Liquid Desires (14 page)

“Did she ever talk about her family?”

Madge Lennox looked at Urbino without breaking her stride. There was a slight hesitation in her eyes as if she were considering something—or perhaps trying to give him the impression she was. He sensed that she was not just uncertain but even a little afraid, but once again he wondered how much he could trust his own judgment about the behavior of someone whose life was based on artifice.

“Rarely. When she did, she would refer to ‘my mother and Lorenzo'—never her mother and father. ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico,' she used to say scornfully. Sometimes when she would see an older man, she'd say, ‘He's just like Lorenzo!' or ‘There goes another Magnifico!'” She looked at Urbino as if assessing his response to what she was telling him. “She said it the first time she saw Signor Occhipinti walking his dog past the villa. It seemed so inappropriate for the little man that I laughed. She had only good things to say about her mother, though. She idealized her.”

“Did she ever mention someone named Violetta Volpi? Or Violetta Grespi?”

“No, but the name is somehow familiar.”

“It was mentioned in Flavia's obituary.”

Madge Lennox nodded slowly.

They had reached a small café with tables set up outside. The road turned up to the right, where it passed the Villa Cipriani Hotel before entering the walls of the town. Just inside the walls was Eleonora Duse's house with the inscription to the
melodiosa apparizione
that Madge Lennox had mentioned.

“I think I'll only go this far today,” the actress said, stopping. She looked a little weary and perspiration beaded her forehead. “Why don't we rest and have a drink?”

They sat at one of the outdoor tables and ordered Proseccos.

“Did Flavia ever say anything that might indicate she was afraid of someone? Someone who might have meant her harm?”

“Someone who might have murdered her, according to your theory? I'm sorry, Urbino, but I can't believe that Flavia was murdered. An accident, yes—even suicide. I can't imagine anyone wanting to harm a hair on her head.” The steady look Madge Lennox gave Urbino didn't convince him that she was telling the complete truth. Once again he detected a slight uneasiness as she raised the glass to her lips and took a sip. “She
was
acting strangely last week, but who would have thought—?” She shook her head. “I think you should just give your energies to putting the Contessa's mind at ease about her husband. Murder strikes me as so—so preposterous.”

And frightening, Urbino added silently for her.

Madge Lennox stood up, slipping her sunglasses back on now that their talk was over. It was as if she had wanted Urbino to see her eyes and judge how little she had to hide. Over Urbino's protests she dropped several lira notes on the table.

“Please give my regards to the Contessa and thank her again for a perfectly wonderful afternoon last week.”

Urbino watched Madge Lennox walk back down the hill. She had told him quite a few things about Flavia, but could he believe them all? And why did he have the impression that she hadn't told him everything that she could have? Maybe it was the residue of his experience with the actress he had wheeled around the Garden District so many years ago. The woman had ended up complaining to the priest that Urbino with all his questions had intruded on her, even though she had basked in his attention and encouraged him. To this day he wasn't sure whether he had misread the actress, been intentionally misled by her, or been lied to, for some obscure reason, by the priest himself.

It wasn't unlike his feeling now as he watched Madge Lennox stride down the hill, determination in her shoulders.

6

The Contessa, having extricated herself from her duties as hostess to Eugene by foisting him off on Occhipinti, was free for some conversation with Urbino on the terrace of the Caffè Centrale later that afternoon.

“I wonder what Eleonora Duse would think if she knew she had become a sundae?” the Contessa asked as she paused briefly in the middle of her decorous assault.

It was a question that required no response, all the more so because it was far from the first time the Contessa had posed it. Urbino could hardly remember an occasion when she had ordered this particular concoction of vanilla ice cream, strawberries, blue liqueur, and cream and
not
asked it.

“I would love to see the scrapbook that Flavia kept,” she said, having reached the bottom of her goblet. “It's frightening to know she kept clippings about Alvise and me.”

“And she was gathering information about you and Alvise here in Asolo.”

“And in Venice she had Violetta Volpi! Oh, the lies that woman was likely to have told her!” The Contessa put down her spoon and took a sip of mineral water. “I wouldn't be surprised if Lennox knew Violetta Volpi. She says she never heard Flavia mention her, but I don't believe it any more than that she's told you everything important. She wrapped you around her little finger, didn't she? I know how you are with these women.”

“You're wrong. She didn't charm me at all,” he defended himself. “And what do you mean by ‘these women'? American women? Retired actresses?
Older
women?”

“Watch yourself! Suffice it to say that I know you have a great desire to please—especially women of a certain kind—but more specific than that I don't care to be. It will have to remain within that large dim realm of things two people know very well about each other but never have to be specific about.”

Urbino could usually distinguish among the Contessa's various forms of banter, and this afternoon it was banter that covered anxiety. If he needed any more proof, he was soon provided with it when she ordered another
Coppa Duse
.

“I have to see Violetta Volpi,” Urbino said after the waiter left. “She's the key to this whole thing—certainly to Alvise and maybe even to Flavia's murder.”

“‘Flavia's murder'!” The Contessa shook her head slowly from side to side. “I do hope you're wrong about that, but if you're not, I pray that it has nothing to do with Alvise.”

Urbino, not wanting to give the Contessa false hope, said nothing.

The waiter set down the Contessa's second
Coppa Duse
. She removed the crowning cookie and ate it. Before attacking the rest she said, “Commissario Gemelli should have the autopsy report tomorrow, shouldn't he? Give him a call. I pulled a few strings this morning to get him to be more cooperative than usual, although I have a feeling he's warmed to you a bit over the years.”

The Contessa looked across the square and waved.

“I'm afraid our little tête-à-tête is about to end. Here come your ex—brother-in-law and Silvestro.” The Contessa started to speak more quickly. “I haven't had a chance to tell you how much I've been learning from Eugene about your past. Is it true that you rescued Evangeline from the clutches of a malevolent man?”

“That's more than an exaggeration. It makes me wonder exactly what he's been telling you.”

“So what's the truth?”

“I've already told you. I met Evangeline when she had just broken up with someone who hadn't treated her well. I consoled her, and we became very close.”

“Now that's the most detached response I've ever heard, even from you! I assume,
caro
, that you mean you both fell in love—you notice I don't say ‘madly'—and eventually got married! And all because of your propensity to rescue damsels in distress!”

A cloud seemed to come over the Contessa's levity. Perhaps she was remembering, as Urbino was, that she had said something similar to this, here on the terrace of the Caffè Centrale after Flavia's descent on her garden party.

“I hear her uncle, a bishop, performed the ceremony,” the Contessa went on, recovering herself, “and that you refused to have your father-in-law set you up in a charming house in the French Quarter or some such place and that—”

The Contessa, obviously enjoying finally being privy to things about Urbino that he had either glossed over or not mentioned at all, didn't have the chance to tell him what else she had heard, for Eugene and Occhipinti had reached the terrace. Eugene was glowing.

“Sylvester told me he had some items at his villa he was willin' to part with for the right person”—Eugene smiled amiably down at Occhipinti—“so we stopped by. Interestin' woman he has stayin' there. Couldn't figure out exactly how old she was. Probably somewhere in your ballpark, Countess Barbara. His villa isn't as big as yours by a long shot, but it's crammed to the gills. I bought a marble statue of a—what did you call him, Sylvester?”

“A
bravo
who was in the service of our family many, many years ago.”

The old man's voice was slightly hoarse and he had a feverish look. He took off his straw hat and used it as a fan before putting it back on his bald head.

“He looks real fierce. I also bought one of the wood angels he has hangin' on the wall, so I might not have to do any more buyin' until right before I leave.”

“Silvestro! Not those lovely eighteenth-century angels over the door to the library!”

“I took only
one
of them, ma'am. There's no need to get so agitated. Sylvester doesn't seem to mind, do you?”

Occhipinti shrugged.

“I'm ‘guiltless forever, like a tree that buds and blooms, nor seeks to know the law by which it prospers so.'”

“‘Prospers,' is right!” Eugene said. “You can be sure I paid him a pretty penny for it, Countess Barbara.”

Eugene and Occhipinti sat down and ordered drinks. As the Contessa was finishing her sundae, she asked Eugene if he would like to stay a few days longer at La Muta.

“Just the two of us, Eugene, and no one else. Oh, don't give me that hurt look, Silvestro. You'd be better off far away from Eugene and me and everyone if I can judge by your peaked look. Bed rest is what you need. And that will leave dear Eugene and me all alone to our own devices, won't it, my dear? We'll continue our little chat about Urbino. He's kept me mercilessly starved for information.”

The Contessa, as if to illustrate the extent of her famine, avidly took up the last spoonful of gelato.

7

The next morning, back in Venice, Urbino called Commissario Gemelli about the autopsy report. The Commissario seemed to be in the cooperative, albeit begrudging, mood that the Contessa had predicted.

“Flavia Brollo was alive when she fell into the Grand Canal,” Gemelli said. “If she hadn't been, her tissues wouldn't have had any of those algae in them. Not the kind that scummed up all the Adriatic beaches a few summers ago. I forget what they're called.” There was a rustle of paper, then Gemelli said, “Diatoms. She had been dead for at least thirty-six hours. That puts her death at no later than about midnight Thursday.”

This was just eight hours after Urbino and the Contessa had seen her at Florian's.

“I could go on,” Gemelli continued. “Froth at the nostrils, the skin on her hands and feet as wrinkled as a washerwoman's, terrible bloating from the heat, loss of tissue from the tips of some of her fingers and her nose, presumably by water rats, and so forth—but the point is that she drowned, all right.”

“She drowned, but that doesn't mean that foul play couldn't have been involved. What else did Zavarella find?”

Gemelli gave an impatient sigh. Once again Urbino heard the rustle of paper as Gemelli continued, “No trace of semen in any of the body orifices, no sign of recent sexual activity and she wasn't pregnant, no blunt trauma or wounds except ones consistent with hitting herself against stones or being abraded by the junk on the bottom of the Grand Canal, some slivers from the Palazzo Guggenheim mooring poles embedded in her skin. The tide must have dragged her—that and the action of the vaporetti and other water traffic.”

“Couldn't the wounds have been caused by something other than by hitting herself or abrasion? If the body was as messed up as the report says because of submersion in the water and being dragged around, how can Zavarella be sure none of the wounds was caused by a blow
before
she went in the water?”

“There
are
two wounds on the front of her head that, in other circumstances, might indicate foul play. And several teeth were knocked out. But Zavarella says that the wounds and the missing teeth are consistent with trauma after death.”

Urbino detected a slightly dubious note in Gemelli's voice.

“And there are other things in the report that make it probable that foul play wasn't involved.”

“What?”

“A half-empty bottle of an antidepressant was found in her room back at the Casa Trieste. Zavarella says the drug is controversial, especially in the States. It's supposed to cure depression but some researchers say it can make the depression worse. It's been linked with suicide and violence in general. From what Zavarella said, people taking it can be preoccupied with death and self-destruction. The toxicology report will probably turn up a high concentration of the drug—and maybe even some others—in Flavia Brollo's body.”

“But even if it does, it wouldn't be proof of suicide or accident, would it?” Urbino insisted. “When it comes to drowning, it's difficult to distinguish cases of suicide, accident, or murder.”

“So now you're a medical expert, Macintyre?”

“Couldn't she have been knocked unconscious with a brick or a piece of wood before she drowned?” Urbino asked, ignoring Gemelli's sarcasm. “Were her fingernails checked for any tissue not her own?”

“Zavarella found none under her fingernails.”

“But the report says that the tips of some of her fingers were eaten by water rats. That could have destroyed any evidence of tissue under the nails, too, couldn't it? If—”