Death in the Palazzo (14 page)

The thought was followed by an awareness of a slight scent, driven by the air blowing from the loggia. A woman's perfume or a man's cologne, vaguely familiar.

When he looked up at the Caravaggio, it seemed as if the epicene boy was smiling at him with the same living malevolence supposedly bestowed on the young Conte so many years ago in the presence of another dead woman.

2

Urbino closed the door of the Caravaggio Room behind him and crossed to the other wing, where Mauro was standing beside the Contessa, still sitting on the divan. She exchanged a brief look with him filled with sorrow and fear.

In response to Urbino's quick questions Mauro told him that Gemma had been helped to her room and that, no, the telephone was still not working.

“And the motorboat?”

“Milo secured it yesterday but something—a barrel or a piece of timber driven by the storm—staved the side in. But even if it were in good order, Signor Urbino, with this storm—” He broke off and shook his head.

“Is something the matter?”

The voice, weak and wispy, belonged to Angelica, whose head appeared farther down the hall at her door.

“No, Angelica, it's just the storm,” the Contessa said with much more calmness than veracity. Urbino wondered if she were in shock or just trying to put off the inevitable.

Angelica pulled her head back into her room and closed the door quickly, as if afraid of learning any more.

“We should get Vasco up here,” Urbino said.

“Why?” the Contessa said sharply. Urbino feared that she had no idea of what was happening until she said, “That poor woman is dead! It doesn't take a doctor to figure that out!”

“Things have to be done properly. There's been a death in the house,” he went on. “It appears to be an accident—”

“Appears to be!”

“And the body in any case must be examined. We're fortunate in having a physician here, cut off as we are for the time being. It makes everything official.”

Weariness replaced the Contessa's defiance.

“Do what has to be done, then. We'll both do what has to be done. That poor little woman.”

Tears filled her eyes. Urbino sat down on the divan next to her and put his arm around her.

“I know, Barbara,” he said consolingly. “It's a terrible thing. I found her endearing, in her way. I admired her honesty.”

The Contessa, drying her tears with her handkerchief, looked up at him strangely.

“I don't necessarily mean her—her pronouncements,” he clarified, “but her directness. She was without pretensions when she wasn't pontificating. That was her real self.”

He thought of the little woman's preference for gin and the colloquial, and then of her body sprawled on the floor of the Caravaggio Room. He sighed and patted the Contessa's hand and stood up.

He told Mauro to ask Dr. Vasco to come upstairs but to say nothing to the other guests about what had happened. When Mauro had left, the Contessa got slowly to her feet.

“I'll see how Gemma is doing. Then I'll tell the others after Luigi has had a chance to—to examine poor Molly. She died through my negligence. I must face that. If she hadn't slept in the Caravaggio Room she'd be alive.”

“This isn't the time for self-indulgent superstition.”

“Is it superstition that I didn't have the doors looked after properly? Superstition that if I had, they wouldn't have blown open? Molly is dead because of me.”

“We don't really know what happened to her.”

“You stop right there, do you hear? Right there! I didn't want anyone to know my brooch had been stolen. Do you think I want to have it bruited about that one of my guests might have been murdered and that—that someone under this roof is the murderer? That poor, defenseless woman died because of
me
, I tell you, and I won't have it any other way!”

3

Vasco turned away from Molly's body with a face that looked more frightened than anything else. His emaciated body was trembling slightly.

“A terrible accident! We should remove her head from the door and lay her on the bed. I'm sure if we call up Robert or Sebastian, we can manage it.”

“I don't think we should touch her,” Urbino said.

Vasco raised one bushy gray eyebrow.

“And why is that?”

“The police will want to have everything kept just as we found it.”

“For decency's sake! She can't be left like that!”

“You're right, of course. Photographs will have to be taken, then. We'll move her after we take them.”

Vasco looked down at the twisted body of the woman who had begun by irritating him yesterday but who, by the end of the evening, had seemed to strike in him a sympathetic chord.

“As you wish.” Vasco made a stiff little bow. “And what about little Gemma?” he asked as if she were still the eight-year-old girl she had been when her mother had died in the same room. “She saw this, didn't she? I must go to her.”

Urbino followed Vasco out into the hall and closed the door gently behind them. The Contessa hurried over to them.

“Gemma doesn't want to see anyone, not even Robert, but I think you should see her, Luigi.”

Silently Vasco set off for the other wing.

“How bad is she?” Urbino asked.

“Very bad. The shock of finding Molly is reason enough, but something else seems to be behind it.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don't know. Just a feeling, and God knows I can't trust my responses right now. And she's not a well woman. You must see it!” She looked toward the other wing as if considering something. “But I must get myself together. I have to break the news.”

“Do you want me to do it?”

“I should be the one. Let me get it over with. Why don't you ask Angelica and Filippo to come down? We'll all meet in the library.”

4

“I have something very unfortunate to tell you all,” the Contessa said to the nine guests gathered uneasily in the library. “It's about Molly. She's had an accident.”

She was restraining herself from looking at Urbino.

“An accident? What kind of accident?” asked Angelica.

Scarfed and demi-gloved, she sat near the fire in a deep armchair. Robert was beside her, holding her hand. One of the locks of his short-cropped black hair fell across his forehead, giving him a slightly vulnerable look. His improbably blue eyes were troubled.

“I—I'm afraid, my friends, that she's dead.”

“Dead?” Angelica repeated, her heart-shaped face looking lost and bewildered. “That's impossible.”

“Molly is most definitely dead,” Vasco said sadly.

“My mother!” Robert said and dropped Angelica's hand. He appeared ready to bound from the room.

“She's resting,” the Contessa said. “She prefers to be alone right now, Robert.”

“There's nothing to worry about,” Vasco said, not convincingly. “She said to come to her room later.”

“Please don't leave me, Robert,” Angelica said. She took his hand again. “I—I'm afraid.”

“There's no reason for you to be afraid, Angelica,” the Contessa said emphatically. “It was a freak accident.”

This time she did look at Urbino, as if challenging him to disagree with her.

“Most freakish,” Vasco said. “The balcony doors blew open from the force of the wind and—and hit her in the head. An obvious and tragic accident.”

“How ghastly!” Viola said. She was sitting on the sofa between Urbino and her brother. Her green eyes darkened and became more Swinburnish. “Poor Molly!”

“Poor Molly? Poor
us!
” Oriana almost screamed. “Can't you see? The number thirteen! And this storm raging around us, cutting us off from any hope of help!”

“Maybe all the bad luck has been used up, Oriana,” Sebastian said and gave a nervous laugh. “The Caravaggio Room has taken the thirteenth guest as its victim. Rather economical when you think of it.”

All too obviously and most inappropriately he was straining to recapture his characteristic manner, but his heart didn't seem to be in it. Neither could he count on an appreciative audience unless it was, briefly, Bambina. She suppressed a giggle, of which she seemed to have an abundance to be bubbled out or held back, as the occasion demanded. Her mother, however, sitting next to her on the sofa, frowned her disapproval of Sebastian's comment.

“If you don't know what to say, Sebastian,” the Contessa reprimanded, “it would be best to keep quiet.”

“She's right, young man,” said Vasco. “This is no moment for humor with little Molly lying the way she is upstairs, her life snuffed out by such a sad accident.”

Sebastian got up and went over to the liquor cabinet.

“My sincere apologies to you all. My humor wasn't meant to be irreverent. To steady the nerves, you know. Now I think I'll indulge in something a bit stronger.” He poured himself a whiskey. “I don't think the rules against drinking before a certain hour apply when there's a dead lady lying in the house.”

Viola was staring at him without her usual ironic affection, but instead with a look of distinct dislike.

“You've become very unfunny of late, Sebastian. How can you say such things when we're the ones who are responsible for Molly's death? Yes, us! We invited her here. We imposed her on Barbara. If we had let well enough alone, she'd be alive now in some hotel or other, entertaining people with her—her gift.”

A look of embarrassed guilt came over Sebastian's face. He took a big sip of whiskey and retreated to the other side of the room.

“If any of us should feel in any way responsible for poor Molly's death, it is I,” the Contessa said. “And not because I set her up in the Caravaggio Room. It was because of the loggia doors that she died. If they had been looked after properly, this would never have happened. I accept full responsibility.”

She looked around at the group as if defying any of them to dispute her claim to guilt and responsibility.

She was about to go on when Mamma Zeno startled them all by raising her cane and saying loudly, “An act of God! He's the only one responsible. The only one!”

Urbino was confused as to whether this outburst was to be taken as a pious expression of faith in Providence or a condemnation of the whims of the Deity. The way Mamma Zeno looked briefly at her daughter—as if searching her face for some validation of what she had said—gave him no clue. Bambina's only reaction was a great deal of shifting about, followed by a concentrated playing with the lace at the wrists of her dress.

The Contessa, who probably thought it best neither to agree or disagree with Mamma Zeno's ambiguous comment, took a deep breath and said:

“Under the circumstances we'll just try to get through the rest of our time together as best we can and as respectfully as we can, remembering that poor Molly is lying the way she is upstairs. Let's hope that things will soon be back to normal.” This must have struck her ears as a bit naive, if not fatuous, for she added, “I mean the electricity and the telephones and—and everything like that.”

As if to warn them all of just how long things might take to return to this questionable state of normality, the storm howled and hurled itself against the frail barrier of the windows. The drapes ballooned inward toward the group, huddling together in their fear and uneasiness.

5

When Urbino returned to the Caravaggio Room ten minutes later after getting a camera from the Contessa's room and a pair of rubber gloves from the cabinet beneath the sink in the conservatory, the rainwater was now pooling more deeply and widely around Molly's body. Some of the blood had become a fainter pink.

He looked down at the body and silently uttered something that was both a prayer and a promise. He would find out why the little woman had ended up like this. Even if he hadn't grown fond of her in the short time he had known her, he owed her this.

He started to take photographs, thankful that the Contessa had supplied the camera with film in anticipation of her house party. Photography was far from his forte. Fortunately, however, the Contessa's camera had proven itself amenable to his inexpert manipulations on those rare occasions when he had wielded it, once or twice in situations and conditions he had been sure would yield up only embarrassing oblongs of black.

He began by photographing Molly's body from every possible angle. It was a distasteful task, more so for him than for most other men, for if the truth were told, Urbino was unusually squeamish when it came not only to the sight of blood but even to the sound of his own heartbeat. As he maneuvered around the body, he once again detected the scent of perfume or cologne interlaced with the odor of blood. It was vaguely familiar, and seemed to be more concentrated near Molly's body. He bent down and sniffed. Yes, it definitely was stronger. Either perfume or cologne had been spilled near her body or she had put on some perfume before her death.

He next took photographs of the room: the bed, with its bedclothes turned down but apparently not slept in. The chair and overturned little table. Molly's clothes and possessions scattered about. Her spectacles lying twisted on the floor. Her felt slippers, which seemed to have been kicked off violently or carelessly. The walls, the carpet, the drapes, the loggia doors.

And the blood.

He looked for signs of more blood other than what had dripped down onto the loggia door beneath Molly's pierced head and formed a pool. He couldn't find any.

When he realized he was photographing even the Caravaggio, he put the camera down. Certainly he was carrying things too far. The room would be locked after they moved Molly's body. But what of the loggia doors? How secure were they now? Should they be kept open or should he close them and try to secure them? The wind was occasionally moving them back and forth, the motion of the broken-paned door limited by Molly's impaled head.