Leonardo raised a hand to his clammy forehead. His fingertips felt cold and real. But he had to be dreaming. She couldn’t be here.
Still the flamenco had sounded under his window that afternoon. He had assured Marcheti she would come tonight.
“Betrayal.” A voice hissed behind him.
He swung round. “Who’s there?”
The birds in the cage scattered nervously at his hoarse cry. He peered past it to see something, anything, but the garden seemed quiet and devoid of human presence.
“Where are you?” he called. His heart beat fast, his throat was dry at the prospect of her appearing from the bushes and coming for him. To kiss him? To scold him?
To kill him?
“Betrayal.” The voice was but a whisper on the evening air. A voice or a trick of the mind? An accusation born of his own conviction that he had let her down? That her death was on his head, somehow.
His knees wobbled. Confrontation would be terrible, but also amazing. Was she not dead? How could she not be dead?
“Come to me,” he called. “Come to me whether you still love me or hate me. But come to me and let me see your face.”
Your gorgeous eyes, the curve of your cheek, the delicate line of your neck. Let me hold you and kiss you and quench the thirst inside of me burning since you vanished from my life.
He spread his arms wide and cried, “Come to me!”
* * *
Leonardo, where are you?
Cursing under his breath, Marcheti hurried to find his pupil whose performance was about to begin. The orchestra was playing well and the champagne had made most guests lightheaded already and eager to forgive a small injury like appearing late, but Marcheti was sober and not about to forgive anything.
It was despicable that he always had to chase Leonardo like he was a little boy running away from his lessons. When would he grow up? When would he learn that a man was judged by his behaviour, by the way in which he kept his promises or broke them? Did he have no backbone?
A light breeze touched him and he walked through the open doors into the inner yard, ready to grab his pupil by the shoulder the moment he saw him and march him inside.
But he froze midway.
“Come to me!” an exalted voice cried, and Leonardo was spinning round and round, his arms outstretched, his eyes searching the bush around him as if he wanted to find something he missed, he needed. More than life itself.
A shiver went down Marcheti’s spine at the sight of his delicate, easily impressionable pupil. Was he worshipping nature? Calling out to the full moon in the skies above to inspire him somehow during his performance? Anything that could drive him to better achievements was a good thing, Marcheti had once believed, but since then he had discovered another truth. Whatever Leonardo embraced to support him, lead him, exalt him, it got a hold on him and became an obsession about to destroy him.
“Come to me!” The cry was low and desperate and Leonardo swayed on his feet, then crashed to the floor on his knees.
Marcheti ran to him. Was he intoxicated? Had he taken a stimulant? He had hoped that after Leonardo’s unfortunate brush with opium he had learned his lesson. But apparently not.
He grabbed his pupil by the shoulders. “What is the matter?”
Leonardo looked up at him with wide open eyes. “Olivia is here. I saw her.”
Not again. Marcheti shook him. “She is dead. Rise to your feet and get ready for your performance.”
“I saw her in the bush. Her red dress.” Leonardo breathed fast. “She called to me, ‘betrayal, betrayal’. I know I betrayed her, but I won’t betray her again. If she comes to me now, I will marry her.”
Marry her? He was about to marry Giulieta Calvieri. To finally seal the deal which would set up Marcheti as a rich man for life. “She is dead. You can’t marry a dead woman.”
“You never wanted me to marry her. Not even when she was alive.”
“She was already married.” Marcheti shook his pupil harder to quench the fever in his eyes. “What have you taken? You are out of your mind.”
“No. She is there. Go and see for yourself.” Leonardo gestured around them.
Marcheti let go of him. He stood up straight. “There is no one here.”
“Go and see.” Leonardo gave him a shove and Marcheti almost collided with the bird cage. The balls of feather shot apart with indignant chatter. Marcheti hissed at them. He straightened up and marched to the bush, folding aside branches and leaves. He looked left. Then right. Nothing. Or… wait. Something red. It moved. Gooseflesh formed on his arms as his eyes clung to the red something, waiting for it to materialize into a woman of flesh and blood. A woman who hated him and would tell him so.
But the red never took on shape. It hung there limp and inert. He gritted his teeth and walked over. Then he had to laugh. A strip of red fabric attached to a branch. For what purpose he didn’t know, but at least the mystery of the red shadow had been resolved.
He untied the fabric and carried it to Leonardo who had scrambled to his feet and stood waiting for him with the expectant look of a boy on his birthday.
Marcheti held out the fabric. “Your Olivia,” he said mockingly.
Leonardo stared at it. “Did you tear her dress?”
“You fool. That is just a bit of cloth, tied to a tree, perhaps to keep other bigger birds away from the bird cage.”
“What did you do to her?” Leonardo closed in on him. “What?” He tore the cloth from Marcheti’s hand.
“There is no one here. Come with me.”
Leonardo stared at him. With slow movements he wrapped both outer ends of the red cloth around his hands. The stretch in the middle made a plonging noise as he pulled it tight.
Marcheti’s patience snapped. “Come with me now. You’re late for the performance already.” He brushed past Leonardo and went to go in. Something flashed over his head and pulled back against his throat. A tight collar closed around his neck, and he flung up a hand to claw at it. It didn’t give way.
The pressure drove all air from him and he began to see black spots in front of his eyes. Grunting resounded in his ears as if someone laboured hard. Was that his own voice, his own struggle with death suddenly so close to him?
* * *
“Scusi.” Jasper made a polite rejective gesture at a waiter who wanted to push yet another glass into his hand and slipped past him into a room where considerably fewer people were gathered. Sweat rolled down his back under his green jaeger jacket. He gasped for breath and glancing about him discerned open doors into something beyond, a courtyard perhaps, or inner garden. Fresh air. At last.
He hurried for it, stepping through the frame into the open space with a relieved sigh. No high ceiling overhead with mythological creatures crowding each other, no laughter, no empty chatter, no bodies brushing by, no grotesque masks staring at him from all sides. He couldn’t quite determine which were more frightening: the beaked ones turning normal people into predatory birds; the ones with too much gold and glitter like the opulent death masks of the Egyptian pharaohs; or the stark white ones without any form of decoration with just holes for the eyes and the mouth, turning everyone into an emotionless mannequin as he had seen them in windows as a little boy when his mother took him into town.
Those soulless people behind glass had impressed him so deeply he had often dreamed of them breaking through the glass to come and get him, abduct him into their world where he could never play again, but would have to stand forever in one pose, staring into nothing, as passersby gawked at him.
Here, in the quiet garden with nothing but the sound of rushing water from a lion fountain and the song of birds, his feverish thoughts cooled, and he scolded himself that his imagination had run away with him like that. There’s nothing evil here.
A grunt, a gurgle as of someone in death throes.
Jasper froze. His ears strained to detect where the subdued sounds were coming from.
Laboured breathing, another grunt
and a smothered curse.
A fight? Here in the quiet garden?
Don’t interfere with it, his first impulse whispered.
But I have to, he retorted in the same breath, I can’t let someone get hurt in my presence.
He rounded a bush, grabbing a lantern off a table to use as a weapon. Close to double doors leading into another part of the spacious palazzo, he caught sight of the figures of two men, one standing behind the other. The first man was grasping at his throat, wriggling as if to be released, while the other pulled back from him but not breaking away. His hands were held closely together behind the first man’s head or neck. Neither was in fancy dress or masked. Were they even guests?
Jasper rushed up to them, lifting the lantern to strike at the attacking man. He wanted to hit him on the head, but in a split second he decided against it, and struck his shoulder instead. The man cried out in pain and let go of the other, staggering back. The victim sank to his knees, gurgling still and gasping for breath.
Jasper raised the lantern to strike at the assailant once more, should he decide to attack him. But he was nursing his struck shoulder, whimpering like a little child. He was a young man with a handsome, arrogant face and black hair which hung to his shoulders.
The victim struggled to stand up. Something dangled from his hand. A long strip of cloth.
“Did he use that to strangle you?” Jasper asked.
The victim rubbed his throat, flinching as if in considerable pain. He uttered hoarse sounds that couldn’t be turned into understandable words.
Waiting for the moment where he could get some intelligible answer, Jasper kept a wary eye on the assailant who was sobbing now.
He said slowly and clearly, “I’m with the police.” No lie in that as he was here with the man who led the Venetian police force. “I can help you solve this matter.”
“It has been solved.” The victim spoke in a whisper. “Is your shoulder hurt, Leonardo?”
The other made pitiful sounds.
The victim glared at Jasper. “How could you strike at him like that? His arms, his hands, are priceless.”
“He was trying to kill you.” Jasper blinked in disbelief at the man’s response to his help. “He should explain himself to Vernassi.”
“He should not do anything. But perform.” The victim cleared his throat. “Come inside, Leonardo. People must not notice anything.”
“We cannot simply let this pass,” Jasper protested.
“Yes, we can,” the other retorted. “I have already forgotten and so will you. I have no money on me, but tomorrow I will come to the police station and we will settle it.”
Jasper blinked again. “You do not have to pay damages. He does.”
The victim gave him a pitiful look, then put an arm around the assailant. “Hush, boy, it will be fine. Come with me.” He ushered him inside.
“Well, have I ever…” Jasper muttered to himself. He lowered the heavy lantern. A man is almost strangled and he doesn’t want to press charges, but even defends the attacker? Trying to…
Bribe the police? What other explanation could there be for his mention of coming to the police station to pay money? The victim, with his grey hair and somewhat stooping shoulders, seemed at least a generation older than the assailant. A father who was too lenient on his son? Wanted to protect him, even against his better judgement?
Jasper shook his head and returned the lantern to its place on the table. The breeze caressed his face and the birds in the cage chattered happily now that quiet had been returned to their sanctuary. He would gladly have spent the rest of the evening here, but his curiosity was stronger. He wanted to hear this murderous man perform.
Chapter Six
Lady Bantham suppressed a sigh that came up from her toes. She hated classical music and especially the violin, which seemed to cut across her nerves and create an instant headache. Of course this performer was something very special, but she just couldn’t stand listening to him any longer. Quietly she moved back, away from her husband who seemed to listen with rapt attention. At least his posture suggested attention, but with the mask his facial expression was hidden and she wondered, briefly, if he wasn’t bored out of his mind.
Not that it mattered. He would no doubt feign interest for the sake of his host, and for Larissa, who stood by his side, clasping his arm and whispering it was so wonderful.
Lady Bantham slipped along the wall, behind the backs of groups of listeners and reached a door leading into another room. To her surprise and delight it was a former ballroom with mirrors along all four walls, worked into heavy gilded woodwork full of satyrs and nymphs. She tried a few dance paces as she crossed to the other side where a piano stood, on the top of which perched a vase full of white roses. She leaned over and smelled the roses, then brushed the petals with her fingertip. She missed the garden in England. Getting her hands dirty was not for her, but walking in it, hiding in it, especially in the sheltered rose garden and the maze, was a wonderful pastime. Sitting on a bench, leafing through a book, not even reading, but just pretending to. Being the lady she had always dreamed of becoming. Revelling in the glorious sensation that she had proved all of those spinsters in that village wrong and had become someone beyond anything they could ever imagine. A seamstress’s daughter, now titled, letting other seamstresses change the hem of her gown, attach a new bow to her bodice. Snapping her fingers, her maid would run to her, bringing her anything she asked for.
Something moved in the mirrors. Glancing up, Lady Bantham detected several women dressed in the red flamenco dress delivered to her address that afternoon. They all stood in the same posture, their hands planted in their sides. They all looked just slightly different. A touch.
She shot upright, almost knocking over the vase of roses, and turned around to look better. It was just one woman standing in the centre of the room, but multiplied on all the walls around her, reflected in every mirror panel, each copy slightly different from the original depending on the angle.
She exhaled in relief and had to laugh. Those mirrors had a funny way of distorting reality. Still it was disturbing that the woman wore the same dress, with headdress and a closed fan in her hand. Lady Bantham wondered a moment if it had a scene of a castle against a fiery sky. She shivered.
The woman in red stood there, without speaking, just looking at her, through her black mask, covering her entire face.
“Where did you get that dress?” Lady Bantham asked.
The figure didn’t respond. She just began to close in on Lady Bantham, step by step.
The silence and the determination in that forward movement drove a shiver up Lady Bantham’s spine. She backed away past the piano to the open window of the room. The woman in the flamenco dress moved as if she were an automaton, such as Lady Bantham had seen at a party. A lifelike figure made of coils and springs, imitating human movement, but a bit too jerky and mechanical.
Her shoulder made contact with the wall and she realized she could back up no more. Trapped.
The woman’s eyes were green. A startling bright green peering at her through the eye holes of the black mask as through slits in a fortress’s wall.
“What do you want?” Lady Bantham asked.
Her voice was hoarse. Her hands felt across the wall she had ended up against, searching for a way out. Or for something she could grab to strike out at the woman in red, should she attack her.
He said it was the dress of his dead wife, it echoed in her head. Olivia is here, she has come to punish you because you took her place.
“Betrayal,” the woman said.
The single word resounded in the room’s emptiness. The violin music played in the distance, but here it seemed so still.
“Betrayal.”
“What betrayal?” Lady Bantham whispered with dry lips. Could this woman somehow know about her past?
Outside the window a thud resounded, and someone cursed loudly in Italian. She jerked her head around to see, on impulse,
and caught a glimpse of two gondolas having collided, the passengers looking bewildered while the gondoliers shouted at each other. She turned her head back.
The woman was gone.
Lady Bantham sucked in air as she surveyed the room, desperate for a hint of the red dress.
There was no one there.
How could she have vanished so quickly? Even if her stiff movements upon her approach had been feigned to strike extra terror, and she had been able to run back quickly, Lady Bantham should have caught sight of her leaving. But she hadn’t.
She wet her lips and swallowed. This was very odd. Should she go and tell her husband about it? But what if he got angry at her again, like he had about the dress being delivered to their host’s home? He had a habit of taking out his moods on her. And she could certainly not mention the word ‘betrayal’ for he might become suspicious.
No, she would not say anything to anyone.
Not even to Arundell. She couldn’t expect help from him. He would merely laugh at her and tell her the strain was getting to her. It’s not easy to keep up an act all of the time, darling, his taunting voice spoke in her mind. But you have to do it. You can’t make a single mistake.
Chapter Seven
“But don’t you think we should at least speak with them to find out what passed between them?” Jasper studied Vernassi with a frown. “One man tried to murder another.”
“Those artists are all highly strung.” Vernassi gestured with both his hands. “One moment they are the best of friends, the next they want to stab each other. As long as there are no dead bodies, I’m not investigating anything.”
Before Jasper could protest, he continued, “Marco Marcheti raised that boy like a father. He will not press charges against him. You must understand our ways, Jasper. We are not like you English, with the stiff upper lip. We shout and we threaten people and the next day we have forgotten and we laugh and drink with them. It may be better that way. If you keep all of your emotions hidden, they may burst out some day like Vesuvius.”
Under the Guise of Death Page 4