Death in a Serene City

by Edward Sklepowich

  “It didn’t do Maria much good,” Urbino said. “It was only when she learned from Quinton that Domenica had been a male glass-blower from old Murano that she started to think along different lines. Maybe she remembered seeing Bellorini on the boat to Murano when he was supposed to be in Padua at the university. She always got off at San Michele to visit her husband’s grave, but Stefano would have continued on in the same boat to Murano—or she might have seen him on the return trip. She went back and forth a lot between Venice and San Michele even before her daughter died.”

  “Until the flood of sixty-six.”

  “No reason to go after that. Beatrice was scheduled to be disinterred early that month, and Maria was determined her daughter wouldn’t end up in a mass grave the way her husband had. There was all the confusion after the flood to help Carlo with the exchange of the two bodies. It was a neat, if daring arrangement, with Lapo Grossi unknowingly carting off the body of Santa Teodora to Sant’Ariano where I guess Maria felt it would be more proper for it to lie than a mass grave. There was that photograph she had seen of the Cappuchin catacombs in Rome—or at least I assume that’s what it was. It comforted her that there was some kind of acceptable religious tradition in what she was doing. Her devotion to her daughter, though, was obviously stronger than her devotion to Santa Teodora. She had her daughter right there at San Gabriele and had secreted the glass dove with her for safekeeping. Maria had taken the trinket from Beatrice after all. It was never lost as Beatrice thought. Everything must have made perfect sense to Maria. Remember that the twelve years were up and she had no money for perpetual care.”

  “I didn’t know anything about it. If she had only mentioned it to me, or someone else had, Alvise and I would have been more than glad to help her. What she must have thought of the da Capo-Zendrini mausoleum!”

  “Things like that probably never even occurred to her. She was determined to solve her problem the way she could. It was the form her devotion to her daughter took. It seems a bit gruesome the way she always had her daughter’s body there to look at. I wonder if there were times when she thought she was really looking at the body of Santa Teodora, but most likely not. How could she ever have forgotten? And for more than twenty years no one else even noticed the difference. It shows what faith can do—not to mention a mask, slippers, gloves, and a long gown! I’m sure that what Carlo had to go through had a great deal to do with his peculiarities over the past twenty years, including his suicide on San Michele.”

  The Contessa nodded.

  “It’s comforting, isn’t it,” she said, “that not only is the Patriarch reconsecrating Santa Teodora’s body but that they’re also setting up a fund for the perpetual care of the Galuppi graves?”

  “I happen to know you’re playing a big role in that,” Urbino said.

  “And I happen to know that you made a large contribution yourself by buying two thirty-year-old paintings that had been left in a lumber room of the building on the Rio della Sensa. I’m looking forward to seeing them.”

  They were silent for a few minutes as they looked out at the darkening Piazza. Although carnevale was celebrated throughout the city, it was here in the Piazza, roofed now with low dark clouds threatening rain, that the festivities were focused. A stage, its curtain closed now, faced the Basilica at the west end. A row of grinning white masks, soon to be illuminated with the coming of night, adorned the perimeter of the Piazza above the arcades. For what seemed the third time since Urbino and the Contessa had sat down a Viennese waltz was blaring over the loudspeakers. Revelers strolled across the open space and under the arcades and congregated in front of the souvenir and refreshment stands. Others occupied the canopied deck outside Quadri’s or sought a better view on the long ramp in the middle of the square where they had to compete for space with costumed figures who were there only to be seen and photographed. However many people there were in the Piazza now, there was no comparison to the throngs who would descend during the next week as carnevale reached its final frenzy. Urbino longed for Ash Wednesday when the Piazza as well as the whole city would return to its serene winter self.

  “About Beatrice’s Wedding Cup painting,” the Contessa began, turning away from the Piazza. “I just don’t understand why Stefano waited so long to steal it.”

  “For one thing, he learned that Maria had just shown all the artwork to Sister Veronica. He could only assume that the Wedding Cup painting was part of it although there was always the possibility that Beatrice had thrown it away out of anger when he returned it after he got married. But from what Sister Veronica said Maria told her—that Beatrice was in tears when she got the painting back and that she hid it away—it seems the poor girl was more hurt than angry.”

  “But Sister Veronica didn’t meet him until about fifteen years ago. I introduced them. Being over on Murano, and under her father’s eye, she was isolated. Then when she entered Santa Crispina she was just as isolated—that is, until Vatican Two came along.”

  “She did say that the face of the groom was vaguely familiar. Because Stefano has changed so much since the fifties he really didn’t have much to fear from her on that account. And Maria didn’t have the best vision. As for Carlo, the poor man wasn’t the type to notice things like that. But what if Beatrice’s work were shown to someone who had known Stefano back then? Admittedly the face of the groom wasn’t as identifiable as Beatrice’s was but Sister Veronica said Beatrice had used reddish tones. Someone might have associated her portrait of the groom with Stefano because of the coloring. And how did he know that there might not be other pictures of him of some kind—in the sketchbooks, for example? At any rate, he would have got his hands on that painting even if the face had been less obviously his or not even his at all.”

  “But without his profile on it, what would there have been to link him with it?”

  “Several things. Stefano would visit Beatrice at the Glass Museum when she was copying the scenes from the Wedding Cup. He would slip over from Pignatti’s or stop by on the way there. Although they tried to keep things secret, they sometimes didn’t care, all of the hiding was too much for them. Once Beatrice was dead—murdered—and he heard Maria was showing the painting around, he was afraid that sooner or later someone might link the two. Actually he was afraid it could happen even if no one saw the painting or—if someone did—even if he wasn’t recognized.”

  “But didn’t he risk drawing attention by stealing the Wedding Cup painting even though he tried to camouflage it by taking the Tintoretto, too? He would have been better off to have done nothing.”

  “Not necessarily. You’re forgetting Cavatorta.”

  Urbino was now approaching more delicate ground as far as the Contessa was concerned. She was looking at him without any apparent awareness of what he meant, of what he was about to say.

  “When Stefano and Angela were married,” he went on, “Cavatorta’s father, on behalf of the whole family, gave them a gift, a copy of the Barovier Wedding Cup. He gave it to all the married couples he knew. A rather convenient and appropriate gift.”

  “And how did you find this out?”

  “Cavatorta told me the last time I visited him.”

  “You never told me that!”

  Her voice was sharp and there was a mottled look to her face. She seemed upset, embarrassed, maybe even a little afraid.

  “No, I didn’t. I thought it would be better to think things through. Angela and Stefano are such good friends of yours and—”

  “You didn’t trust me, did you? It’s as simple as that. What did you think I’d do? Warn them? Or did you think that somehow I—!”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, Barbara. I never thought anything of the kind.”

  “Just go on with what you were saying.”

  Her voice was low, but intense. Something more than his decision not to tell her about what he had learned from Cavatorta was bothering her.

  “The Bellorinis rejected the gift. I know you must have heard how they
sent a gift back to the Cavatortas even if you didn’t know what the gift was.”

  “But why?”

  “Cavatorta told me he saw Beatrice at the Class Museum once or twice. Stefano might have thought he and Beatrice had been seen together and that Cavatorta had influenced his father to send the Wedding Cup as a gift, as some kind of taunt, a sign that he knew the two of them were involved. Even back then, it seems, Cavatorta wasn’t the nicest person around. Stefano saw no reason to trust him.”

  “But that gift was given to everyone, you said.”

  To everyone up until the death of Cavatorta’s father twenty years ago. But Stefano didn’t know that at the time and neither did Angela. It would seem that you yourself weren’t aware of it until I mentioned it.” She nodded perfunctorily and glanced out at the Piazza. “When he got married, he had nothing to fear, and he was angry with Cavatorta. Maybe he had a need to confess. They say unfaithful spouses want to be found out. And maybe he couldn’t hide his anger at Cavatorta. Angela would have wanted an explanation and so he told her the truth, gambling that she would throw her lot in with him against Cavatorta. He told her, about Beatrice and returned the Wedding Cup painting. There was no way Angela was going to have that around!”

  “But the affair wasn’t over, was it?”

  “It continued for months after the marriage, not the way it had before but they were seeing each other whenever they could. A clean break is always the best but people think that tapering off, withdrawing gradually, will be less traumatic, that somehow they’ll get off easier that way.”

  “So Stefano managed to enlist Angela’s aid.”

  “Exactly. He told her that the gift was an affront to them both. Only after Beatrice died did he worry that their behavior might have given something away, that the Wedding Cup painting was probably still among Beatrice’s things. Stefano was all the more upset when he found out that Cavatorta’s father gave the same gift to everyone, that Cavatorta hadn’t necessarily meant it as a taunt. That’s why the story got around that Angela had been offended at getting a so-called common gift. They probably encouraged the story themselves at that point, taking advantage of the Cavatorta tradition even if it didn’t make them look good.”

  “I see. So if Cavatorta saw the painting Beatrice had done even without recognizing Stefano—or even if he knew about its existence—he might have remembered the way the Bellorinis responded to the gift and started thinking.”

  “It was certainly a possibility. And it was the risk I took myself when I asked Cavatorta if he remembered the gift his father had given the Bellorinis. I’m not sure if he knows that a painting of the Wedding Cup ever existed. When I asked him about the theft, he was abrupt with me and didn’t give me a chance to mention that particular painting of Beatrice’s. Unless either Maria or Sister Veronica said something, how would he know? I was taking a chance asking him about the gift. He might have come to conclusions on his own, might have tried to take some action himself, maybe even blackmail. Cavatorta didn’t care for Stefano and Stefano must have remained suspicious about Cavatorta to the end, even paranoid. Don’t forget how Stefano reacted the night of your party to Cavatorta’s comment that ‘those who wear green must be sure of themselves.’ Stefano might have thought that somehow Cavatorta knew that arsenic was used to get a desirable shade of green in glassmaking. When you’re guilty, everything seems to point a finger at you.”

  This seemed to give the Contessa something to think about for a few minutes as she stared at the portrait of two scantily-clad women over the opposite banquette.

  “So when Maria told him there was something that could still connect him with her daughter and that it was in the glass coffin, he had to get it back,” she said dully, as if she were reciting a lesson.

  “There was absolutely no way for him to know it wasn’t something much more incriminating. But I don’t think he had any intention of paying her the money she wanted for Carlo’s security—or any intention of killing her either, as he says. He hit out at her when she tried to prevent him from opening the glass coffin, then he had to do some quick thinking and put the body in my pillow slip. If only Carlo had come out of the confessional then—or even looked out—but unfortunately, his mother had him well trained. And no one noticed Stefano returning to his studio. Of course he was sometimes seen bringing back things he had found along the quay or in a calle. He showed me an art trouvé piece when I was at the studio last month”—at this the Contessa shook her head slowly, her taste not encompassing even a tenth of the modern art at Peggy Guggenheim’s or the Biennale—“so if anyone saw him that day it might not have been thought out of the ordinary. Once back at the studio he and Angela retrieved the glass dove and destroyed it, then disposed of the body in the dustbin, not realizing they were handling the partially preserved body of Beatrice. Voyd’s murder and the theft of the Venice notebook—not to mention what might have happened to both of us at the studio last week if Gemelli hadn’t decided to monitor my movements—were their final, desperate efforts to prevent their exposure, to keep their secret.”

  “My God, but their relationship must have been strange! Thirty years—more than thirty years!—with that secret between them. What a terrible way to live. There must be times when you don’t even know you’re letting your guard down, at other times you probably don’t even know you’re living a lie. Maybe the strain over all those years explains why they’ve been so cooperative with the police. They must have been souls in pain, especially toward the end.”

  Was the strained look on her own face because she was thinking of all the hours—all the innocent, enjoyable hours for her—spent in the company of the Bellorinis and their secret?

  “Probably their secret is what kept them together all those years,” he said by way of pulling her from these troubling thoughts. “Their secret was their marriage. You might even say it was the child they never had.”

  She gave him a skeptical look.

  “Try to curb your imagination just a little, caro.” She picked up a cake. “Exactly what was old Lodovico Pignatti’s role in all this?” she asked, the cake poised at her lips.

  “Innocent enough. He probably saw no danger or difficulty in keeping Stefano’s apprenticeship a secret and was sure that sooner or later the old tyrant was bound to realize his son wasn’t studying in Padua as he thought. It was only a family disagreement he didn’t care to get more involved in. Then, with the old man more than ten years dead, Pignatti could see no reason for not putting up that photograph when he renovated his showroom. When Stefano and Angela found out, they decided it would be a good idea to set fire to the showroom.”

  “That seems a drastic measure. Why not try to convince Pignatti not to use the photo?”

  “He might have become suspicious. About this time Maria was starting to come around with her questions, don’t forget, and Pignatti probably knew that Beatrice had died of arsenic poisoning. In a way arson was a clean way of doing it.”

  “Except what was to prevent Pignatti from putting up another copy?”

  “Stefano took a chance that paid off. Pignatti was too disheartened to redo the showroom the way it had been before. He died not long after that.”

  Dusting off her fingers, the Contessa stood up abruptly.

  “Do you have a gettone?”

  He reached into his pocket and gave her a phone token.

  “I won’t be long.”

  As she was going through the foyer, she stopped the waiter and said something to him. He smiled and nodded.

  She was gone for more than ten minutes. When she came back, she was followed by the waiter carrying a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and two glasses on a tray. She didn’t speak until after the waiter had opened the champagne and poured out two glasses.

  “I have something to confess, caro, and I needed something stronger than tea to do it on. And we do have cause for celebration.” She took a sip of the champagne. “The call I just made was to the house. Before I tell you what this is all
about, you must promise not to be angry. You see, Urbino, Franco Cavatorta gave Alvise and me a copy of the Barovier Wedding Cup when we were married, too.”

  “But, Barbara, why didn’t you mention it? If I had known sooner, I might—”

  “But that’s just it, Urbino,” she interrupted. “I didn’t know myself until a few minutes ago.”

  “What do you mean?”

  She took another sip—this a much deeper one—before going on.

  “Do you remember all the gifts you’ve ever received, especially when you get so many at one time? This was more than thirty years ago. Maybe I never even knew what Franco Cavatorta gave us. Remember, Alvise was a count. We had a huge wedding. Gifts were coming in for weeks before and after the wedding.”

  There was a touch of haughtiness in her delivery which he was sure had more to do with embarrassment than pride.

  “So how can you be sure now?”

  “Lucia looked it up for me. Alvise and I hired a girl from the university to make a list of the gifts and the people who gave them. She wrote them down in a book Alvise’s mother had used for the same purpose. She made out most of the thank-you notes, too, even signed our names.” She met his eyes almost defiantly as if she were ready to counter any accusation of social impropriety. “It’s the way these things are usually done, Urbino.”

  “Especially among you counts and countesses,” he couldn’t resist saying. “But it doesn’t make any difference now, does it?”

  “I just hope that you didn’t think at any point that I knew and didn’t want to mention it.”

  “I thought that if you did know you hadn’t realized its possible significance.” She took this slight—and somewhat evasive—criticism without even a flicker. “It might not have seemed that important to you. I didn’t start thinking along the right lines myself until my talk with Sister Veronica at the Glass Museum the day before the scene at Stefano’s studio. No, it never occurred to me that you might have known and made a conscious decision not to say anything.”