Death in the Palazzo

by Edward Sklepowich

  “You don’t trust me, do you? Oh, I know how it is! Everyone’s a suspect—everyone except the detective and his sidekick! And that’s indisputably Barbara, isn’t it? You’ve got to follow the rules. But don’t get too clever or—or you might fall into a trap of your own making! I don’t care what you think about me—or what you think you should think about me, which is more to the point—but I’m going to do whatever I can to help you find out what happened to Molly. Whatever we manage to discover we can turn over to the police, once this bloody storm is over. Agreed?”

  Urbino, who felt that there was much to ponder in her behavior, said, “I think you should stay out of it.”

  “But I’m already right in the middle of it, aren’t I?” She looked around the room at all the portraits of the dead Da Capo-Zendrinis and seemed to shiver.

  15

  Lunch was strained. Oriana and Mamma Zeno stayed in their rooms, and Robert was still with his mother. Looking around at those who had come down, Urbino wondered if they had done so only to show they had nothing to hide from the others’ scrutiny and to remove any suspicion that might be generated if they chose to be alone.

  Of course, there was also the very real possibility that they were afraid to be alone—all, perhaps, except one, who only wanted to give that appearance and had come down for that very purpose.

  The Contessa used a lot of nervous energy seeing that everyone got what they wanted at the sideboard, and then sat down with a small plate. As if in imitation or comradeship with Angelica, she only picked at it for form’s sake. Her eyes kept darting from one guest to another as she carried on what turned out to be a monologue about how she was sure the storm was abating and how Filippo must have reached the hospital or another source of help by now. They needed to wait only a short time more.

  No one pointed out that the storm seemed to have renewed its strength during the past hour and that they should have started fearing for Filippo a long time ago. Surely if all had gone well with him he would have managed to get Gemma some help before now.

  Only Bambina, who made three trips to the buffet—twice for herself and once for Vasco, who seemed drained of all energy—ventured to utter anything longer than a sentence. She said that Molly wouldn’t want them moping around just because she was lying upstairs dead. She somehow seemed to think—and expressed herself vividly on the point—that Molly had been a game sort and that her “gift” had made her as philosophical as Socrates. As for Gemma, she had known her since Gemma was a child and was sure that she’d want the party to go on.

  “Or at least to have her portrait unveiled,” she said, directing this to the Contessa. “In honor of her.”

  “Little Gemma’s not dead,” Vasco said, showing more energy than he had since entering the dining room.

  Bambina looked as if she were about to snap something back at him, but instead popped a piece of bread into her mouth, then got up and began to prepare another plate, this one for her mother. Vasco excused himself and said that he wanted to look in on Gemma.

  When he had gone, Sebastian, in his inebriated state, came close to shouting that he agreed with Bambina. He got unsteadily to his feet, made a self-conscious gesture of throwing back his thick auburn locks, and raised his wineglass. “To each his hemlock! Let the revels go on!”

  Urbino, who throughout lunch had preferred close observation of the others to conversation, noted the look of disgust on Viola’s face and the shocked one on Bambina’s.

  “You’ve had more than enough to drink, Sebastian,” the Contessa said.

  “But there you’re absolutely wrong, dear cousin! I intend to get thoroughly soused before the cavalry ride in—or should I say float in!”

  16

  “Never! Not one single, solitary word!” the Contessa insisted in a low voice. Urbino and the Contessa were alone together in the salotto blu after lunch, the others having gone their individual ways. He had just asked her if she had ever said anything about his parents to either Sebastian or Viola.

  He had told her about his searches of Molly’s and Gemma’s rooms, his reading of Molly’s journal and other writings, and his conversations with Vasco, Robert, and the twins. He hadn’t told her, however, that Viola had expressed strong doubts about Molly’s accident or that Molly had apparently written out a large check to Sebastian. The twins were family, and he wanted to get a clearer picture before he spoke to her about them. Neither had he told her about having found the brooch in the pocket of Gemma’s robe or his belief that the scent of perfume surrounding Molly’s body was the same perfume Gemma used.

  “And neither Viola nor Sebastian knew about the Caravaggio Room before you told them about it,” she was saying. “It’s been a well-kept secret, as you know.”

  “Yes, but as I also know, secrets are shared with a select few.”

  “Never the twins or anyone in my family at all!”

  “You never said anything to Gemma?”

  “But she didn’t need to be told about the Caravaggio Room. Oh, you mean about your parents. No, not a word.”

  Urbino thought for a few moments, then said, “But Oriana knows.”

  “Of course she knows! She has for years! You’re not suggesting any connection between her and Molly?”

  “No, but Oriana isn’t the most discreet of people, and she and Gemma spent time together.”

  “A couple of visits to the Guggenheim, that was it. Oriana appreciates all that insane art, and you know how I hate that place even more since the murder.”

  The Contessa was referring to one of his previous cases that involved a Dali painting at the Guggenheim and a beautiful young artist’s model whose body had been discovered floating by the water steps of the museum.

  “Let me ask her,” the Contessa went on after giving a sigh that seemed to evoke all the personal sorrows for her at that time. “I know how to handle her. She’s a bundle of nerves at the moment.” She shook her head slowly. “But aren’t we all?”

  Together they listened to the rain driving against the window, as it had so many years ago during the original house party.

  “I hope Filippo is all right. He should have reached the hospital long before now.”

  “True, but maybe even the ambulances can’t get out. They might be sending someone on foot.”

  Surely she, too, must realize this was an unrealistic hope, but she said nothing to contradict him.

  Without in any way preparing her, Urbino took the brooch out of his pocket and put it on the table next to her collection of ceramic animals.

  “My brooch! Where did you find it?”

  When he told her, she was speechless.

  “Gemma took it?” she eventually said. “But why?”

  “It’s not at all definite that she took it. It was in her pocket. Someone could have put it there before or after she fell. Or maybe she found it in someone’s room and was bringing it to me.”

  “When the thief pushed her down the stairs? The person who murdered Molly? Because that’s what you’re thinking, aren’t you? That the theft and the murder are somehow related?”

  “Yes, but maybe they aren’t at all.”

  “But that would mean that there are two maniacs around—one pushing a woman’s head through a door, if that’s what happened to poor Molly, and another one pushing an ill woman down a flight of stairs! No, they’re one and the same, you can be sure of that.”

  “Unless Gemma did steal it and was the one to murder Molly.”

  “The only comfort that would give me was that we wouldn’t have to sleep with our doors locked. Gemma’s in no condition to do anyone any harm.”

  “But that doesn’t mean that someone else might not carry through what she set in motion.”

  “An accomplice?”

  “Or someone who might want to protect her. And there’s another thing. Remember I mentioned the scent of perfume from Molly’s body? Well, I’m almost convinced it’s Shalimar. Gemma used Shalimar.”

  “I could have t
old you that! And so does Bambina!”

  Urbino now realized where his other association with the scent came from: the flask that Bambina carried with her all the time.

  The Contessa stood up abruptly.

  “I’ll leave you to sort it all out and go up to talk with Oriana and get some real work done!”

  “Here,” Urbino said. “Take your brooch.”

  He handed it to her.

  “I’d prefer if you kept it,” she said. “I know it’s unlikely that it would be taken twice, and if what you suspect about Gemma is true—”

  “It’s only a possibility,” he interrupted. Before she could launch another exasperated stream of retorts, he quickly told her what he wanted her to do with the brooch. Her gray eyes opened wide.

  17

  After the Contessa had gone, Urbino sat thinking. His intuition told him that there was a link between Gemma and Molly other than the perfume, which was as much of a link between Bambina and Molly.

  There very likely could be some evidence of this, some clue, among Gemma’s personal things, which Robert had removed to his own room. Robert might be aware of a connection between his mother and Molly that he preferred to keep hidden, perhaps for his mother’s sake or for his own. Urbino would try to persuade Robert to let him look through Gemma’s things.

  He was convinced that Molly—the apparent stranger at the feast, the thirteenth guest—had been murdered because of something she knew about the immediate or the distant past. Urbino had become conditioned to think of murder as seldom a random act, even though he knew that in the world at large it usually was.

  Everything indicated that the situation was the same now. Molly’s gift for the past, which, if he was to judge from her notes, had only appeared to be extemporaneous and inspired. Her death in the Caravaggio Room, the scene of so much tragedy for the Da Capo-Zendrini and Zeno families. The disappearance of the peacock brooch, also with its associations with the histories of the two families, and the brooch turning up in Gemma’s pocket. The scent of perfume surrounding both deaths—a scent that the Conte had referred to in his memoir as the “odor of sanctity.” The gathering of six people all related directly or indirectly to the mysterious death of Renata Zeno Bellini in the Caravaggio Room: Mamma Zeno, Bambina, Dr. Vasco, Gemma, Robert, and Angelica.

  There were also the Neville twins, the extent of whose relationship to Molly was still very much in question. Exactly what had Molly paid Sebastian for? Only to get her into the palazzo? Could Sebastian be working with Gemma in some way? And what role might Viola be playing? Urbino had to confess to himself that the twins disconcerted him enough to make him dubious of his own responses.

  Those who remained were Oriana and Filippo, who were friends of Barbara, unconnected to her family, and whom he didn’t even remotely suspect.

  Whenever Urbino hit a snag in his writing or his cases, he would put it out of his mind and take one of what the Contessa liked to call his “long vague walks.” Very often this activity would result in his seeing things more clearly. But he didn’t have the opportunity for a rambling walk in the storm-ravaged city, and if he had, he certainly didn’t have the luxury of time. He needed to get to the bottom of things as soon as possible. The air of the Ca’ da Capo was charged with menace.

  His eye wandered to the velvet-shrouded easel holding Gemma’s portrait of the Contessa. It was to have been unveiled that evening. Bambina, provoking Vasco’s anger, had suggested at lunch that it still should be. Urbino got up and walked over to it. He suddenly realized that he had not been giving sufficient attention in his thinking to one detail. The portrait itself. It had been the Contessa’s commissioning Gemma to paint the portrait that had set the present house party in motion. She had intended to use it as an occasion to “heal old wounds” between the two families. He remembered what the Contessa had said at Florian’s a month ago. Some wounds never heal.

  The velvet draping was slightly askew. He started to rearrange it, wondering if, after all, Bambina might be right. Perhaps it would be a good idea to unveil the portrait this evening. Consumed with a desire to see the portrait, he drew away the draping.

  He was appalled. A vicious slash angled down to the left-hand corner from the Contessa’s face.

  He heard footsteps approaching the door and tried desperately to cover the portrait, but the door opened before he could.

  The Contessa stood motionless, looking at her mutilated portrait. A strangled sound came from her throat. Urbino hurried to her side and guided her to the sofa.

  “Someone wants me dead.”

  She said it without any emphasis but with as much conviction as if she had herself just been stabbed.

  18

  After calming the Contessa, Urbino convinced her to say nothing about the slashed portrait to anyone. They spoke with Mauro, Lucia, and some of the other staff. No one had seen anyone going in or out of the salotto when the Contessa or Urbino weren’t in it themselves.

  “I don’t know exactly what to think, Barbara,” Urbino said when they were alone again. “It could have been done by someone with a hatred for you. Someone who wants you to know that he—or she—is out there and is prepared to strike at you personally. Or it could be a warning for you to turn a blind eye to things.”

  “Turn a blind eye to what things? To what’s going on under my own roof? Even if I wanted to pretend to be deaf, dumb, and blind, there’s Molly’s dead body lying up there in the Caravaggio Room—and maybe we’ll have another death in the house soon if Gemma doesn’t recover. I have no intention of being intimidated!” she cried, her voice quavering.

  “It could also be a way of trying to get me to stop poking around.”

  “I absolutely forbid that! I might be afraid, but fear is not going to dominate my actions—or yours! We may be close to some real answers now. That’s probably why this—this maniac slashed my portrait. I spoke with Oriana. She’s still a bundle of nerves, lying in bed under the covers with ear stoppers. The whole place could fall down now and she wouldn’t know it! But listen to this! She did tell Gemma about your parents the first week Gemma was here.”

  “Unsolicited?”

  “Let’s say that Oriana was maneuvered into it. They were at the Guggenheim. Gemma brought up your inheriting the Palazzo Uccello through your mother. She knew that from me. She asked Oriana if she had ever known your mother. Oriana took it from there. Oriana tried to use her fears of the storm and worries about Filippo as a cover, but I could tell that she probably said even more than that. Probably about your marriage and divorce from Evangeline, and most definitely quite a lot about me. So it’s obvious. Oriana told Gemma, and Gemma told Molly. There must have been some relationship between the two of them long before Gemma came to paint my portrait.”

  “Gemma might have told someone else what she knew, and that person could have filled Molly in.”

  “You’re thinking of Robert. Because he wouldn’t let you go through Gemma’s things.”

  Urbino was also thinking of Sebastian, but he was reluctant to mention this suspicion. Instead he said, “Robert might be only protecting his mother’s privacy. I’d do the same in his position, but—” He broke off and shook his head slowly. “A distasteful business, when I have to do things that I don’t like to do, that I’d criticize someone else for doing.”

  “This is not a time for scruples,” the Contessa said, more than a little uncharacteristically since she was the most scrupulous person Urbino knew.

  “And rather late in the game, too, I’d say,” Urbino added wryly.

  “You know, there’s another aspect to the slashing. The person who did it might be trying to implicate someone else.”

  “The way the same person might have tried to implicate Gemma by putting the brooch in her pocket?”

  “Yes, and perhaps Gemma is once again the target.”

  “How do you figure that? It’s her creation!”

  She looked over at the easel, now reshrouded in velvet, and shivered as i
f it held a monstrous creation.

  “Artists are considered temperamental, subject to sudden and violent tantrums. People always remember Van Gogh, not painters like Sargent or Renoir. But artists sometimes have been known to destroy their own creations. And if the brooch was put in Gemma’s pocket, the person who did it—probably the same one who stole it, who murdered Molly, who pushed Gemma down the stairs, who slashed your portrait—wanted it to be taken as a sign of Gemma’s dislike and resentment of you.”

  “Dislike and resentment of me for what?”

  “For the past. For what happened here back in the thirties—”

  “But I had nothing to do with that house party! I was in England! Just a young girl myself, like Gemma. Even younger!”

  “The person doesn’t have to be thinking rationally, Barbara. In fact, I believe we’re dealing with someone who is very irrational at times. Not just in the way that we can say all murderers are, but beyond that.” He thought for a few moments, then added: “And I have little doubt that this has to do in some way with the past.”

  “If Gemma isn’t the one who’s having the finger pointed at her through the slashed portrait, then who?”

  “We’d be better able to answer that question if we knew exactly when the painting was slashed. Remember that Bambina mentioned at lunch that you should unveil it despite, perhaps even because, of what happened to Gemma.”

  “So you think it could have been Bambina?”

  “Bambina would appear to be the most likely—but it could have been anyone else at the table who heard what she said. He or she might have got the idea to slash it, hoping you would unveil it tonight and then we’d all think of Bambina’s suggestion.”

  “But would Bambina have wanted the painting unveiled if she had slashed it?”

  “She—or someone else—could have wanted just that. Sitting there, knowing the painting was slashed and waiting for the moment the draping was taken off. I rather find it consistent with the kind of person who would slash it in the first place.”