The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries

by Michaela Thompson

  Except this new man would be plain-looking. And he would never have heard of the Sorbonne.

  Venice was beautiful if you could forget your troubles, but Sally couldn’t. Brian had been murdered, and she herself was threatened.

  True, Michèle had saved her from the Medusa’s attack. Her first reaction had been overwhelming relief and gratitude. Now, she’d had time to think.

  What had resulted from the episode with the Medusa? Sally lost the letters she had been taking to the police, the bizarre letters Brian had received in Paris. Suppose Michèle wanted those letters? Suppose he and the ghost Medusa were working together? Sally didn’t know how Michèle might have arranged it, but she had seen enough of him to believe he could.

  The sky was becoming more overcast. Sally went back inside.

  Suppose Michèle and the Medusa were working together. Michèle had retrieved her bag. Maybe he ended up with the letters.

  She could search around while he was out, see if she found them. If she found the letters, it would prove that she couldn’t trust Michèle. At least that would be settled.

  In a casual, aimless way, still not certain what she would do, Sally drifted through the dining room, polished and pristine, a huge bouquet of yellow roses on the shining table, and down a hall. She passed the open door of a sitting room, where there was a table with an inlaid chessboard and dried flower arrangements under glass bells. Next to the sitting room was a small bathroom and beyond it a closet, and that was it. Sally drifted the other way, back through the salon and the dining room. At the end of a hall she found a small library. It looked like a private place, not as grand and polished as the other rooms on this floor. The walls were lined with old-looking books in dark wood cases fronted by tarnished brass mesh. Two cracked green leather chairs faced one another in front of a cold fireplace. Beyond tall French windows was a wrought-iron balcony overlooking the garden. A small desk held a stack of papers under a paperweight of swirling, multicolored Venetian glass.

  Sally walked into the room. She stood at the desk, looking down at the stack of papers. The top one was a letter to Michèle, written in Italian.

  Sally rested her hand on the paperweight, then moved the paperweight to one side.

  She picked up the papers and riffled through them, looking for the envelopes or for the small sheets with their short, ambiguous sentences. She was searching so intently she almost missed the paper in Brian’s handwriting. She leafed past it and had to go back to look again.

  The paper had been folded, then straightened again. Brian’s writing was wavery, but it was definitely his writing. A purple stain that looked like wine had discolored one corner of the page. She read:

  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?

  This was the poem Michèle had told her about, the poem Brian had written, that Michèle copied and sent to the members of the group. Sally read it several times. How could Brian have hated himself so much? she wondered. She was still standing there, her search forgotten, when she heard footsteps on the stairs. Quickly she replaced the papers, except for the poem, and put the paperweight on top. She folded the poem and shoved it into the pocket of her jeans. She turned and saw that Michèle had just reached the top of the stairs. She watched him coming toward her.

  When he walked in she said, “I was looking for you.”

  He frowned. “Why? Has something happened?”

  “No. I thought maybe you’d gotten back.”

  “But you have been quite all right?”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Good, good.”

  Michèle, she noticed, seemed highly excited, his usually pallid face flushed. He took her by the shoulders. “I have something to tell you,” he said. “I think I may have found out who murdered Brian.”

  EXPLANATIONS

  “Rolf? Are you sure?” Sally didn’t know what she’d expected Michèle to say, but it wasn’t that.

  Michèle was pacing. Sally sat in one of the chairs in front of the cold fireplace. “He was the mirror-man,” Michèle said. “He tried to deny it at first. He said”— Michèle drew himself up, and a snarl transformed his features— “Fuck off!”

  In half a second and two words Michèle had evoked Rolf so vividly that Sally could see and hear him herself.

  Michèle’s features relaxed. “But of course I had proof. A witness. So he admitted it.”

  Sally was confused. “Rolf admitted he killed Brian?”

  “No, no. He admitted he was the mirror-man. But you yourself saw him leaning over Brian’s body. You were telling the truth about that, weren’t you?”

  Sally thought she saw mockery in the suspicious look Michèle gave her. “Yes. I saw him leaning over, but I didn’t see him hit Brian.”

  Michèle waved this away. “Perhaps not. But you admit that in all likelihood he is the guilty one? He ran away, after all.”

  So did I, Sally thought. So did you. But Michèle continued, “And he didn’t go to the police later to tell his story, as you did.”

  Sally remembered the black-cloaked figure, the mirror-face flashing in the sun. It could’ve been Rolf. She had no reason to think it wasn’t.

  “The police were easier to convince than you are,” Michèle said.

  She shook her head. “Maybe you’re right.”

  “No. I see that you have doubts. What are they?”

  What were they? Sally considered, then said, “I don’t see why he would have done it. I don’t think Rolf hated Brian. He hardly paid attention to Brian at all.”

  Rolf didn’t pay attention to Brian, Sally thought. Rolf paid attention to me. He had watched her with hooded eyes as they sat in the Café du Coin. He rarely spoke to her, but he seemed to have something against her. Her palms began to perspire as she thought about it.

  “Ah,” said Michèle. “That, you see, is the other part of the story.”

  His excitement seemed to have dissipated. He had stopped pacing and stood next to the desk. “In fact, he doesn’t realize it’s Brian who has been killed,” Michèle said. “He thinks it’s you.”

  Sally stared at Michèle. Maybe she had misunderstood. Maybe Michèle had misunderstood. “He thinks it’s me,” she repeated. “How do you know that?”

  “He said so. He said, ‘I didn’t kill Sally’.”

  Sally thought about it. The idea of Rolf killing Brian hadn’t seemed right. The idea of Rolf killing Brian because he thought Brian was Sally was strange, even frightening, but possible. She still couldn’t imagine why, but she thought the answer was in the way he had looked at her during those long afternoons at the Café du Coin. The answer had nothing to do with Sally herself, but with something that was going on inside Rolf’s head.

  “I shouldn’t have told you. I should have waited until they arrested him,” Michèle said.

  “How do you know they’ll arrest him? He might get away, now that you warned him.”

  “I had to test him, to be sure. The child who told me he’d seen Rolf in the mirror costume might have been mistaken or lying. I had to see Rolf’s reaction.”

  Sally wanted to shake him. “Why didn’t you just leave it to the police?”

  Michèle frowned uncomprehendingly. “Because it wouldn’t have been nearly as interesting,”

  Sally leaned back in the chair and shoved her fingers into the pockets of her jeans. The poem she had discovered on Michèle’s desk crackled softly. She said, “It doesn’t make sense. You think Rolf whacked Brian in the face and knocked him into the canal thinking he was me? I can see him making that mistake once Brian had fallen and was sinking in the water, but on land? Brian was taller than I am. Larger.”

  Michèle resumed pacing. “Nevertheless. Both you and
I saw Rolf there. The staff – his mirror staff— was broken. These mistakes happen at Carnival. Our senses can play us false, our preconceived ideas mislead us. Rolf believed the Medusa was you, and in his mind the Medusa became you.”

  Sally wasn’t sure she bought this argument, but it would take some time to unravel. “How did you know where to find Rolf?” she asked.

  “It was easy.” Michèle looked pleased. “I called the bistro in Paris where he worked and asked if anyone knew. A very cordial man there seemed happy to give me the address.”

  “But how did you know about the bistro?”

  “Brian mentioned it, the night we met at the taverna. He told me so many things.” Michèle went to the desk, saying, “I meant to show you this sooner.” He moved the paperweight and began to thumb through the stack of papers.

  As Sally watched he searched through all the papers, then started over and looked through them again. After he’d finished the second search, he looked at Sally, a faint smile touching his lips. “I see I’m not the only one who can conduct an investigation,” he said. “Sally, why have you taken Brian’s poem?”

  A VISITOR

  At this point, Sally felt no guilt or shame for going through Michèle’s papers. She said, “I wanted to find out what’s going on. I keep thinking you haven’t been straight with me.”

  Michèle nodded approvingly. “You did exactly right. I meant to give you the poem myself, although I was afraid it would pain you. Brian said it expressed something of how he felt. I find it extremely sad.”

  “There’s something I don’t understand,” Sally said.

  “What is that?”

  “Why did Brian talk to you that night? I mean, tell you his secrets?”

  Michèle paused to consider before he said, “Two reasons, I suppose. First, he was desperate and ready to talk. Second, he told me his secrets because I told him mine.”

  Unaccountably, Sally felt stung. She wondered what Michèle had told Brian that he hadn’t told her. “Your secrets?”

  Michèle walked to the French windows and peered up at the sky. “Do you know, I think it will rain,” he said.

  Sally waited. She wasn’t going to discuss the weather. He returned to the chair opposite hers and sat down. “You must understand that I am a lily of the field who neither toils nor spins,” he said. “My life is not dull because I know how to amuse myself, and my attention is easily caught. It was caught by Brian.”

  He settled himself in his chair, seeming to compose his body carefully. “When I saw Brian at the taverna, he was the picture of despair. I was intrigued, as I told you. Why should a man so young and beautiful be so dreadfully sad? I tried to talk with him, but he would barely answer me. I suppose he thought I was interested in him in a sexual way.

  “You may be too young to have learned this, Sally, but often telling someone your secret will lead that person to tell you his. A confidence will elicit a confidence. I saw that Brian was sad. I concluded that if I wanted to know the reason for his sadness, I should be sad myself.”

  At Michèle’s last words his face changed, almost miraculously it seemed to Sally. His mouth drooped, his cheeks sagged, even his skin appeared to change color and become an unhealthy gray. Pain hovered in his eyes, and when he continued, his voice had a tight, gritty quality. “I began to speak about my beloved wife, Antonia, who has left me. He ignored me at first, but my account of abandonment and despair was irresistible. I was moved by it myself, almost to tears. After I told him my story, he told me his. He had written a poem about Medusa that expressed some of his distress, and he gave it to me. I was very touched.”

  Michèle’s face cleared. “That’s how it happened.”

  “But was it a lie? About Antonia?” Sally asked.

  Michèle frowned. “Certainly not. It was all true.”

  Then why were you using the story just for your amusement, as a way to get Brian to confide in you, Sally wanted to ask, but didn’t. Wind rattled the windows, and the room darkened a little.

  “Antonia doesn’t like Venice,” Michèle said in a soft, absent tone. “She tells me, ‘If you love decay so much, why don’t you shut yourself up in a shabby, tumbledown room with beautiful, rotting things in it and watch them fall apart around you? That’s what living in Venice is like’.”

  “Is that why she stays in Milan?”

  “She stays in Milan because she loves the future. What future does Venice have? Inundation. One day, waves will break over the domes of the Basilica. Antonia has no use for such melancholy thoughts. She has a design studio in Milan, she has many forward-looking friends. They sit in rooms where everything is white, even the floors, and smoke cigarettes and talk about the future. Antonia doesn’t like pattern, complication, intricacy. She thinks Venice is too elaborate to be truly stylish. She’s right, of course.”

  Sally couldn’t think of any reply. She wasn’t used to this kind of talk.

  “I said Antonia doesn’t like pattern, complication, and intricacy,” Michèle went on. “On the other hand, they fascinate me.”

  “Do you and Antonia agree about anything?”

  He smiled ruefully. “Some years ago we agreed to get married. Quite frankly, I thought if she didn’t marry me I would die. To spend an hour away from her was torture. She felt the same. Oh, yes, we were in complete agreement then.” His shoulders twitched. “But now she is in Milan, and you and I are in Venice, surrounded by as much pattern, complication, and intricacy as we could wish.”

  Footsteps sounded in the hall. Maria came in and spoke to Michèle in Italian. He seemed surprised, Sally thought, at what she told him. When Maria had left, Michèle turned to Sally and said, “Francine is on her way up. She arrived uninvited and asked to see me.”

  Sally didn’t want to see Francine. She stood up. “I’m going to wait in my room until she leaves.”

  “Very well, but you’d better go quickly if you don’t want to meet her.”

  Sally hurried down the hall and across the landing. As she started up the stairs she heard Michèle’s voice greeting Francine. She went to her room and closed the door.

  LUNCH IN THE CAMPO

  Francine, Tom, and Jean-Pierre huddled over stale sandwiches at a table in the Campo Francesco Morosini, although it was almost too cold now to sit outside. Revelers passing on their way to the Piazza bent into the wind, capes and veils billowing. One among them, a Pierrot, his sad-clown mask framed by an extravagant ruff of black net, escaped the crowd to hover in a nearby doorway. A café employee, looking at the sky, began stacking unoccupied tables.

  Francine felt cheated and dissatisfied in the aftermath of her conversation with Michèle Zanon. Although the count had been extremely courteous, he had told Francine nothing new, and she had had no chance to look around the palazzo on her own. Neither, to her chagrin, had there been an opportunity to discuss Sartre.

  The meeting was hardly worth the difficulty Francine had gone through to get there, which had been considerable. She had despaired of ever being free of Ursula’s company again, but eventually even Ursula’s inventiveness and capacities had flagged and she’d pronounced herself ready for a siesta. She had insisted that Francine remain with her in the darkened bedroom until she fell asleep. When Ursula was emitting breathy snores, Francine tiptoed out and escaped.

  Francine had felt more than ready for a siesta herself. Her head ached, and the bright sunlight and brisk winter breeze seemed unpleasantly harsh as she wound along the route that led to Michèle Zanon’s palazzo. Ursula had not been especially willing to give her directions, but Francine was not above withholding, or threatening to withhold, skills she now knew appealed to Ursula very much. Ursula finally told her, then clutched Francine and said, “You won’t leave me for Michèle will you, cara?”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Francine, repeating the directions several times in her head.

  Now, her meeting with Michèle ended, Francine’s headache was worse and she felt hollow inside. This bad feeling came
from fear and from anger at Sally.

  Francine was sure she had seen Sally in Michèle’s palazzo. Sally was wearing her dreadful sweater with the flying geese on it, and she was rushing upstairs. When Francine asked Michèle, he blandly denied it, saying Francine must have caught a glimpse of his wife, Antonia, who had just arrived from Milan. Antonia apologized, Michèle said, for not coming to meet Francine, but she was exhausted from her trip.

  Francine wasn’t fooled. Sally was staying in the palazzo with Michèle, and Michèle had deliberately lied about the fact. Thinking of it made Francine wild. It was monstrous that pale, plain Sally was enjoying the company of Michèle Zanon, living with him at his palazzo in great luxury.

  Francine wanted, she needed, Michèle as her ally. She couldn’t have Sally standing in her way.

  The final annoyance had been running into Tom and Jean-Pierre outside Michèle’s gate after her unsuccessful visit, where they apparently had just bumped into one another. Michèle had met with Tom earlier, and had left a message for Jean-Pierre. Both of them wanted to speak with him. Although Francine supposed that if Michèle had sought her out, it was reasonable for him to have visited the others; she wished it weren’t true. She wished she had been singled out, unique.

  Jean-Pierre seemed to be barely functioning. Tom rubbed his cheeks in a way that drove Francine mad, and treated her warily, as if fearing a repeat of their early-morning quarrel. It was he who suggested the three of them exchange addresses and then go on to lunch together nearby.

  Jean-Pierre had eaten nothing, and Tom had two whiskies and half a sandwich, but Francine was ravenous. She also had an idea. She nodded in the direction of the palazzo and said, “Do you know who’s staying there with Count Zanon? Sally.”

  Tom, frowning, settled his chin deeper into the collar of his coat. “How do you know?”