‘Part of the price of being in the public eye,’ he said, wondering if being the Vicar of St Teath’s in Mallborne was the same as being ‘in the public eye’. ‘Other people,’ he continued, ‘have opinions. They seem to believe they have a right to them. And people who are sensitive think they matter.’
‘He was certainly sensitive, poor love,’ she said, and shook her head. ‘He cared. Cared too much, especially about what others thought, or what he thought they thought.’ She smiled wistfully, as if to herself. ‘He was his own enemy, in that respect. Cared too much. But you can’t change human nature. He was always vivid when it came to others. He saw them in Technicolor but he was monochrome himself. So very monochrome. Maybe it was the greyness that killed him. Black and white, even. If he had seen things in colour perhaps he would have survived.’
They both mused. Bognor decided privately that she was slightly deranged, making little or no sense. Greyness and sensitivity suggested something that would not stand up in a court of law, and would cause a jury to have palpitations. A small part of him, however, thought it might just contain a kernel of truth.
‘Dorcas was dead,’ she said, ‘until Saint Peter brought her back to life. Do you think that can be true? Or was she asleep? Or comatose? I don’t think Peter had the gift. Saint or not. I suppose it’s possible, though. People must have thought she was dead and that she was then alive, and that Peter had performed the miracle. Sleight of hand, I suppose. Do you think Peter wanted to be thought capable of such a thing? Or was it an embarrassment?’
The doorbell sounded before Bognor could answer. Which he might not have done anyway, not having a plausible response. This felt horribly like religious mania and he was ill-equipped to cope. Mrs Fludd left. Presumably to open the door, and there were indeterminate noises off. Bognor felt he should have strained to catch any verbal exchanges but could not, honestly, be bothered. Eventually, the bishop entered. He was holding Dorcas’ hand and looking as near bashful as a bishop can. A coy cleric.
‘So you caught the clue,’ he said. ‘Took your time.’
‘I still don’t understand.’
Ebenezer smiled at him patronizingly. Only bishops could smile at senior civil servants like that. Bognor felt at once furious and very small. Young even.
‘I – we – wanted someone to find out,’ said the bishop, ‘but not just anyone.’
Bognor frowned. It seemed tricksy to him but then the whole thing seemed contrived. ‘Why not just take pills or slit your wrists in the bath?’
‘You’re thinking it’s all a touch melodramatic,’ said Ebenezer, ‘and maybe it is. Sebastian wanted to go out with a flourish, if not exactly a bang. So maybe we played along too much.’
‘I’m not with you,’ said Bognor. ‘Are you saying it was Sebastian’s own wish?’ He was groping. It sounded very much as if Ebenezer was suggesting that Dorcas and he had connived in the death. That would make it assisted suicide. A hanging judge would impose a gaol sentence. A liberal might let him off. Or, at least, put them on some form of report.
‘In so far as he was capable of making up what you choose to call – in what, if I might say, is a perverse, layman’s phraseology “his mind” – then, yes. It was his wish. It was time to go.’
‘Who says?’
‘We do,’ said Dorcas. ‘All three of us.’
Bognor did not like this at all. He could see where it was going to end. The bishop was going to pull rank and tell him he had no jurisdiction; that it was a matter for Sebastian and God, with a little help from his friends. Bognor felt increasingly patronized. It was like being back at school, and being told he was too young and inexperienced to have a view. This was a matter for adults, and he was still a child. The bishop and Dorcas were invoking a higher authority. He, however, dealt in more mundane matters. He had to. It was what he was paid for.
‘What about the book?’ he asked, floundering. ‘Did he write a book? Allgood had a story about a book. Used it in his talk. What about the brigadier and the 13th Mobile? Was there a debagging? Did it prey on his mind? Did Brandon’s father know something? Did he talk? And what about Vicenza Book, and her mum? What did he really think about them and their sexual antics? What about the harvest supper and Gunther? There are so many unanswered questions…’
He stopped in mid-sentence, aware that Dorcas and Ebenezer, the dead man’s widow and the dead man’s boss, were looking at him with something that veered between contempt and pity. He also realized that while he had a confession of sorts, it was not one that would stand up in court; nor one that would be admitted outside these walls. Dorcas and Ebenezer had helped the vicar on his way. They might have tied the knot; they might have kicked the stool. But it was what the dead man wanted. Correction, it was what Dorcas and Ebenezer said he wanted, and they knew Sebastian better than anyone, certainly far better than any judge and any jury. Bognor knew that he couldn’t recommend a prosecution. He knew that if he did such a thing, it would be thrown out. Not only that, but he would be ridiculed and vilified for daring to suggest that he knew better than the dead man’s wife and the dead man’s bishop, better even than the dead man’s God. Even so, he did have a sneaking feeling that this was true and that he was right.
Bognor was not happy.
‘I know what you’re about to say,’ he said. ‘You are about to say that Sebastian had lost his faith; that he had lost the capacity to love; that he had lost the capacity to believe. You are going to tell me that it is not my business, nor that of any man on earth. You are going to tell me that this is something which can only be determined in another place. You are about to tell me that my idea of justice and truth is nothing when measured against the eternal verities. You’re saying that I and my fellow man are not qualified, that this is best left to something or someone else.’
There was another silence.
Bognor broke it. ‘Is that what you’re telling me?’ he asked, and, even as he asked the question, he knew that he would not receive an answer until he too stood at the pearly gates in which he did not believe. If then. He had an uneasy feeling that St Peter, or his stand-in, would also be shtum.
They both looked at him patiently, sympathetically but condescendingly.
‘I’ll let myself out,’ he said. Neither the bishop nor Dorcas moved. And he left, cheeks stinging but not from the cold.
TWENTY-SEVEN
Simon Bognor never spoke to either ever again. He told Monica what had happened but no one else. She understood and said nothing. Neither Branwell nor Camilla said anything either, though they did not know the whole story.
Everything was tidied away. The verdict was vague. The job was done.
The bishop retired a few months later.
Dorcas left Mallborne a little earlier, and the two went to Cumbria, where they lived together, though they never married.
Dorcas Fludd had met her husband at theological college and it was she who, unsurprisingly, had made the running, and when the race was done, worn the trousers. Bognor guessed as much, but it was good to have Contractor’s confirmation. Contractor’s researches into the vicar’s wife told him little new, but it told him that his waters were right. Or his intuition. The Reverend Sebastian had been one of life’s holy fools. His wife was, by comparison, a tungsten-clawed butterfly.
He was reminded of the old saw about the wife who had often contemplated murdering her husband, but never divorce. It had been attributed to Elizabeth Longford, speaking of her maddeningly dotty husband, Frank, the Earl of Longford. Lady Longford was fiercely religious, not the first person one would associate with killing, and not one of life’s plagiarists, being of a largely original turn of phrase. It had been a third party who misattributed the remark, which went back a long way, possibly to the first divorce or even the first murder.