confidence.
âWeâll have to be clever.â
âNaturally.â Sir Branwell never allowed his 4th class honours degree to interfere with his assurance on this account.
Bognor couldnât help feeling that things had come to a pretty pass when a Lord Lieutenant and the Board of Tradeâs head of special investigations had to resort to subterfuge in order to ensure rights that were supposed to have been established almost eight hundred years earlier. But then things had come to a pretty pass. He was aware of that.
âAssuming our man was murdered, who would have done it? And who could have done it?â
The squire thought for a moment. âOpportunity is almost universal,â he said, after a momentâs reflection. âMotive practically the reverse.â
âYes,â said Bognor, wanting and needing more.
âWell,â said Sir Branwell, âthe padre was in the habit of going to his church for a bit of solitary rehearsal, communion with his Lord and whatever took his fancy before preaching the following day. He was very much a creature of habit. Everyone knew that he was due to preach the opening festival sermon â which, incidentally, we had better cancel â and that therefore he would be alone in church the evening before. Solitary and vulnerable.â
âNo need to cancel,â said Bognor unexpectedly and at an apparent tangent. âIâll preach.â
âYou what?â Sir Branwell had not been expecting this.
âI said Iâll preach,â said Bognor. âCould be a useful opportunity to pre-empt some thunderous chief costabular strike.â
âBut youâve never preached before in your life.â
âAlways a first time,â said Bognor, with a characteristic lack of modesty. âAnd Iâve always fancied it. Nice frock, captive audience, pulpit. Ask Monica. Being a bishop was always one of my several ambitions. Iâd have made rather a good bishop. Pope, even.â
âHe captains one of the other teams,â said Sir Branwell, who had taken to the pulpit on a number of occasions in his role as one of the countyâs great and good. He too rather rated himself on the sermon front, though with better evidence than his contemporary. He had to concede, however, that Bognor had the better degree.
âIâd have been a perfectly acceptable Mullah and a decent enough rabbi,â said Bognor, not wholly facetiously. âI might not have been quite so hot on the Indian fakir front. Swami Simon doesnât tremendously appeal, though I quite fancy the frock and the beard.â
âNot to mention the sex.â
âMuch exaggerated, Iâm told,â he said. âBesides, I have a feeling Monica might have views on the matter, and if it came to a head-to-head between the Lord God Almighty and my wife, I know who Iâm backing.â
âSo,â said Sir Branwell, returning to his subject in a single leap, âwhen it comes to opportunity, the world is your oyster. When weâre dealing with motive, the oyster becomes shut like a trap. There arenât any. Traps, that is. Nor much in the way of motive. As for opportunities . . .â He seemed suddenly thoughtful.
âWell,â said Bognor, being constructive, â cherchez la femme . In the absence of any other suspects thatâs where one is always taught to start. La femme . Crime passionelle .â
âI hardly think . . .â began Sir Branwell. âBut then . . . well . . . poor sausage.â He recalled the messenger who had, as it were, brought the bad news from Ghent. âYou mean Dorcas. Cherchez Dorcas. It doesnât sound convincing. Iâm not convinced. I doubt youâll convince a jury. Or a judge. Not by starting with Dorcas.â
âWe have to begin with someone,â said Bognor. âAnd if Dorcas is the only candidate, then we have to begin