Under the Guise of Death

by Under the Guise of Death (epub)

  “You…” Jasper pointed at Marcheti in his astronomer’s gown. “Looked at her through your glass. Did you ascertain it was her?”

  “I knew her only briefly in the past. I could not tell for certain.”

  “Biancci went after her,” Jasper said, “and our highwayman, Mr. Arundell. May I ask why?”

  “Same reason as him.” Arundell nodded in the monk’s direction. “Curiosity.”

  “Curiosity you call it. But Signor Biancci’s ‘what on earth she was doing’ suggests anger too. Were you angry at her appearance?”

  Before Arundell could reply, Jasper continued, “After all, if she was still alive, your sister’s marriage was invalid and the privileged position you had acquired lost.”

  “I thought it was someone impersonating the late Lady Bantham. I didn’t think she was actually still alive.”

  “Did you catch up with her?”

  “No.” Arundell sighed. “You know that. You stopped me in the corridor.” He gestured to the ceiling. “You helped her escape.”

  “You didn’t speak to her, in passing? She didn’t tell you to meet her later, on the Ponte della Musica?”

  “No.” Arundell squeezed out the denial through gritted teeth it seemed.

  Jasper nodded slowly. “So we ascertain that the mystery woman was seen by all, pursued by two men, and left without anybody having actually talked to her.”

  Arundell raised a hand. “You asked me whether I caught up with her, but not the monk. Why not?”

  “I will come to that.” Jasper looked around him. “I want to know something else first. Had any of you already come across this woman in red before? Earlier that evening.”

  No one spoke.

  Jasper looked at the monk, but he stood with his head down. Just as Jasper was about to address him, Lady Bantham said, “I had seen her. In the ballroom. I went in there to be alone for a few moments. It was so crowded. Then she came after me. She drove me into a corner. Towards the open window. I think she wanted to push me out of it.”

  “Why would she have wanted that?” Jasper was surprised, as this was the first he had heard of this incident.

  “I don’t know. I looked over my shoulder for a brief moment, to the water below, and then when I focused on the room again, she was gone.”

  “You’re making this up,” Arundell said in a derisive voice, but Sir James took a step forward. “It’s possible my daughter vanished suddenly as she knew the secret doors in this palazzo. There is such a door in the ballroom. You open it by pressing an ornament in the woodwork around a mirror. The panel opens, you step in and then it falls closed again. It can be done in a matter of moments.”

  “So if this mystery woman vanished through a secret door she knew of, it suggests she was indeed your daughter who knew of these doors.”

  “She sought me out,” Lady Bantham said in a shrill tone, “which confirms my earlier suspicions that there was to be confusion between us. That is why her dress or something similar was sent to me. I should have worn it and then been confused for her and… the killer would have killed me. That was the plan.”

  “Whose plan?” Jasper asked.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. But it is too coincidental to have the dress delivered to me.”

  “I agree. There must have been a plan to it. But whose plan, and what purpose did it all serve? Sir James, I must ask you. Did your daughter have a cruel streak?”

  Jasper heard an intake of breath pass around the room at this direct question.

  Sir James went pale. “I don’t like this question.”

  “I’m asking because it is rather cruel to vanish from people’s lives letting them believe you are dead, to be mourned for and then reappear, not even in a decent fashion, but in a frivolous, dramatic way, at a party, with an audience. It suggests to me she did have a cruel streak and she enjoyed attention.”

  “She did,” Bantham said. He looked at Sir James. “I’m sorry but there is no point in denying it. Olivia liked it when people looked at her, admired her, talked about her.”

  Sir James hung his head.

  Jasper said, “So she didn’t just stage her own death, but also her return among the living. It would happen at midnight, in front of a crowd, who would see her and then she would vanish again, mysteriously into the night. We can appreciate the shock effect of this, if you’re a fan of such theatrics, but we must ask ourselves – did it also serve a real purpose?”

  “I don’t follow,” Bantham said. “She staged her own death, then her return, that is a sign of some kind of… madness, surely. A pathological need for attention which was hurtful to all surrounding her. How can it have served a purpose other than that of shock?”

  Jasper looked at him. “You should know. After all, you planned all of it with her.”

  A collective gasp. Bantham took a step forward. “You take that back.” His voice was a low whisper. “You may be a former policeman, but I won’t hesitate to punch your nose, if you don’t take that back.”

  Jasper held his gaze. “Then explain to us how it is possible that you identified your dead wife, while we now know it was not your wife who died in that car accident. You knew her, intimately, but you identified the wrong woman.”

  “I told you before.” Bantham’s face was bright red and veins pumped in his neck. “Her face was damaged. I couldn’t… I…” He took a deep breath. “I wanted to remember her the way she had been, alive. Not the way she lay there in the morgue.” He glanced round. “If you do not understand that, then don’t understand. But I didn’t agree with her to stage her death. I had no reason to.”

  “No?” Jasper held his gaze. “I heard from several sides that she wasn’t exactly the country-loving wife you had wanted for yourself. She would rather be in the city, going to parties, drinking and smoking. Flirting?”

  Bantham took a step towards him. “I told you before I will punch you if—”

  “I’m merely saying that my information notes that your marriage was not without challenges. If you realized she would never be the wife you had imagined, you might have agreed to let her go. Not by a messy divorce, but…”

  “By a clean death? Man, listen to yourself!” Bantham gestured wildly. “Someone died in the car. I have seen the body, briefly, and it was gruesome. Do you actually think my wife and I killed someone to put in that car in her place?”

  “If you were accomplices in a murder, that would give you all the more motive to go after her here in Venice and make sure she would never tell.”

  “Of course. On top of the first murder, committed at my own home, I would go and commit another murder here. Like it is nothing. I don’t know how jaded your work made you, Jasper, but most people won’t even think of murder when it comes to solving their problems. Yes, a divorce would have created a scandal, but I would have survived that. In fact, I had already contacted a lawyer to talk about the possibilities. I can try and see if the appointment, I made, is still somewhere in their files if that can help to—”

  Jasper raised a hand. “I already know about that. I found written proof of it.”

  Bantham stared at him. “You know I wanted to divorce her?”

  “Yes. I know you investigated the financial consequences of it. It does not totally exclude you as the killer, but I don’t see why you would have wanted to stage her death. That would have been something someone else would have wanted. Lady Bantham and… a lover?”

  Jasper let his gaze shift from Bantham, who was still too perplexed to continue fuming, to Leonardo Biancci. “Let’s not play games, Signor Biancci. You and I both know you loved Lady Bantham. You professed as much and besides, why would the appearance of the woman in red upset you so? You had seen her before she appeared up there, or at least you believed you had, a glimpse of red in the inner yard. You went after it, you needed to see, to ascertain if it could be her.”

  Leonardo looked up. “I had heard flamenco music that afternoon when I was practising for the night’s performance
. I heard it clearly even though I could not see the musician in the street. I believed Marcheti had sent him away so as not to disturb me.”

  Marcheti shook his head. “I did no such thing.”

  “You wouldn’t mind lying about it either. You lie to me whenever it is convenient to you.”

  Marcheti shook his head again, but Leonardo looked at Jasper. “I heard the music we danced to when I was in England at her husband’s estate. The night before she died.”

  “You met that night, away from the others. You could have made a plan.”

  “We made no plan.”

  “No plan at all? Or just no plan for her death?”

  “I was devastated when I heard about it. I would never have hurt her.”

  “But would you have helped her escape?”

  Leonardo gestured. “She never asked me to.”

  Jasper tilted his head. “She didn’t ask you to help her?”

  “She only said…” Leonardo sucked in air. He realized that his actions in the inner yard, jumping at Marcheti, had betrayed his deep feelings for Olivia and denying any kind of involvement would just weaken his position. He might retain some credit if he confessed to a point. “She only said she would come to me the next day in London. Marcheti was meeting someone about a concert tour and I would feign a headache and not go with him. I would then meet her. But we never did. She was already dead.”

  He spread his hands. “If you knew how I responded when I heard, you would never again suggest I had anything to do with it. It was like lightning struck me, like my heart was ripped out of my chest, like—”

  “Yes, yes, save me your opera dramatics,” Bantham said.

  Leonardo jumped at him and hissed, “You killed her. You stabbed her to death on that bridge. You couldn’t stand her having escaped you. She never loved you, she loathed you. She didn’t want to bear your child. My child, yes, a beautiful boy or girl who would study music. When I heard she had been with child, I believed my child had died with her.”

  “So you admit you were intimate with her!” Bantham lashed out.

  Leonardo felt his jaw explode and then everything went black.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Marcheti jumped forward as his pupil crashed to the floor. “Are you insane? He’s just recovering from a head injury! Another blow could cripple him for life.” He knelt beside the limp form and felt his neck. “If he suffers any damage from this, you will pay. And so will you, Jasper. Provoking this.”

  “Signor Biancci can file charges for assault if he wants to,” Jasper said.

  Marcheti rose to his feet. Leonardo’s heart was beating strong and he had seen him duck away instinctively when the blow fell. He would be all right. But Jasper needed to be taught a lesson. That vain, pompous man thinking he knew it all. “I will sue you until you have nothing left.”

  “I doubt you will do that from prison.” Jasper eyed him with a cold look as if studying some repulsive reptile. “You have protected your protégé long enough. You can protect him no longer.”

  Marcheti felt a draught in his neck. “How do you mean?”

  “Leonardo left this house in a fit of anger. Oh, yes, he had not known a thing about the staged death in England, he had mourned the death of the woman he loved and her unborn baby which he believed to have been his. The idea that she had never died confused him so much that he ran out and grabbed the woman and struggled with her, almost strangling her. They fell together and he struck his head. When he came to his senses, he was covered in blood. His own blood from his head injury, but he did not realize that. He thought he had killed her. Even then some love for her remained inside him and he stumbled away, his brain a muddle from pain and shock. He roamed the streets until he found his way home and you encountered him there, bloodied and muttering about having killed her.”

  “He never said he had killed her,” Marcheti spluttered, but Jasper silenced him with a hand gesture.

  “You decided to protect him as you have often before. You told me you had been together. You lied. I wonder what else you are willing to lie about. I wonder about that day in England when Lady Bantham, or rather whoever took her place, died. Did you have a hand in that?”

  Marcheti straightened. He was done with the arrogant inspector’s constant accusations. “If the brakes of her car had been cut and she had died, you could have looked at me, yes, Inspector.” He put a mocking stress on the last word. “But why would I have helped her get away from her husband? Become a free woman, even more eligible to my poor deceived protégé? No, I wanted her married and stuck in England far away from him. I had no reason to help her escape as you call it.”

  “Perhaps it does not matter,” Jasper said with a calmness that Marcheti found most infuriating. “The murder here, her death on the Ponte della Musica – was that your doing? You claim Leonardo lied to you when he came home. But what if he didn’t? What if he told you where he had left her, knocked to the ground? What if you went there and found her and killed her, moving her body to another place?”

  Marcheti shook his head. “You just said Leonardo stumbled around for a while before returning home to me. That woman would have been long gone by then. She wouldn’t have lain around waiting for me to appear and kill her. And put her on the bridge called Bridge of Music? Pointing the finger straight at my pupil? I’m not that stupid. I know more appropriate bridges where I would have put her.”

  Jasper held his gaze. “Yes. Ponte della Musica, that was a nice touch of the killer. A clue, shall we call it? Like the red rose left in her hand.”

  “She may have plucked it herself. To offer to the lover she was waiting for.” Marcheti let his gaze wander the assembled people. “Like Arundell.”

  * * *

  Arundell lifted his head. “Pardon me, but I never knew the late Lady Bantham. I only came into Lord Bantham’s acquaintance when my sister married him.”

  Jasper nodded. “True. Still you wore such a nice costume for a bit of nightly roaming. All black, melting with the shadows. And Lady Bantham was stabbed in the back. Did you creep up on her as she was waiting for someone else and stab her?”

  “Just prove it,” Arundell said. “You’re prejudiced. You only look among the men for your killer. The jealous husband, the lover waiting in the dark. But what about the ladies present? Miss Kenwood was the late Lady Bantham’s best friend. Would she not have felt betrayed if her allegedly dead friend showed up here in Venice, alive and well? Would she not have wanted to meet with her to ask her why? She could have known about the meeting place from Bantham.”

  “What meeting place?” Bantham roared.

  Arundell wanted to explain, but Jasper forestalled him. “Mr. Arundell has a theory that the woman in red passed you a note earlier in the evening requesting a meeting with her, and after her appearance on the balcony you showed this note to Larissa Kenwood.”

  “I never got any such note,” Bantham said. “And if I had, why show it to Larissa?”

  “Mr. Arundell assured me that he observed the two of you while you were tending to your fainted wife and that he detected a certain… intimacy between you.”

  Bantham turned red. “The insolence. We’re only friends.”

  “That’s what you think,” Arundell called. “Ask her.” He pointed his finger at Larissa. “Do you deny that you love Bantham? Have loved him since before his first wife died?” She’d give herself away now.

  “How dare you…” Bantham took a step in his direction. “She doesn’t have to answer to such far-fetched accusations.”

  Jasper looked at Larissa. “Did Lord Bantham show you a note from the woman in red?”

  “No.” Her voice was clear, although Arundell could see the vein in her neck fluttering. “He didn’t show me any note about a meeting on the Ponte della Musica.”

  “Still you knew she had been killed there.” Jasper frowned. “How?”

  “You told me.”

  “I didn’t. Had you been in touch with the Banthams before
I came to see you? Did they let you know what had happened?”

  “No.” She lowered her eyes and knotted her fingers. “I’ve been reticent about this for a reason. But I see I must tell you the truth now. As a matter of fact, Arundell let me know where Lady Bantham had been murdered. He dropped by before he went fencing. That is how I knew that you could find him in the gymnasium.”

  “And why would Mr. Arundell drop by to tell you about the murder?” Jasper asked.

  “Because we’re… close.” She raised her eyes to look in Arundell’s direction. “Ever since Lady Cleveland’s birthday party in Paris.”

  Bantham sucked in breath. “Penelope said something along those lines, but I couldn’t believe…”

  It didn’t seem like Larissa heard him. She held Arundell’s gaze, not blinking, and a chill touched him at the determination in her posture. What had she decided?

  “Are you going to deny what happened in Paris?” she asked, never taking her eyes off him.

  That snake. She admitted, openly, to their short-lived affair, harming her own reputation, just to keep him in Jasper’s sights. A fiendishly clever move as she was now also, almost off-hand, destroying the idea she loved Bantham. How could she, if she was having an affair with another man?

  Jasper said, “So you informed Miss Kenwood of the location where the murder had taken place. How did you know?”

  “I didn’t tell her. I never saw her that day. She’s just…” Arundell realized that, after Larissa’s candidness, denials on his part were only making this worse. He pulled back his shoulders and looked Jasper over with a pitying smile. “You go round and round, Jasper, accusing one, then another. You know nothing. Just admit it. You failed back then and you have failed here.”

  Jasper tutted. “Your sister’s marriage was about to fall apart. This woman had to disappear. Perhaps you never meant to kill her, just to plead with her and offer her money.”