‘I absolutely agree,’ said Camilla, ‘that you have produced a number of people who disliked vicars in general and this one in particular. But most of them live outside the town. I think you’ll find the average Mallburnian remarkably tolerant. The philosophy here has always been “live and let live”. Even if the locals shared the average metropolitan dislike of poor little Sebastian, I don’t think they wished him any particular harm. Only seriously zealous and peculiar people listen to sermons, or pay any attention to what the padre says. Anglicanism is a minority business. You’ll find much more passion in Southall or Bradford. Muslims and Sikhs take religion pretty seriously. You could say that even Jews and Catholics are the same. The C of E has always been a great deal more restrained. And nowhere more so, dare I say it, than in Mallborne.’
‘And she speaks as an outsider herself.’
This, in a manner of speaking, was true. Camilla’s father had been an academic at the University of Edinburgh. She came, if she came from anywhere, from the Kingdom of Fife. She was not a Mallburnian; not even English.
‘And Allgood certainly isn’t from these parts,’ said Bognor, moving on to the next most serious suspect.
‘Probably from the same part of Essex as the cook,’ said Fludd.
‘What have you got against Essex?’ asked Monica. ‘Parts of it are perfectly nice, and some quite acceptable people come from there: Constable, Paul Jennings, Ruth Rendell. Some people would even include Randolph Churchill. Not me, I agree, but some would. I’d be surprised if you’d even been there.’
‘Went for cricket once,’ said Fludd, sharpish. ‘Chelmsford. Rain. Only a couple of overs. No runs. Bailey batting.’
This was almost, but not quite, a non-sequitur.
‘Whatever, Allgood seems to have made everything up.’ This was Bognor, claiming inside knowledge. After all, he had the advantage of a post-performance personal talk.
‘Hmmm,’ said Branwell. ‘Plagiarism is a dodgy area.’
‘Who said anything about plagiarism?’ asked Bognor. ‘My feeling about Allgood is that he’s perfectly original. A plagiarist is someone who borrows from someone else.’
‘Steals,’ said Monica. ‘A plagiarist is one who steals.’
‘Novelists are always being advised to write about what they know. That means real life. And that means that writers of fiction steal their material from what actually happens. Which is why so many novels are a pale imitation of life itself. Allgood’s included.’
‘But you’ve never read an Allgood,’ said Monica. ‘So how could you possibly know?’
‘I’ve read the reviews,’ said Branwell, ‘and I’ve heard him talk. That’s good enough for me.’
‘You surely don’t believe what you read in the papers?’ asked Monica, full of assumed incredulity. ‘Any more than what you hear at literary festivals. It may not be plagiarized but it’s certainly not the truth.’
‘Whatever that is,’ said her husband. He spoke morosely.
‘Oh, come on, Simon,’ said Sir Branwell, ‘You’ve done a terrific job of going through the motions. You’ve interviewed all sorts of people with tremendous tact and circumspection, and we haven’t had a jawnalist within sniffing distance. We’re incredibly grateful. A real busman’s holiday for you. I’m truly grateful. We all are. We can bury poor little Sebastian, let him rest in peace, draw a line in the sand and move on. Thanks, largely, to you.’
And, so, thought Bognor, that was it. He felt used, soiled, unconvinced. This was not a new feeling. Far from it. That was partly why he felt so distressed. Not for the first time, he had failed to prove what he believed. Worse than that, he had become a sort of establishment fall-guy, giving a spurious respectability to a cover-up. Perhaps he was mistaken; maybe the vicar had killed himself in this melodramatic fashion, at this inconvenient time. In any event, Bognor had been there to pour oil, to give everything an orderly respectability. In doing so, he had connived in a deception and done what authority wished.
‘I always said,’ said Sir Branwell, rubbing it in, ‘that it was suicide. I have to say that it’s gratifying to be proved right by an expert.’
‘Nothing like consistency,’ commented Sir Simon.
To which Sir Branwell, completely unfazed, said that he had always been taught that inconsistency was the better part of politeness, just as discretion was the better part of valour. Or words to that effect.
Bognor also winced at the use of the word ‘expert’. It was not used ironically but that was its effect on him. All his life he had striven for what was right, whereas the world and his wife wanted only what was expedient. There were occasions on which Bognor felt as if he were in a macabre spaghetti western, holed up in some impregnable eyrie with only a few bullets left for his carbine and a cyanide bullet to kill himself rather than surrender. In the plain below, the enemy was the world itself – an unlikely fusion of the US Cavalry and the Apache; of Burt Lancaster, Henry Fonda and sundry bit-part actors in feathers and make-up; an impossible coalition of good and bad, in which only he was more than window dressing. His was the voice in the wilderness. Everyone else but him was out of step. He would sell his life as dearly as possible, but in the end he would bite the lethal capsule and die an unlamented and unnoticed death.
In real life, he had taken a knighthood and become head of department. He would retire gracelessly and frequent the London Library and his gentleman’s club, where he would bore away at the centre table – a figure to be avoided, pitied and ridiculed. His would be a life of convention. What had once promised so much, had turned to ashes. Worse still, he was a living excuse for evil. The world was a worse place for his existence, but he gave it respectability, for he was a safe pair of hands, a man of integrity, an Apocrypha graduate.
He felt desolate and his friend was rubbing salt in his wounds.
‘Just because I couldn’t prove otherwise, doesn’t mean that the vicar committed suicide.’
‘Of course not,’ said Sir Branwell. ‘Cheer up and have another biscuit. Enjoy the rest of the festival. Relax.’
Upstairs in their vast, chilly bedroom Bognor flipped through the pages of his programme and told himself that he had failed.
His wife, however, seemed elated.
‘I think I’ve cracked it,’ she said. ‘I was barking up completely the wrong tree. Because the clue was on a hymn board, I immediately assumed I’d find the answer in Hymns Ancient and Modern, whereas it was in the Bible itself. I should have known. Even the revised version of the hymnal stops in the six hundreds, so anything beginning with a seven and a nine had to come from somewhere else. QED. So the hymn board wasn’t advertising hymns. It wasn’t intended as a public instruction for the congregation, more of a private message. Bit like a crossword clue.’
‘You’ve lost me,’ said Bognor, ‘and it doesn’t matter. We record some sort of open verdict, bury the poor padre and move on. There is a line in the sand, or whatever the appropriate cliche is. Your solution is too late. Probably wrong, as well. In any case, it couldn’t matter less. I’ve screwed up, but I’ve screwed up in a way that suits the Fludds and the chief constable and Dorcas and Ebenezer, and everyone else in the world. But I still have a sneaky feeling…’
He sighed. The refrain was frequent. Just when you had reached the peak of the mountain, you realized it was an illusion, and you had another climb to make. It was an ascent too far. He had been here before. Often.