Whispers of Vivaldi

by Beverle Graves Myers

  A husky, sardonic voice asked, “Have you two bloodhounds found anything interesting?” It was Messer Grande.

  I felt a relieved breath cool my lips, then immediately wondered if the chief constable’s presence might be a fresh problem instead of a reprieve. “Not much,” I replied carefully. “We’ve made more of a mess than anything. We managed to knock over Maestro Torani’s bust of Minerva. So clumsy…”

  Feigning nonchalance as I rattled on, I used the Vivaldi score to sweep debris from the desktop, rolled it back into a sheaf, and tucked it into a cabinet. I preferred to keep our discovery to myself until I’d had a chance to chew over it more thoroughly.

  Andrea had traded his red robe of office for a roomy black cloak, but his aspect was nonetheless impressive. In his role as Messer Grande, Andrea always managed to be enormously present no matter what his garb or what his errand. Gussie and I stared as he sauntered around the office as comfortably as if he were making the rounds at his favorite coffee house.

  “Did Aldo let you in?” I asked.

  He shook his head. “I let myself in.” His boots crunched on the mixed debris of broken plaster and shattered glass. “Would it surprise you to know that my headquarters contains a little room with hundreds of hooks—six banks of hooks, one for each of Venice’s six sestieri? And that on each hook hangs the key to an important building?”

  I sat down, crossed my arms, and tipped back in my chair. “It wouldn’t surprise me a bit.”

  With a long, drawn-out “Hmmm,” Andrea took up a three-branched candelabrum. First, he inspected the broken window pane, removing his glove and patting the sill and floor as I had done. Then he palmed the missile stone that Gussie had left on the sill, nodding judiciously.

  While the constable was thus engaged, Gussie sidled toward the cabinet where I’d placed the rolled up score.

  No, I thought desperately, get away from there, Gussie. Didn’t he realize that Andrea had eyes in the back of his head, and probably on both sides, too?

  With an air of innocence that wouldn’t fool an infant, my brother-in-law halted his progress directly in front of Maestro Vivaldi’s score. All I could do was avert my gaze and attempt to distract Andrea by pulling the tarot card out of my pocket. “This was wrapped around that stone with a length of twine.”

  Andrea took the card and dropped into the office’s third chair. He examined both sides of the pasteboard rectangle, then shrugged. “Are we to assume that this angel represents the Teatro San Marco’s latest primo uomo?”

  “Who else besides Angeletto?” I asked.

  “Who else, indeed?” Andrea sent me an enigmatic smile. “I suppose the stone could have been thrown by one of Emiliano’s partisans in a manic frenzy—shocking, the lengths these opera lovers will go to. Do you realize an enterprising shopkeeper is selling ladies garters with badges of his likeness attached? As if the bearer of that likeness would be interested in what’s under a lady’s skirt!” He chuckled, but stopped abruptly when he noticed my scowl. “Scuse, Tito. I forget…”

  He cleared his throat and continued in a solemn tone, “It could have been a gondolier on his way home, a roving gang of students…or closer to home, Angeletto’s rival at this very theater could have let his resentment boil over.”

  “Majorano?” Tossing a rock through a window seemed like a petty response for a star performer.

  “It’s possible,” Messer Grande declared. “The hot-headed boy reserves his noble sentiments for the stage, does he not?”

  “That is true.” I leaned forward, extending my hand palm-up for the card.

  Smiling once more, Andrea slipped the card beneath his black cloak. “Enough about this trifle, I’ve tracked you down to deliver good news. I found our man Grillo, and it was as you reported in every respect. He admitted entering the Ca’Passoni to keep an assignation with Beatrice. Her maid was waiting to admit him through the garden gate—a hole-and-corner affair of just the type a young miss finds enthralling. Grillo even admitted fighting with you. He wore the injury to his brow with pride—claims to have given better than he got.”

  “I daresay he’s right about that.” My chest was throbbing again, and the uncomfortable warmth had climbed to my cheeks. They felt like they were roasting before a blazing cook stove.

  “Where did you find Signor Grillo?” Gussie spoke up for the first time.

  “At his favorite brothel. According to the proprietor, who happens to be a keen observer of human foibles as well as everything else, Grillo arrived soaking wet around the time that Passoni’s footman discovered Maestro Torani’s body in the card room. Grillo had stopped there ever since.” Andrea threw one leg across the other and dug under his cloak. He looked as if he might take snuff, but his hand came away empty. He shook his head and continued, “Since this establishment is some distance away, actually on the other side of the Arsenale, we can rule Grillo out as the murderer.”

  “What about Tito?” Gussie put in quickly.

  Andrea locked his gaze on mine. “Tito lacks the willful selfishness of a murderer—the cold heart that puts one’s own needs above all else.”

  “Even to reach the pinnacle of an operatic career?” I asked quietly. “To make a last grab at the only glory left to me?”

  “Even that,” he replied. “I never doubted your story of how you came to be bloodied, but now I have the proof to convince…others. Before Grillo set off for Terra Firma, I had him sign a statement admitting his presence at the Ca’Passoni and his fight with you.”

  “He’s truly gone?” I asked, recalling how neatly he’d tricked me. “Girolamo Grillo is as much a creature of Venice as a canal rat—I’m surprised he would consent to leave.”

  “Especially at Carnival time,” Gussie added, “with so many foreigners ripe for the plucking.”

  “I gave him a choice.” Andrea rose, his gaze straying to Gussie’s right, then his left. “It was either voluntary exile or a stint under the Leads for swindling fools out of their money with that deceitful oracle of his. Grillo took but a moment to declare his preference. I personally escorted him to the San Giobbe quay and watched him sail away.”

  “What was he wearing?”

  “Wearing?” Messer Grande transferred his attention to me with a puzzled look. “He’d outfitted himself in a suit of some dark stuff that he’d sent to his lodgings for.”

  “And his cloak?”

  “Also dark.”

  “Not bright green with yellow lining?”

  “No. Why?” A muscle near his mouth twitched. For once I was a step ahead of the crafty chief constable.

  “When he leapt through the window, Grillo left a cloak of this description in the card room. As everyone poured in after Torani’s murder, I noticed that the cloak had disappeared.”

  “Perhaps the young footman who discovered Torani’s body took it.” That was Gussie.

  We both sent the Englishman withering glances.

  “No, makes no sense.” Andrea tapped the fingers of one hand on the back of the other. His impressions came out with rapid-fire precision. “Either Maestro Torani’s murderer took the cloak—perhaps to later implicate Grillo in some manner—or to erase his presence and shift blame to you,” he pointed toward me. “But in either case, the killer would have been watching and seen Grillo leave after you fought.” Now he raised the finger like a schoolmaster underscoring a particularly salient point. “Or perhaps a golden demoiselle besotted with the whoring scapegrace took the cloak to protect Grillo?”

  “Eh?” Gussie cocked his head, obviously not following.

  “Beatrice,” I advised him.

  “Oh, of course. Right you are, Tito.”

  “Now, my fine friend…” Andrea took several paces toward Gussie. “The hour is late and my pillow beckons, but I find myself intolerably curious about that roll of paper you’ve been so intent on hiding.”

&n
bsp; Gussie’s jaw dropped open. I could only shrug.

  Messer Grande motioned Gussie away from the cabinet with the swipe of a forefinger and the faintest of smiles.

  “Ah…” The chief constable let out his breath in satisfaction as he picked up the thick roll. He placed it on the desk where the candles’ rays were strongest, and read the title page with keen interest. We exchanged a freighted glance.

  Andrea turned a page, then another and another. He scratched his head, grunted, and turned to regard me soberly. The fact that I’d tried to suppress the score didn’t seem to bother him one whit. Instead of berating me, he asked, “What do you make of this, Tito? I never learned to read music. I don’t even know what I’m looking at.”

  I explained that the tattered music manuscript in his hands and The False Duke were one in the same, note for note.

  Messer Grande rocked back on his heels, staring into the dimmest corner of the room. “This is something that Maestro Torani didn’t want publicly known.”

  “Apparently—he certainly went to a great deal of trouble to hide the Vivaldi original. Though at the Savio’s reception, I overheard him tease Signora Passoni by asking if she didn’t hear the whispers of Vivaldi in the selections I’d given Oriana to sing.”

  Messer Grande’s head swiveled abruptly. His dark eyes blazed. “And did Signora Passoni agree?”

  I shrugged. “His comment seemed to upset her terribly—she left the salon in unseemly haste.”

  “Accompanied by the faithful Franco?”

  I nodded. “I didn’t see Signora Passoni again until after Maestro Torani was dead. I didn’t see Franco again at all.” I heard a throb of urgency take possession of my voice. “This original opera may well be the decisive clue that solves Maestro Torani’s murder. Signora Passoni, Franco, Rocatti, and even Lorenzo Caprioli—they all have possible ties to the opera, and they were all there at the reception. With the overflowing crowd, it would have been easy enough for one of them to persuade Maestro Torani to speak in private without being noticed by anyone else. Don’t you think so?”

  Andrea rolled up the score, stowed it in a deep pocket, and yawned behind the fist clutching his black gloves. “Ah, Tito,” he said, with his heavy features set in a sympathetic expression. “I make it a point never to come to conclusions in the small hours. That’s when hags ride out on their night mares, invading men’s dreams and confusing their wits.”

  I dropped my chin, closed my eyes, and rubbed my scratchy lids with forefinger and thumb. Messer Grande had often praised the French philosophes and advised me to follow the rational principals of these men of letters. He didn’t believe in the bogey story of the night hag any more than I did. It was only his facetious way of saying that a rested mind is sharper than a tired one. He spoke wisely. I was so exhausted, my thoughts were going round in circles.

  When I dropped my hand and looked up, a dark hole existed where Messer Grande had stood only a moment before.

  “Let’s go home,” Gussie whispered, looking a little shamefaced.

  “Lead on, my dear fellow,” I shakily replied.

  ***

  Morning came much too soon—a dull gray morning that beat against our bedchamber’s balcony doors in gusty, windy bursts.

  “I feared this,” Liya said, after she’d peeled my nightshirt back and given my chest a practiced look. “An infection has taken hold. Suppuration will soon begin.” She felt my brow with the back of her hand and shook her head. Her manner was the same as if Titolino had made himself bilious eating too many sugared frittoli.

  I reclined upon a stack of pillows, my mouth as dry as parchment and my head feeling too big for my neck. Gathering my wits, I pushed up on one elbow. The skin around the linear wound, I noted ruefully, was a puckered, angry red.

  Liya had already dressed. She stared down at me with arms crossed over her apron. “I can give you something for the fever, but your wound requires a special balm.”

  I rolled over towards her, wondering what time it was and if I was in danger of being late for Maestro Torani’s funeral. “What you used yesterday made it feel much better.”

  “That was yesterday. Today, internal corruption has set in, and stronger medicine is required.” She reached out to trace her fingertips along my ribs. They seemed to burn more warmly than my skin. “The ingredients for the compound are…not easy to come by. I may be gone several hours.”

  “Can’t you obtain the proper ingredients from the apothecary in the campo?”

  She chuckled as she bent to kiss my cheek. “The last time I checked, he was all out of spider webs gathered from a north-facing cave, and his stock has never run to moldy bread.”

  While I was still trying to decide if my wife was joking or not, she brought me a glass of milky, opalescent liquid and insisted that I drink it right down. I clamped my nose shut, certain the remedy would be foul. To my surprise, it tasted sweet and smelled faintly of fennel.

  As Liya removed her thick red cloak from the wardrobe and rummaged drawers for her knitted gloves, she ordered me to stay in bed and drink plenty of water. “There will be no funeral for you—just as well—it would only end by making you angrier than you already are.” She went on to say that the kitchen girl would be up with a pitcher of fresh water, then fired several more dire admonitions at me. At each one, I smiled complacently and settled into my pillows like a man who intended to take a long, refreshing sleep.

  I waved to my wife as she left the bedroom. In a few moments, the thud of the front door floated up the stairs. I made myself count to one hundred. Then my feet hit the floor.

  Chapter Seventeen

  After a cup of inferior chocolate prepared by the kitchen girl, I dressed myself. I chose a plain suit of loden-green broadcloth, a starched neckcloth, and a black cloak. In deference to my fever, I donned woolen stockings instead of silk and wrapped a scarf around my neck. No curls, no lace frills, no feather in my hat. Without Benito’s sartorial skill, I looked rather a sober, dull fellow. So be it. I was going to Maestro Torani’s funeral, and I was going alone. Last night, Gussie had offered to accompany me, but this was a duty best fulfilled on my own. I didn’t want him embarrassed if Signor Passoni felt the need to have me thrown down the church steps.

  If truth be told, I’d found funerals particularly distressing ever since my days at the Conservatorio San Remo. Naples sat on unsteady ground. The roots of its smoke-belching, humpbacked mountain ran deep, burrowing under the vineyards on its sides and causing intermittent tremors that wreaked havoc on ancient buildings. On a schoolboy excursion, we’d once come upon some workmen removing broken coffins from the burial crypt of a church that had fallen in on itself. We boy singers had broken ranks, ignoring our maestro’s strident commands to reform our double line. I’d never forgotten kneeling on the broken foundation stones, peering over into the pit, and coming face to face with a human head lodged in the debris.

  Its flesh was sunken in decay, pulled back from a mouth gaping in a silent scream. The nose had collapsed to one side, its eyes into cankerous depressions. A rotting veil held in place by gold chains swathed the skull, and shreds of that discolored cloth coiled through a tangle of gray-white hair. I popped up with a shriek and didn’t stop running until I’d reached the next campo. In a boys’ school, as you may imagine, I was never allowed to forget my cowardice. Even now, whenever I chance to encounter a gondola bearing a catafalque, a gloomy chill takes possession of my heart and fills me with despondency and foreboding.

  The weather matched my mood. A Sirocco was coming, bound to bring an early acqua alta. I could smell it in the salty tang of the wind and see it in the shifting gray clouds that dirtied the sky to the southeast. Within days, the wind would turn ferocious, whipping the lagoon into waves topped with pea-green foam and flooding the piazza. Not an auspicious beginning for Carnival, or for the opening of The False Duke. I pushed my tricorne firmly down on my
head, tried to ignore my light head and aching chest, and directed my steps towards the church of San Nicoletto where Maestro Torani would be laid to rest.

  At its modest portico, I found a dozen or so facchini laboring as paid mourners. The men were putting on a grand show, weeping, moaning, and extolling Torani in fulsome terms. Their specialty was fastening themselves to the arms of passers-by who were obliged to give over a coin to be released from their supplications; thus the false mourners earned double pay. I’d hoped to arrive before the Savio’s party, and for once luck was with me. I entered the church untroubled except for being forced to shake off one particular industrious mourner.

  I dipped three fingers in the vestibule font—freezing!—and whispered a prayer as I made the sign of the cross. Then I slid into an out-of-the-way pew beside a small side chapel and divested myself of cloak and hat. Aldo, Ziani, Giuseppe Balbi, and few others from the Teatro San Marco had already arrived. They knelt down front with bowed heads and folded hands. I followed their lead. In addition to my uncharacteristic clothing, burying my nose and chin in my tented fingers might save me from attracting notice, at least for a bit.

  Over my mask of sorts, I surveyed San Nicoletto’s interior. It was considerably more impressive than its exterior, not an opulent cavern like the Basilica San Marco, but there was a fluid symmetry in the gilded arches that framed the three naves and a touching humanity in the painting of the Madonna behind the high altar. I inhaled deeply; traces of incense lingered, stale and sweet.

  I was stalling, of course, but I couldn’t put the moment off any longer. By force of will, I turned my attention to Maestro Torani’s death box. Garlands of ivy and fall flowers girdled the coffin atop the black-taffeta-draped bier in front of the central nave, and at least a hundred tapers glowed in ranks to each side. I shivered, out of grief or fever or troubling memories. Or perhaps a mixture of all three. I couldn’t stop myself from picturing the empty, deteriorating shell of the vibrant Maestro Torani I had known. Never again would I have his wise counsel. Never again share a simple glass of wine. Never again see the warmth in his eyes when we talked of music, our shared passion.