Urbino found her gaze somewhat disconcerting.
“But that would mean that the police would have to accept the death as caused by a curse and not open an investigation. I don’t think superstition is one of the traits of the police.”
“Perhaps not, but maybe the Italian police are different. Things seem to suffer a sea change when they cross the Alps. And, yes, Sebastian,” she added, turning briefly to her brother, “I’m quite aware I’m mixing my metaphors. I may even have done it deliberately to show Urbino how caught up I am in this whole story.”
She smiled at Urbino as if they had a secret.
“But the police don’t seem to have been concerned about looking into this femme fatale’s death—what was her name? Renata? What do you think happened? A mysterious death in the thirties! Just the kind of thing someone like you would love to sink his teeth into. I’m sure you have theories.”
“I found no reason to think anything other than what was determined at the time—that she died of a cerebral hemorrhage,” Urbino said, an element of caution creeping into his response.
“But you have your suspicions, don’t you?” Viola asked earnestly, as if her opinion of him was riding on his answer. Urbino, however, was relieved of having to make one when, once again, her brother plunged ahead:
“Maybe she was murdered! Old—or rather young—Dr. Vasco shot her with poisoned darts of mesmeric suggestion! You saw the way he looked at Molly when she was dipping into the past. Or maybe Bambina had finally had enough of being in the ravishing Renata’s shadow. Then again, Mamma Zeno could have knocked off her own daughter for some twisted reason. Or maybe it was matricide: Gemma, the bad seed, giving her mother the old heave-ho! No! I’ve got it. It was the Conte, and the Zenos have gathered to take their revenge against Barbara. Hmm, why does that sound familiar to me? Ah, yes, Murder on the Orient E! How appropriate that we came chugging in on it ourselves with little Molly.”
“But not the authentic one that went all the way to Istanbul,” Viola took some pleasure in reminding him.
“Not a tinplate replica, either. And here we are, safe and sound, and ready for anything. I know I am! What I’m going to do now is take a peek at the C.R. before it gets cleared of cobwebs.”
He hurriedly downed the rest of his drink and left.
2
Viola was in no way as eager to leave as her brother had been. She rearranged her long limbs and dress with a self-conscious air. Urbino was struck by that correspondence between a person’s appearance and interests that occasionally comes along to startle you. Viola had said that she had done a project on Christina Rossetti, and here she was looking as much like Dante Gabriel Rossetti’s favorite model, Mrs. Morris, as it was possible to look without intentional caricature, and of this he didn’t silently accuse her. Her affectations lay in other directions.
She looked at him with eyes that, through no visible effort on her part, became even more Swinbumish and melancholy. Their green color had a trick of darkening startlingly. He almost expected her to break out into an exotic melange of anapests and spondees but instead she said in her deep voice, “Sebastian was acting a bit strangely, don’t you think?”
“How can one tell?”
“Well, he was,” she said with a laugh. “Take it from someone who knows. For one thing, he’s recovering from one of his love affairs. He always chooses the wrong kind of man, poor boy. And he probably feels guilty for bringing Molly here. He’s the one who struck up the acquaintance first. If she even has indigestion during the night—or if there’s any contretemps at our dinner table of thirteen—he’ll take it hard. Beneath that bantering surface he’s really quite sensitive.”
“Not unlike you,” Urbino ventured.
“I don’t exactly know how to take that. I’ve become suspicious of comparisons between myself and Sebastian.”
“Inevitable, aren’t they?”
Urbino wondered if Sebastian and Viola had ever deceived people by pretending to be the other, an easy enough trick for fraternal twins, but somehow not completely unbelievable in these twins of opposite sexes. He absent-mindedly started to trace out Sebastian’s features in Viola’s face, until he saw that Viola was staring at him. He was embarrassed and folded up the Conte’s letter and put it in his pocket.
“We make you feel uncomfortable, and you don’t quite know why, do you?” she said with an ironic little smile. “Well, we won’t pursue the topic. Let me ask you something easier to answer. Am I mistaken or is Angelica’s last name the same as Renata’s fiance?”
“Angelica is Andrew Lydgate’s grandniece—and his heir. He died a few years ago.”
“How intriguing! Death prevents two people from marrying and two generations later their heirs consummate it. It’s romantic, but also a little bizarre, you have to admit. Is this a marriage of love or convenience?”
“They look as if they’re very much in love.”
“Ah, appearances! Who can trust them?”
She was silent a few moments as if contemplating her own comment, and stared down into her glass. When she looked up, she said, “So we’re a cozy group, aren’t we? Even a bit incestuous. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad thing for us to bring a thirteenth guest to the feast. Molly and Barbara’s two friends will help to thicken up the blood.”
Suddenly a woman’s scream shattered the air. Urbino and Viola jumped up and went out into the hall.
3
Right on the heels of a surprisingly sprightly Dr. Vasco, they followed a second scream to its source in the conservatory at the end of the hall. There, Gemma, pale and frightened-looking, was sprawled on a sofa set among a sea of lush foliage. The conservatory, so little changed from the past and with its incongruous scattering of sofas, chairs, footstools, and little tables, was like some colonialist drawing room in the process of being reclaimed by the jungle. Or—at the moment—destroyed by the boisterous gale crashing against the glass.
“She went all white and almost fainted, poor thing,” Molly said.
Bambina emerged from behind a screen of artificial-looking plants. She was holding a glass.
“Here’s some water, Gemma dear.”
She held the glass out to her niece, who made a determined motion of pushing it away. Vasco hurried over to the sofa and said sternly to Bambina, “What are you trying to do? Get away from her!”
He reached out in a gesture intended as both a rebuff of Bambina’s ministrations and a protection of Gemma, who now looked even paler than she had a few moments before.
Bambina gave a good appearance of being amused instead of offended.
“No reason to waste good water,” she said.
She was about to pour it on one of the plants encroaching on the sofa when she shrugged and quaffed it herself. She put the glass down and went over to her mother, who was sitting in an armchair, the large ostentatious flowers of a hibiscus shrub gleaming behind her with a sickly efflorescence.
“My poor little Gemma,” Vasco said, moving closer to her and reaching out for her hand. “Why don’t you lie down and put your head on a pillow?”
Gemma shrank from him.
“I’m perfectly all right! It’s—it’s just the air in here. My God, you can’t even breathe!”
The old physician retreated a few steps. A look of guilt crossed his lined face, but was replaced by one of anger when Molly broke out in the poetical manner reserved for her retrospective statements:
“In the sweet long ago, a lovely girl of innocent ways died after she breathed the air of all these shrubs and herbs and fleurs. Roses, there must be roses.”
At this moment the Contessa appeared, a bit out of breath, with Sebastian at her side.
“Who screamed? Gemma! You look like a ghost!”
The Contessa rushed over to Gemma and threw her arms around her. She looked up at Vasco, who continued to stare at Molly, now with an unmistakable glaze of fear in his eyes.
“Dr. Vasco, can’t you see that she needs attention?”
“I don’t need him or—or anyone else fussing over me!” Gemma insisted. “Is that Robert?” she asked expectantly when footsteps sounded outside the conservatory.
But it wasn’t Robert. It was Oriana and Filippo Borelli and Mauro, followed by two of the staff laboring under enough luggage to take the Borellis on a world cruise.
Oriana quickly surveyed the scene from behind her large-frame eyeglasses. She was an attractive middle-aged woman known throughout the city, and as far as Rome and Milan, for her histrionics and extramarital affairs.
“I must say, Barbara dear,” she said in her throaty voice, “that you’ve chosen the strangest place to entertain your guests. I’ve always suspected that you keep a snake or two slithering around for atmosphere in this mad jungle! And tonight of all nights!” She made a wide gesture that included not only the wind and the rain immediately outside the windows but also the storm-tossed waters of the Grand Canal and, beyond them, the Adriatic crashing against the Lido barriers. “The only worse choice would have been the loggia! Can you believe it, Filippo?”
Her husband, a tall, handsome man who managed to make his total baldness look like an adornment, said in impeccable English, “Barbara always surprises me. That’s what makes her a magnificent woman. Buona sera, Barbara. Maybe we can shake ourselves off on your plants.”
“My God! You’re both soaking! You must change immediately.” The Contessa hurriedly made the necessary introductions—Oriana and Filippo knew only Urbino and Gemma. “Lucia, show the Borellis up to the Longhi Room and have Tonio and Carlo bring their things.”
Oriana went over to the sofa.
“Let Filippo and me help you to your room, Gemma dear,” she said. “Your son can find you there and you can introduce us.”
Seeming anxious to leave the conservatory, Gemma nodded her head weakly and put herself in the care of the Borellis.
“What happened to her?” the Contessa asked Urbino after Oriana and Filippo had helped Gemma out.
“I don’t know. Viola and I were in the salotto when we heard a scream.”
“That was me,” Signora Zeno said, obviously proud that she could still scream loudly enough to summon practically the whole house. “Gemma was sitting normally one minute and the next she fell over. It’s a shock to see one’s own granddaughter look so ill.”
A shock, but also a gratification, if one could judge by the self-satisfied look on her small, wrinkled face.
“It was right after Signora Wybrow—that is your name, yes?—right after she said something about plant diseases,” Signora Zeno clarified.
“Plant diseases?” the Contessa repeated.
“I was merely saying that I could feel all sorts of diseases growing around me,” Molly explained. “And perhaps I said something about aphids and slugs. I don’t always know what I’ve said after I’ve said it,” she added, looking at them all as if she expected immediate and abundant praise. When none was forthcoming, she said, “Is my room ready, Contessa Barbara?”
“I’ll say it is, Molly!” Sebastian said.
“Why don’t you show her, Sebastian? We’ll see you for drinks before dinner, Molly dear.”
The Contessa’s voice held a note of weariness.
When Molly and Sebastian had left, Viola leaned closer to Urbino and whispered, “Barbara looks knackered already. She’s going to need you this weekend. And you can count on me—and Sebastian. It’ll be our penance for having added Molly to the brew.”
The Contessa was peering into the dense screen of plants behind the sofa.
“Aphids and slugs,’ is that what she said? And ‘diseases.’ She must be mistaken.”
“Of course she is,” Bambina said. “She hasn’t got the slightest idea of what she’s talking about—ever! Nonsense from start to finish!”
“I hope so,” the Contessa said, but she didn’t look convinced.
4
“The weekend has barely begun, caro, and I’m about to snap,” the Contessa said to Urbino half an hour later in the salotto. “I should have just had Gemma come here and paint my portrait. That would have been enough stress.”
“But you were prepared for much of this.”
“Not for Molly! Not for a thirteenth guest! And I certainly wasn’t prepared to throw open the Caravaggio Room after all these long years!”
“Don’t let superstition ruin your weekend.”
“Superstition! You heard that woman. She does have a gift, of one kind or another. She knows things, and people who know things are—are—”
“Molly is a harmless sort,” Urbino said, not quite believing his own words.
“She’s done quite a bit of harm already. She must have said something to upset Gemma. I certainly don’t believe she almost fainted because of plant diseases and aphids and slugs.” She sighed and shook her head slowly. “You can try to minimize things, but you know and I know that Molly is in possession of some disturbing pieces of information. She got them somewhere, and if it wasn’t from the ambient air or halos or auras or whatever in creation they’re called, then from where? No one here knows her.”
“There’s Sebastian and Viola.”
“They met her on the train.” She considered for a moment, then went on: “She’s a stranger who knows more than a stranger would or should. I don’t pretend to understand it. You’re the rational one.”
“Which means you’re irrational?”
“Which means that I’m confused and frightened and looking to you for some guidance!”
“I’ve never let you down, have I? And this time you have your cousins, too. Viola said that she and Sebastian would be whatever help they could be this weekend. She’s concerned about you.”
“I don’t think you should be so quick to rely on Viola—with or without Sebastian. I know they’re blood, but they’re just children! They could be your children!”
“Perhaps, if I had been much more precocious in that area than I ever was. But I disagree with you. Viola might be young—Viola and Sebastian might be young,” he amended, “but they’re not dullards. Sebastian is a bit of a poseur but I doubt if he means anything by it.”
“On the contrary! The boy means everything under the sun by it. It’s his whole identity! You’re more attracted to that kind of behavior than you should be.”
Urbino didn’t disagree but told her that he had taken it upon himself to relate the history of the Caravaggio Room to the twins and had read Alvise’s letter to them.
“They didn’t need to know! It’s not any of their business. Whatever will they think of Alvise?”
It was only to be expected that this would be her first concern. Urbino felt uncomfortable as he remembered how Sebastian had joked about the Conte having “done in” the beautiful Renata.
“Well, the damage is done already,” the Contessa said with a resigned air. “I’ll tell them to be as discreet as someone their age can be. All we need is for them to put ideas into Molly’s head when she’s already buzzing with them! And sleeping in the Caravaggio Room! You saw how Gemma takes it as a personal affront! And Marialuisa Zeno and Bambina can’t be too happy, either. Who knows what Molly said to them? Remember! You’re the unofficial host this weekend. You should have been seeing that things were running smoothly instead of telling tales out of school and having tête-à-têtes with Viola. You were alone with her when Sebastian came up to the Caravaggio Room!”
He ignored the implications of this and said, “Maybe it wasn’t Molly who upset Gemma, it could have been Mamma Zeno or Bambina. Those three don’t exactly make an ideal grouping. Rather—rather odd, wouldn’t you say?”
“And would you call it even odder when you throw Robert, Angelica, and Dr. Vasco in, and then—just for good measure—me?”
“Viola called it a cozy group,” Urbino risked saying. “She even described it as incestuous.”
“Filled wi
th the wrong kind of imagination, that girl, and don’t forget it! Well, whatever you want to call our little group, there are too many balls in the air for me to juggle. I’d retire to my room for the weekend if the idea of three ailing women under one roof wasn’t too absurd.”
“Three?”
“Me, Gemma, and Robert’s pale and wan Angelica. Speaking of her, I wonder where she and Robert disappeared to? Gemma won’t take it too lightly that her precious son was off with Angelica somewhere when she needed him.”
“Doesn’t she like Angelica?”
“Let’s just say that she doesn’t approve of the family connection, despite all the money. She would have been happier if he had foraged more distant fields. And I think she’s nervous about the precedent.”
“The precedent?”
The Contessa had temporarily lost him.
“The death of a future bride, her mother, so many years ago. In this house, and in the very room that our little Molly is even now making her own. We’re in for quite a weekend! And this weather won’t make things any better. We’ll be thrown even more on each other’s company. No chance for Torcello.”
She cast an apprehensive glance toward the window, against which the wind and rain beat with increased force.
A few minutes later Urbino watched the storm with alarm from the window of his room. The water level in the side canal had risen considerably. The pavement across the way was awash with water not only collecting from the rain but seeping from beneath as well—a very bad sign.
When he called his housekeeper to double-check the security of the Palazzo Uccello, he had difficulty getting through. First there was no signal on the line, then it crackled several times and almost went dead.
“Everything is fine, Signor Urbino,” Natalia said when he reached her, but there was an undercurrent of worry in her voice.
He hung up the receiver and continued to stare, broodingly, out the window at the gray sheets of rain.
5
“Aren’t you a sly one, Countess Barbara! Trying to test me like that,” Molly said when she joined the rest of the party in the library for drinks. Her grin twisted her face all to one side.
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