Another Death in Venice Read online

  Another Death in Venice

  Reginald Hill

  PART I

  RIMINI

  I

  During the night, the plump woman in the gipsy wig cried again in the next bedroom. Sarah lay and listened, full of concern, but did not waken Michael who had declared two days earlier that of all forms of reveille to this sad and sorry world, he found a fat woman’s weeping the most deplorable.

  After a while the noise stopped or moderated sufficiently to be subsumed by the unceasing hum of traffic. Someone somewhere was having the late night fun promised by the brochures, or perhaps just driving around in search of it.

  Michael had been smoking in bed earlier and the stench still hung on the air. Sarah thought of tiptoeing on to the balcony and staring forty-five degrees left at the view of the Adriatic which was costing them 300 lire per day extra. (This payment troubled her disproportionately, making her think of the disaster-struck in so many parts of the world trekking to the ocean’s edge and peering out hopelessly over the empty waters.) But before she could rise, the picture dissolved into rhythmic waves and she fell asleep.

  At breakfast, Michael watched burly Bob Lovelace eat his English fry-up (600 lire extra).

  ‘I had a dream last night,’ he said.

  ‘Are you going on the beach today?’ Sarah asked Molly Lovelace, an attractive, rather nervous girl who seemed so intimidated by Michael that she had hardly spoken during the three days they had shared the table. Her husband was different. He did not speak at all, but from choice rather than nerves.

  ‘I dreamt that I was sitting at breakfast just like now, and everyone in the room was chatting away about the beach, and booking a spot, and what was for lunch, when suddenly a huge voice boomed out, as if from a megaphone, crying, “Oh no, no, no, no! Cut! Cut! Cut!” We all looked up and out there, beyond the swimming pool, somewhere out over the sea, we became aware of a huge figure, just an outline, like someone seen in the aureole of an arc-light. “Oh no!” this figure cried. “That was terrible. That will never do. Let’s try it again.” “From the beginning?” we all asked hopefully. “No,” came the answer. “Just from where you come down for breakfast. But this time, with feeling.”

  ‘Then I woke up.’

  Bob rolled a rasher of bacon into a fatty cylinder and thrust it into his mouth. Molly stared at Michael in alarm.

  ‘Take no notice,’ said Sarah brightly. ‘My husband’s always making up dreams.’

  ‘Aren’t we all?’ asked Michael.

  Their attention was diverted by the arrival of the plump woman in the gipsy wig whose entrances, always some minutes before her husband’s, had assumed an almost ceremonial significance for the other guests. The previous evening she had been like an overweight Garbo crossing the foyer of Grand Hotel with many a distrait backward glance. This morning dressed in a close-fitting black beach robe relieved by a multi-stranded coral necklace, her eyes deep shadowed in a Quant-pale face, she progressed down the room like the prow of a stately funeral ship, looking neither to left nor right. Bette Davies as Elizabeth the First, thought Michael.

  Her husband who appeared five minutes later was a spare, gangling man with a self-satisfied smile who paused half a dozen times to exchange reminiscences of his last night’s excesses.

  Molly was among his chosen confidantes.

  ‘Good morning, my dear,’ he cried resting his hand familiarly on her bare shoulder. ‘And how are you? You look well enough, I must say, but you don’t deserve to, not the way you were putting it away. Only joking! But Bob here’s the man. What a gullet! What was it, Bob? Fifteen pints of Italian beer and he’s still having his eggs and bacon! I’ll try a coffee, I think. See you later. With a bit of luck we might get a bit of sunshine today.’

  With a friendly nod at Sarah and Michael he joined his wife, who greeted his arrival by moving her chair two feet back from the table and lighting another cigarette.

  ‘Let’s be off, darling,’ said Michael. ‘Or we’ll miss the best of the day.

  ‘That’s the bit,’ he explained to Molly, ‘before the sun gets too hot and while there’s no more than one square Englishman to every square yard.’

  ‘You shouldn’t victimize that girl,’ said Sarah as they left the dining-room.

  ‘You shouldn’t patronize her,’ said Michael.

  ‘I don’t,’ she protested. ‘Someone’s got to talk to her and that brute she’s married to never opens his mouth except to stick food into it.’

  ‘That,’ said Michael, ‘is because he is a typical representative of the British lower orders.’

  Torn between her militant feminism and her militant socialism, Sarah fell silent. Michael accepted as triumph what was merely truce and watched her with an indulgent smile as she methodically ticked off her list of beach essentials. Bathing cap, Biros, books; Lilo, Lilo pump; nose-protector; pocket repair outfit, postcards; sun glasses, sun lotion …

  Michael grew impatient. His smile was as deep as his indulgence went. He stepped into the bathroom and began to clean his teeth in mineral water.

  ‘Must we go on the beach today?’ he asked through pink foam. ‘Couldn’t we give it a miss?’

  ‘Next week we’ll roam around Venice till we’re pools of butter in St Mark’s Square,’ Sarah answered. ‘This part of the holiday’s for swimming, tanning and relaxing.’

  In fact she was as bored as he was but one triumph in a morning was more than enough for him. She suspected he really enjoyed lying on the beach more than she did but there was no easy way of moving out of the roles they had chosen when their Italian holiday was first discussed.

  ‘At least couldn’t we stay by the pool today?’ he coaxed. ‘And avoid all that sand.’

  ‘England’s full of swimming pools,’ she said firmly. ‘But the sea there rarely reaches seventy degrees Fahrenheit.’

  He followed her through the door trailing the half-inflated Lilo behind him.

  ‘That tan will get you blackballed when they see it at the Trades and Labour Club,’ he said.

  She wasn’t listening. Their plump neighbour was on the point of entering her room, and with a sinking heart Michael realized his wife was about to engage her in conversation.

  His first instinct was to go on alone, but he stifled it and instead came to a halt a few feet beyond the two women and looked out of a window, whistling the latest pop tune which several hundred juke-box playings had printed indelibly on his mind. His imminence would have no effect at all on Sarah, but there was always the chance that the other woman might react to his presence by going away. In any case, it was worth hearing what Sarah said. A timely interruption might prevent some complete disaster, such as an invitation for this outlandish creature to spend the day with them.

  ‘Hello,’ said Sarah brightly. ‘We’re in the room next door.’

  ‘Are you?’ replied the woman.

  ‘Yes. I was just admiring your necklace. It’s gorgeous. It’s coral, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s right. Some tat I picked up in Benidorm last year. You can have it if you like it. I’m tired of the bloody thing. It keeps snagging my blouses.’

  She began unfastening the necklace and Sarah looked with alarm at Michael, who grinned at her.

  ‘No, really, I couldn’t,’ said Sarah. ‘Honestly. It must have been quite expensive.’

  ‘I’m not trying to sell you it,’ snapped the woman, ceasing her efforts. Michael felt himself warming to her. The function of natives had always been to eat missionaries.

  The woman spoke with a mild Midlands accent. She must, thought Michael, be in her forties, perhaps five or six years older than Sarah and himself. The deep mask of make-up and the jet black wig with its three ringlets pendant over e
ither ear made a more accurate dating difficult.

  ‘Is he yours?’ asked the woman, looking at Michael.

  ‘Yes, I suppose he is,’ said Sarah. Michael stepped forward instinctively. A quick introduction and off seemed possible.

  The woman nodded at him and turned back to Sarah.

  ‘I don’t like men,’ she said. ‘Does he have affairs? I think they all do, don’t you?’

  ‘Well, perhaps not all,’ said Sarah. ‘They like to pretend a bit. I’m Sarah Masson, by the way. And this is Michael.’

  ‘I’m Wendy Trueman.’

  ‘Oh. And your husband?’

  ‘What about my husband?’

  ‘What do they call him?’

  ‘You find a name bad enough and I’ll call him that,’ said Wendy emphatically. ‘Swine, they’re all swine.’

  To Michael’s alarm her eyes began to fill with tears. He seized Sarah’s arm.

  ‘We’d better get our spot,’ he said jovially. ‘The Krauts will have been out there for hours and once the Wops and their bambinos arrive, we’ll end up by the beach bar again.’

  As anticipated, his racial smears distracted Sarah’s attention from the tearful woman long enough for him to pull her a couple of steps down the corridor.

  ‘See you later, Wendy,’ he called to emphasize their departure.

  The plump woman gave him a look of what might have been hatred or despair and went into her room.

  Michael released Sarah and prepared to receive a tirade of recrimination. Instead she walked quietly by his side for a few moments.

  ‘Poor woman,’ she said finally, then added, ‘Do you have affairs?’

  ‘Not affairs,’ he said. ‘Just the one. It’s well known that for years I’ve been screwing the arse off that little black typist in the registry.’

  He raised his voice as he spoke and she shushed him angrily and became silent herself. He smiled complacently at his own ability to reduce Sarah to something like the quiet, shy girl he had fallen for fifteen years earlier, though the quality of uncritical admiration was not repeatable. He was in fact uncertain precisely how his wife did regard him now. He had been content to accept that she thought of him as a traitor in the great class struggle, or, at best, shell-shocked. But a couple of months earlier he had come across some notes she had made for an extra-mural course in psychotherapy she was following and had been disturbed to find she was using him as a case-history. Anonymously and fictitiously, of course, and embellished by one or two hyperbolical features such as suspected schizophrenia and latent homosexuality, but nevertheless recognizably based on things he had done and said. He did not feel betrayed or anything as absurd as that, merely perturbed that she could have reached this objective standpoint without his noticing. They still loved each other, he believed, but he was no longer sure what precisely love meant.

  To reach the beach they had to cross a road. Much has been written of Italian drivers but even the most vitriolic pen could not do them injustice. Michael refused to let the more timid Sarah hold his hand on the grounds that at crisis moments they inevitably disagreed on policy and she would get them both killed. So as usual he ended up on the beach side of the road while she was still waiting for a gap. He sat on a low wall and watched the morning procession to the sea. It was like the Sunday progress to church in the small Lancashire town where he had been born; the family groups, the uniformity of dress, the singleness of purpose, the certainty of reception; even the same faint shadows of anticipated boredom.

  A hand grasped his shoulder. Turning, he looked at a broad, brown and extremely muscular belly. Dark hairs strayed up from the tartan trunks and spread like couchgrass round the navel. Raising his eyes he found himself looking up at Bob.

  ‘Hello, Bob,’ he said, thinking that Michaelangelo would have admired the set of those shoulders and the way the muscle flexed like steak beneath the sun-tanned skin of the upper arm.

  ‘You,’ said Bob. ‘Watch it. All right?’

  ‘Well, all right,’ said Michael.

  It was only when Bob’s hand let go of his shoulder that he realized how tight the grip had been.

  ‘What was Bob saying?’ asked Sarah who had at last crossed the road.

  ‘I’m not sure. He told me to watch it.’

  ‘You’ve been asking for it, the way you treat Molly,’ said Sarah.

  ‘Anyway, I think I’ve solved the problem of Bob’s job,’ answered Michael.

  For some reason even Sarah’s most subtle questioning had not been able to elicit Bob’s profession from Molly. Michael had speculated that he was a heavily disguised brain-surgeon, fearful of being bombarded with symptoms.

  ‘He’s not a brain surgeon at all,’ continued Michael, rubbing his shoulder. ‘He’s a film star. Queen Kong, the gay gorilla.’

  ‘For God’s sake, Michael! And what on earth do you think you are?’

  Indignantly she marched towards the sea and, with an aggressiveness uncharacteristic in her dealings with foreigners, took possession of a beach umbrella right under the noses of a family of Germans. They muttered angrily and looked as if they might re-group for another attack till Michael dropped the Lilo at their feet, smiled at them and said with an expansive gesture, ‘Lebensraum.’

  He blew up the Lilo while Sarah, curiously prudish still, wriggled out of her beach robe and looked defiantly around as though her Marks and Spencer bikini would be an immediate object of censure and lust. She had a pleasant, rather boyish figure and as she anointed herself with oil, Michael wondered what had happened to the pneumatic girls of his adolescent dreams.

  He untangled a deck chair and began to write a post-card.

  Dear Timmy and Toni, he began.

  There once was a bishop of Rimini

  Who profited so much from simony

  That he bought shares in God

  And to Jesus he said,

  ‘You can push off, From now on it’s Him’n’me.’

  ‘Who are you writing to?’ asked Sarah.

  ‘Our children. You don’t imagine I shall send postcards to anyone else?’

  ‘Let me see.’

  She reached out an oily hand and took the card.

  ‘Why do you always have to be so clever? They won’t understand a word.’

  ‘Timmy’s eleven and Toni is nearly ten. At their age I was getting pre-pubertal thrills from eighteenth-century novels.’

  ‘Ha ha,’ said Sarah. ‘Your mother says you were a very slow child. And “said” doesn’t rhyme with "God”. Do you think they’ll be all right?’

  ‘I should think so. A parentless fortnight with the promise of exotic presents at the end of it – what greater joy this side Paradise?’

  The decision to go on holiday without the children had not been taken lightly. Michael had worked at it for weeks, applying himself in true scholarly fashion to an examination of all Sarah’s text-books on child care in order to muster evidence for his scheme. Spock’s retractions had nearly caught him out, but Sarah had finally capitulated, convinced more by his fervour than his arguments. The children were still too young for her to be willing to precipitate a crisis. Michael had wanted Venice, Sarah had insisted on a beach but the Lido had been too expensive. Then Michael had discovered this two-centre holiday, five days each in Venice and Rimini, ‘where Fellini was born and I Vitelloni is set,’ he enthused. It fell just within their budget, and before she could find time in her busy life to consider what was happening, Sarah found herself at Luton Airport, full of concern at leaving the children with their reactionary grandma and fuller of hurt at their lack of concern.

  But three days in the sun had salved both hurt and concern, and now she returned the card to Michael and settled on the Lilo to toast her underdone parts. Michael glanced at his watch. His duty it was to warn her when to turn. He also regulated their overall beach timetable. It was rather like being at school. There was a period for swimming, one for drinking, one for going out in a paddle-boat, one for playing knock-out whist; plus a
couple of free periods in which he could relax and consider abstract problems such as why it was so many lesser talents seemed to have got so many better jobs, which precise part of the beach Fellini had used in his film, and what it would be like to be seduced by Sophia Loren in a gondola. He had tried conjuring up a fantasy in which he did the seducing, but found it impossible. It didn’t bother him, though he knew it would have bothered Sarah if he’d told her. But then she lacked his realism. In a world so manifestly unjust and simoniacal, it was a wise man who knew his place.

  At dinner that night a shock awaited them. They had skipped lunch as usual, preferring a pair of luscious peaches to the three indifferent courses the hotel kitchen offered, so perhaps the switch had been performed then. Their table was empty when they arrived, but as they sat down Michael noticed Bob and Molly at the far side of the room.

  ‘Isn’t that where Gipsy Rose Lee sits?’ he said to Sarah.

  ‘Yes. Oh Michael, this is awful, you’ve frightened the poor girl off.’

  This was unjust he felt, but even if he had been at fault he did not merit the punishment that followed.

  ‘Hello,’ said Wendy sitting heavily opposite him but addressing Sarah. ‘God, but it’s warm. You’d think they’d be able to serve hot soup, wouldn’t you, but they never do.’

  She lit a cigarette and drew deeply on it, furrowing her heavily spread magenta lipstick. She was wearing a long purple dress with a silk sunflower at the nadir of its deep cleavage. Michael dragged his eyes away from the landslide of breast thus displayed; its light powdering of talc reminded him of the dusting of icing sugar with which his mother had consummated her Swiss rolls. Suddenly he tasted jam.

  ‘What happened to Bob and Molly?’ he asked.

  ‘We like a bit of company,’ said Wendy in an off-hand fashion. ‘They don’t seem to mind. She doesn’t say much, does she?’

  ‘She’s very shy,’ said Sarah defensively.

  ‘Is she? She looks worn out to me. I don’t expect he gives her much rest. He looks the type. But they’re all the same, aren’t they? One track.’