Under the Guise of Death

by Under the Guise of Death (retail) (epub)

  Jasper paced the room again. “My head was clear, as I was an outsider.” An outsider who hasn’t asked enough questions, a voice pestered him in the back of his mind. You never asked about the party the night before, who she was going to meet in London. Shopping? With her maid sent ahead of her? With just some jewellery or also more belongings? Was she running away from her husband? Did she want to leave him, get a divorce?

  And that while she was pregnant.

  Jasper stopped and stared at the intricate patterns of the rug under his feet. Patterns. He should have looked for patterns, underlying issues, but instead he had taken things at face value. The evidence that the car had swerved off the road, had plunged down the steep bank, the collision with the tree, the subsequent fire. None of it had been suspicious, and on that particular road accidents had happened before. It had all seemed to fit. His schedule had been full with other cases, and he had only been able to allot a limited amount of time to it, relying on other people’s information – the coroner’s, the local constable’s – to guide his judgement.

  But her being a reluctant driver, who left the estate without a chauffeur. The maid sent ahead.

  It had smelled of an affair, but he had not wanted to raise the possibility as it was painful enough for the husband. She was dead, it would not bring her back.

  No, but it might have provided better answers as to her death.

  Jasper followed the strand of yellow twirling through the carpet. He should have pulled at something – the missing maid, the sold jewels, the party the night before – to get farther than he had. But there had been other cases demanding his attention and…

  It had been an accident. No doubt about that. The car’s brakes had not been sabotaged. As far as they could have determined from the wreckage.

  Jasper released his breath in a frustrated hiss. At the time he had accepted the verdict of accidental death without question. But right now he wondered if someone hadn’t believed it at the time. Had thought that Lady Bantham had somehow been driven into death. They had never been able to locate the other driver.

  Had the person who suspected that it had been foul play, somehow now started to confront the players of old?

  It was so coincidental they were all here tonight. The husband, the best friend, the new wife and her brother, the violinist whom her husband had not liked because he had suspected they were… lovers? And his maestro…

  That violinist was now about to be married. Was someone eager to prevent the marriage by having Lady Bantham return from the dead?

  But who and why?

  Sir James said, “You are very silent, Inspector. What are you thinking?” After a moment’s breathless hesitation, he added, “Not that Olivia is really alive?”

  “No. They can determine a lot even if the body is… damaged. They looked at her height, build, hair colour. And your son-in-law identified her at the morgue.”

  Sir James nodded slowly. “I was grateful to him that he wanted to do it. I couldn’t have. Besides,” he added, toying with his glass, “if she didn’t die that day, then someone else died in the car. In her stead. But no one was missing.”

  “Except the maid, Agnes,” Jasper added. “But she was seen in London two days later, pawning off part of her mistress’s jewellery.”

  He took a deep breath. “Your daughter died in the car crash and someone is now impersonating her to…”

  Sir James sat up. “Yes, to achieve what, Inspector? I cannot wrap my mind around it. If it was for money, that person would have approached me, one on one. Claiming that in exchange for a sum they’d stay quiet about what they allegedly knew. Why do it like this, at my party, in front of all of my guests?”

  “Perhaps the message wasn’t meant for you.” Jasper followed the red thread in the carpet. It twisted and turned, to come back to its beginning. “Isn’t Biancci about to marry? And he behaved very oddly tonight.”

  He had tried to strangle his maestro, Marco Marcheti. Because he had seen the woman in the red dress earlier in the evening, lurking among the crowd, and believed Lady Bantham wasn’t dead? Had Biancci thought he had been lied to?

  But even a man of a volatile nature couldn’t argue with the facts. Lady Bantham had died in England, had been interred there in the family crypt. Whoever was wearing a dress like hers, wasn’t her.

  “I want to speak with a few people about this,” he said slowly. “To see if I can find more answers.”

  Sir James smiled cynically. “You do not need my permission to simply speak to people while you’re staying in Venice. And I even want you to look into it. For my sake.” He held Jasper’s gaze. “Perhaps for both of our sakes. I can’t imagine it sits easy with you. You’re a good man, who always did a good job.”

  But, Jasper thought as a chill slipped down his back, even good men make mistakes.

  Chapter Eight

  Leonardo supported himself on the wall of the alley. His breathing grated, and he could barely remain upright. The monk’s robe swaddled him like he was a mummy, bringing out sweat across his entire body.

  And his head was so light, so full of thoughts that scattered like the pigeons on the Piazza San Marco when they saw a real or imagined danger. He shouldn’t have run after her. He shouldn’t have tried to speak to her. It was humiliating. She had abandoned him, made him believe she was dead. How could she have?

  Betrayal, she had cried to him in the garden, circling him like a tiger ready to pounce from the bush. But the betrayal had not been his. He had realized that as he had stared up at the clock with its giant golden ornaments. All those years thinking it had been his fault. That he had not been there for her. That he had not taken her away when she had begged him to. All of those years weighed down by an invisible burden. His talent tainted, his freedom blocked. By lies, nothing but lies.

  She was alive, and she had come back.

  But what for? To torment him with her presence, with her enticing nearness while she was out of reach?

  He sucked in the warm night air, his mouth desperately dry, his palate screaming for wine, for ice-cold champagne to numb the feelings, to drive his headache away. He grabbed his head with his hands, rubbing his temples, but the stabs behind his eyes didn’t cease. He dragged his hands down again and staggered on, his shoulder bumping into the alley wall.

  Images whirled through his head of her dancing with him at the party three years ago, of their stolen kisses in the garden. How soft her lips had been, how warm her arms around his neck. How wide her eyes, when she had mentioned her husband being a jealous and violent man who would hurt her as soon as he found out about their love.

  Love she had called it, not affair. No, love. It was the only word applicable to it. Nothing sordid and low and… whatever Marcheti tried to make of it.

  But he was the sordid one, selling him off like a chattel to Giulieta Calvieri. An old woman with a wasted body, thinking she could entice men with her money. It was all sordid. Dirty, low. Something far below the station of a master artist who lived with his muse. The muse demanded a high standard of living, a cleanness of hands. Olivia had made him feel alive, pure, exalted. She could have brought him to new heights. But her death had dragged him down and changed him and…

  She had never died. How that was possible he didn’t understand, but she had never died.

  Not then.

  Not in the accident.

  He halted under a lantern attached to the wall over his head and looked down at his hands. They were covered in blood.

  He gasped for air, but the light feeling in his head didn’t want to go away.

  She hadn’t died then, but she had died tonight.

  Because he had wanted her to.

  * * *

  Marcheti shot upright in his chair as a door closed downstairs. A light sleeper, it only took him a moment to remember where he was and why he hadn’t gone to bed. Leonardo hadn’t been home yet. Leonardo was missing, roaming the streets of Venice, looking for the woman who had appeared at
the party.

  Shock coursed through him again, as he recalled her proud stance on the balcony, the arrogance in her posture and her features as she had looked down on them, as if she were their queen. The smile around her lips as she had pulled off her mask and revealed her face to them. That face he had hoped never to see again.

  He had raised his astronomer’s telescope to his eyes to see her better. He had wanted to tell himself it was just someone looking like her. Makeup could do a lot. But staring through his glass, seeing her intent startling green eyes up close, he had been almost certain it was her.

  Back from the dead.

  Chills had shot up his spine at the recollection of Leonardo’s threat that she’d come to the party, to kill him. Leonardo had screamed that he, Marcheti, deserved to die.

  And standing there, looking the woman straight in the eye, he had for a moment believed it to be so. That he did deserve to die and she was here to execute the punishment.

  But now he had calmed down again and he wouldn’t allow Leonardo to be manipulated either. He had no idea who that woman was, or what she was after, but he’d keep his protégé safe from her wiles.

  Halting footfalls came up the stairs. He opened the study door and stepped into the corridor. On the steps someone stumbled and cursed. Pursing his lips in disapproval, Marcheti walked to the top of the stairs and looked down at his pupil, a pitiful form clutching the railing and trying to drag himself upstairs.

  “Immoderation doesn’t befit a man of your calibre,” he called down. “Straighten and walk.”

  Leonardo whimpered. He fell forward and for a moment Marcheti believed he would lose grip of the railing and tumble down the steps. If he breaks his arm, or just hurts his hand, I will…

  But Leonardo pulled himself up again and came up the last few steps. In the corridor he slumped against the wall, panting.

  “You are drunk,” Marcheti spat, disgusted. “I can’t bear to look at you this way. Take yourself to bed.”

  He wanted to turn away but something drew his attention. Where Leonardo’s hand had touched the white wall, a dark stain had appeared.

  He closed in and peered at it. It was a dark red smear of blood.

  He grabbed one of the wall lanterns and brought it to his pupil, raised it close to his hands. The palms were covered in a dark red substance.

  Marcheti held the lantern higher and also saw smears on Leonardo’s face. He sucked in air. “What have you done?”

  “She should not have betrayed me,” Leonardo whispered. “She knew I loved her. Why did she betray me?”

  His eyes roamed, with a vacant look, as if he didn’t know what he was saying.

  Marcheti glanced around. The servants had all gone to bed. No one had seen Leonardo come home in this state. No one inside his home, at least. Outside he couldn’t be certain. He wanted to ask questions about it, assess the risks, but Leonardo was far too dazed to answer coherently. That had to wait until morning. Then they would make a plan. Leonardo would agree to it. Oh, he would agree to it, once Marcheti had convinced him of the unpleasant future that awaited him when his behaviour became known.

  He pulled one of Leonardo’s arms over his shoulder and moved him carefully to his own bedroom. He would wash and dress him, give him a sedative and sit by his bedside, while he rehearsed the story they would tell. How they had left the party together. Came home together. Yes, he would do anything to save Leonardo from trouble. Anything to make sure that the desired marriage to Giulieta Calvieri didn’t suffer from tonight’s incident.

  Lady Bantham’s appearance was nothing more than that. An incident.

  Still he wished he could speak with Leonardo now. Shake out of him where he had been, if he had met up with that woman. What he had done to her, if she was dead. Dead now like she should have been three years ago.

  What if she wasn’t dead, but lay somewhere in the streets, bleeding, waiting for someone to stop by and rescue her, take her to where she was staying. If she lived, she could tell what Leonardo had done to her. That man at the party had seen the attack on Marcheti, that man who had mentioned he was with the police. A tale of an attack on a defenceless woman would be bad, very bad indeed.

  Marcheti exhaled as he pushed open the door to the bedroom and manoeuvred Leonardo inside. He’d give him the sedative and he’d watch over him, but perhaps not all night. Perhaps there was something else to take care of, out on the streets of Venice. Something very important.

  * * *

  “Red! Wait.” Jasper came down the stairs, quickly following his Labrador who had more energy than he did. Red whined as he waited and looked up at his boss, who stood a moment yawning and rubbing his clean-shaven face before he snapped his fingers at his dog. Together they went to the tall decorated door leading into his friend’s breakfast room.

  Since Jasper had moved to the Riviera, after his retirement, he had become used to some more luxury than he had during his years in active service in London, but nothing had prepared him for the opulence of Vernassi’s renaissance home. Marble pillars, high stuccoed ceilings with mythological figures and gold leaf on the wallpaper.

  Vernassi had waved off his compliments about it, saying it was a nice home but hard ‘in the upkeep’. “My ancestors were all merchants who made a fortune trading with the east. I’m just a humble policeman, trying to do what’s right.”

  Jasper suppressed a smile as the word ‘humble’ didn’t really apply to Vernassi as he sat there at the head of the long breakfast table with its delicately twirled legs. Damask table covers and napkins, crystal water glasses, coffee from small porcelain cups, food as far as the eye could see. Having become used to the French breakfast of coffee and croissants, Jasper’s eyes roamed the offering with something of wonder: cold cuts of meat and cheeses on silver trays, fresh apricots stacked high on a porcelain basket, a pineapple standing upright in a vase, like a peacock displaying his feathers.

  As he approached his host, a footman in livery pulled out a chair for him and he sat down and put the damask napkin in his lap. Red had gone to the corner where Vernassi’s dog stood over a golden bowl. The Rhodesian ridgeback was as rare and extravagant as most of the house’s interior. Vernassi had probably invested the inheritance of his ancestors wisely to be able to afford such luxuries.

  Or perhaps he was in heavy debt? Jasper had heard it was part of Venice’s two-faced nature: the riches on display were often bought with borrowed money and slowly twined into a rope around the debtor’s neck. But in true debonair fashion those under threat simply poured another glass of prosecco and toasted to a better future.

  The ridgeback gobbled meat from the golden bowl, not glancing up as Red joined him. A footman came to bring other bowls for Red with food and water.

  “Pheasant for the dogs this morning. Caught the other day, very fresh.” Vernassi glanced at him. “Did you sleep well?”

  “Hardly. But your bed wasn’t to blame.”

  “Ah. It was the woman.” Vernassi laughed softly. “Even my friend Jasper gets affected by a beautiful woman.”

  “One that came back from the dead, or pretended to,” Jasper corrected.

  Vernassi gestured to the footman to leave the room. He threw an affectionate look at his dog who was licking his bowl clean. “Is it good, Leone?” he called. The dog didn’t dignify him with as much as a glance but watched Red eat his meal.

  “Is he used to other dogs?” Jasper asked. “Red is no match for a breed rumoured to fight off lions.”

  “It’s no rumour. They are incredibly strong and not afraid of anything. But they pick their fights with care. As long as Red is no threat to me, Leone will not touch him.”

  As if he had heard and understood, Leone lay down, resting his head on his paws.

  Vernassi sipped his coffee and sighed contently. Then he sat up with energy and leaned over to Jasper. “Let me tell you something about Venice, my friend. People here love gossip. They thrive on it. The appearance of this woman in red will be the talk
of the town for a few days. People will whisper about it behind their hands, discuss it with their friends at lunch or over a long, leisurely dinner. But that will be all. There will be new events, new shocks, to replace this one. You need not worry about it. In a week everyone will have forgotten.”

  “But I won’t have forgotten.” Jasper reached for some cheese. “I will have to look into it. Sir James asked me to and I also feel a moral obligation.”

  Vernassi rolled his eyes. “As soon as the word moral comes into it, you English believe it’s a done deal. I cannot protest or deter you as you have called it moral. But I will tell you this. You are retired. You have no obligation whatsoever, to anyone.”

  Before Jasper could say something, he lifted a hand and continued, “And the case back in England is closed. The lady died. You cannot go dragging the dead from their graves. Let them rest in peace.”

  Jasper shook his head. “There is no peace here, Vernassi. Have you not seen the faces of all those involved last night? They were outraged, shocked, the new Lady Bantham even fainted away. There is trouble brewing.”

  Vernassi hitched a brow as he spooned scrambled eggs onto toast. “What do you mean, my friend? A woman appeared wearing a dress very similar to what Lady Bantham wore the night before she died. That is all.”

  “Why?”

  Vernassi leaned back in his chair. “Why what?”

  “Why did the woman wear that dress and position herself so ostentatiously beside that clock at the midnight démasqué? Why did she reveal her face for all to see?”

  “Perhaps she likes attention.” Vernassi shrugged his broad shoulders. “I think you are making a lot out of a small incident. You know, I look at it this way.” He picked up his fruit knife and carefully cut an apricot into halves, removed the stone and then divided each half into four parts. “Things in life have no meaning unless we attach meaning to them. To a day of the week, for instance Sunday. To a day in the year, for instance my birthday. We attach meaning to looks. Oh, she must be in love with him.”