Death in the Opening Chapter Read Online Free PDF Page A

host frowned.
    â€˜Have you noticed,’ said Bognor, ‘that popularity nowadays breeds popularity? It’s the reverse of what I think we were taught at Apocrypha.’
    â€˜That the eclectic and unusual was preferable to received wisdom.’
    â€˜Something like that,’ said Bognor. ‘Nowadays we are all more or less victims of herd instinct. If everybody likes something it is automatically good. A best-seller is better than something only a minority admires. Majority taste is good taste.’
    â€˜That’s new?’
    â€˜I think so, yes. In the old days someone like the Reverend Sebastian would have been accepted in a way that he wasn’t nowadays.’
    â€˜Because he was odd?’
    â€˜Maybe,’ said Bognor, ‘maybe not.’ He was thinking. It made him frown. ‘It’s to do with dumbing down. We distrust anything that’s out of the ordinary. We live in the age of the common man. If the common man thinks something’s good, then it is by definition good. If not, it’s unpopular. Ergo bad.’
    â€˜Elitist?’ asked Sir Branwell who recognized the argument and sympathized with it.
    â€˜Could be,’ said Bognor, ‘but not necessarily so. Manchester United are popular and excellent. Accrington Stanley less so. That doesn’t make Accrington Stanley bad.’
    â€˜But they are bad. Man U would have them for breakfast any day of the week.’
    They were getting into irrelevant waters, the land of the red herring. Bognor tried bringing them back to something approaching Earth.
    â€˜Are we saying that the vicar was murdered because he was no good? A sort of ecclesiastical equivalent of a team that lurches between the lower divisions of the football league and something sponsored by a cement company.’
    â€˜No,’ said Bognor, thoughtfully. ‘The Reverend Sebastian sounds like a man with few friends, but, by the same token, he probably had few enemies. He was too Laodicean to aspire to either. Difficult to be enthusiastic about someone lukewarm.’
    â€˜I wouldn’t describe Sebastian as “lukewarm”,’ said Sir Branwell. ‘Useless, yes; lukewarm, no. He had some strong opinions. Women priests, Muslim fundamentalists. Strong, very.’
    â€˜Pro or anti?’
    â€˜Pro. Sebastian was teetering on the brink of being radical. Never over the edge, being one of life’s teeterers. He was always on, or near a brink, but never quite over.’
    Bognor smiled. ‘You didn’t like him.’
    His old chum smiled back. ‘I don’t think liking really came into it. That was the point about Sebby. You didn’t like him or dislike him. He just was, if you see what I mean.’
    â€˜High church?’
    â€˜High on the whole,’ said Sir Branwell. ‘Keen on smells and bells. Latin. But a soft spot for that American-Kiwi monk, Merton, which puts him on the left, I would think. Difficult to pigeonhole Sebastian, which was one of his few attractive features. You never knew what he was going to think about anything. Come to think of it, I don’t suppose he had much of a clue himself.’
    â€˜Bit of a ditherer as well as a teeterer,’ said Bognor.
    â€˜Uncertainty was his middle name,’ said the squire. ‘Except when he was certain of something. That’s one thing you can say for him. Well, could say for him, when he was, well, you know, alive. He was assailed by doubt. I rather approve of doubt.’
    â€˜Up to a point,’ said Bognor, repeating an Apocrypha adage. They both recognized it and grinned.
    â€˜So, in an age of certainty he was a prey to doubt,’ said Bognor, ‘and in an age when popularity was a mark of merit, he was prepared to be unpopular. Sounds rather a good thing.’
    â€˜No, not at all,’ said Sir Branwell. ‘That’s far too positive. He was never that black and white.’
    â€˜No,’ said