Deep and Silent Waters (39 page)

Laura acted as she had never acted before, smiling, nodding. ‘Good, thank you. I like your boat, it’s very comfortable.’

The compliment brought forth a wide grin.
‘Grazie
, Signorina. I like your films,
bene, benissimo
.’ She was glad of his presence: Valerie wouldn’t dare do anything to her while he was with them.

The boat coughed and leapt in the water. ‘Ahhh …’ he muttered, and was gone.

Valerie was staring at her. Laura didn’t look back, yet watched her out of the corner of her eye.

The boat slowed: they were approaching Ca’ d’Angeli. Laura looked out through the spray-misted windows and saw the creamy, fretted stone, the flying cherubs, the rows of carved, protective archangels with their outstretched hands. Even in her state of nerves she felt sudden pleasure. It was so beautiful. Yet there was something about it: a presence, a threat, as if the building were alive and full of secret malice.

‘If you say anything to Sebastian he’ll laugh at you,’ Valerie burst out.

Laura risked looking at her then. They were here now, she was safe. ‘Will he? I don’t think so. The police found traces of you on the cape, even though it had been in the water. Did you know that anything you touch or wear carries the evidence long afterwards? They’re going to test for DNA. They’ll be able to prove it was you.’

A quiver, like a wave on those grey waters, ran over Valerie’s face. ‘That’s ridiculous! I was nowhere near the place. I was in a shop, buying cheese! The woman remembered me.’

‘You may have gone in earlier, but it was you who stabbed me and they’ll prove it. You love Sebastian, too, don’t you?’ With a leap of intuition Laura accused, ‘Did you kill Clea? She didn’t kill herself, I never believed she was the type. She was a survivor. And I don’t believe Sebastian pushed her out, either. That only leaves you. It was you, wasn’t it? You thought he’d turn to you once she was gone, but he probably never even noticed you!’

The boatman was tying up. The taxi rocked, steadied. Valerie jumped up, her hands curling as if she wanted to tear at Laura’s face. ‘We were lovers, you stupid bitch! He loved me before he ever set eyes on you. He was sick of her, disgusted by her drinking, her men, her foul mouth, couldn’t bear to look at her in the end. That day she sat on the window ledge saying she was going to jump, over and over again. Go on, then, do it! he told her. He was desperate to get rid of her.’

‘So you pushed her!’ Laura had made the accusation on impulse but the reality of it was sinking in. Clea had been murdered. Valerie had killed her. Not Sebastian. A terrible fascination filled her; this neat, orderly, competent woman was a killer. Who would ever guess? She looked so quiet and normal.

Or she had. Staring at her Laura saw through the mask to the madness within. Valerie’s mind seethed with maggots; a terrible life hidden behind the eyes, inside that skull.

‘He wanted her dead but he didn’t have the guts to kill her. I had to do it. He would have married me once she was gone – if you hadn’t come along just at the wrong time.’ Valerie lunged at her, those small hands grabbing her throat. ‘I hate you, you bitch. You won’t get away this time.’

Laura wasn’t taken by surprise. It had dawned on her that Valerie would make another attempt. Jack-knifing, her booted feet kicked upwards hard between the other woman’s legs. Valerie let go of her throat with a scream of pain and staggered back. The boat rocked wildly.

From above them Sebastian’s voice yelled. ‘Laura? What’s going on?’

The boat seesawed back and forth as the women fought. Valerie grabbed Laura’s injured shoulder. Laura screamed in pain, but fear made her violent. She hit out with her other hand, punched Valerie’s eye; felt the hard bony socket. The jar of impact travelled up her arm.

Sebastian jumped down into the cabin. He pulled Valerie away and threw her sideways. She fell on the steps, sprawled there, sobbing, then scrambled up without a word and vanished.

‘Are you okay? Did she hurt you?’ Sebastian took Laura’s flushed face between his hands. ‘What was all that about?’

The words tumbled out hoarsely. ‘It was her! She stabbed me! And she’s just tried to strangle me.’ For some reason that sounded funny and Laura began laughing, couldn’t stop. ‘If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again!’

He frowned down at her. ‘You’re hysterical. Calm down, Laura. You sound crazy.’

‘It’s her who’s crazy, not me. She killed Clea – you must have known that! You were there, you must have seen her push Clea out of the window.’

His face was totally bloodless. ‘What on earth makes you think she did that?’

‘She just admitted it!’

‘She can’t have! My God, if I’d even suspected it don’t you think I’d have told the police? I had my back to the window. Clea kept saying she was going to jump and I didn’t believe her. I was sick to the teeth of her threatening suicide. It was a battle of wills all the time, she used every weapon she could think of. There was never any peace. I was so fed up I said, “Jump, go on, do it.” I didn’t believe she would. But she did.’

‘No, Valerie pushed her! She admitted it.’

He shut his eyes. ‘Christ. Once or twice I did wonder… but I couldn’t believe it. Clea screamed “No!” all the way down. I’ve dreamt about it a hundred times. Always felt guilty, wondering if it was all my fault, if I’d somehow made her jump.’ He swallowed convulsively. ‘Valerie really admitted she pushed her?’

‘She said you had been lovers.’ She wanted him to deny it, to say it was a lie, but his expression told her that it was true.

‘Laura, I was miserable and she was there. But I never loved her, and I never told her I did. I ended it, almost as soon as it started. And I hadn’t met you then.

‘She killed Clea because she thought you would marry her if you were free.’

He went white. ‘Yes. So it
was
my fault. And you. You might have died the other day. She obviously meant to kill you.’

Laura’s teeth had begun to chatter. ‘I’m so cold. So cold.’

‘Shock,’ she heard him say from a long way off. He picked her up as if she were a baby and wrapped her round in one of the blankets. She shut her eyes as the boat swung round and round. Or was she imagining that?

The boatman helped him climb out on to the landing stage. There was no sign of Valerie. She must have rushed into the palazzo.

Laura’s red hair split over Sebastian’s shoulder. He tenderly brushed it back so that he could see her face.

A shiver ran down his spine. Déjà vu. He had been here before, stood like this before on this spot. A ghost was walking over his grave. Instinctively he looked up, as he had that day thirty years ago.

He wasn’t surprised to see the Contessa’s face framed in the window, white and fixed, staring as if she, too, was looking at a ghost, as she had looked at him from that very same window thirty years ago.

He had been a child then watching his mother get into the waiting boat. Now he was a man coming out of a waiting boat, carrying a woman with wind-blown red hair, hair the identical shade and texture his mother’s had been; and behind them rolled the grey waters of the canal, veiled in snow which was just beginning to float down from the cloudy sky.

Why did life always make patterns? Echoes of past and future clanged in his ears, came between what his eyes saw, and what haunted his mind.

Another window was flung open with a crash that made him jump.

‘Sebastian!’ a voice screamed. ‘I’m going to jump, watch me!’

He seemed to see Clea looking down at him, climbing on to the sill.

‘No! Don’t!’ he yelled.

‘I love you!’ she called and jumped.

Laura was screaming in his arms, fighting to get down.

Valerie didn’t make another sound. She fell in silence like the soft white snow. Slow motion, he thought, although he knew it wasn’t. His camera eyes followed her, watched the tumble and twist of the body, his mouth open. He didn’t hear the sounds he made, didn’t hear the whine of the wind, the slap of water on the landing-stage.

She hit the stones with a sound he would never be able to forget. Her head split open as if it had been a watermelon. Blood spurted, the white seeds of brain spreading everywhere. Her eyes were open as if they still saw; had started out of the mess that had been her face, like the eyes of Laura’s doll.

She must have done that, too, have somehow stolen it from Laura’s bedroom at The Excelsior, smashed it and sent it to her. She must have written those notes, have tried to kill Laura the other day.

Sebastian had never suspected so much violence had been hidden behind her calm, neat face.

The film crew crowded out of the palazzo’s open door. Too shocked to make a sound as they stared in horror at the blood and brains on the stones.

The weight in his arms made Sebastian realise that Laura had fainted. He began to walk towards Ca’d’Angeli, skirting the broken body, not even aware that he was staggering as he walked until Sidney met him and tried to take Laura from him.

It brought him out of his shock. Arms tightening around her Sebastian muttered, ‘No. I’ll look after her. You deal with that.’ Without looking, he gestured with his head. ‘Don’t touch anything. Don’t let anyone go near it. Just call the police. I’ll put Laura to bed.’ He started to move again then stopped. ‘Sidney. She should see a doctor, would you ring for one?’

For two days after Valerie’s death Laura was sedated. She slept heavily, haunted by dreams from which she woke with horror, sometimes to find Sebastian sitting beside her, watching her with brooding eyes, or Niccolo in the chair by the bed, a pad on his knee, drawing her in charcoal, with quick, light strokes.

She stared drowsily at him. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Drawing you. Do you mind? You know, you’re just as lovely asleep, you have such great cheekbones. See?’ He held up the sketch. ‘But to bring you alive needs colour, that miracle of red in your hair, your peachy skin, your green eyes. Black and white doesn’t do you justice.’

Laura yawned, bored by talk of her looks, wishing she dared tell him her dreams: talking about them might drive them away, but her eyelids were too heavy and she fell back into sleep.

When she got up on the third day the doctor ordered her to stay in her room, sitting by a huge fire, in a Victorian wing armchair, overstuffed with horsehair, piled with cushions, the back of it towards the windows to keep away the draughts. The police came to interview her again, but kept it brief – they had plenty of evidence about Valerie’s suicide. All they wanted to hear from Laura was the truth about what had happened on the boat.

Captain Bertelli looked horrified when she said she had accused Valerie to her face. ‘You told her you believed it was her who attacked you?’

‘Yes. And she—’

He interrupted, ‘That was a dangerous thing to do, Signorina. She might have tried again.’

‘She did. She tried to strangle me, but I kicked her as hard as I could.’

The policeman stared incredulously at Laura’s delicate face, the frailness of her body, covered by a velvet dressing gown, sunk in the chair, which half swallowed her. His brows climbed almost to his hair.

‘You did?’

‘We fought,’ Laura admitted, amused by his disbelief. ‘I scratched her face and punched her.’ Bertelli’s expression made her laugh aloud. ‘I did! I looked at her and thought. She tried to kill me! She really tried to kill me! It made me very angry. She wasn’t getting away with it twice. I hit her, and it made me feel good, let me tell you. But then she deliberately went for my shoulder. It was agonising. I screamed. Sebastian was on the landing-stage, he heard me and jumped down into the cabin and pulled her off.’

Now Bertelli was as alert as a cat at a mousehole. ‘Then what did he do?’

‘He picked me up and carried me out of the boat.’

‘What about Signorina Hyde? What did he do to her? Say to her?’

She frowned. ‘I don’t remember him saying anything to her. I told you, he pulled her off me and pushed her away. She fell over on the steps of the boat, then she … well, she just vanished. I guess she went into the palazzo.’

He looked disappointed, thought for a minute, then asked, ‘What do you remember about her jumping out of the window?’

Sickness welled up in her stomach. She put a hand to her mouth. ‘Do I have to? It was horrible. I don’t like remembering.’

He insisted, ‘I’m sorry, but we have to get the facts straight.’

Laura sighed, and gave him a sketchy description of what had happened, not dwelling on what she had seen when Valerie landed.

‘After that I don’t remember much until I came to in this room.’ She stared into the leaping flames. ‘She must have been mad, poor woman. I didn’t like her, but I can’t help feeling sorry for her.’

Bertelli stood up. ‘Thank you for seeing me. We would be grateful if you would come to the station to make a formal statement, as soon as you are fit enough. Please do not leave Venice until after the inquest on Signorina Hyde.’ A human smile came into his eyes. ‘I am glad you are recovering. Being attacked again must have been a terrible shock to you, on top of everything else that has happened.’

‘Yes.’ That was the understatement of the year, but it was not what Valerie had done to her that made her feel ill. It was what Valerie had done to herself.

When he had gone, she stared into the fire, chilly in spite of its heat. Valerie had loved Sebastian. Clea had loved him. Loving Sebastian was dangerous. She shut her eyes. Stop thinking. Let your mind go blank, she told herself, and slowly fell into a light sleep, exhausted by the interview with Bertelli. She didn’t want to dream, but dreams came.

Her mind buzzed like a wasp’s nest, images stinging her, until she woke up with a gasp and found Niccolo there.

She was glad to see him sitting on the rug in front of the fire, his long legs bent up, balancing a sketch-pad on his knees, a pencil in his hand now. It moved so quickly, soundless, flowing, as if it grew from the end of his fingers.

He must have heard the alteration in her breathing because he looked up and smiled into her open eyes. ‘Hi, how are you now?’

‘You’re always here,’ she said, not complaining, just commenting.