Farewell to the Flesh (31 page)

2

After leaving the Casa Crispina Urbino called the Questura from a public phone in a bar in the Calle dell'Arcanzolo. When the receptionist put him through right away, he took it as a further indication of Commissario Gemelli's spirit of cooperation.

He wondered if Nicholas Spaak had made his promised visit. Perhaps Dora couldn't find her brother because he was at the Questura or on his way there.

Urbino mentioned the pictures in that morning's
Il
Gazzettino
.

“Remarkable likeness of your friend Vico, wouldn't you say? Could hardly have been more like him if it had been a photograph taken by Gibbon or Buffone.”

“I'm sure you would have liked to give
Il
Gazzettino
a photograph if you could have.”

“In time, in time—before the end of
Carnevale
most likely. But even the Italian police have to do things in the proper, orderly way. And don't forget Lubonski. He's a strong suspect in Gibbon's death even if he was rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night.” Gemelli paused. “I don't think I have to tell you what I learned from your friend Lubonski, do I? I know you learned the same things during your visit to him but saw no reason to inform us.”

“Have you had any response to the pictures yet?”

“Not to the one of the blond man but the phone has been ringing off the hook about the other one. Quite a few people have said they saw the handsome Signor Vico the night of the murder. And Ignazio Rigoletti has called us two or three times. He seems to think he keeps seeing Vico parading around. Says he made an obscene gesture at him when Rigoletti's boat was coming into San Marco—then he ran off in the crowd. He wants to know why we haven't arrested the insolent young man yet. I think he's trying to get us to pull him in as a public nuisance. It might not be a bad idea.”

When Gemelli said nothing about Spaak, Urbino assumed he hadn't been to the Questura yet. He realized he was once again withholding information. But what held him back was not that he wanted to keep the information for himself but that he wanted the Commissario to get the story first from Spaak. He had told Mrs. Spaak that he would try to help her son. This might be the best—and only—thing he could do for him.

“Anyway,” the Commissario was saying, “aside from Rigoletti, Vico was seen by at least half a dozen people that night, and he was just where you would expect him to have been—along the Molo, in the Piazza San Marco—someone even saw him in the Mercerie not far from the Splendide-Suisse. He seems to have been having quite a good time. If he has nothing to hide, then why doesn't he just admit that he was out? His stepmother is obviously providing him with an alibi. In the stories I read when I was a kid the stepmother used to throw her stepchildren to the wolves! I wonder if Vico knows how lucky he is to have the one he does?”

3

The Commissario's question sounded in Urbino's ears as he listened to Mrs. Pillow in the crowded wine bar.

Did Tonio Vico know how lucky he was? Urbino didn't doubt that Vico loved his stepmother. But was he aware of the depth of her own feeling? If he could have heard how passionately she was defending him now, he would have considered himself very lucky indeed.

“Tony was in the whole night, Mr. Macintyre. Neither of us is a gadabout. I know people have traveled hundreds, thousands of miles to be here during
Carnevale
, but we've been content to stay in most nights, reading or watching television. When we've gone out to eat, we've usually made it a point to go in the opposite direction from the Piazza. We've found some quiet little restaurants that I'm sure you know all about.”

She cast her eye quickly over the noisy, smoke-filled room. Many people were in costume but only a few wore masks since they made eating and drinking almost impossible. Those who were indulging in the wines and little snacks of the
enoteca
with masks on were wearing either half masks or three-quarter ones designed so that the mouth, although concealed by a long beaklike protrusion, was free to take drink and nourishment.

“Tonio prefers to be away from the madding crowd,” Mrs. Pillow went on, looking away from the exuberant diners and drinkers, “and so do I. He's a quiet boy. Sometimes I think he would have made a wonderful priest or monk although I would have been devastated to lose him that way.”

Urbino didn't see any point in disagreeing, in telling her that having a son in the religious life was sometimes the very way of never losing him—at least not to another woman. He couldn't help but be reminded of Stella Maris Spaak's comment. But although Mrs. Pillow, according to Hazel and Mrs. Pillow's own admission, didn't care for Hazel, Urbino didn't think she was the kind of mother to stand in the way of her son's true happiness.

“Maybe I should have gone with Tony and Hazel.” She gave a laugh that had less humor in it than self-deprecation. “Not as a chaperone. I mean for my sake. San Giorgio Maggiore and the Giudecca might be only a few minutes away but they're worlds apart from this madness.”

Once again she took in the noise and confusion of the wine bar and the festive crowd outside. A couple with their faces painted half white and half black and wearing red fright wigs had their faces pressed against one of the windows and were grimacing. Mrs. Pillow turned away with a moue of distaste. Urbino wondered why she had put herself in the middle of
Carnevale
when she seemed to dislike it so much, although it was completely possible that her patience with it had been worn thin because of the serious problem her stepson now had.

“Yes,” she went on, “all the cleanness and logic—the sanity, you could say—of the Palladian churches would have been restorative today. But Tony and Hazel need it more than I do, although the young can bounce back so much more easily.”

A look of tired sadness passed over her sharp features. It was hard to believe that she was the Contessa's contemporary, or even only a year older. Her skin had a grayish pallor that she made no attempt to conceal with cosmetics, and the lines in her face didn't give it character so much as a worn, weary look. Her graying red hair, however, looked as if it would be thick, rich, even lustrous when it was unbound. If the immediate impression of Mrs. Pillow was one of fatigue and austerity, a considered one couldn't fail to register the slightly mischievous young girl looking out from her blue eyes. When searching for the long-ago girl from St. Brigid's in the mature Mrs. Pillow, it must be these eyes that the Contessa focused on. These eyes were turned now on Urbino.

“Tony didn't see the paper this morning, Mr. Macintyre.”

“I assume you did.”

“Yes, after you called but not before Tony went to Barbara's. It was a shock to see Tony's face—or almost Tony's face—looking out at me. Surely it's some grotesque mistake!”

“You'll have to prepare yourself for more—and he's going to find out soon enough. He probably knows by now.”

“What do you mean that I should prepare myself for more?”

“I wouldn't be surprised if other people say they saw someone who looked like the picture.”

He didn't mention this had already happened. If possible, he wanted to be the one to tell Tonio Vico.

She nodded her head slowly.

“I had thought of it myself but I was too afraid to admit it. It could make Tony look very bad.”

Urbino asked her if Tonio had ever been to San Gabriele.

“San Gabriele? Where's that?”

“In a quiet part of the Cannaregio quarter. Not too far from the Ghetto.”

“Don't try to trick me, Mr. Macintyre. It's where the Casa Crispina is, isn't it? Where Mr. Gibbon was staying? What good would it be for me to say that Tony hadn't been there? The truth is that there's no way for me to know, is there, the way there is about that night at the hotel? But ask him yourself. He'll tell you the truth.”

She looked for her purse.

“Do you think we could leave? It's getting a little close in here.”

She got up and waited for him outside. She seemed even taller as she drew up against the window, disdaining any close contact with the crowd that surged past her and fixing her gaze on the upper story of the building opposite.

4

On the way back to her hotel, Mrs. Pillow commented occasionally on the passing scene, asking Urbino to identify a particular costume or to give her the name of a building, but she was obviously preoccupied with her thoughts.

She didn't show much real interest until three figures appeared suddenly around the corner ten meters ahead. They wore black tunics of oilcloth, wide-brimmed black hats covering their ears and hair, large black-framed glasses, black gloves, and golden masks with a long pointed beak over the nose and the mouth. These masks made them look almost ducklike, but the effect was far from comical. The slow, silent way they moved through the crowd added to their ominous quality. Each was carrying a wooden stick. One of them raised his and touched Mrs. Pillow gently on the shoulder. She shrank back. The figures passed by and silently turned a corner.

“Who are they?” she asked in an unsteady voice.

“Plague doctors. It's used as a costume now but it was how doctors caring for plague victims dressed hundreds of years ago. They put a piece of cloth soaked with some kind of medicine in the cone of the nose. Its fumes were supposed to protect them from the plague. Every opening of the body was protected.”

“And the stick?”

“They used them to examine the victim's sores at a safe distance.”

Mrs. Pillow shivered.

“Some doctors today don't act much different,” she said. “I've seen a lot of illness in those I love, Mr. Macintyre.”

Her face was touched with genuine sorrow. He wondered if she herself could be ill. It might explain why she looked so much older than the Contessa. He felt a surge of sympathy for her.

After they parted at the Splendide-Suisse with a few words about the Contessa's
ballo in maschera
tomorrow evening, Urbino started off for the Piazza.

The faint glimmers of something were starting to form in his mind. Sometimes his own research and his understanding of his biographical subjects proceeded from hunches and intuitions that led him in the right direction. When he was wrong in these cases, all he had wasted was time and energy, and he could make up for his unprofitable detour. In the case of murder, however, it was much different. He didn't have much time to indulge himself. Ash Wednesday was only the day after tomorrow.

The narrow alleys were clogged with revelers. Urbino pitied the relatively few people who were trying to make their way from the Piazza against the surge of people. There were full minutes when Urbino moved barely a foot as he waited for the bottleneck ahead to clear up. The individual costumes and masks were almost indistinguishable, so packed together was everyone. Only occasionally could he concentrate on a detail—an astronaut's helmet, an odalisque's veils and scarfs, an astrologer's cone-hat with crescents.

As he was held up for several minutes in front of a souvenir shop where two men—one dressed as Fu Manchu, the other as an American Indian—stood arguing, he went over everything that Dora Spaak had told him about meeting Gibbon in the dining room the night of his death, about her visits to see how her mother was doing, about her assurance that Nicholas had been in all night, about her response to the artist's drawing in the newspaper. He thought of Berenice Pillow's impassioned denial that her stepson had been out on the fateful night and reviewed what Rigoletti had said about the men he had seen, especially the one he had identified yesterday as Vico. Urbino kept coming back to what Dora Spaak actually knew and might not be telling him.

Urbino would also have to ask Nicholas Spaak and Tonio Vico some more questions. He checked his watch. Hazel and Vico wouldn't be back for a while yet, but lunch must have just finished at the Casa Crispina. He might be able to catch Spaak there if he had returned.

Urbino slowly made his way across the swarming Piazza to Florian's. The family of white-costumed acrobats was in front of the Campanile forming a human pyramid. The one balancing at the top was pelted with an egg by a rabbit-eared
mattaccino
, as Urbino had been a few days ago.

A line of people, most of them in elegant costumes, were waiting in the foyer for a table. Urbino went up the stairs to the telephone and called the Casa Crispina. The sister who answered said that Spaak was in and she would see if he was free. His mother was very ill.

Urbino waited for what seemed a long time. Finally, Nicholas Spaak's voice, sounding strained, came over the line.

“It's Urbino Macintyre. I'm sorry to disturb you at a time like this. I hope your mother isn't too ill.”

“Dora says she'll have to be put in the hospital but Mother's afraid of going to a foreign one, and she seems even more afraid of being brought there in a boat. What do you want? I don't have time to tell you what happened with the police but as you can see I wasn't arrested.”

“I just want to know one thing about your trip to the Questura. Did Commissario Gemelli ask you to look at any pictures?”

“Why do you ask me questions that you know the answer to? Yes, I did look at a drawing—one of the ones that's in the paper today. The one that's supposed to be me is ridiculous. It could be almost anyone as far as I can see.”

“And the other one?”

In a weary voice, Spaak said, “Yes, it was the tall man I saw in that alley. Now you all can see that I'm telling the truth. Good-bye, Mr. Macintyre.”

5

Half an hour later Urbino was glad to see that Giovanni Firpo was on duty at the hospital pharmacy.

Firpo had a worried, puzzled look on his face that didn't clear up when Urbino mentioned the afternoon when he had seen Firpo in the Piazza San Marco taunting Xenia Campi—the last afternoon Gibbon was alive.