The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries

by Michaela Thompson

  The Harlequin saw that the Medusa was approaching the Clock Tower. Soon the Medusa would be lost from sight.

  The Harlequin sat up straight. He launched himself from the railing and landed neatly on the ground. He looked around, began to move, and his slim, slight figure was lost in the crowd.

  RIO DELLA MADONNA

  Catching up with Brian was hopeless, but Sally had no trouble keeping his headdress in view. She pushed forward intently, dodging her way along. Her attention fastened on Brian, she ran full tilt into a figure wearing a flowing black hooded cloak and holding a staff. The figure turned toward her, and deep within the hood, where its face should have been, she saw an expressionless white oval, a circlet of flowers askew on a gauze-draped head. She screamed, the sound muffled and lost in her mask.

  She was looking in a mirror— a mirror the black-cloaked figure wore over its face like a mask. At the end of the staff was another mirror, oval, in a black frame. For an instant the black hood hovered close to her, its rippling edges reflected in the glass, surrounding her image. She stared at her own blank visage, at her white-gloved hand raised to where her mouth should be, then moved away.

  She searched wildly for Brian. Her ears pounded with the din of the crowd and someone’s shrill laughter and, she wasn’t sure why, with fear.

  At last she reached the Clock Tower and the Merceria. The crush was even worse in the narrow shop-lined street, and she could only inch along. Brian was quite far ahead of her, but she could see his headdress and an occasional glint of red when a snake’s eye caught the sun.

  When she saw him turn into a side street, she pushed feverishly ahead. She reached the place where he’d turned. The street was much less crowded, but he was nowhere in sight.

  Sally rushed on and glimpsed Brian’s back down a passage. He was turning a corner. When she reached the end of the passage, she saw him among a group of revelers crossing a wrought-iron bridge over a small canal. He hesitated, looking down at something in his hand. A Pierrot brushed past her, the floating black net ruff around his neck catching and pulling at her gauze. He glanced back, and she saw the sparkle of a bright tear embedded in the cheek of his mask. When she looked toward the bridge again, Brian was gone.

  Crossing the bridge, she discovered three possible directions Brian could have taken. The streets were almost deserted now, although she could still hear raised voices, occasional laughter.

  She chose to explore a tiny lane, and came quickly upon a group of masked children playing in a cul-de-sac. Turning back, she took the next alternative. As she hurried along, a polar bear and an ape rounded a corner, singing, their arms draped over one another’s shoulders. They blocked her way and danced a shambling dance around her, singing raucously in Italian.

  When the song was over they shouted, “Ciao!” and reeled away, making low, mock-gallant bows, nearly colliding at the corner with a person in a silver, symbol-covered robe and a bearded mask who pushed hurriedly past them.

  Disconsolate, Sally wandered aimlessly. She couldn’t find Brian, and now she herself was lost in the twisting streets and dead ends.

  Eventually, she emerged at the edge of a narrow canal. The sun was brighter than it had been all day. Down the way on the opposite side, just past a little arched bridge of white stone, a black hooded figure crouched at the canal’s edge, reaching toward a bundle in the water.

  Sally didn’t think she’d made a noise, but the figure looked up, and when it did, a blinding light flashed from its face. Sally cried out, her voice choked in her mask. The figure hesitated, then moved, and the light flashed again. It stood, whirled, and ran.

  Sally blinked away the dark spots that hovered in her eyes. She saw the floating bundle, and light glittering on the pavement where the hooded figure had crouched. As Sally crossed the bridge she saw that the light was reflected from fragments of a broken mirror. Beside it lay a black staff with an empty mirror frame on the end.

  She looked more closely at the dark bundle in the water— a mass of black snakes, a billowing blue robe.

  Brian threw away his costume, she thought, even as she began to run across the bridge, but by the time she was kneeling where the black figure had knelt, she could see that the cloth hadn’t collapsed as wet cloth would. She could see the outline of Brian’s knuckles and fingernails inside the soaked white glove.

  “Brian?” she whispered, her rush of breath loud and hoarse.

  She reached for his hand. Pushed halfway into his glove was a square of folded paper. She removed it and felt for a pulse, but there wasn’t one. She shuddered, her arm jerked all by itself, and Brian’s hand fell back in the water, lazy ripples spreading from it.

  She pulled at Brian’s shoulder, trying to turn him over. He was heavy. The snakes, dime-store black rubber with red glass eyes, seemed malevolent witnesses to her dread. She managed to lift his head out of the water. His mask had loosened so that he seemed to be staring over the top of it, his own unblinking eyes above the mask’s empty eyeholes and distorted mouth. His face was a grayish color.

  She cried out and let him go. He was dead. She felt scalded and frozen at once.

  The square of wet paper was on the pavement beside her. She unfolded it. The black ink was running, but she could still read the message:

  The game is over. Come see me now.

  Under the words was a crudely drawn map. A rectangle was labeled, “Piazza S. Marco.” An arrow indicated another black line, over which was written, “Rio della Madonna.” Sally tried to concentrate on what the paper might mean, but the image came and went, leaving little trace in her mind.

  She was still kneeling, staring at the paper, when she heard a light, swift sound of running feet. She pushed the paper into her glove. A Harlequin dashed from a side street and took half a dozen steps before skidding to a halt. Motionless, he stared at the floating Medusa. The Harlequin wore a black two-cornered hat and had a round piece of wood stuck through his belt. He looked like the Harlequin in a sun-bleached print hanging in a stall on the Quai St. Michel.

  Slowly, and, it seemed, warily, the Harlequin approached Sally. She felt anaesthetized, disconnected, but when he was close enough she gestured toward the canal. “It’s Brian. He’s dead,” she said. She saw the Harlequin’s eyes blink, but she couldn’t tell if he’d heard. “Brian. My husband.” This time her voice seemed too loud.

  The Harlequin knelt beside her and, as she had, felt Brian’s pulse. When she saw him reaching for Brian’s shoulder, she looked away. She couldn’t stand to see Brian’s dead eyes again. She heard the Harlequin’s indrawn breath and a faint plashing sound, and felt her head begin to swim. Then the Harlequin took her hand and pulled her to her feet.

  “It’s Brian,” she said. “Something horrible happened. I have to tell the police.”

  The Harlequin’s strange black mask covered only the upper part of his face. She could see his lips, which were very pale, and she watched them form the words, “Yes. Come with me.” He had an accent— Italian, she thought. She continued to watch his lips, waiting for him to say more, until she felt a tug and remembered that he was still holding her hand. “Come now,” he said.

  She looked back at Brian. The snakes winked at her with hateful red eyes. The Harlequin dragged her forward. She stumbled. They ran.

  THE MIRROR DISMANTLED

  Rolf had to get out of Venice. He’d rigged his mirror-face so he could see out one side, but his field of vision was very narrow, and he had to twist his entire body to look around him. The sun, so bright earlier, had disappeared, and when he moved, cold wind snatched at his cloak.

  He whirled in a complete circle, trying to see if anyone was watching. He was back near San Marco, standing by the water on the Riva degli Schiavoni. In front of him, tied-up gondolas rode the increasingly choppy waves. At his back, laughing crowds surged by.

  He’d left the staff, forgotten it when the loony-looking figure in the tattered bride outfit surprised him. How stupid could he be? But even though
the loony bride had seen him, she wouldn’t know, nobody would know, that it was Rolf behind the mirror, so nobody would know the forgotten staff was his. If he could get out of his costume without being seen, and get the hell out of Venice, he’d be all right. He wouldn’t go back to Paris, either. Not right away.

  Passersby buffeted him. Some of them might remember his costume. His strong impulse was to tear it off here and now. He couldn’t, though, because everyone was looking at him— the lounging gondoliers, the chubby woman in a brown coat dodging through the throng with her shopping bag, the— God almighty, the idiot with his camera up to his eye about to take Rolf’s picture. Rolf turned his back on the photographer, pushed his way into the crowd and shuffled with the rest, step by slow step, over the bridge next to the Doges’ Palace. Naturally, even in this mob, the goddamn gawkers had to stop and look down the canal at the Bridge of Sighs. Rolf willed himself to be calm. The crush would clear once he was over the bridge.

  It did, and he felt freer, lighter. He flexed his hands. Now to get out of this fucking outfit. He wished he hadn’t done such a good job of modifying the around-the-neck shaving mirror he wore and attaching it to his hood. Stupid games, and now look what had happened.

  He had thought he was so smart, with his mirror disguise. He’d finally decided on the mirror instead of the Devil because he didn’t believe in any true self. People reflected each other. What one person saw in another was his own image, nothing deeper or more profound than that.

  What am I thinking about this for? I must be crazy. He had reached an out-of-the-way street where curved lines of laundry, strung between upper stories, flapped over his head. In a sheltered corner, he unfastened his cloak, unhooked the mirror, and lifted it from around his neck. He wadded cloak and mirror into a loose ball.

  First, he felt the shock of the chilly air; then the vast, overwhelming relief of being able to see all around him. His chest filled and expanded, and he expelled the air in a long, whistling sigh.

  Okay. Okay. Now he was just a guy in jeans and a sweater holding a crumpled black bundle. He put it on the ground and stamped on it, over and over again. The faint crunch of the mirror breaking was satisfying, as was the violent, repetitive motion of his leg. Sweating, he picked it up and went to look for a garbage can.

  The one he found was overflowing, surrounded by additional bags stuffed with trash. He picked up one of them. It contained the remains of a meal— the end of a loaf of bread, cheese rinds, shriveled brown apple cores, an empty plastic mineral water bottle. He dumped it all on the ground, shoved his cloak inside, wadded the bag tightly, and managed to force it into the overfilled can. He walked away without looking back.

  Next, he had to get over to the Giudecca, where he was staying with his boss’s cousin, get his stuff, and get out. He’d have to go back to the Riva to catch the vaporetto.

  When he reached the stop, he’d just missed a boat. He bought his ticket and sat on a bench inside the wooden waiting platform, leaned his head back, and felt the platform move slowly up and down with the swelling and subsiding water.

  Rolf’s head was drumming. He had managed to forget the poem for a while, but now, before he could clamp down, the verses came into his mind again:

  The creature whose visage turns others to stone

  Changes trusting friends into people alone.

  The creature who has snakes for hair

  Changes faithful lovers to men in despair.

  There’s no way to guess what the Gorgon will do.

  Who can predict what she’ll change about you?

  The poem had been delivered that morning. The first he’d known of it was when one of the kids shuffled upstairs and handed him the envelope with his name typed on it.

  As soon as he’d read it, he’d known it was about Sally. Changes trusting friends— because of her, the group had lost all coherence. And as for changing faithful lovers to men in despair, the situation was obviously rocky between Brian and Jean-Pierre these days, and who was to blame for that but Sally?

  What bothered Rolf most, though, was the last line: Who can predict what she’ll change about you? The person who had sent the poem to Rolf knew something. Now that Sally was dead, the person who had sent the poem could be dangerous to Rolf. Rolf pictured Brian, Tom, Jean-Pierre, Francine, trying to guess behind which face lurked knowledge of his secret.

  Sally the Medusa was dead, floating in the canal near the little bridge. Rolf hadn’t thought she’d be so strong, or react so fast. Nothing had happened the way he’d wanted.

  Rolf was shaking convulsively. He had to get the hell out of town. People drifted onto the platform. A balloon popped. Confetti drifted through the air. Finally, the boat arrived.

  IN THE HOUSE OF THE HARLEQUIN

  Sally blinked at the rice-shaped pieces of pasta swimming in the bowl in front of her. The Harlequin sat on the table, his feet resting on a chair and his chin in his hand, watching. They were in a large kitchen. All around them people came and went, stacking cartons, putting down armloads of lilies or radishes. Pots banged, glass clinked, cleavers made decisive thuds, and everyone spoke Italian at top volume.

  “When are the police going to come?” she said. “I have to tell them.”

  “Any minute,” the Harlequin said. “Take off your gloves, so you can eat.”

  She glanced dazedly at her gloved hands lying in her lap. After the Harlequin dragged her here, she ran through some rooms trying to find a phone. He assured her he would make the call. Then a doctor came. Despite her protests and struggles, he gave her some sort of injection.

  “Come,” said the Harlequin. He took one of her hands, tugged at the fingers of her glove, and peeled the glove off. When he repeated the process with her other hand, a damp folded paper fell out of her glove and fell to the floor. At that moment, Sally didn’t remember seeing it before.

  The Harlequin hopped down and picked up the paper. He unfolded and studied it, his lips pursed. Although Sally thought she was watching him every minute, she didn’t see how he made the paper disappear.

  “What happened to Brian?” she asked. Her tongue felt thick.

  “I thought you could tell me,” the Harlequin said.

  Sally took a breath. The explanation seemed too complex for her abilities. “There was a mirror-man.”

  “Ah. And his mirror broke.”

  “The one on the staff broke.” Sally was doing better than she had expected. “His face was—” She lost the drift. “Where’s that paper?” she asked.

  “Don’t think about the paper. Eat your soup. Think about mirrors.”

  Sally stared into the bowl. Steam curled up and enveloped her. “His face was a mirror. He had a black cloak and hood, and his face was a mirror.” She looked up, triumphant at having managed the story so well. Abruptly, her eyes stung. “Brian’s dead,” she said. “We have to call the police.”

  “Yes indeed,” the Harlequin said. Sally’s white mask and circlet of flowers lay on the table, but he was still in full costume. Behind his mask, his eyes were unreadable. He picked up the spoon lying next to her soup bowl and handed it to her. “Please eat. A few small bites.”

  She spooned some of the soup into her mouth and swallowed it. Brian was dead in a canal. She thought the Harlequin was taking her to the police, dragging her to the police, but instead they had rushed through the streets of Venice until they reached this place.

  They had run down a lane to a wrought-iron gate that stood ajar and passed through the gate into a small, bleak wintry garden. She remembered walls covered with stringy ivy, a shed with a red-tile roof, a haphazard stack of empty red clay pots.

  They had climbed stairs, and Sally had broken away to find a phone, even though she couldn’t speak Italian and didn’t even know the word for “police.” Then the doctor came.

  “Another small bite,” said the Harlequin, but she couldn’t. She knew that if she weren’t so woozy she would be dreadfully afraid.

  She mustered her streng
th and said, “I have to leave.”

  “Not now,” the Harlequin said. “The police are coming.”

  Right. The police. “Who are you?” she asked.

  “First, I am someone who wishes you well,” he said, holding up an index finger with a theatrical air.

  “Yeah, but—”

  “You may call me Michèle.”

  She squinted at him. “Kelly? Aren’t you Italian?”

  “Well— I am Venetian.”

  “Then why is your name Kelly?”

  He paused, then said, “I see. You have misunderstood. My name is Michèle. It’s like Michael in English, only pronounced Michèle.”

  “Sounds like Me Kelly.” To her surprise, she gave a little hiccupping giggle.

  “No, no, no.” The Harlequin took her shoulder. “This won’t do, Sally. I can’t have you laughing at me in my own house.”

  He was right. Sally had been hopelessly rude. As tears of shame welled in her eyes, she wondered when she had told the Harlequin her name.

  She dabbed at her nose with a piece of the gauze that was still wrapped around her body. “I’m tired,” she said. She looked at the worn surface of the table. She could put her head down there, although that probably wouldn’t be very polite, either.

  She decided to do it anyway, but once she started, her head dropped more rapidly than she’d planned. Someone caught her, though, before it hit anything.