Sally sat on the pavement of the Procuratie Nuove, gazing out over the drowned Piazza. A breeze ruffled the waters where a bicorn hat still floated.
“My God, I am so stupid,” said Michèle.
Sally didn’t reply. Despite being wet through, she didn’t feel cold. She didn’t feel anything.
Jean-Pierre retched and pushed himself up on one elbow. Water ran out of his mouth and splattered on the stones.
“It isn’t the same costume at all,” Sally said.
“His Harlequin disguise? It’s a common one you can buy anywhere. But all of them look very much alike.”
Especially when you see what you want to see, Sally thought. So instead of Jean-Pierre, I saw Michèle. When you factor that in, it makes sense.
The police would be arriving soon. Michèle had phoned from a call box.
Michèle dangled his own Harlequin mask and hat from his fingers. “I was wrong about everything,” he said. “I thought I could solve it. I was certain I could. Instead, I caused terrible pain.”
Sally looked at him. He was the picture of dejection, but how did he really feel? “Do you ever do anything but play, Michèle?” she asked.
His shoulders lifted in an almost imperceptible shrug.
“It seems to me that you enjoy stirring things up, but you don’t want to take the consequences.” The bitterness in her tone came from the knowledge that, even now, if she could dance with him again at a Venetian masked ball, she would do it eagerly.
He winced, but his glance held a flicker of defiance. “Be fair, Sally. I wanted to put everything right. I did a bad job of it, but I tried.”
“You wanted something else, too,” Sally said.
“Yes?”
“You wanted something to do.”
He said, almost eagerly, “It was Carnival. Things should happen at Carnival. If they go on just the same, there’s no reason for Carnival at all.”
They were silent. Across the way, a group of men arrived and began moving planks and metal stands. “They are putting up platforms for people to walk on during the acqua alta,” Michèle said.
“Is that what the sirens were about?”
“Yes. To warn everyone. By tonight, it will have receded. Until the next one.”
The sky was brightening, and the wind picked up.
Jean-Pierre whispered, “Sally.” She looked down at him. His pale face was mottled with bruises. “Tell me,” he said. She bent to hear him. “Did Brian make love to you again, ever, after he fell in love with me?” he asked.
Sally remembered the night before Brian’s death— his breath smelling of wine, his body sliding into hers. She knew only one answer would see Jean-Pierre through what he was going to face. He had killed Brian, and had tried to kill her as well. Still, she gave him what he needed. “No. Never.”
Jean-Pierre’s face relaxed a little. Sally didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to see what love could do. She turned away. In a few minutes she heard voices and footsteps. The police had arrived.
A RECONCILIATION
“You have lied to me at every opportunity,” said Ursula. The look on her face was so ridiculously tragic that Francine wished she would put on the equally ridiculous mask she held in her hand.
“What have I done to deserve such treatment?” Ursula continued. She ticked off her points on her fingers. “I have given you a place to stay. I have translated, copied, and delivered your silly letter to the police. I have given you my deepest, most profound—”
Her voice broke, and she took a swallow of Michèle’s red wine. They were in the salon of the Zanon palazzo. Francine stared at the toes of her shoes, which just peeked out from the white satin folds of the Pierrot trousers.
Ursula’s reaction when she found Francine sitting on the bed in Antonia’s bedroom had been utterly predictable. Fired with suspicion as she was, the Pierrot costume Francine wore hadn’t fooled her for an instant. “So here you are!” she cried. “Dressed up to play funny games with Michèle! Is this how a murder investigation is conducted?”
Now, Francine judged that the scene had almost run its course. It was time for her to think of some palliative explanation, so Ursula could forgive her and they could move on.
“Your other lovers turn up at my door, making scenes,” Ursula said. “This latest one, poor Tom. You can’t imagine how he has suffered. Only I can imagine.”
Francine looked around. “Yes, Tom was here, wasn’t he? Where is he?”
Ursula gave a dismissive wave. “He said he had work to do. He’s in the library.” She blotted her eyes and went on, “And there was the other lover, the brutal one. And now Michèle—”
Francine finally broke. She threw the Pierrot mask to the floor and said, “I am sick of this! You have whined at me, dogged my footsteps, humiliated me! I can’t stand any more! Leave me alone!”
Ursula pulled herself up in an attitude of immense hauteur. “Very well,” she said coldly. “And when the police want to know who wrote a lying letter accusing an innocent woman of murder, they will surely be interested in what I have to tell them.”
“Tell them! Tell them!” said Francine. “I don’t care what you do!”
With exaggerated dignity, Ursula nodded once and left the room. A few minutes later, Francine heard her talking with Tom as the two of them descended the stairs.
Francine sat until her fury cooled. She began to wish she hadn’t been so hasty with Ursula. When Ursula spoke of telling the police about the anonymous letter, she had sounded sincere. Francine was already in some trouble, she feared, because of the Being and Nothingness letters she had sent to Brian. If the police learned of this one also, they were likely to be even more annoyed. Francine got up. She wondered if she should approach Ursula tonight or wait until morning.
When she went downstairs, however, a nun wearing a lascivious mask was sitting on a bench in the ground-floor room. The nun was holding a notebook bound in marbleized paper. Francine forced herself to sound joyful. “So you waited. I’m glad,” she said. She put her arms around the nun.
“Yes, I waited,” Tom said. He sounded delighted. “I was really looking forward to seeing you tonight.”
AFTER CARNIVAL
A few days later, when the acqua alta had receded and Carnival was completely over, Sally walked across Venice from Otis Miller’s hotel to the Zanon palazzo for tea. It was a gray, wintry day, with a few snowflakes spiraling down. Sally’s parents had bought her a new winter coat and new boots and a new blue dress. Sally hated to think how much they had spent, but they kept wanting to buy her things. Sally’s hair was coiled in a chignon at the back of her neck, and she was wearing her mother’s gold earrings.
There was frost in the garden, lightly dusting the top of the wellhead, dulling the ivy’s green. Sandro let her in, and she climbed the stairs to the salon, where Michèle was waiting. The circles under his eyes had deepened, and his face seemed more lined, but when he said, “Sally! How adorable you look,” she saw that his charm hadn’t diminished. He embraced her warmly and said, “I am so glad you came— so glad you were willing to come.”
“I wanted to.”
He took her coat and poured tea for her and asked, “Are you well?”
“I have nightmares. That’s all, really.”
Only one nightmare. In it, she was running down a dark corridor toward Michèle, and the closer she got to him the more terrified she became.
Michèle’s face darkened. Then he said, “I suppose you’ve heard that Jean-Pierre has been talking freely with the police.”
She had heard, but something in her quailed at the thought of Jean-Pierre. She said, “I know a little bit.”
“He followed Brian from the Piazza, as all of you did, but Brian evaded everyone except Jean-Pierre. Brian was crouched down, I presume hiding, by the bridge when Rolf happened on him and they had their quarrel. Jean-Pierre pummeled Rolf. After Rolf ran away, Jean-Pierre and Brian fought bitterly, and Jean-Pierre struck him with Rolf�
��s staff.”
“Jean-Pierre loved Brian a lot,” Sally said. Her voice almost cracked, and she stopped talking and cleared her throat.
“It drove him mad, in the end,” Michèle said. “And yet, everything he did was extremely shrewd. Concocting a Medusa costume, then dressing as Harlequin—”
“All because he blamed me,” Sally said. Jean-Pierre had threatened her as Medusa, then dressed as Harlequin to get near her. The thought of his hatred opened up a vast emptiness inside her. “He either followed me or knew where I was all the time.”
Restless, she got up and walked to the bull’s-eye glass doors that opened onto the balcony, and stared through them at the distorted Canal. Michèle followed her. He put his hand on her shoulder. “We won’t talk about it.”
She fumbled in her pocket for a tissue and blew her nose. “It’s okay.” After a minute she said, “Rolf hasn’t regained consciousness.”
“No. They aren’t hopeful that he will.”
“So maybe I’ll never know what made him come after me.”
“Perhaps not.” Michèle shook his head. “Rolf had a capacity for finding or causing trouble. The pounding on the door that night was the husband of a local woman with whom Rolf had had a brief affair. Under duress, the woman told her husband Rolf had a connection with me, and he got drunk and came here to have it out with me, or Rolf, or anyone. When we didn’t answer the door, he went to sleep in the garden shed. Sandro found him the next day.”
Sally smiled sadly. “We all got drawn to you, one way or another.”
Michèle touched her cheek. “Sally, will you ever forgive me for my part in this?”
She had known he would ask. “I haven’t gotten it all sorted out,” she said. “I can’t say yes right now. Part of the reason is, I can’t just let this go. It’s too important. Something in me doesn’t want to make it easy for you.”
Her tone had been more vehement than she’d planned. Michèle nodded, his lips compressed. Sally burst out, “I had so many things to tell you! I told you, only it was Jean-Pierre and not you.”
“Tell me now,” Michèle said.
She shook her head. “I can’t. Not right now.”
He put his arms around her, and she rested her face against his shoulder. When she pulled back, she said, “What’s going to happen to you?”
He sighed. “The police are taking a lenient view. Antonia is not. This time, I believe she will really divorce me.”
“I’m sorry.”
“You should know by now that Harlequins are resilient,” he said, but his face was wan.
They finished their tea. They talked, and once or twice they laughed. Then Sally said her parents were expecting her, and Michèle helped her with her coat, and they said good-bye.
A PUPPET SHOW
Jean-Pierre’s decay was complete. He tasted the same rising, rotten tide that had choked Brian. As Brian disintegrated, Jean-Pierre felt his own limbs loosen.
Jean-Pierre stood and sat, he answered questions if answers drifted to him, but he was one with Brian. If a gray-haired woman bent over him, her face dreadful with tears, and called his name and said he was her son, Jean-Pierre saw her through Brian’s eyes, as a stranger. He would rather be with Brian in this underwater life than be without him. He would rather be here than be dead, because if he died, Brian would die, too.
They asked him about the Rio della Madonna. Sometimes, through the tides, he could see the scene performed in pantomime in a puppet theater he had passed in one of the campi. Children sat in front, giggling as he made his dejected entrance as Pierrot, the sad clown. Brian, the Medusa, hurled the mirror-staff to the ground, to the children’s delighted screams.
Pierrot slunk to the Medusa, supplicating, bending deep and groveling, his every attitude saying, “Please,” and “I’ll do anything,” and “I can’t bear it.”
Please, Jean-Pierre almost spoke aloud, as Brian’s strings pulled the Medusa in expressions of “I’m sick of this,” and “Leave me alone,” and, worst of all, “No.”
The Medusa’s back was turned to Pierrot, the snakes shivering in violent rejection. The cringing Pierrot reached for the staff. In the puppet show, this part would be slow— grasping the staff, taking aim, rehearsing once, twice, three times for the blow as the children shrieked to the Medusa to beware. And at last, despite the cries of warning, the Medusa toppled like a toy, and water splashed behind the stage, and the spangled curtain fell despite the childish protests.
MINNESOTA
Dead leaves clung to Rolf”s shoes, and the air was damp and chilly. She was already there, waiting. He could see her, a bundled-up figure leaning against a tree. His stomach knotted.
Nobody could see them here, among the trees. The tip of her nose was red with the cold. She was talking, but her words meant nothing to Rolf. How could he possibly listen?
Rolf’s hands were around her throat. He could feel her blood pulsing against his thumbs in a way that drove him wild.
Suddenly, her neck writhed out of his hands. He struggled to seize it again, but it twisted beyond his grasp. He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t scream, only groan deep inside himself as he reached out.
He was in Minnesota, standing by a narrow, dark green river next to an arched stone bridge. Rolf knelt on the paving stones at the river’s edge. He wept with relief that she had escaped.
BACK TO PARIS
Tom stood on the platform, his suitcase and Francine’s in front of him. They had ten minutes before the train left, and Francine had decided she wanted some chocolate to eat on the way. He hoped she’d hurry back so he wouldn’t have to schlepp the bags on the train by himself. He glanced at the door to the station. No sign of her. He wasn’t sure she should be eating chocolate, anyway, considering how plump she was already, but he didn’t think their relationship was at a stage where he could say anything.
“Relationship” could be too strong a word. He and Francine had spent a lot of time together during the past few days, including reasonably pleasant interludes in bed, but Tom had to admit that Francine hadn’t lived up to his fantasies. Before, she had struck him as a woman who would know how to do a lot of secret and unexpected and delightful things, and she did know some interesting things to do, but it wasn’t quite as Tom had pictured it. Tom wondered, too, if her heart was in it. She often seemed distracted, mechanical. Actually, it hadn’t been very romantic. The most romantic thing had been that night at the palazzo, when she’d put her arms around him for the first time.
They didn’t discuss Ursula, either. Tom hadn’t spoken with Ursula since that night, although he suspected Francine had. Tom had seen Ursula once, at the fish market near the Rialto. With her were two slim, olive-skinned, dark-haired young women who might have been twins. One of them carried a wicker shopping basket and the other led a muzzled greyhound on a leash. Ursula, inspecting the fish, sea urchins, and freshly skinned eels with her companions, hadn’t noticed Tom.
The past few days hadn’t been easy. The worst part, for Tom, had been admitting to the police that he had cheated in the game and gotten himself kicked out of Brian’s hotel for snooping around. Tom was glad that Francine, too, had something to confess. She’d sent Brian some quotations out of Being and Nothingness that could have been threats.
Francine had better get a move on. Tom took a couple of steps toward the waiting room, then walked back to the suitcases.
Neither Tom nor Francine had been allowed to visit Jean-Pierre. Tom tried to insist, saying it was necessary for his work, but he was given to understand that he couldn’t expect any special consideration. Tom was undeterred. He was going to proceed with his book, and it was going to knock all of their socks off. So far, he hadn’t written much, but when he got back to Paris he’d have the distance he needed. It would come together in no time.
Jean-Pierre’s family had unleashed an army of lawyers. Tom figured Jean-Pierre would be locked up in a fancy sanitarium, and that would be that.
Rolf still had
n’t regained consciousness. Tom figured Rolf was a goner. Nobody would ever know why he’d attacked Sally. He had attacked her, though, and then Jean-Pierre had hit Rolf over the head because Jean-Pierre wanted to kill her instead of letting Rolf do whatever Rolf was doing.
Poor old Sally. Tom had to pity her. She had looked awfully strained, wandering around with the worried-appearing man and woman, so polite, hesitant, and out of place, who turned out to be her mother and father. Tom hadn’t seen much of them.
Tom and Francine hadn’t seen much of Michèle, either. His wife, Antonia, had shown up when the scandal broke, and Tom had glimpsed her with him once. She was chic, blond, and pretty, wrapped in apricot-colored fur and looking pinched around the eyes and mouth. She probably wasn’t happy about Michèle’s part in this mess.
Francine emerged from the station door and walked toward him, carrying a chocolate bar. She said, “Let’s get on board,” and they wrestled the suitcases into second-class smoking. Tom hefted them onto the overhead shelf. They sat down, and Francine unwrapped the candy bar and began to eat it without offering Tom a bite.
Tom looked out the window, impatient to get moving. Tonight he’d be back with Olga and Stefan. The thought didn’t make him feel as leaden as it might have. Olga and Stefan, who’d been kept up-to-date by phone, would surely want to hear his account of the whole thing in person. Tom thought Stefan would probably be impressed by his book plans. Tom rubbed his chin and realized how infrequently he did that these days. He had decided to keep shaving after all. He hardly missed his beard.
Olga and Stefan. He’d see how it went. After all this, he would surely be able to get down to serious work. There was Francine, too. He’d see how it went. Tom settled himself in his seat. In a minute, maybe two, the train would lurch forward and they would be off.
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 64