The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries

by Michaela Thompson

  In the meantime, plans for the Venice trip had continued. She and Brian rigorously kept their costumes secret from one another, designating certain closets and drawers off-limits. Sally had no idea, not the slightest, what costume Brian might choose. When she tried to imagine, she couldn’t picture anything. As for the others, she didn’t care. She was going to play the game, parade around at the foot of the Campanile from two until two-thirty tomorrow afternoon. After that, everything was going to be different, because the one thing she knew was that she couldn’t go on like this.

  French words came out of the loudspeaker. People began gathering their possessions and standing up, so Sally assumed the flight had been called. They were lucky to have gotten a cheap fare and avoided the long train ride. Then the announcement was repeated in English, and she and Brian, not looking at each other, picked up their things and joined the crowd pressing toward the woman checking boarding passes.

  It hadn’t been as easy as Sally thought to figure out a corpse disguise. You could do Death, all right— skull, scythe, black hooded cape— but Corpse was harder. The only article of clothing she could associate with a corpse was a shroud. Or maybe a winding-sheet, a term she had run into in her literature classes. Sally wasn’t sure what a winding-sheet looked like, or whether it was really a sheet at all. She took a bed sheet and tried winding it around herself in various ways, but it didn’t look like anything but a Roman toga.

  Then she thought of bandages. She could wrap herself like a mummy. That was closer, but her experiments with a roll of gauze left her convinced that it was impossible to wrap her entire body.

  By now, she was deeply interested— more interested than she’d been in anything for a long time. She finally solved the problem when she found, in the fabric section of a department store, a kind of white cheesecloth that looked like medical gauze. She bought several meters.

  She also bought a white leotard and tights— she’d wear her thermal underwear beneath— and white satin ballet slippers. She went home and put these on and then wrapped her body in the gauze. She swathed her arms, swirled it around her head, let it fall over her face. Then she went to the mirror.

  It was horrifying. The gauze fell away from her body in loops, the ends looking tattered, as if her winding-sheet were loosening. The effect could be more Ghost than Corpse, but it was dreadful either way. Her heart began to thud, as if she really were looking at her dead self. She clasped her trembling hands in front of her, and that was even worse— like a lost, supplicating, half-rotten dead girl. Her eyes stung. She hoped Brian would be terrified when he saw what he had done.

  She made one mitigating adjustment. She bought, in a store that sold religious articles, a little circlet of white silk blossoms intended for a young girl to wear to her first communion. With that on her head, at least she’d look as though someone had cared enough about her death to send a few flowers.

  The only thing lacking was a mask, and everybody said the best place to buy a mask was Venice.

  She and Brian settled into their seats on the plane. All her absorption in her disguise had dissipated. When she thought of it now, it seemed ridiculous, as did this whole trip. A bunch of kids playing Halloween games. She stared glumly out the window at the overcast sky. At least, by tomorrow afternoon it would be over.

  PART TWO

  INTERLUDE

  On a damp, foggy morning toward the end of Carnival, everyone wants to come to Venice. At the Piazzale Roma, buses from the airport disgorge loads of passengers, and the parking garages are filled to capacity. A crowd waits at the vaporetto stop for the next boat. It is not a roistering, jostling crowd. Clowns stand subdued, and a young boy in a devil’s red cape and horns clings to his mother’s hand. A thin man wearing a brown leather jacket, a backpack propped at his feet, smokes and watches a group of chattering teenage girls wearing crowns of fake flowers.

  Here at the Piazzale Roma, nothing has begun. The autostrada is still a recent memory. Mestre, the industrial district, with its factories wafting corrosive smoke, crouches too near. To reach the desired Venice, one must travel by water, make the slow journey along the undulating length of the Grand Canal.

  The merrymakers shuffle aboard, and the vaporetto begins the journey. Engines drumming, it proceeds along the Canal, past Venice’s grand houses, narrow palazzos with arched windows, peeling facades, and white stone balconies. In the subdued light the Canal is such a dark green it might as well be black, and the palazzos, in sunshine deep red, dusky pink, pale ochre, are washed into a monochrome that is, all the same, eerily beautiful. When the water rises and recedes in the vaporetto’s wake, it is possible to see that the foundations of these houses are covered with slimy-looking vegetation.

  The boat reaches the Rialto Bridge and, several stops later, the Accademia Bridge. At each stop there is the shock of impact with the floating landing stage, the rope expertly looped, the barrier slid back, the tickets taken. Passengers strain forward, trying to see ahead, wondering if they will ever reach San Marco.

  They do, of course. The boat slides past the massive gray domes of the Church of Santa Maria della Salute, then past the gold ball that holds the weathervane atop the Customs House, and suddenly, almost too much to take in at once, there is the Molo, with its columns holding statues of Saint Theodore and the lion of Saint Mark, the pink-patterned marble Palace of the Doges, the Byzantine domes of the Basilica, a line of moored gondolas, the towering red-brick Campanile. Across the water, floating surreally, is the Palladian Church of San Giorgio Maggiore. Cold, damp, obscured by fog and unreasonable expectations, Venice is waiting.

  UNEXPECTED MEETING

  His jacket collar turned up against the night wind, Tom emerged from a warren of winding streets into the square in front of La Fenice, Venice’s opera house. The steps of the Fenice were crowded with revelers, and the square was full of light, much of it provided by a television crew. A creature with the beaked and feathered head of a bird, wearing a cape covered with fluttering strips of iridescent material, whirled and swooped for the cameras, casting a huge and menacing shadow on the blank gray wall of the church of San Fantin. Two women in the powdered white wigs, satin knickers, and buckled shoes of the eighteenth-century dandy strolled arm in arm. From somewhere came the sound of a drum, and voices raised in argument or raucous song. Gray-and-white cats slunk through the confetti strewn over the paving stones.

  Tom took his list from his pocket. Rolf, normally the wild card, had been the easiest. Tom had called— actually, he’d had Olga call, telling her he was playing a joke— the bistro where Rolf worked to ask if anyone knew where Rolf was staying in Venice. Genial Louis, the owner of the bistro, had been delighted to tell Olga that Rolf would be on the Giudecca, at the home of Louis’s cousin. Tom had the address noted down, but he hadn’t been over there yet. Francine had been easy, too. She had been to Venice before, he had remembered her saying. Going back through his notes, he found the name of the pensione where she’d stayed previously. A phone call confirmed that she was there again. Jean-Pierre had been more difficult, but after ten or fifteen calls to hotels, Tom discovered that he was registered at a little hotel near the Salute church. Sally and Brian, he’d found by the same method, were at a place called Albergo Rondini, not far from here. He was on his way now to have a look at it.

  A group of twenty or so clowns, all dressed identically in baggy striped satin and red fright wigs, spilled into the square and jostled Tom into a corner near a taverna. He put his list away, wondering why he was doing this. It was strictly against the rules, and what good would it do anyway to lurk and spy? He told himself it was research. His work, after all, was more important than arbitrary rules. But he also had to admit that if he didn’t show up well tomorrow, it would be a blow from which his ego would never recover. He truly believed he’d recognize them all, but he wanted an edge, a small edge, in the unlikely event anything went wrong. He’d get dressed early in the morning and check around some more. No guarantee that he�
�d see anything special or recognize anybody, and when you thought about it, there was nothing wrong—

  He turned his head slightly and saw Brian.

  Brian was sitting at a table in the taverna. His face was flushed, and he was talking, very seriously, to someone wearing a Harlequin costume. The Harlequin was sitting with his back to Tom. His black, Napoleon-style hat bobbed as he nodded at Brian. His suit was the traditional pattern of multicolored diamonds, but the colors were muted. A smooth baton of light-colored wood was stuck in his belt. Glasses of red wine stood in front of Brian and the Harlequin, and a nearly empty carafe was on the table between them.

  Tom moved back into the shadows. He felt as if Brian’s appearance had somehow laid bare his machinations. At the same time, he was curious about this Harlequin to whom Brian was speaking with such intensity. The taverna was packed, and people inside moved back and forth across the window, blocking Tom’s view and then clearing it again. Brian was leaning forward, gripping the Harlequin’s shoulder. He looked as if he might be crying. The Harlequin leaned toward Brian and rested his gloved hand on Brian’s arm. Tom pressed closer to the glass, but a headdress of blue chiffon moved between him and Brian. Through a blue haze he saw Brian lean back. The Harlequin poured more wine into Brian’s glass.

  If Tom went into the taverna, even jammed with people as it was, Brian would surely see him. They weren’t supposed to meet until after the experiment tomorrow. Tom continued to watch. The Harlequin gestured, and the waiter brought another carafe of wine to the table. Brian talked, his face the face of a distressed child. Brian had never talked to Tom like that. Feeling cheated and dissatisfied, Tom turned away.

  IN THE PIAZZA

  A little girl in a pink bonnet, pink hoop skirt, and starched white petticoats, a perfectly round pink spot painted on each cheek, stood in the uncertain sunlight of the Piazza San Marco feeding pigeons. Birds flapped around her, fighting for the few grains of seed she flung from her chubby fist. A pigeon fluttered up and landed on her bonnet.

  “Bellissima,” someone breathed, and cameras whirred and clicked as the fifty or so people surrounding the child pressed closer.

  A turbaned pasha and his harem swept by. Under the stone arches of the Procuratie Nuove, an alchemist wearing a symbol-covered silver cloak and a mask with a wispy white beard posed for a cowboy with a camera.

  The Piazza was thronged, from the portals of the Basilica, where the huge red-and-gold standard of St. Mark curled and uncurled in the wind, to the temporary bandstand at the opposite end. Under the arcades bordering the Piazza on either side, young people sat with their backs to shuttered shop fronts and passed around bottles of cheap wine. There was an occasional sound of breaking glass.

  Sally huddled at the foot of the Campanile, the soaring redbrick bell tower that stood near the Basilica. She felt colder than the coldest corpse. Her thermal underwear might as well have been as thin as the gauze that hung limply from her body. The chill of the Piazza’s pavement invaded her feet through the flimsy soles of her ballet slippers. The only warm part of her was her face, which was actually perspiring in the stale air under her mask. She had bought the mask late yesterday afternoon. A blank white oval, completely featureless except for the cut-out eyes, it added the right macabre final touch to her costume, but she couldn’t help wishing now that it had breathing holes.

  The weather today was cold, but at least there was a little sun, which was better than yesterday’s fog. Yesterday she had thought Venice was the weirdest, gloomiest place she’d ever seen. As they’d ridden the vaporetto along the Grand Canal, Brian had told her that the houses she was looking at were called palazzos, which was Italian for palaces. Maybe so, but she had never thought of a palace as being quite so shabby.

  Another thing about Venice was, it was almost impossible to get around in. More than half the time the streets dead-ended, completely unexpectedly, at a canal. There might be a bridge down the way, but that meant turning back and taking a chance on reaching it by the next alley-like passage. Sally had made quite a few false starts, even with a map, before she got to the Campo San Maurizio, where the man at the hotel had told her the mask market was. On that walk she had discovered, too, that the major streets were so crowded they were almost impassable, but take a couple of turns off the beaten track and suddenly you were all alone, with a dark little canal in front of you and, in a niche on the wall, a painted plaster statue of the Virgin Mary with a plastic flower stuck into the rusted-out screen in front of it.

  Sally halfheartedly studied the multitudes, costumed and not costumed, milling around her in the Piazza. She would certainly never be able to identify anyone, even if she were warm enough to try. Her nose itched. If she sneezed inside this mask it would be a disaster. To take her mind off it, she surveyed the crowd more closely. Two cats cavorted with a mouse. Off to one side stood a gnomelike figure in a baggy suit and tie with the oversized papier-mâché head of a man wearing glasses. Sally had no idea at all what that might be. She saw several Pierrots in loose white satin with black neck ruffs and skullcaps. One of them was about two years old, clinging to his father’s pants leg.

  She hugged her elbows for warmth. Eighteenth-century Venetians in black capes, tricorn hats and white masks paraded near her, and she saw a Harlequin or two. Then her eye fell on a dreadful-looking woman. The mouth of the woman’s mask was contorted in an anguished expression and the eyes were staring and wide. As a headdress, she wore a tangle of black rubber snakes, very real looking, their red glass eyes catching the light. Struck by the figure’s hideous aspect, Sally couldn’t remember for a moment the name of Medusa the Gorgon, the character from Greek mythology who had snakes on her head instead of hair. Medusa, Sally recalled, was so horrible looking that anyone who even glanced at her was turned to stone.

  Sally realized the Medusa was Brian.

  She had no doubt it was Brian wearing a headdress made of snakes, a flowing dark blue robe, and a mask with a terrifying, grimacing face. She watched him stalk through the crowd. The snake headdress must have been in the hat box he’d carried on the plane. The infant Pierrot caught sight of Brian-Medusa, and she saw his small mouth form an o as he drew closer to his father.

  Brian swept around the side of the Campanile, and Sally followed. “Medusa!” someone called, and Brian stopped to pose for the importuning photographers. He raised his arms so his robe billowed in the cold wind. He flung his head back. The snakes bobbed and danced. The small Pierrot wailed, and his father picked him up.

  Sally clenched her hands. Brian, who was so beautiful, had chosen to represent himself as a being whose looks turned people to stone. She didn’t understand why. Brian knew he wasn’t ugly.

  Maybe it didn’t have to do with being ugly. Maybe it had to do with people looking at you, and because of how you looked, they changed. She would ask him. She thought she could ask him, after last night.

  Because Brian had come in very late, and he had made love to her. She had been awakened by the weight of his body on her bed, the smell of the wine he had drunk. He had muttered, “I’m afraid, I’m afraid,” and pulled her to him. She didn’t know why she hadn’t been affronted when she’d realized what he wanted, hadn’t refused, pushed him away in disgust. She had been, she guessed, too sleepy and altogether too lonely.

  It was the last time, though. When he withdrew from her body, that was the final separation. She lay beside him, listening to his purring snores, bidding him good-bye.

  Brian was standing between the Campanile and the Basilica. Behind him, down a wide, right-angled extension to the Piazza, stood the columns she had seen in her grandmother’s print. For a moment, Sally had the impression that the scene was frozen, except for Brian. The gawkers and merrymakers seemed in suspended animation, and only the rippling sleeves of Brian’s robe, the bobbing snakes on his head, moved at all.

  Then he dropped his arms and strode purposefully away from the Campanile. He was crossing in front of the Basilica, walking toward the Cl
ock Tower that marked the entrance to the crowded shopping street, the Merceria.

  Sally was confused. The rules had stated that they were to stay in the vicinity of the Campanile for the full half hour. The time wasn’t nearly up. She saw Brian’s headdress moving as he pushed through the crowd. She followed him.

  HARLEQUIN

  A Harlequin sat on the marble railing of the sixteenth-century Loggetta at the foot of the Campanile, dangling his feet. This Harlequin was essentially identical to several others in the vicinity, or so it would seem at first glance. A close look would reveal subtle differences.

  The costumes of the others were sleazy and cheap, with garish diamond-shaped patches of red, green, yellow, and blue. His was made of lozenges of patterned Fortuny silk in pale colors, and his wide collar was handmade Venetian lace. Their two-cornered black hats were cardboard or plastic; his was sturdy wool and a bit faded, as if it had been worn in commedia dell’arte performances long ago. Other Harlequins did not carry the wooden baton that was the character’s trademark, but the Harlequin at the Loggetta had the baton stuck through his belt. The others wore various sorts of masks; he wore the traditional black mask of the Harlequin, ugly and sensual at once, with beetling brows, a wrinkled forehead, a wen over the eye.

  The Harlequin seemed relaxed. He lifted one foot to the railing and rested his hand, in its tight, cream-colored kid glove, on his bent knee. He moved gracefully and without haste. Yet his attention was fastened closely on the Medusa moving through the crowd in front of the Basilica.

  The Medusa wasn’t making easy progress. Now, at the height of Carnival, people were surging into the Piazza, and the Medusa was moving against the flow. The Harlequin was motionless, intent. A laughing young man reached up and tugged at the Harlequin’s ankle. Immediately, the Harlequin flung his hands in the air mimicking surprise, rocked back and forth pretending to be on the verge of falling, recovered himself and elaborately resumed his former position. The people near him laughed and applauded.