Death in a Serene City (36 page)

Was the strained look on her own face because she was thinking of all the hours—all the innocent, enjoyable hours for her—spent in the company of the Bellorinis and their secret?

“Probably their secret is what kept them together all those years,” he said by way of pulling her from these troubling thoughts. “Their secret
was
their marriage. You might even say it was the child they never had.”

She gave him a skeptical look.

“Try to curb your imagination just a little,
caro.
” She picked up a cake. “Exactly what was old Lodovico Pignatti's role in all this?” she asked, the cake poised at her lips.

“Innocent enough. He probably saw no danger or difficulty in keeping Stefano's apprenticeship a secret and was sure that sooner or later the old tyrant was bound to realize his son wasn't studying in Padua as he thought. It was only a family disagreement he didn't care to get more involved in. Then, with the old man more than ten years dead, Pignatti could see no reason for not putting up that photograph when he renovated his showroom. When Stefano and Angela found out, they decided it would be a good idea to set fire to the showroom.”

“That seems a drastic measure. Why not try to convince Pignatti not to use the photo?”

“He might have become suspicious. About this time Maria was starting to come around with her questions, don't forget, and Pignatti probably knew that Beatrice had died of arsenic poisoning. In a way arson was a clean way of doing it.”

“Except what was to prevent Pignatti from putting up another copy?”

“Stefano took a chance that paid off. Pignatti was too disheartened to redo the showroom the way it had been before. He died not long after that.”

Dusting off her fingers, the Contessa stood up abruptly.

“Do you have a
gettone?”

He reached into his pocket and gave her a phone token.

“I won't be long.”

As she was going through the foyer, she stopped the waiter and said something to him. He smiled and nodded.

She was gone for more than ten minutes. When she came back, she was followed by the waiter carrying a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and two glasses on a tray. She didn't speak until after the waiter had opened the champagne and poured out two glasses.

“I have something to confess,
caro
, and I needed something stronger than tea to do it on. And we do have cause for celebration.” She took a sip of the champagne. “The call I just made was to the house. Before I tell you what this is all about, you must promise not to be angry. You see, Urbino, Franco Cavatorta gave Alvise and me a copy of the Barovier Wedding Cup when we were married, too.”

“But, Barbara, why didn't you mention it? If I had known sooner, I might—”

“But that's just it, Urbino,” she interrupted. “I didn't know myself until a few minutes ago.”

“What do you mean?”

She took another sip—this a much deeper one—before going on.

“Do you remember all the gifts you've ever received, especially when you get so many at one time? This was more than thirty years ago. Maybe I never even knew what Franco Cavatorta gave us. Remember, Alvise was a count. We had a huge wedding. Gifts were coming in for weeks before and after the wedding.”

There was a touch of haughtiness in her delivery which he was sure had more to do with embarrassment than pride.

“So how can you be sure now?”

“Lucia looked it up for me. Alvise and I hired a girl from the university to make a list of the gifts and the people who gave them. She wrote them down in a book Alvise's mother had used for the same purpose. She made out most of the thank-you notes, too, even signed our names.” She met his eyes almost defiantly as if she were ready to counter any accusation of social impropriety. “It's the way these things are usually done, Urbino.”

“Especially among you counts and countesses,” he couldn't resist saying. “But it doesn't make any difference now, does it?”

“I just hope that you didn't think at any point that I knew and didn't want to mention it.”

“I thought that if you did know you hadn't realized its possible significance.” She took this slight—and somewhat evasive—criticism without even a flicker. “It might not have seemed that important to you. I didn't start thinking along the right lines myself until my talk with Sister Veronica at the Glass Museum the day before the scene at Stefano's studio. No, it never occurred to me that you might have known and made a conscious decision not to say anything.”

“Thank you for that.”

“I preferred to ask Cavatorta despite the risk involved. I didn't want to upset you. I knew that if I raised the subject I would have to tell you more than was good for you.”

The smile she gave him now was part appreciation and part, he assumed, the Veuve Cicquot she had drunk so quickly. He was glad she didn't point out to him that he had been somewhat neglectful of her good when he had gone to Bellorini's studio with his plan.

“Thank you,
caro
, and forgive me for being so stupid. When I was a schoolgirl at St. Brigid's, I always got the top grades in memorization: Tennyson, Hopkins, even half an essay by Cardinal Newman. But lately—” She sighed and reached for her glass only to And it almost empty. Urbino refilled it. “But you have to understand that I'm not sure I even knew to begin with so how could I have forgotten?”

It was one final apology and excuse.

“Where is the Wedding Cup now?”

“Probably crammed into that room on the top floor with a thousand other bits and pieces. Alvise used to say that that room was like the section of the Vatican Museum with all the gifts to the Popes. I haven't been in it for years and years. Well have to poke around in there one of these days. I've been afraid of stirring up memories but maybe it's time. It might even be fun.”

They both looked out into the Piazza. Two figures dressed as traditional nuns, in black robes and veils and white coifs and wimples, passed under the arcade in front of their window, arm in arm and kissing. Whether they were two men, two women, or a man and a woman was impossible to know, but any of these combinations was unacceptable to the Contessa as long as they were dressed the way they were. She shook her head slowly.

“Thank God the reconsecration ceremony at San Gabriele is scheduled after all this insanity. I assume you'll be given a place of honor.”

“I'll be right next to you, Barbara, if that's what you mean although I'd prefer not to be there at all. You can be sure it'll be mobbed because of all the publicity.”

“There's that, yes, but there should be a lot of people there for better reasons than curiosity. After all, there's a great deal to celebrate. Santa Teodora's body is in remarkable condition after twenty years on Sant'Ariano.”

“Not all that good really. It's more a matter of only the head. As in the case of Beatrice, there isn't much left to the rest of the body. That old gown seems to have covered a lot of secrets over the years.”

“As I was saying,” the Contessa continued with a slight frown, “there's talk that what we have is yet one more miracle of our little saint from Syracuse.”

“Either that or we don't know the real circumstances of her death. Who knows? She could have died from arsenic poisoning,” he said, barely suppressing a smile. “Maybe that's why her body was so well-preserved to begin with.” Before she could reprimand him, he added, “I know—not in the best taste.”

“Not in any taste at all.” She looked at him severely, then her face softened. “You did an amazing job, you know. You've got your harmony back. You've restored it to us all.”

“Not for long, I'm afraid.”

He nodded toward the
carnevale
crowd getting thicker out in the Piazza.

“We'll just have to suffer through it all for the next week, my dear Urbino. This is the last time I'll be anywhere near the Piazza until the madness is over.”

She looked toward the door where the waiter was standing and caught his eye.

“Tell me,
caro
, do you intend to turn this into an avocation? It might not be incompatible with your
Venetian Lives
, you know.”

“Turn what into an avocation?”

“Your sleuthing, of course. You've had such success with your first case.”

“Venice, I'm afraid, is too quiet a town to make that a real possibility.”

“A quiet kind of town!” She almost shouted it as the waiter stopped at the table. “How can you say such a thing after what we've all been through?”

“
Cosa desidera
, Contessa?” the waiter asked.

“First you can tell my young friend here that it's perfectly conceivable that a murder might take place right here at Florian's!”

“
Come
, Contessa?”

Urbino laughed. The Contessa, as usual when it came to things Venetian, was probably right.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Mysteries of Venice series

1

Just the other night, only a few hours after Carnival officially began at midnight, one more aged sister died at the Convent of the Charity of Santa Crispina.

Surrounded by a group of equally ancient nuns, Sister Clara sat up straight in bed and said with a blind, unblinking gaze,

“I see her clearly, so clearly, my dear ones. Her face is as young as ours when we took the veil.” She smiled and opened her thin arms wide. “Welcome, Sister Death.”

Promptly, without any anticlimax, she fell back on the pillows and died.

The sisters started to do what had to be done. Two prepared to wash the body, two prayed, and two argued over whether the smile on Sister Clara's face should be toned down a bit. And no doubt at least one of them was wondering who would be left behind to tend to her own temple of the Holy Ghost when her time came.

Even if you had no other evidence than the smooth, efficient way the sisters went about their business in Sister Clara's cell, as if they were performing the ordinary tasks of housekeeping, you would nonetheless know that death was far from a stranger to this building that housed the convent and its attendant pensione.

Yet death, though familiar, wasn't any more welcome here than elsewhere. It didn't always come so benevolently or wear such a fresh face as it had for Sister Clara, who seemed happy to be delivered into the hands of her Heavenly Bridegroom.

Far from it. Dying sisters at Santa Crispina have been known to scream and even curse when they finally saw the face that death was wearing for them.

Such reluctance on the part of some sisters to leave their building for the bosom of Abraham might lead you to think it was a snug ark whose considerable comforts mocked the order's vow of poverty. You would be wrong, however, as you would immediately have known when you saw the building's leprous stones and chipped statuary, its damp-warped shutters and listing staircases, its buckling floors and crumbling plaster. The furniture was heavy, dark, and minimal, and the paintings scattered throughout the four stories were mainly grim memento mori and martyrdoms. Never did divine motherhood look as consumptive as it did in some of the Madonnas holding their beloved sons in their arms. As for the Last Supper and the Crucifixion that hung in the guests' dining room, you would have been hard pressed to say which of the two was less appetizing.

And yet, despite the dismal quarters, there were several reasons why you might consider staying at the pensione run by the Sisters of the Charity of Santa Crispina.

For one thing, you might be zealously inclined to purify your spirit in the Casa Crispina's austere surroundings, reminiscent of some dark medieval inn where you were frozen in winter and baked in summer. The good sisters saw no need to make you any more comfortable than they were themselves, the charity of their ancient order obliging them not to deny you any of the pleasures to be gained from the mortification of the flesh.

The Casa Crispina provided a clean, sparsely furnished room, three plain meals a day, and the sound of bells from matins all the way through vespers to compline. You were free to ignore these summonses as you wished but the sisters believed that even the mere sound, falling on your ear in sleep or in sloth, had some beneficial effect. To make things as easy as possible, they had placed a prie-dieu and inspirational lithograph in each of the ten rooms so that you could not invoke the excuse of the inconvenience of a long walk to the chapel.

Another, much more obvious reason why you might be attracted to the Casa Crispina was purely a matter of lire since it was one of the cheapest places to stay in all of Venice—unless, that is, you reckoned in the cost of throat and chest medications in winter and all those
aranciate
and ices you were likely to consume in summer.

If these considerations of austerity and cost did not sway you, however, perhaps the retiring nature of the Casa Crispina could, for it was in a remote part of the Cannaregio into which tourists only occasionally strayed from the Ghetto or the Church of the Madonna dell'Orto, the parish church of Tintoretto. Thus you might indulge here the fantasy that almost every tourist has—that he is anything but what he is.