by Tim Heald
“Absolutely,” said his host. “Spontaneity together with meticulous planning. Difficult but the goal to which we must aspire.”
“Quite,” said Bognor. “And dosh.”
“Dosh?” they both said, and Bognor remembered that they were foreign. He finished his summer pudding, and licked his lips.
“Money,” he said. “Lucre. Spondulicks. Stuff that makes the world go round.”
He wondered if this were right. He had never had a lot himself, and his world revolved in a more or less acceptable fashion. Silverburger had always been short of a few bob, but it didn’t seem to have greatly affected his modus operandi. The Pontis were in much the same sort of boat moneywise. As far as their world revolving went, he wasn’t entirely sure. Maybe time would tell. He accepted the offer of coffee and watched the back of his hostess as she left for the kitchen and the coffeepot. Nice bottom.
“She will be an adornment,” said her husband, catching his guest’s mood and gaze.
“Undoubtedly,” said Bognor, half-remembering a piece of doggerel by someone such as James Thurber or Ogden Nash about advancing and retreating, “but you still need money.”
“Aye,” Signor Ponti said unexpectedly, “there’s the rub.”
“Absolutely,” he concurred as la signora entered with a tray on which there were three dinky Illy coffee cups, sugar, milk, and a caffetiera. The distaff side of the Ponti couple looked even better from the front. Advancing. Bognor thought the verse had something to do with “my sweet sweeting,” but he couldn’t remember. A proper English couple would have served instant muck in mugs. This was better but lacked authenticity.
She tilted the caffetiera and poured. Bognor took his black without sugar. He sipped. It was good and all the better for being foreign.
“My experience,” he said, “is that money will buy anything. Even death.”
“Meaning?” asked Ponti who may not have been English but was far from stupid. “Meaning,” said Bognor, “exactly what I say. Money will buy death. It could well be that Silverburger was shot by a hired assassin. In which case, the actual killer lacked a real motive. The culpability lies with whoever signed the check.” He smiled. “They say that money is the root of all evil,” he said.
The Pontis looked blank. He sighed and sipped. They were about money; that was certain. He wasn’t so sure about the evil. The potential was there, the incentive dubious.
He smiled.
They smiled back. Stalemate.
11
Bognor took the train back from Kettering. Trains were not what they once were. He was a steam Lady Vanishes sort of man. He liked Indian railways because they used elderly coal-burning locomotives made in England back when that phase was a guarantee of quality rather than a promise of built-in obsolescence or even imminent disintegration. Nowadays, trains looked more streamlined but did not travel any more speedily. They had evolved a language all of their own so that passengers had become customers; stations, station stops; and platform was a verb. Only the leaves were always the wrong sort. The days of pedestrian descriptive names were long vanished, Beechingized in some modernist purge so that the Somerset and Dorset, aka the Slow and Dirty, had not only vanished, but even if it were still around, would have acquired a mad new name such as Arrival or even Departure. Bognor looked out of the window and tried to think of suitable modern names for the Slow and Dirty.
He failed and snoozed most of the way to London, where he took a cab to the office in order to touch base before returning to his wife’s welcome smile. Base was alive and well, and working on as was its wont, well after the call of duty and normal office hours. Base was, of course, Harvey Contractor.
“Hi, Boss,” he said, fawning. “Your confessor phoned.”
Bognor frowned. He didn’t know what he was talking about. Contractor knew perfectly well that his boss was a cheerful agnostic masquerading under the catchall euphemism of the Church of England.
“Said he was staying with his friends at Farm Street. The Jesuits. But he was going to be out to dinner. Sounded as if he did a lot of dinner. And lunch. In fact an all-day-breakfast sort of priest. Sounded foreign. Said his name was Carlo. He rolled the R.”
“Padre Carlo,” said Bognor.
Harvey Contractor gave him an old-fashioned look but said nothing.
“So what brings him to London?”
“Cherchez le garçon,” Contractor said knowingly.
“That’s not fair,” said Bognor. “Some of my best Catholic friends are heterosexual. Celibate even.” His subordinate smiled as if he were the only one with all the answers.
“That’s not what I hear,” he said. “Anyone would think you believe what you read in the papers. You’re not the only person with Catholic friends. Most of the men I know were abused at school.”
“Don’t be silly. Most of the world’s Scoutmasters are homosexual. All of us could make a case for having been abused. It’s become a sort of Vatican cliché. What did the padre say?”
“Just his name,” said Contractor. “Seemed to think it would work miracles. I’d say he was right.”
“I’ll call Farm Street from home,” said Bognor, sweeping his stuff into a brown leather brief case with gold initials, almost illegible from age and use.
He did, too. He and Monica ate underdone steak with a bottle of acceptable Beaujolais and then armed with a glass of Mr. Hine’s best cognac, he called the Jesuits and was put through to the Italian guest who had just returned from dining at the hotel across the road. The Connaught, actually. It later transpired that he had been taken as a treat but sent the wine back on the grounds that it was corked. He went to that sort of hostelry frequently. He was that sort of priest.
“Come round for a snifter,” he said. “Bring the wife. Lady Bognor.”
Bognor was fed up with imitation English gentlemen, and Padre Carlo was clearly just such an item albeit in priest’s clothing.
“Actually, I’m a bit tied up,” he said, sipping brandy and smiling indulgently at Lady B. who looked suspiciously at him. She drank a little and rolled her eyes.
He listened for a while as the priest said that he was returning to Italy and had to be at Heathrow by noon. Bognor, naturally, suggested breakfast and found himself being thanked while he agreed meekly to a rendezvous at The Connaught. The office would pay. Even so the priest had an irreligious nerve.
“I take it I’m not included. Also if you end up paying, I will be cross. Very.”
Monica treated him like an infant, which he resented but was reluctant to change. A dislike of trivial matters, even when misconceived, allowed him more latitude in matters of importance. That, at least, was his theory.
And so it was that Sir Simon Bognor found himself eating croissants, smoked salmon, and scrambled eggs, accompanied by freshly squeezed orange juice and strong black coffee, while his guest had two soft-boiled eggs and toast. The Connaught was full of suits and enormous hair. The big hair belonged to the fair sex. Many of the suits had none at all. Padre Carlo claimed to have come in order to preach and see a particular confidant. Actually, his main purpose was to purchase some of his trademark monogrammed chocolate and cerise socks from his favorite chaussettier in the Burlington Arcade. However, he thought it more tactful to stick to the sermon story. Bognor might have thought the socks extravagant, even foppish, particularly for a Franciscan.
“So,” said Simon, “what was your text?” Padre Carlo was momentarily discomfited but then remembered his sermon.
“Revelation,” he said, “with a nod toward W. B. Yeats. Rough beasts. Jerusalem.” He dipped some toast into his egg yolk. Despite the socks, he spoke excellent English.
“Slouching,” said Bognor, not wishing to be thought ill-read, particularly by a foreigner. “Yeats’s beast slouches. As I recall, the one in Revelation did a lot of falling over. Six hundred three score and six. But there were four beasts weren’t there? I confess I always found Revelation confusing.”
The egg was moist an
d buttery, just as he liked it. The salmon was wild. Thank God the office would pay.
“Many people find Revelation confusing,” conceded Padre Carlo, “though in some ways, it is the most straightforward book in the entire Bible.”
“Not for me I’m afraid,” said Bognor. “But then I’m afraid I’m a bit of a lukewarm agnostic. If I were the Lord God, I’d spew me out.”
He grinned. Padre Carlo seemed unamused.
“Your Mr. Silverburger was religious,” said the priest. “He wasn’t mine,” said Bognor, more crisply than he intended, “and if he was religious, then the pope’s my father.” This time, Father Carlo smiled, but it was a winter gesture, without warmth and with the hint of frost to come. “The pope is everyone’s father,” he said, offering the observation as a rebuke, though Bognor who had been brought up in a sound middle-of-the-road Church of Englandism felt that he was in the right and knew best. “In what sense was Silverburger religious?” Bognor asked, ignoring the vexed question of the pope and paternity. He was genuinely interested for Silverburger seemed the most saturnine person he had encountered in a life devoted to confronting bad. “He was interested in making a film based on the Bible.
He, too, was interested in Revelation, as it happens. Interested in substituting the elders with maidens of some kind; younger than the originals and wearing fewer clothes. He assured me that such things were necessary to secure money. He also said that elderly gentlemen would not be box office. I was to be called the technical adviser, and we expected to fight, but that is inevitable. We would always be friendly and constructive. Also I understood, as you Anglo-Saxons say, ‘where he was coming from.’ I am a man of the world. Franciscans are nearly all men of the world. That is part of what makes us the people we are.”
Bognor thought of the socks but did not mention them. Nor did he allude to the fact that, like the late Irving, he batted and bowled. He did both with a verve and enthusiasm that was infectious but not clerical. Austerity was not his thing. He had a voluptuary’s lips and a complexion to match. He suspected the pigmentation of his hair and even its heaviness was not entirely natural. If it were a rug, it was an expensive rug. He also seemed disturbingly at ease in these surroundings, but he would doubtless have said that this was simply being Franciscan.
“And did the Pontis … that is to say, were the Pontis involved in these plans?”
“The money was important.” The padre had finished his eggs and looked as if he might order more. He contented himself with butter and marmalade on toast. “Mammon had to be placated.”
“Quite,” said Bognor. “You say that Mr. Silverburger was a religious man.”
“Oh yes,” said Padre Carlo. “Very definitely so. Not, perhaps, in a conventional way but very religious. Definitely.”
“I don’t associate him with the Church,” said Bognor, “and The Coffee Grinders seemed to be a glorification of material things, especially sex.”
“Ah, sex,” the padre said, as if that explained everything. “Well, yes,” said Bognor. “Extramarital hanky-panky.
Having it off with all and sundry. Not good. Not good at all.” Father Carlo put the tips of his fingers together and smiled over the top of them at the ruined eggs, now all shell and no substance.
“Sometimes, I believe that you puritans are only interested in the exchange of bodily fluids.”
It was on the tip of Bognor’s tongue to protest that he was not in the least puritanical. He thought better of it, however. “Other sins are more sinful,” said Father Carlo. “Killing people is very bad.” He looked at the remains of breakfast. “Gluttony also. Very bad. Sex not so bad. If other people are hurt, then not so good, but if not then … ” He paused, smiled almost with humor. Bognor wouldn’t have put it past him to light a cheroot or one of those foul-smelling loose-packed Nazionali cigarettes. “Killing someone with a crossbow during the Venetian Carnival?” said Bognor.
“Bad,” said Padre Carlo. “Very bad indeed. Much worse than an orgasm with someone. Nothing to compare.”
“I suppose not,” said Bognor.
“The chief of police in Venice says you are in charge,” said the Franciscan.
“Very flattering,” he said, vowing privately to have more than a word with his Italian friend, “but not accurate. The murder took place on Italian soil so it’s in Italian jurisdiction.”
“Waters,” said Father Carlo. He was nitpicking. “Our friend was shot in a vessel.”
“Any idea who did it?”
The priest looked reflective.
“He came to see me in the church. I heard his confession, but I am not, of course, at liberty to tell you what he said.”
“Did what he said have any bearing on his death?”
“Alas, I am not able to say. I am bound by my promises.”
Bognor did not think Father Carlo was bound by anything. He struck Bognor as being amoral at best and venal at worst, probably both. He had conned breakfast out of SIDBOT and teased its boss. Not cricket.
“Who do you think did it?” Bognor was not given to the full frontal direct approach, preferring something more oblique. In this, he was British in an old-fashioned way—all nudges and winks.
“You are the detective,” Father Carlo said with a shrug. “I am just a priest. I am not a solver of murder mysteries. How-ever, I believe the late Mr. Silverburger was a good Christian in his way.”
Bognor didn’t agree about this, but then he had decided some time ago that the Holy Father was not a particularly good Christian, either.
He asked for the bill. This was substantial, but he paid in cash and added a large tip. Father Carlo thanked him. Bognor nodded.
Both men had coats, duly delivered but requiring more tips. It had been an expensive breakfast. Outside, Bognor’s car was waiting. He would sit in the back and read papers while reflecting on a waste of time and of money. He offered Father Carlo a lift, but the man of God said that he would use his own legs and feet, which was not a particular hardship as Farm Street and his guest quarters and bags were only on the other side of the road. Bognor told himself that he must not allow personal dislike to interfere with his professional judgment. Just because he found the Italian loathsome didn’t make him a murderer. Possibly the reverse. Many of the murderers Bogor had known were personally quite attractive, the sort of people one would have to dinner. People one wouldn’t let near the house were often entirely innocent of serious crime despite their obvious shortcomings as human beings.
“Oh well,” Bognor said fatuously, looking back on the extravagant waste of the early hours of the morning, “onward and upward.”
The priest suddenly looked gray and deflated. They shook hands and Bognor got into his limo. Father Carlo waved a sad farewell.
“Very sad and very difficult to lose a brother,” he said as the driver eased the car into the rush-hour traffic, leaving Bognor to reflect on what could have been the most revealing sentence of the entire chat and possibly the entire investigation. He wished that his guest had uttered it earlier, wanted to ask him to elaborate, but saw only his retreat toward his temporary home. Slouching, like a strange beast. Perhaps, however, he had been granted a blinding flash of revelation. A question for Contractor.
12
Contractor thought it was just a turn of phrase. He obviously considered his boss wet behind the ears and not with water from Jordan.
“It’s the sort of thing god-botherers say,” he said. He himself was an agnostic or non-practicing Muslim so he disliked Christians, especially Roman Catholics. “He’s a man of the cloth. And Italian. Naturally, he thinks all men are brothers. He’s amazingly wrong, but there you go. Nothing in it.”
“I’m not so sure,” said Bognor. “I think he was claiming consanguineous fraternity.”
“Long words and concepts will get you nowhere at all,” said the overbright minion. “Check him out anyway,” said Bognor, “and that’s an order.” Giving instructions such as this always made him feel good. He was use
d to discussion, disagreement, debate. Insolence was acceptable in his opinion if it were dumb. Being able to indulge himself thus was almost the only perk of nearing retirement.
The bad news was that his wife agreed with the staff. In other words, Monica, Lady Bognor, thought the same as Harvey Contractor. To make matters worse, Monica specialized in insolence, but she didn’t do dumb.
“Figure of speech,” she said. “At least that depends on the state of one’s belief. It’s the sort of thing you’d expect a Catholic priest to say.”
The skepticism was almost tangible. Just as well, he thought, that they were talking on the telephone and not face-to-face in the same room.
“I don’t think he was talking figuratively,” he said. “He doesn’t strike me as a figurative sort of person.”
“Well,” she said, “you should know.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” He had little or no idea, but he was aware that they were having a row and that it had something to do with the fact that he had been having an expensive breakfast with a priest who claimed to be related to the deceased. Monica obviously thought she should have been enjoying the expensive breakfast.
“It just means that priests think everyone is their brother or sister. They go about the place making the sign of the cross and blessing everyone in sight. They don’t necessarily believe a word of it. In fact, many of them think it’s the mumbo-jumbo it so obviously is.”
“You go to church often enough,” he protested.
“Because I like the noise. That doesn’t mean I believe the nonsense. The idea that the devil has all the best tunes is rubbish in a literal sense. God has some very merry numbers, and his servants have a good line in frocks. But that doesn’t make them serious or believable.”
“You could have fooled me.”
“Not difficult. You’re one of the most gullible men I know.” This wasn’t true. It was a typical calumny. Bognor believed that in a number of important respects he was a figment of his wife’s imagination. Her image of him bore little or no relation to reality. The trouble was that she was so forceful, people were inclined to believe her. And the more he grinned and bore it, the more they believed her.
