Death in the Opening Chapter Read online

  ‘What sort of Fludd was he exactly?’ asked Bognor. He could see that family sensitivities were at work alongside the male chauvinism. It would be better not to offend them. If the family escutcheon were to be impugned, it would come better from one of themselves. Or not at all. Bognor knew enough about family nature to understand that, if rude things were to be said about the family, they would have to be said by a Fludd.

  ‘Some sort of a cousin,’ said Sir Branwell airily. ‘There’s a family tree thingy in the study and I think he features on that.’

  ‘Descended from Flanagan?’

  ‘Everyone was descended from Flanagan on one side or other of the proverbial blanket. Randy old goat.’

  ‘He had the baronetcy?’ asked Bognor, really not knowing.

  ‘Briefly,’ said Sir Branwell. ‘He was number ten, but not for long. He inherited from some cousin.’

  Life in the Fludd family was one cousin after another, reflected Bognor. This was not uncommon in titled families. The title itself zigzagged around, leaping from one branch to another. Chaps changed names from time to time in order to inherit the title, which was no more direct than the crown of England. The Fludds had been the equivalent of Plantaganets, Yorkists, Lancastrians, Tudors, Hanoverians, Schleswig-Holsteiners or whatever, ersatz Windsors and sundry assorted Krauts, Russians, New Zealanders, commoners, Normans, Anglo-Saxons and lesser breeds. Being baronets, however, they had an inordinately high opinion of themselves and took considerable pride in their Britishness, which was more imaginary than real.

  Sir Flanagan was the only Fludd, however, who really merited even a footnote in the rich tapestry of English history. Not that the Fludds hadn’t been all very well, in their way, ever since Athelstan Fludd had become an improbable friend of the Conqueror and been rewarded with the first of the fourteen titles. Fourteen was not that many, given the length of time Fludds had been around and the relatively scant time Fludds such as Flanagan had held the title. One or two of them had inherited when very young and lived to a very ripe old Fludd. One Fludd, a mediaeval Henry, was thought to have lived to be more than a hundred after acquiring the title before puberty. This compensated for the Montague Fludd who had been killed on the Somme. There were others, some of whom had not even inherited. An elder son had gone down with the White Ship and another perished at Trafalgar while serving as a midshipman on the Victory. No Fludd, however, had ever been Prime Minister, Chancellor or even Master of the family college. Their way was modest, local and unobtrusive. They were the salt of the earth, good men who did good things, but seldom remarkable.

  ‘I think Sebastian was something to do with your great-aunt Mildred.’ This was from Camilla, who had been uncharacteristically silent.

  ‘We tend not to talk about Great Auntie Em,’ said Sir Branwell, looking embarrassed. ‘She was a bit of a black sheep. Friend of the Pankhursts; bookish. Swanned around on the fringe of the Bloomsbury business. Crossed swords with Lady Ottoline Morell over some chap. Said she even went abroad to have his child.’

  ‘Great Aunt Mildred sounds rather fun,’ said Monica, with feeling.

  ‘Always thought to be something of a goer,’ said the squire. ‘Kept a boarding house somewhere near Biarritz, I believe. Played pétanque. Read Proust in the original. Before her time, unfortunately. Before anyone’s time, if you ask me. I think Sebastian was something to do with her.’

  ‘What exactly?’

  ‘Haven’t the foggiest. Great-aunt Em was married to Philip, who sounds a bit simple. Supposed to have had one or two sprogs with him, but I don’t know that any were actually Philip’s. If they were, then I suspect poor old Sebastian came down that line somehow. But I honestly don’t know. He was a Fludd, all right. He had the Fludd ears. But I couldn’t honestly say how exactly he fitted in.’

  ‘Maybe he didn’t,’ said Bognor archly.

  There was a conceit that people such as Sir Branwell didn’t exist, that no one nowadays spoke like this, nor held such old-fashioned beliefs or maintained such old-fashioned values. They did, however. They were not celebrities and they tended to remain in the shires – or, as trendy people liked to believe, the sticks. They still wore their grandfather’s three-piece suits, changed for dinner and sometimes boasted fob watches. They would outlive many flashier success stories, for these came and went like moths in the night, garish flutterbies who glowed briefly before fading away into crepuscular obscurity. The Fludds seldom troubled the tabloids, but they often seemed to stretch out for ever, gathering dust, but little or no moss.

  ‘Oh, I was fond of Sebastian in his way,’ said Branwell. ‘He was family after all. Funny way of showing it, but we Fludds stick together, no matter what.’

  ‘But there was a “matter what”, if you see what I mean. A sense in which Sebastian wasn’t one of you, despite being a Fludd, albeit from a cadet branch. How would you describe that?’

  Sir Branwell gave the matter his attention.

  ‘Bit of a lefty,’ he said eventually. ‘Not exactly a Bolshevik but pretty socialist. Read novels, which isn’t exactly our bag. The sort of stuff which gets on the shortlist for prizes. I like Trollope. Now that’s what I call writing. Sebastian liked foreign muck. Marques. That Peruvian chap. Llhosa. Girl’s stuff. Not that I ever held it against him. In fact, we used to have quite animated conversations about books and that sort of thing.’

  Bognor could believe it. Sir Branwell might do his best to appear stupid, but he didn’t fool the Bognors.

  ‘Would you say he had doubts?’ he asked.

  ‘Doubts?’ echoed the squire. ‘Doubts.’ He rolled the world around as if it were some sort of cigar, or a recalcitrant piece of food that had got stuck in his teeth. More than an abstract idea. ‘Sebastian wasn’t into certainty,’ he said eventually, ‘which I found rather attractive. So many clerics are a pain in the bum; try to convert you to their way of thinking. Sebastian wasn’t like that. I never heard him giving a lecture. Even his sermons asked questions, rather than provide answers. I liked that. Reassuring, very.’

  ‘You don’t think that this indecisiveness had anything to do with his death?’

  Not for the first time Sir Branwell appeared to give the question some thought. Eventually, he said, ‘Rum notion.’ Then he thought some more and said, ‘I suppose not being certain might have helped suicide, but, as it happens, I don’t think he killed himself. Difficult to tie the knot and Sebastian wasn’t practically inclined. Not one of nature’s knot-tiers. And, if someone else killed him, the doubt would be neither here nor there. But none of this matters a jot, because it won’t bring him back. Which is why, basically, I think the whole investigation is a waste of time.’

  TWELVE

  ‘Branwell and Camilla didn’t do it,’ said Bognor. ‘I knew that already, but I needed to get it down in black and white. Besides which, I thought what he had to say about Sebastian was quite interesting.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Monica. She was easily bored, only interested in the really interesting; difficult to please.

  They were sitting quietly in a corner of the maize. This was a modern number designed at Sir Branwell’s request, and conceived and executed by Michael Ayrton. It was made of well-topiaried beech and was a tribute to the squire’s unexpected complexity. The bench they sat on was of burnished something or other. Wood. No plaque. Sturdy. Modern. Designed to last.

  ‘Well, I thought it was interesting. It can’t be easy being Branwell.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, darling,’ she said. ‘Nothing could be easier. He has a title, money, a nice house, reputation, and he’s never done a hand’s turn in his life.’

  ‘That’s not fair,’ he expostulated.

  ‘Maybe not,’ she said, ‘but who said anything about “fairness”? To echo the immortal words of Malcolm Fraser: “Life’s not supposed to be fair.”’

  Malcolm Fraser was a tall, notably patrician, Australian prime minister who had many inherited acres of prime land, was born with silver spoons in every a
perture and pretended that he had worked hard to get where he was. Monica evidently believed that Sir Branwell Fludd shared some of these attributes.

  ‘I wouldn’t want a literary festival named after me.’

  ‘It’s not named after Branwell,’ protested Monica. ‘It’s named after Flanagan. Flanagan was an ancestor. Or not, as the case may be. I don’t actually think he was a real ancestor. He didn’t have the family ears.’

  ‘It’s called the Fludd Festival. Most people don’t have a clue about Flanagan or who he was. They think it’s named after Branwell. He’s damned either way. Either he supports it, or he doesn’t. It wasn’t his idea.’

  ‘Only because he’s too lazy and uninspired. Branwell’s never had an idea in his life and he’s certainly never acted on one.’ Monica was on a high horse. She often was. It suited her and she enjoyed being there, even if the position wasn’t always logical.

  ‘That’s not fair.’

  ‘Back to Malcolm Fraser,’ she said. ‘I’m extremely fond of Branwell and Camilla, but that doesn’t mean that I approve of them. I think they’re an affront, actually, and the literary festival is the most obvious source of irritation. It’s not, as you put it, fair, and I think he’s living off his ancestor’s talent. I don’t really object, except when I stop and think about it. But don’t give me that ridiculous line about being him not being easy. Being the fourteenth baronet with your own literary festival is an extremely soft option.’

  ‘I disagree,’ he said. ‘It was the council’s idea, and if he supported it he was damned, just as he would have been damned if he had opposed it. They just wanted to extend the holiday season, and the Fludd name was a good way of doing it. They’re the ones who are exploiting it. It wasn’t Branwell’s idea to call Mallborne the centre of Fludd Country and put up signs to prove it. In fact, he finds it pretty embarrassing.’

  ‘Then, why not say so? He goes along with the idea and the money rolls in, while he wrings his hands in a weedy way and pretends to thinks it’s all a bit vulgar and common.’

  ‘On the contrary,’ said Bognor, defending his old friend and fellow Apocrypha man, ‘a lot of people think he’s vulgar and common, and there’s absolutely nothing he can do about it. Imagine the outcry if there was a story along the lines of “Fludd scion attacks family festival”.’

  ‘I disagree,’ she said.

  ‘Why? How? It’s no use disagreeing for the hell of it; you have to have a reason.’

  Their voices were ever so slightly raised, though they were enjoying an argument, not having a domestic tiff. It was argument such as this that kept them going: adversarial, but not mortally so. Theirs was a learning process, not just because their verbal battles ended in an increased knowledge of the matter under debate, but because they always knew each other even better when they had finished. It was this mutual knowledge, honed over years of matrimonial bickering, that made them such a formidable team, both professionally and over the dinner table, and during the long weekend. It didn’t pay to mess with the Bognors.

  ‘He gets to seem to ride shotgun,’ she said, ‘but actually he’s just riding on coat-tails. Other buggers’ efforts. Like I said, he’s never done a hand’s turn, but he has this reputation. Everything’s inherited; the festival most of all.’

  It didn’t seem like that to Bognor, though he had to admit that most things to do with Branwell Fludd were the result of what other people had achieved and what other people had left him. What Monica didn’t seem to take into account was that the inheritance carried obligations, as well as benefits. Branwell was not his own person; he was determined by circumstance; his freedom of action was circumscribed. His prison might have gold bars, but it was still a cell.

  ‘Branwell can’t do what he wants,’ he said, ‘and that’s limiting. He controls a living and that’s a perk. But then a relation takes holy orders and comes to him as a supplicant. The church is in his gift, but he has to bestow it in a particular way to a particular person. That’s an obligation.’

  ‘Noblesse oblige,’ she said.

  He nodded. ‘You could put it like that,’ he agreed. ‘It wouldn’t be original, but, otherwise, it’s about right.’

  ‘Nice sort of obligation,’ she said.

  He smiled. This was an argument, he felt, that he had won.

  ‘The point I am making,’ he said, ‘is that most of us are free to live our lives as we wish. In my case, I became a special investigator. No one asked me to become such a thing, but that’s what I do. By the same token, I met and married you. The lack of children I suppose I regret, but that is outside our control, as are a number of other facts, such as our appearance, our life expectancy and so on. For Branwell, it’s different. Inheriting his title and Mallborne Manor is limiting, but being descended from Flanagan Fludd, and then having Councillor Smallwood of the Mallborne District Council deciding to create a literary festival with him as the central figure, creates further constraints. I’m not saying that Branwell is not in a number of portent respects a lucky and privileged bleeder, but he can’t lead his own life in his own way, like the way the rest of us can.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Monica with something approaching grace. ‘You win. What about Sebastian?’

  ‘What about Sebastian?’ This sounded like round two: seconds out of the ring, ding-ding, start boxing.

  ‘Would you say he had freedom to do as he wished? Or was he circumscribed in the same way as Branwell?’

  ‘Not in the same way as Branwell, no. On the whole, he had complete freedom of choice to begin with, but then the minute he got religion in a serious professional way he was hamstrung. So are the rest of us, but becoming a reverend imposes a tighter straitjacket than the one most of us are laced into. The fact that he did it himself doesn’t make it any easier. Rather the reverse.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, returning to her moutons. ‘So did he jump? Or was he pushed?

  And, in the end, does it make a blind bit of difference. Is, in other words, any useful purpose established by establishing exactly what happened. Wouldn’t we be better off, as Branwell appears to be suggesting, in simply drawing a line under the messy business and moving on. Nothing we can do will bring him back. Branwell’s right there.’

  ‘Don’t think I hadn’t thought of it,’ agreed Bognor. A dove cooed from nearby. The Fludds owned a mediaeval dovecote and had a flock of white birds to match. They made a mess and a soft plangent sound which was agreeably soothing. Time was when there would have been more and would have supplemented the larder. Today, they were ornamental only. ‘There’s a lot to be said for letting events take their natural course. The trouble is that my whole raison d’etre is predicated on not doing so.’

  ‘You said it,’ she said with feeling.

  ‘Branwell would let his cousin rest in peace,’ said Bognor.

  ‘For all the wrong reasons.’

  ‘He believes in letting things follow their natural course. Assume their own shape in their own way. Ride the waves. Maybe he’s right. In any case, who are we to say which reasons are right? There’s more than one way of playing God.’

  ‘If Sebastian had died of natural causes, then maybe so. But if he didn’t . . .’

  ‘We know he didn’t die of natural causes,’ said Bognor. ‘He was strung up. Hanged from the rafters of his own church.’

  ‘You know what I mean,’ she protested. ‘If he killed himself, then there’s an even better reason for leaving it all alone. If no one else is involved, then no one else is involved. We have no right to strike attitudes. If he was killed against his wishes, then that’s a different matter.’

  ‘There was no sign of a struggle,’ he said.

  ‘We have to wait for the pathologist’s report. That will tell us for certain. But I agree. On the face of it, there’s no sign of a struggle, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t killed against his wishes. He could have been frightened by a man with a knife who forced him to make it look like suicide by hanging; then kicked the stool aw
ay when Sebastian wasn’t expecting it. If it happened like that, then there wouldn’t be signs of a struggle.’

  ‘A lot of hypothesis; precious little evidence.’

  ‘A lot of murders are like that,’ she said. ‘An awful lot are solved by a bluff that’s so convincing the guilty party owns up. But the so-called evidence wouldn’t stand up in court. Confession induced by bluff. That’s why successful detectives are consummate poker players.’

  ‘But I don’t play poker.’

  ‘Exactly. Case rests.’ She laughed.

  He lunged at her, but she was too quick, and stood, smoothing her skirt as she did so.

  ‘The only real evidence is the hymns on the board.’

  ‘Which may be a complete red herring,’ he said. ‘Had any more thoughts?’

  ‘No. Afraid not.’ She glanced at her watch. It was 6.15 p.m. ‘And talking of church, which we sort of were, don’t you think we’d better cut along if we’re going to catch the festival service and your friend the bishop? I wonder, incidentally, if Sebastian had worked out what he was going to say. We haven’t found any notes. He might have been going to confess. You know. Say something revelatory and incriminating, and then take poison, or plunge a dagger into himself in front of a full congregation. Now that would have been dramatic.’

  Bognor stood and adjusted his tie. The garish stripes of Apocrypha College. He guessed Sir Branwell would be wearing the same. It had become a ritual.

  ‘Poor taste,’ he said. ‘Vulgar gesture. Far-fetched suggestion.’

  ‘If you can’t make jokes about sudden death,’ said Monica, ‘I don’t know what you can make jokes about.’

  ‘I suppose not,’ he said.

  The bells of St Teath had started to ring, drowning out the sad cooing of the Fludds’ doves. The congregation was heading towards the pews, as it did every year on the Sunday before the literary festival began. For the first time ever, the sermon would not be delivered by the Reverend Sebastian Fludd, nor would he take the service or say grace at the supper in The Fludd, aka the Two by Two, shortly afterwards.