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

  ‘And the doctor?’

  ‘What you’d expect. Usual stuff about lacerations and contusions and broken this and fractured that and death most likely having been instantaneous and most probably caused by hitting his head on a sharp or rough object, possibly consistent with having bounced from side to side down a deep well shaft. You know the sort of thing.’

  Bognor knew very well. ‘He didn’t say anything about murder?’

  ‘Didn’t give him much chance.’ Inspector Pinney allowed himself a brief smirk. ‘Like Father Anselm said, sir, “Doctor Baines,” he said, “is certainly not what you might call an original thinker”. Very true. Bloody fool, if you ask me.’

  ‘Good. It looks as if you’ve done a good day’s work. I’ve spoken to Sir Erris and I don’t think we’re going to have too much trouble with this suicide idea.’

  ‘No?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  ‘Me think?’

  ‘Yes.’

  The Inspector looked at him as if he was mad. It was bad enough to be kept hanging around answering questions which were relevant, infuriating to be detained answering one’s superior’s sillinesses.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said eventually, ‘I’ll do my duty, but right now that’s it. As far as I’m concerned if you say “suicide”, then suicide it is. And now I’ll be going.’

  Bognor grimaced. ‘Good night,’ he said and waved abstractedly to the policeman as he hurried towards his car and vanished still hoping for at least a pint before getting home to supper. Faced with a rather longer working day, he turned in the direction of the Father Minister’s study/office. Father Anselm, he feared, would be pleased by the ‘suicide’. If he was guilty, he would be pleased because he would believe that he had thrown his pursuers off balance. If innocent, because the whole smelly business had been resolved with the minimum of discredit to himself and his Community.

  He knocked on the heavy oak door, entered and found his worst fears realised.

  ‘Ah, Simon, my friend. So your visit proved unnecessary after all!’ Father Anselm advanced on him, right arm extended in greeting. ‘Sad perhaps to be proved right in so gruesome and violent a fashion, but a little gratifying none the less. I have always felt the simple virtues of the Old Testament were not as absurd as contemporary fashion would have us believe.’

  ‘I’m sorry.’ Bognor was quite genuinely at a loss.

  Father Anselm looked surprised. ‘Your admirable Inspector Pinney, wholly admirable, I thought, told me about the letter. I meant simply that in the end it was prayer rather than modern forensic science which solved our little mystery. As I had predicted in the first place. The Almighty, as the cliché has it, moves in mysterious ways. I suppose that you’ll be leaving in the morning. Such a pity. You must come again soon.’

  ‘I’d like to stay on a little if you don’t mind.’

  ‘No. Really. How flattering.’ Father Anselm scarcely faltered, though the idea obviously disappointed him. Bognor sat down heavily on the faded chintz sofa, uninvited, emphasising his reluctance to leave. ‘I take it that doesn’t mean that you aren’t satisfied at the outcome of these proceedings?’ asked Anselm.

  ‘No. I’m satisfied,’ said Bognor wearily. ‘Though I’d have preferred to have done without another death.’

  ‘Now you mustn’t blame yourself for what happened today,’ said Anselm. ‘I think it is perfectly proper to regard it in a very real sense as an act of God. A little sherry to set the seal on the matter.’

  ‘I’d love one,’ he said, wishing it were a Scotch. ‘I didn’t know you drank.’

  ‘Good heavens no.’ Father Anselm looked offended and it occurred to Bognor that the Abbot thought that he was being accused of alcoholism.

  ‘I mean, I thought that alcohol wasn’t allowed.’

  ‘It isn’t. But when there are guests I’m afraid I do indulge a little. It is after all a gift of God. Tell me, why do you wish to stay on? Not that I’m not delighted.’

  Bognor could scarcely explain that it was because he had to make a resounding success of his first solo assignment. He looked round the room and took in the fussy water colours, self-perpetrated, the Daily Telegraph and a book by Beverley Nichols on the pouffe, the collection of Copenhagen China pieces scattered about the shelves. Then he had an inspiration.

  ‘Tell me,’ he asked, ‘how were you able to know that Father Xavier had been to see me last night?’ Father Anselm was pouring sherry from a cut-glass decanter. He spilt some.

  Bognor watched him as he crossed the room with the glass in one hand. He was shaken but controlling it well.

  ‘You may think,’ he said, ‘that I am badly informed about what goes on here. Like a housemaster who’s out of touch. But I do make it my business to be informed. It is a very important part of my job. Of my ministry you could say.’

  ‘All the same… I mean it wasn’t exactly Christian of you.’

  ‘Come come, Simon. As you yourself would be the first to acknowledge, we are—or were I should say—investigating a murder.’

  ‘But you surely didn’t suspect me?’

  ‘It’s wrong to argue like this,’ said Father Anselm, his self-control now completely restored. It was, Bognor recognised, an immaculate performance. ‘Tell me instead why you want to stay on. Do you find us so fascinating?’

  ‘I’d like to stay for the funeral,’ he said, sipping his sherry which was good but too sweet for him. ‘And yes, I have to confess my curiosity is aroused. I’ll pay of course.’

  For once Father Anselm really was offended. ‘That is certainly not necessary,’ he said. ‘You’re very welcome to make a donation but there’s certainly no question of paying a fee.’

  Bognor was genuinely dismayed. ‘I’d no idea there was a difference,’ he said.

  ‘The difference between alms and debts, between volunteering and being compelled. Rather a significant difference I think.’ He finished his sherry and looked at his watch. ‘Will you be joining us at Evensong? We haven’t seen as much of you in chapel as I might have hoped.’

  ‘I have been rather busy.’

  ‘I’m delighted that it was to no avail.’

  Bognor put his glass on the coffee table and smiled. ‘I can’t promise to stop being inquisitive,’ he said.

  Father Anselm smiled patronisingly. ‘I like nothing better than an enquiring mind,’ he said. They were quite late for chapel. It was in any case Father Anselm’s privilege to enter last of all and so when Bognor took his place he discovered that the choir stalls were full and also that several of the tubular steel chairs were occupied by guests, or in some cases by completely strange faces which he took to belong to visitors. A second later Anselm entered wearing a beatific smile. He paused to genuflect and then to pray, rose and announced ‘Hymn 573’. The pianist, the same, to judge from his inexpertise, as the one who had been practising earlier in the day, played a sample verse and then the Community joined together in the familiar words.

  ‘All things bright and beautiful,

  All creatures great and small,

  All things wise and wonderful

  The Lord God made them all.’

  Anselm’s own satisfaction seemed to have permeated the whole congregation. There was an apparent and pervasive relief which increased with every verse and every note.

  Even the piano had a tiddly pom, tin pan alley sort of complacency about it.

  ‘The rich man in his castle,

  The poor man at his gate,

  God made them high or lowly,

  And ordered their estate.’

  All’s right with the world, all’s well that ends well, thought Bognor, watching and listening with growing alarm. Practically everyone there, he supposed, felt that a great burden had been lifted with the death of Batty Tom, that a potential slur on their very reason for being had been removed almost without pain. Only Bognor and one, perhaps two, other knew the truth: that there was still murder to be solved and to be answered for. The thought m
ade him apprehensive, and yet excited too.

  ‘He gave us eyes to see them

  And lips that we might tell,

  How great is God Almighty,

  Who has made all things well.’

  They sang well, wafting the clichés skywards in an orgy of simple pleasure. Bognor looked round uneasily at the starkness of the chapel itself and the symbolism of the stations of the cross. Searching for some more human contrast, some hint of non-conformity, he noticed Father Xavier. He was standing arms folded, steadfastly refusing to join in with Mrs. Alexander’s words. Bognor caught his eye and got a massive wink in return. He smiled. Father Xavier reminded him of someone.

  By the time he got out of Evensong he was desperate for his whisky. Father John would have to wait till later and as for supper if it was Brother Bede’s broth accompanied by readings from the life of Elizabeth Fry or William Booth then he would rather have a stale ham sandwich at the Boot. He broke a switch of hawthorn from the hedge and set off down the lane swinging it vigorously and trying to forget the hymn tune which kept hammering away at his brain. He was exhilarated. He knew he was being patronised, and he was determined to prove himself.

  He made the hamlet in a shade over twenty minutes, walking fast and aggressively. The Boot itself seemed completely unchanged, which was hardly surprising as it had almost certainly been exactly the same for the last fifty years. The same smell of cow-dung and cigarettes and stale beer, the same two (or similar two) cowhands drinking morosely, and Mr. Hey himself, faintly sinister and looking as if he had been wrapped round the same pint of mild and bitter that Bognor had bought him the night before.

  ‘Double Bell’s,’ said Bognor, nodding perfunctorily at the landlord and his guests. ‘And whatever you fancy.’ ‘Fancy’ was a word he disliked and seldom used. He hoped it was appropriate. It was what Collingdale would have said.

  ‘Fine day,’ said Mr. Hey when he had poured the drinks.

  ‘As far as the weather goes, yes,’ said Simon.

  ‘Ah.’ Mr. Hey’s eyes, never a picture of wide-eyed credulity at the best of times, narrowed swiftly. ‘I hear,’ he said, putting his elbows on the bar, ‘that you’ve had a spot more trouble. You don’t seem to have blown anyone any good.’

  ‘You hear a lot, fast,’ said Bognor.

  ‘Can’t help it. Not in a place like this.’ Mr. Hey was as pleased with himself and his intelligence system as Father Anselm, in a different way, was with his.

  ‘Do you have anything to eat?’

  ‘Sandwiches,’ said Mr. Hey without pride. ‘Ham, cheese, cheese and pickle, beef.’ He peered into a plastic display cabinet on the bar counter and frowned. ‘Sorry. Ham or cheese. Cheese and pickle’s off. So’s beef.’

  Bognor accepted with good grace. ‘A round of ham,’ he said, ‘and another Bell’s please.’ Mr. Hey opened the cabinet and using his dark grainy hands, as impregnated with cow-dung as his surroundings, he produced a sandwich, curling gently at the edges and with a filling more margarine than meat.

  ‘Found out much?’ he asked.

  ‘Not much.’ Bognor bit into the bread. It was as bad as it looked. ‘I wonder,’ he said. ‘You obviously know everything there is to know about these parts. Do you know anyone with a Red E-Type?’

  ‘Red E-Type… What, Jaguar?’

  ‘Yes. Another pint?’

  Mr. Hey poured his second pint with alacrity. ‘Only one car like that round here,’ he said. ‘Most of them drive farm things or big saloons for going to London. Some of the week-end people have sports cars. Cheap ones mostly. Caundle’s son has a Maserati, I’m told. Doesn’t come down much these days.’

  ‘But the E-Type?’

  ‘Strudwick, that is, the Old Manor at Melbury.’

  ‘What, Strudwick the M.P.?’ Bognor had a mental image of a purple-faced backwoods M.P. who had introduced a bill for the reintroduction of capital punishment a couple of years before.

  ‘That’s right. Not that he’s here much. Too busy striking attitudes round Whitehall and going on the telly.’

  ‘Wasn’t there a divorce?’ Bognor had a further image of something faintly sordid: a twenty-year marriage being overthrown with the maximum publicity… a middle-aged, plain, discarded wife. Something new and glamorous.

  ‘That’s right,’ said Mr. Hey. ‘Traded the old woman in for a new model. Foreign job. Not a bad looker. Much good it did him.’

  ‘Oh?’

  ‘Well, you know.’ Mr. Hey raised his eyebrows and would, Bognor reckoned, have dug him in the ribs but for the intervening counter. ‘Let’s just say she’s not all the local M.P.’s wife should be. I mean her idea of a local fête isn’t quite what the Women’s Institute would like. If you see what I mean.’

  Bognor said that he thought he saw what he meant and was about to change the subject when it was changed for him by the sudden advent of Father Xavier.

  ‘Aha,’ he said. ‘Aha aha. Usual please. And the same for P.C.49.’ He unshouldered his duffel bag. ‘You can take it out of my winnings on the 3.15,’ he added.

  ‘Do I take it you don’t care for the more conventional Hymns Ancient and Modern?’ asked Bognor, trying to look quizzical.

  ‘Just can’t sing,’ said Xavier, taking a massive gulp. ‘And even if I could the words are unspeakably bloody. Not to say inappropriate. I mean, say what you like, Batty Tom was our second death in three days and that can’t be good.’

  ‘Could be for some,’ said Bognor with contrived ambiguity, and thinking of Humphrey Bogart.

  Father Xavier gave him a very unambiguous old-fashioned look. ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning nothing in particular.’

  ‘You never mean nothing in particular.’

  Bognor sipped. ‘Anyway,’ he said, ‘when’s the funeral?’

  ‘Tomorrow,’ said Xavier. ‘No reason to waste time.’

  ‘Bit quick, isn’t it?’ said Mr. Hey.

  ‘Not in the circumstances,’ said Xavier.

  ‘What circumstances?’ asked Mr. Hey, maliciously.

  ‘You know bloody well what circumstances. “No muss, no fuss,” like the commercial used to say. You know who his father is. You know what he did. No point in letting the yellow press make a meal of it. As our friend here will agree.’

  ‘Up to a point,’ said Bognor.

  They finished their drinks. Bognor toyed with the idea of another revolting sandwich, and thought better of it when Xavier said he’d better get back for a spot of quiet meditation.

  They walked back together. It was getting dark and banks of dark cloud were edged in purple.

  ‘Feels sticky,’ said Xavier, when they had been walking for a few minutes. ‘Thunder soon, I should think.’

  ‘Yes.’ Bognor was wondering if he could ever have met Xavier before. He did seem oddly familiar, but it might just be that he was overtired. Fatigue sometimes gave him that sort of hallucination. The feeling that he had been somewhere before; that an event he knew perfectly well to be brand new and totally unique was in fact a repeat of something he had witnessed years earlier.

  ‘Have you ever been on one of these Expo-Brits?’ he asked.

  ‘Huh,’ Father Xavier snorted. ‘Not me. For a kick-off they wouldn’t trust me. And then again I’ve never seen any bloody reason for going. Commercial traveller isn’t a role I particularly relish.’

  ‘Father Simon was giving me a very sympathetic picture of the free world’s friars bringing spiritual relief to their oppressed brethren behind the iron curtain.’

  ‘Oh balls. That’s typical of Simon. He’s almost as sanctimonious as Anselm, and that’s saying something, as you know.’ They continued in silence to the Friary. ‘What amazing piece of detection are you embarking on now?’ asked Xavier, as they passed through the gates.

  ‘I was going to have a word with Father John.’

  ‘Ah, he’s not sanctimonious. Quite sharp too. You’ll like him.’

  ‘Good.’

  ‘See you in Compline, then.’
Father Xavier slouched away towards his room, and Bognor turned towards the old farmhouse where John lived. He walked down the passage, his feet echoing dramatically in the silence, past Father Anselm’s door, past Father Simon’s and knocked on the next. It was a great deal easier finding people’s rooms in the farmhouse, since, unlike the Nissen hut where the only identification was numbers, in the farmhouse each man had his name written on a card and displayed in a cheap brass holder on the door. Immediately below the card on Father John’s door was a heavy knocker shaped like a dolphin. Bognor used it to tap lightly three times, and entered as soon as he heard the faintly querulous invitation to do so.

  Father John was sitting at his desk reading by the light of a battered reading lamp which hung only inches above his book. Alongside the desk at his feet there was a sturdy blackthorn walking stick.

  ‘Good evening,’ he said, pushing his glasses towards the end of his nose and looking over them at Bognor with an expression of mild amusement. ‘I was wondering when I should have the pleasure of a visit. Would you like a cup of coffee?’

  ‘That would be nice, thank you.’ Bognor felt patronised, yet again.

  ‘In that case I’ll put on the kettle.’ He shuffled to his feet, picked up the stick with one hand and wandered over to a corner cupboard from which he extracted two blue-and-white half-pint mugs, a teaspoon, a tin of instant coffee, a packet of dried milk and an aluminium kettle which had lost its whistle. ‘Won’t be a second,’ he said, going outside with the kettle. ‘The gas ring’s just at the end of the corridor.’

  Bognor muttered something half-hearted and semi-coherent about not wishing to be any trouble and looked round the room. He hadn’t realised how old Father John was. At close quarters he was much more lined and grey than he had seemed at a distance. Certainly in his mid-sixties, he thought, as he went over to the desk to see what it was that he’d been studying. He had been expecting the New Testament or at least Thomas à Kempis, but it wasn’t anything so proper. It was a heavily thumbed copy of Ribbands’ The Behaviour and Social Life of Honeybees. He turned to the small walnut bookshelf which hung on the wall and read through the titles.