The Rossetti Letter (v5)

by Phillips, Christi

  “It’s all my fault,” Francesca chimed in. “I’ve made a terrible mistake.”

  “Terrible mistake,” Gwen echoed.

  Dumbfounded, Gabriella, Maurizio, and Claire stared at the three of them. Maurizio was the first to recover his poise. “This is Signor Corregio, the investigating magistrate,” he said. “Perhaps you should explain further. You could begin,” he said to Francesca, “by telling us who you are.”

  “Yes, of course.” She smiled. “I am Francesca Luponi, head librarian at the Biblioteca Marciana,” she said to Corregio. “You see, Gwen was showing me her diary…”

  Eager to help, Gwen took her diary from her backpack. “See? It looks a lot like that old one, ’cause I spilled Coke on it once, and I dropped it in the road a couple of times, and once this guy on a bike ran over it—”

  Andrew gave Gwen a warning glance and she abruptly stopped speaking.

  “Gwen was showing me her diary,” Francesca continued, “then Claire brought her materials to the desk and somehow when I was putting them all away, I mixed up the diaries and gave them the wrong one.”

  “But she said that she and this girl mixed it up themselves.” Gabriella pointed at Claire while addressing the magistrate. “She already admitted that she took it!” She turned to Andrew. “Do you actually believe this?” she asked, waving her hand at Francesca.

  “It seems that there’s been a…a terrible mistake,” he said. “When I caught up with Gwendolyn here, she told me what had really happened, but she said that Claire told a different story because she didn’t want Francesca to get in any trouble. I thought that it was best for us to proceed to the Marciana to inform Francesca of what had transpired, and being the very nice person she is, she insisted on coming here to put things to rights. So, apparently, it was all just a—”

  “Terrible mistake,” Gwen and Francesca said.

  Good god. Gwen and Francesca had concocted this ridiculous story, and somehow managed to convince Andrew Kent to go along with it. Three faces—Andrew’s, Gwen’s, and Francesca’s—looked guardedly hopeful; two faces—Gabriella’s and Signor Corregio’s—looked as though Francesca’s confession hadn’t quite registered yet, and the questions they sought to form remained formless. Maurizio seemed to be smiling, rather enigmatically, to himself. Claire kept her face as blank as possible lest someone notice that the terrible mistake was actually a terrible lie.

  Corregio looked from Francesca to Maurizio. “Does the director of the Marciana know about this?”

  “Yes, I spoke to the director just a few minutes ago,” Francesca said. “Once he heard that I was completely to blame, he said that he would like to extend his apologies to Miss Donovan, and said that he would be very sorry if an American was arrested or in any way slandered because of a mistake made by an employee of the Marciana, as it could become an international incident and reflect badly on us all.” She smiled prettily at Signor Corregio.

  “Yes,” the investigating magistrate muttered. “Yes, indeed. A very bad reflection that could be.” He stood up, checked his watch, and rubbed his ponderous belly. “Well, well. I think we’re all done here. A terrible mistake. If I leave now I might get home in time for the pasta. Arrivederci.” He eased his bulk out the front door and walked off down the lane.

  Gabriella turned to Andrew, openmouthed with rage. “How could you? You know very well they’re lying.”

  “Gabriella, what does it matter? The diary’s going back to the library. It was a mistake. There’s no reason to carry on like this.”

  “How would you feel if English historical documents were being stolen? If someone took your precious Magna Carta out of the British Museum?”

  “This hardly compares to that. And it wasn’t stolen, it was an accident. Why don’t we just let it be?”

  Gabriella looked around the room defiantly. “We’ll see about that.” She flounced out of the office.

  Andrew and Maurizio exchanged a glance. “I’ll take care of it,” Andrew said, and walked out after her.

  The moment they were gone, the atmosphere in the room lightened considerably. Claire looked at Gwen and Francesca in amazement, and they smiled back broadly. “I don’t know how to thank you,” Claire said. “But, Francesca, I don’t want you to get in any trouble. Perhaps I should speak to the director myself.”

  “It isn’t necessary,” she replied.

  “But you took the blame for all this, and it’s not your fault.”

  “There is no need to worry,” Maurizio said with a smile. “I don’t believe Signor Luponi will fire his own daughter for making a little mix-up like that. Would he?” he asked Francesca.

  “Oh, no.”

  “What do you mean, daughter?” asked Claire, confused.

  “My father is the director of the Biblioteca Marciana,” Francesca confirmed. “As was my grandfather before him. I have excellent job security, although I would hate for this to happen again.” She smiled, but her eyes were serious.

  “It will never happen again,” Claire promised.

  “I think it’s best for us to leave here quickly,” Maurizio said to Claire. “I’ll take you back to your hotel, then go with Francesca to return the diary to the library.”

  They all left the carabinieri office for the nearest traghetto stop. As they walked out of Calle Foscari, Claire saw Andrew and Gabriella at the far end, standing close together and talking. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but Andrew seemed to have a calming effect on Gabriella. She was still speaking excitedly, but with less vehemence than before. Andrew’s hand gently rested on her arm as he looked earnestly in her eyes, attentively listening. Maurizio noticed Claire glancing back at the pair, and walked closer to her.

  “Please excuse our contessa. I know she did not behave very nicely, but she does mean well. This is none of my business, I know, but a word of advice: it might be wise if you didn’t spend any more time alone with Andrew. Gabriella is not an understanding girlfriend. And she is very powerful within certain circles in Italy. She can make a lot of trouble when she wants to.”

  “Not that I was planning to spend any more time with him, but I do appreciate your advice. And thank you for watching out for me. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t been here to help.”

  “Don’t speak of it. I have a vested interest, after all. I would much rather that you be free to speak at the conference again next year instead of locked up in jail. What do you think?”

  “About coming back? I would love to, of course.”

  They reached the traghetto crossing. Maurizio stepped down into the boat and extended his hand to help them board. Claire let the other two go ahead of her, and was still standing on the stone terrace when she heard footsteps behind her.

  “Claire.”

  She turned. Andrew stood a few feet away.

  “I never had a chance to tell you how good your lecture was,” he said.

  “Thanks.”

  “I’m really sorry about all this. Gabriella can be a bit overzealous.”

  A bit? Claire thought, but held her tongue. “It’s okay,” she said, wishing she were completely sincere. Instead, she was thinking that it must be nice to have two men willing to make excuses for you. Ah, well. They’d done a fine job standing up for her, too; she might as well be a good sport about it. Anyway, there was something else on her mind, and this was her last opportunity to find out.

  “Now that the research is done, how long will it take you to write your book?” she asked.

  “Hmmm. That’s a good question.” He clasped his hands behind his back and peered at the ground for a moment. When he looked up, his expression was serious. “I don’t see how I could possibly finish it until well after you’ve written your dissertation. After all, I’ll need to quote from it—quite a lot, I should imagine.”

  Claire smiled, relieved and grateful. Her dissertation could be completed without worry of competition, or redundancy, and then it would be cited in his book. “That’s—that’
s just—great,” she stuttered happily.

  “You will send it to me soon, I hope.”

  “At Cambridge?”

  “Trinity College, yes. You can find my email address on the university website.” He paused. “You know, we still don’t know what happened to Alessandra after the conspiracy ended.”

  “That’s true. I wish we’d been able to find out,” Claire admitted.

  “I have a friend at the University of Padua. Perhaps I’ll give him a call and see what he can turn up.” Andrew checked his pocket for a pen and paper. “Write down your email address, and if he comes across anything of note, I’ll have him send it on.”

  Claire jotted down the information for Andrew, then joined the others in the traghetto.

  “What was all that about?” Gwen asked.

  “Just work stuff.” As the boat moved out into the canal, Claire realized that she hadn’t thanked Andrew—for his help, for the lecture, for everything. She turned around to call to him, but he was already gone.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  GWEN LEANED BACK in the gondola seat and turned her face up to the sun with a satisfied smile.

  “This is awesome,” she sighed as the colorful houses of the Rio di San Giuseppe slowly glided past.

  Claire agreed it was a brilliant outing and more than compensated for the dramatic events of the day. After they’d checked out of the hotel and stowed their luggage in the lobby, she’d surprised Gwen by taking her out to the nearest group of gondole and asking her to choose a gondolier. It was Gwen’s idea to make a tour of the sights mentioned in Claire’s lecture. Good thing she had chosen a young and apparently tireless gondolier for their extended journey.

  Claire regretted that she hadn’t spent all her time in Venice traveling by gondola. It was, of course, the way that the city was meant to be seen, but the obvious truth felt like a revelation. The arterial canals gave the city light and life; it was as if Venice opened before them like a blossoming flower, revealing its true beauty and hidden secrets. The constant movement—of undulating reflections in the water, of their forward progress through sunlight and shade as they slipped momentarily under the arch of an ancient bridge and out again, of the teeming boats in the larger canals or the flapping laundry hung high above the smaller waterways—was interspersed with kaleidoscopic images of sun-drenched stone facades, cascading red begonias in blue window boxes, fat orange cats lazily sunning themselves upon stone steps, and was accompanied by the wonderful aromas of cooking food and the sounds of conversation and music floating down from high, arched windows.

  The gondolier stopped rowing as they reached the end of the canal near the lagoon, and the boat glided to a gentle halt.

  “That’s Alessandra’s house?” Gwen asked.

  “Yes,” Claire affirmed as she took her camera out of its case.

  “Wish we could go inside.”

  “Me, too.” Claire took a few photos of the house and its surroundings.

  “Where to next?”

  “The Rio del Palazzo and the Bridge of Sighs.”

  “That’s where the prison is, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Then to the Piazzetta, where Antonio was hanged, then to the Canal of Orphans, where all those guys were drowned.”

  Claire felt gratified by Gwen’s interest in the Spanish Conspiracy, and chose to overlook her morbid fascination with the places where the more gruesome episodes had occurred. “Yes, and then to Campo Barnaba,” Claire said.

  “This is totally cool.”

  “It’s the least I could do to repay you for springing me out of the clink. Tell me,” she said as the gondolier began rowing them toward the lagoon, “how did you get Andrew Kent to go along with that story you made up?”

  “I didn’t make it up.”

  “Who did, then?”

  “I don’t know. When I saw the police taking you away, I decided to call Francesca. I knew she would understand that I would never leave my diary behind on purpose. Then Andrew caught up with me, and when I told him what I wanted to do, he decided that we should go over there to talk to her. So we took a motorboat to the Marciana, and then Francesca called her dad, and he was talking on the phone to him in Italian—I mean Andrew was talking in Italian, and then he and Francesca talked, and then she told me what to say.”

  “It was incredibly nice of her to go out on a limb for me, even if the director is her father.”

  Gwen shrugged. “I don’t think she was the only one who convinced her dad to go along with it. She told me later that Andrew promised him he’d donate money to the Marciana restoration fund.”

  “He what?”

  “He made a donation. He promised to bring them a check this afternoon.”

  “How much of a donation?”

  “Three thousand euros.”

  “Three thousand euros?”

  “Why are you yelling?”

  “Three thousand euros!”

  “I don’t know what you’re all excited about. It’s a charity. It’s tax deductible.”

  Claire groaned softly and put her head in her hands. Three thousand euros? Andrew Kent had been primarily responsible for Signor Luponi’s acquiescence, without which she could still be sitting in that carabinieri office, or worse. And she hadn’t even said thank you.

  They wheeled their luggage behind them as they walked along the Riva to the San Zaccaria vaporetto stop and to the end of a line waiting for the airport-bound boat. Claire turned to look at the Piazza one last time. This was the busiest hour of the day, with crowds thronging the Riva and filling the tables in the Piazzetta. A masculine hand rose above the constantly moving masses and waved in her direction. A moment later, the person belonging to the hand appeared: it was Giancarlo, pushing his way through the crowds. Striding alongside him was a tanned, dark-haired young man whose good looks rivaled his own. She knew they were together because she saw Giancarlo cuff him on the head, as if urging him to keep up. More incredible still, they were both holding floral bouquets wrapped in cellophane.

  Gwen followed Claire’s speechless gaze into the crowd and gasped. “Nicolo!” she screeched. She turned to Claire. “Oh my god. What am I gonna do? What am I gonna say?”

  Claire had been wondering much the same thing herself. “Just smile and say, ‘Thank you for the flowers.’” Her voice was calm despite the fluttery sensation in her stomach.

  In an instant, Giancarlo and Nicolo had arrived and were standing before them.

  “Ciao,” Nicolo said to Gwen. He seemed to be having a difficult time looking up from his feet.

  “Hi,” said Gwen, blushing to the roots of her hair.

  “I’d hoped to catch up with you sooner, at the hotel,” Giancarlo said to Claire, “but Nicolo wanted to come along, and so…” He touched her arm and tilted his head. They moved a few feet away from the tongue-tied teenagers. “I hate that I’ve spent so much time apologizing to you, but this morning was not what it looked like. Natalie and I are not getting back together. It’s true she’s not very happy right now, and I don’t know what to do about that, but I would really like to see you again.”

  “But I’m leaving now. I have to take Gwen to Paris to meet her father.”

  “And after that?”

  “I’m going home.”

  “Do you have to?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If no one’s waiting for you there, why don’t you come back here?”

  “That’s a lovely idea, but I can’t afford to stay in Venice any longer.”

  “You could stay with me. My flat is not nearly so nice as my parents’ house, but there’s room enough for two.”

  Claire looked into Giancarlo’s face and remembered the breathless excitement she’d felt when she’d first met him. There was no denying that he was one of the handsomest men she’d ever met, perhaps would ever meet.

  “That’s an incredible idea,” she finally said. “I mean, it sounds wonderful, but I don’t know if I—well, I don’t
know.”

  “Will you think about it?” he asked.

  “Of course.”

  “Call me from the Paris airport and let me know what you decide.” He handed her the flowers. “So you don’t forget.”

  They looked at the younger couple near them. Gwen and Nicolo were talking; evidently they’d gotten over their initial shyness. Jesus, he was a good-looking kid, Claire noticed. Must be quite a gene pool these Baldessaris sprang from; she’d never seen such a beautiful family.

  Claire motioned Gwen aside for a quick tête-à-tête. “I bet there aren’t any other girls at your school who can say they’ve got an Italian boyfriend.”

  “Nicolo’s not my boyfriend,” said Gwen, glancing around to see if Nicolo had overheard them. “I mean, we only went out once, and it didn’t turn out very good.”

  “You don’t necessarily have to share all the details,” Claire replied. “I’m just saying that when you go back to school in September, I’m sure that a story about a—how would you describe him?”

  “Drop-dead gorgeous.”

  “A story about a drop-dead gorgeous Italian guy you met in Venice will make everyone forget about what happened with Tyler.”

  Gwen looked hopeful for a second, then reality hit. “Sure, except that no one’s going to believe me. I mean, look at him. No one’s going to believe that someone like him would like someone like me.”

  “You believe that Nicolo likes you, right?”

  “I dunno,” she said, shrugging.

  “Well, you should! If he didn’t like you, he wouldn’t have come to say good-bye.”

  Gwen brightened noticeably for a moment. “Still,” she continued, “just because I know he does, and you know he does, doesn’t mean that anyone else will believe that he does.”

  “Oh, I think they’ll believe you,” said Claire, taking out her camera once more. “Because I’m going to take some photos of you and Nicolo, then you’re going to make a really big enlargement of the best one and put it up on the wall of your dorm room where all your friends can see it—including Tyler.”

  Gwen’s eyes grew wide with delight as she contemplated Claire’s devious plan. “You rock!”