Death in the Palazzo

by Edward Sklepowich

  “À votre service!”

  “Why don’t you tell us how it was that Molly came to be invited?”

  “Again? Don’t press my admiration of you too far! Oh well, just let me get a spot more of Barbara’s inestimable cognac to wet my whistle.”

  When he had reseated himself, he began: “Once upon a time about three days ago as the Orient Express—most unfortunately the ersatz O.E.—was easing out of the City of Lights, I—”

  “Don’t you think you should begin before the Orient Express?” Urbino asked.

  “Before the Orient Express?” Viola echoed. “Whatever do you mean?”

  “Sebastian knows very well. You knew about Molly’s book, didn’t you?”

  Resentment blazed in Sebastian’s green eyes.

  “Molly never said anything about a book!” he said.

  “Molly kept very good accounts in her checkbook. Names and dates and amounts. What she didn’t put down on the stub that particularly interested me, however, was why she had made the check out to you. For a very large sum.”

  “What is the meaning of this?” the Contessa said. It wasn’t clear if she was addressing Urbino or Sebastian. What was clear, however, was the anxiety in her voice.

  Sebastian appealed to the Contessa with a nervous, embarrassed grin, like a schoolboy caught out in a prank, then sobered as he turned his long-lashed gaze on Viola. Brother and sister, so close to being mirror images that it was disturbing, exchanged a long, silent look. Seeming to take some courage or caution from the depths of her green eyes, Sebastian squared his shoulders and looked at Urbino directly.

  “I suppose you think that I lured Molly here to murder her and she was kind enough to pay me for it! So she wrote me out a check! That doesn’t mean I killed her or that anyone else did. She died in a freak accident! This idea of yours about murder is—is pure egomania. You’re quickly losing whatever charm you held for me.”

  He got up and stalked over to the window. He drew aside the drape and stood gazing down at the garden.

  “Your garden looks torn to pieces, Barbara,” he said, almost inconsequentially, then turned around and looked a bit sheepishly at the Contessa. “I hope you’ll forgive me. I would have told you everything once the weekend was over. Molly made me an irresistible business proposition. She was willing to pay for it. Handsomely.” He put his brandy glass down and lit a cigarette. He puffed at it reflectively. “Who was I to say no? I figured she’d be a lively addition to the festivities. Yes, I knew her before the O.E. I was giving tours at the British Museum. A little extra money and a chance to meet people who might see their way to helping me out. Molly gave me a generous tip and invited me out for a coffee. She started in on Venice, how she was going the next week and didn’t have reservations, how she wished she had planned far enough ahead to rent a flat in a palazzo because that was the only way to do it. I said that renting that kind of place would cost a fortune, but she said money wasn’t a problem. This was her first visit to Venice and she wanted to do it up in style. She said she was taking the O.E. Of course, it was only natural to tell her that Viola and I were coming here on it, too. She wanted to know when and it turned out we would be on the train together. One thing led to another, and—and I told her about Barbara’s house party. Oh, I talked it up big, Barbara. La grande fête of the season and all that. She was pea green with envy and—and, well, I ended up inviting her. She made it clear she was willing to pay a lot for the privilege. More than enough to get me out of the red and to finance a jaunt to Morocco this winter—which I thought I’d ask you on, Urbino, until this public humiliation you’ve subjected me to!”

  “How could you!” Viola looked at her brother in astonishment. “What a position you put me in!”

  “Don’t go moralistic on me, Vi. You know I’ve had a hard time of it. I could plaster these walls with dunning letters! I even owe you a pound of flesh! What’s funny is that you went right along as if you were in on it yourself.” He extinguished his cigarette and took a sip of brandy. “So there you have the whole sordid truth. That’s the extent of my liaison with poor little Molly.”

  Urbino thought for a moment, then said:

  “There’s no way to tell if she made the entry in her journal about the Ca’ da Capo before or after she met you. If it was before, it means that she probably didn’t just happen to meet you at the British Museum. She knew who you were. She knew about your relationship to Barbara—and, through her, to the Ca’ da Capo. What did you tell her about the Ca’ da Capo?”

  “The little I knew. That it was a palazzo on the Grand Canal and that my cousin had made it her mission to restore it to its former glory. I told her nothing personal about Barbara, except that she had married an Italian count.”

  “Has it occurred to you that someone might have set you up?”

  “Set me up?” Sebastian repeated as if it were in a language he didn’t know.

  “Told her about you—your relationship to Barbara, where you worked, your plans to come to Venice for the house party, maybe even your financial straits.”

  The Contessa glanced nervously at Robert and said, “I—I told Gemma about Sebastian and Viola. But I didn’t know anything about his money problems.”

  Sebastian gave a short laugh and tossed off the rest of his brandy.

  “Just the fact that a young man of good family and high talents was obliged to babble on about the Elgin Marbles and Halicarnassus might have tipped her off.”

  Bambina, who had been following all of Sebastian’s revelations with increasing interest and with even a strange kind of glee that lit up her round eyes, said, “Maybe Sebastian took the peacock brooch! It must be worth a lot of money!”

  “And if he did, Bambina,” Urbino said, “why do you think he would have put it in Gemma’s pocket?”

  “Hold on! I had nothing to do with that!”

  “Oh, Sebastian, I hope not!” Viola said with what sounded like real distress in her voice.

  “Answer the question, Bambina,” Urbino said, paying no attention to the twins. “We’d like your opinion.”

  The look Bambina gave her mother was a strange mixture of fear and supplication. But Mamma Zeno didn’t choose this moment to break the silence she had wrapped herself in since entering the library. She once again made a point of not even glancing at Bambina, but instead held Urbino’s gaze for several long moments. He tried to read everything in her dark pools but so much eluded him. He wondered if Bambina, with her many decades of experience, was more adept.

  “I don’t know. Maybe he got frightened or regretted taking it, since it belongs to Barbara, his own cousin, who’s so kind to him and—and to everyone else.”

  She threw a look at the Contessa that was meant to be all gratitude but looked more like a scowl.

  “But why in Gemma’s pocket? He could have done any number of things with it.”

  “Stop right there!” Sebastian said, his face red.

  Viola got up and went over to him. She whispered in his ear. He angrily extinguished his cigarette, then immediately lit another. Viola seated herself on the carpet beside his chair.

  “He could have dropped it into an urn,” Urbino continued. “There are enough of them around. Or hidden it among one of the plants in the conservatory.” He put a special emphasis on this last word. “Or gone out onto the loggia and thrown it into the Grand Canal.”

  “He would never do that!”

  She smiled benignantly at Sebastian, as if to assure him that there were some things she believed were beyond him. He puffed away furiously at his cigarette as Viola peered up into his face with a worried look.

  “You still haven’t answered my question, Bambina,” Urbino persisted. “I really would like to know. You strike me as a very observant and resourceful woman.”

  Flattery had worked with her earlier today and he hoped it would again.

  “I do? Tante grazie. Let me see.” She put a finger to her cheek. “Why would—why did Sebastian hide the brooch in
Gemma’s pocket? I—I suppose he could have wanted to catch two pigeons with one bean! He got rid of the brooch—which he never, never should have taken—and he makes my niece look guilty, because—because he wants us—wants you, Urbino—to think even worse of her.”

  She beamed like an apt pupil waiting for her praise.

  “What do you mean? Even worse than a thief?”

  Bambina made her characteristic zipper action across her mouth with her thumb and forefinger.

  “By the way, Bambina,” Urbino began, “there’s one more thing you might be able to help me with.”

  “What is that?” she asked with every appearance of wanting to be of help.

  “Did you see anyone on the loggia last night after we all went up to bed?”

  “On the loggia? Oh no! With the storm I was afraid to even peep out. And good thing I didn’t. Look what happened to Molly. I—I’ve never been out on the loggia at all!”

  “That’s strange, Bambina, because I found this out there this morning.”

  From his pocket he took the pink ribbon and held it out in the palm of his hand. He could almost feel the intensity of Mamma Zeno’s stare burning into his hand.

  “How do you account for this being there?”

  She stared at the ribbon. He went over to her and placed it near one of the matching ribbons in her hair. To her credit, she answered quickly.

  “Oh, I forgot. I—I went out to the loggia before the storm. A lovely panorama! It was getting windy and the ribbon could have flown away.” She paused and said, with a little concentrated frown, “Or—or maybe someone took one of them from my room—I have so many, how would I notice?—and threw it on the loggia to get me in trouble. It could all be a plot against poor Gemma and me. The brooch in her pocket and my ribbon on the loggia.”

  Sebastian, who had been so loquacious and intrusive in his comments in the earlier part of the evening, somehow held his tongue. Viola was once again whispering in his ear.

  “Let’s forget about the ribbon, Bambina. I suppose it could have just blown out of your hair, as you say. Barbara, would you ring for Mauro?”

  “Mauro?”

  “Please. He’s expecting to be called.”

  She pulled the cord and within a moment there was a quiet knock on the door and the old majordomo entered. Urbino hoped he would remember exactly what he had told him to say. The man had at first protested, assuring him that he never lied, but had quickly relented when Urbino had pointed out how important it was to the Contessa.

  “Excuse us for taking you from your duties, Mauro, but would you tell us what you saw last evening?”

  “Certainly, Signor Urbino. It was some time after the Contessa came down for drinks before dinner. I can’t say exactly what time it was because with the storm there’s been so much to do. Some windows up in the attic story wouldn’t stay closed. It’s been very difficult.”

  Mauro was not only remembering his lines, but also embroidering on them. Everyone was listening intently, none more so than the Contessa, whom Urbino hadn’t told about his plans to use Mauro in this way.

  “Go on, Mauro,” Urbino prompted, when the man’s pale Venetian skin turned even whiter after seeing the disturbed look on the Contessa’s face.

  “I—I had occasion to go out to the loggia. I was afraid that we had left some chairs there. I was outside the Contessa’s bedroom. Her shutters were open. I looked through the door-pane to see if everything was all right, and I—I saw a woman in the room. She—she was standing by the Contessa’s dressing table.”

  “Who was it, Mauro?”

  “It—it was the Signorina Zeno.”

  Mauro avoided Bambina’s eyes as he said this.

  “She had the Contessa’s peacock brooch in her hand. When no one said anything was missing, I—I thought it best to mind my own business.”

  “You did well, Mauro. Thank you. You can go now.”

  When the majordomo had left, no one broke the silence that reigned in the library until Robert said, his face livid, “How could you do such a thing, Zia Bambina? Put the brooch in Mother’s pocket like that?”

  Bambina, who had looked stunned during Mauro’s account, gave her great-nephew a tremulous grin.

  “It was a joke. I got caught up in the spirit of our charades. I thought it would be amusing to have it disappear and then turn up in an unlikely place. Like a treasure hunt. That’s all. I meant no harm.”

  She put her hands over her face, then latticed them and peeped out at Urbino.

  “It was a foolish thing to do, Bambina,” Vasco said sternly, his sharp eyes shooting disapproval. “It could have had serious consequences, joke or not. You see how it’s misled Urbino to think that someone was trying to make trouble for our little Gemma.”

  It was perhaps a strange comment to make since it had been Bambina herself who had apparently tried to mislead Urbino. Vasco glanced at Sebastian, surrounded by a cloud of cigarette smoke and an air of barely subdued anger.

  “It’s interesting that you mention my being misled, Dottore, because you tried to do that to me yourself, didn’t you? You insisted, drawing on your professional knowledge and experience, that the cause of Molly’s death was a piece of broken glass from the loggia door which pierced her throat, and that she died instantly.”

  Vasco nodded his head.

  “Instantly—or relatively so.”

  “But as we discussed this afternoon in your room, if Molly died in that way, blood would have spurted around the room because of the pumping motion of the heart.”

  “Only if the carotid artery had been pierced.”

  “As we both observed, it had been. This leads me to wonder how—or perhaps I should say, why—you made such an error. Did you really want me to believe it was an accident, or did you want me to see through your deception? I can come up with one reason why you might not want to believe it actually was an accident—and that’s not because of any sympathy with Barbara’s position as the padrona of the Ca’ da Capo. It’s because of your belief in the powers of the mind—your belief that if we direct our energies in a certain direction, we can affect the course of the natural world and maybe even behavior. Am I right? Accident or murder. You’re not comfortable with either alternative. But better that Molly’s death is determined to have been an accident than murder, for there’s much greater culpability there, a much more frightening example of the power of the mind. The power of a mind focused consciously on ending the life of another person.”

  Urbino paused, and for a moment his eyes locked with the frightened, pleading ones of the Contessa.

  “Surely, when the Caravaggio Room was examined and the autopsy was done,” he went on, “there would have been no doubt that Molly didn’t die in the way that you said. I can only assume that you hoped to gain time, perhaps to make some changes in the room so that her death would seem more like an accident.”

  The old physician’s expression had become dazed, and the silence surrounding the immobile Mamma Zeno now seemed to spread over him. Without a word spoken between them or so much as a brief glance exchanged, they had an unmistakable air of complicity.

  “Why did you want me—and later the police—to believe that Molly’s death had been an accident? So that no one would associate her death with Renata’s except to say that they both died under strange circumstances in the Caravaggio Room? Maybe you were afraid that your past had caught up with—with who? Yourself? Who, with your skills as a physician and your long-standing interest in mesmerism and the powers of the mind, has remained devoted to the Zeno family? Or maybe it had caught up with Gemma, whom you seem to cherish as if she were still the eight-year-old girl she was when Renata died. Or Signora Zeno, so long a widow and so long a mother burdened with the greatest sorrow a mother could have: the death of her child. Or Bambina, with all her energy and love of pranks and pink ribbons and cats and—many years ago—Andrew Lydgate. I suppose I should add Robert, Gemma’s son, to the list, and his fiancée, Angelica, Lydgate’s
grandniece.”

  As Urbino had named each of these individuals, he had treated them impartially with his glances, but now his eyes returned to Mamma Zeno and rested on her, still so silent, sitting there on the sofa swaddled in midnight satin, her only adornment the gold wedding band worn as thin as a thread.

  “You married a Zeno, signora, and you yourself are by birth and blood a Zeno, the cousin many times removed of your deceased husband.”

  The old woman said nothing. She didn’t even move except for the slight rising and falling of the bodice of her dress and the nervous tapping of her fingers against her cane.

  “I’ve noticed, signora, that you prefer not to wear any jewelry—no earrings, no necklaces or bracelets, no brooches of any kind, no rings except your wedding band.”

  “Mamma has been like that ever since I can remember,” Bambina said quickly. “I always—”

  She was silenced by a look from her mother, who then immediately returned the full power of her eyes to Urbino. He waited, as everyone else around him was waiting. They all sensed that the time had come for her to utter her first words since she had reprimanded Bambina in the dining room about the brooch.

  Her thin voice was very clear, and as was her habit when using English, she spoke slowly and precisely.

  “Young man, I have observed you and listened to you all this weekend. I have even indulged you in the privacy of the chamber that has been put at my disposal. Among other things I have been curious to see how far you would go—how far you could go. Very far, I now see. Too far. I suggest that you go no farther. It would be one more indignity, and life is full of too many.”

  She paused as if to catch her breath, all the while looking at Urbino. When she continued her voice was even stronger than before.

  “I see why you and Barbara are such good friends. Two ficcanasi! Meddlers! And you, Barbara, La Contessa da Capo-Zendrini”—she jerked her withered head slightly from side to side as she uttered each of the syllables of the Contessa’s title—“more than a meddler! An intruder! But for you Bambina would be the contessa, the padrona di casa. Wearing your shoes and your gowns and your jewels. Ha! Your jewels, did I say? Bought with Da Capo-Zendrini money! Or stolen from the Zenos! I laughed when you told me you wanted to heal the wounds between the families this weekend, to bring us together. That was to have been Bambina’s job, except that you put yourself into the picture like a well-bred puttana!”