Tim Heald: Death in the opening chapter

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.