Death in the Opening Chapter (27 page)

‘What about the book?' he asked, floundering. ‘Did he write a book? Allgood had a story about a book. Used it in his talk. What about the brigadier and the 13th Mobile? Was there a debagging? Did it prey on his mind? Did Brandon's father know something? Did he talk? And what about Vicenza Book, and her mum? What did he really think about them and their sexual antics? What about the harvest supper and Gunther? There are so many unanswered questions . . .'

He stopped in mid-sentence, aware that Dorcas and Ebenezer, the dead man's widow and the dead man's boss, were looking at him with something that veered between contempt and pity. He also realized that while he had a confession of sorts, it was not one that would stand up in court; nor one that would be admitted outside these walls. Dorcas and Ebenezer had helped the vicar on his way. They might have tied the knot; they might have kicked the stool. But it was what the dead man wanted. Correction, it was what Dorcas and Ebenezer said he wanted, and they knew Sebastian better than anyone, certainly far better than any judge and any jury. Bognor knew that he couldn't recommend a prosecution. He knew that if he did such a thing, it would be thrown out. Not only that, but he would be ridiculed and vilified for daring to suggest that he knew better than the dead man's wife and the dead man's bishop, better even than the dead man's God. Even so, he did have a sneaking feeling that this was true and that he was right.

Bognor was not happy.

‘I know what you're about to say,' he said. ‘You are about to say that Sebastian had lost his faith; that he had lost the capacity to love; that he had lost the capacity to believe. You are going to tell me that it is not my business, nor that of any man on earth. You are going to tell me that this is something which can only be determined in another place. You are about to tell me that my idea of justice and truth is nothing when measured against the eternal verities. You're saying that I and my fellow man are not qualified, that this is best left to something or someone else.'

There was another silence.

Bognor broke it. ‘Is that what you're telling me?' he asked, and, even as he asked the question, he knew that he would not receive an answer until he too stood at the pearly gates in which he did not believe. If then. He had an uneasy feeling that St Peter, or his stand-in, would also be shtum.

They both looked at him patiently, sympathetically but condescendingly.

‘I'll let myself out,' he said. Neither the bishop nor Dorcas moved. And he left, cheeks stinging but not from the cold.

TWENTY-SEVEN

S
imon Bognor never spoke to either ever again. He told Monica what had happened but no one else. She understood and said nothing. Neither Branwell nor Camilla said anything either, though they did not know the whole story.

Everything was tidied away. The verdict was vague. The job was done.

The bishop retired a few months later.

Dorcas left Mallborne a little earlier, and the two went to Cumbria, where they lived together, though they never married.

Dorcas Fludd had met her husband at theological college and it was she who, unsurprisingly, had made the running, and when the race was done, worn the trousers. Bognor guessed as much, but it was good to have Contractor's confirmation. Contractor's researches into the vicar's wife told him little new, but it told him that his waters were right. Or his intuition. The Reverend Sebastian had been one of life's holy fools. His wife was, by comparison, a tungsten-clawed butterfly.

He was reminded of the old saw about the wife who had often contemplated murdering her husband, but never divorce. It had been attributed to Elizabeth Longford, speaking of her maddeningly dotty husband, Frank, the Earl of Longford. Lady Longford was fiercely religious, not the first person one would associate with killing, and not one of life's plagiarists, being of a largely original turn of phrase. It had been a third party who misattributed the remark, which went back a long way, possibly to the first divorce or even the first murder.

Dorcas was a power in Mallborne – in charge of the holy dusters, and the poppy collection, a power in the Women's Institute and much else besides. She was notionally one of life's second fiddles but, if one was mixing metaphors, she had put lead in her husband's pencil. She was light years away from being an obvious suspect, but Bognor's experience, not least within his own relationship, was that, in matrimony, all things were possible.

That did not make her a murderer, but Bognor was a committed believer that when it came to killing people, wives often dunnit. This had, perforce, to include Dorcas.

A few years later, a book arrived with a printed compliments slip. It was from a major religious publisher and was by Ebenezer Lariat. The inscription acknowledged a great debt to ‘my friends Sebastian and Dorcas Fludd'.

‘He was only doing his job,' said Monica.

‘That's what they all say,' said Bognor. ‘It's no excuse. Pontius Pilate was only doing his job. It's having the courage not to do the job which separates the men from the beasts. If everyone just did their job and obeyed orders, we'd be in an even worse state than we are already.'

Monica knew better than to argue with him. It was a core belief and important to him. Indeed, he was not rational on the question of law and order. And orders. Especially orders. She knew that her husband's first instinct on being given an order, was to question it. And even though she tended to disagree with him, it was the main reason she had married him in the first place.

‘I knew Dorcas was there because she found him. But old Ebb is a bit unexpected.'

‘Maybe,' said Monica, ‘maybe not.'

‘I've always thought bishops were above reproach,' he said.

‘I've always taken a slightly different view of bishops,' she said. ‘Methodists don't have such things, and my instinct is to think of them as works of the devil. Too much port and House of Lords. I think your average bishop is a bit of a dark horse.'

‘No such thing as an average bishop,' he said. ‘Any more than an average butler.'

Even so, he had a feeling there was a convention regarding bishops, just as there was with butlers. Trouble was that he couldn't for the life of him remember what it was.

A little later, Bognor read the bishop's obituary in the
Daily Telegraph
. It quoted the Archbishop of Canterbury as saying ‘Ebenezer was that rare person – a genuinely good man.'

Dorcas survived him.

So did Simon and Monica.

Simon went to Ebenezer's funeral. He stood at the back and slipped away unnoticed.