The Alchemist's Code

by Dave Duncan

  Vasco thumped the brass anchor knocker. The door was opened instantly by the young valet, Pignate. His face was fish-belly pale, so he had been told of the murder, probably also been warned that the visitor he was waiting for was an inquisitor. He bowed us in.

  That was the fourth time I had seen the great book collection in the androne, and each time it had progressed farther along the road from packing cases to shelved library, yet I had never seen anyone working on it, as if the books rearranged themselves at night when people could not see. I concluded that ordinary porters could not sort books properly, so the work was being done by clerks from the family publishing business, brought in at odd hours. No one would ever find time to read such a collection, but libraries like that are not intended to be read, only envied. I fervently hoped that my duties would not require me to go through it volume by volume, looking for spiders.

  We mounted the staircase to the piano nobile, where Giro awaited us. Having shed his official robes, he was again no more than a private gentleman wearing oddly drab garments. He made no offers of welcome or pretense that our visit was social.

  “My parents are with Grazia,” he said conducting us to the salotto. “This is a very painful time for us.”

  “Of course it is,” Gritti said, “and your ordeal shall be as brief as I can manage. I will talk first with the servants, if you please.”

  Today the balcony doors were closed against the rain and the garden looked glum and dank. The inquisitor chose a chair that put his back to the light, such as it was, and I picked one nearby, from which I could study the Michelli wedding portrait. Andrea Michelli is also known as Andrea Vicentino, the Andrea from Vicenza. That must be what the Maestro’s hint had meant, for I had told him of the unusual wedding portrait. Why had a dead man intruded on my pyromancy? I had seen his wife struck down also. My mind shied away from the implications.

  Vasco chose a chair where he could watch me, but did not get a chance to sit on it.

  “Vizio,” Gritti said, “take a look around the neighborhood and the garden down there. Look for traces of bloodstains.”

  Vasco departed. Giro returned, remaining just inside the door.

  “The servants have all been told of the tragedy?” Gritti asked.

  “Certainly. Come in, girls.”

  Three young woman shuffled in, lined up, and then stared in horror at the demon inquisitor. To be accurate, they stared at his feet, avoiding his eyes. Giro presented them: ladies’ maid Noelia Grappeggia, cook Marina Alfieri, and housemaid Mimi Zorzin, all uniformed in aprons and head cloths as if interrupted in cleaning chores.

  I had watched Ottone Gritti in action before, so I was not surprised at the ease with which his benevolent smiles and cooing voice won them over. They did want Danese’s murderer caught, didn’t they? They would like to help, wouldn’t they? All three nodded like drinking chickens. Two of them he eliminated very quickly, because neither Marina nor Mimi lived in. They had left for home at sunset, so they could contribute no information about Danese’s movements. Noelia slept on the mezzanine level, but yesterday she had been given time off because her mother was sick. Her father had come for her at sunset and brought her back before curfew. Pignate had let her in and she had gone straight to bed. None of the three had any idea who might have killed poor sier Danese. There had been no quarrels or threats. Gritti did not ask them if they had liked Danese, because “yes” would make them seem flighty and “no” suspect.

  First the oil and then the vinegar. “Tell me about the blood!”

  They jumped at his sharp command, but none of them fainted or burst into tears. There had been no massive bloodstains that they knew of.

  The angels were dismissed and flew away.

  I had not expected much help from them, but I found them a puzzling trio. The cook was much younger than most cooks, who are typically mature widows. The cleaning maid was dainty, although she must have to move heavy furniture as part of her job. Noelia I knew already to be a beauty, which is not too uncommon for a ladies’ maid—nobody wants to be primped by an ogre—but the other two were beauties also. Not a missing tooth or smallpox scar among them. Dress them well and they would attract men like sharks to blood. Combining that observation with the strapping gondolier, Fabricio, and the cherubic valet-page, Pignate, I felt I had established a pattern, although I could not see what significance it might have to murder or espionage. I wondered if the Sanudos paid extra to hire and keep especially decorative staff, and that was only a step away from wondering why. Were they assigned special duties?

  “The menservants, if you please,” the inquisitor said.

  Now things should become more interesting. If anyone in Ca’ Sanudo had wrestled Danese for possession of my rapier and won, it must have been either young Pignate or the gondolier, who could probably have done it with one hand. Moreover, only he could have delivered the corpse to the watergate at Ca’ Barbolano. Rowing a gondola—with a single oar, standing upright on a narrow boat—is no job for an amateur. It takes long practice and many involuntary cold baths to acquire that skill. Fabricio was odds-on suspect for the accomplice paid to dispose of the body.

  Giro had been conferring at the door. I detected Pignate’s voice and he followed Giro in.

  “Our valet, Pignate Calabrò, clarissimo.”

  The boy was even more nervous than before. He tucked his hands behind him so we wouldn’t see them shake, but he managed to hold his head up and meet the inquisitor’s eye, although his chin quavered. If the torturers were going to be involved, they would start with the servants.

  Gritti chuckled. “I am not going to eat you, Pignate! I just want to find out when sier Danese went out last night, and why. How long have you been in service here?”

  Just two months, was the answer, since the Sanudos returned from Celeseo and moved in. He was seventeen. Yes, he could read and write. Told to describe his actions the previous evening, he answered clearly and without hesitation. He had polished shoes, starched ruffs, sorted laundry. He had taken charge of the door while Fabricio was ferrying the master and mistress to their engagement, and later when the gondolier went to fetch them home. He had let Danese out and locked up behind him. There had been no visitors, and no notes handed in for Danese or anyone else. He was eager to help, and when Gritti doubled back or fired unexpected questions, he did not hesitate or contradict himself. In only one respect was his testimony lacking—he had no idea of time as measured by a clock. His life was run by waking and sleeping, by meals and the city bells, but he could not measure a day into twenty-four hours. After all, why should he?

  “You are a very good witness, Pignate,” the inquisitor said. “I wish there were more like you.” Without turning his head, he added, “Alfeo, have you any questions?”

  To be treated as a colleague by an inquisitor was a scary experience. Why should he so flatter me? Was he just putting me at ease, planning to catch me off guard later?

  “Just one, if I may, Excellency. Yesterday I brought back the dead man’s portmanteau. Did you unpack it for him?”

  The boy glanced uneasily at Giro. “No, er, sier Alfeo. I was not told…I have not attended sier Danese in the past.” A cavaliere servente might be better rewarded for his services than a valet, but he was still only a servant to the other servants.

  “I just wondered,” I said. “That is all. Thank you.”

  Pignate was dismissed.

  Giro closed the door behind him and turned to the inquisitor. “I am embarrassed to report, clarissimo, that Fabricio Muranese, our gondolier, appears to—”

  “Does he have any money?” said Gritti, that patient, understanding grandfather.

  “He probably has some,” Giro admitted, face frozen into inscrutability. “He has been in my employ for six or seven years.”

  The inquisitor nodded. “And did he tell you anything before he left?”

  That was a leading question, but Giro ignored the implications. “He repeated what he told us earlier, when w
e learned that Dolfin was missing. He brought my parents home, carried in his oar and the cushions from the gondola, bolted the front door, checked the rear door, went to bed. About two hours after curfew, roughly, I came home and he let me in. The men sleep at the front, so they can hear the knocker, and I have a special knock—I am often late.” He glanced at me and showed a rare trace of a smile. “I tip whoever comes, so they almost fight over the honor.”

  By now Fabricio would be on the Mestre ferry, or even already on the mainland. As a suspect, he was too obvious. Whether or not the Sanudos had suggested it to him, his flight was a sign of prudence more than of guilt; better exile than interrogation. If the real culprit could not be found, Fabricio could be labeled a murderer and the case closed.

  At that moment Vasco slipped in, nodded meaningfully to Gritti, and sat on the chair he had chosen earlier. The nod meant that he had found blood.

  Gritti did not criticize Girolamo for letting the gondolier flee. “Before we meet with the ladies, sier Alfeo has a question to ask you.”

  Giro turned an inquiring gaze on me. Again my hair follicles twitched in alarm. More and more the inquisitor was making me think of cats and mice, with me in the supporting role. I swallowed hard.

  “Clarissimo, since you mention that you were late coming home, may I inquire where you went last night?”

  The navy minister stared at me in silence for a long moment, letting me stew in my impertinence, before saying, “It is no secret. I spend most afternoons and evenings helping out at the scuola. Last night I was cutting elderly toenails.”

  Charity work. If true, that would be a better alibi than just about anything. I evicted Girolamo Sanudo from my mental parade of suspects.

  “And who hired the servants here?”

  “I did. While my father was closing the house at Celeseo, I was opening this one. You approve of my taste?” Giro’s cold stare said that he could guess what I was thinking and nothing in the world mattered less than my opinion.

  “So none of them has been in your service more than a couple of months?”

  “Fabricio. And Danese, but he was no longer a servant at the time of his death.” Giro did not express any hypocritical regrets. “I hired him about five years ago. Before my duties for the Republic interfered, I provided legal advice for the poor at nominal fees, and he came to me with a problem. I was able to help him with that and he revealed that he was in the service—unwillingly, he assured me—of a man of high standing who is also a notorious pervert. I offered the lad a job as a clerk, which he accepted eagerly, and eventually he graduated to being my mother’s companion.”

  But he had not won his way back into his own mother’s favor. Had he even tried? Giro waited to see what else I wanted, but I understood that I had been thoroughly put down and just thanked him politely.

  “If the ladies are ready for a few questions?” Gritti prompted. Girolamo nodded and went to see.

  The inquisitor said, “Vizio?”

  Vasco drew a deep breath. “Excellency, I have the honor to report that I found no bloodstains in the yard here, but a large amount of blood had been spilled in the calle three houses east of here, near the watersteps. Fante Bolognetti was there, calming a trio of sbirri, who were supervising a worker cleaning it up. Much of it had already been washed away by the rain, but traces ran all the way to the watersteps.” Vasco looked smug at having completed so difficult a mission successfully. “We informed the sbirri that Their Excellencies know who died there and I took their names in case they are needed as witnesses.”

  So Danese had left Ca’ Sanudo, gone south to Ca’ Barbolano to get his sword, returned north to Ca’ Sanudo to die, and then been transported back to Ca’ Barbolano again. In the names of all the martyrs, why? He had probably never gone near his mother in San Barnaba.

  Gritti nodded. “Very good.” The shrewd old eyes stabbed at me. “Why did you ask the page about Dolfin’s portmanteau, Alfeo?”

  Prevarication time. I wanted to locate Danese’s gold and find out where it had come from, but if I mentioned the gold itself, I might have to reveal that he had been ferrying sequins from Ca’ Sanudo to Ca’ Barbolano, and out would come the Maestro’s extortionate fee. I must find an alternative explanation. The Maestro insists I cannot tell lies with a straight face, but I can. I did.

  “I wondered after I brought it here whether I should have gone through it to check for migrating silverware. You noticed that sier Girolamo admitted Danese had been in some sort of trouble when—”

  “Your master said he sent you to pack the portmanteau. Did you or didn’t you pack it yourself?”

  “It had never been unpacked. I just threw in a few loose clothes he had left lying around. Hosts shouldn’t rummage through their guests’ luggage.”

  Gritti gave me the sort of silent stare that is intended to make a witness keep babbling. I took the chance to change the subject.

  “I admit I misjudged sier Girolamo. I am impressed by a member of the Collegio cutting old folks’ toenails.”

  He shrugged and allowed the diversion, although he had noticed it. “Be more impressed by a man who does the Lord’s work being elected to office. That was mostly a compliment to his father and I am sure that sier Girolamo will be glad to see his term end. Young Sanudo took a vow of celibacy when he was sixteen, you see. His father talked him out of entering a monastery, but I think there is a time limit on that promise.” The old rascal was flaunting the Ten’s intimate knowledge of the nobility’s secrets. “A few years later Zuanbattista married again to try for an heir, but madonna Eva has given him only one daughter and a stillborn son.”

  No doubt Girolamo’s religious zeal explained his drab clothes and frigid self-control. I had never known Violetta to be so wrong about a man before, but he was not a potential patron and had only just come into the public eye, so her error could be excused. “He likes to keep pretty boys and girls around just to torture himself?” I asked.

  “Or to test his resolve. For all I know he wears a hair shirt, too.” The inquisitor rearranged his jowls in a pout to indicate that the subject was closed.

  But for me a new door had opened. “So madonna Eva’s hopes of one day being dogaressa were not so unreasonable after all! If Girolamo takes holy orders and turns his back on the world, and Grazia is married off to a wealthy Contarini, then the family fortune need not be saved for the next generation. The mainland estates can be cashed in to finance sier Zuanbattista’s continuing career?”

  Gritti’s answer was a stony stare. I ignored it as I recalculated motives. I had not given enough thought to the matter of dowry, which in Grazia’s case could be several tens of thousands of ducats, enough to make the lapdog Danese into a very rich man by normal standards. Surely the murder on top of the elopement scandal would destroy whatever was left of Zuanbattista’s reputation? Would he banish Grazia to a convent now, or find her another husband? How much dowry would she bring the second time around? For that matter, how much had Danese been promised? Now my personal list of suspects had acquired some new names—the rejected suitor, Zaccaria Contarini, who had been cheated out of a large fortune in dowry, and even Danese’s sisters, who had all married commoners. If Danese had left a will…

  “What’s squirming around inside your agile young brain now?” the inquisitor demanded.

  I jumped. “I hadn’t realized, Excellency, that if the marriage contract was signed before last night”—which might explain why Danese had been allowed to move back in as Grazia’s acknowledged husband—“then he may have died a comparatively rich man.”

  Gritti snorted. “And perhaps the young scoundrel had debts that had suddenly become worth collecting? Have you gotten that far, Alfeo Zeno?”

  23

  Zuanbattista ushered in his womenfolk. Madonna Eva was magnificent in full mourning, swathed in black lace and taffeta. She had experience of mortality and funerals, of course, and would keep a complete outfit ready in her closet. Black flattered her fair coloring. To
Grazia a brush with death must be a new experience, and even to my untutored eye her gown looked as if it had been assembled in haste and fastened on her with pins. We visitors rose and bowed, remaining standing until the ladies were seated, side by side on a divan.

  Eva lifted back her veil. After a moment’s hesitation Grazia copied her, revealing the red eyes and pink nose of recent weeping. Her mother had not wept, but any joy she felt at being rid of an unwanted son-in-law was well hidden behind maternal concern for her bereaved child. Even if the romance had been a flash in the pan or puppy love contrived by an experienced seducer, Grazia’s shock and loss must be genuine. I felt truly sorry for her, and perversely happy that at least one woman mourned Danese Dolfin.

  “I realize that this is very painful for you,” Gritti said, “and I will be as quick as I can. When your husband announced that he had to go out last night, madonna, where did he say he was going?”

  Grazia sniffled. “To visit his mother in San Barnaba.”

  “He did not mention anyone else he might see on the way?”

  Another sniffle, a head shake.

  “She says he did not arrive, and we have reason to believe that he was killed on his way back here, not far from this house, about two hours after he left you. So what was he doing in the meantime?”

  She whispered, “I do not know, Your Excellency.”

  There was a long pause, while the inquisitor sat as if half-asleep. I wondered if he was about to spring some dramatic catch-them-napping question, as he had with the maids, but all he said was, “Alfeo, have you anything to ask?”

  “No, Excellency.”

  He smiled without looking at me. “Then why don’t you reveal to us the terrible curse that your master thinks has been laid upon this house?”