Yet Another Death in Venice (The Simon Bognor Mysteries)

by Tim Heald

  Once more, Sir Simon sighed. He could not, in all conscience, claim that either Sophia or Benito had a motive. As far as they were concerned, Irving Silverburger was just another trick or John. Bognor could not get into the mind of either the maid or the gondolier. To be honest, he had no wish to do so. Like so many others both on and off his little list, both of them had the opportunity. They were in Venice on the day of his departure, but they had no more motive than Swanley, Trevor, or Ingrid. This was tiresome but true.

  Both had known Silverburger. And what is more, they had done so in a biblical sense, but this meant very little, if anything. If either had enjoyed anything approaching an affaire, that would have been different, but they had not. Instead, theirs had been a commercial arrangement, pure and simple. Well, maybe not so pure but straightforward and of no significance. Yes, they had both known the dead man, but they had done so fleetingly, taken his money, smiled, bared all, dressed, and departed. All this was in a day’s work. It should not have been so but, alas, it was.

  Alas, poor Silverburger.

  18

  Bognor had always wanted a classic denouement in the library with him playing an omniscient God and disconcerting all the suspects with his fiendishly clever solution. More to the point, this author has always hankered after such a scene; wherein lies a problem, which is one of author involvement and reader awareness. Generally speaking, it is not considered proper for the author to interfere in a work of fiction. I suppose it destroys the essential delusion. I mean everyone knows who the author is, but the conceit is that he or she has to appear anonymous and to pretend that the characters have lives of their own and do as they please. Anyone who has ever written a book knows that there is some truth in this. Sir Simon Bognor is a case in point. He was invented by an author and is inclined to do what the author tells him to, but not always. From time to time, punters furrow their brows and ask whatever happened to that character of mine, “Bugger” or “Weymouth”—they invariably get his name wrong. From time to time, they want to know where he went to school or what food or drink he prefers. Sometimes I know; sometimes I feel I should and bluff; and occasionally, I say I do not know but will ask next time I see him.

  Much like any old friend.

  Mr. and Mrs. Swanley arrived first and each chose an orange juice after a thoroughly British bout of prolonged indecision. They looked around as if believing in the books, which had been bought by the yard, and the pictures, which were school of Nondescript and So-So; possibly old, possibly not, but ripped untimely from a condemned country house blown up or down, unlamented in the fifties. They were not very good, but depicted people who had once existed just as the authors of the books had once drawn breath. The Club lacked even that humdrum reality but was fake in much the same way as the Swanleys and other suspects. This made them feel at home. Those books that had not been purchased by the yard from the wreck of someone’s private library were pure invention. In this category, Bogor identified the A to Z of Building by Timothy Dribble and Hermione Pi. On closer inspection of the frontispiece, Dribble and Pi were described as “Architects to the Aristocracy.” Bognor snorted. Aristocrats were too stupid to qualify for architects, even ones so obviously fabricated as Dribble and Pi. For those who were interested in the reality of reading rather than its appearance, there were ereaders. In deference to reality, these ereaders were chained to prevent removal, like the books in the medieval libraries in Hereford or at Merton College. They had been sprayed with eau de livre, which suggested to Bognor that bookishness was implied, and the water was composed of stale sweat, old leather, cigar smoke, and alcohol fumes—probably brandy.

  Bognor enjoyed this counterfeit quality, relishing the sham and professionally preferring the mildly crooked to the honest. He moved in this sham world where nothing was quite as it seemed and he much preferred the genuinely illusory like The Club to the second-rate reality of minor schools, restaurants, and their ilk. Give him pretentious legerdemain over tatty, tacky reality any day of the week. He liked his flaws concealed, albeit flamboyantly. This should have meant that he warmed to the Swanleys, but instead he was repelled. If confronted with the truth of their subterfuge, they would not even have blustered but gone quietly muttering clichés about a fair cop.

  On the other hand, what was life but a fabrication? In the words of the Good Book, you bring nothing in and you take nothing out. In and it’s mewling and puking and nakedness; out and it’s probably a box and flames. The point is that we are all a fabrication. You can believe in nurture or nature, be a Christian or a Dawkins follower, but we arrive at no one’s behest much and we depart when our time is up and the Divine Clockmaker calls us in. “Come in, Number Nine.” The point is that it makes no difference whether you are Swanley or a duke, the fourteenth Mr. Wilson or the fortieth Mr. Wilson. The point is that you may get dealt certain cards along the way but essentially you make it up as you go along. The point, the point … what was it the man said? “Nothing matters very much, and very little matters at all.” Balfour. Tory politician. And if you thought that way, therefore a bad thing. Bognor, on the other hand, considered himself less doctrinaire than that. His was a mind waiting to be made up.

  So where did all that leave Swanley? Bognor thought about the Swanley problem and then dismissed him. He had not reached retirement age, nor risen to the head of his department and been honored by Her Majesty in order to bother himself with the likes of Swanley. Though who were the likes of Swanley, and was he, Bognor, merely being impossibly snobby and priggish that the likes of Swanley were Untermensch? If he really did believe in the nakedness theory—and many did not—then Swanley was as important as he. No more and no less, but just as worthy of consideration. It depended, he supposed, on whether one subscribed to the half-empty or half-full theory of life.

  He sighed and wondered where it did leave Swanley and whether it mattered.

  Probably not. Prejudice and professionalism did not Sitwell together, and though he was both, he had never consciously allowed the former to interfere with the latter, job-wise. He disliked Swanley personally, but that had nothing to do with the job in hand.

  “Mr. Swanley,” he said, shaking the German accountant by the hand with every manifestation of warmth he did not feel. “And this must be Mrs. Swanley. How good of you to come.” To himself he was thinking that it was not good; that they were seldom invited out and were curious.

  “Indeed,” said Swanley. “Wretched business. Wretched.

  Be glad when it’s all over. Very.”

  “Eric’s been very poorly ever since it happened. Cough he can’t shake off and not eating properly. I keep telling him that Mr. Silverburger was only another client, but he won’t have it. Insists he was much more than a client. I tell him he mustn’t let business and pleasure get in each other’s way, but he won’t have it. Not Eric. Not the man I married.”

  “Well, thank you for coming anyway,” he said, thinking unfairly that the Swanleys were fakes among fakes. Even the orange juice was from a packet. Reconstituted. Only the peanuts were real. The wine might have originally come from grapes, but it did not come from the country it claimed and had spent too long in a tanker offshore. All was fake but, ultimately, did this matter?

  Trevor arrived soon after the Swanleys. He was wearing a mass-produced suit, undertaker-style, and seemed more than usually deferential. Bognor had trouble working out the Balt. For a start, although he had never been to either country, he would have worked out whether he came from Latvia or Lithuania. Trevor seemed to have come from neither and both, simultaneously. Bognor decided he was Estonian. The only Lithuanian actor Bognor could think of was Laurence Harvey, who was so bad he wasn’t even a joke. Trevor buttled for Silverburger, enjoyed helping out at tea parties, and aspired to being the next Harvey, thinking he was a famous actor. He could well have been the next L. Harvey. He was definitely bad enough. Bognor suspected Trevor of muddling Olivier with Harvey. It was a common error in un-thespian circles. The only famous
Lett Simon could think of was not an actor but the poet, Janis Blodnieks. Simon questioned his first name, which he thought should be Anders, and his poetry. Besides, Blodnieks had been made up by a man named Arnold Harvey. Never mind. Bognor would not have been surprised to find women’s clothing in Trevor’s wardrobe, but he would have been amazed to find a harlequin’s outfit, let alone a crossbow.

  “Ah, Signora Vincent, Signor e Signora Ponti,” Bognor greeted the new arrivals.

  “Signorina, actually,” said Ingrid, who was auntless but had been obviously hitting the gin. Bognor reflected that everything about Ingrid was fake, but so much so, and so obviously, that it came out the other side and he ended up rather liking her. She was so clearly artificial in every respect that you ended up admiring her. She was a flamboyant fake; a positive Cartland, all pink and pancake. So much so that one sometimes forgot that underneath the boa and the makeup there was real flesh and blood and a heart that beat. There was nothing real about Ingrid from her name, age, and nationality to her face, breasts, shoulders, and, above all, her hair. Not just a wig but a bad one.

  Bognor found himself warming to Ingrid. This was absurd since she was as false as the other guests and suspects. It was more that she was a lie in which no one could believe. Nor, in a sense, was one supposed to. She was the original fake. Even her sex was dubious. Had she said that she was a drag artist, à Danny la Rue or Dame Edna, one would simply have shrugged and smiled. What she did, however, was to demonstrate that Bognor was not influenced by duplicity. When it came to insincerity, style was vital.

  La Vincent had it in spades even though her fakeness was there for all to see.

  The Pontis were a different kettle of fish. They intended to deceive, at least in Northamptonshire. They were probably the only people apart from Bognor himself who actually came from their country of origin. Bognor fingered his Apocrypha tie with its improbably garish stripes and laughed thinly. In a number of important other respects, however, they were as much imposters as everyone else. The only reason they had moved to Northants was that Italians were comparatively thin on the ground. Therefore, there were fewer potential whistleblowers there.

  None of which explained why he had a soft spot for Ingrid, whoever she might be, and none for the others. He considered the question and decided that liking was not a rational set of beliefs or values. He liked Ingrid and disliked the Swanleys, Trevor the Balt, and the Pontis. He did not need reasons for doing so; indeed, reasons would have been suspicious. Liking was akin to love. It happened at first sight and was often dangerous and unsuitable. Nonetheless, it was real. It happened.

  When it came to his job, however, it was irrelevant. If it interfered with his professionalism, it had no place in his personal scheme. He thus afforded precisely the same greeting to Ingrid Vincent as to the others. It happened that he did not believe in the guilt of any of them, but that was not important. All were equally suspicious; each was as potentially culpable as the next. His own personal predilections did not come into the matter. They were private prejudices, and at times like this, he was remorselessly cold-blooded.

  Just like a murderer.

  That left Benito, the taxi-driving male prostitute; Sophia, his female equivalent; and the priest, Father Carlo. They arrived together, though whether they had set off like that was open to question.

  Bognor greeted them, made sure they were all suitably lubricated, and cleared his throat. He was about to begin.

  This was as near perfect as it was going to get. Everything was fake, including the suspects. Especially the suspects. Yet its very facsimile quality was part of the attraction. For what use was the truth to people such as this? Bognor wondered. Monica wondered. Contractor wondered. They wondered if the others wondered among the artificial smells and generally fake ambience. Perhaps it did not matter. Metaphorically, Bognor shrugged.

  “Thank you all for coming,” he said, before beginning a ritual character assassination. He started with the Brits of whom the German-born accountant was first. “I make no secret of my dislike and disbelief in accountancy,” he said. “Accountancy is founded on the belief that everything is orderly and runs on time. This is false. I know it. You know it. Life is chaotic and makes little or no sense but accountancy pretends otherwise. Besides which you are a Kraut. This is not your fault, but pretending is. We British call that hypocrisy and we do not like it. Besides which, Krauts tend to believe in an eternal timetable. That lie is your problem.”

  He cleared his throat. “We British believe in chaos. Krauts don’t. That’s why we won the war. Only we don’t mention it. That’s another season.”

  He realized he was reducing Eric Swanley to a stereotype. He said so and apologized. “He is a Kraut accountant. This is as bad as it gets, but it does not mean that he killed Irving Silverburger.” He said much the same for the sexy gondolier and the equally sexy hotel maid and the no longer sexy Pupescu. Trevor the Balt might have been sexy but not for the deceased, and by the same token, the Northamptonshire inhabitants who belonged in the pages of “Come Hither” or “I Spy” rather than the English shires. Not for them country life, let alone twin sets and pearls. It was as he dilated on them that he realized that only one of his suspects had no British base. Was it xenophobia that put Father Carlo where he was? Was he like the new pope, a Jesuit with Franciscan proclivities? Or the other way around? Did this matter? He was inclined to think that nothing much did particularly when he stood where he was—as it were.

  He sighed inwardly. Time was when the surroundings would have been real and likewise the suspects who would have been whittled away by a combination of personal forensics and intuition or hunch. Time was. Maybe time had passed him by and all men of his age were similarly perplexed. This he doubted.

  In any case, he was not perplexed. Far from it. It was just that he had reached his conclusion by the bludgeon not the rapier, by crudity when he preached and practiced sophistication. He regarded himself as traditionalist yet innovative.

  “I am struck,” he continued, and extemporizing as he did, “by how many of you have come to Britain. I know that we are in many ways the center of the world and yet Venice … and yet Venice …” He let the sentence hang, tantalizing for the Balts and East Europeans who, however briefly, had made La Serenissima their home. In his own curious way, he loved the city. The English did. He supposed their tweedy pragmatism thought the place exotic.

  “In the words of the man from the BBC, I think you are pretty nasty pieces of work—at best confidence tricksters and at worst liars; and about everything, about life itself. You would sell your mother or your wife. I on the other hand … let’s just say that I am on the other hand. And leave it there. All the same, it doesn’t mean that you killed Silverburger, himself incidentally also a nasty piece of work who left leaving the world a better place. That is irrelevant. It’s all irrelevant, I fear. Life’s like that. Wish it weren’t.”

  He paused. “So,” he resumed, “the Brits didn’t do it. You may be masquerading, but you never dunnit. Fluke. Accident. Call it what you will, but you did not do it. You could have, but you had no motive. The reverse, in fact. You may have been wrong, but your best interests were served by keeping Irving alive. All except one.” He repeated the last phrase partly for effect but partly because it gave him the chance to decide what to say next. “All except one.” He paused—for a similar combination of reasons.

  “Funny thing, religion,” he said, then remembered that many of his audience were foreign and therefore unfamiliar with English idiom and amended it to “odd thing religion,” then changed it to what he should have said in the first place. More alliterative, just as idiomatic; perfect. “Rum thing, religion. True Christians believe there is another life after this one. If you believe this life is simply a preparation for what comes later, death is … well, death has no capacity to inspire fear. Isn’t that so?” He seemed to be musing but was actually about to pounce.

  This he did. “You’re a man of God, Father Ca
rlo,” he said. “Wouldn’t you agree?” The priest went puce, grinned, and shook his head. “And there,” said Bognor, “I was a silly old lapsed Anglican, assuming that Carlo, by way of his calling, believed in the afterlife. Ain’t necessarily so, which you might think leaves me dead in the water were it not for the reverend gentleman’s fondness for dressing up and his interest in ballistics, medieval and other. Would you not agree, Father?” This last query was full of menace, though not perhaps on paper.

  Privately, Bognor knew that he had Father Carlo on toast because earlier he had done the unthinkable and organized searches. He hated doing so, for searching implied failure. For much the same reason, he hated calling Michael. He loved hearing his friend’s voice but loathed what he was telling him. Message bad, medium good—a something for the late Marshall McLuhan. Victory probably, since victories were gained almost exclusively posthumously.

  He sighed inwardly. An outward sigh would give away too much. “Most of you had good reasons for wanting the deceased alive. For Father Carlo, it was a matter of indifference. He didn’t care whether Silverburger lived or died. More than that, his whole life was predicated on the belief that there is no difference between what most of us call life and death. But Carlo was curious.”

  He was anxious to know what effect his words were having. He looked around him and thought of Christopher Wren. Circumspice. What need of conventional memorials when you had only to look around his and God’s house? Memorial, yes. Conventional, no. He had authorized the British searches personally; Michael, the Italian. He had protested; had argued that this, the dawn breaking-down of doors, the surprise attack was contrary to their life’s work. A hatred of such crudity was implicit in their joining up and had informed everything since. Such unarguable arrogance was against justice. The search warrant and all that it implied ran counter to common sense. Bognor agreed but needs must. And pragmatism prevailed.