If the figure she had seen in the signora’s box hadn’t passed by the turnstile, he would have walked through the main entrance. He must have had a ticket for the performance – and Nancy was sure it would have been a ‘he’. Marta Moretto was tiny, but considerable strength would be required to lift a struggling woman over a barrier that high. He had planned the death carefully, a member of the audience for much of the opera, but then slipping out of his seat – in the interval perhaps – and waiting his chance. Then when the whole theatre was on its feet, the air loud with cheering and the signora out of her chair and clapping each curtain call, he had struck. But why? The portinaio had called Marta a pious woman. Leo respected her business acumen. Why would anyone wish to do such a dreadful thing?
Nancy looked blankly into the distance, her mind clutching at stray thoughts in the hope she might solve the puzzle. She didn’t notice the young man until he was half way across the square, but then she saw him – the man who’d had the angry confrontation with Signora Moretto on the Zattere. He was dressed in overalls this time and carried a tool bag, evidently on his way to work.
She jumped up and ran across the campo, catching up with him as he walked out of the square. ‘Scusa,’ she said, her breath coming fast. ‘L’ora?’ She tapped her wrist. ‘Do you have the time? I have an appointment, but I’ve forgotten to wear a watch.’
She sounded stupid, but that didn’t matter if it meant she could talk to him. He looked down at his own wrist, tanned and leathery. ‘Five past eleven,’ he answered in English.
‘Thank you so much.’ When he went to walk away, she said quickly, ‘Have you heard about Signora Moretto?’
He turned, looking stunned.
‘I saw you talking to her yesterday,’ she said in explanation. ‘I thought you must be a friend of hers.’
‘Friend!’ He literally spat the word. ‘Marta Moretto was no friend of mine. And yes, I have heard. I am glad she is dead.’
Nancy was aghast, but tried to speak coolly. ‘You were at the theatre – you saw her fall?’
‘You think I can buy a ticket?’ he asked. His tone was bitter and he gestured to his workman’s clothes and the bag of tools he’d dropped to the ground. ‘If I want to hear the singers, I must stand in this square and listen to them practise. But I wish I had been there – last night. I would like to have seen her fall. The woman was wicked.’
‘Surely you must be mistaken.’
‘There’s no mistake.’ His voice grated. ‘She has ruined my life.’
‘But how?’
‘You really want to know, Signora English?’ He leaned towards her and for an instant his muscular figure blocked out the sun.
Nancy refused to be intimidated. ‘I spoke to her myself. Not for long, it’s true, but I can’t imagine the signora ruining anyone’s life.’
‘That is the face she shows the world. But what do you say of a woman who locks away her own daughter? A young girl – only seventeen – sent for life to a convent?’
Nancy gave a small gasp. ‘You’re saying she forced her daughter to enter a convent?’
A different picture of Signora Moretto was emerging and Nancy was confused. The portinaio had called her a very good woman, while for this man she was evil incarnate.
He nodded, seeming pleased with the impression he had created. ‘For eight years my Angelica has been behind bars. And do you know why? Because I was too poor, too rough, for the Moretto family. That woman has taken years of our lives. Ask her daughter’s friends if you don’t believe me. They know what happened. Ask Giulia, ask Luisa Mancini.’
‘Angelica is still in the convent?’
‘A month, two months ago, she escaped, but only to be prisoner in her own home. Until now. At last now she is free – and we will marry. In a few weeks, she will be Signora Bozzato.’
‘Then I wish you well for your wedding. I suppose there will have to be a post-mortem first, and a funeral?’
‘You suggest we wait for that woman’s funeral?’ His face had reddened and his eyes sparked anger. ‘We have waited long enough. I will make sure my angel is far away when her mother lies where she belongs – under two metres of earth.’
He had advanced towards her as he spoke, and she found herself stepping back, fearful of his intent. She had thought him ready to strike Signora Moretto, so why not her?
There was a sudden flurry behind her and Archie Jago appeared at her side. He was looking pointedly at the young man. ‘Have you a problem? Can I help you?’ They stared at each other for several tense seconds, and then Mario picked up his tools and marched out of the square.
Archie turned to her, a vexed expression on his face. ‘What was that all about?’
‘His name is Mario Bozzato. He was the man I saw threatening the signora. You can see how angry he gets.’
‘Oh yeah, I saw all right. Why were you annoying him?’
‘I wasn’t annoying him. I wanted to find out why he’d threatened Marta.’
‘And did you?’
‘I think so.’
‘So now you’ve fingered him for a murderer?’
She flushed since she knew how ridiculous that sounded, yet she was thinking it nonetheless.
‘There’s very little crime in Venice, Mrs Tremayne.’ Why did he persist in such formality and why speak to her as though he were indulging a small child? ‘Regular thievery maybe,’ he went on, ‘graffiti, badly behaved tourists on occasions. But nothing violent, no big-city crime. Just accept it was suicide.’
He was intent on making her feel foolish and she longed to retaliate. ‘Why are you here?’ she asked, trying to throw him off balance. ‘Have you been following me?’ It was unlikely – and unnecessary. It couldn’t have been difficult for Archie to guess where she’d be, that she’d return to the theatre at the first opportunity.
He ignored the challenge and answered her first question. ‘The reception is starting an hour earlier than scheduled. Leo asked me to find you.’
‘Thank you for letting me know.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘And for arriving when you did.’ It stuck in her throat to thank him, but she was grateful. Bozzato had felt threatening.
He shrugged again, irritating her even more.
‘Why has the reception been brought forward?’
An unexpected grin flashed across his face, and for the first time she thought him an attractive man. ‘One of the delegates ate a few too many oysters last night and is currently indisposed. His lecture was cancelled – hence an earlier reception and a longer afternoon.’
‘All good then, but I can find my own way back to the palazzo.’ She was lying. Without retracing her journey on the water bus, she would be lost. The city was a maze of alleys and courtyards, tortuous passages and dead ends. But she felt a desperate need to assert some independence and repeated, ‘I’ll be fine from here.’
Archie looked bored. ‘I’m on my way back anyway – I’m invited, too. Sometimes even the hired help gets treats.’
The familiar edge to his voice was pronounced. Whatever good humour the oyster incident had produced, had already vanished. And she was about to make things worse.
‘I’d like to speak to the friend Mario mentioned. A Luisa Mancini. I could ask around. Venice is a small city, someone might know her.’
‘You shouldn’t do that.’ She’d known, of course, that would be Archie’s response. ‘Leo won’t be happy. And why are you even bothering? What is the Moretto woman to you?’
‘Nothing… except I know she wanted to live. I heard it in her voice. I saw it in her eyes. And no one else is going to champion her. They will sweep her away – the police, the audience last night, her family, for all I know – she’s a tragic accident or a whispered suicide. But she deserves the truth.’
‘And you’re the one to deliver it?’ His tone was sardonic. ‘You can’t seriously think that man had anything to do with her death. He wasn’t even at the theatre last night. I heard him say so.’
‘If you
heard that, you must have heard him say the signora stole his life from him when she locked up her daughter. He is a very angry man and angry men can do bad things.’
‘You think a blighted love affair is worth murdering for?’ He twisted his mouth into a grimace.
‘I wouldn’t expect you to understand, but if love doesn’t go right, it can do strange things to people.’ She knew that better than anyone. ‘Disappointment can breed bitterness. Revenge. So yes, I think it’s a possible motive. I must try to find this Luisa.’
Archie was walking slightly ahead of her, and there was a pause before he said over his shoulder, ‘Don’t. You don’t want that kind of attention. I’ll ask around.’ Then added obscurely, ‘I know people. Though this Luisa may have left Venice, despite what Bozzato said. A lot of Venetians do. They move to the mainland for a job, for a house.’
Nancy had no idea who Archie knew in the city, but he was bound to be more successful than she at discovering Luisa Mancini’s whereabouts. It was one small step in the right direction. Her pleasure, though, was short-lived. It took a moment only to realise her husband’s likely reaction.
‘You won’t tell Leo I’m looking for her?’ she asked, anxiously.
‘Why would I?’
‘You might feel you have to. He’s your friend.’
‘Like the squire is friends with his stableman?’
Chippy – Leo’s word – was an understatement, she thought. Aloud she said, ‘I imagined you would be friends. You come from the same village. You must have known each other as children.’
‘No, Mrs Tremayne, we didn’t. My family are fisherfolk. I went to the only school available – the village school – and left at fourteen to gut fish. Leo was a boarder in Dorset. Shaftesbury School, I believe – that’s an expensive education. He left at eighteen to go to Cambridge. Slightly different life experiences, wouldn’t you say?’
His tone warned her not to pursue the subject and by now they had reached the gates of the palazzo.
‘I’ll see you at the party, no doubt,’ she said brightly, walking ahead to the side door and up the marble staircase.
Chapter Five
Minutes later Nancy was in her bedroom and crossing to the window to look down on the canal. She wished she could slip away on its waters, escape from an event she was sure she would hate. She suspected that Leo’s colleagues would talk over her head, and their wives talk behind her back. A brilliant man like Leo Tremayne, she could hear them say. How on earth did he come to marry that little nobody?
But perhaps she was being unfair and it was her own lack of confidence talking. If so, it was hardly surprising. Her parents had rarely supported her ambitions, had stood in the way of her most cherished dreams, and any pride she’d had in her own judgement had fled when Philip March walked into her life.
She crossed the room again, this time to glance at herself in the wall mirror with its gilded baroque scroll. She found the reflection dispiriting. The floral dress she’d put on that morning was decidedly dowdy and, despite her lack of enthusiasm for this meeting, she knew she would have to do better. The Cipriani, she’d learned from Concetta, was the most prestigious hotel in Venice.
Her wardrobe was modest, but not because she lacked a passion for clothes. She delighted in them: their colour, their line, their texture, part of her pleasure in all things artistic. Rationing had ended six years ago, but she had never had enough money to buy more than one or two special outfits to hang alongside the sober skirts and blouses she wore to work. Leo had wanted to buy her a whole new wardrobe for this holiday, but she had refused. There was a limit to how much generosity she could accept.
And she had only one dress that was good enough for this event, other than the evening gown she’d worn to the opera – a tea dress of eau-de-nil crêpe – bought just before Leo proposed, just before that last terrifying incident.
A colleague at Abingers had invited her to an engagement party and she had gone to Dickins & Jones and spent far too much money on a dress that until now she had never worn. She had wanted so badly to feel for one evening that her life was normal. But it wasn’t normal, and when she returned to her Paddington bedsit, she had found it ransacked.
The crackle of broken china had sounded beneath her feet and when she’d taken a deep breath and switched on the light, she had crumpled. Her newly painted walls were smeared with food, cupboard doors swung off their hinges, each shelf swept clear, and on the floor the remnants of crockery and glass. In the living room every piece of furniture she possessed had been destroyed, the sofa for which she had saved so hard ripped apart, its fabric torn and gaping. Everything that could be broken had been broken. Philip had destroyed it all.
Her bedroom door had been ajar and she’d stood in the open doorway, hardly daring to look. When she opened her eyes fully, though, nothing seemed to have been touched. But then she saw it. A dead crow lying on her bed, its feathers a fading black, its blood seeping into the white linen counterpane.
But she would not think of it this morning. Not any of it. She would enjoy what she could of the day, enjoy being with Leo. She washed quickly, then slipped on the dress and was pleased to see how well it fitted her slim form. A pair of oyster-grey wedged shoes, the ones she had worn to the Fitzrovia Chapel, and a matching handbag completed the ensemble. She stood back to look again in the mirror – yes, she would do.
She rarely wore make up, and now that her skin had acquired a golden tint she looked better without. But perhaps she could arrange her hair more stylishly. Instead of tying the unruly chestnut waves into a tight bunch at the nape of her neck, she could sweep them up into a loose coil. She had nice hair, she thought, probably her best feature, though Leo swore it was the dreamy grey of her eyes he’d first fallen for. She hoped he would like the dress; he deserved a wife who took more trouble with her appearance. And it might be good to remind Archie Jago that she was a woman and not an unwanted parcel with which he’d been burdened.
* * *
Ten minutes later when Nancy glided down the palazzo stairs, both men were waiting in the lobby, Leo having just arrived back from the conference. She saw their eyes widen and their eyebrows rise steeply. In appreciation? Or was that amazement? It was a comical sight and she was forced to stifle a laugh.
Leo strode forward and gallantly offered her his arm. Together they walked down the final flight of stairs and along the narrow passageway that led to the front of the palazzo and the landing stage. For once, the huge wooden door to the canal stood open, its amazing array of locks, chains and antique padlocks hanging loosely to one side. When she’d laughed at such elaborate security, Leo had told her that Venetians considered it necessary. The city’s burglars, it seemed, were skilled at gaining entry to canal-side houses, stealing a handbag or a piece of jewellery, then drifting silently away on the canal.
These days the palazzo’s front entrance was used only for deliveries, but this morning a small boat was waiting for them by the moss-covered steps, tied to a huge painted post. The boat gave a sudden lurch to one side and then back again, as the wake of a larger vessel out in the lagoon sent waves rippling up the canals. But Nancy managed to clamber aboard without mishap, taking shelter in the cabin while the men stayed on deck.
The Cipriani was situated at the very tip of the Giudecca, a short ride across the lagoon from San Marco. They threaded their way first towards San Giorgio Maggiore where the Cini library was hosting Leo’s conference, then swung right to arrive at the island in a matter of minutes. Nancy could have wished the journey longer. A sharp breeze had sprung up, but the day continued bright and the lagoon sparkled. She felt a new freedom in being on waters that stretched far into the distance, flowing on and on until they reached the Adriatic.
A splendidly uniformed man met them at the hotel’s landing stage, helping to steady the boat as they stepped onto the short walkway and into the beautiful old building, then through a marbled lobby and out of double doors into the garden.
Fo
r a moment Nancy stood quite still, amazed at its size. When she had first arrived in Venice, she’d thought most houses must be without gardens, but then she’d caught the smell of honeysuckle in the air, and a second blooming of wisteria, and realised there must be an infinite number hidden behind iron gates or ancient brick walls.
This garden, though, was immense. It stretched as far as she could see, planted not just with flowers but, beyond the ornamental beds, with every kind of vegetable. A peacock strode past, squawking with annoyance at the intrusion of so many people, and a mother duck with her babies waddled away, retreating towards the pond that lay to one side of a wide expanse of lawn.
Nancy looked across at her husband. ‘How beautiful!’
Leo nodded. ‘At one time the Giudecca was the garden of Venice, though when the weather is miserable, the island can feel desolate – I’ve heard people say it’s sinister, a place where nasty things can happen. But on a day like today, it’s unbeatable. There are still flower gardens running down to the lagoon. I’d like to show them to you.’
‘It doesn’t look as though you’ll have the chance.’
Nancy gestured ahead to where tables had been set up beneath a row of striped awnings, providing shelter from the sun or perhaps even rain. It was September and the weather this far north could be uncertain. Unlikely today, she thought, feeling the heat of the midday sun on her bare arms. Comfortable chairs, many already occupied by the older guests, had been positioned in groups across the lawn or beside flower beds.
Archie had slipped away as soon as they’d arrived. Nancy saw him now, making his way towards a table that had been set up as a bar and was groaning with every kind of beverage. A waiter swooped on them from behind with a tray of champagne, but before she could take a sip from the offered glass, Leo had hailed a fellow guest, eager to introduce her. The newcomer was well-groomed, a man somewhere in his thirties, and dressed in sleek Italian style.
The Venice Atonement Page 3