‘They are doing the best they can.’ The contessa had decided not to tell Mina that Apollonia had died. Given the girl’s emotional state, she would probably think that Apollonia had died because of grief and shock, and feel guilty for that, too, on top of everything else.
‘I hope they will forgive me.’
‘There is nothing for them to forgive.’
The contessa feared that Mina was about to start proclaiming her guilt again, but when she broke the short silence, she asked, ‘Signorina Gaby is still worried and afraid?’
‘She told Signor Urbino that she had been feeling a premonition of the danger that was surrounding her sister.’
Mina took this in and, being the sensitive, impressionable soul she was, seemed to accept it.
‘And how is Zouzou?’
‘Zouzou is the good little girl she always is – good even in her mischief.’ The contessa was happy to move on to this innocuous topic. ‘She misses you.’
But then the contessa wondered if this was the right thing to say. She was so confused. She did not want Mina to feel worse. She was a sentimental girl – but maybe it was the contessa who was the sentimental one. She should not have mentioned Zouzou.
‘Who takes her for her walks?’
‘I’m doing it until you come back.’ Once again, the contessa was not telling the truth, but she did not want Mina to feel that Zouzou might be transferring her affections to someone else in the house.
‘I’m sure she enjoys that.’ Mina glanced at the guard. The contessa was pleased to see that the stern-faced woman gave Mina a pleasant smile. ‘I must tell you something. It is very important. I must not tell anyone else except you and Signor Urbino. Olimpia made me promise.’
The contessa took a quick breath. ‘What are you talking about, Mina?’
‘A month ago she gave me an envelope. Right before Christmas. She said she wanted me to keep it safe. There is something important inside it, she said. I was supposed to keep it until she asked me for it back. Or if something bad happened to her, I should give it to you or Signor Urbino. I hated when she said that. Her face was very serious. I told her she must not draw bad luck down on her head. And – and now something terrible has happened to her, because of that and because of me!’
Mina was about to burst into tears again.
‘Please, Mina, you must not think like that. We must think clearly. About the envelope. Do you know what’s inside?’
‘Oh, no! I promised that I would never open it.’
‘Is there a name on the envelope?’
Mina shook her head, tears still in her eyes, waiting to brim over. ‘But it’s an old envelope. It’s stained with spots.’
‘Where is it now? You must know that the police searched your room.’
‘Signor Lanzani told me. But I didn’t put it in my room. That would not be safe, Olimpia said. I am sorry, but she said anyone could come into my room and look at my things, even if it was locked because – because you have the key. Oh, please, don’t be upset!’ She looked down at the photograph. ‘I know you would never do anything to hurt me! You are too kind!’
‘Of course I wouldn’t. And I’m not upset.’
‘I had to keep three promises, you see. Three, like in the fairy tales. I must not open the envelope. I must not keep it in my room. And I must give it to you or Signor Urbino if something happened to her. You see! She said to give it to you. She trusted you! She just did not want anyone to see it unless – unless …’ Mina trailed off.
‘You’re a faithful girl, Mina. And I am sure Olimpia had her good reasons for asking you to do what you did. But where is the envelope?’
‘In the library. Inside one of the books that are on a high shelf next to the windows. You made Vittoria dust all the books on those shelves the week before. I was outside the library when you told her they were German books.’ Mina paused. ‘It’s the encyclopedia. I know because the word on the book in German is like the one in Italian.’
‘Why did you put it there?’
Mina looked away. ‘Because I never saw you reading the German books. English books, Italian books, and French books. But never German ones. You told Vittoria they had belonged to the conte, may God rest his soul.’
This was true. All the German books in the library had belonged to Alvise. He had started to learn German after the war when he was helping families of German immigrants who had come to Venice. He had become interested in the language beyond the purpose it served him.
‘I – I did not want you to find the envelope,’ Mina went on. ‘Forgive me.’
‘I understand. Do not trouble yourself about it. But Signor Urbino reads German. Sometimes he has borrowed the conte’s German books.’
‘I was taking a small chance. But I didn’t know where else to hide the envelope and I knew no one would dust the books until spring. I was going to find another place before then. It’s not easy to figure out a hiding place.’
‘No, it isn’t.’
‘I put the envelope in the last volume. Now that Olimpia is gone, I must keep my promise. You must read it. You and Signor Urbino. Olimpia said the two of you would know what to do.’
The import of the whole thing hit Mina anew. It meant that Olimpia was dead, dead, dead. Her tears fell so thickly and furiously that the guard seemed on the point of getting up. The contessa waited for the storm to run its natural course, making sympathetic sounds and comments. When it was over, the contessa fell into a rambling account about Zouzou, the exhibition, and her visit to the Fortuny factory, which she hoped would be soothing, but it was a strain on her. Mina kept looking at her with large, moist eyes. And the contessa was conflicted, for, although she wanted to be with the girl for all their allotted time, she was also eager to leave and return to the house so that she and Urbino could search for the envelope. It could bring Mina closer to being released. This was what she was desperately hoping.
When they were parting, Mina said, ‘Please be careful when you go out in the cold. You could get sick.’
‘And you take care of yourself, Mina. Signor Urbino and I will continue to do everything we can so that you will soon be out of here. And Olimpia is looking after you, too. You kept your promise to her. I will come back to see you again as soon as I can.’
Thirteen
As soon as the contessa returned home, she telephoned Urbino. Natalia said he had gone out early in the morning and had not returned.
‘I’ll tell him to call you as soon as he comes in.’
But this was not good enough for the contessa. She was more impatient than she could ever remember having been.
After she had lunch, which she was not able to finish, she rang the Palazzo Uccello four times in the next hour and a half. She could hear the barely concealed irritation in Natalia’s voice when she said, each time, quietly, ‘I’ll tell him as soon as he comes in, contessa.’
The contessa did not want to look at the envelope until Urbino was with her. This seemed important, but she was so wrought up that she could not decide why. Surely, she should just get the envelope out of the encyclopedia and read what was inside on her own. She might even save some valuable time, depending on what was in it.
But she didn’t, although her steps kept carrying her to the dark-panelled room with its rows and rows of volumes, most of them calf-bound, with gilt lettering on their spines. The rich smell of the leather reminded her of the conte, who had spent many hours every day in the library. She did not even take the volume of the encyclopedia down from the shelf. She positioned the ladder, however, so that when Urbino came they would at least not lose the few moments of time it would take him to do it.
But she found it difficult to keep her eyes away from the large dark green book, concentrating all her attention on it as if it could tell her something.
She tried to interest herself in a book, and took one after another down from the shelf and brought them over to the deep-buttoned leather sofa, only to close each after a few glazed m
inutes of reading. She drew the purple velvet curtains across the windows, although there was no possibility that anyone could see inside the room.
Just when she was about to give in, climb the ladder, and take down the volume, Urbino rang.
‘I just got in. What’s going on?’
‘Oh, Urbino! Finally! You have to come here.’ She explained about the envelope. ‘I’ll have Pasquale pick you up.’
‘Here.’ Urbino said from the library ladder. He handed the contessa the encyclopedia volume. ‘You can have the honors. Look for it.’
She took the book to the long table by the windows that looked down on the garden. Urbino joined her.
She riffled through the pages. Placed between two of them near the end of the book was an envelope.
‘Here it is. Just where she said it would be.’ What might be in the envelope was, for a moment, less important to the contessa than that the envelope was there. It gratified her to have this physical proof that Mina had been telling the truth about it. ‘It does look old.’
The envelope was about five by seven inches. It was slightly yellowed and had fly specks on it – or the kind of small brownish stains the contessa had once been told came from flies. Nothing was written on the front. She turned it over. Nothing was written on the back either. The flap, which was not sealed, had been tucked neatly into the back of the envelope.
‘Obviously Olimpia saw no need to seal it,’ Urbino said. ‘We should be a little careful handling the envelope and what’s inside. It might be important to know whose fingerprints are on it if it comes to that.’
‘You take it.’
The contessa handed the envelope to Urbino, who took it between two widespread fingers of one hand. With the other hand, he lifted out the flap and extracted a folded sheet of white notepaper, which was only slightly yellowed around the edges. He placed the envelope down on the table and, careful to touch only the edges of the notepaper, he unfolded it.
The contessa, who realized that she had been holding her breath, moved closer to Urbino, but all she could see without her reading glasses was a blur of light blue handwriting that covered only a small part of the paper.
Urbino was frowning.
‘What does it say?’
‘It’s not much more than a note. And it’s in English.’
Urbino read it aloud in a low, deliberate voice:
My one and only A,
Because we shouldn’t, it is all the more delicious. Don’t you agree?
I love you for all the reasons against it and for a thousand and one more. I always will.
I hope you like my gift. I looked for a long time before I found one in exactly the same shade as your eyes. It is a very special shade that is only yours.
Forever,
E
Ten minutes later the contessa and Urbino were in the salotto blu. The contessa needed the comfort of the small room that she spent so much of her time in, and much of it with Urbino. Since leaving the house this morning, she had felt whirled around, and now the letter had made things even worse. It had immediately set in motion a series of disturbing thoughts.
‘Thank you,’ she said to Urbino as he handed her a glass of sherry. Urbino settled on the sofa beside her, with Zouzou between them, asleep. The letter lay unfolded on the coffee table.
‘I don’t recognize the handwriting,’ the contessa said, after she had read it with her reading glasses on.
‘Neither do I. But I haven’t seen any of the Pindars’ handwriting. Have you?’
The contessa thought for a moment. ‘I’ve got a note here and there during the years, mainly from Apollonia and Regina. I don’t have them anymore. I don’t remember what their handwriting was like. But why are you assuming that one of them wrote this?’
‘I know it’s a big assumption, but everything so far has come back to the family – or almost everything, it seems. I would even go so far as to say that we need to consider that both the writer and the recipient come from the family. The fact that we have the initials “A” and “E” alerts me, too. Think of how common those initials are in the Pindar family.’
The contessa did her best to absorb the implications of what he had said. ‘But – but that would be horrid. It is a love letter!’
‘So it seems. But it’s also completely possible we’re not dealing with something like that,’ Urbino said, clearly in an attempt to reassure her. ‘I have no doubt that either “A” or “E” is – or was – a Pindar. The fact that blue eyes are mentioned points us in that direction, too. “A” has blue eyes – or had them. As far as I know, all the Pindars do.’ He paused. ‘Something the letter says makes me think of one of your Pindar relatives in particular.’
The contessa ran her eye over the letter again. She did not understand what he meant.
‘The reference to a thousand and one more reasons,’ Urbino said. ‘The Arabian Nights. Ercule has two volumes of Burton’s translation.’
‘But it’s a common enough thing to say, don’t you think? I’ve said it many times.’
The contessa, surprised at the feeling of annoyance that had suddenly come over her, silently chastised herself. Her nerves were on edge. She forced herself to calm down as best she could. Mina was at stake in all this. Although the contessa doubted – or was it that she feared? – the implications of the love letter being exclusively a Pindar affair, she knew she had to face it directly. Yes, Urbino was right. They did have to consider the worst, and she would do whatever she could to help him arrive at what she could only think of as horrid conclusions.
‘And besides,’ she said, continuing her thought out loud, ‘by trying to establish the worst, we could end up eliminating it.’
‘Yes.’ Urbino scrutinized the note. ‘I can’t even tell if it’s a feminine script or a masculine one, if there are such things. A graphologist might be able to tell, but I think I read somewhere that there is no way of being definitive about it. What we need to do now is to give our efforts to what we can do. We have to put our heads together. “A”? “E”? Who might they be?’
‘There’s no “O” for Olimpia. Or “M” for Mina. That’s some consolation. And the envelope and letter are old.’
‘They seem to be. But they could have been made to look old.’
‘Is that what you think? Why would someone have done that?’
‘We need to keep all possibilities open. And that, dear Barbara, presents a great problem. Just about any letters other than “A” or “E” would have kept the possibilities down. Now we have many to consider. The Pindars and their penchant for names beginning with “A” and “E”!’ Urbino’s tone was exasperated. ‘We have Alessandro, Ercule, and Eufrosina. And there is Apollonia even though she’s dead. And Apollonia isn’t the only dead person we have to consider.’
He stared at her as if urging to think.
‘There’s Achille,’ she said.
‘Anyone else?’ Again, Urbino waited.
‘Yes. Efigenia, Apollonia’s and Platone’s aunt,’ the contessa said. ‘How many does that make?’
‘Six. Three “A”s and three “E”s.’
‘How far back do we have to go with the Pindar names? There has been an Elettra and a Euridice, an Antigone. I think there was a Euripide. I am sure there must be others that I have never known or have forgotten. It’s an entire cast from a Greek tragedy.’ The contessa gave a nervous little laugh.
‘Let’s limit ourselves to the relatively recent past, to Pindars who had some kind of direct contact with those who are alive today and with people outside the illustrious, eccentric family!’
For the next ten minutes they arranged the names in various combinations of the “A” and “E” of the letter. The contessa’s head was spinning. Then she remembered something that might help.
‘I have Eufrosina’s signature on the contract! The letter is signed with an “E.”’ She went to the study to get her copy of the contract, proud that she was able to contribute something right away to
proving or disproving Urbino’s theory.
They carefully compared the signature and the handwriting, keeping the note on the table and not handling it. After a few minutes of scrutinizing the two, however, they realized that there was no way of determining from the signature whether Eufrosina had written the note. Her signature was distinctive, but hardly more than an indecipherable scrawl.
‘Maybe a graphologist could help us with this, too. But her signature is almost like an abstract design. Let me keep the contract and the letter, though. I’ll try to find someone to look at them.’
Urbino read the letter again. The contessa stared down at it but could not focus on it. It sounded as if Urbino was mumbling something under his breath.
‘I’ve forgotten my high school mathematics,’ he said clearly and distinctly now. ‘If I could remember the formula, I could tell you how many permutations there are.’
‘Permutations!’ the contessa said in a raised voice. Zouzou stirred in her sleep. ‘I feel we’re playing a version of Gaby’s game.’ She turned to Urbino. ‘A game! Could someone want us to be playing a game?’
‘Who? Olimpia? Mina? I don’t think so. I think the person who wrote the letter wanted to conceal identities – because it was important to them, or at least to the writer, to do it.’
‘But if the person really wanted to conceal their identities, then why didn’t he – or she – not use any initials at all?’
‘Ah, Barbara, if only people would be consistent, then this line of work I’ve taken up – that we’ve taken up – would be much easier. The initials might refer not to names but to something else, like affectionate names, terms of endearment. But Olimpia apparently knew who corresponded to the initials, and she was afraid it would cost her her life. If it did, she wanted to have a hand in revealing the identity of her murderer. And you must realize what we have to consider seriously. You don’t like to think of Olimpia as a victimizer because of Mina’s relationship with her. But she could have been blackmailing whoever wrote or whoever received the letter. One would think, though, that she would have had more sympathy, given her own situation.’
The Veils of Venice Page 21