The Veils of Venice (34 page)

And so did Alessandro and Eufrosina, he might have added.

Nedda lifted her chin and said with quiet firmness, ‘Not the same blue as his were. No, not the same. None of you. His were a very special shade of blue. I can see his eyes now as if they were right in front of me.' Her voice now sounded far away.

Evelina was looking at Nedda with increasing concern. She bent close to her and whispered something that Urbino could not hear.

‘How interesting, Nedda,' the contessa said. She had been avoiding Urbino's eyes throughout the exchange and only now brushed him with a glance. ‘One of Achille's things that Olimpia showed me was a blue sweater. It must have been the one you remember. A lovely blue, as you said. It's amazing, isn't it, the way we can forget so much of our life but how some things – even small ones – are so vivid after many years?' She even managed a convincing sigh as if she were contemplating some of the unforgettable little details and moments of her own rich life.

Urbino had told the contessa last night that her improvisational skills would be called upon for the wake, and she was showing how good she was at them.

Eufrosina was becoming visibly agitated. It seemed that she wanted to get up and leave the small group, but she remained in her seat. Her brother had also been undergoing a change in his manner since Nedda had started to speak. His face had fallen into an expression of disapproval. Gaby took his hand again and started to chafe it between hers as if she needed to warm him. And Apollonia's son did look in need of warming, for his whole manner had become icy. He withdrew his hand forcibly.

‘Do you remember the blue sweater, Eufrosina?' A flicker of a smile passed over Nedda's face. ‘He got it right before he drowned.'

‘Why should I remember it? I hardly ever saw Achille, and I didn't live in the house back then.' Eufrosina's fists tightened in her lap. She gave Nedda a black look. ‘What's this blue, blue, blue? Blue doors, blue rooms, blue eyes, blue sweaters! We are here to pay respects to my mother, our mother. Aren't we, Alessandro?'

She turned toward her brother. But Alessandro, wrapped in a cold cloak of disdain and disapproval of everything, including his own sister, ignored her appeal to what they had in common.

‘You must think I'm stupid, Eufrosina,' Nedda said. ‘I'm not. And I never have been.'

‘You're drunk. Drunk at my mother's wake! Disgraceful, isn't it, Alessandro?'

But her brother continued to ignore her. He looked morose, unapproachable.

‘I've always respected your mother,' Nedda said quietly. ‘Always tried to protect her.'

‘My mother didn't need your protection.' Alessandro said in a low voice, breathing heavily. ‘I was there for that.' He stood up and strode across the room to the catafalque, trying to put as much command into his small figure as he could manage. He drew the black drapery across the front of the catafalque, obscuring Apollonia's stern profile from view. He stood in front of the drawn curtain for a few moments, his arms folded across his chest. He then rejoined the small group, but this time he took the empty chair between the contessa and Nedda, managing to keep more distance between himself and his sister and Gaby.

The contessa began a series of reminiscences about Apollonia, which gave the appearance of returning the wake to its proper spirit. Alessandro started to warm slightly and contributed to the anecdotes, but he didn't draw the curtain away from the catafalque. Urbino shared a pleasant memory of when he and Apollonia had enjoyed a bowl of traditional mulberries together on the Giudecca during the Feast of the Redeemer seven years ago.

Ercule threw himself into the spirit of things and confided how Apollonia had given him old photographs of Istanbul that she had found among her mother's possessions. ‘Old black and white photographs. Lovely. It was very kind and generous of her. Have you ever seen them, Eufrosina? I'd like your professional opinion, although even if you say they're not good, I'll still cherish them.'

Eufrosina had withdrawn into herself. She stared at the drawn curtain, her eyes hardly blinking. Nedda was glowering at her.

‘Have you seen them, Eufrosina?' Ercule prompted.

‘No, I haven't.' Her voice was little more than a hoarse whisper.

This was the opportunity Urbino was looking for.

‘Speaking of photographs,' he began, ‘I have some of Apollonia. They're ones of her with the two of you.' He looked at Alessandro and Eufrosina in turn. ‘And some of her with Gaby, Ercule, Olimpia, and Barbara. I brought them with me. I like what you did with the photographs of her, Alessandro. It's a very thoughtful touch. You can have mine. Maybe you can make copies of them, Eufrosina, and give the copies to me. The two of you can keep the originals.' Urbino got up. ‘Let me get them before I forget.'

He went to the armoire out on the staircase landing. From his overcoat pocket, he took the photographs and the copy of the ‘A' and ‘E' letter, as he had come to think of it.

The focus of everyone's attention was now on the photographs in his hand.

As he handed them to Alessandro, he made sure that the copy of the letter, unfolded, which was underneath the photographs, fluttered to the floor. It settled face up. It was as if the laws of chance were eager to cooperate with Urbino and conspire against the murderer.

Urbino let it lie on the floor.

‘What's that?' Alessandro asked. He got up and retrieved it. As he started to read what was written on it, his jaw clenched and his eyes slightly narrowed.

‘I must have picked it up with the photographs back home. I had a lot of things on my desk.' Urbino took the letter from Alessandro's somewhat unwilling fingers and held it so that it remained in clear view. He gave the appearance of waiting for Alessandro to look through the photographs, but all the while he was paying covert attention to the others, especially one of the others.

Eufrosina's long fingers were curling and uncurling themselves. She rose and approached Urbino, who now was making a show of folding the letter. As he was about to slip it into the pocket of his suit jacket, she said sharply, ‘May I see that?'

Urbino handed her the letter. Eufrosina's eyes were glittering and she was passing her tongue repeatedly over her dry lips.

Eufrosina unfolded it slowly, as if she were afraid of what she might find written inside. She became pale. She looked back and forth between the letter and Urbino. She examined the letter more closely.

‘But – but this isn't the original,' she said, with an odd inflection. ‘I don't understand.'

Bianchi, who was making up for having been so talkative with the contessa about Apollonia's affairs, continued to keep his silence, but he had a look of professional interest on his face as he looked in the direction of the letter in Eufrosina's hand.

Gaby came up behind Eufrosina and snatched the letter from her hands. ‘What is this about?' Her eye ran down the page. She blinked with bafflement.

Alessandro was sitting quite motionless but the hand that held the photographs was trembling slightly. Eufrosina's eyes were filled with confusion and anger.

‘It's something Olimpia gave me to look at a few weeks before her death,' Urbino said to Gaby. ‘I never had a chance to return it to her before she was murdered. I suppose it belongs to you and Ercule now.'

Ercule, who during the past few moments had been changing color like a chameleon, went over to Gaby and squinted at the letter. She held it tightly in her hands, as if determined not to relinquish it. Evelina, who had looked startled when Urbino mentioned Olimpia's name, grabbed Nedda's hand in hers.

‘It's a kind of love letter.' Gaby spoke in a flat, inflectionless voice.

Evelina, Urbino's wild card, jolted upright. ‘A love letter? Olimpia gave it to you?'

‘She gave it to me to read. She didn't write it to me. In fact, she didn't write the letter, but she wanted me to know what's in it. She said it came from one of the blue rooms.'

Alessandro, with a puzzled expression on his face, jerked to his feet. The photographs scattered on the floor.

‘She gave
you
the letter? What else did she give you?' Gaby was now close to shouting. ‘And she gave
you
the ocelot coat!' she threw out at the startled contessa. ‘Did she forget she had a sister?'

Gaby, still holding the letter, dropped into her chair.

‘Where's the original?' The face Eufrosina turned to Urbino was dead white.

‘I gave it to the police. It's evidence, you see.'

Evelina stood up, took a quick step forward, and then came to a halt. ‘Evidence of what?' Her voice was harsh and unsteady.

‘Of the person who murdered Olimpia.'

Gaby gave a scream and dropped the sheet of paper on the floor as if it were on fire.

Eufrosina swooped down and grabbed the sheet of paper. She ripped it into pieces and let the scraps flutter to the floor. Sharp notes of laughter burst from her lips. Then, as if with a pair of scissors, she cut the laughter off abruptly. She muttered something indistinguishable, and then in the clearest of voices and the most even of tones, she said, ‘The police know?'

‘They know everything,' Urbino said, stretching the truth for the occasion.

Eufrosina reached one hand to her throat in a pathetically expressive gesture. It was unfortunate that she – or someone else – could not capture it with a camera.

A shudder ran through her body.

She dropped to the floor as if felled by a physical blow.

Epilogue

Sewing Things Up

Urbino stared out into the Piazza San Marco from the windows of Florian's. The scene was far different than it had been three weeks before, when he and the contessa had watched the snow come down on an almost deserted square and waited for Eufrosina to join them.

People sauntered and promenaded across the large open space, which had lost most of its blanket of snow.
Carnevale's
days of indulgence would not officially begin for a week, but revelers were stealing an early start on the moveable feast. They posed in costumes for photographers, sat on the edges of the temporary stage with beer and wine, and danced to the music of the Florian orchestra. Merchants walked through the crowd selling confetti, horns, masks, and hats. A snowfight had erupted among a group of children that claimed a young Japanese woman as one of its unintentional victims, but she just laughed and brushed herself off. A large chandelier was suspended above all this activity, waiting to be illuminated on the last evening of the festivities when the square would become transformed into a large, open-air ballroom.

Urbino focused his gaze on a still point in all the swirl of activity. This was a stout – and recently much stouter – snowman, with a pigeon perched on its head, which had been visibly disappearing as Urbino sat with the contessa in the Chinese Salon.

It was two days after Apollonia's funeral at the Church of San Giacomo dell' Orio and her burial on San Michele. The weather had remained bitter cold until this morning and now, in late afternoon, a persistent drizzle was falling on the city. All the beautiful transformation of the city was being washed away, but the rain had not put a damper on the spirits of the people in the square and under the arcades.

‘Nothing lasts forever.' The contessa, who had been looking at the melting snowman, echoed Urbino's thoughts as she so often seemed to do. ‘Neither the good nor the bad. I suppose it all balances out in the end.'

‘That's the most comforting way to look at it.'

Two figures, carrying blood-red umbrellas, were prancing around the snowman. One was dressed in a parti-colored Harlequin costume and wore a white cap. His face was covered with a black half-mask with demonic features. His companion, whose face was concealed in a black feathered mask, was someone in an old-fashioned black nun's habit, complete with a wimple. A red devil's tail peaked out from the rear of the black robe. They joined hands with a couple dressed in baroque costumes, and started to dance around the melting snowman. When they stopped, the nun bent over and kissed the snowman. The watching crowd whistled and clapped.

All the tables in the Chinese Salon were busy. The room was filled with laughter and animated conversation, and wafting through the air were the aromas of coffee and of the mint, cocoa, and cherry in the small Rosolio glasses. A couple in black capes, lacy white shirts, black pants, white stockings, and high-heeled shoes occupied one table. A black
bautta
mask partly concealed the man's face, and the woman held a gold and jeweled demi-mask on a stick.

The contessa reached down to pet Zouzou. She lay asleep on the floor by the contessa's divan, with a pink-and-red-striped blanket beneath her and a small porcelain dish of water beside her.

‘This will be the last time I come anywhere near the Piazza – or even leave the house, who knows? – until Ash Wednesday,' the contessa said. ‘You're fortunate you're escaping it this year.' She had already anticipated the end of carnival in her choice of today's deep purple dress of simple lines, which she always wore on Ash Wednesday. Her honey-blond hair, pulled back from her face and held by a black comb that matched her onyx necklace, was in the style habitually reserved for the solemn day. ‘And by then Mina will be back.'

Mina, whose release from the Giudecca had been delayed, would be returning to the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini after a visit to her family in Palermo. So far, she had been sticking to her resolution not to accept any of Olimpia's legacy except for a few personal items she would choose when she had the opportunity. She intended to turn over everything else in equal portions to Gaby and Ercule.

The contessa looked at Urbino affectionately. ‘Well, you've done it again,
caro
. Order out of confusion. And in record time. You can go to America with an easy mind.'