‘A silly idea of mine. You’re spending time in the museum. You can’t help but be with Gaby. Gaby is the museum and the museum is Gaby. You might put in a good word for me.’
‘A good word?’
‘About the collection. The house. If we sell them, we’ll make enough money to do what we want to do.’
To do what you want to do, Urbino thought, but he did not say it. What he did say was, ‘But what would become of Gaby? She hasn’t been out of the house for years,’
A far lesser consideration – but one, nonetheless – was the disruption it would mean in the lives of Apollonia, Eufrosina, and Alessandro. But Ercule could point out that they had their own house to return to.
‘It would be good for Gaby!’ Ercule said with more enthusiasm than sympathy for his sister’s condition. ‘It would be the push she needs.’
This had been Olimpia’s opinion, as she had expressed it to him and the contessa. It appeared that Olimpia and Ercule had been of the same mind when it came to Gaby’s condition and the best way to remedy it. Had Olimpia also shared her brother’s desire that the house and the collection be sold? If she had wanted to sell, it would have aligned her with Ercule against Gaby – and possibly also Apollonia and her children. If she had been against selling, then Ercule would have been farther away from realizing his dream.
‘I’m not so sure about that,’ Urbino said. ‘We should encourage her to get treatment. If things go well for her, she might be open to change. Did Olimpia want to sell?’
‘It depended on the day of the week. I could have brought her around to it. Now it’s only Gaby – unfortunately.’ He gave Urbino an embarrassed look. ‘Olimpia and I tried to get her to agree to sell some pieces, but the collection is like a family, she says. Everything should stay together. Olimpia didn’t have any problem with parting with a few things for a good price. She was having financial troubles, but she had seemed less worried about money lately.’
‘So both you and Gaby need to agree on selling anything.’
‘Yes, since each of us owns one-half share of everything.’ Ercule scratched the side of his head. ‘If any of us were to predecease the other and had no children, his – or her – share goes to the others, equally. That’s how we got Olimpia’s share.’ A cold, congested expression had been settling on his face. ‘Poor Olimpia! Being murdered like that. And by Mina, of all people! I thought she was so gentle.’ He touched the Doge’s hat. ‘Olimpia made this for me.’
Ercule stood up. He placed his empty cup on the tray next to Urbino’s. ‘Do you think you could help?’
‘I doubt if I have much influence with Gaby. And as I said, the best approach is to persuade her to get treatment. Then, with time, she may be able to see things differently. You’d have a healthier sister and your dream.’
Ercule turned his face away but not before Urbino saw the annoyed look.
‘I have two things to take us away from upsetting topics,’ Ercule said with forced cheerfulness. He went over to the cupboard and reached behind a pile of books. ‘The first is this.’ He lifted up a bottle. ‘Raki. The best grade. It’s Turkish.’
He went through a small door partly concealed by one of the screens and returned a few minutes later with two glasses with ice in them. He poured generous portions of the raki in the glasses.
The raki, which Urbino was drinking for the first time, was not to his liking, any more than grappa or ouzo was. Ercule downed his and poured himself more.
‘The second thing is this. Let me find it.’ Ercule fished around in the pile of books before finding the one he was looking for. ‘It’s Pierre Loti’s Aziyadé. An English translation.’
Loti’s book, which Urbino had read years ago, was a nineteenth-century French novel about Ottoman Istanbul. It told the story of a romance between a Frenchman and a beautiful woman from the sultan’s harem.
‘Listen to this,’ Ercule said.
He reseated himself on the divan, and started to read long passages. He skipped around in the book, but whatever he read was about love and assignations, and rich with exotic descriptions of the old city.
After fifteen minutes, Ercule’s voice started to fade away. His head, in its ridiculous but affecting ducal hat, drooped toward his chest. He looked vulnerable as he sat on the sofa, the Loti book ready to drop from his hands, his breathing slow and steady.
Urbino got up quietly, collected his briefcase, cape, and scarf, and left Ercule to whatever dreams he was having.
Late that afternoon, after returning to the Palazzo Uccello for lunch and a nap, Urbino went to a small pastry shop on the Via Garibaldi in the Castello area. The front window was filled with a tantalizing display of baicoli, zaleti, bussolai, pignoleti, and other traditional Venetian sweets. The aroma in the shop was delicious.
The shop was owned by an elderly couple. Urbino was a regular customer. The reason he had come this afternoon, however, was not to get his usual selection of pastries – although this was what Nicoletta started to tend to after they had exchanged greetings – but to ask her and her husband Marco about Mina.
The couple owned the building and lived above the shop. The apartment above theirs had been rented out to the cousin Mina had come to live with when she had left Palermo, where she had gone through a rebellious phase in her early teenage years.
Nicoletta and Marco, who were childless, were fond of Mina and had helped her in many small ways. In fact, it had been through them that the contessa had connected with Mina when she had accompanied Urbino to the shop. Mina had been behind the counter, helping the couple.
It was to be expected that the conversation this afternoon would turn to Mina.
‘Something is wrong with our system when a good girl like that is accused of murder!’ Nicoletta said, shaking her head slowly as she placed zaleti biscuits in a small carton. ‘Mina wouldn’t hurt a fly.’
‘It must be a mistake,’ Marco said. ‘We’ve read what was in the paper and we hear what people are saying, but we don’t believe it.’
‘Neither do the contessa or I. Mina has a very good lawyer.’
‘And she has you,’ Nicoletta said. She started to arrange baicoli in another carton.
‘Yes … Well, I was wondering if Mina ever stopped by here with anyone in the time she has been working for the contessa. I know she visits you often.’
‘At least once a week,’ Marco said. ‘She doesn’t forget us. But no, she comes alone. She never even came with her friend, the one who was murdered.’
‘She came once with the contessa,’ his wife corrected. ‘As for her friend the dressmaker, Mina always had good things to say about her. She would never have done anything to hurt her.’
‘Has she seemed troubled in any way recently?’
‘Always as bright as sunshine. She grew out of whatever emotional problems she was having in Sicily. We never saw her depressed. These days, though, being on the Giudecca, I suppose it would be only normal for her to be depressed, wouldn’t it? It’s a good thing her cousin Anna isn’t alive to see what the poor girl is going through. She gave Mina the love she needed. All she needs is someone to care about her.’
Seven
That evening, the contessa retired to her boudoir early, after having tried to calm herself with a game of patience, which, unfortunately, had belied its name. The pastels burning in the blue Fes urn scented the boudoir with roses. Surrounded by her well-worn books, her small Longhi paintings, and other objects dear to her heart, and with Zouzou pressed against her side on the pink brocade sofa, she sipped her chocolate as she read the memoirs of Lorenzo da Ponte, Mozart’s librettist. A box of marrons glacés were within easy reach.
She had prepared the chocolate herself. This was usually something that Mina had done. The contessa did not need Mina to do it for her or to do much else. She was a self-sufficient woman, although the largeness of her staff might have indicated otherwise. But the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini needed tending after in ways that were far beyond her, even if
the building had been a third or a fourth of its size.
No, she did not need Mina for all the little ministrations the young woman performed. The contessa felt this more this evening than she ever had, because what she was feeling was how much she missed Mina’s company. For Mina was her companion, and now the poor girl was locked away and the contessa could not even pay her a visit.
The contessa ran her hands through Zouzou’s silky fur and tugged affectionately at her long ears. The cocker spaniel gave the contessa a look from her dark brown eyes that the contessa interpreted as nothing short of the depths of devotion.
The contessa had spent the whole day at home, not even taking Zouzou out for her evening walk as she usually did, but assigning the task to one of the housemaids.
A little earlier, she had stepped out on the balcony to get some air and take in the view of the Grand Canal, washed by the white light of a frosty moon. A few dimly lit boats, with wakes like strings of pearls, gently broke the silence. Reluctantly, she had abandoned the scene and gone back into her boudoir, where a strong blaze burned in the fireplace.
She was now doing her best to absorb herself in da Ponte’s account of a gambling episode at the Ridotto during carnival. But she kept feeling Mina’s absence, even though the girl would have been in her own room at this time.
How was Mina doing? Was she being well treated? Did she think the contessa had abandoned her? Did she still believe that Olimpia would not have died if she had not taken the scissors out of her chest? Had she –
The ringing of the telephone interrupted her thoughts and awakened Zouzou, who had fallen asleep with her head in the contessa’s lap.
It was Urbino.
‘No, I wasn’t asleep,’ she said. ‘I’ve been thinking about Mina. I still haven’t heard from Corrado Scarpa about when and if I’ll be able to see her. He’s doing his best.’
‘Coraggio, Barbara. He’ll work something out.’
‘Are we any closer to getting the poor girl out? I have faith in your abilities. Even if you were only at the Palazzo Pindar for a few hours, you must have learned something. You must have impressions.’
‘Plenty of impressions. I’m not as ignorant as I was when I went there, but what it all amounts to it’s much too early to say.’
Urbino gave her details of the conversations he had had with Gaby, Apollonia, Eufrosina, Alessandro, and Ercule, interweaving them with his suspicions and puzzlements.
When he finished, the contessa said, ‘Am I wrong, caro, or did I detect a trace of amusement in your voice? Is it appropriate?’
‘Most inappropriate, but they can be a rather amusing group. Even poor Gaby can be amusing with her word game. But I’m under no illusions, and I won’t be distracted or misled if I can help it. Maybe amused is not the right word, though. Maybe it’s that I feel as if I’m looking at a performance. They are almost like actors in a play. Each of them has his or her role. It usually develops that way in families. But with the Pindars it’s almost as if, in some strange way, they’re all acting, but whether they might be acting in concert is something else entirely. When someone has something to hide, he becomes an actor. That’s obvious enough. But it forces everyone around him to act as well.’
‘Alessandro’s little theater seems to have influenced your thinking.’
‘It’s very apt, isn’t it, his theater? The drama of the extended Pindar family: love, death, and eccentricity.’
‘Not too extended, not with only five members. You’ll notice that I’m taking myself out of the picture for the moment.’
‘Five members alive, one recently dead.’
‘Sounds like a game tally.’
‘That’s apt, too. The Pindars love their games – and their hobby horses, their little obsessions. Even their disputes and disagreements seem scripted.’
‘And you say you didn’t notice anything different about them?’
‘They all seem very much as they have always been. As if they decided to go on as usual, despite Olimpia’s death.’
The contessa slowly turned her revolving silver photograph frames with photographs of her dead. Alvise, her mother and father, her grandparents on both sides, a close aunt and uncle, some cousins. ‘Isn’t that what we’re supposed to do? Go on as usual?’
‘Not when there’s been a murder in the house.’
‘Yes, a murder in the house of Pindar, in my family. But you shouldn’t look only under the Pindar roof.’
‘Exactly. We need to know more about everyone’s life outside the house. As for Gaby, she might not leave the house, but that doesn’t mean she has no contact with the world beyond it. And we need to know more about everyone’s financial situation.’
‘Everyone in that house has money problems, with the exception of Gaby, who doesn’t care about money at all. Eufrosina has borrowed some money from me since her husband died. As for Alessandro, he isn’t exactly pulling in the money from wood-carving or anything else.’
‘Great expectations,’ Urbino said.
‘What does Dickens –? Oh, I see! Their inheritance from Apollonia.’
‘Which she was taunting Eufrosina about. Eufrosina and Alessandro seem to be in competition for it, or maybe each just wants to make sure he gets his proper share – or more than that, if possible.’
‘Maybe that’s the “sin in Eufrosina” that Gaby found so amusing – Eufrosina’s greed.’
‘Or something else. Or maybe nothing,’ Urbino came back with. ‘Gaby could be trying to stir up problems for Eufrosina. She doesn’t hide her fondness for Alessandro. But it’s hard to know how much credence to give to what she says. And if we’re talking about money, we shouldn’t neglect Apollonia. She doesn’t have the problem of not having enough. Her problem is being sure to hold on to what she has and wanting more.’
‘Ercule came right out and said he needs money. There’s some honesty in that.’ The contessa sighed. ‘Money, the root of all evil.’ She had a sharp vision of the money scattered across the floor of the atelier. ‘Money and blackmail go together like a hand in a glove. But the question, as you’ve said, is whether Olimpia was victim or blackmailer. If she were a victim, the obvious reason would be that she was gay, but that doesn’t make sense. She didn’t keep it a secret. You can only be blackmailed for a secret – for something you want to conceal.’
‘But someone might have been blackmailing Mina through Olimpia. She wouldn’t want her family, the little that she has, to know about her relationship with Olimpia. Of course, there is no chance she is going to be able to keep any of it a secret now.’
‘Poor Mina! But if someone wanted to blackmail Mina through someone, I would have been a more logical target.’
The contessa wondered what she would have done to protect Mina from exposure. She doubted she would have given in to blackmail.
‘If blackmail is behind Olimpia’s murder,’ Urbino said, ‘and she was the blackmailer, then whom was she blackmailing? What did she know about the person? And who else might have known the person’s secret?’
The contessa would have preferred it if Olimpia had been a victim of blackmail and not a blackmailer. Blackmail was cowardly and despicable, although it did not deserve being murdered for. But she could imagine someone so tormented, so fearful, so desperate that murder seemed the only escape. She focused her attention back on Urbino.
‘… and you must see what I mean, don’t you?’ he was saying. ‘It’s not only the living Pindars and not only Olimpia. We need to know more about Achille.’
‘You’re not suggesting there was foul play there? He died in an accident.’
‘Nonetheless, we need to know more than we already do about him and the accident. Something you’ve forgotten about the accident or the family might come back. I’m going to need your help. There’s no reason why you couldn’t gather some impressions yourself, Barbara. Impressions and information.’
‘From whom?’
‘From the people it would appear most natural for you
to speak to, to be around. Think about who they are.’
The contessa did just that, as she sipped her chocolate.
‘Apollonia, for one,’ she said after a few moments. She reached for a marron glacé. ‘I’ve had more contact with her than the others. And she’s closer to me as a relation than any of the others.’ And closer in age, as well, she thought, but did not say.
‘Who else?’
The contessa thought some more as she bit into the marron glacé. ‘Eufrosina. She’s doing the photographs. If what you say is true about the way they’re all behaving as usual – ’
‘Acting as usual,’ he interrupted her.
‘If they’re all acting as usual, then I’ll do the same with Eufrosina. I’ll tell her that I see no reason why we shouldn’t proceed on schedule with the exhibition and the catalogue. And I’ll show her that I mean it.’
‘Have you been considering postponing?’
‘It had occurred to me. But it seems important for me – for us – to carry on as we planned. Maybe Eufrosina and everyone else will think that I’m trying to put Olimpia’s murder behind me. That could only be to our advantage. Having Eugene here will be a good thing, too. He’ll help give us the appearance of going on as usual, of showing a visitor the sights. When is he coming?’
‘The day after tomorrow.’
The thought of Eugene coming didn’t please her entirely even though she liked the man. His arrival would bring Urbino’s departure with him closer. Her heart quickened as she realized what Urbino needed to accomplish before then.
‘You can even bring him by the Palazzo Pindar and show him the museum. It will give you a good excuse for being there – or another good excuse, along with the Fortuny letters. As for me, I’ll do my best to behave as I always have with them – allowing for some understandable bouts of nerves, all perfectly controlled, of course. It would not seem normal if I behaved completely as usual. After all, my personal maid just murdered Olimpia.’ The contessa gave a high laugh that sounded unpleasant to her ears. ‘That’s what they believe.’
‘Or what some of them may want to believe.’ Urbino paused, and then added, ‘And what one of them wants us to think he or she believes. But you will do fine. You’re a consummate actress, my dear, a mistress of social artifice. When you have the desire to please and charm, you do it seamlessly. And you definitely know the value of benevolent deception.’
The Veils of Venice Page 8