“Right, right.”
“You are her close friend?”
Tom was picking up an innuendo here, but he felt reckless. It would probably be true soon enough, anyway. He gave Ursula a slow, heavy-lidded smile and said, “Sure. Close and good friend.”
“I see,” Ursula said.
Tom finished his brandy and poured another. He was starting to feel warm and cozy. On the table beside him his beautiful notebook gleamed with promise in the firelight.
“In that case, perhaps you would like to know where she is,” said Ursula silkily. “She tells me she is in the midst of conducting a murder investigation.”
Tom sat up sharply, with a lurch of fear and resentment. What did Francine think she was doing? Brian’s murder was his business. Francine would spoil everything. “What?” he said.
Ursula nodded. “A murder investigation. At the moment she is pursuing it at the palazzo of Count Michèle Zanon.”
Tom was furious. He himself had intended to visit Count Zanon and discuss the murder. The thought of what Michèle might be telling Francine made him sick. “That’s bullshit! She’s no investigator!” he cried. “She’s just trying to get close to Count Zanon!”
Ursula jumped to her feet. “Exactly! The lying bitch!” she screamed.
Amazed at this reaction, Tom said, “Hey, wait—”
“This moment, this very moment, your lover is betraying you with Michèle Zanon!”
“Listen—”
Skirts swirling, Ursula strode to stand in front of Tom’s chair. She bent over and prodded his chest with a red fingernail. “You’re as big a fool as I am! We are fools together!”
“Maybe you should—”
She put her face close to Tom’s. “Fool!” she shrieked. She whirled and ran from the room. Tom heard the dog barking frenziedly.
Tom’s ears were ringing. He was shaking all over. Fortunately, the brandy was close by. He poured himself another glass.
BRIAN
Brian glides through the streets of Venice. The spongy, slick remnants of what he was, coalesced and held by rage, carry him as if he were alive.
In Venice, night is coming on and the rain has started. The souvenir vendors under the arcade of the Doges’ Palace, wearing high boots of dull-green rubber, pack up, muttering invocations to God to condemn and destroy this weather. They futilely try to light cigarettes and call on God again. On the Molo, the prows of docked gondolas rear and pull like tethered ponies, and waves slop across the pavement. Long lace petticoats, satin shoes with sparkling buckles, are dampened and drenched. The sea is encroaching to drown the revels. By morning, perhaps, the tide will bring acqua alta and the Piazza will be a lake, a reflecting pool for the doomed beauties of Venice.
None of this concerns Brian. What does high tide matter to the drowned? What is a damp chill to one whom cold has invaded forever? In Brian’s vision, the rain has cast over Venice a net of silver filaments. All those caught within— souvenir vendors, dripping masqueraders— struggle to escape. All except Brian, who is in his proper element.
The water rises, Carnival continues. Musicians pin their sheets of music to wire stands with clothespins and go on playing. A jester spins and somersaults to the applause of a shivering crowd. A drunken gladiator gags in a dim corner of the Procuratie Nuove not far from a mask seller whose wares are spread on a blanket weighted at the corners with bricks.
Carnival continues, Brian continues. His repulsive, loosening, decaying self can still give the illusion of life. For a while longer, he will be able to act.
ROLF KEEPS WATCH
From his shelter in the potting shed, Rolf watched the Zanon palazzo. Rain poured from the shed’s red-tiled roof. The walls were runny and damp, the air musty. Rolf sat on a bag of fertilizer and looked through the barely open door. He was wearing his devil mask, knit cap, and black gloves, and it would be hard to spot him here even if someone was looking. Rolf was unaware of the chill, almost unaware of the rain. Excitement was crackling, sparking, and connecting beneath his skin.
He thought it was almost time to move, but he wanted to be sure. He had watched long enough to see that Count Zanon had gotten another doorman, this one a kid who looked seventeen or so. Rolf had glimpsed him moving around inside and seen him again when the kid turned Francine away a short while ago.
No doubt Francine had come to visit the count, but the count had left, in what looked like a big hurry, not long before Francine arrived. Rolf didn’t know whether Sally was in the palazzo right now or not, but once he was inside, he was willing to wait. When he felt like this, so alive and sure of himself, he could wait a long time.
Rolf had no doubt he could knock the crap out of this doorman, just as he had the old one, but he had decided to do it differently this time. An incapacitated doorman would be a warning to Count Zanon when he returned, and Rolf preferred to take the count and Sally by surprise. It was Sally he wanted, really. The resurrected Sally, all dressed up in her ruffles. Drops of perspiration formed a line across his forehead, under his mask.
In Minnesota, things had gotten out of hand. The girl, Barbara, the one he had hurt— her fear had made him feel too strong. That moment, the moment she got truly terrified, had been too rich and overpowering, like a flash of lightning, or an ocean wave.
Venice wasn’t Minnesota. Sally wasn’t Barbara, although she had the same freckles and brown hair. Rolf would handle it differently this time. Against his will, he saw Barbara. Dead leaves stuck to her hair, and there was a wet, red smear under her nose. Her freckles were drowned in the pallor of her skin, and her short, sparse eyelashes looked like tiny needles sticking out of her closed eyelids.
He blinked the thought away and stood up. This was as good a time as any to get started.
The garden was dark, with only a pool of yellow light from a lamp outside the back door of the palazzo and a tiny bit of illumination from the street. If Rolf was careful and nobody showed up, he’d be fine. He pushed the shed door open a little wider and stepped out into the downpour.
Keeping his eye on the ground-floor windows so he could stop dead if the doorman looked out, Rolf moved from the potting shed to the ivy-covered garden wall. The rain, drumming on gravel and leaves, bouncing off the top of the wellhead, was loud enough to cover any sounds he made. He slid along the wall toward the palazzo, wet ivy dragging across his back, tickling his neck, depositing moisture on his earlobes.
When he had nearly reached the palazzo, it was time to begin the hard part. Rolf turned to the wall and gauged the distance. He’d prefer to have a running start, but that was impossible. He took as deep a breath as he could with his mask on, flexed his knees, and jumped.
He got hold of the top of the wall easily and clung to it until his feet found a purchase in the ivy and he could climb up. He sat on the top of the wall, panting, anticipating the next step. This was where the rain would work to his disadvantage, because the iron balcony would be slippery, but Rolf had no doubt he would pull it off.
The wall was fairly broad, and when Rolf had caught his breath he worked his way along it until he reached the point closest to the balcony. Here, he spent some time in contemplation. It wasn’t a long leap, but he’d only get one chance. Water streamed from the balcony and glittered in the pool of light below. Watching it, Rolf felt almost hypnotized.
Then the right time came, and he got to his feet and leapt. His gloved fingers slipped and clung to the balcony’s wrought-iron supports. He let himself be sure of his grip, then swung his feet once, twice, and on the third try got his toe between the supports. Laboriously, he dragged his body upward, but he knew he’d make it. He climbed over the rail and collapsed on the balcony floor, drenched and gasping.
Eventually, he dragged himself up and crouched next to the door. It was locked, of course, but Rolf had a knife and a screwdriver in his pocket. The job wouldn’t be done elegantly, but it would be done. In a short while, sooner than he would have predicted, the door was open, and Rolf was dri
pping rainwater onto the floor of Michèle Zanon’s library.
THE MEDUSA RETURNS
Sally had dinner with Otis Miller. After sitting in her drab room tormented by nerves, and creeping down the hall to the depressing bathroom quite a few times, shaking like a leaf every time, she had had enough. She realized she might feel better if she ate something and went in search of the hotel dining room. She also went, she had to admit, a little bit in search of Otis Miller.
“I’m afraid we don’t serve grits, young lady,” Otis said, and then recommended a dish called seppie con polenta, a Venetian specialty. Sally agreed, but when her order came, it was a plateful of tentacled black goo, along with a couple of pale yellow squares that looked like fallen cornbread.
Otis chuckled. “It’s supposed to look like that. Squid cooked in its own ink. Try it, Miss Sally.”
Sally didn’t want to hurt Otis’s feelings. She took a small bite of seppie con polenta. It didn’t taste as horrible as it looked. She could get through a few bites for the sake of politeness, she thought, but what with drinking wine and laughing at Otis’s stories about his growing up in Eufaula, Alabama, she finished it all.
Otis had been a misfit in Eufaula, he claimed, because he hated to hunt and fish. When he came to Italy, he felt at home for the first time.
Sally wasn’t surprised. “But you seem”— she wasn’t sure how to put it— “you seem so much like Eufaula.”
“Well, sure. I’m from Eufaula. I wasn’t raised on some Tuscan hillside, and there’s no point in pretending I was.” Otis looked as if the point meant a lot to him. His eyes bulged even more than usual. Then he relaxed and said, “What about you?”
Sally bit her lip. She wished she could tell Otis everything, but she was afraid to. It had been a long time since she’d felt she could trust anybody. “I’m in trouble,” she said. “It’s bad, but I can’t talk about it.”
Otis nodded as if he had known. “Anything I can do?”
Sally couldn’t get over her nagging worry about what had become of Michèle. The Pierrot had gotten into the house somehow. What had it done before Sally frightened it away ? She had already considered trying to call, but her little room in the annex had no telephone. “Can I make a phone call?”
“Sure thing,” Otis said, and when she got out money to pay for dinner, he waved it away, saying it was on the house.
Back in the lobby, Otis pushed the telephone across the counter and handed her the phone book. Now that she was about to call, Sally’s anxiety returned. She looked up Michèle’s number and tried to dial it, but the numerals kept slipping from her mind. After a couple of tries she wrote it on a pad, and after that she managed to dial.
There was no answer. She tried again, let it ring a long time, but nobody picked up. She put down the receiver.
“Nobody home?” Otis asked.
She shook her head. “Thanks, anyway.”
In her room once more, Sally was getting increasingly nervous. It was all very well to take off, which she had done for very good reasons. But something wasn’t right, and time could be important. She had her disguise, Antonia’s costume, so she wouldn’t be recognized. She should go now. She tied on her mask, rearranged her hat, and started out.
Antonia’s green umbrella provided some protection against the downpour, but the red shawl wasn’t warm enough, and she soon felt damp to the skin. She thought she could find the police station where she’d been with Michèle, and if she didn’t find that one, there had to be others.
She turned into a little campo. A small bandstand there was empty, its bunting sagging, but underneath a low, covered passage leading through to another street huddled several musicians, blasting away at a tune that sounded like “Yankee Doodle” but probably wasn’t. In the middle of the campo a dozen or so people were dancing in the rain. They were laughing with the abandon of those who can’t possibly get wetter, their hair plastered down, skirts and cloaks dragging, feathers and ruffs limp. As Sally tried to edge past them, a man wearing a waterlogged Renaissance cloak caught her hands and swung her around, the two of them slipping over the paving stones, Antonia’s ruffled skirt flying out like foam, the green umbrella bouncing over their heads.
When he released her, she saw the Medusa. The white figure hovered in the shadows where the street she’d just left joined the campo. She couldn’t possibly mistake the waving headdress, the blank white mask. She stumbled backward, turned and fled.
As she pushed past other umbrellas, other costumed figures, her heart lurching, Sally tried to figure out how this had happened. She had checked, as carefully as she knew how, to see if the Medusa was lurking around the palazzo when she left. She had seen nothing. Had it managed to follow her to the hotel somehow? Had it waited there until she emerged? Furthermore, she was wearing Antonia’s costume. Nobody was supposed to know that the masked and ruffled señorita was Sally.
Except Michèle. Of course Michèle would know.
Sally shook her head. She had seen Michèle and the Medusa together, when Michèle frightened the Medusa away, so Michèle couldn’t be the Medusa. Or he couldn’t have been that time.
At last she found the nerve to slow down and look behind her. She was in a well-populated street lined with packed trattorias, souvenir shops doing the evening’s final business, bars loud with commotion. The Medusa was gone.
Now, rattled and disoriented, she wasn’t sure of her directions anymore. She’d have to ask.
She entered a bar, clutching the dripping umbrella, and yelled at the bartender that she wanted to find the police station.
The bartender spoke English, after a fashion, and he was eager to help. He explained in detail where the police station was. Sally listened, but she was having trouble concentrating, and his accent was difficult to understand. The bartender kept waving his arm. She thought he was saying straight for a while, then turn left, then the station was close by. She could remember that much, at least.
She thanked the bartender several times, but after that there was no excuse for waiting.
Straight for a while, then left. No sign of the Medusa. She wished she had been able to understand exactly when the turn should come. She walked for a reasonable distance, then veered left. What had seemed a well-lighted and well-traveled street rapidly became dim, small, and deserted. The wares in the windows of the darkened shops looked a hundred years old. The only sounds were Sally’s feet and the pounding rain. She started across an arched stone bridge and saw raindrops, millions of them, dimpling the black canal below. On the other side of the bridge was darkness, punctuated by one or two bulbs over doorways. This couldn’t be the right way.
Abruptly, in the middle of the bridge, she stopped. She had to go back, try again. She turned to retrace her steps. At the foot of the bridge, a white figure stepped to one side, out of the light.
It was the Medusa. Sally whirled and ran for the darkness on the other side.
SALLY PURSUED
Sally looked back at the bridge through the columns of a portico bordering the canal. She was crouched in a corner against a damp stone wall, surrounded by the odors of garbage and urine.
She was sure the Medusa hadn’t had time to cross. The bridge had only been out of her sight for the few moments it took her to careen down a street she had hoped would lead far away. The street curved back treacherously, as Venetian streets so often did, and deposited her on the edge of the canal not far from the bridge. To go back was to risk coming face to face with her pursuer. To stay here was to risk being trapped. As a hunted creature will, she crouched down to watch.
A flat-bottomed boat, loosely covered with a tarpaulin, was moored in front of her. She heard the faint groaning of the ropes as it was pulled by wind or current, followed by a bump as it nudged the side of the canal.
Then came another sound— a rustling or scrabbling. It stopped, but soon started again, louder. Let it be cats, Sally prayed. Let it be cats. Not rats. Please. The seppie con polenta she had eaten with such
gusto threatened to come up, but she closed her throat in time.
In a building across the canal was a lighted window with a lace curtain hanging over it. Behind the curtain, a dark-haired woman moved to and fro. Sally stared at the woman for a moment or two, and then the Medusa started to cross the bridge.
Only then did Sally realize how much she had hoped the white figure wasn’t the Medusa, that the whole thing had been her imagination. The Medusa stopped at the top of the bridge. It looked her way, but she knew she couldn’t be seen. Not yet. Not from there. The Medusa continued. Sally was close enough to hear its footsteps.
If the Medusa came the way she had, Sally would be trapped, with no alternative but to jump into the canal.
Quickly, ratlike herself, she scuttled across the portico to the canal’s edge. A few feet below was the tarpaulin-covered boat. As silently as she could, she let herself down into it. The ropes groaned as the boat moved, but only a little. She picked up the edge of the tarpaulin, crawled underneath, and pulled it over her. She lay curled up, motionless on the slatted bottom of the boat.
Her hat was wildly askew, the chin strap nearly choking her, but she didn’t dare move to loosen it. She had a moment of panic, thinking she’d left the green umbrella, then realized that her hand was fastened tightly around it.
She could hear nothing but the rain pounding the tarpaulin and the occasional groan of the ropes. She would have no clues like footsteps to tell her if the Medusa had come and gone. She could only lie and wait.
She waited. The air was suffocatingly close. After a long while she reached up slowly and loosened the chin strap of her hat. When she did so, sweat broke out on her scalp.
Although she could see nothing, she couldn’t close her eyes. Surrounded by the sound of the rain, she stared wide-eyed into the blackness.
A moment came when she couldn’t stand it any longer. She crawled out from under the tarpaulin and stood up, filling her lungs with cold, wet air. She climbed up onto the pavement and again took shelter under the portico. She didn’t see or hear anybody. Across the canal, the lace-curtained window was dark.
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 59