Alibi: A Novel (39 page)

“It’s possible. But if he’s already hit, they don’t like to drag him far. Somebody sees.” He paused. “Of course, it’s possible he is killed after he gets into the boat.”

“After.”

“Yes. And I thought, but where is that likely to happen? Signora Mortimer’s. Boats coming and going. Moretti’s waiting with a message—he’s needed urgently. So he gets in the boat.”

“And that’s why you want to talk to the servants again.”

“Yes, everyone at the landing stage. Although I will tell you frankly, I doubt it was that way. Very risky for Moretti to show himself to so many people. It’s more likely that it happened here,” he said, pointing back down the fondamenta. “After the corner, I think, where it’s quiet. But that would depend on whether he found somewhere for the boat.” He smiled at my expression. “I can see you’re not a Venetian. It’s not so easy to tie up in this district—look, so few spaces. So we talk to people—what was free, who was gone? And if we’re lucky, someone saw. Then we have him.” He looked down the canal again toward the turn to Mimi’s. Where Gianni must have gone. “I will tell you,” he said, smiling, “some in the Questura will be surprised. There have been discussions.”

“They don’t think Moretti did it?” I said, alarmed, unaware that any doubts had been raised. Had they already started looking elsewhere?

“Well, it’s more accurate maybe to say they would prefer someone else. The kind of trial this will mean, once the newspapers—they want something simple. Not a show trial. So they’re suspicious of you.”

“Of me?”

“Making these trials. This is what you did in Germany, yes? They don’t want that here—it brings shame to people. Look at Rosa. She’s Italian and she makes this trouble for Italians. But you—I say to them, it’s not for trials, it’s personal with him. Like me. Rosa, that’s something else. But you don’t want to make trouble. Look how careful you were about Moretti. Be sure, be sure. So now maybe we can be sure. We find where he kept the boat.” He shook his head. “It’s a gift, this woman. Now we know when he was last alive and we know where to look.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any chance she made a mistake? Old woman, anybody in formal clothes—”

“No, no, sharp eyes, you know how they are, these women. Once she saw the picture, she knew. She identified Signorina Grassini too.”

“What?” I said involuntarily, like a twitch.

“In the funeral pictures. At Salute. That’s how I knew the eyes were sharp. She said she saw her the same night. Right here, coming from San Ivo, like Maglione. Half an hour or so later. And that’s right—it’s as you said. So I said, oh, she was going to the party too? No, no, she says, not dressed up at all.
Normale
. So that was accurate, because she dressed at your house, you said.”

He looked at me, the faintest hint of a question.

“That’s right. A dress of my mother’s.”

“Yes, I remember. Very beautiful. And the necklace. Well.” He raised his hand, glancing up at the building. “So, an accurate witness. Maybe watching now, who knows?”

He went on to San Ivo, and I started back along the narrow stretch of pavement where Gianni was supposed to have been attacked and bundled into a waiting boat. What would happen when Cavallini didn’t find the boat, when there were no more old women with sharp eyes? I looked to my right up the calle. But our house wasn’t visible from here—you had to make another turn, go deeper into the maze. There were no straight lines in Venice. Maybe if you lived here long enough your mind began to work that way too, seeing around corners, making leaps out of sequence, until you arrived at the right door. But Cavallini had turned left, to Mimi’s, the logical route. I looked down at the gray, sluggish water, my stomach turning. He wouldn’t stay there, though. The servants wouldn’t know anything. The boats would all be accounted for. It was personal with him. And now he had something to prove at the Questura. He’d see, finally, that it was a dead end and turn around to look somewhere else.

I got back just as Celia’s bags were being put into the taxi. My mother was standing at the water entrance with Bertie, and when she turned and hugged him for a second, I thought I saw him wince, pressed too hard maybe, where he felt sensitive. I wondered if he’d told her yet. But the embrace had been quick, fleeting, two friends at the station, not someone who thought it might be the last. Then he
said something and she laughed and they were back in their own time again, cocktails and patter songs, before the war.

“Just in the nick,” my mother said, seeing me. “I thought I’d miss you.” She kissed my cheek. “Don’t get into any trouble.”

“Don’t buy any clothes,” I said back.

“All right,” she said, smiling, “a little trouble. Celia says I haven’t given Paris a chance. Not really. She says I left too soon.”

“So you might stay for a while.”

“Well, we’ll see. It’s odd here for me. And the trial. They’ll want to take my picture, and why? I have no position, really. I’m just someone he knew,” she said, her voice drifting a little.

“Don’t worry about anything. I’ll take care of the house.”

“You know all the papers are in my desk? I don’t know why I’m talking like this. We’ve got the house through spring, and I’ll probably be back in a week. It’s just—well, what’s here now?” She touched Bertie on the arm. “Except me pals,” she said in stage cockney.

“You’ll miss your train,” Bertie said, giving her another peck. “Have fun. Just don’t try to keep up with Celia. And no
cinq à septs
, please. It’s unseemly at our age.”

“Yours, you mean,” she said, laughing. Then she looked around, swiveling her head to take in the line of palazzos across the canal. “It is so beautiful, isn’t it?” Then she was hugging people and getting into the launch with Celia, waving to friends and settling in beside the stacks of luggage, leaning out the side of the boat for a last look as they headed up the canal.

I turned to Bertie, whose eyes, surprisingly, were moist.

“And you’ll be next, I suppose,” he said.

“Not yet.”

“That’s right,” he said airily, turning back to the house. “Otherwise engaged.” He started walking again. “You stick, I’ll give you that. Where is she, by the way? I thought she’d be here playing daughter.”

“Couldn’t. She’s working.”

“Working? Where?”

“In a shop.”

“A shop,” he said. “Adam. Really.”

She’d left the shop early, however, called back to the hotel. When I got there, she was already packing, moving things from the wardrobe to the bed, stopping in between to look out the window, her movements anxious and darting. A cigarette was burning in an ashtray on the end table, half forgotten in the rush.

“What’s going on?”

“The police were here. Back again, about that night. You think Cavallini’s a fool? Maybe not such a fool.”

“But I just saw him. It couldn’t have been him.”

“Another one, then. What’s the difference? They know something.” She went to the window and peeked out. “Why come again? The same questions. What time did I leave? They know.”

I walked over to her, taking her by the shoulders. “Calm down. It’s not that. They don’t know.”

“How do you know? Are you inside their heads now?”

“Just listen. They turned up someone who saw Gianni that night. That’s what I came to tell you. An old woman. She also saw you.”

“Saw me?”

“On your way to the house. At exactly the time you said. They’re just checking with the hotel to verify
her
story. Nobody suspects you of anything. They just want to make sure it all fits.”

Her shoulders, tense under my hands, softened a little.

“Yes?”

“Yes. Calm down.”

She went over to the night table and picked up the cigarette. “She saw him? Where?”

“Where she saw you. San Ivo. Out her window. She’s an invalid, watches the street.”

“Then they know where he was going.”

“It’s also the way to Mimi’s. Depends which way you turn.”

“Oh, so he turns one way and I turn another? You believe that?”

“They believe that.”

“And when it occurs to them that he could have gone the other way, like I did?” She started walking to the wardrobe, then turned back, her pacing like visible thought.

“It won’t. He went to Mimi’s. You came to me. That’s all there is to it.”

“No, not all. They’re looking again. They’re looking at me. Who hated him. Who follows him to your house—yes, that’s all the woman proves, that I was there too. Who better?”

“But you were with me.”

“Yes, doing what? How long before they see it?” Another move to the window, still anxious.

“Listen to me,” I said quietly, lowering my voice. “I’ve been over everything—the hall, the canal gate, the boat. Every inch. Everything’s been scrubbed. There’s nothing there, no evidence at all. Nobody saw him. Nobody can prove he was there except us.”

“So maybe there’s another invalid.”

“Nobody except us. All we have to do is keep our heads.”

“Oh, and I’m losing mine, is that it?” She went over to the wardrobe, turning her back to me. “It’s me they’re asking questions about, not you.”

“They’re just making sure about her,” I said calmly. “That’s all. They don’t suspect you.”

She kept her back to me, staring at the wardrobe, then reached in, pulled out a dress, and carried it over to the suitcase on the bed. “Yet. And now what?”

“Come home with me.”

She shook her head.

“My mother’s gone. She’s not coming back.”

“I can’t.” She looked up. “I can’t stay here, in Venice. Today, I thought, It’s getting closer. Oh, I know what you say, but I can’t help it. They’ll find out somehow. If I don’t leave now, I’ll never get out. So maybe it’s true they don’t suspect. But how much longer? And then we’re trapped here.”

“What do you mean, ‘leave now’?” I said, the only phrase I’d really heard.

“Now. Just get on the vaporetto and go to the station. Unless they’re watching,” she said, jerking her head toward the window. “But then at least I’d know.”

“I can’t leave now.”

“No,” she said, going back for another dress, then folding it into the case. She tucked a toiletries bag into the side, then looked around, the room suddenly bare, just a few hangers dangling in the wardrobe. “Look how easy it is when you don’t have anything. Remember how we left San Isepo? Not even an hour. You can pack up your whole life and leave.”

“And go where? It wouldn’t make any difference, you know,” I said, trying to keep my voice emotionless. “You’d have the same papers. If they really wanted to find you—”

“They would, I know. But then it’s easier to run. Where can you run in Venice? It’s a prison here. And they’re always looking. And, who knows, maybe someday they ask the right question: What if he turned the other way?” She stopped, then closed the lid of the suitcase. “Today it was like a warning. If I stay here—”

“But if you leave without me, they’ll wonder.”

“No, they’ll be happy for you. A woman like that, a
puttana
? What else would she do? That’s the way it is with them.”

“Stop it.”

“Then come. It’s our chance now, before it’s too late.”

“And leave Moretti to them? You could do that?”

She walked over to the window. “Today it’s him. Then something else. And we stay and stay. Under their noses.” She gestured out, as if the police were lurking beneath a tree in the campo. “This cat-and-mouse. Waiting to be caught.” She turned. “Maybe that’s what you want, to be caught. There are people like that. They want to be caught.”

I said nothing, waiting it out.

“But I don’t.” She looked away, then busied herself closing the wardrobe and checking the bathroom, her silence itself a kind of
apology. When she came back to the window she looked up, across the roofs of San Polo to the campanile of the Frari. “And now it’s going to rain,” she said, weary, a last straw.

“Come and sit,” I said, moving the suitcase.

But she stayed at the window, looking out. “If I don’t go now, it’ll be too late. I’ll get caught in the rain.” She paused. “Listen to me. What difference does the rain make? I’m talking with my nerves. No sense.”

“No one’s going to get caught,” I said evenly, as if I were stroking her arm.

“But I’m afraid.”

“You? You’re not afraid of anything.”

“Yes, now I’m afraid all the time,” she said, facing me, moving away from the window, her hands so jittery that she folded them under her arms, holding herself to stay still.

“Of what, exactly?”

She began pacing again, but near the bed, in tighter circles. “Everything. That I’ll say something.” She stopped in front of me. “No. That you’ll say something.” She lowered her head. “I’m afraid you’ll say something.”

I looked up at her, stung, and for a minute neither of us spoke, everything fragile, even the air. “All right,” I said finally. “Then marry me.”

“What?”

“A husband can’t testify against his wife. Isn’t it that way here too? They could never use anything I say.”

For a second she froze, then her shoulders twitched, that peculiar shudder that moves between laughing and crying, unable to settle on either. She sank down onto the bed next to me.

“Wonderful,” she said. “Marry somebody to keep him quiet. To protect yourself.”

“No,” I said, reaching over and brushing back her hair. “For all the other reasons. The usual ones.”

“The usual ones,” she said, looking down at her lap. “With us, after this, the usual ones. But also just in case. Just in case.
Brava
.”

I dropped my hand. “I just meant you’d never have to worry.”

She stared at her lap for another minute, then got up, turning to me. “No, and then neither would you. Is that why you want to?” She went over to the night table and lit a cigarette, her eyes avoiding me. “A wonderful marriage. Because we’re afraid of each other.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Just the way I always imagined it.” She went back to the window, blowing smoke and staring out, letting the quiet settle over the room. “I was right,” she said finally. “Now it’s raining. Where did your mother go?”

“Paris.”

“So you want me to come to Ca’ Venti. Yes, why not. I can’t stay here.” She smiled wryly. “I was going, but—”