Death in the Opening Chapter by Tim Heald Read Free Book Online Page B

the single book – something to do with expectations. Not great in Allgood’s case. He knew this to be unfair, but was convinced that the author was an untalented showman. He had a beard and was very short. Bognor had an aversion to small, hairy writers, which was based entirely on prejudice but was more or less unshakeable, probably for that very reason.
    â€˜Was Sebastian the vicar during Allgood’s previous residency?’ asked Bognor, quick as the proverbial flash. He liked not to be seen missing tricks, especially when so clumsily flaunted.
    â€˜As a matter of fact, Sebastian was newly arrived. They didn’t get on. Allgood criticized Sebby’s sermon, which was ill-advised. He was sensitive about his sermons, Sebastian.’
    â€˜Don’t blame him,’ said Bognor. ‘What was the point of Allgood’s criticism?’
    â€˜Oh, Allgood was going through a Dawkins’ atheist phase as usual and Sebastian was sympathetic to the creationist johnnies. Not hook-line-and-sinkered, but sympathetic. Sebastian had a fatal tendency to see all sides to an argument; Allgood only ever saw one.’
    â€˜Seldom the same,’ smiled Bognor.
    â€˜No one ever accused Martin of consistency,’ said Sir Branwell. ‘Not even Martin, and a lot of the time he is his own worst enemy. As he freely admits.’
    â€˜Did he dislike the vicar enough to kill him?’
    The squire thought for a moment. ‘At the time, maybe. But Allgood never harboured anything for very long. Least of all grudges. And these days he’s something of a creationist himself. If you believe what you read in the papers.’
    â€˜No.’ Bognor grinned. ‘I don’t.’
    He didn’t either.
    Bognor reflected that he had included his old friends in Contractor’s brief. The office genius had duly obliged. But.
    Neither Branwell nor Camilla had escaped Contractor’s forensic attentions. They couldn’t. What’s more, they would both have been mortified if they had been left out. There was nothing in the reports of his two old friends that caused Bognor to so much as raise an eyebrow. Nevertheless, he felt as if he we were reading an obituary by a professional who hadn’t known the deceased, or a eulogy by a friend of a friend at one of those impersonal memorial services. Too often, the preacher hadn’t known the centrally departed any more than the obituarist. It was just so with Harvey Contractor. The reports had professional finesse but lacked true knowledge. Bognor knew both rather better than the back of his hand. Which was why he eliminated them from his enquiries.

SIX
    S ir Simon and Lady Bognor went for a walk later that morning, before the sherry which always preceded Sunday lunch.
    The two had walked together since before they were married and it had become a ritual, even though their walking had an imbalance which handicapped the process from the very beginning. This lay in the fact that Monica had two speeds and her husband only one. Never the twain did meet. Monica moved fast or slow. The former was designed for getting from A to B with maximum expedition and was used in airports, railway stations and other places of no passing interest, where the arriving was all that mattered and the travelling merely a tiresome necessity. The other, slower, speed was for window shopping. Bognor referred to it as dawdling.
    He himself walked at a speed which suited him but, essentially, belonged to no one else. Because of this, he was often an anthropomorphism of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘cat that walked by himself’. He was at one and the same time gregarious and solitary, and his walking speed suited him. When it was appropriate he adjusted his speed to that of other people, but he was basically only happy at his own idiosyncratic medium pace. It left him alone with his own thoughts, untroubled by interruption.
    So Simon and Monica walked at different speeds, but