Death in a Serene City (13 page)

“Merely a few scraps here and there but there's a fat notebook I haven't yet got to. It promises to be most interesting.”

“And not a little sad, I'm sure,” the Contessa added.

“Ah yes, that too.”

“Clifford, don't forget your appointment with Adele. It's already past nine.”

“What would I do without your fine Danish precision, my boy? Once I cross the Alps I'm inclined to forget time and tide altogether.”

The Contessa was amused at this.

“But we dare never forget the tide here in Venice, Mr. Voyd, south of the Alps though we are. As for time, well, that's something we're all too eager to forget, and Venice is a better place than most, isn't that so, Urbino?” she added, trying to draw him into the conversation. He only nodded.

They soon parted company on the steps of the church. Voyd and Kobke struck out into the
campo
, crowded now with shoppers, children, and deliverymen. Before they were halfway across, the writer turned around and called back, “Now don't forget, Mr. Macintyre, I'm still expecting you—and you as well, Contessa. The Europa e Regina.”

Urbino watched the two men until they turned down into the Calle dell'Arcanzolo and then gave his arm to the Contessa. As they walked across the
campo
she said, “He's perhaps not such a bad sort after all, is he? But I'm not so sure about his friend Kobke. He's a handsome enough young man but there's more there than meets the eye.”

Urbino smiled to himself. In her own unpredictable way he supposed she was being consistent. Her disapproval was still there but she had neatly switched it from the writer to his young Danish companion.

“And now,
caro,
” she said as she gave his arm an affectionate tug, “I would like you to come with me to Signora Castaldi's for my dress fitting. Don't frown like that! You know very well she has Mutinelli's book on Venetian costume to keep you occupied. After that I have to stop by the Fortuny, but then I absolutely promise we'll go to Florian's.”

14

“WELL, Urbino, what do you think?”

It was several hours later and they were finally ensconced at their usual table by the window in the Chinese room at Florian's. Coffee, tea, and a tray of small sandwiches were on the table.

“That leaves a great deal open, Barbara. What do I think of what?”

“Don't be coy with me, Urbino. It doesn't suit you and it makes me suspect you have something to hide. You're the person least able to conceal anything from me. I'm quite obviously referring to what we've been avoiding talking about ever since we left San Gabriele—this whole miserable affair of Maria and Santa Teodora. What have you been doing—that is, other than paying visits to the Questura?”

“I only went the once. There's no need for me to go again. I'm finished with them.”

“But are they finished with you? I know this system. I might not have been born in a gondola either but I've spent a much longer time in this city and country than you have. Your naïveté only reminds me of my own age, and there's no need to draw more attention to that than is necessary.”

She smiled and poured out some tea for herself. Today more than usual she seemed to be paying a dear price for having been born with a mobile face, expanding so often over the years into astonishment and anger and diminishing into sorrow, puzzlement, and suspicion. Just about every line and indentation, so useful in her first and second youths, stood out now at Florian's.

“So what conclusions have you come to? Everyone from street sweepers to cardinals has an opinion.”

“There isn't much to base an opinion on, is there?”

“That's why there are so many of them. Everyone's imagination is working double time. A lot of people seem to believe whoever it was was after the jewels that were supposed to be somewhere in the casket. The police and more people than I want to think about are convinced it was Carlo, and Don Marcantonio is waiting for a ransom note he probably thinks the Vatican Bank will take care of or—who knows?—maybe even the English Contessa he hasn't shown much fondness for before.”

“Would you?”

“
And
there are some who think—believe it or not—that you might be involved yourself.”

“Me!”

“Oh, not in a direct way of course but talk might eventually make it seem so. After all, your pillow slip is still missing and Carlo did come to the Palazzo Uccello right after his mother's body was discovered.”

“But that's just coincidence about the pillow slip. And Carlo's coming to see me—who knows why he did that?”

“That's all true enough but it doesn't mean that people will stop talking. Listen, Urbino, surely it's no secret to you that they're not particularly quick to accept
forestieri
in this city, even
forestieri
from other parts of Italy! At times like this these feelings surface.”

“I really can't concern myself with it. What I
am
concerned with is Carlo and the way the Questura seems to have placed him right at the top of their list.”

The Contessa reached for a sandwich. “Yes, but we both know that's ridiculous.” As she was about to take a bite, she looked at him and added, “Don't we?”

“No matter how many times I've been proven wrong I still trust my impressions. Carlo just doesn't seem the criminal type even if appearances are so much against him—and I'm not talking only about his—his ugliness,” he added reluctantly.

“There you have it. It doesn't help that he's one of the few people with easy access to San Gabriele, especially on that particular afternoon. The murder and theft had to take place between five and five-thirty. Sister Veronica and her group were there until almost five. She locked up. She has a key, as you know, for her tours, since the church is usually closed at that hour. It would have been reopened before the six o'clock Mass as usual if Don Marcantonio hadn't been ill.”

“Does Don Marcantonio open and close the church every day?”

“Usually it's Carlo. That's one of his jobs as sexton. He was a little upset when Don Marcantonio gave Sister Veronica a key last year.”

“So Sister Veronica locked the front doors but the side door was open.”

“She has nothing to do with the side door.”

“I wasn't suggesting that she had but the fact that it was open must mean either that it was never locked to begin with or that someone opened it after it had been.”

“But that side door is usually kept locked even when the front doors are open.”

“An oversight on Carlo's part?”

“I doubt it. You know as well as I do that he's not the kind of person to take his duties lightly. It's just about everything the poor man has had for the past thirty years. He's dedicated to San Gabriele. He feels more at home there than in those rooms on the Rio della Sensa. He even—”

She broke off abruptly and put a hand to her throat, staring out the window. He followed her wide-eyed gaze and saw a man under the arcade reading
Il Gazzettino
. He was absorbed in the back page but it was the front page with its photograph of Santa Teodora, the one without the mask that showed her receding chin, that arrested his attention as it obviously had the Contessa's. Above the photograph was the headline
RANSOM LETTER FOR SANTA TEODORA.

Urbino hurried out to get a copy of the paper from one of the kiosks by the post office behind the Piazza. When he brought it back to the table, the Contessa had her reading glasses on and her hand out.

“Let me, please.”

He handed her the paper. She glanced quickly over the page and then, in her clearly enunciated Italian, slowed now for emphasis, she read:

“A ransom note was received early this morning in the country's most unusual kidnapping. The ransom request involves no money, and the victim has already been dead for some time—more than a thousand years in fact.

“The anonymous letter received in the Bologna office of ANSA begins: ‘The conditions for the return of Santa Teodora's body, which Santa Teodora herself would have agreed with, are the following: In every junior high and high school in the entire Veneto region one page of Antonio Gramsci's book,
Letters from Prison
, should be read at choice.'”

The Contessa stopped, a puzzled expression on her face, and asked if he knew the book. He nodded but told her to go on.

“The letter, typewritten on a piece of ordinary white paper, was postmarked January 17 from Bologna.

“It was entitled ‘For Publication,' and it goes on to say, ‘We are neither glory-seekers, nor fanatics, nor terrorists. The only ones who can be called glory-seekers or fanatics are those who try to get some money in exchange for a little pile of bones.'”

“A little pile of bones!” the Contessa repeated. “Can you believe that!”

“Is that all?”

Skimming ahead, she said, “There's a section on that Gramsci person.” She took a sip of tea and continued:

“The book in question, published posthumously in 1947, was written by Antonio Gramsci, who founded the Italian Communist Party in 1921. The author, born in Sardinia in 1891, wrote numerous notes while mortally ill in Fascist prisons. These notes were later collected together and published as
Letters from Prison
. Gramsci believed that the disorganization and lack of individualism in Italy were the consequence of the capitalistic system and that only Communism could effect a cure. He died in Rome in 1937.”

When she lowered the paper, Urbino thought she had finished but then she raised it again and read the last lines:

“One ANSA reporter observed, ‘It is difficult to establish a connection between the book and the theft of Santa Teodora's relics, except for one coincidence. Gramsci—like Carlo Galuppi, son of the murdered woman of San Gabriele and one of the major suspects in the case—was a hunchback.'”

The Contessa put the paper down, almost upsetting her teacup. Then, for the second time within an hour but now with a rasp of impatience to her voice, she asked, “Well, what do you think?”

“It's obvious, Barbara.”

She shook her head. “Tell me. Make me feel like a
cretina
if you want.”

“Some crackpot group or person is taking advantage of the murder and the theft to make a point.”

Her face brightened.

“Mightn't it help Carlo?”

“It could do the opposite. All that business about a hunchback will only draw more attention to him. It's an unfortunate coincidence.”

“Maybe it's not a coincidence.”

“Gramsci was a hunchback, Barbara.”

She shook her head impatiently.

“What I meant was that it seems just a little too convenient that both this Gramsci and Carlo are hunchbacks. Someone may be trying to point a finger at him.”

“That's hardly necessary.”

He was beginning to wish he had ordered something with alcohol instead of coffee. He looked around for the waiter.

“I don't know why you're being so obstinate! I thought you believed Carlo is innocent!”

He covered her hand with his.

“Of course I believe he's innocent but I don't believe it because of nonsense like this.” He nodded toward the paper.

“It may not be nonsense at all. Sometimes I think anything is possible in this country! Alvise and I used to have the worst arguments about it, almost right up to the end. I love it but I despair of ever really understanding it.”

“Didn't you say just a little while ago that you knew more about it than I did?”

“Yes, I did, but that was only to point out how abominable your own ignorance is!”

“Vincible, however.”

“What?”

“Vincible ignorance, to use a good old theological term. Just give me time.”

“Ah, time! You have such a knack for bringing up the most disagreeable topics!”

15

AT about eleven that night Urbino was once again trying to get into Sand's
Consuelo
.

He was nearing the end of a chapter when he heard a noise in the hallway outside the study. It sounded like a footstep. He had let Natalia go right after dinner, and although she had a key, he couldn't believe she would come back from Mestre at this hour.

He put the book down and went to the door. Before he quite reached it, however, it started to open slowly to reveal the misshapen form of Carlo Galuppi. Urbino had one quick rush of fear that he was almost as quickly ashamed of. The hunchback looked as if he were about to collapse.

“Carlo! However did you get in?” He helped him to a chair next to the door. “Let me get you some brandy.”

It all seemed so much a repetition of what had happened before that he expected Carlo to be gone when he returned a few minutes later with a glass and the brandy decanter but there he was, still sitting, his large head in his hands. Urbino poured some of the brandy and handed it to Carlo. He gulped it down.

When he finished, he started speaking rapidly. It all sounded such a mad jumble of elisions, dropped consonants, strange words, and an extravagance of z's that Urbino cursed his unfamiliarity with the Venetian dialect and wished the Contessa were there. Even she, however, might not have been able to make much sense of the man's gibberish, a result not only of dialect but also of his speech impediment and the quite palpable fear that reached out to grip Urbino himself. But the man had sense enough to slow down and repeat what he had been saying so that gradually Urbino came to understand that once again Carlo was asking for help, this time with considerably more desperation.

“Please, Signor Macintyre, you must help me, I beg you—I could see and hear nothing, nothing!—the confessional—always I did what she told me—our saint was our protection, she said, we needed no other—she watched over all we did and all we had—soon everything would be different for us—but the blood—I was afraid—I—”