Tim Heald: Death in the opening chapter

Sir Branwell had shot since he was so high. Bognor did not shoot, never having seen the point. He ate birds mowed down by others but deplored their turning it into sport. His disapproval was, however, mild and did not extend to the table.

Chief Constable Jones said the suicide was sad, that the balance of the poor man’s mind had obviously been disturbed, but that he would have wished life, and more particularly, the festival, to go on as near to normal as was decently possible. The chief constable had not yet won his knighthood. Bognor had, risibly, acquired his; Sir Branwell’s came as his natural inheritance.

‘I’m not at all sure he did kill himself,’ said Sir Simon.

‘Sir Simon thinks it was murder,’ said Sir Branwell. He laid emphasis on the word ‘sir’ and noticed that the chief constable noticed. This pleased him.

Mr Jones shrugged a man-of-the-world shrug and smiled what was meant to be a man-of-the-world smile but came out as more of a pained rictus.

‘Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t,’ he said, ‘but it will be much more convenient all round if it’s suicide. And seen to be so. I’m sure that can be arranged. The local press is very good. Editor has a decent handicap. We play eighteen holes every Thursday at Royal Mallborne. Suicide’s the ticket. Much the best for everyone.’

‘Not for the widow,’ said Bognor. ‘If it’s suicide, the insurance company won’t pay up.’

‘Oh,’ said the chief constable, ‘God will provide.’

‘Doubt it,’ said Sir Branwell. ‘His people are strapped for cash right now. The diocese made some ill-advised investments in Iceland. Besides, the Lord thy God is inclined to be a bit tight where lucre is concerned. His son came down to tell us it was filthy and diminished one’s chances of making it upstairs. Eyes of needles, camels, haystacks and all that.’ He paused, proud of his Biblical knowledge. Bognor was impressed; the policeman less so.

‘My professional opinion is that it was suicide,’ said the man Jones.

Neither Sir Branwell nor Bognor gave a fig for his professional opinion.

‘Sir Simon’s professional opinion is that it could perfectly well have been murder.’

The chief constable was on the brink of saying that he didn’t give much of a fig for Bognor’s professional opinion but evidently thought better of it, and before he made a fool of himself simply repeated two words.

‘Professional opinion?’ he said, inviting explanation.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Sir Branwell, not sorry at all, ‘I should have said that Sir Simon runs SIDBOT – The Special Investigations Department of the Board of Trade. There’s very little in the field of crime that he hasn’t solved in his day. The murder of Champion Whately Wonderful, Britain’s Prize Poodle; skulduggery in one of our best known monastic communities; Fleet Street; the Stately Home Industry; Canada; publishing; even the sudden and unexpected death of the Master of our own dear college. You name it and Sir Simon has been there. And he always gets his man.’

‘Well,’ Bognor had the decency to look mildly, if not wholly, embarrassed, pinkening a shade and shuffling his feet in a less than convincing suggestion that his host had been over-egging the pudding, ‘I wouldn’t put it quite like that.’

Chief Constable Jones was visibly shaken. He had taken Bognor for one of life’s failures, like so many of Sir Branwell’s friends. He seemed so understated, so frayed at the edges, so positively unremarkable. In the normal course of events the chief constable would probably not have noticed him. In this the chief constable would have been wrong as usual, but his would have been a common enough reaction. Bognor was not instantly noticeable and this was part of the reason for his success. He grew on one like ivy on a wall or moss on an unturned stone. Men like Jones often failed to notice and when they finally did, it was too late.

‘You don’t think it was suicide, Sir Simon.’ The chief constable was careful to remember the knighthood, to which he and, more keenly Mrs Jones, aspired.

‘Neither of us are attracted to the idea,’ said Bognor. ‘It seems too obvious. And not in character. Or not, at least, from what I know of the man. There was no note.’

‘No note.’

‘No note.’

Silence enwrapped them.

‘In my experience of suicide, which I may say is considerable, there is usually a note,’ said Jones. ‘Just because a note has not yet been found does not necessarily mean that there is no note. Or indeed notes. Sometimes the deceased sends several.’

‘The Reverend Sebastian was not,’ said the patron of his living, ‘a man of many words. Except when he took to the pulpit.’

‘Shy or just… er, laconic…?’ asked Bognor.

‘Economic with words,’ said his namesake. ‘Believed that actions spoke louder. Tended to leave matters unminced except at matins.’

‘In any event,’ said Jones, sounding like the man of the world he wanted to be, ‘suicide would, generally speaking, be a much more convenient verdict.’

The other two looked at him incredulously. Both, in their different ways, led sheltered lives. Here was the force of law and order expressing a preference for convenience over truth. Both Bognor and Fludd had a naive belief that the police believed in justice and the triumph of good over evil. Yet, here was a top police person suggesting, as far as they could see, that a man had not been murdered because the investigation and the concomitant apparatus would be too much bother.

‘But what if he were killed?’ asked Sir Branwell, as mildly as he could manage while still being polite.

‘So what?’ asked Mr Jones, meaning to sound rhetorical and wringing his hands. ‘A murder enquiry involves an inordinate amount of fuss. There will be officers, uniformed and uninformed all over the place. The press, possibly even national, will descend like vultures. There will be television cameras; statements to be taken; lines to be drawn. The whole thing will be excessively tedious.’

‘That’s the way with British justice,’ said Bognor. Had Jones known him better, he would have noticed that there was an edge to Bognor’s voice at this point and that this edge suggested danger. He should have been alerted and gone into back-pedalling mode. Instead, he blundered on.

‘We’re here to ensure a quiet, orderly life,’ he told them, in words that he had obviously uttered before. Often. ‘The job of the police is the same as that of all authority, namely to maintain an orderly society, prevent undue irregularity, alarms, excursions and things that bring other things into disrepute. There are necessarily times when in order to maintain a sense of order and common sense, corners have to be cut and a certain economy with regard to the truth has to be effected. That is why we employ public relations officers and other consultants. We seek to allay fears and to facilitate the order of the day. So, suicide, which is regrettable but rocks no boats, is preferable to murder, which upsets people.’

‘So, the police hoodwinks the public and turns a blind eye when it suits them,’ said Bognor with deceptive blandness.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ said the chief constable, ‘though I’d be unlikely to say so in public.’ He laughed mirthlessly. ‘My PR people wouldn’t allow it.’

Neither Bognor nor Sir Branwell joined in.

‘I was always taught,’ said Sir Branwell, ‘that justice not only had to be done, but had to be seen to be done.’

The chief constable, believing that he had won the day, was well into his stride, ‘That’s a very old-fashioned way of looking at things,’ he said. ‘Seeing is now believing. The vital thing is that justice must be seen to be done. Whether or not it really has is neither here nor there. Life is a game of smoke and mirrors. Providing these are convincing, nothing else matters.’