The Veils of Venice (2 page)

Caffè Quadri was less fashionable than Florian's, which was the main reason why Eufrosina's mother preferred it. Urbino suspected that she also associated Florian's with the contessa, who, in her opinion, was too worldly for her own good.

Eufrosina grabbed her satchel and took out photographs of Fortuny's studio in the San Beneto area of the city. She dropped one of them in her haste. The photographs would appear in the catalogue along with Urbino's descriptions of the studio and Fortuny's working methods.

She handed each photograph to the contessa. She seemed unable to keep her eyes away from her mother and brother, who were approaching the opposite arcade.

The contessa passed each photograph to Urbino as soon as Eufrosina started to hand her another. There were photographs of the main façade of the palazzo, its courtyard, and various views of the studio and the library.

Urbino became increasingly disappointed as he looked at one after another. The photographs were mediocre. In most of them, the lighting was poor. Some of Eufrosina's photographs of hands, which had once been exhibited at the family museum at the Palazzo Pindar, had been accomplished, but Urbino feared that she was not up to her new project.

It was evident that the contessa, her lips pursed slightly and avoiding Urbino's eyes, had the same impression. She tried to handle the situation diplomatically, but she ended up damning the photographs with faint praise. Eufrosina had a stricken look. She saw the contessa's generous sum slipping away from her. She gathered the photographs together and put them back in her satchel.

‘Do you mind, Barbara?' she said. ‘I promised Mother that I'd meet her at Quadri's.'

She was afraid of offending the contessa, who was writing the checks and who was obviously not pleased with the recent specimens of her work. But she was also afraid of offending her mother, who demanded that her two children be at her beck and call and who held a large future inheritance over them. Apollonia dominated every aspect of her children's lives, even disapproving of Eufrosina marrying again, believing that marriage was forever, even beyond the death of one's mate.

‘Please go to her, Eufrosina. Perhaps they'd like to join us,' the contessa added politely. ‘It would –'

The entrance of a short man in his late thirties, his blond hair neatly barbered, interrupted her. It was Alessandro, Eufrosina's brother. His belted tweed coat, which reminded Urbino of one his grandfather had worn, reached below his knees and gave off a musty smell as if it had been kept in a damp, airless closet. He had a smug look on his good-looking, spoiled face and cold amusement in his blue eyes – eyes that were almost the same pale blue as his sister's.

‘Still here, Eufrosina!' he said after bestowing little more than a cursory greeting on the contessa and Urbino. ‘Mother is getting impatient. She asked me to come fetch you. You understand, I hope, Barbara?'

‘Perfectly, Alessandro. Today is a special day for your mother. I would not want anything to be any different from the way she always likes it to be. Eufrosina and I are finished for now, aren't we, dear?'

The contessa gave her a warm smile, which Eufrosina returned with a look of gratitude as she got up from the divan, clutching her satchel close to her side.

‘I'm ready, Alessandro. Let's not keep her waiting any longer.'

‘
Now
you're thinking of that. Thank God that you have me to remind you of time and schedules, or else Mother wouldn't speak to you for weeks. Be more aware!'

Eufrosina had become ashen under her brother's criticism.

‘It's all my fault for having distracted Eufrosina,' the contessa said. ‘Please give our regards to your mother. And tell her that we hope she'll be completely well soon.'

Eufrosina nodded and followed Alessandro out of the room.

‘Yes, the photographs were mediocre,' the contessa said as they watched the brother and sister walk across the square. ‘I don't know what I'm going to do if the new ones aren't much better.'

‘It might be a good idea to see if another photographer would be interested in doing the work.'

‘There's a thought.' The contessa's face was clouded.

‘I have someone in mind.' He named a photographer who had his studio in Dorsoduro. ‘I can contact him if you want. I'll make it clear that it's only a possibility.'

‘Let's hope we won't need him.' There was little conviction on the contessa's voice, however. ‘It would be such a disappointment for Eufrosina. And it would put a strain on our relationship. But at least there's a kill fee in the contract.'

Now that the two of them were alone again, Urbino was eager to return to the subject of Gaby. But before he had a chance to mention it, one of the contessa's friends from her days at the Venice music conservatory joined them. She was a soprano who had long since retired and who was lending a Fortuny purse to the exhibition.

The two women slipped into reminiscences, doing their best to include Urbino, but he allowed his mind to drift in the direction of Gaby and the occupants of the Palazzo Pindar as he looked out at the snow falling silently, softly down on the Piazza.

And what fell over him, just as silently and softly as the snow, was the conviction that he was on the verge of another one of his cases. He accepted it with a sense of inevitability and with a familiar frisson of apprehension and pleasure.

Part One

Death and Fortuny

One

Despite a gray astrakhan hat, a Moroccan blanket with geometrical designs, and a heavy black wool cape, Urbino was feeling the cold in every part of his body as he sat inside the
felze
of his gondola. Yet he loved every minute of it.

His heart went out to Gildo, however. The young gondolier, who had added only one layer to his usual outfit, was exposed to the buffets of the icy wind as he guided the craft down the small, quiet canal in Santa Croce.

Yesterday's snowfall decorated the tarpaulins of the moored boats, the edges and steps of the canal, the window ledges and eaves, and the bare branches of a tree that overhung a garden wall. Urbino was glad that the snow was lingering. He hoped that the city would see at least one more snowfall, bigger than this one, before the winter was over. When it snowed, the child came out in him, bringing memories of winter visits to his mother's cousins in Vermont.

On their way across the Grand Canal from the Cannaregio, he had noted with pleasure the relative absence of tourists. Urbino hated crowds, and the crowds he hated the most were the ones that flooded the city during the summer, armed with cameras, knapsacks, and plastic bottles of mineral water. He felt a kinship with the few tourists he saw today. He liked to think of them as travelers rather than tourists. They stood on the bridges and at the rails of the waterbuses, gazing around them with what seemed a pure sense of appreciation.

‘Are you sure you're all right, Gildo?' he called up to the gondolier, the vapor of his breath making a cloud in the small shuttered cabin.

Gildo's laughter floated down to him from the poop.

‘I am more than all right, Signor Urbino.' Gildo's English had greatly improved during the past two years. He always insisted that Urbino speak English with him. ‘I am warm, not cold. Remember that I was the one to ask to take out the gondola today. And you know that it is my sport.'

Last September Gildo had participated in the Historical Regatta on the Grand Canal. He and his teammate had come in fifth, just missing the green ribbon. It had been an amazing victory for two rowers competing for the first time in the event.

Urbino never felt really at ease when he was out in his gondola, and not only because of Gildo's labor. The contessa's gift, given on the twentieth anniversary of their friendship, drew too much attention to him. In fact, this morning, shortly after the gondola had slipped out of the Grand Canal and into Santa Croce, a Venetian woman had called out from the parapet of the bridge, ‘
L'americano
!'

It was a familiar cry. Although the woman could not see him inside the cabin, she knew who it was. Urbino's gondola was the last private one in the city, and his was even more conspicuous because of the
felze.
Gondolas no longer attached them in inclement weather or in any kind of weather at all. They had become a thing of the past. And by now, the handsome, vigorous Gildo with his curly, reddish blond hair was well known as the eccentric American's gondolier.

What pleased Urbino about the gondola, however, even though he disliked the scrutiny and jokes, was the mood it invariably induced. Reflective, calm, and, yes, he had to admit it – with another twinge of conscience to accompany his guilt about exposing Gildo to the weather – privileged. He especially enjoyed the gondola when he was in the
felze
and could observe without being observed. He was particularly grateful for this advantage as the gondola approached a building that loured above him.

‘Stop here a few moments, Gildo.'

It was the Palazzo Pindar. Since yesterday at Florian's when the contessa had told him about Gaby Pindar's fears for her life, the building had taken on a different dimension. Urbino still had no doubt that the Palazzo Pindar was a house of whimsy and eccentricity, but could it be one of danger as well? In his two lines of work, Urbino had been in many strange buildings and households in the city, but the Palazzo Pindar was certainly one of the strangest. And now it was about to be a place of work in both his lines.

He had visited the Pindars with the contessa, and on a few occasions he had made solitary tours of its little museum. He had also accompanied the contessa's maid Mina when she went to collect dresses from Olimpia Pindar, Gaby's older sister, who had a dressmaking atelier in the attic.

The Palazzo Pindar was located in the part of the Santa Croce district embraced by a long curve of the Grand Canal. The baroque building had an almost abandoned air. Thick chains secured two large rusted metal doors in front of the broad water steps. The shutters on the windows had long since passed the time when they needed to be repaired or – in most cases – replaced. Patches of stucco had detached themselves, exposing the bricks beneath. The glass in one of the bull's-eye windows was cracked. The buildings on either side of the huge tumbledown palazzo were in good condition and only served to make their neighbor look more dilapidated.

But the Palazzo Pindar was magnificent in its neglect, and its shimmering reflection in the greenish-gray waters of the small canal deceptively restored much of its former beauty.

A tall woman emerged from the mouth of the
sottoportico
beside which the gondola had come to a halt, and walked briskly along the embankment toward the palazzo. At first Urbino thought that it was Eufrosina, because of the figure's height. But it was Olimpia, her cousin. She was wearing a knee-length ocelot coat and a red-and-black cloche hat.

She had her eyes cast down. When she reached the small wooden door that the Palazzo Pindar now used as its entrance, a voice called out her name loudly from the direction of the bridge at the other end of the canal. A middle-aged woman in an alpaca poncho with purple and lilac stripes stood on the parapet of the bridge. Urbino recognized Nedda Bari, who did local charity work.

Olimpia had started slightly at the sound of her name, but she didn't acknowledge the greeting. She went inside the building, without having to ring or use a key, for the door, as was the custom of the Palazzo Pindar, wasn't locked.

With an irritated expression on her face, Nedda Bari stared at the building for a few moments before leaving the bridge and disappearing from view down a nearby
calle
.

‘All right, Gildo,' Urbino said. ‘The Danieli.'

Before seeing the contessa at the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini as they had agreed, Urbino needed to make arrangements at the Hotel Danieli for a visitor. It was his ex-brother-in-law, Eugene Hennepin, with whom he would leave for America next month. Eugene preferred to stay in a hotel and wanted to return to the Danieli, which he had been pleased with during his first visit to Venice ten years ago.

Gildo started to manoeuvre the boat in the direction that would take them back into the Grand Canal.

Two

The contessa checked the clock on the mantle of the morning room. Urbino should be coming in less than an hour. A strong fire crackled in the fireplace with wood from Asolo where the contessa had a villa.

‘Tell me again, Mina,' the contessa insisted. ‘Exactly what did Signorina Gaby say to you?'

The contessa wanted to be sure of what Mina had told her. Urbino would want every detail.

A look of impatience, touched with irritation, passed over the pretty features of the contessa's personal maid, but they were quickly banished. Mina, slim and dark-haired, with delicate, porcelain features, had just celebrated her twenty-fifth birthday. The contessa always tried to be careful of Mina's feelings, knowing how high-strung she was. The palazzo staff thought that she favored Mina. She supposed she did. It was a weakness she usually succumbed to with her personal maid, whoever she was. In the case of Mina, the habit was more pronounced. The girl was as endearing as she was efficient, and she had a quick intelligence and a light sense of humor, although none of the latter was in evidence on this occasion or, for that matter, the contessa realized, had been for the past few months.

‘She said that someone was trying to kill her.' Mina, whose Italian was marked by a Sicilian accent, lowered her voice when she said ‘kill'. She stared at a small table with a collection of ceramic animals as if she were studying them. ‘I didn't believe her. But she seemed frightened.'

So did Mina. When she turned her eyes to the contessa, they were wide and unblinking.

‘When did she tell you this?'

‘Last week when I brought Signorina Olimpia the dress material from you.'