The Veils of Venice (26 page)

The main things – almost the only things – he knew about Alessandro were his apparent devotion to his mother and his woodcarving.

Urbino had no idea whether Alessandro had worked with a master woodcarver or whether he was self-taught. There were several wood craftsmen in Venice who sold their sculptures in their own shops. One of the shops wasn't far away, near the Campo Sant' Angelo, in the general area of the Palazzo Fortuny.

But when he got there, the shutters were down. The owner had closed earlier than the other shops around it.

He took the ferry across the Grand Canal to San Silvestro, where he hurried toward the Campo San Polo. A shop off the square, not far from the Turkish café, sold carved wooden objects and other curiosities. He got there just as a stout middle-aged man was raising the metal pole to pull down the shutters.

‘Excuse me, signore. I'll come back after you re-open if you have what I'm looking for.'

‘And what is that?' The man, who had a genial-looking face, stopped pulling down the shutters.

‘I'm looking for small carved wooden figures. About this high.' He measured off eight inches on his fingers. ‘They're lifelike and painted, sometimes with slightly exaggerated features and details. A friend from Rome showed me some she bought in Venice a few months ago, but she couldn't remember where the shop was.'

‘Finally!' the man said with a little laugh. ‘Your friend didn't buy them from my shop. That is, if I have what you are talking about. I haven't sold one in the seven months I've had them in the shop. Are those the kind you're looking for?'

The man pointed to five identical figures clustered closely together on a top shelf in the window. They were carved wooden figures of a woman in a coat that had been painted with black dots against a yellow background. The figure's face resembled Olimpia's. In her arms, she was cradling a figure in a maternal way, whose face was pressed against her breast. This smaller figure looked less like a child than it did a miniature adult. The effect reminded Urbino of medieval paintings of the Madonna in which the infant in her arms had the proportions of an adult.

‘Yes, they're what I'm looking for.'

‘Come inside.'

‘As long as I'm not keeping you.'

Urbino said he would buy all five figures. As the owner was wrapping them up, Urbino asked him who had made them.

‘A man named Alessandro Ballarin. I have his address and telephone number. He lives in Venice. A Venetian. I felt sorry for him. He seemed so desperate to have me take them. He said he was self-taught. That's another reason why I decided to stock them.' The man shrugged his shoulders. ‘What can I say? I am not the best of businessmen. But I know what it is like trying to get started. I gave him more than I should have for them. I promised him that I'd give any buyers his name and address in case they were interested in more.'

He wrote down Alessandro's name and address on his business card and slipped it into the bag.

‘No one else showed an interest in them?'

‘Some customers have looked at them from time to time, taken one down from the shelf. Tourists. They asked me if the figures had anything to do with the history of Venice. I was honest and said no. No one ever bought one.'

After Urbino left the shop, he went to the Campo San Polo. He asked the owner of a café on the square if he knew where the two women lived who, according to Teresa Sorbi, had been faithful customers of Olimpia. The owner pointed him in the direction of two buildings on the other side of the large square.

The two elderly women had known Platone and Regina Pindar. They had lost touch with the family shortly after their drowning but they had started to give some business to Olimpia a few years ago for the sake of her parents. The women were polite, if slightly curious about his inquiries about Olimpia. But he learned nothing new from either of them, even though they both praised the quality of Olimpia's work.

He went back to the café, where he ordered
tramezzini
sandwiches and half a liter of red wine. He believed he had discovered why Olimpia had been angry with Alessandro and had threatened him. It was because of the wooden caricatures. He assumed that the baby she was holding was Alessandro's way of depicting her relationship with Mina, so many years younger than Olimpia had been. Olimpia must have been furious that her nurturing relationship with Mina was being ridiculed.

Had she seen the figures in the shop window? Possibly even in other shops if Alessandro had made more? If she had, why hadn't she bought them up the way Urbino had? But perhaps she would have felt embarrassed to do it – or to have Mina go in her stead, or anyone else she might have taken into her confidence.

Although Urbino could understand Olimpia's reaction, he was puzzled about Alessandro's motivation in making the figures. Had it been his way of expressing his moral disapproval of the relationship? Had his mother been behind it in some way? Or had some animosity toward Olimpia, which had had nothing to do with Mina, encouraged him to use his skills to take this form of revenge?

Alessandro, however, had not been the one to be murdered, but the victim of his prank had been.

Then something occurred to Urbino. He was assuming that the baby held in the Olimpia figure's arms was meant to represent Mina. Was it possible that it was Evelina? She was younger than Olimpia, although not as young as Mina. If the baby was Evelina, did this help Urbino to any clearer understanding?

Urbino didn't have very specific dates for when the shopkeeper had bought the figures from Alessandro or for when Olimpia had argued with both Evelina and Alessandro, but they were all roughly within the same time period of last summer – which was also around the time when Olimpia and Mina had started to get close.

Urbino kept mulling over various possibilities, but he reached no conclusions.

Overall, however, his morning had been fruitful. He hoped that the contessa's visit to Mina had been as successful.

Twelve

Although her appointment to see Mina at the Women's Penitentiary was not until eleven, the contessa found it difficult to stay in the house after breakfast. Rather than wander around from room to room, she decided to try to turn her nervous energy to something constructive.

But what could she do?

In reviewing the possibilities, she quickly lighted upon Bianchi. She could pay him another visit. She might be able to get some information from him.

The contessa was about to step into the motorboat when, on an impulse, she went back inside the house and up to Mina's room to get the photograph of Mina and Olimpia, with the Bridge of Sighs in the background. It would give Mina some consolation that the contessa hoped would more than offset any problems that would come her way because of it.

Pasquale dropped her off on the quay near Bianchi's offices.

‘What can I do for you today, contessa?' Bianchi asked from behind his heavy writing desk, not being quite able to conceal his surprise.

The contessa seated herself in the armchair that gave her a view of the Rialto Bridge.

‘I've been thinking about something you said when I was here last time.' The contessa tried to figure out when that had been. Five days ago? A week? She was losing track of time. ‘You mentioned – and mentioned rightly – that my main beneficiary is someone older than I am by quite a few years. I made the will when he was much more vigorous.'

‘Yes. I remember.'

‘I don't want to remove him from my will, you understand, but I would like to make a provision that, if he predeceases me, his nephew Vittorio da Capo of Naples be my main beneficiary. I have been thinking, Signor Bianchi, that I might not have time or opportunity to change it. Life is unpredictable. We never know what is going to happen.'

‘You are correct.' He pursed his lips and nodded in what the contessa was sure he considered a sage manner.

‘We see what's happened within only a few weeks at the Palazzo Pindar.'

‘Indeed. As your lawyer, I recommend that you make the change. I even urge it. I'll have my assistant add a codicil immediately.'

‘That's comforting.'

‘I want you to think of other changes you might want. We will make up a completely new will later. But the codicil will suffice for now.'

The change was made quickly and efficiently. When this matter was behind her – which, in fact did relieve the contessa – she brought up Apollonia. Although her words were calculated, she felt a painful knot tighten in her as she mentioned her death. ‘I know she wasn't a young woman and that she had been ill, but it took me by surprise.'

‘I understand how you feel. I did not expect it myself – not so soon.'

‘I've long considered Apollonia to have been much more far-seeing than I am.' The contessa could say this without any twinge of conscience since Apollonia, for more than twenty years now, had had her eyes focused on the afterlife.

‘You are not fair to yourself, contessa. But Apollonia was a prudent woman, God rest her.'

‘And judicious.'

A smile wreathed Bianchi's plump, pink face, so different from his father's stern one, which was fixed not only in her memory but also in the large portrait behind the desk. ‘Are you asking me if you are in her will?'

Bianchi's question was so unexpected and so inconceivable that she was momentarily speechless. ‘No, Signor Bianchi. I –'

‘I am only teasing, contessa. Even lawyers can tease. It was because of Olimpia's will and the ocelot coat that I allowed myself. But to be clear, you are not mentioned in the will. She changed it recently, just as you are doing. Since you are family, I will tell you that she left almost everything to Alessandro. She gave a modest bequest of money to Eufrosina. Also her Fortuny gown and a few other personal items.'

‘I see.' The contessa tried her best to keep her voice from revealing the surprise she felt and the turmoil of thoughts racing through her head. ‘I am sure she knew what she was doing. As I said, she was a judicious woman – and – and fair.'

‘And prudent as well, as I said.'

As the contessa was returning to the boat, she felt pleased, confused, and disturbed by the relative ease with which Bianchi had given her information about Apollonia's will.

She was pleased to have it – and eager to pass it on to Urbino.

But she was also nonplussed. Why had Bianchi been so forthcoming? This was different from his openness about Olimpia's will, since she was personally concerned in it because of the ocelot coat. Did Bianchi want her to keep the information to herself until it became generally known? If he did want her to do so, he had given her no indication.

But perhaps he wanted her, for his own purposes or perhaps at another person's urging, to reveal it to someone. If he did, this someone was most probably Urbino, given his reputation for sleuthing.

Yes, the contessa was both pleased and puzzled – and she was distressed. Bianchi Senior had been the most discreet of souls. Nothing easily passed the thin line of his lips. But Bianchi Junior had not hesitated in the slightest in telling her about Apollonia's will.

How discreet was he about the contessa's affairs?

It was all quite vexing.

Yes, her meeting with Bianchi had given her a great deal for her and Urbino to consider.

On this cold day in late January, as the motorboat approached the embankment of the penitentiary, the mere sight of it, with its small barred windows and bank of security cameras, oppressed the contessa's spirits. Its three stories of brick, sorely in need of repair, rose above her against the dark gray sky.

The contessa had seen it only once before. Four months after her marriage, she had walked past it when she was wandering on the Giudecca. Even the mild sunshine of that long-ago May afternoon had not been able to dispel the gloom of the severe, canal-side building.

At that time it had been a curiosity for her, something that she never could have imagined would one day directly touch her life, especially not in such a manner. Her interest then had been piqued because it had formerly been a convent for women. Now, when she remembered that the convent had been called I Convertiti, she found herself briefly thinking not about Mina imprisoned inside the building but the dead Apollonia, who had placed herself among the converted and was now dead.

Even though the contessa was an observant person, from the moment she went through the entrance, so much of what was happening around her did not register. Everything and everyone was an impressionistic blur – the guards, the security search, the corridor, the room she waited in, the officials she spoke to, the man who conducted her to the visitors' area, the overheated visitors' room, the woman guard watching her.

But then everything sharpened, everything came into focus when Mina was brought into the room and sat down across from her – although it isn't even correct to say that the contessa noted everything about her, eager as she was to see her. Afterwards she could not remember whether she was wearing a prison smock or her own clothes, a blindness that the contessa saw as a failure on her part and a betrayal of Mina. It was her responsibility not to let anything slip by her. She had come to help Mina.

Yet what she didn't see or remember clearly was greatly compensated by the clarity with which she saw Mina's face, even though the memory of it would haunt her in the coming days.

It was pale and drawn, and her porcelain features had lost their shine. All the liveliness in her dark eyes and the mobility of her mouth, so quick to smile, were gone. She was subdued, but she was not broken in any way, and this filled the contessa with a surge of gratefulness.

The contessa wished she could reach out and touch Mina, could hug her, but they were separated by the glass barrier. Somehow, the contessa and Mina got through their first greetings. Tears were shed on both sides. For the third time, the contessa heard herself ask, ‘How are you, Mina?'