4 - The Iron Tongue of Midnight (9 page)

“So I’ve heard.” I shifted from foot to foot, silently entreating all the saints of heaven to send Vincenzo on his way.

One of the elect who wasn’t particularly busy that night must have taken pity on me and granted a small miracle. After another wink, my host trotted off toward the east wing humming a gay tune under his breath.

Moving like the wind, I slipped through the door and went to work. My search of Carmela’s wardrobe and chest was not accomplished as easily as Romeo’s. The soprano had more garments than Romeo, Emilio, Gussie, and I put together. In one drawer, I counted seven nightshifts alone. Then there was the dressing alcove where she’d stored little trunks filled with jars of lotions and face paints and hampers containing yards of ribbons, lace fichus and other folderol. I wasn’t able to make the business as methodical as I’d planned, but once I crept back across the corridor, I was reasonably sure that Carmela did not possess a pistol.

Almost as soon as I’d closed my door, I heard voices in the corridor calling good night. Suddenly weak-kneed, I sank into the chair and mopped my forehead with the towel I’d left on its arm. I’d cut it fine, much too fine for comfort.

Gussie returned a moment later. “You’re back. Thank the good Lord.” He sighed heavily, then brightened to ask, “Did you find anything?”

My voice sounded as glum as my mood. “I have no reason to suspect that Romeo harbors any secrets beyond a book of erotica or that Carmela has any worries besides keeping the years at bay.”

Gussie nodded with pursed lips. He could have said, I told you so, but those words were not in my brother-in-law’s lexicon. Instead, he opened his sketchbook and tore a sheet off the top. “Here, Grisella wouldn’t take this. I thought you might like to have it.”

“She didn’t want her portrait?”

Gussie shrugged. “She glanced at it, and then returned it to me with a cold shake of her head. Jean-Louis laughed outright and said it looked no more like her than he did.”

Studying the drawing, I thought I saw why Grisella had rejected it. Her lips were upturned and her cheeks dimpled, but like a magic mirror, Gussie’s sketch also revealed a pitiful longing beneath the smile. Grisella would never want to admit to such naked vulnerability. Though I’d renewed our acquaintance only that morning, I already understood that my sister made a virtue of self-control. Gussie had caught something else, too. In her narrowed eyes, I detected something hard and merciless that gave me a hollow feeling in the pit of my stomach.

We both sought our beds. Gussie’s day in the open air of the vineyard must have worn him out. Within minutes, he was snoring softly. I didn’t fare as well.

Two women involved in scandals that tied them to Russia, and when I weighed my night’s activities in the balance, the scales dipped toward my wayward sister. Rearranging my pillow for the tenth time, I pondered how Grisella had artfully induced our reluctant maestro to include me in the cast of
Tamerlano
. My sister was obviously interested in more than renewing family ties: I felt that down to the meat of my bones. Grisella’s daring leap from Count Paninovich’s burning
yali
had been only the beginning of a long journey. With mounting anxiety, I wondered if I was the end point or merely a stop along the way.

Before I found my desperately needed repose, another matter which probably had no bearing on either Grisella or the Russian stranger floated to the top of my mind: Why did the master of the villa feel the need to skulk about his own house like a thief in the night? And what had Vincenzo been up to that put him in such a mellow mood?

***

The next morning Maestro Weber set us to rehearsing recitatives. For me, this was a necessary evil at the best of times. Accompanied by only a few supporting chords from harpsichord and strings, passages of recitative moved the story along in great chunks of repetitive, sing-song dialogue. Give me an aria that combined a musical challenge with an inspired melody, and I could scale sublime heights, but singing recitatives made me feel like an Arabian steed forced to drag a plow over a muddy field. What torture!

Bored, and distracted by family concerns which perforce must remain secret, I’m afraid I delivered my tuneless bits with scant grace. Maestro Weber dismissed me with a frown, but voiced no overt criticism. When he called Emilio up, I retreated to a comfortable wing chair in a distant corner of the salon. This turned out to be a fortuitous choice, as my position offered an unobstructed view of the front door that soon resounded with the metallic clang of the knocker.

A footman should have answered immediately. Instead, another series of increasingly impatient knocks brought Nita from the depths of the house drying her hands on her apron. She opened the door on a draft of chilly air. Three men waited on the portico, the first a sober personage whose ample stomach was spanned by a gold chain bearing a medal of office.

Nita dropped a dutiful curtsy and greeted him by name. Unfortunately, I couldn’t quite make it out.

The maid curtsied even lower to the second visitor, a middle-aged man of distinguished bearing with a shock of tawny hair that put me in mind of a lion’s mane. His roving gaze took in every corner of the foyer and the salon beyond, sweeping over me as if I were invisible. His attention lingered on the furnishings and décor, and he did not appear to appreciate what he saw.

“Signor Luvisi,” Nita announced grandly,
“we make you welcome.”

Ah, I’d heard that name mentioned several times. Luvisi was the neighboring estate owner who had stolen a march on Vincenzo with the grape harvest.

A twinkle sprang to Luvisi’s eyes as he handed Nita his cloak and tricorne. Calling her by name, he said, “I hope that welcome goes for your master as well.”

She answered by pressing her lips into a tight line and giving a small shake of her head.

The third man needed no introduction. His rusty black cassock and wooden cross marked him as the parish priest. The expression on his lined face would have suited one of the gloomier Old Testament prophets. Nita avoided his eyes as he handed over his broad-brimmed hat.

Before the maid could show the callers to an anteroom, Vincenzo came down the corridor that held his study. He entered the foyer with the usual pleasantries, but his polite phrases were woven with threads of tension that stood out like gilt embroidery on a black suit.

Hoping to escape notice, I pressed myself into the well-padded chair and focused my gaze on the harpsichord as if Emilio’s recitative was the most amazing performance I had ever witnessed. My ears were not trained on his droning soprano, however, but on the increasingly animated conversation among Vincenzo and his visitors.

It transpired that Agostino Bartoli, the mayor of Molina Mori, headed the small delegation. Rumors concerning the villa’s midnight tragedy had penetrated every corner of the village, and its good people feared being murdered in their beds. In the constable Captain Forti’s absence, Mayor Bartoli had been forced to make inquiries himself. Signor Luvisi had been included because of the proximity of his estate. Padre Romano had joined the group to ensure that the murdered man received the proper rites of burial.

Vincenzo obviously resented the delegation’s intrusion. Perhaps it was because he was accustomed to holding unopposed sway over everyone at the Dolfini Ironworks. Or perhaps it was the bustling air of pomp and ceremony that enveloped Mayor Bartoli like an invisible cloud. Whichever the case, Vincenzo announced his intention to keep the stranger’s body in the ice house until Monte Rosso ran out of boar and Captain Forti returned to Molina Mori. Though Forti was giving his official duties short shrift, he was, after all, the only judicial authority in the region.

Vincenzo’s visitors were just as determined that the body be released, advising that it could reach an unconscionable state of deterioration before the constable came away from his hunting. Mayor Bartoli also wanted to question everyone who was staying at the Villa Dolfini or lived on the estate. Luvisi had already allowed the mayor to question his tenants. None of them had noticed anything unusual on the night in question, but then, Luvisi’s estate lay several miles away. Surely a man couldn’t have been bludgeoned to death in the second floor corridor of a house without someone in that very house seeing or hearing something. The mayor’s tone bristled with suspicion at Vincenzo’s assurances that he had already put these questions to his household without any light shed on the mystery.

As they disputed all the way down the hall, I strained my ears to catch their fading voices. I couldn’t help noticing that Vincenzo directed most of his comments to Mayor Bartoli or Padre Romano, as though he disdained to acknowledge his neighbor any more than was absolutely necessary.

The slam of a door put an end to my eavesdropping, but not my curiosity. At the harpsichord, Grisella had replaced Emilio and was trilling her way through her recitative like a gay woodland bird. Her bright efforts had captured everyone’s attention. Silently, I eased myself from my chair and slunk into the foyer.

Nita was visible through the half-open door of the cloak room, tossing the priest’s broad-brim on a peg beside the mayor’s gilt-edged tricorne. When she came to Signor Luvisi’s headgear, she smoothed its spray of white plumes and dusted its crown for any sign of lint.

“A fine man—Signor Luvisi,” I said as I stepped through the doorway.

Startled, Nita jerked around with a tiny jump. On seeing my pleasant smile, she hung up the hat and replied in her flat tone, “That he is, Signore. A fine man from a family of the highest station. You’ll not find anyone here that would breathe a word against a Luvisi.”

“He seems quite concerned about our recent tragedy.”

“He would be. Not like some,” she finished sotto voce.

“I noticed that he called you by name. Did you once work for him?”

She shook her head. “I worked for his cousin, Signor Annibale Luvisi. We all did. This was his villa.”

I nodded. Many noble families owned great country estates, but it had not always been thus. Our island republic was founded on one guiding dictum:
Cultivate the sea, let the land be
. The discovery of the new continent across the Atlantic forced Venice to reconsider that proverbial wisdom. With their maritime fortunes diminishing, patricians scrambled to purchase land on Terrafirma and exploit its luxuriant soil. The intervening years had seen the huge tracts split up to accommodate younger sons, but it was rare for an estate to pass out of family hands entirely.

From some deep recess, Nita heaved a sigh that trailed memories in its wake. “Signor Annibale was the mildest of masters, never out of sorts. His wife, also. You should have seen the villa then. When they were in residence, we had parties that went on all night with hundreds of candles burning, luncheons served in the open air by the lake, carriages streaming through the gate to pay afternoon calls. Everyone loved the young master and mistress.” Her freckled cheeks bunched into a rare smile.

“Did Annibale Luvisi also take an interest in agriculture?”

“He took pride in the estate, but he was a child of the city at heart. The ways of the country didn’t come naturally to him. Just as Signora Francesca left the housekeeping to me, Signor Annibale allowed Ernesto to see to the farming.”

“Ernesto seems very capable in that regard.”

“Indeed so. Ernesto was born on this estate. He worked alongside his father from the time he could toddle. Thanks to Signor Annibale’s open hand, Ernesto was able to plant a new vineyard, build a new threshing barn, and refurbish all the walls and fences. The more improvements he made, the more lucrative the estate became. Signor Annibale was the envy of all the neighboring landowners.”

“How did it happen that the villa passed into Dolfini hands?”

Nita shook her head and flapped her apron. “Oh, Signore. It was enough to make you doubt the Lord’s goodness. One day Signora Francesca woke up looking as white as bread dough and complaining of a pain in her side. By afternoon, she was burning up with fever and her little belly was as hard as slate. The doctor from the village was useless. She died the next morning in a torment I never hope to see the likes of again. Signor Annibale changed forever that day. He truly loved his wife and couldn’t accept that she’d been taken in such a cruel fashion. For a week, he shut himself up in the chamber where she died. Then he took off for Venice where they say he meant to drink himself to death.”

“He’s dead, too?”

“No, he still lives, but while he was in his cups he gambled everything away. Some foreign count won the house and land and turned around and sold it before the rest of the family even knew what was happening.”

“Vincenzo Dolfini was the buyer?”

She nodded solemnly.

“What happened to Signor Annibale?”

“When he came to himself, he tried to undo the sale. He even took it to court, but Signor Dolfini is a good man of business. He’d insisted that all the papers be drawn up in the proper way. The sale was held to be valid, so that was that.”

“The rest of the Luvisi family must have been livid.”

“Yes, especially the current signore.” She threw a longing glance at the plumed tricorne. “His fields surround this estate like the arms of a crescent moon. Signor Annibale’s land was scooped out from the whole centuries ago, a bequest from a Luvisi long past. If it was to be sold, it should have been offered to his cousin.”

“You said Signor Annibale is still living. Is he in Venice?”

“No, my poor master had no taste for society, and he bore his family’s displeasure like a millstone on his back. He left Venice and withdrew to the Capuchin monastery on Monte Rosso. As hard as it is to imagine, my proud young master is shut behind stone walls living a monk’s life of solitude and hardship.”

I shook my head slowly. “What a sad tale. I had no idea the Villa Dolfini possessed such a regrettable history.”

“There’s no reason why you should. Signora Dolfini got you and the others here to put on her opera, not stir up the past.” Nita fell silent, then smoothed her apron and clasped her hands over her rounded belly, as if to signal an end to the subject. I formed the vague impression that she regretted having talked so freely. “Is there anything else I can do for you, Signore?” she asked.