‘So your husband was punctual and thoughtful, liked dogs but hated pets?’
She smiled. ‘That makes him sound, oh, you know…’ She broke off, trying to put her late husband into something approaching perspective. ‘Sebastian was a people person…’ she said, eventually, and then seemed to be aware that this was a cliche – possibly comforting, but not true. At least not necessarily, not everlastingly.
‘I think he liked people,’ she said, ‘no matter what the state of their beliefs. Or behaviour. He really liked sinners. In fact, I think he preferred sinners to the righteous. Give him a good murderer, any day. Virtuous people were a bit limp and Laodicean for him.’
‘He’d have spewed them out?’ he ventured.
She caught the biblical allusion and smiled.
‘I thought I knew him,’ she said. ‘Now, I begin to wonder if I knew him any better than anyone else. I begin to wonder if anyone really knew him. But, I also begin to wonder if anyone really knows anyone else. Indeed, I wonder whether we know ourselves.’
‘Probably not,’ said Bognor. After all, he hardly knew himself, so why should anyone else, even Monica?
He realized, dimly, that the interview was wandering out of control. Spiralling. On the other hand, the best interviews were like that. Only idiots used clipboards and were not prepared for apparent inconsequentialities, unexpected riders, things that went bump and interfered with arguments and prejudices. Even so…
‘It must have been distressing?’
‘Finding him?’ She considered the question. ‘I suppose so, though not in the way I expected.’
‘Expected?’
She seemed surprised that he had picked up on the word.
‘I’d thought about it,’ she said. ‘Doesn’t everyone? Life can’t go on for ever. We have to be prepared for God doing something we hadn’t bargained for.’
‘So you think it was an act of God?’
‘I think I’m a Christian,’ she said, ‘and if that’s what I am, then everything is in some way an act of God. Isn’t that part of being a Christian? We have a bit of free will, but only a bit, and even that’s an illusion. God can always override it.’
‘You could put it like that,’ Bognor agreed. He saw her point of view from deep down, as well as professionally. In that sense, he had to agree with Sir Branwell. What difference, in the great scheme of things, did man’s verdict of innocent or guilty mean? Were they absolute concepts? Valid concepts, even?
‘You do realize that you were either the last person to see your husband alive or the first person to see him dead.’
‘That presupposes that either he committed suicide or that I killed him. It doesn’t allow for murder by a third party. If that happened, then the murderer would have been the last person to see him alive and the first person to see him dead.’
‘Which was it?’
He felt exasperated. At one moment she seemed almost precociously bright, the next unconscionably dim. There didn’t seem to be any half measures.
‘The last person to see him alive? Or the first person to see him dead?’
She allowed herself a fleeting smile. ‘If I killed dear Sebastian, then the two aren’t exclusive. In fact, they’re the reverse. If I killed him, then I would be the last person to see him alive and the first to see him dead. If I wasn’t the murderer, I wouldn’t have seen him alive. Only the body.’
‘So which was it? First? Or both? Did you kill him? Did he kill himself? Or was it a third party?’
‘You’re the professional,’ she said sweetly. ‘It’s for you to decide.’
TWENTY
He was getting somewhere, even though he didn’t know where. Even the arrival was far from assured. He felt as if this meandering interrogation was going to end in a conclusion, but he still didn’t know what it was, nor even if it would be useful or germane.
He shifted tack.
‘Do you think your husband’s death had anything to do with the literary festival? Or was it just a coincidence?’
Again she smiled.
‘The timing is interesting,’ she said. ‘If he had died at any other time, it would have been unlikely to attract attention. As it… well… who can say? Part of your role is to avoid publicity, keep things tidy and orderly, to avoid fuss. On the other hand, I sense that you want to establish the truth. The two may coincide. Or not. Who knows?’
‘I don’t think that answers my question,’ he said. ‘One of my problems is to establish whether this tragedy could have occurred at any time, or whether it took place specifically because it was the eve of the festival. What do you think?’
‘I don’t know,’ she said.
‘But what do you Thinking and knowing aren’t the same. One is an opinion and the other is a statement of fact. If you can produce the latter, then that’s great, but I suspect you can’t. In which case, I’ll have to make do with something more speculative. Obviously, that’s not as helpful, but it’s better than nothing.’ think?
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, ‘I really am, but I don’t have an opinion.’
He shifted tack again.
‘When I talked to the bishop,’ he said, ‘I got the impression that Sebastian was going through some kind of crisis. He was suddenly doubting his belief. Personally, I don’t see that there is any relation between this crisis of confidence and the festival. I could be wrong, of course, but I don’t see any connection. What do you think, though? Was the bishop right? Was the crisis real? Was it significant? Did it have anything to do with the festival. With books? With literature? With being a Fludd?’
Dorcas seemed anguished and confused.
‘Ebenezer shouldn’t have told you. He only knew about it because he was in a privileged position. It was as if it had been in the confessional. Not that I’m a papist, or anything so vulgar.’
The word ‘papist’ sounded ludicrously pejorative and old-fashioned to his ecumenical ears. She made ‘vulgar’ sound vulgar too. He was moderately surprised to hear the bishop referred to with quite such easy familiarity. Three words in about the same number of sentences. He wondered if he was becoming lexicographically threatened.
‘Do you think your husband killed himself?’ he asked. ‘It’s a simple question, and you’re in the best position to answer. I have to tell you that there is a lot of pressure to decide that he did. It’s neater. May not be true, but it’s tidy, and why not? If he was murdered by someone else, it’s not going to help him. Nothing we do will bring him back.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I suppose not. He would have preferred it that way.’
‘Sorry?’ said Bognor, not understanding. ‘What would he have preferred and why?’
‘He never liked fuss. If he had to be dead, he’d rather just be buried and forgotten. That was his style, and nothing in that respect had changed.’
‘What other things had changed?’ This time Bognor knew – or thought he knew – what the answer should be. On the other hand, he didn’t know whether the widow would want to give it.