by Tim Heald
He was laughing when he came on line.
‘I’m calling from Kew,’ he said. ‘On a bench by the lake. Cold but bright, and I’ve found what you wanted.’
‘Which was?’
Bognor had not forgotten, but he wanted Contractor to repeat the info. Kept him on his toes, though this was seldom necessary. Others might rock back on their heels, but not Harvey Contractor.
‘I checked out the army list, and particularly had a look at the 13th Mobile in the 1950s,’ said Contractor. ‘Our friend the brigadier was there all right. And, as I suspected, but you didn’t quite spell out, there was a padre doing his national service at the same time by the name of Sebastian Fludd. Also a chap who sounds like a promoted sergeant major by the name of Brandon. Isn’t the Fludds’ butler called Brandon?’
‘Yes,’ said Bognor.
This he had not been expecting.
‘Not right for him,’ he said, ‘but an odd coincidence. Quite a usual name but not that usual. Not our man though.’
‘Could be his dad,’ said Contractor. ‘Was Brandon an army brat?’
‘Could well have been.’ His boss was thinking on his feet. This was tiresome but sometimes needs must. This was one of those occasions. The trick was not to let anyone else know.
‘I’ve already spoken to the brigadier but I didn’t know about the national service padre. Would you mind having a word? In person. He’s London based.’
‘Already have,’ said Contractor. ‘Cup of tea at his home. Knightsbridge or thereabouts.’
This was maddening but typical. One of many reasons why they enjoyed a love-hate relationship. It was horribly predictable of Contractor to be ahead of the game and to have anticipated his boss’s desire. What’s more, Contractor would wheedle stuff out of the brigadier that would have eluded Bognor. Contractor had a habit of going for the jugular in the nicest possible way. That was progress. Contractor was not as nice as he looked; Bognor nicer.
‘Ah,’ said Bognor.
‘Did I do right, boss?’ he asked.
‘Of course you did right,’ said Bognor snappily. ‘You always do. It would just be nice if, for once, you waited to be asked.’
‘Sorry, boss.’
‘Don’t pretend.’ Bognor was reminded of the time that Leslie Compton, a footballing hero from Arsenal days had disregarded his captain’s command, had scored a famous winning goal, and had apologized to the skipper for disobeying orders. He hadn’t meant it any more than Contractor.
‘You OK?’ Contractor wanted to know. Bognor was touched, although he recognized that the concern was at least partly selfish. Bognor’s absence left his minion dangerously exposed to marauding mandarins from elsewhere in Whitehall. Bognor, by dint of years, if nothing else, had clout. Other men and women were frightened of him. He never thought it would happen, and put it down partly to age, and partly to a certain recklessness which came with longevity. On his way up the ladder, he cared about life and about the impression he was making on others. Now that he had gone as high as he was going, he no longer gave a stuff. He simply couldn’t care less. Other people knew this. And were afraid.
‘I’m fine. You?’
‘We miss you,’ said Contractor, and part of him may even have meant it. He had grown quite fond of the old thing. Self-interest was there too. Bognor was a grouchy old guard dog, but once he was out on his rounds, the rest of the world came sniffing around, pulling rank and peeing on the shoots of independence and unorthodoxy. Contractor was keen on both, and clever enough, particularly when protected by Bognor, to get away with it. Without the protective bark of Bognor, however, he was vulnerable.
‘Don’t let the buggers get you down,’ said Bognor, only too aware of the crippling orthodoxy of the men who ran other departments. He knew that they would be trying to pull rank in his absence; attempting to get Contractor to toe the line behind which they liked to hunker down.
Smooth, suave and second-rate. Cowards certainly, but bullies too. At least, when they could get away with it. In the nicest possible way. It was what foreigners so disliked about a certain sort of old-fashioned Brit. You couldn’t trust them, but they were such gents. Dressed properly, as well.
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I can look after myself. Be nice to have you back though.’
Bognor frowned. He was supposed to be on holiday. He doubted whether Contractor really could look after himself. It would be good to be back. He snapped shut the mobile.
In for a penny, he thought, and punched in another number.
‘Pathology,’ said a voice, and he asked for the man to whom he had been so rude.
‘Sorry if I seemed . . . er . . . well . . . sorry,’ he said.
The voice at the other end sounded conciliatory and used to apologies such as this.
‘It’s all right,’ said the voice. It obviously wasn’t but Bognor let it pass.
‘I just wonder,’ said Bognor, ‘in the case of the late Vicar of St Teath’s, Mallborne, whether it would have been possible for the deceased to tie a rope round a rafter, put it round his neck, step on to a stool and then kick it from beneath him. If it were suicide, then that’s what he would have had to do. Does your examination provide hard and fast answers?’
All this prolonged and original thought was good for Bognor’s ego, and he could hear the forensic scientist cudgelling his grey matter at the other end of the line for several gratifying seconds. Eventually, the pathologist spoke.
‘It’s a grey area,’ he said. ‘Routine DNA testing showed evidence of the widow’s presence. There were a number of other traces. Churches are busy places, after all. The rope had been handled by several different people. So, it’s perfectly possible that one or more other people were involved. Technically speaking, it would have been possible for the deceased to have carried out the entire operation single-handed, but my own guess is that it would have been unlikely, given that he was not a naturally strong or athletic person.’
‘No,’ said Bognor, ‘I agree. And while DNA testing makes it possible to say who had been in the church and who had touched the rope, would it also be possible to eliminate other people who hadn’t either been in the building, or handled, what for want of a better word, one has to think of as the murder weapon?’
There was another gratifying, cogitating silence.
‘Difficult to say,’ said the expert. ‘It’s a grey area.’
‘Quite.’
He wanted to say that forensics was too often a grey area; that post-mortem examinations only told you what you already knew; and that detection was best left to detectives. The ambiguity of the autopsy to alliterate. However, he thought better of all this and merely, meekly, thanked the pathologist for his time and trouble, closed the nasty little machine, consulted his watch and realized that he had missed lunch. Even so, he needed to discuss progress with Monica. Monica was the only person, apart from the absent Contractor, on whom he could really rely.
He met her in the drive up to the manor. She was looking smug and humming. Always a bad sign. Especially when, as now, she was humming Mozart.
‘I skived off,’ she said. ‘Made my excuses and left. I’ve just been having an absolutely delicious beef sandwich at the Two by Two. Underdone beef, brown bread, fresh butter, home-made English mustard. And a glass of jolly-nice Rioja, made in an obscure village by an old man called Pablo.’
‘As one is,’ said Bognor, unamused. His tummy rumbled.
‘Not a trace of snail; not a hint of porridge,’ said his wife, not noticing. ‘Perfection. Just what the doctor ordered. Pub food as she was intended. The best of British. And Gunther came by for a chat and let me into a juicy little secret.’
There was a bench nearby, dedicated to Mavis, with dates. They sat on it. The sun shone, lemony, thin and antiseptic, bright enough but conveying no warmth.
‘Secret?’ said Bognor, envying the sandwich and the glass of wine but not saying so. He thought of the Rubáiyát and fancied himself briefly as Omar Khayaam,
curbing this flight of fancy, as speedily as it had arisen.
‘He didn’t like the vicar. Hated him, in fact. I think it was mutual. The Reverend Sebastian didn’t like poofters.’
‘Plenty of gay people around. Even in Mallborne. That’s no excuse for a serious feud.’
‘They fell out over food. Gunther being gay didn’t make things easier.’
‘Everyone in Mallborne fell out over food with Gunther. He’d be all very well in Bray. Or even Padstow. But Mallborne is another matter. They don’t go for his sort of scoff. It’s classic meat and two veg country.’
‘I know, I know.’ Monica knew. ‘The point is that it could be a motive. Gunther thinks so anyway. There was a grudge which persisted; business was unfinished. Worst of all there was a campaign on some allegedly impartial website. Lots of anonymous people claimed to have eaten at the Two by Two and hated it. Some even alleged food poisoning. Gunther thinks the vicar was behind it. He’s afraid it could be a strong enough motive to excite suspicion.’
Once again, Bognor exercised his scepticism. ‘He would say that. Might even think it. But at the end of the day, it’s like I say – we’ve only got his word for it.’
‘Well,’ she said, ‘he’s a worried man.’
‘Which,’ said her husband, ‘may explain the uncharacteristically orthodox beef sandwich. He saw you coming.’
His tummy rumbled agreement, but once more Monica affected not to notice.
TWENTY-FIVE
He kept thinking about the unexpected beef sandwich and glass of red wine, but had to make do with builder’s tea and biscuits. He rather liked basic tea with sugar and milk, and Branwell and Camilla provided Chocolate Olivers, which were, arguably, the best biscuits ever invented. For a man who had missed lunch, he was therefore reasonably happy.
Mallborne should, by rights, have been the cosiest place imaginable; its vicar the least likely corpse. He was reminded of the old Conan Doyle adage about the smiling English countryside being far more lethal and threatening than the mean streets of the most sinister city. Lincolnshire was more menacing than London; Gloucestershire than Glasgow; Sussex than Stoke.
It was fashionable to suggest otherwise. Chicago, Los Angeles and Detroit had meaner streets than anything funny old Britain had to offer, and latterly it was Danes and Icelanders who had acquired a reputation for really revolting killings. Scandinavians did sex; Americans assassination; the English nothing more deadly than scones with cream and strawberry jam.
And yet.
Horrible things happened in the English countryside. Harmless spinsters and blameless bachelors in picture-postcard English villages dropped dead in mysterious and often rather disgusting circumstances. Honeysuckle and roses under a roof of thatch afforded a plausible disguise, just as, let’s face it, so did much of the apparatus of the typical English village. A benign exterior often concealed something nasty. Things were just as likely to go bump in the night when you could see the Milky Way, as when the only lights were neon; the woodshed concealed as much nastiness as any tenement; and the nightshade in the environmentally friendly hedgerow was as deadly as the detritus in the gutter. Cosiness was an illusion; security a sham; there might well be honey still for tea, but only a supremely gullible innocent would accept it from a stranger.
Bognor knew all this in theory, but it didn’t make it any easier to accept when it hit him in the face. He really had thought that a few days with his old university friend and his wife in the sleepy town of the Fludds would be a happy, peaceful holiday. A literary festival, even allowing for the scratchy reputation of rival writers, was almost by definition, a somnolent affair. He had anticipated a lazy holiday, far from madding crowds and sudden death.
And now this.
‘Almost everyone in the place seems to have had a motive for killing the vicar,’ he said conversationally, chomping on a delicious biscuit.
‘Oh, come on, Simon,’ said Camilla, pouring strong black tea from an enormous silver teapot. ‘Present company excepted.’
This was Bognor’s belief but it was an exaggeration, and though acceptable, perhaps, as a figure of speech, it would not show up in any written report to which he attached his name. He was much too canny for that. What he really meant was that the Reverend Sebastian was the sort of person who was probably better off dead. What he also meant, but naturally failed to say, was that if he were the murdering kind, then he would cheerfully have murdered the Reverend Sebastian Fludd. Bognor, basically, believed that the world would be a better place without clergymen. At least, he believed that the good cleric was someone who had at least one, and preferably several, lay lives before being ordained. He also believed that successful clergymen smoked, drank, swore and probably gambled. If they did, the last they often lost. But then Bognor liked sinners and he liked losers. The dead vicar was definitely one of life’s losers, but he certainly wasn’t a sinner either. And Bognor believed that sanctimonious souls were better off dead, and that most people wished them to be so. If necessary, most people would help them on their way. Or would if they did not run a real risk of being caught.
‘Oh, all right,’ said Bognor. ‘But there are a surprising number of people who will be only too happy to see the back of the vicar.’
‘That says something about the nature of belief in today’s society,’ said Sir Branwell, drinking tea with enthusiasm. ‘Dawkins and his friends have a lot to answer for. One of the things I always liked about religion in the good old days was its non-aggressive character. It just was. No one particularly believed in stuff like transubstantiation or the virgin birth, or what have you. Never gave it much thought, if they were honest. Just formed up in their best suits on Sunday, belted out something familiar from Hymns Ancient and Modern and buggered off home until the next week’s show. It was like glue or cement. Kept everyone in their place but everyone knew where that was. Made a good noise, gave a lot of comfort. Good thing, very.’
‘Talking of Hymns Ancient and Modern,’ said Bognor, addressing his wife, ‘did you get anywhere with the hymn board.’
‘’Fraid not,’ said Monica shaking her head. ‘There’s something there, all right, but I haven’t worked out what it is. Not yet, anyway. But I will. Promise.’
She would too. If Monica promised something, she would deliver. That’s what promises were about. As far as she was concerned. She was that old-fashioned figure – a woman of her word.
‘Anyhow,’ said Bognor, helping himself, unasked, to another biscuit. I’m afraid I seem to have uncovered something of a can of worms in this little paradise. Everyone loathed the vicar.’
This was not an absolute truth, more of a conversational ploy. In a community such as Mallborne, most people were indifferent to the vicar. He was a fact of life, much like the squire or the doctor. Most people didn’t loathe the vicar, because they couldn’t be bothered. Bognor, living in London, didn’t even know who his vicar was. Had he done so, he felt he should loathe him, but he was a kind-hearted person and also disinclined to do the right thing. This meant that he tended to rather like priests. On the other hand, he took little satisfaction in this. In fact, he regarded it as a lapse.
‘Not us,’ protested Camilla. ‘We thought he was a perfectly nice little man. And his wife. Charming.’
‘If you like that sort of thing,’ said Sir Branwell. He spoke stiffly, as one who patently did not like that sort of thing, but considered himself (wrongly) too well-bred to show it.
‘You have a perfectly acceptable alibi, and I don’t for a second believe you killed him. However, that’s not the same as saying you liked him. Or the Reverend Mrs. You tolerated them. They kept the vicarage warm; they ran the church and everything that went with it. But that’s not the same as liking them.’
‘Vicars are trade,’ said Sir Branwell. ‘Simple as that. They are. They exist. They help keep things in their place. But their place is, well, put it this way, Sebastian and Dorcas were not one of us.’
‘Well,’ said Camilla,
‘they used the front door.’
‘In a manner of speaking,’ said her husband, ‘but they weren’t the sort of people you’d have to dinner. Not for pleasure. Duty, perhaps. But that’s something else altogether.’
Sir Branwell was not Lord Lieutenant for nothing. He knew the Queen and she had been to stay. Actually, he thought the Windsors and especially Prince Philip were foreign upstarts, but this was an opinion he did not often voice out loud. Nor did he know any of the royal family at all well. In fact, they wouldn’t know him from the proverbial bar of soap if they met outside the county. Within it, however, he was Her Majesty’s Lord Lieutenant and, in a very real sense, monarch of all that he surveyed.
‘Men of God,’ he said, ‘are a necessity. However, the necessity is painful. And that includes the bishop.’
‘I think Ebenezer is rather a good egg,’ protested Bognor. ‘He’s by way of being a bit of a friend.’
‘You have to have bishops and vicars, but I take a Cromwellian view of such people. If you catch my drift.’
The Bognors caught it but were not altogether impressed. They knew that Branwell was a cheerful agnostic, who took a pragmatic view of clerics and the church. Broadly speaking, he liked the noise, but expected ‘his’ chaps to toe the line, not step over it, or rock the boat. They were part of a team dedicated to decency, common sense and, above all, the preservation of the status quo. The last thing he wanted creeping into their behaviour, was any sort of damned religious nonsense. As far as he was concerned, the true Christ was a dangerous lefty and would have been run out of town, double quick. Probably wore sandals and read the Guardian. On the other hand, Branwell was not stupid, nor ill-educated. When he spoke of Cromwell, he might just as well have been talking of Thomas as Oliver. He had read Hilary Mantel, but did not believe hers was a historically accurate account of a flawed life.
Sir Branwell was right wing but that did not make him a patsy.
‘Point taken,’ said Bognor. ‘You regarded the Fludds as socially inferior and professionally suspect, but you were in charge and you tolerated them. Above all, you didn’t kill him. End of story. Correct?’