Yet Another Death in Venice (The Simon Bognor Mysteries) Page 8

  On the other hand, he recognized that watching it was part of his job and not simply a pleasure. The unexpected appearance of Trevor the Balt was a bonus and otherwise he was supposed to study Ingrid Vincent. This he did, finding it no hardship at all, undemanding but ultimately unsatisfying. There was something about her that was not quite right: an artificial quality that should have been at home on film but left one feeling cheated. She was like a bad Indian meal.

  “What did you think?” Bognor asked in a general way, not expecting any very coherent answer.

  Contractor said something unintelligible about cinematography, auteurs, and camera angles. Sam went pink and seemed to agree. Monica said, “Just what you’d expect. Not even bad enough to be rubbish.”

  These were Bognor’s own thoughts.

  “And yet he was always described as ‘film producer’ as if he was good at it,” said Bognor. “I don’t understand.”

  “If you repeat something often enough and loudly enough, people will begin to believe you. Silverburger told everyone he was a film producer, and after a while they started to believe him. Same with Ingrid. She told everyone she was a film star, and after a while, that’s how she was described and how she was known. I think she began to believe it herself. And in a macabre way, she was right. She may not actually have been a film star, but she should have been and this was recognized, so she became one. It’s commonplace. If you believe something enough, it will come true, particularly if you say it very slowly and very loudly.”

  That was it really. The film was ordinary; La Vincent likewise. Both had large sums of money expended on them; both were told they were not second-rate despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary; and both vanished virtually without trace after their brief moment in the twilight.

  “Has she ever worked again?” Bognor wanted to know, and the consensus was that she had made one or two advertisements, including an almost famous one on behalf of the English asparagus growers from the Vale of Evesham. Mostly, however, she had been reduced to opening supermarkets and appearing in celebrity game shows, which had their origin in Japan and featured people such as herself who were not particularly celebrated for being not particularly celebrated. She was often mentioned in gossip columns, usually when there was no one else to write about and a journalist or two were feeling particularly jaded. Ingrid Vincent was a victim of celebrity culture, being neither celebrated nor cultured but having to make do in an ersatz world where nobody would have recognized the real McCoy anyway and where, ultimately, no one much cared.

  Bognor had a sudden craving for a hamburger with American mustard and a number of highly colored relishes together with some German-based beer from Milwaukee. This was available in Soho like most foreign dishes, and the other three joined him, Contractor observing that since they had spent a couple of hours being bored rigid by foreign dishes he saw no reason to be otherwise for the rest of the evening. If he was going to be gastronomically threatened, he would like to see the threat carried out.

  “I suppose I should talk to her,” he said wearily, chin streaked with loud color.

  “Of course,” agreed the others, not really seeing the point but conforming to the rules of the game. Even if one ignored them in the end, it was important to be seen to be observing them most of the time. Enemies noticed such things and would be quick to take advantage of errors or omissions. And Bognor and SIDBOT had plenty of enemies.

  He and Monica walked home, which was possible, saved money, and promoted the illusion of well-being, compensating for the gin and the burger. They liked the city afterhours. Even the rattle and clunk of garbage trucks doing whatever they did to empty bottles had a louche, extramural sound and smell. Waste, dirt, stubbly men with large dogs laid out in doorways surrounded by rags and a cardboard box had an appeal. The place stank of people living close to one another, exchanging unmentionable fluids and odors. Anonymity and loneliness stalked the streets and lurked on corners; everyone was foreign and came from somewhere else; this was urban living, and it was what Simon and Monica had opted for many years ago. They relished the edge, the menace, the danger, and took pleasure in the lack of security and the imminence of sudden death. Urban crime was more thoughtless and less premeditated than its country cousin, and they were used to its changes of pace, its lack of rhythm, its sudden shifts. They were town mice; rats, at home with gutters and dirt.

  “Couldn’t live anywhere but London,” said Monica, gazing at the all-enveloping squalor and inhaling the stench of the stale, the discarded, and the unwanted. “Imagine being clean.”

  “Singapore,” said Bognor. “Like school. Penalties for littering. Big Brother and Sister always watching and listening and telling you what to do. Everyone knowing each other’s business and minding it.”

  Monica neatly sidestepped a fallen drunk lying across her path.

  “That was a fantastically forgettable film,” she said. “Must have cost a fortune. And that nubile tartlet, the Transylvanian totty … rumpy-dumpy from Romania. I suppose your friend Mr. Silverburger had his wicked way with her.”

  “I suppose so,” said Bognor, who hadn’t really given the matter a lot of thought but supposed so now that Monica had mentioned it.

  “Do you think that’s enough to constitute a murder motive?”

  “Going to bed with the producer/director?”

  “And then being rejected.”

  “Rejected? Who said she was rejected?”

  “She hadn’t acted in a film since The Coffee Grinders.”

  “But Irving hadn’t made a movie since The Coffee Grinders.”

  “No.”

  They walked across Wigmore Street in silence.

  “Do you imagine it had anything to do with cause and effect?” mused Bognor. “I mean do you imagine that Silverburger didn’t make any more movies because of Ingrid?”

  “Because he insisted on having her in any sequel? Or because he ditched her?”

  “Either,” said Bognor, “or both. We’ll never know if he slept with her. If he threw her out. Was still with her. Wanted to hire her for a new movie. Had got rid of her. The secret died with him. We’ll never know.”

  “You could ask her,” said Monica. They were passing an old Greek restaurant where they did a mean moussaka, dispensed pepper from gunmetal grinders, and served a house retsina that stripped linings and even a banker’s assets at a hundred paces. Or something like that. Why was commercial taramasalata so vividly pink? Bognor wished he knew the answer. Why did everybody seem to think you had to be so heavy-handed with the cochineal when the real article was so visually lackluster?

  “Do you really think she’s two-a-penny?” he asked. “That there are hundreds just like her? East European tartlets on the make. Sleeping their way to what they hope will be the top because it’s all they have.”

  “All they think they have,” said Monica. “Doesn’t make any odds. If you have the misfortune to be a female from the old Communist empire, you’re only good for sex. You’re there to be trafficked. Doesn’t matter if you’re Einstein, the male only wants what’s between your legs.”

  Bognor was shocked.

  “Don’t,” he said. “It’s not nice. Nor true.”

  “It may not be nice, but it’s certainly true. Even in the so-called civilized West, we have glass ceilings everywhere. Little ladies have their place, which is in bed, rocking the cradle, or maybe at the sink or stove. Certainly, not in an advantageous position at the boardroom table.”

  “And Ingrid wasn’t Einstein?”

  He felt Monica shrug. “Maybe, maybe not. Couldn’t act for toffee.”

  “So was she a killer?”

  “That’s for you to find out,” she said. “You’ll have to ask her. You never know. She might tell you.”

  They had arrived at their front door. Between the Indian newsagent and the dry cleaners. Bognor got out his key and unlocked the door.

  “I’ll have to do the interview. Can’t say I’m looking forward to it
.”

  “Liar,” said Monica, kissing him as they entered the elevator. It had been there for a long time. Its doors creaked and it rattled. One day, it might kill someone, but so far it never had. One day, though. Perhaps it would plunge to the basement with a passenger inside.

  He kissed her back, and they went rattling upward, happy after their own fashion.

  9

  Ingrid Vincent, née Pupescu, lived in a mansion block overlooking the Thames at Kingston. It was close to the former film studios at Teddington, latterly the production HQ for Thames TV and a place to which the actress felt she belonged though she never quite did. It dropped nicely into her conversation, though.

  Nobody knew for certain quite how old Ingrid was. Like a Pakistani cricketer, she arrived in Britain with no verifiable birth certificate and she was almost certainly older than she made out. At the time, it didn’t matter, and she got away with it. Everyone knew that she was mutton dressed as lamb, but she was a passable sheep and, hey, who cared? She appeared in The Coffee Grinders, which may have been ghastly but was more than most of her competitors managed, and for a while, she was seen on the right arms and at the right parties. When she said that she was an actress, nobody gain-sayed her. Maybe they believed her; maybe they couldn’t be bothered; maybe they were frightened by her often-criminal squires. But at any event, she became a popular girl about town with fashionably lax morals and prominent breasts, which she was not afraid to flaunt.

  Latterly, however, she had faded. Faded blonde were the words commonly used, and the cloche fitted like the proverbial glove. At dueling space, she still looked good, for she had kept her figure and her bone structure was a guarantee of approving verdicts on the height of cheekbones, the gamineness of expression and the general pertness, which belied the years at a distance. Closer, you caught the lines and wrinkles around the neck and wrists. These were the unmistakable signs of advancing years and gave the lie to the extravagant makeup and the pert expression. It was unfair, meant different things to different sexes and rendered Ingrid increasingly ridiculous. She was not growing old gracefully. She refused to concede that she was growing old at all, and graceful was not in her vocabulary.

  Most of this Bognor guessed, if he did not already know it. Much of it was in his briefing document; the rest was in his brain masquerading as prejudice. Nevertheless, he had to see for himself and measure the reality against what he thought, what he felt, and what he had read. Thus the tube to Wimbledon and a bus to Kingston, a brisk walk, and a ring on the doorbell. He had rung ahead so that she was prepared, but why not? Neither had anything to hide, and the dawn raid by the security police kicking in the front door and taking the inhabitant away without anyone having the first idea what was going on had died, surely, with the Ceaușescus.

  She had a miniature poodle. It was old and smelly, and she called it Charley’s Aunt, and carried it under her arm when she opened her door. She smelled of cheap scent and alcohol; the dog of urine.

  “Sir Simon,” she said, “please come in. Don’t mind Charley’s Aunt.”

  Charley’s Aunt snuffled and snarled. Bognor put out a hand, but this seemed to agitate the dog and increased the decibel rating. He withdrew and smiled instead.

  The flat was sad in an indefinable way, made the more so by the occupier’s indefatigable chirpiness; an optimism that Bognor felt was false and could easily be defeated. It was old-fashioned with chintz and prints, and it smelled of the smells he had caught when she opened the door but also, just, of mothballs and cooking. Or was that simply his imagination? Nice view and a tiny balcony. Too cold to sit out, though.

  She offered him a gin, which she had obviously been at already, lit a cigarette, sat down on the sofa, crossed her legs, adjusted her pantyhose, and smiled a tight little smile, which almost broke his heart though not for reasons she intended. “So what can I do for you? I presume it’s about Irving.”

  There was a picture of the dead man on a table in a silver frame, signed and smiling. He looked smarmy, which was usual, but she seemed neither to notice nor mind.

  “Were you in Venice the other day?” he asked, not seeing any need to avoid the point and wanting to get everything over with as soon as possible. He wanted to leave.

  “Yes,” she said. She evidently saw no need to avoid the point either, but she wanted him to stay. She welcomed the distraction. Hers had become a boring and disappointing life. “Irving must have paid for my ticket and the hotel, but nothing was said. He wasn’t like that.”

  Her English, thought Bognor, had improved since The Coffee Grinders. It was still heavily accented but syntactically much better.

  “Where did you stay? How did you fly?”

  “I went by easyJet,” she said. “But it is a short flight, and the plane goes to the main airport, so there was no problem. Marco Polo. It is named after a famous Italian explorer. The hotel was small but clean, central. I forget the name, but I can find it if you wish. The Pensione something. It was okay. And we had one lunch together. Irving and all his friends. On the other side of the canal. Nice. Very expensive. Very stylish. Very Irving.” She smiled. Wistfully. An aging spinster on the outside with a little girl inside trying still to get out. Bognor thought smugly that it was different for men, different perhaps for a different sort of woman. Monica, for instance. Perhaps it was necessary to be alone to seem like this: so vulnerable. He wondered if there had originally been a relationship between her and Silverburger and whether and on what terms the relationship had persisted.

  “Good lunch?” She smiled.

  “Very good lunch. I would say not especially Italian, but Irving was a citizen of the world not of a particular place, so he ate the world’s food and he expected his guests to do the same.”

  It was on the tip of his tongue to say that you could learn a lot from gastronomy and that perhaps Napoleon had a point when he maintained that an army marched on its stomach. But then maybe Napoleon was talking figuratively and, in any case, he wasn’t really French, and Corsican food and civilization was its own thing and not the same as on the mainland. But Bognor remembered where he was and what he was supposed to be doing, so he smiled and nodded and asked if she could remember what she had had.

  “A cocktail,” she said, “wine, prosciutto, pasta, some sort of pudding, grappa. Good. Good company. Irving’s friends. There was hope in the air. The sight of a new movie. With Irving, there was always the hope of a new movie, but this time it was real.”

  “The Lemon Peelers?”

  She inclined her head. “That was what he called the idea.

  It was to be a sequel to The Coffee Grinders.”

  “And you were going to have a starring role again?”

  “Yes,” she said. Her glass was empty, and she refilled it from a Gordon’s bottle. It was cloudy with Schweppes Bitter Lemon, but there was not much of it, whereas there was a lot of Gordon’s. Bognor noticed but made no comment.

  “What about Gina Ponti?”

  “What about Gina Ponti?”

  It was the same question, but Ingrid gave it novelty value by emphasizing the about. This had the effect of making it a different sentence.

  “My understanding was that Bernardo Ponti was going to finance the project on condition that Gina had a big part.” This may have been his understanding, but it had not hitherto been voiced even by Dibdini, who nevertheless thought it as well. Bernardo had access to funds, and Gina harbored thespian ambitions. It didn’t require much ingenuity to put two and two together and come up with this theory.

  “Gina has no experience. She cannot act. Pouf!”

  The dog had made an excruciating smell and now whimpered. Bognor and her mistress pretended not to notice.

  “But Bernardo had money …” said Bognor.

  “So Bernardo had money,” she said. “So what if Bernardo had money? What difference does that make?”

  “A lot of difference I’m afraid,” said Bognor. “There is a saying in England that ‘money makes the w
orld go round’ and it is, alas, surprisingly true. A movie costs a great deal of money to make. A great deal. And Irving Silverburger did not have money of his own. He needed to do what is called ‘raise capital’ to make a movie such as The Lemon Peelers become possible. And maybe Gina Ponti was the price for Bernardo making his money available.”

  At first, Ingrid said nothing but stubbed out a cigarette angrily, causing the dog to whimper again.

  “You have other sayings,” she then said. “You have ‘there is more to life than money.’”

  “We have many sayings involving money,” said Bognor, trying to be gentle. “There is another that says that ‘every man has his price.’ Perhaps Gina was the price that Mr. Silverburger was going to have to pay.”

  “Not possible,” she said.

  “But you must understand if the price Irving Silverburger had to pay was Gina, then that gives you a very good motive for killing him.”

  “But why should I kill him?” she asked. “He was my friend. I had good reason for killing that talentless bitch Gina and maybe her husband as well, but I had no reason whatever for killing Irving. No Irving, no movie. No movie, no future. His death killed hope.”

  This was not only almost poetic; it was probably true. Silverburger was probably her only prospective passport. Without him, there was only a future of dead dog and virtual penury. As a foreigner, she probably didn’t even qualify for a basic pension, might even be deported. Silverburger might have afforded her some protection. He was the sort of person who could.

  “There has been no Silverburger movie since The Coffee Grinders?”

  “No,” she admitted. “And that, forgive me, is quite a long time ago.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” This response made no sense.

  “Your friend Mr. Silverburger was a one-film producer; a single-movie director.”

  She sighed. “Yes. But as you say, it is ‘an overcrowded profession.’ Many people make movies, but usually they have friends with good contacts or with money. Irving was a stranger, a foreigner. He did not have friends with money and connections.”