Death in the Palazzo

by Edward Sklepowich

  “I will go to my room,” she said with a lift of her well-tended-to chin. “And I’ll lock the door and stay there until this nightmare is over!”

  She swept down the hall into her room and slammed the door.

  10

  It was only now that Mamma Zeno opened her door. Her room was next to Gemma’s. Several hours earlier she had vehemently proclaimed Molly’s death an act of God. Now, with her own granddaughter lying unconscious and perhaps close to death herself, she might not find solace in the same sentiment.

  “Is something the matter?” Her voice sounded tired. “I fell asleep. The wind … rain …” Her voice faded out for a few moments, then came back clearly and distinctly: “I heard voices in my dream. Shouts. I realized they came from out here.”

  She looked more than ever as if she were on the point of disappearing into the voluminous folds of her clothes.

  “It’s Gemma,” the Contessa said. “She seems to have fallen down the stairs. She’s unconscious. Luigi is looking after her.”

  “Let me go to her.” She moved toward Gemma’s door. The small group made way for her. “Robert, why are you standing here? Come with me.”

  “Dr. Vasco said to leave him alone with Mother.”

  “He did? I’ll see about that.”

  Her obvious weakness didn’t prevent her from walking toward her granddaughter’s room with an air of command that boded little good for the Zeno family physician. The Contessa put a gentle arresting hand on her shoulder.

  “Why don’t we all gather down in the library for a few minutes, if you don’t mind,” Urbino said.

  The Contessa, guiding Mamma Zeno, led the rather solemn processional down the staircase to the library. As if under a general agreement to remain silent, they quickly disposed themselves in various chairs and sofas—with the exception of Sebastian, who preferred to lounge near the liquor cabinet, glass in hand, and Urbino himself, who stood on the carpet in the middle of the room.

  Urbino felt vaguely uncomfortable as the others stared back at him with what he felt were varying degrees of resentment, nervousness, and puzzlement. He told himself that he had better start getting accustomed to discomfort. It was only going to get worse from this moment on.

  “In what can’t be much more than twelve hours we’ve had what seem to be two accidents here,” Urbino began. “And—”

  “Seem to be!” repeated Bambina. She immediately clapped a hand over her mouth and stared at Urbino, then at the others.

  “Yes, seem to be,” Urbino said. “You know about Molly. Now there’s Gemma and her apparent fall down the stairs. Did anyone see her fall?”

  “Why ask us about Gemma first?” Viola said. “If you’re going to do things right, you should begin with Molly. I thought you had experience with these things,” she added with an attempt at affectionate mockery.

  “We’ll get around to Molly,” Urbino responded more sharply than he intended. Viola’s smile disappeared.

  “That’ll put you in your place, Viola,” her brother said. “Do you mind if we have a drink, Mr. Sleuth?”

  “Go right ahead,” the Contessa said before Urbino could answer. It was as if she were making an attempt to remind them—Urbino perhaps most of all—that she was still in charge of the revels, no matter what bizarre form they were taking. “But please don’t smoke!” she added as a further assertion of authority.

  “A drink will be sufficient unto the moment.” Sebastian poured himself a whiskey. His hand shook slightly. “Can I do the honors for anyone else?”

  No one chose to join him. Urbino continued.

  “So, did any of you see Gemma fall?”

  “I was in my room reading,” Angelica said. “I didn’t know anything was wrong until I heard Robert shouting.” She looked at Robert, who as usual was sitting next to her on the sofa, one arm extended across the back. She reached up and patted his hand. “I’m in a different world when I’m reading. I didn’t even hear the storm.”

  “The pleasurezh—the pleasures of the text,” Sebastian said and took a sip of whiskey, which he evidently didn’t need. He dropped himself onto an available sofa.

  “What about the rest of you?” Urbino asked.

  “I was reading in my room, too,” Viola said. “I came out when I heard all commotion. I’m afraid I’m not much help.”

  The rooms in both wings closest to the stairway were those of Angelica, Viola, Bambina, and Mamma Zeno.

  “I was in my room, too,” Bambina said quickly. “I was daydreaming. The scream frightened me. I guess it was Gemma screaming when she fell.”

  The twitch was still there in her eye. One hand held the other tightly in her lap. She seemed to be restraining herself from reaching up and touching the twitch.

  Mamma Zeno, who had already told them upstairs that she had been asleep, offered nothing more, but just sat there with an inscrutable look on her shrunken face.

  “I was at the window of my room, looking at the storm,” Robert said. “It was making enough noise to wake the—” He broke off. “I rushed out when I heard the scream. It wasn’t my mother.”

  “It was Lucia,” Sebastian said with the air of clarifying all from his reclining position on the sofa. “And no, I didn’t see her scream, but when I hurried from the library she was bending over Gemma.”

  The library wasn’t far from where Gemma’s unconscious body had been found.

  “And you didn’t hear her falling?”

  “Afraid not. The walls in these palazzos are thick. But she obviously did fall. By the way, I was in the library for a good hour or so. Never left. Needless to say, Gemma wasn’t there when I came down.”

  The Contessa excused herself and said she would be right back. While she was gone, Urbino asked the group if they had seen or spoken with Gemma since at the breakfast table when she had summoned the Contessa. Robert was the only one who said he had.

  “I went to see how she was about an hour and a half ago. She was extremely upset at having seen Molly like that. She kept saying that it was her fault. I asked her what she meant, but she just kept saying it over and over again. Vasco’s sedative must have disoriented her. I stayed with her until she fell asleep—a drugged slumber is more like what it was.” He shook his head. “She—she must have got up for some reason and lost her balance.”

  The Contessa returned with Lucia. Lucia said that she hadn’t heard anything but that she had discovered Gemma when she was going upstairs to speak with the Contessa about that evening’s dinner.

  “What about the other staff?” Urbino asked her. “Did they hear or see her fall?”

  “But of course not, Signor Urbino! They would have called Mauro or the Contessa. None of them were by the staircase for at least half an hour before I found her.”

  So, unless any of the absent guests had something different to add, there seemed no way of knowing exactly how long Gemma had been lying there before Lucia discovered her.

  Lucia left. Urbino, who had nothing more he wanted to ask them as a group, fixed himself a whiskey. Viola came over and asked him to fix her one, too.

  “It’s been quite a day,” she said after taking a sip. “And it’s not even over yet.”

  “Nonetheless, I just might lock myself in my room with a good book and a supply of candles.”

  “So you’re not mad at me. I—”

  “Excuse me,” the Contessa said, overriding Viola’s comment and the quiet conversation Robert and Angelica had begun, “but I’d like to say a few things.” Her eyes met Urbino’s, and she seemed to be warning him to allow her to speak without any interruption. “It’s obvious that we can’t consider ourselves in the middle of a house party any longer, certainly not the one we all hoped it would be.” She frowned at the inadequacy of her words and began again. “I mean that what’s happened to Molly and now our dear Gemma”—she looked consolingly at Robert—“makes even the thought of any further attempt at diversion completely impossible. What has happened has happened in my house
and I accept full responsibility. No, please,” she said, putting her hand up when there were some murmurs of objection from Robert, “I do feel responsible, and in some way I am. Considering that I feel this way, you might find a little strange what I have to say next. I’ve decided to throw you on yourselves for the remainder of our time together. What I’ve had planned for us will be forgotten about. The unveiling of my portrait, the treasure hunt this evening, everything.”

  There was a note of regret in her voice, which she made an effort to banish as she continued: “You’re free to go anywhere in the house you wish”—she glanced nervously at Urbino as if she expected him to disagree—“and to entertain yourselves as you wish, but please be careful. I—I mean, of course, that we can’t have any more accidents of even the slightest kind. I’ll understand if you choose to remain in your rooms under the circumstances and have your meals there, like Oriana, although I don’t think we should take her as our example. Perhaps Filippo has already found a telephone that’s working and we’ll soon have help.” She stood up. “I’ll be up in my room if anyone needs me.”

  Urbino felt her parting words as a summons. He quickly finished his whiskey and, to Viola’s evident irritation, excused himself and slipped out of the library.

  11

  Urbino immediately realized upon entering the Contessa’s room that his suspicions in the library were correct. What she had just given them downstairs had been a calculated performance. Here in her private domain, with only himself as audience and surrounded by her most beloved objects—her Fabergé revolving frame with photographs of her dead, her well-worn books, and a half-dozen small Longhi paintings—she could be herself.

  All he needed to tell him the true state of her nerves was the glass of gin in her hand, a drink she seldom indulged in and never at this hour. She gripped it tightly as she said to him in a lower voice than necessary, “Do they know what I’m really thinking? What did they say after I left?”

  “Very little, since I left right after you. I thought you wanted to talk to me.”

  “I do want to talk to you, but one of the things I wanted to talk about was their reaction. I thought you would understand that.”

  “Sometimes you assume I understand much more from what you might or might not say than I possibly ever could.”

  “I don’t know if you’re trying to be humorous or carping. We’re not playing games! This is serious.”

  “Exactly. You know how I feel about Molly’s death. And I feel even more strongly about it now.”

  “And why is that?”

  He busied himself with pouring himself a gin as he considered a response. He didn’t want to mention the check stub made out to Sebastian for a large sum until he had an opportunity to talk with him. And he needed to get his thoughts more in order about Molly’s notes on himself and the Contessa. He had barely had time to absorb these things when the alarm had been sounded about Gemma.

  When he turned around the Contessa was looking at him with impatience.

  “There really wasn’t enough blood.”

  “Not enough blood! The room was full of blood!”

  “I’m not an expert in pathology, but when Molly’s artery was pierced by the glass of the door, blood should have been sprayed over the room for some distance.” When she shook her head as if she didn’t want to hear any more, he said, “I don’t find this any more agreeable than you do.” He fortified himself with a sip of gin and continued. “It was obvious where the glass had pierced her artery, but the piece had fallen out somehow, maybe from the movement of her head and body in the wind, I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know! What else don’t you know?”

  “I suppose it’s possible she died from a slow seepage of blood caused by head injuries. And the piece of glass that pierced her artery could have fallen out after her heart had stopped pumping her blood, but I don’t think so. The room shows some signs of violent activity. A table and chair in different parts of the room were overturned, but there were no traces of blood near them. If she had been injured by the door bursting open and then moved around the room in shock or whatever, there would be some blood.”

  “Are you saying that there was a—a struggle of some kind in the room?”

  “It’s one possibility.”

  “You’re holding something back. I can tell. I want to know everything. I have a right!”

  She did, but it was best that he keep her in the dark about certain things for a while. He did tell her, however, about the scent of perfume in the air of the Caravaggio Room and especially around Molly’s body.

  “I didn’t smell any,” the Contessa said, “but in the state I was in it’s a wonder I was even breathing myself. But what of it?”

  “I’m not sure, but it wasn’t the perfume in the bottle in her room, and if she was indeed wearing perfume, she put it on after she took her bath. It might mean she was expecting someone to stop by, presumably a man. It’s—it’s just speculation at this point. Bear with me. There were some other things but I’d rather wait before I go into them. I need to—”

  “You need to brood and worry over them! Well, go right ahead, but don’t spend too much time about it. We have to get through until—until this storm ends or Filippo gets some help. The way things have been going today, who knows what can happen in the next few hours?”

  She started to raise the glass to her lips in an agitated movement, then looked down at it as if someone had just thrust it into her hands.

  “So you don’t think we’re dealing with accidents, either?”

  She put the glass down violently on the table.

  “I don’t know what to think! Everything is starting to look suspicious to me now. Oh, I’m probably making a beam out of a twig”—she often fell into a direct translation into English of Italian idioms—”but when I went to Gemma’s room after we found Molly, she asked me to tell her exactly which room was yours. It seemed such a strange question. She said she needed to be absolutely certain. I thought it was just one of those irrelevant things people say when they’re in shock, but I’m not so sure now.”

  Urbino told her what Gemma had said to Robert—about how she was responsible for Molly’s death.

  “She said that? It—it just goes to show you how confused she was. She kept saying, ‘Poor Molly! To die through no fault of her own.’ I did find that strange, too, to be honest—that she said ‘fault.’ I assumed she was hysterical, and she was, really, but it seemed a rather strange way to put it. It made me think of how Molly’s death could be said to be my fault, but I don’t think she was trying to make me feel responsible. Anyway, it was then that she asked where your room was. I said that she shouldn’t be concerned about anything or anyone but herself, and just to get some rest.”

  “But you did tell her where my room was?”

  “She insisted. Maybe she had something to tell you. She could have gone looking for you and—and fallen. I don’t necessarily mean that she fell because she was coming to see you. I mean, she might have fallen on the way to seeing you and—”

  She broke off. She was trying to retreat from the implications of her own statement.

  “You think Gemma might have been pushed down the stairs by someone because she was on her way to see me.”

  The Contessa had a defeated look that made her face seem as if she had never spent all that time up in Geneva.

  “Yes,” she said quietly. “Tell me it’s ridiculous.”

  He went over and took her hand.

  “We both have to face something, Barbara. I think you realize it yourself. There’s something very strange going on. Even before Molly died and Gemma fell down the stairs, there was a tension in the air and—”

  “But of course there was,” she interrupted. “Having the Zenos here after all those years, and maybe it was a mistake to have the twins come, and then of course they brought Molly, and she made thirteen, and Oriana …”

  She trailed off. He was shaking his head.

&nbs
p; “I don’t mean all that, although Molly’s inclusion in the house party by the twins is part of it.” This was the closest he wanted to come at the moment to discussing Sebastian. “Surely you noticed how both Bambina and Angelica reacted when they first met me. As if they’d seen a ghost. Then Molly’s comments caused a bit of a stir—”

  “They caused a bit of a stir in you, too! And in me! I don’t see what that has to do with all this.”

  “Perhaps a great deal. Exactly what, I don’t know, but if you think Gemma might have been pushed down the stairs because of something she might have wanted to tell me, isn’t it even more logical that someone killed Molly because of something she knew or someone thought she knew? I’ll try to find out what I can and—”

  “Find out nothing! If what you say is true, then you’d be in danger yourself! Leave the door closed! Just as I should have left the door of the Caravaggio Room locked and barred. There’s some truth in the fairy tales! Bluebeard’s wife, Pandora, and—and all the rest of them! Just do whatever you can to see that no more accidents happen to anyone else before this storm ends!”

  Exactly how he was going to have any chance of effecting this without opening a few doors, the Contessa didn’t say.

  12

  After leaving the Contessa, Urbino went to the conservatory. Unless someone was concealed among all the plants, it seemed empty and glowed with a strange, green, sickly light.

  As he had only a short while ago he went to the cabinet beneath the sink and took out another pair of white rubber gloves. There were still a few pairs left. He stuffed the gloves in his trouser pocket. At the door he paused to consider the storm crashing furiously against the glass. With a shiver he was reminded of the “ghostly hand” he had seen—or, more likely, of course—had imagined he had seen flying past his window last night.

  He went directly up to Gemma’s room. Vasco was sitting by the bed, holding Gemma’s hand. The drapes had been drawn and the room was dark.

  “I’ll relieve you, Dottore,” Urbino said quietly. “Barbara is arranging for the staff to stay with Gemma until we can get an ambulance here to take her to the hospital. Filippo might be close to having one sent soon. Let’s hope so.”