Black Bridge (24 page)

Urbino said he did. He remembered that both Festa and Flint had displayed a knowledge of the Baron Corvo on separate occasions. He left Bobo and the bewildered, faintly smiling priest to join Flint. The former model was looking down at a map of the cemetery, the one given out at the cemetery office.

“Can you help me, Urbino? Oriana marked her family's tomb but I'm still confused. Could you give me my bearings so I can bring these there?”

He indicated the demure bouquet of violets. Urbino explained the best way to get to the tomb. It wasn't far from the Da Capo-Zendrini mausoleum. To get his own bearings Urbino's eye strayed to the other corner of the map where the Baron Corvo was buried.

“Thank you! I'd better go right away. I don't want to miss the boats returning to Venice. A cemetery isn't my idea of a place to spend the night!”

“Mine either!” Festa said from a nearby pew. She threw an angry glance at Bobo, who was still talking with the priest. Flint excused himself and left. Fog curled into the church from the briefly opened door.

“I've told Bobo and I'm telling you,” Festa went on. “You can tell
her
if you want!” There was no need for the irritated nod in the Contessa's direction for Urbino to know whom she meant. “I'm sitting right here until the boats go back so don't forget me! I don't know why I came!”

“Why did you?”

She pressed her plump lips together and frowned. Urbino excused himself and joined the Contessa, who was moving slowly toward the door with Harriet and Zeoli.

“Harriet and I are going to the mausoleum. Why don't you come with us? Marco was going to come, but he's feeling ill.” The man in fact didn't look at all well. His eyes were bloodshot and his sallow skin had a sickly shine. “You should rest here, Marco dear. Maybe you can keep Livia company. I think she'll be on the first boat back.” She cast an amused glance over at Festa, who was rummaging through her large pocketbook. “So will you join us, Urbino? Bobo says he has his own respects to pay. Where, I don't know. He's being mysterious.”

“Why don't you and Harriet go on ahead, but if you don't mind, give me about twenty minutes before you leave the church. I'd like to go to Pound's grave first.”

“That fascist!”

“Don't let the Barone hear you say that,” Zeoli said with a sickly grin. “D'Annunzio had his sympathies with II Duce, too.”

“No more of your criticisms of D'Annunzio tonight, Marco,” the Contessa said. “You should have heard him, Urbino. Filling poor Harriet's ears with all sorts of terrible stories. Now, you just sit right there next to Livia, Marco. You take good care of him, Livia. I'm sure you must have a whole pharmacy of medicines in that big bag. You doctor him up if he needs it. As you wish, Urbino. If you must go to that ghastly man's grave, do it. You know where the mausoleum is. We'll give you your twenty minutes.”

Very little of this interchange seemed to register on Harriet, who had a preoccupied look on her plain face.

Urbino hurried through the door and into the fog-filled cloister, then into a crypt on the other side of the cloister where Gemelli had said Urbino's contact would be. Urbino informed him about what he was going to do and what Bobo had told him about the newest blackmail note and the Baron Corvo's grave. He made sure the police officer knew exactly where Corvo's grave and the Da Capo-Zendrini mausoleum were.

Then he went into the cemetery.

3

Fog swirled around him and invaded his clothes. What little he was able to see gleamed as if lit by an unearthly light. Sounds, all of them muted and most of them indistinguishable, fell dully upon his ears like some manifestation of the fog. The only sounds he could identify were the scratching of what were either the cemetery's ubiquitous rats or the salamanders that had frightened Harriet, and the periodic bleat of a foghorn out in the lagoon.

He proceeded a short distance along the wall to the left of the entrance, then stopped. He pressed himself up closely against one of the tombs built into the wall. He had only to wait a few minutes. Footsteps sounded from the cloister, paused briefly at the entrance to the cemetery, then turned right without any perceptible hesitation. They continued in the general direction of the Baron Corvo's grave before being swallowed up in the thick air.

Try though he did, Urbino couldn't make out any form, nor could he identify the footsteps as belonging to a man or a woman.

He went onto the same path the footsteps had taken. He advanced slowly because of the fog and because he wanted to make as little sound as possible on the gravel. Old-fashioned lanterns placed close to the ground provided only minimal illumination, so that someone could have been within touching distance without being seen. Occasionally he thought he saw the glimmer of a lamp and heard a voice, but the fog and the dark deceived as well as concealed. If he hadn't taken this path so often, he would have had to feel his way even more than he was.

Yet he didn't catch up with whomever was ahead. If he could only see who it was, it would be enough. If it was Bobo, his mind would be more at ease, for the man couldn't be in two places. Then he could be almost assured that Bobo had told him the truth about the blackmail note. So much depended on this, for this last blackmail note had been an unforeseen development that might ruin everything. If he had been wrong about the realizations he had come to in Harriet's former room—

But he didn't allow himself to reconsider. He had to be right. He continued to crawl through the fog, calculating how much more time he had before the Contessa and Harriet started out from the church.

The grave of the Baron Corvo, who had taken part in a similar procession to the cemetery at the turn of the century, was farther to the right near the surrounding wall. Urbino continued along with the slight help of the lanterns, but mainly by instinct and habit. Occasionally the fog lifted to reveal more of the path ahead, a water spigot with a pail, or one or two grave markers. Most of the latter were cheap wooden crosses about three feet high with ceramic photographs or plastic-covered snapshots of the dead. The name of the dead was painted crudely on the horizontal bar of the cross, sometimes without any dates.

He made good progress and was soon in an area of burial niches built in tiers near the outer wall of the cemetery. He stopped behind a column near the water gate. Globes on top of the wall cast their meager light down on the scene. The Baron Corvo's niche was on the topmost tier and faced the lagoon and the sleeping city. A movable metal stairway nearby provided access to the higher graves. Broken pieces of marble, large rocks, discarded crosses, urns, and grave markers with photographs littered the area.

Before the fog drifted in from the lagoon again, Urbino made out a tall figure standing beneath the skeleton stairway. It was Bobo. His cigarette glowed brightly and then dimmed. Urbino was tempted to stay longer, but he now knew that Bobo, who hadn't seen him, was where he had said he would be. Somewhere nearby were policemen. They would have to handle whoever might show up to meet Bobo.

As for Urbino, he had to get to the Da Capo-Zendrini mausoleum as quickly as possible now.

Still not sure, however, that he wasn't being tricked in some way that took advantage of his blind spot about Bobo, he started to retrace his way with a sense of urgency.

Surely those were footsteps behind him. He stopped, but heard only the fog horn moaning. A few seconds later a blow smashed against the back of his head. He dropped to his knees. He looked up and saw a figure looming above him. He put his hand up to avoid the next blow.

4

The Contessa and Harriet groped along the path, using the feeble illumination of the lanterns as their only guide. At the insistence of Harriet, who seemed anxious to get away from Festa and Zeoli after everyone else had left the church, the Contessa had shaved five minutes off the twenty she had promised Urbino to wait before leaving.

The fog was one of the thickest the Contessa had ever had the misfortune to be out in. So absorbed was she in what Harriet was saying that it was a wonder the Contessa didn't fall flat on her face.

“Don't you see, Barbara? He abandoned Helen Creel when he found out that she had no real money—that it was all her son's, because of her father's will! I know you love him but love can do terrible things. I've been driven mad!”

Harriet grabbed the Contessa's hand and moved a step ahead of her, as if she were urging the Contessa to the mausoleum, afraid she might now turn back. The Contessa suddenly wished that she had waited those extra five minutes. She desperately wanted Urbino to be at the mausoleum waiting for them. Whyever did he have to go to Pound's grave?

The mausoleum rose up in her mind with its cold marble walls and its eroding statues, with her name and birthdate engraved and waiting. How could she ever have thought that she had banished her dread of the place?

“Moss never forgot Bobo's face,” Harriet was saying, her breathing shallow and wheezy, her voice seeming to come from a long way off. “You know how little he's changed in the past ten years. As handsome as ever. My mother always told me to run as fast as I could from handsome men. As if I ever had to do the running!”

Harriet broke out into her loud, hysterical laugh, but cut it off as if with a knife and clapped one hand over her mouth, with the other pulling the Contessa along.

The Contessa peered into the fog. She could see only vague shapes—peculiar flickering lights, mausoleums, grave markers, trees, unmoving forms that looked like men and women but certainly must be statues. Perhaps Urbino was somewhere nearby on the path ahead or behind them. She thought she heard a footfall.

“Urbino? Is that you?”

Her voice was swallowed by the fog.

“We've both been fools, Barbara. But I've been the bigger one. I—”

The Contessa felt as if the fog had crept into her mind, confusing it, and into her heart, giving it a mortal chill. She started to lose track of what Harriet was saying.

“—and he said that all we needed was money, that we already had love, and I believed him. And when I told him what I heard Moss and Quimper say in the garden the night of your reception, that was all he needed to get his mind going. I'm so sorry for what I've done to you, Barbara.” She gripped the Contessa's arm more tightly and the Contessa started to pull away. “I never thought he was the one who killed them! And now I think he knows that I know! Oh, my God, what was that?”

Both women froze. Harriet's nails dug into the Contessa's flesh.

“Let's hurry,” the Contessa said. “We can't be far from the mausoleum. I have the key.”

As they hurried along, the Contessa gave a shudder at the thought of seeking safety behind the heavy doors of the mausoleum.

5

His watch was smashed. Slowly, painfully, he got to his feet. How long had he been unconscious? One minute? Ten minutes? Longer?

He touched his head. His hand came away sticky. He smelled his own blood.

He stifled a call for help. Whoever had hit him hoped he was dead or at least unconscious. Better to leave it that way, better to stay off the paths. Moving with the slowness of a nightmare, never sure if his legs weren't going to buckle, he struck out across the field of graves.

As long as he walked in a straight line between the graves he was fine, but he occasionally lost his sense of direction from the effects of the blow and the fog. He bumped into grave markers, flower urns, and concrete planters. The unmistakable squeal and scratching of rats assaulted his ears. They ran across his feet and plopped down from the grave markers. He both cursed and was grateful for the fog and darkness that hid how alive the field must be with them. He tripped and fell onto the damp, yeasty earth. He scrambled up as quickly as he could but not quickly enough. A rat grazed the top of his head. Shuddering, wondering if the blood was attracting them, he continued to creep along.

His eye was caught by scattered, flickering lights that burned through the fog. These weren't votive candles or lamps. They were the
fuochi fatui
, fires fueled by gases from the decomposing bodies buried close to the surface. The coldness of their burning mocked him with what it seemed to say about the illumination the living might expect of the dead.

At one point he thought he had lost his way, had become turned around and might be going back toward the Baron Corvo's grave or deeper into the cemetery. But the fog lifted and thinned to reveal a row of graves whose names he remembered recording in his journal for possible research. Yes, he was still moving in the right direction. He crossed a path and entered another field. He was only a short distance from the Da Capo-Zendrini mausoleum.

He should have been warned by the rubble that he knocked against and stepped on, that sometimes crunched beneath his feet or obstructed his way. Realization came a second too late as he tripped and fell into a shallow excavation filled with water. It was a disinterred grave. He now remembered seeing the graves in the process of being disinterred when he was here with the Contessa.

He scrambled up the muddy side of the grave. A woman screamed. He pulled himself out and grabbed a large piece of concrete. He ran toward the mausoleum. A sharp crack cut the air.

“Oh, my God!” came a voice he immediately recognized as the Contessa's.

The crack came again, followed by the grate and bang of a metal door closing.

Fog wreathed the mausoleum. A votive candle on the steps shimmered and quickened the faces of the two stone saints. Urbino rushed up behind a figure with a gun, who was frantically searching the ground. Other figures ran in their direction from the fog. Urbino brought the concrete down heavily on the man's head.

Flint dropped the gun and staggered toward the steps of the mausoleum. He grasped the statue of St. Nicholas with both arms and slowly started to fall backward. The saint, dislodged, came down massively on top of him.