A Very Venetian Murder

by Haughton Murphy

  “We have more than you imagine,” Valier said. “Maybe four or five a year. Mostly one criminal killing another, especially over drugs, or sometimes a jealous husband.”

  Reuben did a quick calculation. “If Venice has a population of seventy-five thousand, five murders a year is a rate of one per fifteen thousand.”

  “How does that compare with New York?” Valier asked.

  “We average about six a day, or something over two thousand a year. With a population of eight million that’s, let’s see, one per four thousand. Your record is better.”

  A waiter served up three dishes of tagliolini, with a sauce of minced shellfish and cheese covering the pasta.

  “Venetians seldom serve fish and cheese together,” Valier explained. “But you’ll like this.”

  After a taste, Reuben and Cynthia expressed immediate approval.

  His pasta selection commended, Valier called the owner over to discuss the next course.

  “You wanted to see us, Jack,” Reuben said, when the ordering was completed.

  “Yes. I’d like to see what we know and what we don’t know about Mr. Baxter’s murder. We now have statements from Mr. Garrison, Miss Tabita, Mr. Abbott and Miss Medford. And, of course, there is the information you first gave me, about the poisoning attempt. I have talked to the barman at Haig’s Bar and I’ve had two ispettori asking questions around Santa Maria del Giglio.

  “From this, we know the following. Primo. Someone unsuccessfully tried to poison Gregg Baxter on Wednesday. Secondo. Baxter had dinner last night with his colleagues and la marchesa Scamozzi and her gentleman friend, right here, at this restaurant. Terzo. Baxter separated from his companions at Santa Maria del Giglio at approximately ten-twenty-five and went to Haig’s Bar. Quarto. An hour or so later Baxter left Haig’s with a young man named Nicolò Pandini, then returned to the bar alone after another hour had gone by. Quinto. Baxter had one drink of Scotch and left the bar again, by himself. This was at approximately one o’clock. And, finally, sesto, Baxter was killed in the Calle dei Tredici Martiri, sometime between one and three A.M., or so they concluded from the autopsia.”

  At this point the waiter brought the largest plate yet, containing a giant branzino, or sea bass, which had been prepared bollito, boiled in white wine.

  “This is very healthy for you,” Valier explained. “No heavy sauces, which I believe you Americans no longer eat.”

  The simple fish was delectable, and the Frosts again congratulated the Commissario for choosing it. He smiled and quickly returned to the subject of Baxter.

  “Now, let us see what we don’t know. Primo. Who placed the poison in Baxter’s insulin? Secondo. Where did Baxter and Pandini go when they left Haig’s Bar together? Terzo. How did Baxter get from Haig’s to the Calle dei Tredici Martiri? Alone? With his murderer? And finalmente, the jackpot question, who was that murderer?”

  “You have facts we didn’t know before,” Reuben said. “Pandini, for instance. Who is he?”

  “He is un uomo che si prostituisce, a male prostitute, a hustler. Or, as we say in Venice, a recio. He’s a bad egg who preys on queer tourists. He’s smart enough not to rob them, but he charges a fancy price and we suspect is not above blackmail if the opportunity comes along. We’ve had an eye on him for a long time. He’s good-looking and friendly, so he makes out well.”

  “Let me see if I have this straight. He met Baxter in Haig’s, went outside somewhere with him and then Baxter came back into the bar alone.”

  “Yes. That’s what the bartender says.”

  “But Pandini could have met up with Baxter again later, after he left the bar?”

  “Of course.”

  “What does this Pandini say?”

  “He’s disappeared,” Valier said. “We haven’t been able to find him.”

  “And what about the neighbors? You said your men had questioned them.”

  “Nothing,” Valier said. “Usually, no matter where you are in Venice, or what hour of the day or night it is, there is at least one grandmother, una nonna, peering out a window, or at least listening to the sounds. Unfortunately, there are not that many apartments along the Calle where Baxter was killed.”

  “I know, I went there this afternoon,” Reuben said.

  “Anyway, no one heard a thing or saw a thing. Or so they all claim.”

  “What about the workers in the hotel?” Reuben asked. “This afternoon the service entrance was open and one could see and hear people moving about inside.”

  “The door is closed at night. My ispettore asked the same question. Right now, I would say young Pandini is a likely suspect, wouldn’t you?”

  “There’s only one difficulty with that,” Cynthia said. “If we assume the person who tried to poison Gregg Baxter was the same one who murdered him, it seems improbable that Pandini was the poisoner. As far as we know, he met Baxter for the first time last night.”

  “That is true, Mrs. Frost. So let us put Pandini to one side for a moment. There is another intriguing fact I did not include in my enumeration, because I don’t know what it means. We have taken the deposizione of la signorina Medford. She claims to have no memory of what happened after she returned last night to her hotel.”

  “I told you, Jack, about her being fired,” Reuben said.

  “Yes. That is why we were especially interested in her statement.”

  “What I didn’t tell you is that we saw Ms. Medford last night,” Reuben said. “She was with Eric Werth, the perfume manufacturer I mentioned, and Jim Cavanaugh, his lawyer, at the Antica Besseta. They came back with us and we left Medford at the Bauer Grunwald.”

  “What time?”

  “Around ten-forty, I’d say.”

  “Was she drunk—ubriaca?”

  “She seemed all right when we left her,” Reuben said. But then he thought of the quantity of grappa she had put away. And her wine consumption on the plane, Baxter’s reference to her as a “drunken bitch” and her perpetually red face. She was probably a two-fisted drinker. “If she was drunk, she would hardly have been in shape to kill Baxter.”

  “She may have stayed sober long enough to kill him and then done some serious drinking afterward,” Cynthia observed. “Wiping out her memory of the murder in the process.”

  “That’s true,” Valier said. “In fact, Mrs. Frost, you have made a very good point. I shall have my men do some more checking at the Bauer Grunwald.”

  “Jack, not to jump around, but are you aware of the quarreling that went on here at Da Fiore?” Reuben asked.

  Valier looked surprised. “Quarreling? What do you mean?”

  “What I mean is that Cynthia and I have heard that Gregg Baxter picked fights with most of his party during dinner.”

  Together, the Frosts reported what they had been told by Gussie Morrison and Sarah Cochran.

  “I am very surprised,” Valier said, when they had finished. “Neither Garrison nor the model mentioned trouble to me, and neither did Mr. Abbott.”

  “Nor to me,” Reuben added.

  “You say it was an old lady who told you this?” Valier continued. “Perhaps she was confused.”

  “Our source may be old, but I’ve yet to find her confused,” Reuben said.

  “We can settle this pretty easily,” Valier said. He motioned to Maurizio Martin, who came over to the table. The crowd had thinned out and the dining room staff was less harried than it had been earlier; the owner had time to sit and chat, and did so.

  “Maurizio, you’ve heard about the murder of the American?” Valier asked.

  “Yes. The fashion person. It was unbelievable. He was here for dinner last night,” Martin said, speaking in English.

  “We know that,” Valier said. “And we’ve been told that Baxter, the dead man, was quarreling with his group.”

  “He talked much.”

  “What was he saying?”

  “I could not hear. It was very busy and I was moving around. He must have said something sgradevole, som
ething disagreeable, because two of the people he was with, the two negri, got up and left.”

  “And you didn’t hear anything that was said?” the Commissario pressed.

  “No.”

  “What happened after the black couple left?”

  “Il signor Baxter started shouting at one of the men with him. Not Luigi Regillo but the other one.”

  “Dan Abbott,” Frost said.

  “Then they took off.”

  “What time?”

  “I would say around ten. A little after, perhaps.”

  “Maurizio, thank you.”

  After Martin had left them, Valier said over coffee that he wanted to talk to Baxter’s colleagues again.

  “An ispettore has gone to the Cipriani this evening to speak with the employees who were on duty last night,” he continued. “I’m going to try to reach him now to ask him to make questions at the Bauer Grunwald as well. First thing tomorrow morning, I’ll find out what he’s learned and then call the famous New York detective.” Valier smiled and looked at Cynthia.

  Reuben ignored the taunt. Their business done but their coffee unfinished, he asked Valier if he were a native Venetian.

  “Oh yes. I’ve spent my whole life here, except for my short stay in Sicily and then my enforced vacation in your country. I always refused to leave Venice to serve in the P.S. elsewhere, which is why I’m a mere Commissario and not the Questore of, say, some booming metropolis like Salerno. I took care of my mother for very many years, you see, so could not leave. Which was all right. Valiers should be in Venice. It is an old Venetian name. The family had two Doges in the seventeenth century, Bertucci and Silvestro. Poor Bertucci was sick the whole time and died within two years. Silvestro, his son, lasted longer, but was stricken with apoplexy after a fight with the Dogaressa, his wife.”

  “Are there monuments to the Valiers?” Frost asked, after explaining his vacation project.

  “There is only one—a huge mausoleum in San Zanipolo.”

  “Ah yes. I remember reading about it now.”

  “It is the tomb of both Bertucci and Silvestro. And Silvestro’s wife, the Dogaressa Elisabetta Querini. The legend is that she felt so guilty about quarreling with her husband, and causing his death, that she had the grandest possible monument built to ease her conscience.”

  “A touching story,” Cynthia said, an amused edge to her voice.

  “I have to make an assault on San Zanipolo soon,” Reuben said.

  “Right now I have to make an assault on the bed,” Valier said. “It is sack time. Let me call you in the morning. And, Avvocato Frost, thank you for the information you supplied. I think in this processo two gray heads—ours—may be better than one.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  The Poor Baker-Boy

  Saturday morning, Reuben went to the pool earlier than usual. He knew that it was invaded on weekends by rich Milanese and their families. More precisely, the pool area became crowded early in the day with mothers, children and nannies: the children scampered about, the nannies looked bored and the young mothers, uncovering and greasing their bodies, sought desperately to absorb the last sunshine of the season. The Italian surgeon general, if there was such, had clearly not warned his constituents of the dangers of sunbathing—or of smoking, for that matter. The young matrons in their bikinis puffed assiduously on their Marlboros.

  Reuben was dismayed to find a family group camped near his favorite spot. He reclined there on a chaise all the same, hoping that the three infants uncomfortably close by would behave. He was disappointed. The two girls and a boy rousingly chased each other around and around.

  To his relief, an Italian-speaking termagant finally shouted, “Basta! Tornatevene dalla mammina!” The nanny’s stern imprecation, coupled with a severe look, had a positive effect and the chastised noisemakers did return to their mother, settling down in wiggly silence beside her.

  Later, emerging from his morning swim, he lay back and looked up at the suites occupied by the Baxter party. There was no sign of anyone on the balconies, though the anonymous and limber member of the staff had done his climbing act that morning and opened the large umbrellas. Then, just as he closed his eyes, a porter approached with the message that Commissario Valier wanted him to call.

  Frost put on his robe and went to an outdoor telephone near the landing stage. Once on the line, the Commissario proposed that Reuben meet him early in the afternoon at his office. “We put things together so well last night, I’d like to try again today,” he told Frost. “I have some new information to be fitted into the puzzle.”

  Valier was no more forthcoming, so it was plain to Reuben that making the trip to the Squadra Mobile was the price of learning what the “new information” might be. He agreed to be there at two.

  That afternoon, the Commissario was dressed in suit and tie; Reuben was tieless and wore a blue blazer. Perhaps as a concession to it being Saturday, Valier’s suit was a pale tan, lighter than his own complexion, and he wore two-toned brown shoes on his tiny feet. Again Reuben noted that his erect bearing made him appear taller.

  “You have news?” Frost asked.

  “Yes, I do. Hot off the press. My assistants have been busy. While we were having our very good dinner last night—for which I thank you once more—one of them questioned the motoscafista of the Cipriani boat who was working Thursday night and the watchman who guards the rear door at the hotel. Also the second watchman who patrols the property. Also the concierge on duty. The result of these interrogations is this. Primo. Mr. Abbott returned to the hotel around eleven, according to the boatman.”

  “That fits with my having seen him in the bar later.”

  “Yes. He said he was in the bar until just before midnight, when he rented a movie from the concierge and watched it on his VCR. A film with your Mr. De Niro—or maybe he’s ours—called Midnight Run. Not that the name matters.

  “Then, secondo, Mr. Garrison and Miss Tabita came back later, the boatman says about twelve forty-five, though the concierge thinks it was more like one-thirty when they picked up their room key. There were so many revelers from a party of Americans that no one seems quite sure of anything.”

  “I know. I was there,” Reuben said. “Perhaps they returned and had a drink in the bar before going to pick up their key.”

  “Unlikely. The bar did stay open to accommodate all the drinkers, but neither the bartender nor the waiter saw Garrison and Tabita.”

  “Isn’t it possible they could have missed them in the crowd?”

  “They are a pretty distinctive-looking couple, Avvocato Frost.”

  “Point taken,” Reuben said.

  “So I think we have to realize that there may be a discrepancy between what the boatman says and what the concierge says.”

  “What do they say?” Reuben asked.

  “They split the difference. Their deposizioni both state that they got back around one o’clock and went straight to their suite, after picking up their key.

  “Now let me turn to what my other ispettore learned,” Valier continued. “Point terzo, which I find intriguing. The records at the Bauer Grunwald show that three miniature bottles of vodka and two miniature bottles of Scotch were consumed out of Miss Medford’s minibar between the time she checked in Thursday and when the bar was checked and restocked Friday afternoon. Thus there is possible support for the theory offered by your wife last night that Medford may have killed Baxter and drowned her sorrows afterward.”

  “Both Scotch and vodka were drunk, you say. That could mean she drank vodka at one time and Scotch at another—not necessarily the binge you pictured. Or she may have been drinking with someone else.”

  “Or she drank all the vodka and then started on the Scotch,” Valier said. “The hotel only includes three bottles of vodka in each minibar.”

  “Hmn,” Reuben said.

  “So terzo is ambiguous. Which brings me to the deceased. As I told you at Da Fiore, Baxter came to Haig’s Bar
around ten twenty-five or ten-thirty Thursday night, picked up Nicolò Pandini, left the bar for an hour or so and then came back. He departed the second time about one A.M., after which he was killed.”

  “So what do you have to add to the story today, Jack?” Reuben asked.

  “Quarto is what I have to add. We have found out what Baxter and Pandini were doing,” he said, then paused. “They went for a gondola ride.”

  “Gondola ride! That’s preposterous!”

  “Is it, really? Making love in a gondola is not unheard of, you know. Read your Casanova. Including two men going at it, I should think. Maybe not buggery, but there are other themes and variations that would have been possible. In the dark, under a blanket, no one would ever know. Including the gondolier, unless he’s a voyeur.”

  “You’ve talked to the gondolier? What does he say?” Frost asked.

  “His name is Viscusi and he works at the gondola station right there between the Gritti and Haig’s.”

  “Yes, I know where you mean.”

  “Viscusi says Pandini, whom he knew, and another man—he later identified him, so we’re satisfied it was Baxter—hired him at eleven forty-five for one hour. They discussed a price and decided to go up the Rio Barcaroli—not too far from where they were—and back. Viscusi says he’s sure of the time, because he was to quit at midnight and had been looking at his watch repeatedly. He took the job and finished where he’d started at twelve thirty-five.”

  “That’s only fifty minutes.”

  “To a gondolier, that’s an hour.”

  “Just like an American psychiatrist,” Reuben grumbled. “What did the gondolier say was going on?”

  “Gondoliers do not make a habit of being talkative with the police, Avvocato Frost. He saw nothing, or so he claims.”

  “And I take it Mr. Pandini has still not been found?”

  “Correct.”

  “That leaves la marchesa Scamozzi and her friend—what about them?” Reuben asked.

  “My men found out that they were on the number five, the circolare sinistra, that went from the Zattere to Sant’Eufemia, over on the Giudecca near where la marchesa lives, at ten forty-five. Both the crew members on duty remembered seeing them. The trip across takes only two minutes, so they were on their way home at ten forty-seven.”