The staircase was stone and almost completely dark. The ground floor, as so often in Venetian houses, was given over to storage; there were separate storerooms with padlocked doors. I could smell the earthy mustiness of beetroots, cabbages and onions, the tang of vinegar, and the clamminess of various long-forgotten rotting objects. I started up the stairs. On each floor I could hear domestic noises within: children crying, the clattering of pots, a buzz of conversation. Then I reached the top floor; here too there were faint sounds of life. I stood still and tried to work out what I was hearing. Then I realised: it was a single female voice emitting an unbroken sequence of muttered words. I couldn’t actually hear any distinct sentences.
I knocked and the muttering voice broke off for a second or two, and then resumed, coming towards me. I began to distinguish words. “Why don’t they leave me alone. Who can that be. What do they want now. Why don’t they leave me alone. Who can it be. Now what do they want.”
Then the door opened. I found myself facing a small woman in black clothes. Her hair was grey and straggly and her face in continual twitchy movement. “What is it now? Who are you? What do you want?”
“Good afternoon, siora. I’m here from the Scuola dei Marangoni da Case.”
“I don’t want anything. I’m all right. Just leave me alone.”
“I’m not trying to sell anything, siora,” I said reassuringly. “I offer condolences on your loss. I hope it’s not a bad time . . .”
“Of course it’s a bad time,” she snapped. “You know it is. Just leave me alone and don’t come back.”
This was not a promising beginning. It looked as if I would have to fall back on the unfailing if undignified persuasive power of money. I pulled out three lire from my pocket. “Siora, on behalf of the Scuola dei Marangoni,” I said, “I would like to offer you some compensation and a contribution towards your expenses.”
Her face stiffened for a moment as she gazed at the coins. “How much is it?”
“Three lire.” I said. “I realise this is inadequate, but I hope it will compensate for the disturbance I am causing you.”
“It is inadequate. Ten lire at least.” And then she resumed her muttering litany: “Why don’t they leave me alone. What do they want. Why don’t they leave me alone . . .”
I decided that haggling would be unsuitable, and I pulled out a filippo, worth eleven lire. “Siora, you’re right. Here’s a filippo. But if I could come in and ask some questions I would be very grateful.”
Her hand shot out and grabbed the coin. Whatever else, there was nothing wrong with her hand–eye coordination. Still muttering, she stood to one side and allowed me to enter the apartment.
I hadn’t known what to expect: scholarly confusion, scholarly precision, dignified penury, squalid clutter? What I had not expected was what I found: almost complete emptiness. There were shelves and cupboards, but they were all completely bare. There were some plain wooden chairs, a table with nothing on it, and a bare floor with Venetian marbling. I almost expected our voices to echo cavernously as we spoke. A door on the right gave on to a bedroom that looked equally stark.
“Have they taken things away?” I said, looking around in amazement.
“Everything,” she said. She spoke with no apparent emotion. This was a simple fact of life.
“Who?” I said.
“Them. The people that came. His people.”
“His . . . ? You mean your brother’s people? His employers?”
She shrugged and made a vague muttering sound, which could have been an answer to my question or just a reversion to her resentful litany.
“Did you know these people?”
She gave a contemptuous shrug.
“Siora,” I said, trying to sound solicitous, “I would like to help you. If these people have gone beyond the boundaries of their authority we can force them to return these things.” I hoped what I was saying was true; I could certainly put in a word with the Missier Grande, I told myself.
She continued to mutter, but she did cast one suspicious look into my face, as if to see whether I was serious.
I insisted: “I’m sure they had no right to leave you destitute like this. I speak as someone who knew your brother.” Well, my morning’s study had made me feel uncomfortably close to him.
She looked at me again, more penetratingly this time. “How did you know him?”
“We were colleagues,” I said.
“I thought you were a carpenter,” she said at once.
She was more attentive than I had imagined. This would require some inventiveness on my part. “Yes, I’m from the Scuola dei Marangoni. It’s actually my surname.” I gave a little laugh, in a rather feeble attempt to lighten the mood. “But I’m not a carpenter myself; I’m responsible for the administrative side of the scuola. And I also occasionally work for the Missier Grande.” This was a risky leap into unknown waters. It would all depend on whether her brother had confided to her about his role as confidente. And also on whether she had approved . . . and on countless other unguessable factors.
She stopped muttering and stared at me. “Prove it,” she said eventually.
I stared back with equal intensity. I imagined that asking her how I could prove it would not help to establish my authenticity. Instead, I said, “I’ve read your brother’s reports.” I was thinking very hard; what was he likely to have told this eccentric but obviously close relative? Well, unless he was grossly irresponsible he would only have given her unimportant snippets of gossip, probably about people she was likely to know. That would limit it to people who lived nearby, I guessed. On a venture I said, “I know about Sior Vianello, the man who works at the Marciana library, and his habit of smuggling books by Voltaire home with him.” Sior Vianello lived just round the corner from this house.
She cackled. “Yes, they soon put a stop to that. Lucky to have kept his job.”
I was beginning to feel a little less sympathy for this woman, but none the less I kept my tone benign. “Your brother wrote a very balanced report on him. Judicious but not too damning.”
“I told him he was too soft. Could have had him locked up for good. Always so smarmy and sneering. And his wife, who does she think she is? Giving me her condolences. I soon put a stop to that. Told her a few home truths.”
“Yes, I expect you did,” I said, feeling distinctly uncomfortable now.
“Paolo was always telling me not to mention anything he’d found out. Nothing to stop me now, is there?”
“Well,” I said, “I still think you should be careful. Even just out of respect for your brother.”
She let out another cackle. “I’ll just be telling people the things Paolo would have liked to tell them himself but couldn’t.”
“Because of his vows to the Missier Grande. He” – I uttered the pronoun with a hushed awe so that it would be clear I was referring to the Missier Grande and not to her brother – “would not be pleased to hear that his rules are being flouted. And remember that his reach is extensive.”
This did unsettle her slightly. There were few people bold enough to dismiss the Missier Grande airily. “Well, I won’t be saying anything against the Republic.”
“No, I’m sure you won’t,” I said. It appeared that I had at least convinced her of my role as a colleague of her brother. I suspected that any investigators who had questioned her before this had not broken down her defences in similar fashion. So now I could start probing with some hope of obtaining fresh evidence.
“Do you happen to know anything about a diary he was keeping?” I asked.
“Ah,” she said, and assumed a knowing expression.
“You do know about such a diary, then,” I said. “Did the sbirri take it away with them?”
She looked contemptuous. “Not them. They had no idea.”
“Well, I wouldn’t be so sure,” I said. “He mentioned the diary in the reports he wrote for the Missier Grande.”
“Oh, they knew there was a diary,�
� she said. “And they kept asking me about it.”
“And what did you tell them?”
She looked smug. “I didn’t tell them anything. I know how to keep my mouth shut.”
I doubted that that was literally true. I suspected that on the contrary she had baffled them by indulging in her meaningless sequential muttering. They had probably concluded that she was too deranged to be worth interrogating at length; that had certainly been my initial reaction.
“So where is the diary?” I said.
She continued to look smug. I could see that there was a risk of this becoming an endlessly protracted game unless I played it correctly. She might not be deranged, but there was undeniably something infantile about her. I would just have to treat her as one would an irritating child.
“Oh, I see; you don’t know,” I said, and turned as if to go.
“Oh, don’t I?” she said at once.
“Well, I imagine not,” I said, “or you would have told me. Anyway, I have more important matters to attend to.” I put my hand on the door handle.
“Wait just one moment,” she said. “I could tell you . . .”
“Could you?” I said, making my tone as flat as possible.
“Yes, I could.”
I waited.
“But my memory isn’t always as good as it should be.”
I continued to wait. If she wanted another bribe she would have to spell it out clearly.
“Another filippo might help.” She said it without any embarrassment.
“Another scudo,” I countered firmly. That was seven lire. I did not take it from my pocket yet.
“Well,” she said, as if trying to dredge some recalcitrant fragment of memory from the murky depths of her mind, “I might be able to remember. Let me think.”
I began to gaze around as if wondering whether I might spot the diary in some previously uninspected hiding place, like the table in the middle of the room.
“Let me see now, let me see now . . .”
“Take your time,” I said drily.
“Well, I never actually saw the diary,” she said.
“Ah,” I said. This was unexpected.
“No. But he told me about it. He thought it better to keep it somewhere safe.”
“I see,” I said. “The scudo will be for useful information, you do understand?”
She looked decidedly irked. “Well, I didn’t tell you I had it, did I?”
“You led me to understand that you knew where it was,” I said. “For that information I promised you a scudo.”
“Well, I do know.”
“Good.”
“More or less.”
I waited.
“It’s here in the city.”
“Good,” I said. “That will save me dredging the lagoon.”
“In recent months he had started visiting the monks on Sant’Elena,” she said.
“Oh, really?” I said. There had been no mention of this in any of the files. “Why?”
“He was devoted to Saint Helena,” she said. “She discovered the True Cross.”
“Yes, so I believe,” I said.
“And she was the mother of Emperor Constantine.”
“Yes,” I said again, still a little puzzled. Then I remembered something from the files. Padoan had had occasion to mention Constantinople a few times, with reference either to merchants who had dealings with the city or to Turkish ambassadors from the city residing in Venice. On each occasion he had referred to it rather curiously as the “Holy City of Constantinople”.
“Well, there you are then,” she said, as if that explained everything.
I realised I might cast a doubt on my position as a close colleague of her brother if I expressed further puzzlement, so I said slowly, “I see.”
“You know what he thought of Constantine,” she said.
“Yes,” I said, “founder of the Holy City.”
That clearly reassured her. “Exactly.”
“And so he kept his diary there, with the monks?” I asked.
I think she was trying to calculate whether anything would be gained by another bout of “I could tell you”. She clearly decided that she had exhausted that particular line of bargaining, for she said after a pause, “I think so.” She gazed pointedly at my pocket.
“Did you ever hear him mention a salotto?”
“A what?”
“A salotto. A place where people meet and discuss literature, politics, the arts . . .”
“My brother would never have gone to a place like that,” she said without hesitation.
“Are you sure?”
“He didn’t like talking. Sometimes he wouldn’t say a word for days on end.”
I suspected he had never been given much chance. “And did he ever mention a group of people called the Four Horsemen?”
She shook her head. “He didn’t talk much. Only sometimes, when I asked him specially, telling him I hadn’t heard any news from anyone all day . . .”
I could imagine her voice, needling him insistently until he dropped a few gobbets of gossip to keep her happy. I began to feel sorry for her again, as well as for him. I pulled out the scudo and passed it to her. She immediately buried it deep in her clothes.
“Could I see the altana?” I said, not sure whether I needed to return to the pretence of representing the Scuola dei Marangoni.
“Why?”
“We need to make a report on the accident. Is it certain your brother was alone on the altana?”
“Yes, of course he was. I don’t go out there.”
“Has anyone else been there? Did the sbirri inspect it?”
“Of course they did. In and out, up and down, didn’t even have the goodness to bring in the washing till I asked them.”
“Did they say anything about it?”
“About what? The washing?”
“No,” I said patiently, “the altana. Did they say what had happened?”
“Just that it had broken. I knew that already. I was always telling Paolo to be careful. It’s what I told the landlord’s man as well.”
“Who?”
“The man who came to inspect it the other week.”
“You mean before the accident?”
“Yes, of course. The landlord then told me he hadn’t sent anyone, but that’s what he would say, isn’t it? He said the altana was nothing to do with him. He hadn’t put it there.”
“Is that true?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. Can’t remember things like that. Perhaps Paolo put it up years ago. Or someone.”
“And you’re saying that the other week, before the accident, a man came to inspect it, claiming he had been sent by the landlord?”
“Yes.”
“And did you tell the sbirri about this?”
“No. No one asked. I told the landlord, said he should be ashamed, and that’s when he started saying he hadn’t sent anyone.”
“What was he like? This man who came to see the altana?”
She shrugged again. “Don’t know. Pulcinella.”
“Pulcinella?”
“That’s what he reminded me of. I remember calling him Pulcinella. Didn’t seem to mind.”
“In what way did he remind you of Pulcinella? His clothes? A long nose? Was he hunchbacked?”
“Can’t remember.” She was beginning to grow cantankerous. “I’ve had enough of your questions. Go and have a look at the altana if you like, then leave me alone.” She resumed her incantatory muttering. “Why can’t they leave me alone. Why doesn’t he go away. Why can’t I be left in peace . . .” I had the idea that this was a habit she had taken up deliberately years ago to keep neighbours away, and now she hardly knew when she was doing it. Maybe it had begun purely as a defensive strategy, but it had become so much part of her character that it was hard to draw a line between pretence and real derangement. I guessed I was not going to get any more sense out of her. It was not surprising that the sbirri, who were not famed for subt
lety or patience, had not questioned her in any meaningful fashion.
She pointed to a window in the corner of the room. I walked over and stared out. It was a dormer window, and I was looking straight out on to the altana, which had been built just outside.
I looked back at her. She was now just staring at the front door, her face twitching and her mouth engaged in the same endless litany. I imagined this would go on until I left by that same front door. I had better carry out my inspection quickly.
There was a stool nearby, clearly kept there to provide easy access. I climbed on to the stool and opened the window. Crouching down, and saying a nervous prayer to myself, I stepped out. There was still a lazily drifting mist, but it was not thick enough to conceal the long drop to the ground. This was one of the tallest houses in the neighbourhood, so there was an unimpeded view of the city. I could see the nearby towers of San Domenico and Sant’Antonio, the dome of San Nicolò and, further off, the slender tower of San Francesco della Vigna; westwards the mist blurred the solid shape of the great campanile of San Marco; gazing out to the lagoon I could see sails and masts swaying slightly – or was it the altana that was swaying? I gripped the window-frame more tightly and looked carefully at the structure.
It was a simple square platform, made of wooden planks, and it projected horizontally from the sloping roof. Presumably it was supported at the front end by small columns of bricks, which I decided not to inspect. Around the three sides of the flat square was – or, at least, had been – a simple railing supported by wooden poles at the corners, with X-shaped cross-poles beneath it. However, the railing opposite where I stood was broken in the middle, and just looking at the gap made me feel queasy. Across the middle of the platform, just to the left of where I was standing, ran a single washing line supported by two poles, one close to the window and the other by the gap in the railing. I imagined that while hanging clothes on that side of the platform Padoan was likely to have rested against the railing, and then . . .
I forced myself to approach the gap, and peered over the edge. There was a sheer drop to the street below, and although my feet remained on the platform, my eyes and mind swooped down with a sickening plunge to the grey stones beneath. I examined the broken edges of the railing. The wood looked fairly rotten, and it was perfectly feasible that it had simply given way. With infinite care I knelt on the very edge of the platform and peered down at the guttering; I thought I could see, amid the dead leaves and pigeon-shit, a powdery substance which could well be sawdust. It had not rained in the last week or two, and so if anyone had sawed away at the wood it was quite likely that the evidence would still be there.
The Four Horsemen Page 5