Death in the Opening Chapter by Tim Heald Page A

not enjoy change. He enjoyed the same always: food, hymns, words, grace, women.’
    â€˜Women,’ said Bognor, latching on to the oddity with speed. ‘What makes you say women?’
    Gunther Battenburg went pink.
    â€˜It is, as you say, a figure of speech.’
    â€˜But you thought the vicar was conservative when it came to sex?’
    â€˜Perhaps, but also, perhaps not.’
    The chef was discomfited and Bognor pressed home his advantage.
    â€˜Sex,’ he said. ‘Would you describe yourself as conservative when it came to sex?’
    Part of the fun of being a special investigator, even if only from the Board of Trade, was that it gave one a licence to ask questions from which one would normally have flinched. Thus sex.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ said Gunther, ‘I am not understanding.’
    Bognor was not sure where this was heading, but he asked the question that had been at the back of his mind long before he had actually met the chef.
    â€˜Gay are we, Gunther?’
    Monica was obviously outraged at such an irrelevant intrusion.
    â€˜I hardly think . . .’ she began, but her husband shushed her.
    â€˜Her Majesty’s government doesn’t pay for thought,’ he said, ‘especially from spouses. I just want to know whether Gunther here is homosexual.’
    Gunther was no longer looking particularly pink.
    â€˜I don’t understand what my sexual inclinations have to do with the death of the Reverend Sebastian,’ he said, giving the impression of understanding perfectly. ‘But, given a chance, I’ll fuck anything that moves. Sex seldom comes into it.’
    It wasn’t clear whether the Bognors found the admission, or the use of the Anglo-Saxon word, the more upsetting. They belonged to a generation and a class which tended to believe that homosexuality was an unpleasant disease best not mentioned, and in which only out-and-out bounders, such as Peregrine Worsthorne, used four-letter words in public. Nevertheless, Bognor had asked the question. He should have been expecting an answer he didn’t like and to hear words he only used, if at all, in private.
    â€˜You asked,’ said the chef, after a longish pause. ‘But I don’t see how it is going to help poor Sebastian or nail his killer.’
    â€˜So you don’t think it was suicide?’
    â€˜I didn’t say that, but, on balance, I think it’s unlikely. Sebastian was almost certainly gay, but I’d guess his sexuality was probably repressed.’
    â€˜What makes you say that?’
    â€˜I recognize the signs. Above all, only a certain sort of man would marry a woman like Dorcas, just as only a woman such as Dorcas would marry a gay cleric.’
    â€˜Meaning?’
    â€˜That Dorcas is a typical dyke. Repressed, non-practising, but still a dyke.’
    Another silence.
    â€˜You feel it in your gut?’
    â€˜I feel it in my gut. More prosecco?’
    The Bognors accepted and drank. In the old days, they would just have drunk with no questions asked. Nowadays, they had a problem. In today’s world, everyone preferred it if one didn’t drink alcohol at all. In any event, one was not allowed very much. The Bognors, however, belonged to a world and a generation which enjoyed a drink and did not regard this as a problem. Change of life. Bit like gaiety. What had once been a guilty secret was now an open affirmation.
    â€˜Anyway,’ said Gunther, ‘I didn’t kill him. I don’t know who did. I have a watertight alibi and no motive. May I go now and make porridge?’
    Bognor glanced at his wife. She agreed, but no third party would have known. They took their glasses into what was, in former days, the snug, and was now all beige furniture and black and white photographs.
    â€˜There was a time,’ said Bognor, ‘when cooks were just cooks, and chefs worked at a handful of great hotels.’
    â€˜Or were