Death in a Serene City

by Edward Sklepowich

  “And there’s another thing,” Urbino went on, deciding it best to ignore Gemelli’s sarcasm. “Voyd mentioned only yesterday that Quinton had made some entries about Maria in her notebook. Voyd and his friend Kobke—”

  “Now there you might have something. He’s being brought back from Florence later tonight. There was more to that relationship than met the eye. They had a whole suite to themselves and Voyd paid for everything, even down to newspapers and gratuities. And there was an incident at the hotel restaurant a few nights ago, a heated exchange about a young American woman.”

  “Adele Carstairs?”

  “We don’t know her name. Why do you mention this Carstairs woman?”

  “She’s Margaret Quinton’s niece. They’ve all been seeing a lot of each other.”

  “Yes, I remember the name now. She was very cooperative about her aunt’s possessions at the Casa Silviano. Could it be that Kobke and Signorina Carstairs are on especially good terms? From what the headwaiter said Voyd was upset with his friend for always being at the Danieli when he was needed elsewhere. They had some words after the young woman left the table. I believe Signorina Carstairs is staying at the Danieli?” When Urbino didn’t say anything, Gemelli smiled. “Why are you so shy of someone else’s theories, Signor Macintyre? Would Signorina Carstairs wreck your own house of cards? There are many different kinds of crimes of passion, you know.”

  2

  THREE days later at four-thirty in the afternoon, Adele Carstairs, in a black dress with a beige lace collar, sat on the sofa in the small parlor of the Palazzo Uccello. Above her was a Bronzino the Contessa had given Urbino several years ago. The tautness and look of restrained inner agitation of the Florentine lady, in her pearls and brocade, mirrored those of the young American woman to an extent that was almost comical—even down to the way their long, thin fingers were splayed in their laps. Kobke, more casual than usual in a Missoni pullover in brown, beige, and blue, was pacing back and forth in front of the closed doors to the balcony. When he saw Urbino, he strode across the room to him.

  “At last, Mr. Macintyre,” he said as if he had been kept waiting for hours. “We have very little time.”

  Urbino took the young woman’s hand.

  “It’s good to see you again, Miss Carstairs.”

  “I wish the circumstances were different. The last time we saw each other it was with dear Clifford—” She reached in her pocketbook for a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes.

  When Kobke looked at her sharply, she slipped the handkerchief back into her purse.

  “It was Adele’s idea to come here this afternoon. I’m not sure that fool of a commissioner would approve.”

  “He had to be that way with you, Christian.”

  “That way with me! He had me there for three hours asking the same questions over and over again! I wouldn’t even repeat some of the things he asked about Clifford.”

  To Urbino’s surprise Kobke colored.

  “Don’t forget he had me there for an hour myself. We shouldn’t criticize him for doing his job so thoroughly.”

  “I’m not talking about thoroughness. I’m talking about indiscretion.”

  “But how is he going to find out who killed poor Clifford unless he asks all kinds of questions? Besides, Christian, what’s indiscreet for you might not be for a Latin.”

  Kobke turned away and went over to the balcony doors, pulling aside the drape to look down into the garden.

  “Christian has been through a great deal, Mr. Macintyre. They told him he couldn’t stay at the Europa e Regina any longer. The suite was closed off for a day, then there was a problem about the bill, so we thought he would move to the Danieli. He’ll leave for Vienna as soon as he can. I’m sure something can be worked out with the Hotel Sacher.” She glanced nervously over at Kobke.

  Vienna in winter, Urbino thought, not the best time for love under the lindens but yet it might indicate some finer discrimination. He was about to ask what had brought her to Vienna when she went on.

  “Clifford owned the flat in Knightsbridge, you see, and poor Christian doesn’t know if hell be able to get his things—there’s lots of clothes and artwork—let alone stay there. Of course, we’ll both go to London for the memorial service whenever that will be, but—”

  “How you do run on, Adele dear,” Kobke said, dropping the drape and turning back to them. “I am sure Mr. Macintyre has little interest in our plans. Don’t you think you should tell him why you came?”

  Urbino asked if they would like something to drink but Kobke declined for them both and gave his companion a pointed stare. She opened her purse and took out some folded sheets of paper.

  “Here, take these,” she said to Urbino.

  There were six or seven sheets, some lined, others blocked in the Continental manner, covered with a small, crabbed handwriting, with a lot of deletions and insertions. A three-by-five file card almost slipped to the floor.

  “That’s the very last of Aunt Margaret’s writings, Mr. Macintyre.”

  “But why are you giving them to me?”

  “My thoughts exactly, Mr. Macintyre,” put in Kobke.

  Adele Carstairs looked embarrassed.

  “I thought you might keep them for a while. Look them over, do what you want with them. The truth is that I’m almost afraid to have them myself after what happened to you and Clifford. Don’t get the wrong impression. I certainly don’t want to put you in a delicate or—God forbid—dangerous situation, but I thought you might be able to do some good with them. As I mentioned the other day, I didn’t read most of the things I came across and now I have an aversion to them. You showed such an interest in Aunt Margaret’s writing and Clifford did give you the notebook”—she stirred uneasily on the sofa, pointedly not looking at Kobke, who was standing with his arms folded across his chest and a longsuffering expression on his face—“so I thought that giving them to you was the sensible thing to do. I haven’t told anyone about all this.”

  “Except me, of course,” Kobke said, breaking his pose to walk across the room and sit on the sofa. He took the young woman’s hands in his. “And I advised a safe-deposit box or—even better—just ripping them up and throwing them into a canal. You see, Mr. Macintyre, there’s something you don’t know. It explains why Adele is so worried about those papers. Most of Quinton’s writings were taken from the suite at the Europa e Regina, also some of Clifford’s letters to her, the ones he collected from the Casa Silviano last month. Nothing else was missing—no money, nothing. We can’t delude ourselves any longer that Clifford’s murder didn’t have something to do with Quinton’s writing.”

  He looked at Urbino levelly.

  “And Quinton’s letters to him? Did he have any of them here in Venice?”

  “Those letters couldn’t have been stolen even if Clifford’s flat in Knightsbridge had been broken into. He burned them in December, every single one! I was there when he did it. But don’t get the wrong idea, Mr. Macintyre, he wasn’t singling out Quinton’s letters for the fire. He threw all the ones he had into it. It was a big roaring blaze.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “It was part of an agreement he made with his correspondents. He wanted them to destroy all his letters and he would do the same with theirs. Clifford had a horror of the biographer.” He allowed himself a slight smile as he said this. “He wanted to make things as difficult as possible.”

  “Did your aunt destroy Voyd’s letters?”

  “Obviously not, Mr. Macintyre,” Kobke answered for her. “As I recall, the topic came up at your friend the Contessa’s party. Clifford had just taken dozens of his letters from the Casa Silviano. I’m sure that none of his correspondents was so foolish as to have destroyed any of his letters. I certainly didn’t. Clifford wrote the most magnificent ones.”

  “I know nothing of all this,” Adele Carstairs said. “I do know that Aunt Margaret and Clifford wrote a great many letters to each other since they first met here
in Venice—more than thirty years of correspondence.” She sighed, perhaps at the thought of a relationship of such length ending so sadly for them both in the place where it had begun. “So, then, Mr. Macintyre, you will take those things? Even though you realize that—that there’s perhaps some connection between my aunt’s writing and Clifford’s death? Who knows? There might be something there that could be of help. I suppose I could have offered them to the police but that commissioner would probably have thought I was ridiculous. Besides, somehow it didn’t seem quite right.” She stood up. “We must be going. We’ve imposed on you long enough. I’ll be at the Danieli until the end of the week. After that you can contact me at the Hotel Sacher in Vienna.”

  “Before you go, Miss Carstairs, I’d like to ask you something about your aunt. I hope you don’t consider it impertinent or disrespectful but I’m sure you will realize how important it is. Do you believe your aunt killed herself?”

  Where he had expected a moment, however brief, indicating reflection, perhaps regret or reluctance, she answered him immediately with an unblinking look.

  “It pains me to say it, Mr. Macintyre, but yes. She made two other attempts. One before I was born, about fifty-one or fifty-two. She had come back to Schenectady to settle her father’s affairs after he died. The second time was fifteen years later in Tangier where she was staying with friends and working on a travel book. So when I got the call in Vienna, my first thought was that she had succeeded at last, God rest her soul. You see, Mr. Macintyre, my aunt might have been a very talented woman, someone whose work will live long after her, but it wasn’t enough to keep her going. She gave up a long time ago. She needed something more and never found it.”

  When she finished, she smiled bravely, not for Urbino but for her Danish companion who was already putting an arm around her shoulders.

  3

  URBINO was determined not to make the same mistake twice. He would sit down and read what Adele Carstairs had just given him. And when he finished, he would lock it in the safe, something he should have done with the Venice notebook. After telling Natalia she could leave for the day, he went to the library, put the third act of Tristan und Isolde on the turntable, and settled into the Brustolon armchair with some Corvo within arm’s reach on the large convent table, cluttered with books and papers he hadn’t yet restored to their proper places. As the shepherd’s horn sounded—inspired by the lugubrious cry of the gondolier—he started to read, slowly at first.

  He gradually became accustomed to the scribbled corrections and the intricacies of Quinton’s script and was able to read more quickly. The first few sheets were filled with various observations, all of them rather brief and most about Venice.

  In Venice, actually Murano, they invented the mirror, not to mention quite a few other things, but I keep thinking about mirrors, always mirrors. The reason isn’t far to find, not with all this water, all these surfaces reflecting and distorting. The Italian for “a stretch of water” is uno speccbio d’acqua—“a mirror of water”—and “to be as clean as a new pin” (something I devoutly wish for!) is “to be as clean as a mirror”—a much better image.

  There must be dozens of mirrors here in this apartment. Did Signora Razzi take all the mirrors from her other buildings and put them here? Does she have any in her own apartment? What frightens me isn’t that they reflect all my lines, my graying hair, my haggardness, my fading blue eyes, showing all the years I’ve lived and making me apprehensive of the ones still to come. No, it isn’t that although sometimes I think it is. But last night I realized it was something much different. When I went to fix my hair in the ormolu mirror in the hall, I was afraid that when I looked it wouldn’t be me, that my features would have changed and I wouldn’t even recognize the person I saw. There looking back at me would be a stranger.

  Cannaregio (also Canareggio, Cannareggio): bamboo district, region of cane, region of bamboo. Sounds more like a quarter in an Oriental city, but of course Venice does have an Oriental aspect, doesn’t it?

  Why not say to him: Just look at a map of Venice or look down on the city from a plane. Does it look like a lute? two fish swallowing each other? a whale? two hands interlocked? or does it really look like a distorted, broken heart?

  Yesterday at the Accademia I assured myself that I was safe. Not only might I observe without becoming any more involved than I wanted to be but there was a point beyond which—no matter what my intentions—it was impossible for me to go. There was certainly little chance I might find myself within the frame, surrounded by all that old polished wood Wasn’t that the stuff of Oriental tales and of imaginations much more vivid than my own?

  Can there be one single solitary day untinged with melancholy in this city? I doubt it and I don’t think I would wish it. I’ve been melancholy (lovely word!) elsewhere but never with such pleasure.

  My conversation last night makes me think that there might be a story in it somewhere. Or maybe not in what Maria told me but in this: Somewhere there exists a lost Tintoretto on the theme of the theft of the body of Santa Teodora from Sicily, and a man (but why not a woman?) is obsessed with finding it. She can’t and commissions a fake.

  She looked up at the ceiling. From below upwards the figures seemed to be floating in space above her head, swimming against a blue that receded from her eyes the more she looked at it. Sotto in su, from below upwards, she remembered from the guide. If only one’s own life could be seen from this kind of distance so that all the cumbersome and embarrassing shapes and memories floated freely as if they were filled with a hydrogen that didn’t just make them light but gave them a luminosity, too. And then she remembered—hydrogen exploded, didn’t it?

  How about this for my historical novel? The story of the sailors from the Lido who went to Alexandria to steal the body of St. Mark and hid it beneath a pile of pork. Would this be more interesting than something on the glassblowers of old Murano?

  When the weather gets better, I want to make a circuit of some of the islands in the lagoon, those I’ve already seen and others. Not just San Michele crowded almost obscenely with its graves or Murano that always seems to smoke and smolder in my imagination but Burano, home of lace, also green and silent Torcello, San Francesco del Deserto with its friars, and all those isole del dolore dedicated to the care of the insane, the leprous, the tubercular. One of them used to be set aside for the sick pilgrims who wandered and searched for cures at whatever shrines they chose to believe in.

  Murano. You hear the name and think of glass: avventurine, reticelli, millefiori, lattisuol, retortoli, beautiful, romantic names. But thinking of glass I think of death. Death and glass are sisters. The fragility of the glass, the frozen deathlike stare of all those little animals and ballerinas and clowns, the inescapable feeling of death and dying you get when you see all the cheap work. Death and glass at the court of Louis Quatorze where the glassmakers were poisoned after they had rendered up what had kept them alive—their secret of how to make the magical substance. And didn’t the Muranesi bring their own form of death into the world when they invented the mirror into which we peer for signs of decay and the inevitable failure of not being the person we used to see there?

  These entries covered three sheets, front and back. Even if the entries themselves hadn’t made it clear that Quinton had recorded them at different times, the various inks and the marked variation in the handwriting would have. Urbino assumed that the entries were the kind he might have found in the Venice notebook. In fact, she very well might have copied them into the notebook afterward.

  The other four sheets appeared to have been written all at once or copied from another source.

  She was always wandering in some Venice of the heart where she didn’t so much lose her way as seem to lose it, to take a turn she thought would lead her away from it all, only to find it confronting her again without any warning when she thought she was far, far away from it. The Campo of Pain, the Piazza of Grief, the House of Loss.

  And so
it was appropriate that she not only came to Venice after Paris but that she decided to stay awhile. It was easier having arrived in November. There were more rooms, fewer people, and the sense that everything was being protected by fog from something which, though as inevitable as the coming of true winter, would itself pass if one only had patience.

  Lillian had patience. Hadn’t she shown how much those last weeks in London, especially during that last meeting in Regent’s Park? If John hadn’t appreciated it, it wasn’t for any inability on her part to mark time, to hold herself back from saying and doing what she wanted.

  In the end, however, it might have been better if she had had less patience and more of something else she was still trying to name months later.

  Even the vaguely Oriental aspect of the city seemed appropriate. She remembered reading in a book when she was hardly more than a schoolgirl that “I‘Orient commence a Venise.” John was an Arabist and insisted on referring to the Middle East as the Near East, the Orient of old. Their first disagreement had been in a Lebanese restaurant when she had told him she hated the song they were playing, that in fact she hated that kind of music. It never seemed to resolve anything, always seemed to leave things up in the air or to end them on a dying fall. It had only made it worse when John had told her the song was called “From Here Begins an Old Story.”

  Even then, so close to the beginning, those words had chilled her, had seemed to be a prophecy. And now she felt that they showed their truest meaning here in the serenest city on earth, the city where strange things were supposed to happen to you.

  Yes, Lillian said to herself as she wandered the city, yes, at least I know how it’s supposed to be. Knowing this prepares me for anything, even for nothing.

  She found a room not far from the Zattere. Two or three times a week she went to the Ca’ Pesaro to look at Klimt’s Salome. She knew it was perhaps perverse, this fascination with the Klimt when she had the Tintorettos and Veroneses and Carpaccios all around her. Vienna was certainly a more appropriate place for Klimt. Yet, almost against her will, she was drawn to the painting, associating it with the Salome mosaic in the San Marco Baptistery. It made no difference when she read that Klimt’s painting was actually of Judith, for hadn’t Judith been responsible for the death of a man, too?