The Veils of Venice (15 page)

‘That, too.' Urbino twirled the wine glass in his hand. ‘Do you think Mina knew about the will?' As she expected, he seized on what was surely the most relevant thing she had learned. ‘If she did, it could change a great deal. No, not about how we feel about her innocence, but she might have said something about it to someone if she did know. Maybe Gaby. After all, Gaby confided in her about her fears.'

‘I have no idea if she knew.'

‘She might have felt uncomfortable telling you. She kept most of her relationship with Olimpia to herself.'

‘And I never pried. 'This was not because the contessa had not burned with curiosity, but because she was a keen respecter of others' privacy. But the problem with privacy in a murder investigation, as Urbino had pointed out to her on numerous occasions, was that it could not be respected – and should not be. The private life, the hidden life, was often what had led to the violence. One could only hope that, after a case was solved and the guilty person had been exposed, the uncovered secrets that had had nothing to do with the case could be re-interred.

‘It makes it worse for Mina,' Urbino observed. ‘I hardly need to tell you that. You can imagine the scenario that the police will have already created. Each piece probably seems to fit perfectly. Moneyless girl from Sicily in the service of an aloof, wealthy woman.'

This was not all that far from the scenario the contessa had tortured herself with in Walther's office but she took umbrage with some of Urbino's description. ‘Mina is paid very well, and I'm not aloof! I do
not fare la contessa
with her, you know that. I put little distance between us.'

‘Don't defend yourself by saying that to anyone, Barbara! People are going to try to pull you into the picture. Don't give them any more encouragement than they already have.'

‘I already am in the picture.
La contessa inglese,'
she murmured.

‘Precisely. As you said over dinner,
la contessa inglese
seems to have already been assigned her role in a deadly triangle. And there could be more than a few tongues wagging – in the heads of people who don't know you and never even heard of you until now – that
you
could have murdered Olimpia. Oh, you can be sure they'll be able to work out a very plausible motivation for that.'

Urbino held up his hand as she started to protest. ‘But let me continue with the other pieces in the scenario. I'll revise them slightly. A poor young Sicilian woman. A generous, warm, and wealthy mistress of the house – you see, it does not look too much better. Then there is the lonely, unmarried dressmaker, rattling around in an old palazzo with a bunch of other eccentrics. Dressmaker gets smitten, gets manipulated, gets murdered. It's all so damnably neat.'

The contessa's heart sank. ‘I'm afraid it is. And I had to get the ocelot coat. I hope that doesn't get around. It could look like a pay-off for having been the go-between, the – what is the name I am thinking of?'

‘The Pandarus.'

‘Yes, the Pandarus! But why did she leave it to me?'

‘It might have been her way of thanking you for being responsible for bringing – quite innocently – Mina to her notice. Olimpia never would have met her if it had not been for you. Or she might have left it to you because you
are
family. And you appreciate beautiful things. You have a respect for tradition, continuity. Leave it to Gaby? A kind sisterly act, certainly. But where would the poor woman wear it?'

‘In the house as she's doing now! It's cold enough in there for it. I will give it to her. Or, rather, let her keep it.'

‘She must be upset that Olimpia didn't will her anything. Her share in the house and the collection she expected, of course. It appears to be what the three of them agreed to, even maybe what they promised their father if the topic ever came up while he was still alive.'

‘I wonder if she took the coat before or after the reading of the will. And it makes one wonder if she took any of Olimpia's other things, from her rooms and from the atelier.'

‘Yes, it does make one wonder.' Lines of concentration deepened along his brows and under his eyes. After a few moments he said, ‘Olimpia could have been murdered because of something she had or was thought to have had. Someone else wanted it, needed it. I don't mean money.'

‘What do you mean?'

‘I am just speculating, Barbara. I have no idea what it might have been, but it would have had to have great value of some kind. Gaby and Ercule get her share of the house and the collection, but they are not getting her personal possessions or perhaps not the contents of the atelier, although Bianchi did not mention that. Mina gets all that, but if she is convicted, whatever Olimpia bequeathed her will go to Gaby, wouldn't it? She's the next oldest sibling.'

The contessa nodded.

‘In a manner of speaking,' Urbino added, after taking a sip of wine, ‘it would be to Gaby's advantage to keep Mina looking as guilty as possible. She would get Olimpia's possessions. And we've seen how eager she was to take over the ocelot coat. She would clearly benefit from Mina's conviction, even if she had nothing to do with Olimpia's murder.'

The contessa could not believe that Urbino – or, to be honest, she as well – had reached the point where they had to consider such things about Gaby or anyone else in the Palazzo Pindar. But she knew that they had set out on a course that they could not turn aside from, no matter where it led.

The contessa, who had thought that she had uncovered some interesting facts and possibilities, was realizing that things were much more complicated and even more disturbing than they had originally seemed to be.

The wine was giving her a pleasant feeling, but it was making her sleepy. She had already had three glasses over dinner. She was not sure she would be able to follow Urbino through many more of his ruminations.

‘As always,' Urbino said, ‘the problem is figuring out what the facts mean. Like your ocelot coat. Why did Olimpia leave it to you? And what about this business of the door of the Palazzo Pindar not being locked during the daytime? That house, that museum are Gaby's and Ercule's patrimony as they were Olimpia's along with them. They should want to protect what they have from any damage, any theft, as Apollonia says. The loss of some of the objects would be Gaby's main concern, but there is also money involved. Some of those things could be sold for a pretty penny. If the house and the museum had a good security system and anything were to be stolen, they might not be able to recover the objects but they would recover some money. Even if they have insurance now, they wouldn't get a cent if anything were taken.'

The contessa did her best to try to follow each question and each point some distance toward a possible answer and clarification, but it was proving to be a very short distance.

‘Do you have any answers,
caro
?' The contessa took another sip of wine.

‘Ideas and questions, not answers. The ideas and questions are relatively easy. One seems to generate another. It's the answers that are difficult.'

The waiter came over and poured more wine for them.

‘Let's see if Apollonia can help influence Ercule and Gaby to put in a security system. She's the matriarch, in a manner of speaking, and the Pindars have great respect for tradition and the past, even if it's taken some unhealthy forms. And since you've offered to assume the costs, they might agree. They might seize the opportunity to toss aside a family tradition that's become ludicrous –
if
tradition is the real or main reason behind it.'

The contessa's head was throbbing. It had been a long day and several glasses of wine too many. She brought up again, hoping she was not slurring her words, how ill Apollonia had been today. ‘I doubt very much if she's up to the task, not now. She was trying to be her usual self, but she's declined considerably since the funeral. She used to know so many people, be the life of the party. Now she is all alone, except for Eufrosina and Alessandro. Most of the people she used to know are dead. The few others don't seem to care.' The contessa felt a strong surge of sympathy for Apollonia. How well she remembered her in her prime, and it did not seem all that long ago.

‘It's sad. But sick mothers – even desperately ill ones – often outlive their children,' Urbino observed. ‘Or even die before their disease gets them. If you had asked me who, of everyone in the Palazzo Pindar, might end up murdered I wouldn't have said Olimpia or even Gaby – at least not before we learned she's afraid of something bad happening to her. I would have said Apollonia. It is a terrible thing to say when she is so ill, but I keep thinking of that. She's a sacred terror. I wouldn't want to be on her bad side.'

Urbino's glass seemed almost empty again, but perhaps she was mistaken. The contessa suspected that her vision was going the way of her concentration.

What Urbino had been saying for the past few minutes floated in her mind, where it was bumped, jostled, and nudged by almost everything else he had been saying this evening.

She did her best to keep her attention anchored.

Urbino was moving on to Eufrosina and her behavior in the Fortuny exhibition room. He found this situation most interesting, he said, and asked her to tell him again what items she had been photographing.

‘Yes, quite interesting,' she heard, and ‘doing her best to impress you' and ‘desperate for the money' and ‘speak with your staff tomorrow' and other things that drifted past her about Giorgio Lanzani.

Then, Urbino said gently, ‘It's time for us to go, Barbara.'

She understood this well enough and was relieved to hear it.

The cold night air and the wind blowing from the lagoon revived her. As they went past the Basilica, gleaming darkly and silently above them, she clung to Urbino's arm, more in affection than for support. City workers were cleaning the front steps and the pavement in front of the Basilica with a hose and brooms. Fog, like billows of a bridal veil, was slowly advancing from the water, brushing the wedding cake of the Doges' Palace and curling around the twin pillars. Above them gulls were flying mysteriously in and out of the fog.

They did not speak about Mina or Olimpia or anything related to the murder at the Palazzo Pindar. Urbino mentioned that Eugene would be arriving tomorrow.

‘He should be a diversion for you,' she said.

‘And for you. You're not going to escape him, Barbara dear.'

‘I don't want to. I find him charming. And he brings a welcome air of spontaneity with him – as fresh as this air.'

‘If by that you mean he usually doesn't think before he speaks, you're absolutely right.'

‘You're just afraid he's going to keep revealing secrets about you. You've managed to keep quite a few corners dark.'

‘That's because my house has many, many rooms.' He gave her shoulder an affectionate squeeze. He looked up at the sky above the Bacino. ‘I hope we get some more snow while Eugene is here. It would be nice for him to see Venice in the snow.'

‘And I hear the child in you speaking, too.'

No denial came from her friend, but instead a boyish smile as he guided her across the stones of the Molo, which were slippery from the water washed in from the Bacino.

They made their way to where the contessa's motorboat was moored, rocking from the passage of the boats in the Bacino.

At most other times when the contessa and Urbino went out together in the motorboat, they would part after she got into the boat and he would walk back to the Palazzo Uccello. But tonight her gentlemanly escort rode all the way home with her and delivered her safely into the hands of Vitale.

Within less than an hour of being home, the contessa was lying in her drowsy bed with Zouzou pressed against her side. A long bath had soothed her and dispersed some of the wine fumes smoking through her head.

When she was lying in her bed at night, she felt cloistered, protected. The closed, double-paned windows, reinforced by heavy shutters, kept out all sounds, even at the height of the summer season. No boat's horn, peals of laughter, or barking dogs penetrated her boudoir tonight or on any night.

She had lit candles and placed them on the nightstand next to the silver-framed photograph of the conte. The candles were a nighttime votive to her dead husband, extinguished before she fell asleep. They were also the light by which she liked to read in bed.

She gazed at Alvise's sharp-featured, good-looking face. The photograph had been taken a few years after their marriage. Other photographs of him were placed throughout the room. She let her eye run over them. She found it strange that Apollonia seldom, if ever, mentioned her dead husband, and from what the contessa could tell, there were no photographs of him in her
salotto
. Maybe she kept them for more private viewing, in her bedroom, like these photographs of Alvise, although the contessa had others scattered through the house.

For that matter, neither did Eufrosina ever mention her dead husband. The contessa had known both men. They had been kind, generous souls, and Apollonia had wielded a strong influence over both of them – husband and son-in-law.

The contessa picked up da Ponte's memoirs, but she closed it after a few minutes. She would rather think of the future before she fell asleep than immerse herself in someone's past, no matter how fascinating it was.

She picked up another book from the nightstand. A gift from Urbino, it was about treasure hunts that had been organized in country houses and gardens in England and Europe. Someday soon, God willing, the contessa planned to organize a treasure hunt at the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini or the Villa La Muta in Asolo.

As she leafed through the book and looked at the illustrations, with her fingers caressing Zouzou, she allowed her mind to drift to that future happy time.