The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fiction (31 page)

“Not then, not now.”

He grasped her round the waist, and felt his manhood hardening. That hadn’t happened in a long time. He realized Cat was gazing over his shoulder and coughing. He turned his head to see what had distracted her. Katie stood in the centre of the hallway, a big grin pasted on her face. He had completely forgotten about her. Gently the two lovers pulled themselves apart, and Zuliani apologized.

“Not in front of your grandchild, I suppose.”

Cat shook her head in dismay.

“Has it not entered your thick skull yet? I just said I was pregnant when you left forty years ago.”

Zuliani frowned.

“Yes. I am sure you and your family did well for the child. But it’s too late for me to play the father now.”

Cat grimaced.

“It is. Agostino died five years ago of the plague.”

Zuliani was touched that she had chosen his father’s name for the child he never knew. But that was the point. He had never known the boy – or even the man. So how could he mourn? He reiterated his point about not being a father. Cat prodded his stomach.

“Yes, but not too late to be a grandfather, you ninny.”

Zuliani gaped at Katie, who stepped up to him and hugged her new granddad.

*

After the three members of the newly united family had eaten their fill, they sat back with some of that famous Dolfin wine that Zuliani had long envied. Over protests from Katie, Zuliani had insisted on watering the girl’s wine judiciously. He was taking his role as grandfather seriously. He was also revelling in the sight of his long-ago lover, who sat curled up in an armchair in a way that brought to mind the creature he had named her after. Cat may be a grandmother, but her body was still as lithe as any feline. He wondered if she might let him bed her later. But there was still one question that nagged at him, and he couldn’t resist asking it of Cat.

“Why have you hidden away from me for so long? And why did you have Katie hunt me out now?”

Cat eased back in the chair, considering her answer. She decided the truth was the best way forward.

“When I sat in this very house, pregnant with Agostino, and my father told me you had murdered someone and fled Venice, I was angry more than sad. I didn’t entirely believe him, but I was angry at you for leaving me in his clutches. I had to endure the ‘I-told-you-so’s’ for months. Then I was even angrier at you for forcing me to marry Pasquale Valier.”

Zuliani sat bolt upright.

“I forced you to marry rat-face Valier?”

“Well, what else could I do? He accepted your child as his own and gave him a name. You weren’t there to do that. You were enjoying yourself living the high life at the fabled court of Kubilai Khan.”

Zuliani thought to intervene and tell her just how hard life had been for him then. But he knew better than to set her straight just now. Uninterrupted, she went on.

“Pasquale was a good husband, and father. And our life in Verona was … settled.’

She stared pointedly at Zuliani at this statement, challenging him to protest. He bowed his head, and took the cheap shot.

“And now? Why now?”

“Because Pasquale died last year.”

“I’m sorry to hear it.”

She ignored his comment, as if she had rehearsed her story for a long time, and now nothing would stop her telling it.

“And because I yearned all those years to be back in Venice, but I couldn’t bear to come and see you, and not get to know you again.”

Zuliani stirred with excitement in his seat, but Cat held up her hand.

“Let me finish. That is why
now
, and also because Katie told me you had got embroiled in the conspiracy to overthrow the Doge. I could not bear the thought that I was free to see you again and you were once more risking being expelled. I persuaded my great-nephew Mario to pass on the news of the conspiracy to Gradenigo. And get you off the hook.”

Zuliani should have felt euphoria about his old lover caring so much for him that she had extricated him from the mad enterprise that had been the Tiepolo family’s conspiracy. But a very nasty thought was burgeoning in his head. He had been aware of Matteo Mocco’s look, when the avogador had inspected Francesco’s body. It had been one of sour displeasure. Until this moment Zuliani had imagined it was occasioned by the nasty nature of the fire-crisped corpse. Now, he was fearful that the displeasure had been reserved for himself. Mocco had been wondering why the sought-after Tiepolo renegade had been in his house in the first place. Was he guilty of harbouring a criminal. He groaned, and Cat leaned forward, touching his arm.

“What’s wrong, Nick? Did I do the wrong thing?”

Zuliani waved aside her concern, and was about to keep his worries to himself. But then, looking from the older woman to the younger and back again, it dawned on him he had a family. And what else were families for if not to share your concerns with? He took a gulp of that good Dolfin wine, and explained his quandary.

*

In order to pull Zuliani’s irons out of the fire – almost literally, bearing in mind what had happened to his home – the three of them agreed to divide up their resources. Cat had suggested she would be in the best position to talk to other members of the
case vecchie –
the old aristocracy of Venice. After all, she was a Dolfin, and one of the
case vecchie
herself.

“I will see what the gossip says about Francesco, and if there are still perceived to be any links to you, Nick.”

Zuliani had agreed with this strategy, only briefly wondering what their lives would have been like if they had joined forces forty years ago. With Cat’s connections and his gift for underhand dealing, they would have been unstoppable. He only hoped they would be so now, or he would have to flee Venice for the second time.

“And Katie and I will revisit the scene of the crime, and see what we can dig up.”

Cat started to protest, concerned about her young granddaughter seeing the no doubt ugly corpse again. But Zuliani calmed her worries.

“Have no fears, the body will have gone by now. I sent a message to the family to come and collect it. I said that, if they didn’t, it would be dumped in the lagoon along with all my other burnt rubbish.”

Now, he stood outside the door of his shell of a house with Katie at his side. She prodded him.

“You didn’t send a message, did you? I was with you all the time from when Mocco left to when we got to granny’s house. There was no time for you to send a message.”

Zuliani grinned conspiratorially at his granddaughter.

“I won’t tell, if you won’t. Now, do you want to examine this body or not?”

Katie clapped her hands with delight.

“Yes, please.”

The interior of the house looked even gloomier as the day was drawing to a close. But Zuliani had anticipated this and provided them with a lantern from the Dolfin palace. The wind was getting up, and the candle had almost blown out as they crossed the Grand Canal. Even now, inside his empty house, the yellow flame flickered, casting strange shadows on the walls. They ascended the perilous staircase in order to examine Tiepolo’s body once again before the light gave out altogether. It still lay where Zuliani had left it, and he crouched down, holding the lamp close to the gruesome sight. Tiepolo was nothing more than a blackened shell, his knees drawn up to his chest. Any facial features had been destroyed by the fire. His clothes had largely burned away, though Zuliani could see a belt-buckle adhering to the remains, at the point that would have been Tiepolo’s stomach. What was left of his hands were clenched like the talons of a falcon about to grasp its prey. Zuliani glanced at Katie, who was crouched at his side, holding her skirt in a bunch to keep it from the worst of the mess on the floor.

“What do you think?”

The girl grimaced.

“I think he died a bad death.”

“Whoever he was.”

Katie frowned at this statement from Zuliani.

“What do you mean? It’s Francesco Tiepolo – we saw him at the window.”

“Look at the body again. Then bring to mind what you know of Tiepolo, and what you saw when he was standing at the window waving his arms around.”

Katie pouted, but did as she was told. For a while she didn’t understand, then she smiled broadly.

“Move the lantern over here.” She pointed at the claw-shaped hands. “Closer.”

Zuliani held the lantern so that the candlelight shone where Katie had commanded. She clapped her hands again.

“There are no rings on this man’s hands, and yet when I saw Tiepolo waving his arms out of the window, there were rings on many of his fingers. I saw the light sparkling on them.” She liked this clever deduction, but she still had a doubt. “Might not the fire have melted the gold?”

Zuliani nodded.

“It might. But even if that were so, where are the gems? They would not have been destroyed. The other thing that worried me was when I saw the belt-buckle stuck to this man’s stomach. Despite him being burned to a crisp, there is no sign of Tiepolo’s fat belly. This was a slim man in life.”

Having made this deduction, Zuliani had crouched over the body for too long, and tried to stand. His knees protested, and he would have stumbled if Katie had not taken his arm and steadied him. Grouchily, he thanked her, not relishing showing his infirmities to a woman, even though she was his granddaughter. Katie made as if she was unaware of his annoyance, and eagerly pursued him concerning the riddle of Tiepolo’s demise. She pushed her errant locks from off her face, once again smearing soot on her brow.

“If this is not Tiepolo, then where is his body?” She glanced down at the dead man. “And who is this?”

“That’s what I would like to know – where Tiepolo is, I mean. As for this body, I would say it’s Girolamo Lando, Tiepolo’s lieutenant. He went missing at the same time as Tiepolo.”

“But then why didn’t Tiepolo say Lando was trapped by the blaze too? Why didn’t he call out ‘Save us’?”

Zuliani pointed a finger at Katie.

“Exactly.” He stepped towards the door. “Perhaps it had something to do with Lando being already dead before the fire took hold.”

Katie was stunned.

“How do you know that?”

Zuliani carelessly waved the lantern at the body, almost extinguishing the guttering candle.

“Because there is a crack in the man’s skull that was made by something heavy striking it, not the fire. So, either Tiepolo dragged a dead man into my house or he himself killed his lieutenant on this spot.”

Katie turned back to look at the head of the corpse to see what she had missed. But Zuliani had already left the room, plunging her and the dead man into darkness. She had a momentary sense that the body was moving towards her. Maybe it was only the movement of the shadows as Zuliani left with the lantern in his hand, but she didn’t want to wait and see. Shuddering, she rapidly followed her grandfather upstairs.

When she entered the upper room, she recalled those happier times when Zuliani had shown her the little treasures he had brought back from his travels. The window shutters where they had last seen Tiepolo standing were still wide open, but it was now dark outside and a wind whistled eerily through the opening. Zuliani was picking disconsolately through what remained of his collection. He groaned.

“Even the gold
paizah
has gone. Melted away in the heat, I suppose.”

Katie looked around.

“And Tiepolo’s body is not up here, either.” She took Zuliani’s hand, dragging him away from the horror of his loss. “Let’s go downstairs. The fire must have started down there in the first place. Perhaps Tiepolo managed to get down the stairs before he died.”

“Yes. Let us look there for him. I told him to try and get to the front door. Maybe he almost made it.”

But there was no hope of finding a body on the ground floor. It was a blackened, wet mess of burned wood. The fire had obviously started here, but Zuliani could not tell how. Katie looked around.

“What is all this?”

“Old furniture from when my parents lived here. I could not use it, but I couldn’t bear to part with it either. So I just piled it up here. What I don’t understand is how it could have caught fire. It was so damp from the closeness of the canal. What is sure is that we will not find Tiepolo in a hurry in this mess.”

Katie stood at the bottom of the staircase rubbing her hand on the cast-iron image of the lizard on the newel post which was all that had survived the holocaust. Thoughts of the salamander emerging from the flames came to her again. Nick might have told her that it was all a myth, but she liked the idea. He wiped the smudges from her face.

“Come. Let us go and see what your grandmother has discovered. When my manservant, Vettor, returns from visiting his family in Malomocco, I will set him to cleaning this up. Maybe he will find the body.”

*

At the end of Nick Zuliani’s first full day as a grandfather, he sat with his one-time lover, Caterina Dolfin now called Valier, and Katie, the offspring of his unknown son, Agostino. He pondered broaching the possibility of the girl changing her name to Zuliani, but decided first they had more pressing matters to discuss. He told Cat what they had found at his house – omitting the small matter of the body being still there. He made out to her that they had seen the ringless fingers earlier, but had not realized the importance of it until now. The corpse therefore was not Tiepolo’s. Cat was shocked about the identity of the body, and pointed out to Zuliani a matter he would have to deal with urgently.

“As the Tiepolos have already taken the body you say is that of his lieutenant, Lando, you must tell them before they bury it thinking it is one of their own.”

Zuliani and Katie exchanged glances, then he spoke up.

“I don’t think they have had time to do anything yet. It is too late. I will tell them tomorrow. First, tell us what you have learned.”

Cat shrugged her ivory-skinned, bare shoulders, causing a little flutter of Zuliani’s heart.

“I am not sure what I have found out is very helpful. It is mainly gossip. Apparently, Francesco Tiepolo was engaged on a colleganza which aimed to try and break the Pope’s interdict on trade.”