The Word Is Murder(40)
‘I explained—’
‘Diana Cowper,’ Spielberg said. ‘Isn’t that Damian Cowper’s mother?’
‘That’s her. She was strangled. In her own house.’
‘I heard.’ It had often struck me that Spielberg, the man who had shot the bloodiest opening in cinema history with Saving Private Ryan and who had recreated Nazi atrocities in Schindler’s List, didn’t actually like talking about violence. I could have sworn he’d gone a little pale once when I was outlining an idea I’d had for Tintin. Now he turned to Peter. ‘I met Damian Cowper last month. He came in for a chat about War Horse.’
‘Poor kid,’ Peter Jackson said. ‘That’s a horrible thing to happen.’
‘I agree.’ Both Spielberg and Jackson were looking at me as if I had known Damian Cowper all my life and not attending his mother’s funeral would be the meanest thing I could possibly do. Meanwhile, Hawthorne was sitting there like some passing angel who’d wafted in to appeal to my better conscience.
‘I really think you should go, Anthony,’ Spielberg said.
‘But it’s just a book,’ I assured them. ‘To be honest, I’m having second thoughts about writing it. This film is much more important to me.’
‘Well, we don’t really have much to talk about where the second movie is concerned,’ Peter said. ‘Maybe we all need to take a rain check and rethink where we are in a couple of weeks.’
‘We can do a conference call,’ Spielberg said.
We’d been talking about Tintin for less than two minutes. My script had been thrown out in its entirety. And before I could start coming up with ideas for The Calculus Affair or Destination Moon or even Flight 714 to Sydney (spaceships … Spielberg liked spaceships, didn’t he?) I was being thrown out. It wasn’t fair. I was in a meeting with the two greatest film-makers in the world. I was meant to be writing a film for them. And yet I was being dragged out to the funeral of someone I hadn’t even met.
Hawthorne got to his feet. It tells you something about my state of mind that I hadn’t even noticed when he’d sat down. ‘Very nice to meet you,’ he said.
‘Sure,’ Spielberg said. ‘Do please pass on my condolences to Damian.’
‘I’ll do that.’
‘And don’t worry, Anthony. We’ll give your agent a call.’
They never did call my agent. In fact I never saw either of them again and my only consolation as I sit here now is that so far there has been no new Tintin film. The Secret of the Unicorn got rave reviews and made $375 million worldwide but the response in America was less enthusiastic. Maybe that’s dissuaded them from continuing with the sequel. Or maybe they’re working on it now. Without me.
‘They seemed very nice,’ Hawthorne said, as he walked down the corridor.
‘For Christ’s sake!’ I exploded. ‘I told you I didn’t want to come to the funeral. Why did you come here? How did you even know where I was?’
‘I rang your assistant.’
‘And she told you?’
‘Listen.’ Hawthorne was trying to calm me down. ‘You don’t want to do Tintin. It’s for children. I thought you were leaving all that stuff behind you.’
‘It’s being produced by Steven Spielberg!’ I exclaimed.
‘Well, maybe he’ll make a film of your new book. A murder story! He knows Damian Cowper.’ We pushed through the main doors of the hotel and went out into the street. ‘Who do you think will play me?’
Eleven
The Funeral
I know Brompton Cemetery well. When I was in my twenties, I had a room in a flat just five minutes away and on a hot summer afternoon I’d wander in and write there. It was somewhere quiet, away from the dust and the traffic, a world of its own. In fact it’s one of the most impressive cemeteries in London – a member of the so-called ‘magnificent seven’ – with a striking array of Gothic mausoleums and colonnades peopled by stone angels and saints, all of them constructed by the Victorians partly to celebrate death but also to keep it in its place. There’s a main avenue that runs in a straight line all the way from one end to the other and walking there on a sunny day I could easily imagine myself in ancient Rome. I would find a bench and sit there with my notebooks, watching the squirrels and the occasional fox and, on a Saturday afternoon, listening to the distant clamour of the crowd at Stamford Bridge football club on the other side of the trees. It’s strange how different locations around London have played such a large part in my work. The River Thames is one of them. Brompton Cemetery is most certainly another.
It was ten to eleven when Hawthorne and I arrived and made our way between the two red telephone boxes that seemed to stand guard on either side of the main gate. We followed a narrow, twisty path with bollards that could be lowered to allow vehicles – presumably hearses – to come in. A few mourners walked ahead of us. This part of the cemetery was shabbier and more depressing than I remembered. I noticed a headless statue on a plinth. Another greeted us with a severed arm. I took pictures of them with my iPhone. A few pigeons pecked at the grass.
We turned a corner and the Brompton chapel appeared ahead of us, a building that consisted of a perfect circle with two wings. If viewed from above, it would have the same shape as a London Underground sign … vaguely appropriate when you think about it. We had approached it from the back and, sure enough, there was a hearse parked on a square of concrete next to an open door. The willow casket that Diana Cowper had requested was inside, as – I realised with a jolt in my stomach – was she. Four men in black tailcoats stood waiting to carry her in.