The Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists (7 page)

I assumed Francesca had told Roberta about me, for she looked me over boldly as she lowered her clarinet for a moment. Boldly and with the practiced eye of someone assessing the competition.

We seated ourselves and ordered overpriced drinks from a waiter who had no right to look contemptuous, considering how few people made the step from mildly interested strolling passerby to paying customer.

The set ended—perhaps a little sooner than the bass player and pianist had expected—and Roberta bowed briefly to acknowledge our applause before coming over. She pulled up a seat between me and Francesca and kissed her cheek.

We were introduced all around.

“But, of course, I know
him
,” she said, waving dismissively at her brother.

Francesca said to me, “I told her about the missing bassoon…”

I smiled to show it would be best not to get into
that
discussion immediately, and asked Roberta where she’d studied.

At the Conservatory of Music, she told me. “Along with Marco. But now I work in a music shop, and he is an errand boy for my father.”

She seemed to be deliberately taunting him. He said something in dialect I couldn’t quite catch, and she answered him just as rapidly with a rude gesture in the direction of Andrew, who had an arm draped over the back of Marco’s chair.

Marco jumped up. Roberta jumped up. Francesca looked proud but alarmed, Andrew confused, Bitten preoccupied. Only Albert thought to intervene. Holding out a black-gloved hand like a policeman, he blew on an imaginary whistle. He followed this by a short, graceful speech in Italian about there being a time and a place for everything.

Roberta turned her back on us and walked up to her place by the piano, and Marco sat down dejected, but not before I’d had a chance to see the expression of fury distorting his handsome face. He rather violently pushed away Andrew’s consoling hand on his shoulder.

Our drinks arrived, and Andrew insisted on paying. “We’re in Venice,” he said, with an imploring look at Marco. “On a beautiful night.”

That probably made about as much sense to Marco as it would saying to someone from Winnipeg, “We’re in Winnipeg, let’s enjoy ourselves!”

But it
was
a gorgeous night, and the
piazza was
magic, and Roberta wasn’t glaring at me as I edged my chair slightly closer to Francesca’s; she was launching into something wild that had more klezmer in it than Benny Goodman.

Bitten said, “Do you hear a siren?”

A police boat was speeding across the water in the direction of the Pietà.

I
DIDN’T SEE
Anna de Hoog at first. She was surrounded by Italian police, gondoliers and porters from the Danieli Hotel. But the big, blond body that had been dragged from the canal was clearly recognizable. We didn’t need Bitten’s scream to tell us it was Gunther.

The narrow canal that runs by the hotel is one of the busier waterways in Venice. In addition to gondolas, private cruisers and barges loaded with goods, water taxis were constantly arriving and departing from the small dock next to the hotel. From where we stood, on the stone bridge over the canal, the dock was inaccessible. You would have to go through the hotel to get to it, which Bitten did. The rest of us remained on the bridge.

Andrew looked pale. He leaned over the bridge and was sick over the side. Marco patted his shoulder distractedly and went over to the group down on the short strip of quay opposite the hotel, a group I could now see included Signore Sandretti. Across the canal, on the hotel’s landing dock, the unremarkable Anna, still in her formal black dress, was in the center, apparently explaining who Gunther was. Bitten knocked her aside in her haste to get at the corpse of her lover.

Francesca and Roberta came racing up to me on the bridge and gasped when they saw Gunther’s body laid out on the dock.

“Who is he?”

“The German bassoonist,” I said. “I wonder if it was the oboist, Anna de Hoog, who discovered him.”

Signore Sandretti glanced up and noticed us standing on the bridge above. A look of distaste, even rage, crossed his face when he saw his daughter with Francesca. It reminded me of Marco’s expression just a short while earlier, when handsome turned to horrifying for a split second. Roberta returned his glare with vigor, but I felt Francesca tremble slightly beside me.

It soon became obvious that we could do nothing. Marco returned from a conversation with the police and said we should all go home; the inspector would let us know in the morning if he needed a statement from any of us. For the moment the police were treating Gunther’s death as suspicious, but only after an autopsy would they be able to pinpoint the cause. They would interview Miss Johansson and Miss de Hoog now.

“But how did it happen?” I whispered to Marco in Italian. “Did Anna de Hoog see anything?”

“No, she left the Pietà immediately after the performance and came into the Danieli to meet someone for a drink. There was a commotion on the dock, and she went out and was able to identify Gunther.”

Marco looked subdued and scared. He avoided looking down at his father. I wondered if Sandretti would hold Marco responsible. Roberta left the bridge without speaking to her brother, and Francesca, giving me a shaky smile, trailed after her.

I cast one last glance at the scene below, with Bitten collapsed like a fallen Valkyrie at the feet of a slain warrior companion, and then reluctantly followed Marco and Andrew to the
vaporetto
stop and back across the Grand Canal to the Dorsoduro. No one had mentioned the word
murder
yet, but it lingered in the air like the brackish scent of the canals.

I couldn’t help thinking,
It’s unfortunate that Nicky had to choose this afternoon to disappear
. And that made me remember that Albert Egmont had not been among those who had arrived breathless at the scene of the crime. The last time I remembered seeing him was at the table in the
piazza
, with a Campari in front of him and a look of pleasure on his austere face as he tapped his black fingers in time to the clarinet.

The next morning I woke from a dream of stone echoing under a solitary step. The sound was coming from outside my hotel, but the steps wound their way into my sleep. I was in a convent, a nun, and in my dream it was a very pleasant thing. I had no worries and no job other than to walk in circles and pray. No romantic entanglements complicated my life; my yearning was only for the Virgin. Best of all, I knew I was making my mother happy. She had longed to be a nun herself, she’d once confided, and had hoped that one of her four daughters would make the choice. I was the least likely of the four to take the veil; on the other hand, I was the only girl in the family who was still technically a virgin, which counted for something I suppose.

I’d ordered my breakfast brought up and in great luxury sat up in bed with a tray of rolls and fruit and coffee, with
Lovers and Virgins
open in front of me. It was gray and overcast outside, and I was in no hurry to go out. Nicky might or might not show up, with or without explanations or bassoons. Gunther’s death might or might not be solved. But in the timeless world of a romance novel, life would go on, like a ship surging over rhythmic waves of luxurious prose. Despite some feeling of guilt on my part,
Bashō in Lima
had migrated to the small pile of books I’d brought with me but hadn’t yet opened. Guilt, because I knew it was real literature, composed with thoughtfulness and intent. Guilt, because I considered myself a literary person, widely read and not adverse to working my way down through the surface of a text to the meaning below.

I couldn’t help it, though, I
had
to find out what was happening to the four sisters in Venezuela.

I had come to the part where Lourdes, the baby of the family, was demanding to return to the convent and become a novice. She had seen her sister Maria’s seduction by the stable hand, and her innocent mind had rebelled and turned it into a Biblical vision that she kept babbling about, much to Maria’s dismay. Mercedes, her next oldest sister, who clearly had her wits about her and was perfectly aware of what had gone on in the horse box, was considering taking the veil as well. Not because she completely believed in God or thought that locking herself up in a nunnery was so fabulous, but because the convent had a library, and the library contained not only the complete works of Voltaire and Rousseau, but also Mary Wollstonecraft’s
A Vindication of the Rights of Woman
, books she couldn’t obtain elsewhere. As Mercedes said, “What else can a woman with a mind do in this godforsaken country but live as a nun?”

Occasionally my mind drifted to the Ospedale della Pietà and to the musicians there. Had the orphanage been a kind of prison where musicians were produced for the entertainment of the Venetian nobility and foreign guests? Or had it been a safe haven where girls who would have otherwise been on the streets were assured of education and livelihood, where talent was recognized and rewarded? What if my choice had been between cloistered musical servitude and prostitution? What would I have chosen? Nun, I thought, but crossed my fingers behind my back. Shut away, but at least with my own kind. Maybe some of the Pietà girls were the same kind of virgin I was. Maybe, I liked to think, they had had time for a kiss in between all those hours of practicing the bassoon.

There was a knock at the door and the maid came in. I’d been in bed most of the morning, and I assumed she probably wanted to make up the room; instead, she handed me an envelope with my name on it.

I opened it quickly.

Cassandra. Meet me at one at the Campo Santa Margherita at the Bar Antico.

N.

P.S. Don’t tell anyone where you’re going or let yourself be followed.

“Who gave you this?”

The maid smiled and shrugged. “The front desk.”

But when I went downstairs a little later, the clerk at the front desk professed not to know anything about it. I asked if anyone else had left me a message, and the clerk pulled out a scrap of paper with a single question scrawled across it:

What orchestra or chamber music group does Miss de Hoog play with?

Could it be from Albert? I had never seen his handwriting before, but it was like him to be curious about the least obvious thing.

I’d hoped to see Anna de Hoog at the
palazzo
; to my relief, she was sitting in the garden with a few newspapers and a book beside her, obviously alone. I pulled up a painted iron chair and sat down beside her. It had turned into a sunny day with bouncy white clouds above. In the dappled shade Anna’s skin looked pale and mottled. Did she have a life-threatening disease? Her expression was a picture of serenity.

I picked up the book. It was
Women Musicians of Venice
. It looked like Nicky’s copy. When I turned to the inside cover, I saw that indeed it was. Someone else might have apologized for snooping among Nicky’s things, but not the unflappable Anna. With a guileless smile, she said, “Wasn’t it kind of Nicola to loan me this book?” and she launched into a discussion of the Venetian welfare state that had created the
ospedali
in the first place.

“They say the reason there were so many abandoned children in Venice was that men were encouraged not to marry, and a huge class of courtesans arose. There was no stigma in giving up a child. The mother would simply place the baby in a sort of revolving door and ring the bell. The nuns would be on the other side to take the baby in, wash it and brand it with the letter P for instance, if it was the Pietà that was taking the child in, and then give the baby to a wet nurse. It was quite a system, don’t you think? I believe the Pietà still has a sign near where the little revolving door used to be. All the same, don’t you think some of those women wondered, when they went to the concerts years later, whether their daughters might possibly be among the performers? And don’t you think the daughters wondered too, looking through the grille work out into the audience:
Is my mother here
?”

“Not that this isn’t fascinating,” I interrupted, “but…”

“You’re probably wondering about Gunther’s death,” she said quietly. “It was shocking, a shocking thing to see.”

When I looked into her eyes, I saw she truly meant it.

“Do the police know anything more?”

She shook her head. “It’s always a bit complicated in Italy when a foreigner dies. Especially when foul play is suspected. I believe his grandmother was contacted last night and has arrived this morning.”

“And his wife?”

“He wasn’t married.”

“But this Frigga he kept talking with on his cell phone…”

Anna deliberately looked into the distance. “I had thought to be leaving today, now that the symposium is finished and the performance of
Orlando Furioso
is done. But I suspect I may be staying on a few days.”

That reminded me of what I took to be Albert’s question, left for me at the front desk. “I suppose you have to leave because you have other musical engagements to fulfill?”

“Yes, of course.”

“I didn’t catch what orchestra you were affiliated with.”

“I am not affiliated, only a fill-in,” she said, and seemed so pleased with the assonance that she repeated it. But I could see she was watching me carefully and would not be caught out.

“Now I have a question for you,” she said, in a disconcertingly flirtatious voice that contrasted with her bland demeanor and inquisitive eyes. “I find your friend Albert Egmont rather fascinating. I had hoped to see more of him. Is that possible? I understand from Marco that he is staying at the Danieli.”

“I don’t really know.”

“But he is your friend.” Again, that false sprightliness.

“More an old acquaintance. He knows about missing things.”

“Missing things,” she said significantly. “Missing bassoons?”

“Among other things.”

“Missing things are a sort of specialty of his?”

“Why, did you lose something?” I didn’t mean to be rude, but I didn’t for a moment believe in this sudden coyness, especially as regarded Albert.