Jasper had to smile at Vernassi’s cynical tone.
“To what people do or not do. She didn’t come to the opera last night, she must be over her affection for the main lead.” Vernassi put a slice of apricot into his mouth and chewed. “Delicious, very sweet.”
He looked Jasper in the eye. “You attach meaning to this woman because you associate her with the late Lady Bantham and the events in England three years ago. But do you realize how common a red flamenco dress is? That someone may simply have chosen it as a costume for the party last night, not thinking how it would look to others? Indeed, that it would have any specific meaning. Just consider that and you will see that your preoccupation with the matter is overdone.”
Jasper shook his head. “I agree that people choose costumes for parties quite randomly and some costumes are common. I saw a lot of harlequins last night and a dozen Tudor queens. But this woman showed herself off to the guests as if she was something special.”
“Did you ask Sir James if he asked her to stand on that balcony?” Vernassi gave him a sly look. “You spoke a long time with him.”
“Yes, mostly about events three years ago.”
Vernassi lifted both hands in a gesture of mock despair. “Three years ago. Listen to yourself. Is there anything you can change about what happened three years ago? You did your job back then, with care, I know that. You are a conscientious man, Jasper, you do not rush or jump to conclusions.”
“Perhaps not, but I do feel that some aspects of the case were overlooked. Ignored or… There was a lot to do that summer.”
“There is always a lot to do. In fact, we have a lot to do today. I want to show you some more of the city and we could go to Murano. You must buy some glass for your home, as a souvenir.”
Jasper didn’t feel like sightseeing at all, and didn’t want a memory of this trip to remind him he might have made a terrible mistake three years ago. But he didn’t want to be rude to his host who was taking time away from his own duties to show him around. Just as he wanted to say something to the point, thank him for his hospitality, a knock resounded and the footman opened the door. “Scusi…” The rest of the rapid fire Italian brushed past Jasper like a hailstorm of words. He did recognize one word though.
Morta. Dead.
His heartbeat sped up, and he clenched his fork.
Vernassi asked a question or two, then waved the footman off. He looked at Jasper with a sigh. “I have to go and see a dead body on a bridge. It will not take long. You can come with me and then afterwards we can look at the city. If you agree.”
“Of course.” Jasper reached for his coffee cup to empty it quickly, but Vernassi leaned back in his chair. “We finish our breakfast and then we leave. The bridge is guarded and no one can get to the body before we do.”
“Did he say anything about who it is or what it could be about?”
Vernassi shook his head. “Could be a tramp or a young man killed in a drunken brawl. I can only hope it will not be a tourist. Tourists dying are not good for the appeal of our beautiful city. But sometimes they deserve to die.”
“Deserve to die?” Jasper echoed.
Vernassi made a so-so gesture with his hand. “I express myself poorly. I mean, that sometimes they almost invite violence. They carry money, they flaunt it, they invite thieves to come after them into an alley and try to rob them. Then they fight back to protect their possessions and… woosh. A quick stab. Blood flowing away across the cobbles. The curtain falls. And the police are left to explain why Venice is not safer. But safety is also a responsibility for the people themselves. Not invite trouble, if you understand me, my friend.”
Jasper nodded. Vernassi’s immediate assumption that it had been a drunken brawl leading to a sudden death or a robbery gone wrong eased the nerves in his stomach. On top of the shock last night he had, in a flash, believed it was somehow related but that was a silly assumption. Venice was a large city and violence did occur when visitors were as careless as Vernassi had just described.
Vernassi finished his coffee and rose. “You eat at leisure, my friend. I had wanted to take the dogs along to see the city, but we cannot take them to a crime scene. I will ask my valet to walk them, then I will go up and dress.”
Jasper had no idea what was wrong with the suit his friend wore at this very moment, but he had learned the Italians were meticulous about their appearance and nodded his assent. Red would enjoy a walk, especially with another dog. He was usually alone.
Jasper went over and rubbed Red’s head, telling him to be a good boy. Leone rose and sniffed Jasper’s shoes. Jasper’s hand reached out to pat him as well but hesitated at the last moment. Leone padded to the door where a footman appeared to take the dogs for their walk. Jasper pointed for Red to follow and the Labrador went without protest, wagging his tail.
Alone in the quiet room, Jasper glanced down the lavish table. There was too much of everything. Like it seemed to be everywhere in Venice. Too much marble, too much gold leaf, too much food, too many people and too many emotions brewing below the surface. How would the people be feeling, who had woken up this morning as if from a bad dream, thinking Lady Bantham might still be alive, or someone wanted to give them that impression? There had to be a lot of uneasy minds in Venice. And one woman, out there somewhere, who had all the answers.
If only he could find her, somehow.
Chapter Nine
The gondola took them quickly across the smooth water. The backs of the houses on the canal mainly showed shuttered windows, but a few were open and in one a birdcage hung, full of happily chattering little birds. A woman leaned out of another, combing her long blond hair which shone in the morning sun. A gondolier sang, while in the distance dogs barked and something squeaked like the unoiled hinges of a door or cart.
Vernassi sat quietly, his head down as if he was dozing during a pleasant boat ride. Jasper’s nerves were strung, his senses alert to catch anything of meaning, even though he didn’t know quite what he expected. Another appearance of the mystery woman? As if she was hunting him…
Perhaps she is, he wondered, if I made a mistake with the death…
Who had known he was coming to Venice? Vernassi, of course. Mrs. Valentine, the nurse who had helped him with an earlier case. He had written to her and as it wasn’t exactly a secret she might have shared it with other acquaintances they had in common. But he couldn’t imagine that someone from that circle had brought the news back to England, at least not so quickly that someone could have come over to…
It made no sense at all.
A window overhead opened in a clatter of wood against stone and a maid leaned out emptying a dust pan. Flakes of dust, bits of wood and even hairs drifted down.
Vernassi lifted his head and followed his gaze up. “It could be worse,” he observed drily. “Once upon a time these canals were like a sewer system for the city. It is no wonder the Black Death came here often. Do you know this painting where people are partying while the figure of death is already among them?” He shook his head. “Open water is Venice’s life blood and her greatest threat.”
Jasper was only half listening as his mind was stuck on the image of a party with death lurking among the guests. Had he sensed that last night? A certain sinister edge to the festive mood, a hint of decay below the shiny exterior of opulence and joy?
Vernassi said something to the gondolier and gestured in the distance. “It is the next bridge. Ponte della Musica. They all have names. It makes it easier for us to know which one is meant.”
Jasper craned his neck to see the bridge up ahead. It was made of white stone with metal railing, the metal wrought into elegant swirls as if leaves twirled round them. Two men guarded it, one on each side, keeping the curious bystanders at bay. A man with a large pack of something on his back argued in a loud demanding tone.
“He wants to pass,” Vernassi explained. “He’s carrying perishable foods and must deliver them quickly.”
“Instead of arg
uing he had better find another bridge,” Jasper said.
The gondolier steered their boat beside a dock and they clambered out. Jasper rolled back his tight shoulders. The lack of sleep crept through his entire body, clenching his muscles. Vernassi strode ahead of him, his hands on his back as if he was on his morning stroll. He greeted the policeman on their side of the bridge and asked him something. The man shook his head and explained in a waterfall of Italian.
“No one has been here to demand access to the body,” Vernassi said. “Sometimes as soon as the police arrive, relatives show up or friends, who claim to be in tears while it later turns out they were themselves involved in the killing. I will also ask the other man. But we must see the body first.”
Stone steps led up the bridge, flanked by two stone vases with potted roses. Bright red petals lay scattered at the foot of one vase. Lions’ heads worked into the stone panels beside the steps gaped with open mouths and unseeing eyes like silent witnesses.
Exactly in the middle of the bridge, on the highest point of its arc across the water, lay a still form covered by rough brown sacking. Something peeked out from underneath the material. Part of a hand? Jasper peered closer. A delicate hand clasping a red rose.
Jasper held his breath as he approached, his eyes on the hand. It seemed to be female. No drunken brawl between late night drinkers, no tramp dying of alcohol excess.
Vernassi halted and crouched beside the body. As his hand raised the sacking to fold it away from the corpse, Jasper steeled himself against something gruesome. It never ceased to amaze him what violence one person was capable of inflicting on another.
The face of the victim was not damaged. Not deformed by a blow, not streaked with blood. It was quiet and calm, still in death as if she were sleeping. Her eyes were closed, but Jasper knew that, had they been open, they would have been a startling green.
Vernassi sucked in breath, and Jasper leaned down over his shoulder. “It is her,” he said. His heart beat in a low, dull drum beneath his chest bone. “It is her, the woman who stood on the balcony last night.”
Vernassi muttered something in Italian. He folded the entire length of sacking away and they both studied the tall, elegantly dressed body. Because the dress was red, it was hard to detect a blood stain.
Jasper asked, “How did she die?”
Vernassi gestured to one of the police men to come over and asked something. The man replied, pointing at the body. Vernassi nodded and said to Jasper, “The doctor will have to confirm this but he thinks it was a stab straight through the heart that killed her. From behind.”
So the wound was on her back and they could not see it.
Vernassi continued, “A long thin blade as he couldn’t see much of a cut. He closed her eyes and covered the body with the sacking he got from a passerby.”
Jasper frowned. “He should have left it in the same position as he found it.”
“Some respect for the dead.” Vernassi sounded resigned. “The beautiful dead.”
Jasper didn’t agree. He would have wanted to see exactly how she lay there. Stabbed from behind. By surprise? “And that rose?” he asked. “Did he also put that in her hand as respect for the dead?”
Vernassi scoffed. “He wouldn’t have been able to. The body is stiff already, having lain here for hours.” Still he asked the man a few questions, then reported, “It was in her hand when he found her. He thought it came from there.” He nodded back at the stone vases flanking the bridge’s entry.
Jasper frowned. Had the picking of a single flower caused the petals to drift down from other roses? He tried to picture the scene: a woman walking through the city alone at night, picking a rose from a vase and walking to the highest point of the bridge. Halting to look down on the water? Perhaps drop that rose into the water? The attacker approaching from behind and stabbing her so quickly she had no idea what was happening?
His attention was foremost on her face, his mind going back to the photographs he had seen of Lady Bantham when he had been to the estate to speak with her husband about her departure and the missing jewels. He couldn’t be certain as it was three years ago and he had seen many faces since then, but… it could be her. It could actually be her.
Was the rose a signal of something? A sign she had waited for someone here? Had picked it to offer to her secret lover?
Vernassi rose to his feet and sighed, reaching down to brush dirt off his knees. “She’s not carrying a purse or something holding personal belongings. It will be hard discovering who she is.”
“Perhaps not.” Jasper’s chest tightened when he thought of Sir James’s grief last night. The idea of having to ask the elderly man to come here and look at a dead body was repulsive, almost like a crude action, but it might be the only way.
“I would suggest that we ask both Sir James and Lord Bantham to come here and see the body.”
Vernassi studied him, his eyes narrowing. “You mean…”
“I think we should find out as soon as possible whether this woman was indeed Lady Bantham who died in England three years ago.”
Vernassi broke out in a soft chuckle. “You are phrasing this quite right, Jasper. She died in England three years ago. She cannot die again. Not here in Venice, not in my city, not on one of my bridges.”
Jasper put a hand on his friend’s arm. “Let us make sure. I will personally go and fetch them. Sir James asked me last night to look into it. It need not involve you. Please.”
Vernassi grunted. “It will always involve me. This is a body on my territory. I can simply have it removed to the morgue. And you can do nothing about it.”
“I know you’re a man who highly values truth and justice. If something was not right three years ago, we now have the chance to set it straight. You must agree that we need to try to unravel the truth. Just try.”
Vernassi sighed. “You will go and fetch Sir James? On your authority, and at your peril. I have no intention of dragging an old man into this. A man who is an honoured inhabitant of my city. A man who—”
Jasper cut him off with a motion of the hand. “It’s my responsibility. I will go and fetch him now. Can I take your gondola?”
“Of course. I have things to arrange for here.” Vernassi looked dark. “I do not like it. Not at all, Jasper.”
Jasper stared down at the dead woman, at her face which had beamed at them all in triumph and arrogance last night. “Neither do I.”
Chapter Ten
Sir James sat in the bath, soaking his aching muscles in the hot water. His valet had placed a cup of tea within reach, the delicate aroma of bergamot filling the air. A man of habits, Sir James stuck to the same routine wherever he was: a hot bath, a cup of Earl Grey and an egg, boiled for exactly two minutes, then dipped in cold water for twenty seconds and served while the shell was still warm. But this morning he couldn’t bring himself to break it and eat. His stomach seemed too full with tension and disbelief.
Olivia, he whispered, staring up at the bathroom’s pink ceiling with a bathing Artemis in the centre. How could you? It is over and done with. It has to be.
Artemis’s features seemed to resemble those of the woman on the balcony, from the previous night, as she stared down on him. A goddess of vengeance. The unhappy man who caught her bathing had been turned into a deer and been torn apart by his own hunting dogs. Killed by the creatures he had hired to do the killing for him.
A shiver went down Sir James’s spine despite the warm water swirling around his limbs. He closed his eyes and tried to erase the image of the woman on the balcony and her daring smile as she had looked down on them, straight at him it had seemed. Just a vision of an overwrought mind, like a bad dream after indulging in too much meat and port. An illusion.
An illusion seen by many others, including a former inspector of Scotland Yard, who was a rational man, not given to emotions. But he had been undone as well, scrambling for answers. Sir James had felt it in his footfalls as Jasper had paced the room; in his heavy dr
awn eyebrows as he had studied the carpet in front of his feet.
Jasper present on the very night the vision of Olivia appeared. Life had strange coincidences.
Sir James’s eyes flew open as he heard the doorbell below. For a moment he imagined his daughter standing on his doorstep, alive and well, rushing up to come and see him. But if she had wanted to speak with him, she would have come to him instead of appearing at his feast, uninvited, sneaking in under the guise of a mask.
A mask as if she needed to hide from him, play games with him.
Anger rushed through him as he rose from the bath and reached for his robe, swinging it around his wet shoulders. He knocked into the stool, and the tea cup overturned, spilling its brown contents across the floor. It seeped into the gold-embroidered bath rug.
Sir James swore under his breath and rang the silver bell for his valet. At once the door opened and the man came in, saying, “There’s a visitor for you. Former Inspector Jasper. He’s waiting in the sunroom. He said it is urgent.”
Jasper? Having discovered something so soon?
“Tell him I am dressing and will come to him at once. Clean up that spilled tea. I want the rug to look as new before I bathe again.”
“Yes, sir, right away, sir.” The man bent to his task.
Sir James hurried into his bedroom, where his valet had laid the clothes he was to wear on the bed while he bathed. He slipped into his shirt and struggled with the buttons and the cuff links. What could Jasper be calling about?
* * *
Jasper resisted the urge to pace the room as he waited for Sir James. On the way over he had rehearsed the best way to break the news to the man, but he hadn’t found any ‘best way’. A death so soon after the feast would come as a shock, and the idea the body might be Lady Bantham who had not died three years ago made it even worse.
Under the Guise of Death Page 7