.

  Sir Erris straightened. ‘Not at all,’ he said, ‘rank bad shot. Cup of tea?’ He waved in the direction of a wooden tea trolley which stood under an ilex tree. The two of them walked over to it.

  ‘Do you play?’ asked Sir Erris, and continued without waiting for an answer: ‘Then we’ll take a turn round when we’ve had a cup. Nice to see you. How are things?’

  ‘We’ve had another murder.’

  ‘Have you?’ said Sir Erris, looking only mildly surprised. ‘Not Father Anselm by any luck?’

  ‘A poor chap called Thomas. The Earl of Camberley’s son, as a matter of fact.’

  ‘Bert Camberley’s son?’ Sir Erris was surprised this time. ‘Good God. I’d no idea he had a son there. That’s bad. Are you sure it’s murder?’

  Bognor recounted the story as far as he understood it while they drank their tea. ‘Anyway,’ he concluded, ‘I want to go along with suicide. It’ll make life a bit easier if I can lull our villain into some sort of security. So if you could make sure there are no awkward questions. Not now. Not from the doctor or from Camberley or any of your people.’

  ‘Have a mallet,’ said Sir Erris, taking one from a long wooden box on the grass. ‘You can be blue.’ They walked back to the hoops.

  ‘I’ll do what I can,’ he said, after a bit. ‘I can see your point. I just hope we can get some goods before long. Bert Camberley isn’t easily fooled. I can deal with my own people but he won’t be so easy. He’ll know it’s not suicide.’

  Bognor took aim and achieved a moderate shot, the ball ending up a few feet short of the first hoop but giving him an easy shot for next time.

  Sir Erris’ first shot hit Bognor’s ball and on the second he knocked him yards off course in the direction of the border again.

  They finished the game in about twenty minutes, Bognor’s marginally superior eye not quite making up for Sir Erris’ superior experience and considerable gamesmanship or, as most people would have described it, cheating.

  Bognor told him most of what had happened so far, using the older man as a sort of verbal punchbag. Sir Erris came up with little new or even constructive but, as with the note-taking, it helped Bognor to get his ideas into some sort of order. ‘If Batty Thomas didn’t commit suicide…’ he began.

  ‘We’ve got three different crimes,’ he pointed out.

  ‘Any one of eight could have done the secrets. Any one at all could have done the first murder.’

  ‘Except for the boy we picked up hitch-hiking,’ said Sir Erris.

  ‘Yes, but that still leaves thirty-two friars and the guests… then there’s today’s job. It could have been any of the cookers and servers, but I know this lot. They won’t have noticed anyone slipping out for five minutes. Not a hope.’

  ‘No,’ said Sir Erris. ‘Funny about Aldhelm.’

  ‘Yes. He’d really had to shift to get that far, and he was extremely edgy.’

  ‘Have you talked to your original eight?’

  Bognor struck his ball through from an impossible angle, making up a little of his lost ground. ‘Softly, softly catchee monkee,’ he said. ‘Except of course that they’re friars not monks. Technical point. No, I’ve taken your advice and gone slowly and methodically. Before long I shall interview Father John and Brother Bede. Bede made the soup and I don’t even know what he looks like. John’s the bee mandarin. He’s got weak ankles and creeping arthritis.’

  ‘If Bede made the soup he’d have been in the kitchen,’ said Sir Erris, ‘so he could have one, two and three to his credit.’

  Bognor leant on his mallet and watched Sir Erris make the winning hit. ‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘You could be right about Bede,’ he went on. ‘But I just fancy I shall leave him till the morning. There are a few other people I want to talk to first. Not least Father John. His pins may be poor and his hands going, but he does look after the honey and that’s where it all starts. Don’t forget that.’

  By the time he got back to the Friary it was getting close to Evensong and it was past the time that Inspector Pinney reckoned to knock off. The Inspector was waiting in the yard, occasionally throwing pieces of bread at the chickens and rather obviously pacing up and down. He had been hoping to stop off for a quick one on his way home but the prospect of doing so and not making his wife suspicious was growing increasingly distant.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ he said pointedly as Bognor alighted. ‘I was beginning to get worried.’

  Bognor grunted. ‘Nearly ran out of petr
ol. Nothing otherwise. Have you got that list?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The Inspector handed over a piece of lined foolscap. ‘The following friars and associates were on the duty roster for serving and cooking of luncheon today,’ it said. Bognor scanned the list quickly. There were eight names in all and the only ones he recognised were those of Brother Bede and Brother Paul. He frowned. Perhaps the whole thing was a hopeless red herring. Perhaps, after all, the deranged Thomas had killed Collingdale on a mad whim and committed suicide. Perhaps the whole thing was a dreadful sick mistake.

  But in that case why the odd business of Brother Aldhelm? And the honey labels? Or the innuendoes from Xavier and the landlord of the Boot? Why in any case had Thomas approached him that morning? Surely not to warn him of impending suicide?

  ‘Anything else?’ he asked the fidgety Inspector.

  ‘Well they seem quite happy about the suicide. Sight too happy if you ask me.’

  ‘You must admit that suicide wraps it all up.’

  ‘Oh it was murder all right,’ said the Inspector morosely. ‘You’re probably right.’ He stared round at the old stone and across to the camouflaged Nissen huts, searching vaguely and vainly for inspiration.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘They seem quite sorry. Except for Brother Bede, that is. He was rambling on about heredity and that. The deceased was gentry, and our Brother Bede doesn’t hold with that.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘No. Bit of a firebrand I should judge.’

  ‘But not a murderer?’

  ‘Wouldn’t have said so, no.’

  ‘What about Brother Paul?’

  ‘Seems a nice enough lad.’

  ‘Alibi?’

  ‘They all spent most of lunch going backwards and forwards between the kitchen and the dining room. Any of them might have gone for a few minutes. There aren’t any real alibis. Not what I’d call alibis.’