Death in the Opening Chapter Read Online Free PDF

Bognor. He could see that the vicar had been a tiresome priest, if seldom turbulent. Turbulence was obviously not in his nature, which was a pity as far as Sir Simon was concerned, as he had a definite weak spot for turbulence of almost every description. Perhaps the vicar had, as it were, kicked his own bucket; taken his own life; died by his own. Yet suicide, despite a popular view that it constituted cowardice – not a view to which Bognor ever ascribed – required a certainty, not to mention a moral courage, which was not part of the former padre’s make-up. Bognor was not at all sure what had happened in the night, but he was pretty sure it wasn’t suicide. Something had clearly gone bump but the drama had been inflicted by an outside agency. Of that he was already certain. He felt it in his water, which was, on the whole, and on the evidence of past history, as good an indicator as any.
    He said so out loud, seeking confirmation, and was glad to receive it.
    â€˜I don’t think he killed himself,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t sound in character.’
    Sir Branwell shook his head sadly. ‘I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘For all kinds of reason. Nevertheless, I find it hard to believe that anyone would have done such a thing on purpose. It seems to me much more like a hideous mistake.’ Sir Branwell was a cock-up man rather than a conspiracy theorist. He held to the belief that when ‘Crusoe’, the great Somerset fast bowler and scribe killed himself, he overdosed by mistake. Chaps made mistakes. Name of the game. Fact of life. Could be awkward, but most real awkwardness was the product of confusion and inertia, not malice aforethought.
    â€˜Hideous mistake, eh?’
    Bognor laughed mirthlessly, having been taught, like his host, that clichés were full of dangerous assumptions and prejudices.
    â€˜For once,’ he said, ‘the mistake really would have been hideous. Not often you can say that, eh?’

FOUR
    T he chief constable was, as usual, brisk and efficient.
    Actually this was not true. The chief constable was the reason the boys were in the library, and it was into the library that the chief constable was ushered by Brandon the butler. Brandon did for the Fludds upstairs, while Mrs Brandon toiled away below stairs, behind the baize and below the salt. She was the invisible half, while her husband was all mouth and striped trouser. He buttled; she cooked; he was the outward sign that all was well; she the inner strength that ensured it really, almost, was. Time was when the manor would have supported a staff of several, if not of thousands. Now it was just the two of them: Harry and Peggoty.
    â€˜Black, two sugars,’ said the chief constable. He shot with Sir Branwell; his wife played bridge with Sir Branwell’s wife. They were both ‘county’.
    The chief constable, whose name was Jones, came from elsewhere but was ‘county’ by rank and assimilation. He was also living proof of the fact that in modern Britain, still, there were two sides to almost every question: the visible and the invisible. With the post-Murdoch decline in the concept of the Fourth Estate and of the press as a tribune of the people, the invisible side of British life had become more significant and the visible more perfunctory. Nevertheless, the distinction was maintained. There was a way in which things were seen to be done and there was a way in which things were actually done. This distinction was further complicated by the twin and, on the whole, contrary distinctions between ‘conspiracy’ and ‘cock-up’.
    It was widely believed that these two theories stood for an ‘either or’; that you either had a conspiracy or you had a cock-up, and that this explained everything. However, Bognor’s life experience, contrary to that of Sir Branwell and others, suggested that the two ideas were not alternatives and that the