Death in the Palazzo

by Edward Sklepowich

  7

  As he sat across from the octogenarian physician, Urbino felt entombed by the past.

  From over the massive bed a full-length portrait of Doge Renier Zeno by a minor thirteenth-century Venetian painter dominated the dark chamber, which was known as the Doge’s Room. It had the air of a museum, and was directly across from the Caravaggio Room.

  Doge’s hats, engravings of the doge’s annual marriage with the sea, replicas of the gilded Bucintoro, ducal seals and codices, small modeled hands of wood and gold used for the reckoning of secret ballots—yes, the room was very much a museum and its atmosphere, though enlightening, was oppressive.

  Vasco had managed to put his personal imprint on the room, although not as extensively or as calculatedly as Angelica had on hers. His was a matter of disarray, with cast-off clothes, bottles of pills and tubes of ointment, and medical magazines.

  Then there was the odor, a stale one, despite the strong draft from the loggia doors, of medicines, mustiness, and exhaled breath.

  Vasco offered Urbino a whiskey, but Urbino declined. He wanted to be as clear-thinking as possible and regretted the drinks he had already had.

  Urbino got the feeling that he had interrupted the physician’s dark thoughts. Rather than resent the intrusion or see it as an opportunity to escape their disturbing implications, however, Vasco immediately drew Urbino into them.

  “Do you believe in the power of the mind, Signor Urbino? Little Molly did.” His face clouded. “I have since I was a young man. I look at sweet Gemma and try to communicate all the strength of my mind to her. Get up, Gemma! Wake up! We’re all waiting for you.” He shook his head. “Nothing. But the mind’s power to do good should be equal to its power to do wrong, yes? I try very hard to concentrate my mind on the good, but sometimes the bad has a power equal to ten—a hundred—a thousand times its force! I—”

  He reached for a glass of whiskey on the cluttered table and drank most of it down.

  “I’m an old man, Signor Urbino. Listen to the old, they say. It’s very bad advice. We have seen too much—ah! done too much—to offer any hope.”

  Vasco’s words carried a heavy burden of not just pain but guilt. This was consistent with his behavior on other occasions, and Urbino couldn’t help linking it with what he had just said about the power of the mind to do evil. What proofs of this might he be torturing himself with? Did they have anything to do with Renata’s death? Molly’s? Or with Gemma’s fall down the stairs?

  Urbino needed information and he could see that he might be able to play on Vasco’s apparent feelings for Gemma to get it.

  “I hope you won’t think that I’m asking you to betray a professional confidence, Dottore, but is Gemma ill? Aside from her accident, I mean?”

  “There’s no confidence to betray. I’m not her personal physician. I agree that she hasn’t been looking well lately. So disturbing to see it. She’s always been healthy.”

  “She wasn’t a frail child, then?”

  “Not at all! Very healthy. Perfect in every way—and so intelligent!”

  “How did she take the death of her mother?”

  Vasco picked up a ducal medal from the table next to him and examined it.

  “Children are resilient. Sometimes it can be disturbing how resilient they are.”

  “She must have had many questions.”

  “Not very many. We told her the things you tell a child. That God wanted her mother for an angel.”

  “She must have had more specific questions later.”

  “Actually, she didn’t.” He put the medal down. “And none of us ever spoke of that time. I’m sure she has only vague memories now, if any.”

  Urbino, who couldn’t have agreed less, said, “Tell me about her mother.”

  Without hesitation Vasco embarked on a long encomium. Renata had been the brightest, the kindest, the most generous, the most beautiful, the most sincere, the most everything, as far as Vasco was concerned. Yet, according to the Conte’s memoirs, Vasco had expressed resentment against Renata and had told Alvise that he didn’t intend to be made a fool of. None of that animosity seemed to have survived her death. Urbino wondered if Renata had encouraged Vasco only to drop him when Lydgate had come along. What had their relationship been like? Why had she preferred first Bellini and then Lydgate to him?

  As he was trying to think of some way to get this information, Vasco surprised him by seeming to show his awareness of Urbino’s thoughts.

  “Bellini started to come round when she was barely fifteen! Almost three times her age and with a mountain of lire! He made his offer and Renata was obliged by her parents to accept. She didn’t care a fig about money, but she was just a girl and couldn’t stand up to them. Especially to Marialuisa. She’s got a will of iron! When Bellini died, I thought that we might marry. I already loved Gemma like my own daughter. But then Lydgate came into the picture,” he said bitterly.

  “Renata must have been independent enough by then. She had inherited Bellini’s money, I assume.”

  “He had lost much of it. Renata and Gemma were left with very little. With what I could earn, we would have been comfortable enough. But—but Renata had Gemma to think about then, and in those uncertain times she felt she should make a marriage that would secure Gemma’s future. She was only thinking of Gemma, I tell you! Lydgate was rich. Renata sacrificed herself—sacrificed us, the life we could have had—and accepted Lydgate.”

  Although Urbino knew very little about Renata, this picture of her as a self-sacrificing young woman didn’t ring true. He doubted if Vasco believed it now or at any time. The man seemed driven by a desire not so much to remember the past as to revise it.

  Vasco got up and replenished his glass. This time Urbino joined him.

  When Urbino asked Vasco how Renata and Lydgate had met, the doctor confirmed what Urbino already knew from the Conte’s memoir. Lydgate had been a friend of the Zenos’ English tutor.

  “There was some expectation that he might marry Bambina at first. Marialuisa encouraged it, but then Bellini died and the next I knew, he was courting Renata.”

  It was an old-fashioned term, but Vasco was in many ways an old-fashioned man.

  “How did Bambina take it?”

  “She eventually came to accept it.”

  Urbino decided to change his tack.

  “Did Molly confide anything in you during the time the two of you spent alone together?”

  “We were never alone together!”

  “I didn’t necessarily mean completely alone, but you retired with her to a corner on one or two occasions.”

  “Only to talk about the power of the mind. But I don’t see what this has to do with anything! We were talking about poor Gemma.”

  “Yes, about Gemma and her mother. But one more question about Molly, if you don’t mind. How do you think she died?”

  “How? An accident! Just like Gemma.”

  “I don’t think so, and neither do you. Surely you noticed the same thing I did. There was only a pool of blood around Molly’s head. None at any great distance. And yet her artery was pierced by the glass of the door. In all probability she was dead before her head went through the glass.”

  Vasco looked lost and frightened.

  “There could be other explanations.”

  “Possibly. It’s your field of expertise, not mine.”

  Urbino took a last sip of his whiskey and got up.

  “But I’ll tell you one thing, Dottore. With this death in the Caravaggio Room there will be an autopsy. Whatever might have stopped one from being done on Renata—money, influence, whatever—isn’t going to have the same result this time around.”

  Urbino expected Vasco to defend himself against the implications of this, but he remained grimly silent. Urbino thanked him for the drink and bid him good-day.

  As he was going to his room to rest and mull things over, Lucia approached him with a little silver tray. It held a white envelope.

  He ope
ned it and found a soiled visiting card. On it was engraved “The Signora Marialuisa Zeno” and on the reverse side was the handwritten message in Italian: “Signor Macintyre, I would like to see you at once, in my room, if it is convenient for you.”

  8

  Mamma Zeno was staying in a room with less apt associations than Vasco’s. Known as the Room of the Courtesan, it took its name from the Contessa Querini-Benzon, who supposedly had slept in it after her dalliance with Byron when she had been in her sixties. A painting of her by Longhi hung on the damasked wall.

  Mamma Zeno was seated on a massive chair at the far end of the room, her thin black cane like a scepter in one hand. She was so small and frail, and the chair so large, that it was improbable she had climbed into it herself; more likely she had been helped into it or even carefully placed and arranged. Feeble light struggled through a crack between the drawn drapes.

  “Sit down, Signor Macintyre.”

  An almost imperceptible nod indicated which seat it should be: a low one with considerably more history than comfort. Urbino seated himself and had the peculiar sense of having to look up at the tiny, perched woman.

  As his eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness, he saw that she had already changed for dinner. Her shrunken body was once again overwhelmed by her clothing—by the stiff black and gold dress, the gray shawl, and the black Burano lace wound around her head that artfully concealed whatever hair she still might claim. No jewelry except for her worn gold wedding band. She resembled one of those effigies of saints, pinned with lira notes and carried through the streets of Italian towns on a litter.

  “Best to have come to me first with your questions about my family, Signor Macintyre,” she said in Italian without any preliminaries. “A man living in my country as long as you have should understand these things.”

  Her voice, although at the mercy of her shallow breathing, had a peculiar command. It seemed to issue not from the old woman in front of him, but from another, much younger one inside.

  “You have been rude,” she went on, “but you yourself have suffered most. Only I can answer your questions. Only I know the truth.”

  Urbino couldn’t have been more on his guard if he had seen the hilt of a stiletto glinting in the ample folds of her dress.

  “My dear, dead daughter Renata still seems to have the power she had in life. The only immortality we have. Ah, yes, the effect we have on others … yes, on others … I will tell you.”

  She remained very still, her little head cocked to one side as if she were listening to something beyond the room, beyond the storm outside.

  “Wait until you are an old man, Signor Macintyre. If you are so lucky—or unlucky! My eyes water and my mouth is always dry. And my joints are on fire! There’s some virtue in dying young, especially when you are beautiful like my Renata was. You want to know about her. Because she died in the same room … that silly woman, Signora Wybrow … dead and there’s an end to her life. We still have it.”

  Her voice faded in and out like some distant, poorly received station on an old wireless. She took several shallow breaths, all the while peering at him with her small dark eyes. The expression on the tiny patch of face visible between the lace head-covering and the high neck of her dress was pained and determined. No doubt she was willing her voice to be steady, and as she continued, the success of her efforts was immediately apparent.

  “Yes, my daughter died in the same room. A bubble in her brain or a defective heart. All this poking and Renata’s life ran its natural course. A happy life, despite her husband’s death. Happier than mine, than Bambina’s. A mother doesn’t expect her children to die before her, but what can be done? You are listening to me, aren’t you, Signor Macintyre?”

  She glowered at him and her hand tightened around her cane. She seemed completely capable of striking out at him with it—and with considerable force.

  “I didn’t want to interrupt you, signora.”

  “I see,” she said, relaxing her grip on the cane. “You’d rather have me run on until I tire myself out, is that it? Then what good will I be to you?” She pressed a shriveled hand against her breast and shook her head slowly. “I can only do so much with this body of mine. Better to ask your questions. I’ll either answer them or not.”

  Urbino rapidly considered all the things he would like to ask her. He then looked very hard at her as he said, “Tell me about Dido.”

  There followed a brief silence. Mamma Zeno took several shallow breaths and dropped the lids of her eyes partway.

  “Dido? Testing an old woman’s education? That isn’t very cavalier of you. I thought that Barbara had smoothed away most of your hard American edges.” She gave several quick little choking sounds that might have been laughter or something more pathological. “Dido was some barbarian queen who killed herself for the love of Aeneas. Burned herself to death, wasn’t it?”

  “I wasn’t asking about Virgil’s Dido, signora, but your daughter Bambina’s cat.”

  “She had so many.”

  “Dido was the one who died a few months before Renata did. On the last evening of her life, Renata mentioned Dido’s death. She said that Bambina was unlucky in things that she loved.”

  “How do you know these things? Not from Bambina!” The old woman’s frailty seemed to fall away from her like some rotted garment. “If it was Luigi—!”

  Her hands, gripping the arms of the chair, looked as hard and tense as the rococo carvings.

  “It was neither Bambina nor Luigi, signora.”

  Urbino thought it best not to tell her that he knew it—and more—from Alvise’s account.

  “That stupid, meddling woman! How did she know?”

  Since Molly was beyond danger now, Urbino encouraged Mamma Zeno’s mistake by saying, “Signora Wybrow mentioned Dido last night. She said that she had suffered a lot. Bambina got very upset.”

  “Sentimental fool! Yes, I remember Dido. Long white fur that flew all over the house. She would let Gemma carry her around like a doll. I think Gemma cried more over that cat than over her own mother. What else did that woman tell you?”

  Urbino decided to take full advantage of Mamma Zeno’s misconception, if this was what it was.

  “She said that Andrew Lydgate had no intention of marrying Renata. That he was going to marry Bambina.”

  Mamma Zeno’s reaction to this fabrication was to twist her thin lips into a smile.

  “Now I know the woman was an idiot! Lydgate not marry Renata? He was mad about her.”

  “But I heard that he was originally interested in Bambina.”

  “That woman again? Well, even an idiot can hit the mark sometimes. Lydgate and Bambina came to nothing.”

  “Once Renata became available, you mean.”

  “He was mad for her, I said, and a good thing he was. I made it clear to Bambina. A woman with another man’s child doesn’t have an easy time finding a husband. Marry Bambina when there was Renata needing a good husband? I wouldn’t have had it! I had a plan for my family.”

  “But after Renata died? What about Bambina’s chances then?”

  “Lydgate was never free of Renata. Never! You see the power that Renata has even over you, who never knew her! Unless that mad woman convinced you that you knew her in a former life! Did she tell you that you—”

  She didn’t continue but stared at him with an almost scornful smile.

  “That I resemble Lydgate? Is that what you were going to say?”

  “What does it matter? I once resembled Renata. Many people took us for sisters back then. But, yes, you do look like Lydgate. I wouldn’t advise you to try to make much of it, though. The resemblance is only skin deep.” She paused, then added: “He wasn’t a man of particular intelligence.”

  Urbino didn’t know what to take more note of in what she had said: the implied compliment or the distant warning. He looked into what he could see of her face, and tried to bridge the years between now and when that wrinkled face had resembled Ren
ata’s. He couldn’t do it. It wasn’t that his imagination failed him, but that something in the old woman made the effort futile.

  Mamma Zeno, despite her frail physical condition, was a strong woman, perhaps stronger than any of the other guests isolated this weekend at the Ca’ da Capo. Urbino thought it unlikely that she had ever done anything she didn’t want to do. It was therefore perfectly consistent with his thinking that he now asked her why she had decided to come to the Contessa’s house party.

  “For Gemma’s sake” was her answer. It was when she apparently felt the need to clarify that he sensed she wasn’t telling the truth. “Because of the portrait.”

  “She urged you to come?”

  She nodded.

  “She wanted Bambina and me to be here for the unveiling. And Luigi,” she added, anticipating his next question. “He’s been like a father—an uncle—to her.”

  “So she obviously wanted all four of you to be here again together after all these years.”

  Mamma Zeno stared at him coldly.

  “Don’t you think you should say that it was Barbara who wanted us all here?”

  He felt the need to shock the old woman.

  “Suppose I told you that I believe Molly didn’t die in an accident, signora?”

  “I would say that you’re as insane as she was and not as intelligent as I thought! I don’t think that you are qualified to give a professional opinion. We have a physician in the house. I’m sure he didn’t say anything of the kind.”

  “I find it interesting that you’re so certain of what Dr. Vasco did or didn’t say to me about Molly’s death.”

  “I don’t know what you mean by that statement, and I’m not even going to try to—”

  “Oh, Mamma, excuse me” came Bambina’s voice from the door. “I didn’t know that you had a guest. Signor Urbino, what a surprise!”

  Bambina started to flutter nervously around the room, making it obvious that she was looking for something.

  “I seem to have misplaced my copy of Gente. I wanted to read it before dinner. Have you seen it, Mamma?”

  “It’s not here. Leave!”

  She raised her cane threateningly.