They started back to the palazzo.
A VISIT FROM MICHÈLE
Francine had just gotten out of the shower when she heard a light tapping on the door of her room. She pulled on her bathrobe, black satin printed with scarlet poppies. To her curt demand, in English, to know who was there, the response came, “Please open the door. I’d like to talk with you.”
“Who are you?”
“A friend of friends of yours.”
Francine opened the door a crack and peered out. Standing in the hall was a slim man with neatly barbered brown hair. He wore a gray suit with a yellow rosebud in the buttonhole and carried an overcoat on his arm. His face, with its light brown eyes and straight nose, was conventional, safe-looking, not very interesting. There was something extremely familiar about him.
“Who are you?” she said again.
“A friend of Brian’s,” the man said.
Francine stood completely still. The man put out a hand and pushed gently on the door. “May I come in?”
Francine stepped back and he entered the room, closing the door behind him. She pulled her robe closer around her. The man stood looking at her, a pleasant expression on his unremarkable face.
Francine sat down on the bed. “Are you from the police?”
He hesitated before answering, “No, I’m not. Although I expect they will be here shortly.”
“Perhaps.” She took a cigarette from a pack on the bedside table and lit it.
The man put his overcoat on a chair. “You know, then, that Brian has been murdered.”
“Yes.”
There was a challenge in the monosyllable, and the man took it up. “You don’t seem sad.”
She lifted one shoulder. “Brian was an ignoramus and a troublemaker. I don’t pretend to feel what I don’t feel.”
“You are brave. If you speak that way to the police, they may believe you killed him yourself.”
She said nothing. He leaned closer. “Did you?”
She laughed harshly. “Do you expect me to say yes?”
“Only if it’s the truth. I see you are a woman committed to the truth.”
“Yes, I am. And you?”
“I am committed to the false. It’s a Venetian characteristic. We paint wood to look like gold, and paper to look like marble. And the wellheads you see in the campos? You thought, I suppose, there were wells beneath them. Not at all. They are simply the tops of columns stolen from elsewhere by marauding Venetians, brought back and set up to look like wells.”
The man had a triumphant air, as if he had proved an important point.
Francine said, “That’s disgusting.”
“Not at all,” said the man earnestly. “If Brian’s killer had tried to knock him down a well, instead of into a canal, Brian would still be alive.”
Francine studied this familiar, ordinary-looking man. She wanted to dismiss him as an idiot, but in fact she was intrigued. “Who are you? Were you really Brian’s friend, or did you say that as part of your commitment to the false?”
He smiled. “You are clever. No, I was not Brian’s friend, any more than you were yourself.”
Francine said, “I hate to be mocked.”
He pulled an exaggerated long face. “Then we won’t get along very well together.”
“Brian mocked me. He dressed as Medusa. It was intended as a mockery.”
“A mockery of—”
“A mockery of Jean-Paul Sartre and of those who admire his ideas.” Francine took a furious drag on her cigarette and expelled the smoke sharply toward the buttons on the man’s jacket.
The man seemed to be thinking. At last he said, “I saw you in the Piazza yesterday. Sartre.”
Francine didn’t answer.
“That’s who you were. Sartre,” he said. He sounded very pleased with himself. “You weren’t a troll at all.”
Francine winced. “I certainly was not a troll. I was Jean-Paul Sartre,” she said.
He crossed to the bed and sat next to Francine. He took her hand. “How interesting it must be to talk with you!” he said excitedly.
Francine burst into loud sobs. She burrowed her head against the man’s neck. He removed the cigarette from her clutching fingers and put it out in the ashtray. Then he smoothed and patted Francine’s back, murmuring, “My poor girl.”
“You don’t know what it’s like,” cried Francine. She grasped his lapels, dislodging his rosebud. “To be possessed, completely possessed by his ideas, and nobody—”
“Poor thing,” he said. He brushed some of Francine’s hair out of her eyes and kissed her forehead. “I kiss all those ideas,” he said.
Francine held on to him, her body heaving. At last the tears subsided and she rested, sniffling, with her head on his chest. “It is interesting to talk with me,” she said.
“I’m looking forward to a long conversation,” said the man. He continued patting her back gently and said, “Will you tell me about Brian’s death?”
Francine recoiled. “I don’t know anything.”
The hypnotic patting on her back didn’t stop. “What did you see?” he asked.
“Just Brian. Dead. When they pulled him out.”
“Ah.” He continued to pat her back, in an absentminded way.
She looked up at him. “Were you Brian’s lover?”
“Lover.” He chuckled softly. “As I often say, Desire is defined as trouble.”
For a few moments, Francine didn’t move or speak. Then she said, “Tell me who you are.”
“My name is Michèle.”
Michèle. Francine had heard the name recently. She had heard it—
He released her and stood up, straightening his jacket. “I must go.”
Fear crawled along her spine, but she could feel, bound up in it, the sensation his hand had created when he touched her. “Please don’t.”
He inclined his head. “I must. But our visit has been very interesting.” He took her hand and kissed her knuckles. “I want to talk with you soon about Sartre.”
After the door shut behind him, Francine found his yellow rosebud where it had fallen on the bed. As she smelled it, the petals cool and smooth under her nose, she remembered where she had heard the name Michèle.
RETURN TO URSULA
The map of Venice rattled in Francine’s hand, and she cursed the wind, the map, and her own nerves. She must be steady. Steady, calm, and as wise as Sartre. The map didn’t stop shaking altogether, but at least she could read it now.
Francine knew she was moving in the right direction but wasn’t sure of the exact address. She had hardly bothered to notice landmarks before, although she did remember a gondola stand in a side canal and a ridiculously ornate church near the palazzo where Ursula had the top floor. She folded the map and picked up her suitcase.
Leaving the pensione had been natural, after the scene Tom had made early this morning and the insults she had taken from the landlord afterward. Leaving was a good idea for other reasons as well, and she’d done it just in time. As she was coming down with her suitcase, she had heard her name mentioned in the midst of a low-voiced Italian conversation being carried on at the desk. Looking down through the banisters on the first landing, she had seen a man in an unfashionable brown overcoat leaning over the registration book. Michèle hadn’t been a policeman, but the man in the brown overcoat undoubtedly was. The landlord continued talking, gesturing toward the stairs, and Francine hastily and very quietly retraced her steps and hurried down the back way.
The streets were already filled with people in costume. The good weather had drawn a big crowd. In a campo two young men were setting up a puppet theater, and the sound of a violin floated through the air. Francine, with more serious matters on her mind, was in no mood for this cheerful, colorful scene, so much like a cheap operetta.
At last she caught sight of the church with its facade of hideous statuary. Yes, and there was the gondola stand. Now she knew exactly how to find the place.
Th
e maid who answered Ursula’s door spoke only Italian, but she managed to convey that Ursula was out. A small, mousy woman, she eyed Francine’s suitcase dubiously, but eventually consented, through shrugs and sign language, to let Francine wait.
Smoking a cigarette, sitting on a slippery blue silk chair in an anteroom, Francine tried to make sense of what was going on. Her mind went back to breakfast on Torcello. “Are you a friend of Michèle’s?” the señorita had asked. Of course, now that Francine had made the connection, there was no doubt that Michèle was Count Zanon, whose party she’d attended. She had even seen him, from a distance, without his mask, but the crowd, her lack of sleep, and the Harlequin costume he’d been wearing had confused her, and she hadn’t recognized him when he’d come to the pensione. His face, anyway, was unremarkable, or so she had thought at first.
Michèle had said he was a friend of friends of Francine. The señorita, Francine now remembered vividly, had reminded her very much of Sally— except the señorita had been more beautiful and sophisticated. Watching cigarette smoke drift around the multicolored glass garlands of Ursula’s chandelier, Francine wondered if the señorita could possibly have been Sally. She decided that, unbelievable as it seemed, she could. The more Francine thought about it, the more certain she became.
But how had Sally gotten on such familiar terms with Count Michèle Zanon? And the señorita costume— was that the disguise Sally had picked to express her true self? Francine began to toy with the absurd idea that Sally’s plain, pale, withdrawn aspect in Paris was the disguise, and that all along Sally had lived a double life in Venice as the— what?— say, the friend of Michèle Zanon.
“Are you a friend of Michèle’s?” Sally had said that to Francine. Furthermore, Sally must have known exactly who Francine was, since the black eye mask Francine had been wearing was no disguise at all.
Francine put out her cigarette in a crystal ashtray. She felt badly used, tricked by Sally. As for Michèle— Francine must find out a great deal more about Michèle Zanon.
She heard a key turning. The front door opened and a greyhound bounded into the room, his nose and mouth covered by one of the straw muzzles Venetian dogs wore. He skidded to a stop when he saw Francine and stood, flanks quivering, as Ursula came in. Ursula had on her fur coat. A red leather leash trailed from her hand. When she saw Francine she dropped the leash and cried, “Cara!” She threw herself at Francine, and Francine was smothered by fur and a sweet, heavy scent. Then Ursula took Francine’s face between her hands and said, “I’ve been searching desperately for you. I couldn’t wait, I couldn’t bear it. Cara, at Albergo Lorenzo they never heard of you! I was wild with despair!”
“A misunderstanding,” said Francine. “I’m here now, in any case. I’ve brought my things, hoping you’ll let me stay.”
“My darling—” Ursula’s voice broke, and she clasped Francine again. Then she was calling the maid, unmuzzling the dog, leading Francine out to a tiny roof garden with leafless trees in tubs, an ornate white cast-iron table, a statue of a naked boy holding a sea-shell. Soon, Francine and Ursula were sitting at the table sipping Cinzano.
After further expressions of Ursula’s joy and descriptions of the suffering she had gone through, Francine said, “Tell me about Count Zanon.”
“Michèle? Why?”
“I’m curious, having gone to his party.”
Ursula arranged her coat around her shoulders and tapped her front teeth with her fingernail. “Michèle,” she said meditatively. “He’s Michèle, that’s all. Everybody knows him. We call him Michelazzo, which means he is a bit naughty. The Venetians have a saying that the good life is La Vita di Michelazzo— magnar, bever, e andar a spasso. The life of Michelazzo is to eat, drink and walk around. That’s Michèle. That’s all there is to say about him.”
“Is he married?”
Ursula shot Francine a sharp look, then laughed shrilly. “Are you looking for a rich husband? Well, I’m sorry to tell you he is married— in a manner of speaking.”
Francine raised her eyebrows. “Oh?”
“His wife lives in Milan. She comes back from time to time, and when she does they go everywhere together, but— you know. It’s a boring story.”
“What’s she like?”
“Antonia is exquisite. Also very rich. Most of the money is hers. I’m sure she has many, many lovers in Milan. She deserves them, the poor darling.”
“Why do you say that?”
“It’s idle gossip, really.” Ursula smirked. “When she first went to Milan, people said it was because Michèle had lost— certain abilities, certain capacities. In the physical line. You do understand?”
Francine felt her face flushing under Ursula’s close inspection. “Of course I understand.”
“I think Antonia got rather desperate about it and told a close friend, and the friend was indiscreet. It’s difficult to know who’s trustworthy, isn’t it?”
“Since then, since she left, he’s had no—”
“I couldn’t say,” said Ursula brusquely. “I haven’t wasted my time worrying about something as dull as the life of Michèle Zanon. But do you know, cara, what I was thinking—”
Ursula leaned forward, her head close to Francine’s. Francine sighed inwardly and tried to prepare herself.
IN THE SCUOLA DI SAN GIORGIO
Tom sat on a bench in the small, shadowy Scuola di San Giorgio degli Schiavoni. He was aware of the low drone of conversation as the caretaker sold postcards, and of the masterpieces by Carpaccio that lined the walls. He was only slightly bothered by the air on his naked face.
Tom was completely absorbed in planning his book, the companion volume to From the Barricades. The connections were coming together. Both books were portraits of people caught up in crucial events. In ’68 it had been political upheaval; now, it was murder.
He couldn’t deny that the project had gotten off to a rocky start. Actually, since he’d quarreled with Francine and Jean-Pierre, he had little to write so far. He had imagined they would cling to him for support, tell him all their thoughts. It hadn’t started that way, but Tom would make it work. He had to.
“Pardon, monsieur.” A Frenchman in an oversize baby bonnet, carrying a bottle with a huge rubber nipple, pushed past Tom to get to the paintings on the other side of the room.
Another factor hampering Tom’s work was his determination to stay away from his hotel in order to avoid the police. His wanderings had brought him to the Scuola di San Giorgio. He had entered this unprepossessing building next to an out-of-the-way canal because he saw other people going in and he needed to get the cold off his face. He had even bought a guidebook.
He got up and wandered around, glancing at the pictures. He should go now. He had to return to the hotel sometime. He reached the door and looked at the last painting.
The guidebook said it was called The Vision of St. Augustine. The saint was in his study, a pen in his hand, gazing at a bright light at the window. The study was sumptuous, spacious. Open books lay on the floor. There was a reading lectern, shelves. A fluffy white dog with bright black eyes sat to one side.
Tom was irritated. Who couldn’t be a saint in a place like that? Naturally, Saint Augustine could work, at that fancy table covered with green leather! Saint Augustine didn’t have a wife and a kid and a tiny apartment near the Tour Montparnasse.
Also, and this was the worst part, Saint Augustine did have a thick brown beard.
Tom shoved his hands into his pockets and left the Scuola di San Giorgio.
When he got back to the hotel, the desk clerk said, “This is for you, Signor,” and handed Tom a card along with his key. The card was a calling card, large and square in the European style. On it, in curving black letters, was printed, “Michèle Zanon,” and an address.
Tom looked at the card. He turned it over. On the back was scribbled, “Please meet me at Florian’s. Until noon.” Was Michèle Zanon a policeman? He said to the clerk, “You must have put this in the wrong b
ox. I don’t think it’s for me.”
The clerk nodded a vigorous affirmative. “It’s for you. Count Zanon asked for you by name.”
Tom studied the card again. “Count Zanon?”
“Yes, Signor.”
Tom wondered if this card could be a trick. He turned to the clerk, who was still nodding, his manner considerably more unctuous now than it ever had been before. “You know this Count Zanon?”
The nodding picked up speed. “Certainly. I have seen him often. He is well known in Venice.”
Tom tapped the edge of the card on the counter. It could be an elaborate trick. But if the clerk wasn’t lying, Tom guessed that this Count Zanon had indeed been here asking for him and would wait at Florian’s until noon for him to show up.
Tom reached the Piazza San Marco in plenty of time. Florian’s was suffused with mellow golden light and the warm smells of coffee and chocolate. Although it was filled with chattering patrons, many in costume, the waiter reacted instantly to Count Zanon’s name and led Tom to a table where a slight, well-dressed man was finishing an espresso.
When greetings had been exchanged and more coffee ordered, the count said, “You are kind to have come. Thank you.”
“Sure. What’s it about?” Tom said warily.
“First, I must offer my condolences on the death of your friend, Brian.”
Tom felt uncomfortable. He wondered if a Venetian count could be an undercover policeman. “Are you a cop, or what?”
The count shook his head. “Only a bystander, and an acquaintance of Brian’s. When I met him he told me you were friends. I’ve gone to some trouble to locate you, because I was very eager that we meet.”
Tom waited. Brian talked to this Count Zanon about him? He didn’t like the sound of that.
The count leaned forward. “I am a great admirer of your book, From the Barricades.”
This was more like it. Tom settled down, the way he always did on the occasions, rarer and rarer now, when people made such remarks. The count, who had looked like a wimp, seemed to become more substantial. “You are?”
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 52