The Veils of Venice (20 page)

They continued in silence until they reached the Riva del Carbon that bordered the Grand Canal. The Rialto Bridge loomed ahead of them.

Eugene stopped suddenly, letting Urbino walk a few steps beyond him until he, too, came to a halt and turned around. Eugene stared at him with a big smile on his face.

‘You're tryin' to hide it,' Eugene said. ‘But I can tell sure as anything that you've got your nose in another one of those investigations. Is the old boy right?'

‘The old boy is right, Eugene. And it's something I have to get to the bottom of before we leave. But if you don't mind, I'll wait until dinner tonight to tell you. It's a long story.'

‘Just wish you'd be careful. One of these days …' He trailed off and his face went a little grim.

Urbino did not want Eugene to know anything about Olimpia's murder and how it involved the contessa until after they had visited the Palazzo Pindar, where they were now going. Urbino had decided to visit the palazzo with Eugene as a kind of camouflage, as the contessa had suggested – as if his only reason for being there today was to have his ex-brother-in-law see the collection.

‘Here comes our boat.' Urbino pointed to the vaporetto that was approaching the landing.

The two men quickened their steps.

‘So what are we going to see now?'

‘A small private collection. A family related to Barbara owns it. You didn't see it when you were here before.'

‘Good. Another thing not on my list. You're treatin' me real fine.' Gaby was thrilled that Urbino had come with a visitor, and not just any visitor but a paying one as well. Eugene gave her a generous amount, far more than the cost of two admissions. She stuffed the notes into the pocket of her ocelot coat, tugged her little red cap, and smiled brightly at Eugene.

‘You put all those packages right there by the entrance, Mr Eugene,' she said. She indicated a spot beside an empty wooden clothes rack. The
androne
was chilly as usual, but Urbino and Eugene removed their outerwear and put them on the rack.

‘I'll show you around personally, Mr Eugene,' Gaby said as she took Eugene's arm. ‘It will be my distinct pleasure.'

‘Thank you, ma'am. Your English is excellent.'

‘And thank
you
. Please call me Gaby. I hope you won't find me gabby though. Hah, hah! My, you have a fine sturdy figure, Eugene. A very American male figure, I would say.' She looked at Urbino, who suddenly felt puny rather than fit. ‘Right through this door here. It will just be you and me, Eugene. Urbino has seen my things many times. He can go upstairs and see my brother.' She smiled at Urbino. ‘Ercule is always happy to have you visit him.'

Urbino had never seen Gaby behaving so buoyant and flirtatious, but he had seldom seen her in the presence of anyone but himself, her own family, the contessa, and occasional visitors to the museum. Her long, angular face even seemed to become, at least momentarily, as round and smooth as that of a schoolgirl. She had sized Eugene up and put him into a special category, one that did not include Urbino. His presence wasn't needed for a time. Urbino far from minded. In fact, it suited his purposes.

‘The first thing I'm going to show you, Eugene, is a suit of armor that went all the way to the Holy Land and back centuries and centuries ago. By the way, Eugene, you have such a strong name, and it's a good one. It's Greek. Did you know that? One part of our family line has Greek connections. Your name means “wellborn”. Isn't that appropriate? I can tell you're wellborn, and they say that all Americans are natural aristocrats.'

‘Don't know about that, but you're very kind, Miss Gaby. That's a pretty hat you're wearin'. Is it part of the museum?'

‘You're such a joker, Eugene. No, it's not part of the collection but it is very old. It belonged to my mother. Just like my coat.'

‘It's one of the nicest leopard coats I've seen.'

‘Ocelot, Eugene. It's ocelot.'

‘Whatever it is, you better not wear it in America. Someone might fling a pot of red paint at you.'

‘Oh, that wouldn't be very nice at all!'

Gaby took Eugene's arm. She leaned lightly into him as they went into the museum. A few moments later Gaby's voice, lowered to a warm, intimate level, was describing the suit of armor.

Urbino, still very much under the influence of his restless thoughts of late last night before the sirens sounded, went to the opposite side of the vestibule. The two rooms, with their faded blue doors, were locked, as they always were when Urbino was there. Keys appeared to have been inserted in their rusted locks, recently enough so that scratches were still fresh.

No sound came from the rooms, but seeping from them was a vague sour odor.

A few minutes later Urbino knocked at Ercule's closed door. The
portego
was silent and deserted. He was about to knock a second time, when the door was opened slowly.

‘Urbino!' Ercule said. He was dressed in the same two kaftans of red cotton and green velvet brocade. His head was bare of the red and orange Doge's bonnet, but the white cotton
camauro
, which accentuated the roundness of his face, was in place, tied under his chin, and on his feet were the brown kid slippers. He gave his Turkish greeting. ‘Please come in. This is a pleasant surprise. I didn't expect another visit so soon.'

A fire blazed in the fireplace. At the foot of one of the divans was a litter of newspapers and magazines with holes in them. A pair of scissors lay on top of a large worn leather scrapbook.

Ercule saw the direction of Urbino's glance. ‘A hobby of mine. I cut out anything that has to do with Turkey and Istanbul – anything that interests me, I should say. I have a whole shelf of scrapbooks.'

Urbino nodded. ‘I came here with an old family friend,' he said, seizing on one of the most convenient ways of describing Eugene. ‘He's visiting me. Gaby wants to give him the full tour. How are you?'

‘Fine. But Apollonia is doing poorly. Alessandro, Eufrosina, and Dr Santo are with her. But sit down, Urbino.' He cleared away books from an armchair across from the divan and placed them on the floor near the single-pipe nargileh with its green glass vase.

‘Barbara told me that Apollonia had seemed to have taken a turn for the worse a few days ago. We're concerned about her. When I saw Nedda Bari yesterday, she was worried about your aunt, too.' Urbino hoped that Nedda would forgive him for attributing more sympathy to her than she actually had seemed to feel.

The only reaction he got from Ercule was a small frown and the comment, ‘She's probably afraid she'll be kicked out of the building if anything happens to Apollonia. Let's have some
raki.'

‘That would be nice.' Urbino was willing to endure more of the drink as a lubricant for their conversation.

Ercule poured them two glasses. He seated himself on the divan across from Urbino, being careful not to disturb the mandolin lying against the cushions. He picked up the silver and velvet hose of the nargileh. ‘Would you like to have some puffs?' he asked, offering the mouthpiece to Urbino.

‘No, thank you.'

Ercule drew on the pipe, which made a pleasant gurgling sound, and blew out a plume of sweet, apple-scented smoke.

‘So where are you today, Ercule?' Urbino asked, reversing the question on the man.

‘Aren't you the clever one! To answer you truthfully, I've been walking through the streets of Istanbul and taking in the views of the Bosphorus.'

‘There must be places in Venice you enjoy being, other than this great Turkish parlor of yours.'

Ercule took another draw on his nargileh, this one longer and, it seemed, meditative. ‘Oh, not many places. I like to go to the Basilica and just sit there, looking around and thinking. And there's a café in San Polo that's owned by a Turkish man. He's married to a Venetian woman who went to Istanbul on vacation. But as I've said, most of my enjoyment comes from just traveling to Istanbul in my mind.'

‘I hope you'll get there again soon, and do it the way you want to. By boat.'

‘I shall, I assure you. Dreams and memories can't feed a person forever.'

Urbino sipped the
raki
. Ercule drank most of his down – how he did it Urbino had no idea – and closed his eyes, savoring the flavor. He held the mouthpiece in his arms as if in an embrace. The fire crackled.

Letting his eye wander approvingly over the appointments of Ercule's parlor, Urbino waited until the silence between them became even more companionable before saying, ‘I was thinking of something that might help you, Ercule. Help you with making your dreams reality.'

Ercule's eyes brightened with interest behind his spectacles.

‘You have a lot of wasted space in this building,' Urbino started to explain. ‘Almost your whole
androne
is empty. You use only the two rooms for the collection. You have the rest of it at your disposal – and the two rooms across from the collection.'

‘Yes?' A cautious note had come into Ercule's voice. He took a draw on the nargileh.

‘Private organizations and even the municipality are always looking for space to mount exhibitions. You and Gaby could realize a good, steady rental income. You could make enough to take your trip to Istanbul and stay a while. It's something to think about.'

Ercule emitted another stream of apple-scented smoke. ‘Yes, it is.'

‘Barbara and I might be able to help you find someone.'

‘That would be kind of you both. But it isn't only me that has to agree. There's Gaby.' He paused. With his fingers lightly clasped, he revolved his thumbs slowly round each other. ‘Well, we'd have to do something with what's in the rooms. Gaby and I. That would be a little difficult.'

‘Gaby might be more open to the idea than you think. It would not mean she would have to go out of the house. It would mean bringing people into it, and the collection would have much more exposure than it has now. By the way, what is in the rooms? More objects for the collection?' Maybe the Pindars rotated their collection the way museums did, although he had never seen any variation in the items. Then he corrected himself. Alessandro's little theater and his carved wooden figures had been added recently.

‘I suppose some of the things in the rooms could be put in the collection. They're clothes.'

‘Clothes?'

‘Clothes and shoes and hats. That's where I got my kaftans. Olimpia used to go through the things. They gave her ideas. Sometimes she used the material from the old clothes to make new ones, though Gaby hated that and did all she could to prevent her. We Pindars have been putting clothes in those rooms since the eighteenth century. I think Olimpia said there are clothes there even older than that. She would have known. She knew a lot about clothes, more than Gaby.'

‘All those old clothes. Fascinating.'

‘And not just old ones, but recent ones – or more recent than hundreds of years ago.' He placed the mouthpiece carefully on the small shelf of the nargileh. ‘Like my mother's and father's clothes and my brother Achille's. Maybe Olimpia's will end up there, except for the ocelot coat and some other things Gaby is interested in,' he added, giving no indication that he knew Olimpia had willed the coat to the contessa. ‘It's up to me and Gaby to break the tradition. If you want to look, ask Gaby. She keeps the keys.'

‘There might be a Fortuny gown or something else by him.'

‘Olimpia would have scooped up anything like that. But you never know. I have no idea of everything there is in there. It would take forever to do an inventory.'

Ercule picked up the mandolin and started to strum it. He soon was playing a sweet, melancholy melody that provided an accompaniment to Urbino's far less sweet and much more melancholy – even dark – thoughts.

After leaving Ercule, Urbino ascended the staircase past the closed door to Apollonia's apartment. Muffled voices came from within.

Stepping quietly, he continued up to the attic story. He went to the closed door of Olimpia's atelier. He kept himself still and listened. He could hear nothing coming from within. He turned the metal handle. The door opened easily and, fortunately, without a sound. It struck him how inconsistent Gaby and Ercule were. They kept their front door unlocked during the daytime, and Olimpia's atelier was not locked, yet the two blue rooms were.

He stepped into the room, keeping the door open behind him.

He found himself in a vast space that extended the length of the palazzo, without any partitions or smaller rooms on either side. Eight round-arched windows, smaller than the windows on the two lower floors, let in the winter light on both long walls.

Like attics almost everywhere else in the world, including the one at the Palazzo Uccello, this one had once been the building's storehouse, crammed with objects the family could not part with. In setting up her atelier, Olimpia must have cleared the space and persuaded Gaby to let her sell some of the objects. Other objects had probably been distributed throughout the house. Much of whatever clothing there had been in the attic must have found its way to the blue rooms.

He stared down at the spot, where Mina had knelt over Olimpia's body, with the scissors in her hand. None of the chaos the contessa had described was evident, and the floor had been swept clean. What had become of the money scattered on the floor? Did the police have possession of it? Or had Gaby or Ercule taken it?

He walked around the room, eerily accompanied by the faint music of Ercule's mandolin.

Tables of various sizes were placed throughout the room. Their surfaces held measuring-tape, cutting scissors, button boxes, reels of sewing silk, pincushions, clothes brushes, steam irons, remnants, and bolts of material. A black mantilla was draped over the back of a chair. Behind the chair was a hat stand with cloche hats, old-fashioned bonnets, and a pink Pashmina shawl. Two modern sewing machines and a much older model were placed at workstations.