The Veils of Venice (18 page)

When Nedda asked him again what she could do for him, Urbino seized the opportunity. The woman was so accustomed to doing things for others that she assumed he had come for help of some kind. She was making it easier for him.

‘Actually, it's not about getting someone to help out at the house, even though Carlo was an excellent worker. I am managing fine with Gildo. I don't know if you know it, but I'm writing a book on Mariano Fortuny.'

‘Apollonia told me when I gave her the January rent.'

Urbino wondered how much of a conversation the two women had had on that occasion. From what Urbino understood, relations between them were not good. Although Apollonia was more than eager to take Nedda's money, she disapproved of the kind of help she was providing and the kind of undesirable people – in Apollonia's opinion – who came to the house.

‘I'm trying to get as much information about Fortuny as possible,' Urbino went on. ‘I was wondering if you've heard any anecdotes about him that you could pass on. Perhaps from Efigenia, Apollonia's aunt. I believe you knew her, and I hear she never lost an opportunity to talk about Fortuny. I'm going through the letters Fortuny wrote her.'

Nedda nodded. This, too, she seemed to know, apparently from Apollonia.

The man pacing the room with the piece of paper said something to her that Urbino did not catch.

‘I've told you over and over again, Silvestro,' she responded. ‘I'll see that your application will be filed this afternoon. I'll bring it myself. No matter if we have a flood like the one back in sixty-seven. No,' she said, turning back to Urbino, ‘I'm afraid I can't help you. Efigenia and I were not close. I knew she had been friends with Fortuny. But anecdotes? No. Anyway, it is Apollonia you should be asking, but I don't think she's in the mood for that these days. Her health isn't very good, as I'm sure you've noticed. Poor Apollonia.' There seemed little real sympathy in her voice. ‘But I have no idea what she might know about Fortuny. In fact, the only time she has mentioned his name was when she told me you were reading the letters and that the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini is putting together an exhibition of his clothes. I never see her except when I bring over the rent. She likes it handed to her personally.'

‘Eufrosina is photographing some of the exhibits for a catalogue.'

Nedda gave a little frown.

‘Eufrosina and her photographs.' There was no mistaking the cold sarcasm in her voice. ‘You'd think she'd find something more productive to do with her time. Oh, but excuse me, Signor Macintyre. I don't mean to criticize the contessa's exhibition or your own work.' She gave a laugh in which Urbino could hear the release of nervousness. ‘It's just that when you get buried in the kind of things I try to do you lose perspective. There's a place for almost everyone and everything in this world of ours.'

Nedda, it seemed, was not on the best terms with Apollonia or Eufrosina. Urbino was put on the alert, concerned as he was to understand the Pindars and their apparently limited dealings with the world. Had Nedda's relationship to the family deteriorated over the years since her engagement to Achille, or perhaps only recently? Olimpia's rebuff in front of the Palazzo Pindar a few days before she was murdered suggested a recent source of friction.

‘I realized there was very little chance of your having anything to tell me,' Urbino said, ‘but I have to pursue all possibilities. Much of my research leads up a dead end. I suppose you heard nothing from Regina Pindar either?' Regina was the mother of Gaby, Ercule, Olimpia, and Achille. ‘Regina knew Fortuny.'

‘She never spoke about him. She probably didn't think I was the kind of girl who was interested in such things. And I wasn't! Look at the kind of clothes I wear.' She indicated her tent like dress. ‘I have never had any interest in clothes, even back then when I was slim – yes, slim, believe it or not.'

A reminiscent smile played across her large, attractive features. The expression in her eyes became softer.

‘I guess you mentioned Regina because you know I was engaged to Achille. She was a good, kind woman, but we were different from each other, as I said. And Achille – well, Achille was different, too, different from his brother and his sisters. Everything might have been different if he hadn't died. Who knows, maybe Mina Longo would not have killed Olimpia.'

‘What do you mean?' Urbino asked in a low, composed voice.

‘Don't you know that if we change something in the past it changes so much else?' She looked around the noisy, crowded room. ‘If Achille and I had married, I might not be helping people the way I do. Not that he would have prevented me. He was a sensible man, the best of them all. What I mean is the past, Signor Macintyre, the past! Change the past, you change the future.'

Urbino could not disagree with this. He sipped his espresso.

Nedda seemed to have forgotten about everything going on around her, which was not an easy feat. ‘Ah, the past! We can't change it. You know that Achille drowned with Regina and his father off the Lido. I was supposed to go out with them. But we had an argument, Achille and I. About something silly, I'm sure. I don't remember what it was about. I refused to go out with them, even though it was a glorious day. In my memory the sky was the bluest I've ever seen. But you see, don't you? If we hadn't argued, I would have died too. I would be dead now.'

She looked down at her lap where she clasped and unclasped her hands. She and Urbino were a small island of silence in all the turmoil of the room.

Then she shifted her position on the sofa, sighed, and looked around the room with her earlier sharpness and interest.

Urbino finished his espresso and stood up. ‘Thank you very much for your time. And the coffee.'

‘You're welcome. But you didn't have even one of the
pignoleti.'

‘By the way, that young woman Evelina. She was with you at Olimpia's funeral.'

‘Yes. I – I did not want to go alone.' Nedda turned her attention to the man on the floor. He had finished tying up the newspapers and was working on the magazines. ‘No need to bring them today, Vittorio. Wait for the weather to clear. Give me that application, Silvestro,' she said to the pacing man. ‘Caterina, would you go into the kitchen and see what's happening with the water?'

Urbino took his leave.

After leaving Nedda Bari, Urbino walked to an area of the Castello near the Arsenale. A man named Marcello Buono lived on the top floor of a building whose lower floors were occupied by a pensione. He was in his late nineties and the owners of the hotel let him stay on for a small rent. Marcello had sometimes been helpful to Urbino, because the man had been saving every edition of
11 Gazzettino
since the flood in 1967. His apartment was overwhelmed with them, leaving only a small living space. But the copies were neatly stacked and ordered. It took Marcello only five minutes to locate the pile from the summer twenty-five years ago when Achille Pindar and his parents Platone and Regina had drowned off the Lido.

‘Here you are, Signor Urbino. Be careful with them.'

Sitting on the sagging sofa, Urbino, with a little effort, located six pertinent articles.

One, the first chronologically, described how the boating party had never returned to the Lido on a July afternoon twenty-five years before, after taking their sailboat out into the Adriatic, where a violent storm had suddenly blown up. It mentioned the prominence of the Pindar family. Another, which appeared the second day, was about the ongoing search for the sailboat or for the recovery of their bodies. The third article, dated a week after the fateful outing, reported how their bodies had been found, washed up on shore near Chioggia. It also reviewed the events of the past week and provided a brief history of the Pindar family and biographies of Regina, Platone, and Achille. There were also individual obituaries for the three family members.

Urbino replaced the copies as neatly as he could in the stack and helped Marcello return everything to their proper place. Although the old man protested at first, Urbino gave him a generous sum of money. The man lived on a very fixed income.

As Urbino walked to the Palazzo Uccello, he went over what he had learned from the articles. Not very much, unfortunately, but there was no suggestion that what had happened had been anything but an accident. Although he now had more details about the tragedy, there was nothing in what he had learned that seemed to be relevant to Olimpia's murder two weeks ago. But perhaps there was something in the details that held a clue if he looked at it in the right way.

Or it might not be any of the details that could bring him closer to Olimpia's murderer, but the fact that Gaby's withdrawal from the world had begun shortly afterward. The deaths of both parents and her oldest brother could certainly explain it, but had there been another reason, one related to their deaths but not the deaths themselves? And there had been another change in the behavior of a Pindar, although not for about three or four years after the drownings: Apollonia's fervent, even fanatical, embrace of religion.

These were some of the many things to consider in a case that was proving to be as wrapped in layers as the cat mummy in the Pindar collection.

Urbino found Natalia in the kitchen. She had just brought Gildo a portion of
ambroyno
, the spiced chicken dish with nuts and raisins that was one of the gondolier's favorites.

‘It smells delicious,' Urbino said.

And it tasted delicious, too. After Urbino had finished lunch, he brought some of the plates out to the kitchen, which was as spotless as Natalia always kept it. The only dirty dishes were the ones that Urbino placed in the sink.

‘I stopped by to see Nedda Bari this morning.'

‘And how is she? I didn't get a chance to talk to her at the funeral.'

‘She's busy, as ever. I thought she might be able to help me with my new book. She knew some of the people who were friends with the man I'm writing about.'

‘She knows a lot of people – and helps at least half of them.'

‘I saw that for myself this morning. Olimpia's death seems to have put her in a reflective mood. About Achille.'

‘I don't think she ever got over that. That's when I met her. Right after he drowned with his mother and father. She started coming to church more. San Gabriele. She lived in the Cannaregio in those days.'

‘I never knew her husband.'

‘Giorgio Bari. He owned restaurants in Venice and Mestre. He was a good man. But she didn't take it as hard when he died as she did when Achille did.'

‘What did he die of?'

‘Diabetes. Lost a leg near the end.'

‘She said she could have gone out on the sailboat that day. But she had an argument with Achille.'

Natalia nodded. ‘I know. That was probably the only fight the two of them ever had from what I've heard. Well, it was fate, wasn't it?'

‘I suppose you could call it that. When did she meet Giorgio Bari?'

‘About five years later. I thought she might marry the other brother. Ercule.'

‘Ercule?' Urbino saw no need to conceal his surprise.

‘Yes. She mentioned that they were secretly engaged. They didn't want anyone in the family to know. Of course, everyone would know eventually, if they decided to go through with the marriage, but time would have passed. The deaths of Ercule's parents and brother wouldn't be so fresh. I promised not to say anything, but I don't think it makes any difference after so many years.'

They must have kept it a good secret, for whatever reason. The contessa would have mentioned it if she had known.

‘Do you know why they didn't marry?'

‘What she said to me was that Ercule was nothing like his brother. She was right, there. I guess she realized what it would be like to be married to someone whose head is always in the clouds.'

Later that afternoon, Urbino telephoned the contessa.

‘I had no idea,' she said when he mentioned Nedda Bari's secret engagement to Ercule. ‘But is it so strange that I didn't know? Maybe the two of them wanted to keep it a secret for as long as they could because they wanted to avoid scandal. People were sure to talk. Nedda had been engaged to marry one brother and then, right after his death, she was planning to marry another brother.'

‘Yes, there's a logical explanation.”

‘I can imagine what Apollonia would have made of it, even though the two of them weren't related even by marriage. She might have thought the relationship was too close. Who knows what strange ideas she has?'

‘But those were the days before her great conversion, weren't they?' Urbino observed. ‘She wasn't so religious or moralistic then, not until a few years later.'

‘The seeds must have been there. It was not as if she was suddenly converted on the road to Damascus. It must have been growing and developing.'

‘And maybe somehow the drownings – or Ercule's secret relationship with Nedda afterward, if Apollonia found out about it – encouraged it.'

‘God works in mysterious ways, as she said to me the other day. But it's disturbing,
caro
, isn't it? What other things are there that we don't know?'

‘I read the articles about the drownings in
II Gazzettino
. At Marcello Buono's. To see if there might be anything in the public record about the drownings that we didn't know.'

‘But there was nothing, right? Whatever you read we already knew.'

‘Yes. Nothing indicates that it was anything but an accident, but it may have been the start of a series of events that somehow led to Olimpia's murder. In what way, I have no idea.'

Before ringing off, Urbino told her that the young woman they had seen with Nedda at Olimpia's funeral was named Evelina and asked her if she was sure she had never seen her before the funeral, as she had said then.