Tim Heald - Death in the opening chapter

‘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 away 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.

His absence would be felt, however, and his sudden death would cast a pall over tonight’s proceedings and much of what was scheduled for the week ahead.

‘Your friend the Bish had better be good,’ said Monica.

The church was packed.

It always was. Correction. It always was for this annual service preceding the Fludd Lit Fest. On the average Sunday, at Holy Communion, Matins or Evensong, attendance was sparse. Sir Branwell and Lady Fludd sat sadly in the family pew at one or other of these services, but otherwise the faithful were considerably less attentive and dutiful than even a few years earlier. The church was always full at Easter and Christmas, but apart from this, and the annual Festival service, it echoed in effective emptiness. The vicar, the choir and the organist turned up, and one or two hardy regulars, but that was all. The rest stayed away pursuing secular rites and rituals.

This was the way of the Church of England. Time was when it had been the Tory party at prayer, but now even the traditional Conservative Party was little more than a memory of blue rosettes, feudalism and soapbox oratory. Muslims, foreign sects, and even the Methodists and Roman Catholics, seemed to be gaining ground, or at least standing steady, but the lukewarm moderate established church was no longer part of the required procedure.

Tonight, however, the ancient building was full of Mallborne and its visitors. The ghost of the late Reverend hung heavily over the service and all the suspects were there. Sir Branwell and Lady Fludd had kept a couple of places for the Bognors, who dutifully squeezed into the box pew alongside them. Just behind them, though decently below the salt, were the butler, Harry Brandon, and his wife Peggoty. The widow Dorcas Fludd was snivelling appropriately in off-black weeds. Brigadier Blenkinsop and his wife Esther sung lustily in tweed and responded noisily in all the right places. Vicenza Book kept shtum, waiting presumably until she could command attention from centre stage, and Martin Allgood sat near the back of the building behind a pillar and observed beadily. Gunther Battenburg was not there; presumably preparing dinner in the Fludd kitchens.

All was as one would hope and expect, and as orderly as Sir Branwell would have wished.

The service itself was robust and conventional: middle of the road as only rural C of E could be on a high and holy day, and the whole affair made Bognor comfortable. He was surrounded by the sights and sounds of his growing-up and he drew strength from their permanence.

The Saxon church was full of English spring flowers of a kind he associated with cottage gardens, rather than municipal beds. The sweet peas smelt, the wild garlic and valerian were classified as weeds elsewhere, but here they were encouraged to rampage over the pulpit, lectern and font. All was amateur, in a friendly way, unless you scratched the smiling surface and revealed the steely professionalism beneath. Iron fist in velvet glove. The congregation was led by the choir in ‘All Things Bright and Beautiful’, ‘Fight the Good Fight’ and the 23rd psalm. The readings were from the King James Bible, the Authorized Version, the only decent committee job known to man.

The bishop was the senior cleric present by a mile. A couple of lay readers from the neighbourhood were officiating, standing in for the Reverend Sebastian, and hating each other in a decidedly unchristian way, if the Bognors’ sixth sense was to be trusted. It was difficult to upstage one another during a church stage, but it seemed to the Bognors that these two did their best, though even this rivalry was strangely reassuring, for it reminded Bognor of the chaplains at school – technically equals, but for ever, it seemed to him and his friends, competing for supremacy. Or at least the appearance of supremacy.