The True and Splendid History of the Harristown Sisters (58 page)

When we arrived at the
palazzo
, it was to the sound of nasal notes haunting the upstairs apartments. The music trickled down the stained steps to the
androne
, where I paused, and cursed.

No matter where we hid the harp, Ida always found it again.

‘Play the fiddle, Ida honey,’ urged Oona, ‘not that thing.’

‘You forgot,’ said Ida. ‘Darcy sold it to buy a lottery ticket.’

Ida lifted the harp. Of course, it made no music. But keening, shrieking sounds poured out of Ida as she plucked on it, flooding the
palazzo
with the memory of blood.

Chapter 52

The next day the
Gazzetta
ran a story about an English newsman discovered dead at the bottom of a laundry boat in Mestre. The police, it reported, had no credible leads in the case.

I fed on the sentences that said:

Although the gentleman bore signs of a contusion to the back of the head, this probably occurred when he fell against the hard surface at the bottom of the boat. The post-mortem has confirmed that he died of suffocation. All signs point to an unusual and unfortunate accident.

We had not killed him. The sheets had done it. My brain fell in love with that fact, finding all kinds of corners to hide in. The body had been made away with and had not been found in any proximity to us. I tried to give it similar distance in my mind.

That was not to be allowed.

For that same afternoon, before the Eileen O’Reilly could retrieve the manuscript, a policeman came calling at our
palazzo
.

A tall man, his jowls and his dramatic widow’s peak gave his face the look of a seven-pointed baroque shield. He introduced himself as Capitano Viaro.

He had some pretensions to English. So it was in broken English that he told us that he knew that ‘
il giornalista morto
’ had been writing about us.

‘The manuscript of a book,’ he said, ‘it was found in the hotel room, abandoned with all his possessions.’

As he spoke, he ran his eyes around, noting our poor clothing and the grandeur of the drawing room where we sat. He was no Brother of the Hair, this sober middle-aged man: he looked at our heads without wonder.

From his disapproving expression, this Viaro had taken a deep dip into Millwillis’s pages, and the writing had not been too sophisticated to withstand his linguistic skills.

Berenice said defiantly, ‘I still cannot for the life of me understand why you should want to talk to
us
about his death. I’ve never even been to Mestre. I believe none of us have.’

‘None,’ we chorused.

‘Mestre,’ I added hastily. ‘We know he was found at Mestre because of the
Gazzetta
.’

I held it up, blushing at its finger-worn pages, which betrayed the intensity of our interest in the death.

‘Signorina, I come here for information. We are afraid that there may be another victim. It is discovered that a young lady had been travelling with Mr Millwillis. She had been seen in the hotel, though she
had no room of her own there
.’ He paused significantly. ‘And we are finding that she disappeared a short time after the man’s death. Her clothes, they were still in that room. The hotel owner called us to take them away.’

In rapid Italian, the Eileen O’Reilly spoke to him. ‘I believe,’ she said, ‘that you speak of myself. I am she, Eileen O’Reilly of Brannockstown, County Kildare, Ireland. And I am here and perfectly safe and well.’

‘I took you for a Swiney sister,’ said Viaro. He counted on his fingers.

She interrupted, ‘I had been working with Mr Millwillis, it is true. But I discovered that Mr Millwillis was a bad man, a corrupt man, and I forsook his company—’

‘So you came here?’ The policemen frowned. ‘But I understand that you spoke very badly of these ladies to Signor Millwillis, and that he wrote down what you said, Signorina O’Railli. To
sell
, Signorina O’Railli.’

‘That is the very reason why I am here! I came here to explain to these ladies, and to apologise to them.’

I said quickly, ‘Of course we are old schoolfellows, with a friendship going back to our childhoods—’

Viaro was half listening, distracted. His eyes continually returned to Ida. Finally, he asked, ‘Where did you get that most unusual harp?’

Darcy’s breastbone, now grey and creamy white and strung with Oona’s hair, sat in Ida’s lap. She strummed a silent note.

Viaro asked again, ‘The harp?’

‘It is a part of our singing act, of which you’ve read,’ I told him.

‘
The Cruel Sister
!’ explained Ida.

‘This
model
of harp is called “The Cruel Sister” from an old Irish folk tune,’ I said hastily.

Ida said, ‘And doesn’t it look
fierce
like the breastbone of a sister?’

‘I could not say against that,’ said Viaro. He tore his eyes away from it with reluctance. ‘Now may I confirm this list of all the Swiney ladies who are here, for my records?

‘Miss Ida, aged twenty-two? Ah, it is you with the harp, thank you. Miss Oona, aged twenty-three? Yes. Miss Pertilly, twenty-four? You dress as a maid? Very well. Miss Manticory, aged twenty-five? Good. Miss Berenice, twenty-nine years? Thank you. I know your sister Enda is departed. My condolences.’

He frowned at his notebook. ‘So where is your sister, the eldest, the Signorina Darcy, aged thirty-one?’

‘She has been away in Dublin some weeks,’ the Eileen O’Reilly said quickly. ‘She’s contriving a new show.’

‘She’s a very contriving sort of girl,’ said Ida, strumming the harp, ‘with a very contriving heart inside her. Of course, that was in the old days, when she had a heart inside her.’

She laughed loudly.

The policeman persisted. ‘When exactly did the Signorina Darcy leave? Is she coming back to Venice?’

‘A bit of her shall always be among us,’ insisted Ida.

Oblivious to the rictus of anxiety clamping her sisters’ faces, Ida let her tongue clatter on, very far from sense, but close enough related to it that the policeman pulled out a notebook and began to make himself some tense little scribbles. The sun was setting but we made no move to light a lamp.

‘Our sister Ida,’ I said confidentially, ‘has episodes when she is not herself, as you can plainly see now. Do not let her distract you from your proper urgent investigations about the terrible fate of Mr Millwillis. Let me see you to the door—’

Ida interrupted, ‘For it’s getting evil dark outside and I am sure there are devilish crimes happening that need to be solved. You know what they say, the longer the hair, the closer to Hell.’

The policeman allowed himself to be guided out of the room.

‘I shall return shortly,’ he said on the threshold.

Ida cooed, ‘We thank you for your visit, and fair weather after you.’

‘Expect me tomorrow,’ he said, bowing, pale, determined.

‘Is that so at all?’ I asked but my voice wavered on the words.

Chapter 53

‘He knows we killed Darcy, the creature,’ wept Oona. ‘And he will work it out about Millwillis, too.’

‘We’re corpses,’ keened Berenice. ‘They have done for us. They have taken everything now.’

‘It is not all of us who are implicated,’ I said. ‘Only Ida and myself have anything to fear. At worst, the rest of you are just witnesses whose tongues were temporarily frozen by fear. If we devise a confession—’

‘But you and I shall not go alone, Manticory,’ said Ida. ‘The Swineys do everything in perfect synchronicity. We shall drop from our gallows at the same time. The Harristown crows will be calling for us soon.’

I looked into Ida’s eyes, seeing only clouds and shadows.

‘And we shall have our names to the very last!’ she said. ‘Our beautiful names! Berenice! Pertilly! Manticory! Oona! They never took those.’

Ida had uttered a truth. Our paternal gift of names had been almost the only thing about us that had not been changed along the way by those who had profited from us.

‘Better to hang than to starve,’ laughed Ida. ‘Quicker that way.’

‘Ye are starving,’ said the Eileen O’Reilly. ‘It is true. I took a look inside the kitchen cupboards. What have ye eatable? Only a few grains of porridge in the house, is it not? Rainfleury and Stoker did this to ye? And Millwillis did his part, too, I know. With my own help.’

She looked down.

Pertilly said in a clotted voice, ‘We are not without a cup of comfort; I’ll fetch us something from the kitchen.’

I rose abruptly and went to stand by the window, on the edge of our declining Swiney world and the other place beyond it, with just a pane of glass between our desperateness and its indifference to us. The Eileen O’Reilly joined me. Oona and Berenice linked arms with me. Ida came last, and she gave her hand to Berenice, inserting herself between Oona and myself.

That evening, Venice was in a state of furious beautifulness, as perfect in herself as one of Darcy’s pure rages. The work boats were gone and the gondolas had not yet commenced their trysts. The steam
vaporetto
had retired for the night. The Grand Canal was onyx, stippled with rare shafts of white light from gas lamps and lanterns. It was the moment of dead tide, the turning point between ebb and flow, a sinister, passionless moment, a lost no-time.

‘Something to drink?’ Pertilly arrived with the only silver tray that had not yet been sold. On one side were glasses brimming with wine, and on the other a whole quire of blank paper. In the middle was a salver piled with coins and banknotes.

‘The money,’ she said, ‘I held back till this moment. I have something to explain. It is that—’

Her eyes flickered nervously from face to face.

‘I have been working at Almoro Pagin’s
trattoria
—’

‘While we were starving and starving?’ Berenice asked. ‘With a single candle between us?’

‘I fed you as much as I could,’ said Pertilly, ‘without making you suspect me.’

‘Why did you not tell us?’

‘Almoro made me promise. He was afraid that Darcy would gamble it away if she knew of it. I did not like to lie to you all, but I wanted to save enough to feed us while Manticory writes the book that will feed us better than I can.’

‘The book?’ Berenice frowned.

‘The book that Darcy told Millwillis about, the one that is the story of the Swiney Godivas but by us. Darcy would not permit you to write it, Manticory, because she knew
she
would come out of it badly. But Darcy cannot stop you now.’

A silence fell among us.

Pertilly added, ‘And if there is anything you’re not remembering, Manticory, I am sure you can take yourself a look in Darcy’s black books. I had to burn a few for kindling but they’re still massed in the press in her room.’

I asked, ‘And how will the most recent chapter with the True Revelations about the deaths of Millwillis and Darcy be received by the public? And how will it keep us from dangling off the end of our nooses?’

‘And a book will take for ever,’ said Berenice, ‘and the policeman will be back tomorrow morning.’

‘I belave,’ said the Eileen O’Reilly, ‘that I have the means to hurry things on their way. That was an ugly turn I did on ye, when I spoke of ye to Mr Millwillis. Let me be makin’ it up now.’

She took hold of my hand. I sniffed the scent of her – soap, Irish skin, sweet and salty like rain. She smelled like a Swiney.

‘If I talk to the policeman, will ye trust me?’

I nodded. Berenice, Oona and Pertilly breathed as one. ‘We will.’

‘And Manticory, would ye not let me be discoorsin’ an’ discoorsin’ without ever coming to a point?’

‘I could,’ I told her.

‘And if I falter and fail, will ye lend me the gift of yer tongue to save me, Manticory? It would be like an amulet for me to know that ye were with me on that.’

‘I will be with you on that.’

‘And Ida,’ she asked, ‘will ye hold your tongue?’

Ida smiled. ‘I shall hardly speak a word.’

‘Let us be havin’ this drink now.’ The Eileen O’Reilly raised one of the glasses that Pertilly had brought in.

‘To your Ma,’ she said. ‘Who I wisht could’ve been mine.’

Chapter 54

The next morning’s
Gazzetta
plunged us into a new abyss. The Venetian newsmen were assiduous in investigating the death of one of their own tribe. They knew Millwillis had been writing of us and that we had been visited by the police.

The headline read:
Irish Sisters
‘
Persons of Interest
’
in Laundry Death
.

I was still reading the article aloud when the doorbell rang.