Tim Heald: Death in the opening chapter

Seconds later, he was back, energized, if such a thing were possible, and resembling the rural, aristocratic extramural equivalent of an action man. This was not particularly virile or particularly active, but it was a great deal more so than its virtually comatose predecessor.

In his wake, the baronet towed a woman, middle-aged, and middling in every visible sense except for her distress, which was extreme.

She seemed, for a moment, to be aware of the enormity of what she had done, but then, evidently, remembered why she was there and the reason for her distress.

‘It’s Sebastian,’ she said. ‘He’s dead. Extremely. I mean he really is. Dead. He was all right when I last saw him but now he’s dead. Gone. There was so much I wanted to say and so much I wanted to hear and now I can’t, shan’t. He’s gone.’

Sir Branwell had produced brandy. His remedy for everything had been conjured up in a balloon on a silver salver that was originally presented to a great grandfather after some regimental triumph in the tug of war competition in Poona in the late nineteenth century. He always knew it would come in useful one-day. The present Sir Branwell that is, not the long-dead lieutenant with the electric whiskers and the faraway expression, who had been killed leading a charge against Boers in Africa.

‘Drink this,’ he said, as he had seen generations of stiff-lipped English actors order in innumerable not very good movies. He thought of adding that it would do her good but decided he was muddling the movies up with the ads.

‘Dorcas, how dreadful,’ said Lady Fludd, laying down her paper and rising to her feet. ‘You poor sausage. How dreadful.’

She was thinking at the same time as she spoke, rather than planning ahead. This was a mistake. Her words did not convey what she really meant. She didn’t really think the event dreadful; nor had she really meant to call Dorcas a sausage. It just came out like that.

Privately, she was thinking as she spoke, but the poor sausage was herself and even though she was commenting privately on the dreadfulness of the event, what she was actually saying was, ‘Bloody vicar. How incredibly inconvenient. And just before the festival. But then Sebastian always was a selfish little sod.’

Out loud, however, she said, consolingly again, ‘You poor sausage! Sit down, sit down for heaven’s sake.’

Brigadier Horace was a barking brigadier but he had little or no bite.

‘All fang but no finish!’ said Sir Branwell, with whom he had been at school, or thought he might have been. He was too polite to ask. Or indolent. Or, more likely, uninterested. He neither knew nor cared with whom he had been at school. In any event, people were at school with him, not him with them. The difference was crucial. ‘Never seen a shot fired in anger, let alone pulled a trigger.’

Contractor had done the work. He had done so at his master’s behest, his master being in the wrong place and, in a manner of speaking, on holiday. He had done so with flair, invention and assiduity. Contractor didn’t do competence. He obviously deployed sources, but he did not attribute his work in a conventional academic way, with footnotes and bibliography at the bottom of the page or the end of the book. Instead, he did so like a card sharp. Now you see me, now you don’t. He flickered magically with a sense of legerdemain, like a conjuror facing befuddled males on a drunken stag night. Here a rabbit, there a beauty in a bathing suit sawn in half, here a glass of water disappearing, only to re-emerge behind an ear or in a far corner of a room. Always the top hat, always the cane, always the fixed grin, but never anything conventional.

This was why Bognor had hired him. His first in semiotics from the University of Wessex was neither here nor there. Nor was his race, parentage or sexual orientation. Bognor liked him because he was bright and quirky. Other people found this intimidating. In the unlikely event that they appreciated intellect and industry and the qualifications which were the inevitable result, they liked them orthodox. In a super competent world, those who believed that two plus two always equalled four were appreciated; only a genius or a poltroon would think they added up to anything else. Contractor wasn’t sure they did and he certainly was not a poltroon. Bognor liked this; and Contractor knew that he liked it, and as he grew older he realized that this appreciation of his intellectual eccentricity was unusual. It was one of the things that made Bognor different. It infuriated some, particularly if they were bright and successful. A minority, however, found the quality appealing. One of these was Harvey Contractor and he was very, very bright. Formidably so.

Take Brigadier Blenkinsop. Eustace Basil Blenkinsop, aka ‘Basher’ Blenkinsop. Educated Wellington and RMA Sandhurst. The brigadier came from a long line of retired majors, though his father was a vicar in the Quantocks. Stogumber. St Mary’s. Red sandstone. The church was famous for its candlelit chandelier discovered by one of the brigadier’s father’s predecessors in 1907, languishing. It was now lit on high days and holy days and looked very beautiful.

Bognor shut his eyes and thought of the candles in the chandelier at Christmas in St Mary’s Stogumber. He imagined the vicar clambering up into the pulpit and saying words that none of his congregation understood. Stogumber wasn’t exactly the centre of the universe even when Basher was growing up. There was a sister who was married to a vet on Vancouver Island and another sister who was a spinster in Letchworth and did good works. That was all. Bognor imagined what it must have been like growing up as the only son of a vicar in rural Somerset. Was the vicar embittered? A fire and brimstone man? A pacifist? Had his religion influenced the brigadier?

After Sandhurst, Blenkinsop had gone into the gunners. Blenkinsop’s outfit was the 13th Mobile. Its proper name was the ‘13th Mobile Artillery’, because since Agincourt, and possibly earlier, they had been able to deploy lethal weaponry in the least expected places. There were no earlier twelve mobile artillery units, thus earning the 13th the unusual sobriquet of ‘the Lucky for some’ though they were usually known simply as the ‘13th Mobile’. Another nickname was the ‘Cautious Cauliflowers’, which derived from their habit of pinning a floret of the vegetable next to their cap badges every Dettingen Day. This was the anniversary of the battle of 1743, which was the last occasion on which an English – actually German – monarch had led his men into battle. This only happened because the CO of the 13th, Colonel ‘Biffer’ Lowe-Laugher, had stuck a prong of his tuning fork into the reluctant rump of the king’s horse. Hence the regimental custom of placing a gilt tuning fork on the Colonel’s right every night at the Dettingen dinner. The British army was full of such things.

At school and the academy, Blenkinsop had boxed and he went on fighting with some success after joining the army. He was battalion welterweight champion and knocked out some sergeant who was much fancied in the ring. As Second Lieutenant Blenkinsop he competed in the army championship, but was defeated by a mad captain in the Irish Guards. Bognor wondered what the Vicar of Stogumber made of his son’s pugilism.

The vicar of Stogumber had briefly taught at a public school – of which Bognor had not previously heard – in Warminster. He guessed it must have closed. The Queen’s School. Queen’s Warminster. Contractor had drawn a blank here because the school was long closed and all records lost or destroyed. Nevertheless, it seemed that the Reverend Blenkinsop had spent a relatively short time at the school before being translated to Stogumber. Again, there was no record. Why had Blenkinsop senior spent so short a time at Queen’s Warminster? Why had he been translated so swiftly to such a relative backwater? Bognor was suspicious. His wife, Muriel, was the daughter of a general, a friend and protege of Field Marshal Haig in World War One. That too aroused Bognor’s suspicion, though he was not sure precisely why. Muriel had a posthumous reputation in West Somerset for prodigious snobbery, whereas her husband was known throughout the area as a man of the people.