The Contessa, drying her tears with her handkerchief, looked up at him strangely.
“I don’t necessarily mean her—her pronouncements,” he clarified, “but her directness. She was without pretensions when she wasn’t pontificating. That was her real self.”
He thought of the little woman’s preference for gin and the colloquial, and then of her body sprawled on the floor of the Caravaggio Room. He sighed and patted the Contessa’s hand and stood up.
He told Mauro to ask Dr. Vasco to come upstairs but to say nothing to the other guests about what had happened. When Mauro had left, the Contessa got slowly to her feet.
“I’ll see how Gemma is doing. Then I’ll tell the others after Luigi has had a chance to—to examine poor Molly. She died through my negligence. I must face that. If she hadn’t slept in the Caravaggio Room she’d be alive.”
“This isn’t the time for self-indulgent superstition.”
“Is it superstition that I didn’t have the doors looked after properly? Superstition that if I had, they wouldn’t have blown open? Molly is dead because of me.”
“We don’t really know what happened to her.”
“You stop right there, do you hear? Right there! I didn’t want anyone to know my brooch had been stolen. Do you think I want to have it bruited about that one of my guests might have been murdered and that—that someone under this roof is the murderer? That poor, defenseless woman died because of me, I tell you, and I won’t have it any other way!”
3
Vasco turned away from Molly’s body with a face that looked more frightened than anything else. His emaciated body was trembling slightly.
“A terrible accident! We should remove her head from the door and lay her on the bed. I’m sure if we call up Robert or Sebastian, we can manage it.”
“I don’t think we should touch her,” Urbino said.
Vasco raised one bushy gray eyebrow.
“And why is that?”
“The police will want to have everything kept just as we found it.”
“For decency’s sake! She can’t be left like that!”
“You’re right, of course. Photographs will have to be taken, then. We’ll move her after we take them.”
Vasco looked down at the twisted body of the woman who had begun by irritating him yesterday but who, by the end of the evening, had seemed to strike in him a sympathetic chord.
“As you wish.” Vasco made a stiff little bow. “And what about little Gemma?” he asked as if she were still the eight-year-old girl she had been when her mother had died in the same room. “She saw this, didn’t she? I must go to her.”
Urbino followed Vasco out into the hall and closed the door gently behind them. The Contessa hurried over to them.
“Gemma doesn’t want to see anyone, not even Robert, but I think you should see her, Luigi.”
Silently Vasco set off for the other wing.
“How bad is she?” Urbino asked.
“Very bad. The shock of finding Molly is reason enough, but something else seems to be behind it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t know. Just a feeling, and God knows I can’t trust my responses right now. And she’s not a well woman. You must see it!” She looked toward the other wing as if considering something. “But I must get myself together. I have to break the news.”
“Do you want me to do it?”
“I should be the one. Let me get it over with. Why don’t you ask Angelica and Filippo to come down? We’ll all meet in the library.”
4
“I have something very unfortunate to tell you all,” the Contessa said to the nine guests gathered uneasily in the library. “It’s about Molly. She’s had an accident.”
She was restraining herself from looking at Urbino.
“An accident? What kind of accident?” asked Angelica.
Scarfed and demi-gloved, she sat near the fire in a deep armchair. Robert was beside her, holding her hand. One of the locks of his short-cropped black hair fell across his forehead, giving him a slightly vulnerable look. His improbably blue eyes were troubled.
“I—I’m afraid, my friends, that she’s dead.”
“Dead?” Angelica repeated, her heart-shaped face looking lost and bewildered. “That’s impossible.”
“Molly is most definitely dead,” Vasco said sadly.
“My mother!” Robert said and dropped Angelica’s hand. He appeared ready to bound from the room.
“She’s resting,” the Contessa said. “She prefers to be alone right now, Robert.”
“There’s nothing to worry about,” Vasco said, not convincingly. “She said to come to her room later.”
“Please don’t leave me, Robert,” Angelica said. She took his hand again. “I—I’m afraid.”
“There’s no reason for you to be afraid, Angelica,” the Contessa said emphatically. “It was a freak accident.”
This time she did look at Urbino, as if challenging him to disagree with her.
“Most freakish,” Vasco said. “The balcony doors blew open from the force of the wind and—and hit her in the head. An obvious and tragic accident.”
“How ghastly!” Viola said. She was sitting on the sofa between Urbino and her brother. Her green eyes darkened and became more Swinburnish. “Poor Molly!”
“Poor Molly? Poor us!” Oriana almost screamed. “Can’t you see? The number thirteen! And this storm raging around us, cutting us off from any hope of help!”
“Maybe all the bad luck has been used up, Oriana,” Sebastian said and gave a nervous laugh. “The Caravaggio Room has taken the thirteenth guest as its victim. Rather economical when you think of it.”
All too obviously and most inappropriately he was straining to recapture his characteristic manner, but his heart didn’t seem to be in it. Neither could he count on an appreciative audience unless it was, briefly, Bambina. She suppressed a giggle, of which she seemed to have an abundance to be bubbled out or held back, as the occasion demanded. Her mother, however, sitting next to her on the sofa, frowned her disapproval of Sebastian’s comment.
“If you don’t know what to say, Sebastian,” the Contessa reprimanded, “it would be best to keep quiet.”
“She’s right, young man,” said Vasco. “This is no moment for humor with little Molly lying the way she is upstairs, her life snuffed out by such a sad accident.”
Sebastian got up and went over to the liquor cabinet.
“My sincere apologies to you all. My humor wasn’t meant to be irreverent. To steady the nerves, you know. Now I think I’ll indulge in something a bit stronger.” He poured himself a whiskey. “I don’t think the rules against drinking before a certain hour apply when there’s a dead lady lying in the house.”
Viola was staring at him without her usual ironic affection, but instead with a look of distinct dislike.
“You’ve become very unfunny of late, Sebastian. How can you say such things when we’re the ones who are responsible for Molly’s death? Yes, us! We invited her here. We imposed her on Barbara. If we had let well enough alone, she’d be alive now in some hotel or other, entertaining people with her—her gift.”
A look of embarrassed guilt came over Sebastian’s face. He took a big sip of whiskey and retreated to the other side of the room.
“If any of us should feel in any way responsible for poor Molly’s death, it is I,” the Contessa said. “And not because I set her up in the Caravaggio Room. It was because of the loggia doors that she died. If they had been looked after properly, this would never have happened. I accept full responsibility.”
She looked around at the group as if defying any of them to dispute her claim to guilt and responsibility.
She was about to go on when Mamma Zeno startled them all by raising her cane and saying loudly, “An act of God! He’s the only one responsible. The only one!”
Urbino was confused as to whether this outburst was to be taken as a pious expression of faith i
n Providence or a condemnation of the whims of the Deity. The way Mamma Zeno looked briefly at her daughter—as if searching her face for some validation of what she had said—gave him no clue. Bambina’s only reaction was a great deal of shifting about, followed by a concentrated playing with the lace at the wrists of her dress.
The Contessa, who probably thought it best neither to agree or disagree with Mamma Zeno’s ambiguous comment, took a deep breath and said:
“Under the circumstances we’ll just try to get through the rest of our time together as best we can and as respectfully as we can, remembering that poor Molly is lying the way she is upstairs. Let’s hope that things will soon be back to normal.” This must have struck her ears as a bit naive, if not fatuous, for she added, “I mean the electricity and the telephones and—and everything like that.”
As if to warn them all of just how long things might take to return to this questionable state of normality, the storm howled and hurled itself against the frail barrier of the windows. The drapes ballooned inward toward the group, huddling together in their fear and uneasiness.
5
When Urbino returned to the Caravaggio Room ten minutes later after getting a camera from the Contessa’s room and a pair of rubber gloves from the cabinet beneath the sink in the conservatory, the rainwater was now pooling more deeply and widely around Molly’s body. Some of the blood had become a fainter pink.
He looked down at the body and silently uttered something that was both a prayer and a promise. He would find out why the little woman had ended up like this. Even if he hadn’t grown fond of her in the short time he had known her, he owed her this.
He started to take photographs, thankful that the Contessa had supplied the camera with film in anticipation of her house party. Photography was far from his forte. Fortunately, however, the Contessa’s camera had proven itself amenable to his inexpert manipulations on those rare occasions when he had wielded it, once or twice in situations and conditions he had been sure would yield up only embarrassing oblongs of black.
He began by photographing Molly’s body from every possible angle. It was a distasteful task, more so for him than for most other men, for if the truth were told, Urbino was unusually squeamish when it came not only to the sight of blood but even to the sound of his own heartbeat. As he maneuvered around the body, he once again detected the scent of perfume or cologne interlaced with the odor of blood. It was vaguely familiar, and seemed to be more concentrated near Molly’s body. He bent down and sniffed. Yes, it definitely was stronger. Either perfume or cologne had been spilled near her body or she had put on some perfume before her death.
He next took photographs of the room: the bed, with its bedclothes turned down but apparently not slept in. The chair and overturned little table. Molly’s clothes and possessions scattered about. Her spectacles lying twisted on the floor. Her felt slippers, which seemed to have been kicked off violently or carelessly. The walls, the carpet, the drapes, the loggia doors.
And the blood.
He looked for signs of more blood other than what had dripped down onto the loggia door beneath Molly’s pierced head and formed a pool. He couldn’t find any.
When he realized he was photographing even the Caravaggio, he put the camera down. Certainly he was carrying things too far. The room would be locked after they moved Molly’s body. But what of the loggia doors? How secure were they now? Should they be kept open or should he close them and try to secure them? The wind was occasionally moving them back and forth, the motion of the broken-paned door limited by Molly’s impaled head.
Carefully stepping around Molly’s body, he took several photographs of the loggia, so awash with the rain driven in by the storm that the drains were inadequate to deal with it. The wind whipped at him.
He noticed something in the water and picked it up. It was a piece of silk ribbon, as soddenly pink as the blood mixed with water. He took out his handkerchief and unfolded it, placed the ribbon in it, refolded it carefully, and returned it to his pocket.
He began his search of the room, wearing the gloves that made him feel both furtive and foolish.
The Caravaggio Room was one of the few bedrooms without its own bath, since the locked room hadn’t been included in the renovations after the Contessa’s marriage.
However, at some point after coming upstairs last night, Molly must have been to the bathroom across the hall next to Vasco’s room, for a bath towel, hanging from a wooden rack, was damp. She could possibly have mopped up water coming into the room from the loggia, but it wasn’t even slightly soiled, as it probably would have been if it had been used for this latter purpose. If she had taken a bath upon retiring to her room, it would seem that she had then applied perfume. It wasn’t something one usually did before sleeping—unless, that is, one was expecting a guest.
Molly’s only medication was a half-filled bottle of aspirin. There was a rather Spartan collection of toothpaste, creams, and an inexpensive perfume. He sniffed the perfume. It wasn’t the scent that seemed to be emanating from Molly’s body.
He next looked through the clothes in the armoire and the chest of drawers. The dead woman appeared to fall into the category of the sensible, perhaps even the seasoned, traveler, for she had brought only a modest wardrobe, with interchangeable pieces. Two pairs of comfortable shoes were neatly lined up in the wardrobe.
No Ouija board, no Tarot cards, no crystal ball stored away—but, after all, Molly had insisted that her gift was one for the past, not the future. He looked at her body lying so exposed and undignified on the floor. No, her gift, if she had had one, certainly hadn’t included the future. Otherwise she might still be alive.
On the bedside table were a paperbound copy of a popular guide to Venice and a lacquered lap desk of vaguely Oriental design.
He thumbed through the guidebook. He read a few underlined passages and quickly a pattern emerged. Each of them dealt with some aspect of Venice’s sensational side. The stabbing of Paolo Sarpi on a bridge not far from Urbino’s Palazzo Uccello. The acqua alta of sixty-six. The intrigues of the Council of Ten. The theft of St. Mark’s body from Egypt. The Black Death. The skinning alive of a Venetian general by the Turks. The cholera plague of the nineteenth century. The beheading of the traitor Doge Marin Falier. The ghost legends surrounding the Casino degli Spiriti.
Molly’s ticket from the Orient Express, quoting the high fare, was between the pages of the guidebook. Molly hadn’t seemed the kind of person with that kind of money. Her humble collection of belongings attested to this.
He put the book down and opened the lap desk. It held pens and pencils, a letter opener, stationery with Molly’s Northwest London address, British postage stamps, an address book, a checkbook, a small notebook, a packet of file cards fastened with an elastic band, and an envelope with the address of a London literary agency. Urbino opened this latter and found a standard literary contract, duly signed, for a “nonfiction book, tentatively entitled The Blood of Venice,” by Molly Wybrow. A modest advance was quoted, as was the delivery date of the manuscript nine months from now.
He removed the elastic band from the file cards and shuffled through them. About a dozen were written on in a small cramped hand. They appeared to be notes—quotations and summaries about Venice, with once again Venice’s frequently dark history as their theme.
He put everything back in the lap desk to take to his room. His slight nausea of before was now replaced by a more general uneasiness and discomfort.
He looked down at Molly’s body again. He rejected the possibility that the source of his discomfort was the feeling that he was violating her privacy. After all, as a biographer, he had had many occasions to settle this particular qualm. If he didn’t quite subscribe to the maxim that the dead had no claim to privacy, he nonetheless knew the dangers of being overly scrupulous. And certainly those who had died under mysterious circumstances could claim no privacy—and neither could anyone who had been associated with them.
No, the uneasiness was coming from somewhere else, perhaps from the fact that, in the absence of the police, he was acting without authorization and setting himself up for censure. Yet, didn’t the present situation—the storm, the isolation, the need for immediate action—call for something more than just sitting back and waiting?
Urbino thought that he had resolved—or was it “rationalized”?—his feelings, until something else occurred to him. It was the possibility that his uneasiness came from another quarter entirely. From fear. The circumstances that might excuse his present behavior were the very ones that contributed now to his apprehension.
For if his suspicions were correct, he was in the palazzo with a murderer.
Urbino wasn’t a physically brave man. He would be the first to admit it. But physical bravery wasn’t something particularly required in that small, floating corner of the world that he had so comfortably sequestered himself in. Even his amateur sleuthing had required no heroic efforts. What he did have, however, was moral courage and a cold fury against almost all forms of injustice. These things, along with his intelligence and tact, hadn’t failed him yet, and he hoped they wouldn’t now.
6
Urbino picked up the lap desk and the camera, and walked toward the door. He stopped short. The door was slowly opening. Cautiously, stealthily, a head appeared. It was Bambina.
She started when she saw Urbino, and a hand flew up to her heavily painted mouth, accompanied by an involuntary gasp. Then her dark, round eyes focused on Molly’s body. She stared at it intensely for a few moments as if it were important to take in every distasteful detail.
“What do you want, Bambina?”
The harshness of his voice startled even him in this room of the dead.
Bambina, who had paled, seemed at a loss. Her eyes wavered again in the direction of Molly’s body. A guarded yet also somehow childlike expression passed over her face.
Death in the Palazzo Page 11