Farewell to the Flesh (33 page)

“It isn't the first time that she's been apocalyptic.”

His response expressed more confidence than he actually felt.

“That may be true but it's the first time she's been
personally
apocalyptic. I would prefer it if she would keep me out of her computations or her prognostications or whatever you want to call them. Either that or be more specific. Have you ever noticed how these people manage to be specific enough to frighten you but vague enough to wriggle out of it in the end? I wouldn't give another thought to what that silly woman said. She could have been born with
two
cauls for all I care!”

Urbino asked her if she had seen the police artist's sketch that looked like Tonio Vico.

“How could I miss it? Even if I had, Berenice called me up right after she saw it herself. It certainly looks like Tonio although he's much more handsome.”

He told her that many people had seen Vico in and around the Piazza San Marco the night of Gibbon's murder, that Dora Spaak had said she had seen him talking with Gibbon in the Campo San Gabriele, that her brother—who looked very little like the other sketch—had identified him as the man he had seen in the Calle Santa Scolastica.

“Are you saying that Tonio is the murderer? You might as well say that poor Berenice did the deed! Stabbed Gibbon in the heart because he had taken away her stepson's fiancée!”

“So that her stepson could marry a girl she didn't even like?”

“You're right. If she were the murdering kind, she would have done in your dear little Hazel, I'm sure!”

“She didn't even know that they had broken off the engagement.”

“Poor Berenice. Tonio had nothing to do with Gibbon's death! I don't think you believe that, do you? You seem so determined to ignore the obvious!”

“And what is that, Barbara?”

“That your cherished Miss Hazel Reeve is up to her shelllike little ears in intrigue! And to think that because of you I'm harboring her here in the Ca' da Capo!”

“Because of me…?” he began but wasn't allowed to finish. The Contessa hung up.

Irritated though he was by her accusation that he was protecting Hazel Reeve, the precipitate end to their conversation had solved—for a time—the dilemma of whether or not to tell her what he had learned from Firpo and Pierina.

8

Serena's cries and ankle rubbing reminded Urbino that in his eagerness to talk with the Contessa, he had forgotten to feed Serena and that he, too, was hungry. After giving her something to eat, he rummaged through the kitchen and fixed himself a plate of prosciutto, Gorgonzola, and an apple. He brought it to the library where he poured himself a glass of Corvo, leaving the bottle near for replenishment. He also put his Proust within easy reach but knew that he wouldn't be able to concentrate on it tonight until he had thought some things through.

The first thing he turned his mind to was Xenia Campi. What was she in a position to know? She was staying at the Casa Crispina and therefore had an insider's perspective on the other guests. Because of her self-proclaimed clairvoyant abilities, most people considered her a
pazza
—a crackpot—and a meddler, someone to be avoided and not to be taken seriously. Dora Spaak and Giuseppe were frightened by her. Most of the time she was very much in evidence in the Piazza San Marco, predicting the doom she saw for the city and handing out her leaflets. Surely she recognized the same people day in and day out, evening after evening, their faces when it wasn't
Carnevale
and probably even their masks now that it was. Her best camouflage might very well be her notorious publicity. The quickest way to put yourself in a vulnerable position when you had something to hide was to underestimate the intelligence of someone ideally placed to observe you. Xenia Campi was easily underestimated, was quickly dismissed. Didn't the Contessa do it? Hadn't he himself done it from time to time?

Xenia Campi had gone out of her way to come to the Palazzo Uccello to warn him and, through him, the Contessa. Was her warning based on something she had actually seen or heard or was it the product of the fevered workings of her imagination? Could she have been thinking less of their safety than of giving herself—or someone close to her—a clear field during the final frenzies of
Carnevale?

Xenia Campi had been sitting in the chair in the vestibule the night Gibbon had been murdered. Had she told him everything she had seen? Sister Agata had been asleep for a while. What might have happened during that period that Sister Agata wasn't aware of? Had Xenia Campi herself been sitting there for that entire time? Had she actually stayed in her room after Gibbon had left the Casa Crispina?

Urbino tried to fit Xenia Campi into what he had learned from Firpo and Pierina. Might she not know something she hadn't told him about the night of Gibbon's murder? If she did, she could be putting herself in a dangerous position by going around giving people warnings. Perhaps it was she who should remain close to home “until it was all over.”

He next went over what Lubonski had told him the other day about Val Gibbon, about the man's maneuverings and deceptions, and kept coming back to one thing that the Pole had tossed off in passing. If he could get more details from Lubonski, it might be all he needed.

Serena jumped into his lap and started to make herself comfortable, as if she were sure of having a long, undisturbed nap. He helped her settle herself, stroking her soft, glistening coat. Her purr of contentment soothed him and he ate some of the prosciutto and cheese, followed by the Corvo. Although Serena had just eaten, she showed an interest in the Gorgonzola, one of her peculiarities being a taste for cheese, the more pungent the better.

Urbino was restless and he shifted his position in the chair several times. Each time he did, however, Serena accommodated herself to it, always managing to find a comfortable way to nestle again. When his changes and movements eventually became too much for her, she would always jump down and seek her comfort elsewhere. But her patience sometimes amazed him, even if at other times her lack of it made him realize that she was, after all, only a cat.

As he looked down at Serena, who at the moment was the perfect embodiment of her name, he wondered at the patience of people, at their ability to adapt themselves to things much more shattering for them than any shift of his position could ever be for Serena.

He took a sip of his Corvo and considered the adjustments Berenice Pillow had to make. She hadn't cared for Hazel to begin with. Yet she hadn't had the brief and bitter comfort of knowing that the girl had fallen in love with Gibbon—brief because death had now ended it and bitter because any sorrow of Tonio's was surely her own. She was a true mother in this respect. But although Tonio had concealed from her that Hazel had broken off their engagement, he wasn't doing the same now with what seemed to be their reconciliation. Berenice Pillow had her own adjustments to make and to judge from her behavior at the
enoteca
that afternoon she was doing a fairly good job of it.

The Italians called it making a
bella figura
—cutting a good figure, putting a fine face on things, even sometimes pretending to feel other than you did. It was something that Urbino admired in Berenice Pillow and in the Contessa, who was a mistress of its more benevolent forms. It was almost equal parts the art of deception and the deceptiveness of art. Without it the precarious structure of social life couldn't be maintained, but with too much we all wandered confused, trying to fathom the true thoughts and feelings even of those we loved and who loved us. Our intelligence and our awareness were our Ariadne's thread through this labyrinth, but even these could take us only so far to the open air.

As Urbino stroked Serena's coat and she rearranged herself with a murmur, he hoped that the Ariadne's thread that he had begun to spin out of the facts he already knew and the assumptions he couldn't help making—the kind of assumptions that had proved him right so often in his biographies—would be strong enough to get him out of the labyrinth.

And he hoped that no one else would be seriously hurt before he did. He was worried mainly about Tonio Vico, yet there was also room—and doubt enough in his mind—for him to worry about what harm Vico might do to someone. But who might that someone be?

9

Next morning, on the last day of
Carnevale
, Urbino called Gemelli and told him what he had learned from Pierina.

“All of this simply raises more questions,” Gemelli said. “It complicates things, as you well know. The men from London are arriving tomorrow. Maybe they don't want to be corrupted by our Latin excesses and are waiting until all the celebrations are over. But unless we make some sense of all this, we stand a chance of being put in our place.”

Urbino allowed himself to assume that he was included in the Commissario's “we.” It was unlikely he was going to receive any more recognition than this.

“Alibis provided by mothers—even stepmothers, as in this case—are even more suspect than those provided by wives,” Gemelli went on. “Signora Pillow can lie until she's blue in the face, and Pierina from the Campo San Maurizio can come in here and swear to her statement, but the prosecutor would just shake his head and frown. Annoying him is the last thing anyone wants to do, believe me. This is far from the most straightforward murder case I've ever dealt with and what you're telling me now makes it seem as devious as—as I don't know what!” he finished lamely for lack of an appropriate example.
“Carnevale
be damned! None of this business will get into
Il
Gazzettino
, Macintyre. I'll see to that. It would be a big mistake if it did, so don't mention it to anyone. And although we'll put a police guard on Vico, I don't want him to know that we are. That way you and I will both be satisfied. You can assume that my men are protecting him and I'll be glad to have them watching him in case anything else develops. A nice, neat package and an economical use of the taxpayers' money. You
do
pay taxes here in Italy, don't you, Macintyre?”

Pleased that his conversation with Gemelli had gone so well, Urbino next called the Contessa. She was on her way out but she said she would be coming back in a few hours.

“If you think everything has already been taken care of for the masked ball tonight, you're sadly mistaken. I have plenty to do and I'm not sure I'm going to forgive you even if it all turns out to be a smashing success!”

“You said you wanted to go to the hospital to see Josef today, didn't you?” Urbino reminded the Contessa. “We can go in late afternoon and be back and forth in less than an hour. In addition to Josef, I'd like to see Mrs. Spaak. Sister Teresa called a little while ago and said that she was rushed to the hospital late yesterday afternoon and would like to see me.”

Urbino arranged to be at the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini at five. This should give them enough time, since the ball didn't start until nine.

10

A dark gray sky with a flat, stony look was pressing down on the city like a slate roof when Urbino, in his cape and a heavy scarf, went for a walk half an hour later in the bone-numbing cold.

Ever since he had been a boy in New Orleans, deprived of a bicycle by his overcautious father, he had been a walker. The habit had carried over into his adult years and now he couldn't feel comfortable in any city that wasn't walkable. Fortunately, Venice was eminently so, and on those rare occasions when it wasn't, it more than made up for it by being floatable. The Contessa chided him about his love of walking, avoiding the activity herself whenever possible, but she understood that it could cure him, clear his head, put things in perspective.

This morning it might help him see something other than an impossible chaos in the details of Val Gibbon's life and death and in the lives of the other people Urbino had become familiar with.

At first Urbino sought out the quieter areas of the Cannaregio and in fifteen minutes, after crossing over a wooden bridge and going under an archway, he was in the isolated Campo Ghetto Nuovo.

The square, surrounded by tall narrow tenement buildings, had its usual weekday activity far removed from the frenzies of Carnival. The only people in masks were three young children chasing each other back and forth from a bare tree to one of the covered stone wellheads. They wore yellow plastic masks beneath their woolen hats, the kind of mask Nicholas Spaak had seen on the face of the person standing suspiciously across from the entrance of the Calle Santa Scolastica. Two women, their shopping baskets on the ground, looked with amusement at the children and chatted, occasionally casting apprehensive glances at the lowering sky.

Urbino didn't stop but continued to walk briskly out of the square and over the bridge past the synagogues and the shops of metalworkers and carpenters.

Urbino's mind was filled with thoughts and speculations about Val Gibbon and his murder. Something was glimmering there in the darkness of his meditations, of this he was sure—something thin, silver, hopefully more strong than it looked. Last night he had called it his Ariadne's thread and this late morning he still felt the aptness of the image.

He reviewed most of what he believed was important. His review didn't begin with Sister Teresa's summoning him from the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini the evening after Gibbon's murder but with the days immediately before.

The reach of his review also extended back into the pasts of the people he had spoken with or been told about, pasts either reluctantly or eagerly confided in him. It wasn't just Gibbon's life he tried to understand but the lives of all the others it had touched—the Casa Crispina guests, Rigoletti and Firpo, Tonio Vico and his stepmother, and, of course, Hazel Reeve. His mind was a kaleidoscope of masks and faces, and he wasn't at all sure that he was yet able to distinguish between them.