“Yes.”
I sighed, suddenly needing a swig of vino but still resisting. “Who discovered Maria was missing?”
“Zara arrived home late the next morning and found her gone. She called the police and the search began. She was found early yesterday morning…floating…in the canal.”
Nicolina lowered her glass and quietly wept while I sat imagining the scene. How awful it must have been to arrive home and discover that someone you presumably cared for or looked after was gone—all the searching, the fear, the sense of pending loss…
And yet what if Zara wasn’t as devoted as she appeared? “Did the police check Zara’s alibi?” I whispered.
“I’m sure they would but it will not be so hard to prove that she was with her family.” She sniffed. “I do not believe that she would do this thing. Why now when she’d have worked for her for years?”
“In any case, we need to find out who Maria was speaking to when she suddenly decided to hide that painting.”
“Yes, I have already put Seraphina on the task. We will know very soon.”
“And what about Maria’s will? Are there other beneficiaries?”
She turned to me then, fixing me with her beautiful swollen eyes. “Of course. I know every detail and now it is time you did, too.”
I gazed back, waiting. “Why are you hesitating, Nicolina? Is it complicated?”
She sighed and looked away. “Everything is complicated, is it not true? Parts of the will are not so difficult: Maria has left a sizable bequest to Zara, which she discussed with me. She will not have to work ever again.”
“That makes sense,” I agreed.
She nodded. “Other than that, I have been left the villa and the weaving studio and all of the contents, including the painting.”
“Is this why you’re hesitating? To me, that makes sense, too. Didn’t you say that she had no family?”
“No immediate family, no, certainly no one who she would trust. I refused at first but she pressed me to agree. She wanted to entrust the studio to someone she knew would renovate it as she would and not just sell it to the highest bidder, as her cousin wished to do. And then there is this villa. Villas in Venice are—” she tossed her hands upward “—worth a fortune. This cousin once remarked that Maria should sell up and retire someplace less difficult. She would, if it were hers, but Maria would never leave. She said that Venice’s canals were like blood in her veins.”
“All right, so you are the major beneficiary and Maria was right to trust you with the largess.”
“She also made me promise to follow through with establishing her weaving museum. I will do all these things, of course. The cousin will not contest the will.” She shrugged. “I have spoken to her and she has no interest.”
“Well, that’s good. I know that you will honor Maria’s wishes and your friendship.” I studied her for a moment. “But why do I get the feeling that there’s something else you’re not telling me, something you don’t want to tell me?”
She turned to me again. “You will not like this, Phoebe.”
“Not like what—why would any of this be something that I would dislike in any way?”
“Because there was once another beneficiary in the will whom Maria had removed years ago. To him she had originally bequeathed both paintings because he loved them when she loved him. Love can make a strong woman weak.”
“Don’t I know it. And she removed this man from her will long ago, you say, and now the last painting has been stolen? That makes him a possible suspect. Is this what you want to tell me?”
“Yes. The man is her former fiancé but she did not tell him that she had removed him from the will, or at least, not that I know of. I believe he found out recently.”
I sat back against the cushions and clasped my hands as if to fortify myself. “And I know him, don’t I? That’s why you’re hesitating. All right, out with it, Nicolina. Who is our prime suspect?”
“Rupert Fox.”
4
Sir Rupert Fox and I had been friends for years starting from when he and his driver/bodyguard, Evan Ashton, had rescued me from kidnappers in Istanbul. That he was a probable top-drawer pilferer of ancient artifacts was something I had long suspected but couldn’t prove, yet still he managed to fly under Interpol’s radar. His London antiquities shop, Carpe Diem, appeared to do a thriving business in rare and arcane artifacts and Max had indicated that Foxy was more than willing to launder the scrapings from illegal digs and tomb robberies. In any case, for all the years I’d known him he’d only ever mentioned one love, that of his late wife, Mabel.
“Maria Contini and Rupert Fox were engaged?” We were standing on the stairs as Nicolina took me on a flash tour of the villa. I couldn’t quite process any of it. In fact, I could hardly focus on the all the treasures she was showing me, for that matter.
“Yes, I said this before, Phoebe. They were secretly engaged almost forty years ago—long before he’d met Mabel and when they were both very young. This is how I first met him, too.”
“But how, where?”
“He was in Italy with his father to purchase antiques.”
“You mean that his father was an antiques dealer, too?”
“Yes. He owned the same shop Rupert has today.”
“But I always thought Rupert acquired Carpe Diem as a front for his art-foraging ways. I had no idea he had inherited it. He’s always had that to-the-manor-born thing going on so I thought he was a blue blood.”
“Blue blood?” Nicolina gazed at me uncomprehendingly. “Oh, yes, I see: you think he was always wealthy, but before he married Mabel, he was not rich.”
“And ‘collecting’—” I put the word in air quotes “—art and artifacts has clearly contributed to making him richer even after marrying into money. Okay, so he and his father came here to the villa…”
“And I was there visiting Maria with my grandpapa at the time. Now I will continue my tour and my story also, so do be patient, Phoebe. Come.”
I followed her up the next two flights. “I’m trying to be patient but you’ve delivered a couple of info bombs here. I never knew any of this about Rupert.”
On the top floor, I paused to gaze through a round window that looked down onto a wide canal blurring with rain and lights—the Cannaregio. So, the way we came in was the back alley, so to speak.
“Why would you? A man does not tell everyone that he was jilted. Do come.” I glanced up and hastily joined her.
“He was left standing at the altar?”
“Not exactly but almost,” she continued. “It was all very painful for them both. I was never to speak of it to either Maria or Rupert again and, for a time, I never did.”
She stopped by a glossy wooden door and slowly turned the brass knob. “We are here,” she whispered. Touching my arm, she led me inside and closed the door softly before flicking on a switch. The room suddenly bloomed into a rich tapestry of color.
If a bedroom could be a museum of extraordinary textiles, this was it. At the foot of a four-poster bed swathed with deep blue velvet brocade stood a mannequin in a Fortuny evening ensemble. I’d recognize that style anywhere—the elegant gold-stenciled black silk velvet coat hanging in deep lustrous folds over a pleated silk Delphos gown. Those gowns were Fortuny’s signature creation, a masterpiece of pleating designed to drape the female form in a way that enhanced both woman and textile. Even in modern times, no one had quite been able to duplicate the sublime sinuous fusion of color, handiwork, pleating, and design that composed those wonders.
“Oh!” I took a step forward, stopped, and pressed my hands to my mouth. “Oh.”
“She could not part with any of them. The Fortunies she rotated from her closet to these stands. Some were her grandmother’s, others she collected. There are more there and there.”
I wrenched my gaze away from the black-and-gold to fasten it on the deep pomegranate, gold-embossed gown with the transparent pleated overtunic, which stood on another m
annequin directly under an orb of light. From there, my gaze went traveling across the room to another illuminated design, this one a deep apricot pleated velvet seemingly etched in gold vining tendrils with one sleeve parted along the seam to reveal the pleated peach silk gown beneath.
The effect was mesmerizing, akin to fairy tale loosened upon a pre-Raphael dreamscape. “This is one of my favorite decorative periods. The organic flow of color and design, the dynamic movement of shapes and forms. But they should be in a conservation room away from the damp.”
“Yes, I know. Come.” Nicolina led me across the room and through another door where an enormous glass-enclosed closet opened up on either side. I recognized temperature and moisture-controlled storage shelves and hangers of the most sophisticated nature holding length upon length of fabric as well as boxes and trunks. “This had been her greatest expense—the careful conservation of these treasures so important to her. She would keep her gowns here but would bring a few into her room ‘to breathe,’ she called it. They were like her friends, her loves. She imagined them one day displayed in similar storage areas in her dream museum down the street along with samples of all the textiles her family made across the centuries. She loved them all. How she loved them!” Her voice caught.
“I’m so sorry, Nicolina.”
A pair of slipper chairs sat companionably against one wall beside a low marble table holding a stack of books and a decanter of wine. A single painted crystal glass—I guessed early seventeenth century—sat nearby where I imagined Maria sipping vino while admiring her treasures. A halogen light shone down onto an empty rectangle of silk on the wall over a low marble table. Nicolina indicated for me to take a seat.
“And this was where the last painting originally hung?” I asked.
“Yes, her favorite, and it was once willed to Rupert also. I have photographs. They have never been published or shown in any gallery despite general knowledge that the Continis owned them.” She picked up a large leather folder from the table and passed it to me. “The one on the left is the one she sold two months ago.”
I opened the portfolio to find a rendering of the artwork on each side of the book-like holder. Once again my breath caught; yet again I succumbed to the glory of brilliant color but something else besides.
Not surprisingly considering the period, one painting was ecclesiastical, an annunciation rendering of incredible detail depicting an angel dressed in velvet trimmed with silk arriving at an open door to witness Mary receiving the seed of God, which appeared like a lightning bolt from the sky. But it was not the Immaculate Conception that interested me so much as the rich textiles revealed through the open portal. A carpet, definitely Anatolian from the late fifteenth century, blew in the breeze from a balcony above in a rich pattern of ochre and reds rendered with such precision that I could attribute it to the region without difficulty. A second textile covered a mantel behind the Virgin. That one I recognized as an Anatolian animal carpet. My mouth went dry. I looked up. “She sold a Crivelli?”
“Yes, Carlo Crivelli painted it in 1487. It broke her heart to let it go but for financial reasons she had no choice.”
My gaze swept over to the second painting, which showed a gathering of richly dressed citizens wearing varying shades of silks and velvets celebrating what I assumed to be an engagement or a wedding in a church. An unusual prayer rug warmed the marble under the bride’s feet while the family members stood on a carpet design I did not recognize but which almost looked Berber. That, too, was painted in such detail that I could almost feel the nap enough to know it was probably silk. “A Bartolo—seriously?”
“Of course you know your art. Yes, that is Domenico di Bartolo’s Marriage of the Merchant’s Daughter painted in 1441, the one that was stolen. Maria loved both paintings so, as much because of the textiles as the subject matter. She said that those very robes in the Bartolo—you see how the bride’s gown features that feathered scroll design?—came from her family’s very own fifteenth century silk looms. They sent their textiles far and wide as Venice had an active trade in luxury textiles at the time and that design was unique to the house.”
I stared at her. “She believed that this painting illustrates her family’s own fabrics?”
“Yes. They may have been painted from life.”
“That’s incredible provenance.”
“Yes, it is.”
“Bartolo’s known for his frescoes, of course, but he painted other mediums. And the carpets? It can’t be a coincidence that both paintings feature carpets prominently, or prominently to me. There are only a few Renaissance artists known for using carpets in such exquisite detail and these two are among them. But I don’t recognize the design of this larger version where the wedding party is standing.”
“Yes, it has always been an enigma.”
My gaze returned to the photo. “The Bartolo carpets are an odd mix of symbology. It’s very unusual for Renaissance painters to use Berber carpets in their work. They were usually purely Anatolian or Chinese. There isn’t anything purely one thing or another in any of the symbols here.”
“I knew you would notice. That painting was very special, as you can see, not just by a renowned Renaissance artist but perhaps linked to her family by the bride’s gown. Imagine the value? Imagine how disappointed Rupert was at having them both slip away from his fingers again and again?” That steely look had returned, chasing away the vulnerability of sorrow I had witnessed seconds before.
I cleared my throat, fixing for a moment on the shy look the bride was casting her fiancé and his ardent gaze in return. That, too, was odd. “I can see how Rupert and Maria would have had lots in common but I’m sure the loss of his love hit him far stronger than the loss of these paintings, despite their value. Why did they break up?”
“I was still a young girl and watched the affair from the wall, as they say. Maria and he were very much in love, or so I thought.” She sat with her hands clasped in her lap, staring straight ahead.
“But not enough to keep them together?”
“That is a romantic view, one that we Italians have celebrated in art since the being of time, but there are so many other kinds of love that tear at us, is that not so? I am no longer convinced that love conquers all—or, at least, not the romantic kind.” Her gaze found my face again. “Do you believe that Noel did not love you enough to go to prison so you could be together?”
Where’d that come from? I met her eyes. “I believe he loves his freedom more,” I replied carefully, “and I, in turn, love myself enough not to choose to continue living in a way that makes me unhappy.”
I must have passed some kind of test because she rewarded me with a sad smile. “This is good that you stand up for yourself when it is all so difficult. That is what we women must do.”
Were we speaking of me or Nicolina? “Back to Maria and Rupert,” I said gently. “Did Maria choose another love over what she may have felt for Rupert, is this what you’re saying?”
She nodded. “Maria’s father was much like my grandpapa—very overbearing. His rule was the law and he believed family and bloodlines sacred. When he discovered the secret engagement, he went wild, threatening to have Rupert shot and Maria cast off from the family.”
“A bit extreme, wasn’t it?”
Nicolina regarded me sternly. “This is Italy.”
“Of course. Sorry.”
“Her father would not permit her to marry a penniless antiques dealer, you understand, or to sully the bloodline. Rupert begged her to elope with him but she refused. In the end, she chose the love of family over romance. It is equally powerful, is it not? To give up one for the other, so difficult. I have tried it and did not fare well.”
“Poor Rupert.”
“Poor Rupert? Well, yes, perhaps poor Rupert. Maria made her choice to remain a Contini and Papa Contini chased him out of town. In Venice, such things were easy in those days. It is a very small place still. Rupert never forgave Maria and Maria never forgave he
rself.”
“That’s tragic.” I sighed. “So, Maria gave him up for money.”
“Not money,” Nicolina said, fiercely shaking her head, “but family. It was not being penniless that tortured her so much as it was being separated from her mama and papa, from her inheritance here in Venice, and the history that flowed in her veins—her blood, you know? To never live in this house again, to never touch and breathe among these velvets, to perhaps never again walk these halls—that she could not bear.”
“So in refusing to marry him, she kept all this.”
“Yes, these paintings that she promised to give Rupert as a wedding gift at first she decided to give him still—a very big sacrifice, you understand.”
I really didn’t like where this was going. “So obviously something happened to change her mind again.”
Nicolina nodded. “This time, her mother. Though the paintings were Maria’s by right—willed to her by her maternal grandmother—her mother raged against her for taking them from the family. She said that to rip them from the Continis was like cutting off her limbs and letting her very own mother bleed to death—chop, chop! Her mama was very dramatic. How they argued! And then Signora Contini had a heart attack right in the middle of their argument and died that very night.”
“No, that’s terrible!” Like a bad soap opera made worse by reality. Sometimes life is more bizarre than fiction, I swear.
“Yes, horrendous. These rooms have known so much sorrow. Maria blamed herself for her mother’s death as well as for her father’s heartbreak, and for hurting Rupert also. I told her over and over that she was not to blame, that she tried only to do the right thing by all, but sometimes there is no way we can please everyone, yes?”
“Yes, I mean, no: sometimes there is no one right way and you can’t please everyone. So poor Maria rescinded her promise to Rupert once again because she believed she had no choice? How awful for her and for Rupert, too. I’m sure he didn’t take any of this well.”
The Carpet Cipher Page 4