Death in the Opening Chapter by Tim Heald Page B

said Bognor, not adding the word ‘stupid’, though his tone implied it. ‘But if he was murdered by someone he thought he could trust, someone he believed was a friend, then there’s no reason why he shouldn’t have made an appointment with him.’
    â€˜Or her.’ His wife was a stickler for feminine equality, even when it was a question of murder suspects. He admired her for it.
    â€˜You think it might have been a woman?’
    She thought for a moment, as if the idea had only just occurred to her.
    â€˜I don’t see why not,’ she said. ‘The only possible reason for supposing it was a man that did it is if it’s a question of brute strength. I’m prepared to concede that the average man is stronger than the average woman. But we aren’t talking brute strength here.’
    â€˜Big of you.’ His wife’s feminism was a matter of edgy humour between them. Deep down, Bognor reckoned he was more of a feminist than she was; Monica, on the other hand, tended to the Marilyn French view that all men were rapists no matter what. Unsurprisingly, they both took considerable exception to such opposing views in the battle of the sexes, so that they went unexpressed, even though they were at the root of all arguments on matters of gender. Part of the problem was that husband and wife both regarded themselves as liberal and progressive on matters of sex, whereas in fact they were as susceptible to ingrained prejudice as the next man or woman. In professional matters this signified little, but they suffered from the popular belief that they were both in their quite different ways superior to the normal conventions that applied to the essential differences between men and women. In fact, they suffered from the usual old-fashioned failings that had afflicted men and women for ever. Bognor, for example, did not really see the point in soap and water; Monica, however, could not have too much of either. There were other differences involving everything from map reading, through punctuality, to shopping for shoes. Both would hotly deny that they ever succumbed to sexual stereotyping. Neither, however, would be entirely correct.
    Privately, Bognor thought women made rotten detectives and, if forced to admit it, he would have included his wife in that generalization. Monica, more or less, up to a point, thought precisely the opposite.
    But neither of them would ever admit it.
    â€˜I feel like a dry sherry,’ he said, looking, like all Englishman, at his watch whenever the question of alcoholic drink was mentioned.
    â€˜G and T for me,’ she said, ‘and an olive from Fortnums. One thing I’ll say for your old friend, he does Bombay Sapphire and a mean olive.’
    And they turned for the ha-ha and home, with nothing resolved and the mysterious death of the vicar still hovering uneasily on what was otherwise a perfect country Sunday. They both enjoyed habit, particularly when it blurred into tradition. There was something comforting about the sort of library drinks, decent but unfussy meat and two veg with a claret to match and a couple of Labradors under the table. It may not have made Britain Great but it certainly made England English.
    Even a murdered vicar had an agreeably timeless feel to it. One felt the English had been murdering vicars and drinking warm sherry since time immemorial. Rooks cawed as they negotiated the cattle grid on to the gravel and lawn, which led up to an Englishman’s cockeyed version of what Palladio had built for the nobility of the Veneto. It was like so many things English – a friendly, agreeable, slightly tumbledown misunderstanding of the real thing. England was meant to be frayed at the edges, well worn and a not quite perfect fit.
    Even sudden death had an old banger, rust-bucket feel to it. That was the British way of murder that was.

SEVEN
    O ne of the forensic pleasures of weekends chez Fludd was working out the