Yet Another Death in Venice (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  Irving Silverburger had not been a member of The Club. In a number of important respects, he was perfect membership material, but he lacked one important qualification: he was not popular. He was natural blackball material, and someone would have destroyed any prospect of election. In this sense, The Club was like any other. Aspiring members required a proposer and a seconder. Their names were placed in a book, and members were invited to indicate their approval with a signature. From time to time, members were blackballed, which is to say that members objected to their election. One voice was enough to sustain non-election. And though you could bet that normally apathy would prevent such an occurrence, you would put your money on one or two members doing so in the unlikely event that Silverburger would find anyone foolish enough to propose and second him.

  So there were no Silverburgers in The Club. It was central, comfortable; the food and drink were easy on the stomach, and the largely female staff was easy on the eye and affable. Bognor had always wanted a usual table, and at The Club he had one. Membership was an indulgence, an extravagance, but, crucially, Monica allowed it.

  The other members were loners like Bognor. They were essentially unclubbable and not team players. This did not make them selfish or antisocial, but they were notably deficient in what Bognor thought of as “herd instinct” and they were high on an individuality, which he prized. They couldn’t, however, have been as individual as they thought or they would not, like him, have enjoyed The Club as much as he did. And this was the point. It was not so much that Bognor and other members of The Club did not like the idea, more that there had hitherto been no club for the likes of them. Now there was.

  So The Club existed for those for whom there had previously been no such animal. Mr. Silverburger was emphatically not a member, nor were any of those suspected of killing him. The suspects were, however, pleased to be asked. Obviously, no one had told them that food and drink did not come free. If they had told them, the suspects presumably felt that they were exceptions to this rule. If it were a rule, they would prove exceptions or even overturn it altogether. The suspects were nothing if not confident.

  Bognor ran through them in his head. The first was Eric Swanley, né Braun. It was not Eric’s fault that he was an accountant. Nor that he was originally German. It was more indicative of the sort of person that Bognor was that he had a prejudice against both. He disliked accountants because they were on the side of money, authority, neatness, and tidiness and he, personally, was against all of these. Not violently so, but he could see no point in them. He had the salaried person’s secure contempt for wealth and the greed that, in his opinion, was its natural concomitant. He was not naturally neat and he had never been any good at arithmetic, not basically seeing the point of sums. As for Germans, it was all to do with the war and football. He recognized that this was ridiculous, but he could not help himself. He had no aversions to foreigners in general, or to Germans when encountered in real life, but in the abstract he disliked the idea. Some of his best friends were German accountants, but he convinced himself that they were exceptions and proved nothing.

  He tended to think of accountants as “bean counters” and Germans as Krauts. The combination was lethal, and from time to time he could be heard sounding off to Monica or even Harvey Contractor about “Kraut bean-counters,” than whom there were few things worse. On the other hand calling people “Kraut bean-counters” did not mean you thought of German accountants in that way. It was a variation of calling a spade a spade and came into the same category as the duke of Edinburgh’s strictures on the Chinese and Indians. Just because Prince Philip was on record as saying that Chinese were slitty-eyed or Indian wiring was a shambles, did not mean he was prejudiced. To believe so was a failure to understand the nature of prejudice. So, Eric Swanley seemed a typical English accountant from suburban Kent, but he was actually a Kraut bean-counter from the former Communist East. Leipzig, probably. The fact that he was German; that his real name was Braun was no more important than his profession but the deception mattered. The deceit was significant. Lie about one thing and you might lie about another. You became a liar and the truth was of diminished value. Eric Swanley was a liar. This did not make him better or worse as a person, but it meant that where crime was concerned he was always a suspect. Bognor, rightly or wrongly, believed that men such as Swanley had difficulty telling the truth. He believed that the Swanleys were part of life’s majority. This was not helpful but it was what he believed, and it did not make his life any easier. Yet if he disliked Swanley, which on the whole he did, it was not because of his attitude to the truth. On the contrary, it made Swanley interesting, which in many respects he was not.

  Bognor smiled. He recognized that he admired consistency more than rectitude. It didn’t matter whether one was bad or good, the important thing was that one should always be one or the other. It made his job easier, of course, but that was not really the point. Like many who regarded life as a game and their part in it as entertainment and not to be taken too seriously, he relished a genuine struggle. He did not appreciate the theft of confectionery from small children and much preferred a contest with someone of more or less equal strength.

  He supposed Eric S. came into this category, but he was not disposed to think of him as an equal. He struck Bognor as quintessentially gray, which was an aged insult from his days at university. Many perfectly acceptable people were designated as “that little gray man from …” You filled in the name of the gray man’s college with a sneer, which was universally mandatory, for the verdict had been issued with a truculence common to Apocrypha men who believed themselves to be at least a cut above all aspiring rivals. Membership of another college was just part of the grayness and inferiority.

  Prejudice was a vital component in anyone’s makeup, but it must not interfere with one’s professionalism. That meant recognizing it and keeping it out of the way. It was folly to pretend it did not exist but that was very far from implying that one had to succumb to it. Rationality was what distinguished man from animals. The ability to think was vital. Thinking straight was probably a different matter and implied a rare triumph of the mind, but one had to aspire to such a state. That was what made a great detective.

  Not that Sir Simon thought of himself as a “great” detective. Good, yes. Unusual and unorthodox. But of course. Great was probably not part of his vocabulary, certainly not as far as detection went, for the concept smacked of hero worship, which was definitely not his style. He was not so much egalitarian as insufferable where fools were concerned. In other words, he believed that he was as good as anyone now in practice. That did not mean “great” because greatness was not thrust upon anyone who was top of the batting averages. “Greatness” only came along once in every generation or so. It had to be earned and the idea had been abused. He was elitist; he set high, almost Rowseian standards. This meant that he regarded himself as at the top of his tree, but that tree was a mere sapling compared with greatness that sat at the top of the equivalent of a redwood.

  He smiled once more. It was just one reason that he enjoyed the old-fashioned book. One could turn the pages, aimlessly flitting about in a seemingly purposeless way just as he had been. One could open something old-fashioned and encyclopaedic such as Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable at random, then just a few minutes later after a haphazard and apparently aimless riffling of paper one ended far from the original intention. Books were voyages of discovery, and one had no idea where they might lead.

  The Internet and new technology were a quest for knowledge and information, which led in predictable directions. On the Net, one ended at a predictable destination. The old-fashioned book led in a series of more or less random directions. Two people could start at the same beginning and travel to different destinations. That was one of the factors that gave old-fashioned books their appeal.

  It was musing such as this that made him so maddening to so many others. He must return to the matter in hand; revenez aux mo
utons. Swanley, Eric. He did not like the idea of Swanley for a number of reasons, which had nothing to do with Mr. Silverburger or his murder. With regard to that, his inclination was to give Mr. Swanley or whoever he was the benefit of whatever doubt he might be harboring. On the other hand, he could not eliminate him altogether for he was in Venice at the time of the murder and he knew the dead man. The fact that he had no discernible motive was probably neither here nor there.

  Bognor sighed. Next up, he said to himself.

  Trevor was the second suspect. He, like Swanley, was not what he seemed. To the uninitiated or gullible, he seemed just an English manservant, a gentleman’s gentleman who did. Quite what he did was anyone’s guess, but this was often the case with manservants. There was no universal job description.

  But Trevor was a Balt, and Trevor was not his real name. That did not make him a criminal, much less a murderer, but it did mean that “Trevor” was a liar and that his identity was false. Such subterfuge was understandable, and there was a sense in which one was able in a free society to be whoever one liked. Even so the manservant was not whom he originally was. He was christened Artis, his surname was Dombrovskis, which may or not have given him a political dimension, and he was not high on the list of Contractor’s list of suspects, which may have been why the interview with him at Silverburger’s funeral had been perfunctory and non-revealing. Contractor’s hunches were just that—hunches, no more and no less. The fact that they were more often right than not was coincidental though compelling. There was no scientific or forensic basis for Contractor’s accuracy but, even though irrational, it was worth following Contractor’s nose.

  Bognor thought that Trevor modeled himself on Laurence Harvey who came from Lithuania but was the most famous Balt actor, notoriously bisexual and assumed the name Harvey either from the Harvey Nichols department store or the Bristol wine company that was synonymous with cream sherry. Harvey worked for Frank Sinatra, was romantically entangled with the actress Hermione Gingold (who was old enough to be his mother) and was widely said to have the morals of an alley cat though the judgment was thought to be unfair on urban felines. Trevor came from suburban Riga and had a sexy walk-on part in The Coffee Grinders though he claimed to have met Irving G. later.

  Bognor had decided that this particular deception was something to do with visas or at worst show biz. That did not mean that Trevor was nice. On the contrary, he was an obvious no-good who could not even act or sneer as well as Harvey. He was keen to get out of his particular Baltic state and he was prepared for whatever stratagem was needed and, if that meant lies and Silverburger, it meant lies and Silverburger. Besides, it dented what little motive he might have had. As with so many of the “suspects,” the deceased was more value to him alive than dead. He might have been a lousy film director and a rotten human being, but he was a benefactor of sorts even if he dealt mainly in plastic and pink plastic at that.

  Trevor had lied in order to get out of Latvia. He had lied about Silverburger. He had lied about The Coffee Grinders. Trevor was all lies, but he was largely a creation of the late Irving and he owed his continued existence to him, too. In other words, Trevor may have been a bad hat, but he had a vested interest in keeping Silverburger alive and, for that matter, sweet. So Swanley and Trevor could have committed the crime on the grounds that they were in Venice at the time of death, and they were easily bad enough. On the other hand, they were better off with Silverburger alive. There was no reason for either man killing him. Rather the reverse.

  Bognor swore lightly. Two down and no obvious killer. Ingrid Vincent, the faded starlet, was perhaps more plausible on the grounds that Silverburger might not have given her work in his new film. On the other hand, Silverburger was more likely to give her work than anyone else. He had at least heard of her and had indeed given her work. Alas, her salad days were behind her, and she relied more than most women on pulchritudinous looks, which tended to go with a certain age. It could not be said that she had weathered well or grown into anything. If she were a weather forecaster on TV, she would have been put out to grass long before. Perhaps one should not say such things, but Bognor believed in honesty.

  It was more than likely that Silverburger would not have cast her in his long-awaited sequel to The Coffee Grinders and yet, without him, the probability of an enforced retirement became a certainty. Irving represented a slim hope, but it was a hope of sorts. If his diagnosis were correct, then Ingrid was also in the clear. She, too, was not what she seemed, and her life was founded on a lie. But whose wasn’t? Bognor supposed that the alleged friends of Irving G. Silverburger were more than usually duplicitous, but he was reluctant to cast stones.

  Bognor believed that most people’s lives were founded on deception. But then he was straying into fields philosophical. What, after all, was identity? Did age matter? Or sex, come to that? Was Ingrid Vincent doomed because so much of her career depended on her appearance? Did she not have a personality? Did she not bleed? Oh God.

  Bognor went to the window of his office and looked down at the populace scurrying hither and yon. Had not the duke of Wellington once liked to sit in the window of Brook’s Club, praying for rain in order that he could watch the “damn people get wet?” Was this relevant or just a red herring? Was there a problem with the irrelevant? Bognor had a soft spot for things that seemed at first to be irrelevant for they had the knack, in his experience, of fitting what he saw as life’s jig saw. There was a logic to life, though determining what that logic was, was given to very few. Those who could detect patterns to existence were either geniuses or morons. You had to be very stupid or incredibly bright to discern the meaning of life and Bognor was neither. Appreciating this was what lifted him out of the rut and made him different.

  So Ingrid Vincent was more of a suspect than Swanley or Trevor but not by much. The first two were definitely better off with Silverburger alive, and Ingrid Vincent probably came into the same category. She might have harbored a grudge about becoming older and losing her looks, but Irving would hardly have been so tactless as to remind her of the passing of time and the consequent of history. Ye who are left grow old. Something like that. It appeared to be worse for women and particularly so for those who in their youth had traded on their looks. Even Ingrid could hardly have blamed Irving Silverburger for this, and he had given her a break of sorts. On the other hand, Ingrid was very stupid and Irving, particularly when provoked, could seem gratuitously rude.

  He decided to move on, leaving La Vincent with a penciled “Not Guilty” rather than an inked one. Sophia and Benito were different. They were sexual mercenaries, and Silverburger had paid his bills and, within strange limits, behaved like an officer and a gentleman. The girl and the gondolier had both been in Venice at the time of death, and the nature of their work made both, in Bognor’s book, suspicious.

  This, too, was prejudice. He knew it and he was ashamed. But nevertheless, it existed, and to pretend otherwise was counterproductive. He knew that selling one’s body for sex carried no baggage and was perfectly legal in many enlightened countries. However, he had been brought up in a world that believed, sort of, that the body was a temple and not to be defiled by acts of prostitution. Or that was what his society purported to believe. It was also endemically hypocritical, which was a different sort of problem but probably more real than the original proposition. Prostitution is wrong, but given certain circumstances, we sleep with the practitioners. We don’t publicly approve of sex, but privately we get up to all sorts of tricks. Something like that. One had to accept that most men were simply the sum of their prejudices. What mattered more than the prejudices themselves was the way in which one dealt with them. Bognor’s way, which he obviously believed to be correct, was to acknowledge their existence but to put them to one side. Bearing this in mind, he considered the two professionals.

  The girl, Sophia, was Russian by origin, cosmopolitan in fact and she worked in a hotel. This was a front and acknowledged as such. Working in hot
els brought her into contact with men who were as often as not deprived of female companionship but also often craved it. They tended to be lonely and quite often they were drunk. These two facts of male hotel-life made the places lucrative hunting grounds for women like Sophia. Ingrid Vincent should have tried. Maybe she had, though Bognor dismissed the thought as soon as it first occurred. He had no evidence and was simply succumbing to the prejudice, which—untrammeled—could have interfered with his professionalism.

  This was the nature of Sophia’s relationship with the dead man. Under normal circumstances, the sex act would have carried all kinds of emotional undertones involving emotion, feeling, even love. This, however, was not like that. It was a professional assignment: wham, bam, thank you, ma’am. You paid your money and … Bognor wondered how many such tricks Sophia turned in a single day. And whether she took plastic. Or pink. It did not matter. All that mattered was that there was no likelihood of a motive either way. Sophia would erase Silverburger from her mind once the act was over. She probably did not consider him as a human being even when the act was taking place. That was probably the only way in which she could navigate through life. Whether or not she was a graduate of Harvard, she was plainly intelligent and educated. He had half a mind to consider her sensitive, but—given the nature of her calling—this was probably a stretch. Bognor found the pragmatic approach to sex alien to what he and Monica got up to, but he was man enough to recognize that theirs was not the only way.

  The same could be said for Benito, the gondolier/taxi driver. As far as he was concerned, sex was a job, was a job, was a job. The chances of him remembering Silverburger, let alone killing him, were negligible. It was just as likely that he would be able to recall details of who precisely he had had in the back of his cab or the stern of his boat. In fact, if Irving were a celebrity, Benito would be much more likely to remember him in the back of his cab than the depths of his bed. Such was a taxi driver’s stock-in-trade.