House of Cards

by Stanley Ellin

“A funeral, signore.” He pointed to a small island ahead, a neat rectangle of greenery and marble monuments. “Somebody’s getting a ride to the cemetery there. It might look crowded, but there’s always room for one more.”

  We passed through the channel between the cemetery and the island of Murano and sped through silty water toward the string of islands low on the horizon.

  “Burano,” said the taxi man. “Then Torcello.”

  Burano was like a last outpost of civilization. Beyond it was a sea of marsh grass, the barene, and then a broad canal cutting through an island lush with vegetation. At intervals along the canal were signs of past habitation—a hut standing in a weedy clearing, a stucco mansion in the classical style with half the columns of its portico tumbled down, the roofless, windowless remnants of a stone structure that might have been a church decaying there since the Dark Ages. Somewhere on Torcello, I knew, life was going on, but along the canal we were traveling there was not a soul to be seen. It was as if the inhabitants had gotten warning of plague or invasion and abandoned it overnight.

  Anne was staring ahead with the intensity of an explorer searching for the landmarks of a new world. Small canals traversed the main one, and as we approached a canal which looked like no more than a ditch running between stone embankments she suddenly said, “Here. A sinistra. A sinistra.”

  The driver obediently turned left between the embankments, but shook his head. “The tide is out. There’s hardly enough water in here to float a matchstick. And look at the way we have to cut corners.”

  He skillfully edged the boat around a turn that was almost a right angle, the embankment so close I could have reached out and touched it. “For a man who can handle a boat like you, this is nothing,” I said, which was what he wanted to hear.

  “Yes, I know my job.” He looked more like a Bronzino courtier than ever as he casually spun the wheel with one finger. “But why anyone would want to live in this emptiness—”

  That was understandable, coming from a city dweller. On one side of us was a wasteland of marshes. On the other side, the embankment was shaded by elms and weeping willows, and through the trees could be seen fields of wild flowers. The air was rich with the smell of brackish water overlaid by a lush scent of honeysuckle.

  Outside of small pylons carrying telephone lines, it was beautiful, unspoiled, and menacing, the way a side stream of the Amazon might be where one saw only the natural splendors around him and not the savages lurking behind the trees with poisoned arrows fitted to their bows.

  We inched our way around a bend and came in sight of a narrow footbridge spanning the canal in a steep arch.

  “There,” Anne whispered. “The boat landing is just past the bridge.”

  “Cut the motor,” I told the driver, and he did. “Pull alongside the embankment here.”

  “Not here, signore. That stone would scrape the devil out of this woodwork. We can tie up to the tub there.”

  The tub was a small rowboat which was moored to the embankment thirty or forty yards below the bridge. We silently drifted toward it, and the boatman dexterously tied a line to its seat. He offered me a steadying hand as I stepped into the bobbing rowboat and up to the embankment, and then I saw that Anne was following.

  “Wait here,” I said.

  “No. You might need me with you.”

  I might at that. And since she was already standing beside me on the embankment with the boatman interestedly watching us from below, it was no time to make an issue of it.

  “All right,” I said, “but you’re not to make a move unless I tell you to.”

  “I won’t.”

  There was another rowboat upside down on the ground beside the embankment, a splintery oar and some primitive fishing tackle resting against it. As I walked around it, Anne close on my heels, the mossy loam underfoot yielded like a sponge. It felt like the kind of ground where you could drop a seed and have it take flower while you watched. There was a barely discernible path leading through a small grove of trees beyond, and I followed it to what had once been a lawn but was now a patch of untrimmed grass carpeted with marigolds. I pulled up short before we reached this clearing and drew Anne behind a tree which kept us out of sight of anyone in the house on the other side of the lawn.

  It was not the home I had imagined Madame Cesira would choose, not even as a temporary dwelling. It was the kind of ugly, utilitarian box a prosperous Tuscan farmer might have built for himself, and the only things to mask its ugliness were the heavy growth of wisteria vine covering its walls as high as the second-floor shutters and its two chimney pots, the classical Venetian chimney pots shaped like the funnels used as smokestacks on old-fashioned steam locomotives.

  Several pairs of shutters were swung open against the vine-covered walls and a wisp of smoke trailed from one of the funnels, so there was a good chance someone was at work in the kitchen.

  “Where is the kitchen?” I said to Anne.

  “Around the house, inside the back door.”

  “All right, that’s where we’re going.” I drew Matilde Vosiers’ automatic from my pocket and checked it to make sure the safety was on. “I don’t expect to use this, so don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not worried about it,” Anne said between her teeth. “I’ll be glad to use it myself.”

  “Forget it. We’re here to get Paul away, not start a war. The first job is for me to get up against the wall of the house. You follow when I give you the signal.”

  I scanned the windows where gauzy curtains hung limp in the lifeless, humid air. If anyone was on guard, gun in hand, behind those curtains, it would be all over for me before I got halfway across the lawn. I closed my mind to the thought, took a deep breath, and plunged across the lawn to the shelter of the house wall, rank grass and marigold stems whipping my legs as I ran. The ivy covering the wall was in flower and swarming with bees, but compared to bullets they were a positive pleasure.

  I waited to see if any alarm had gone up in the house, then when silence still prevailed I signaled Anne to join me. Keeping against the wall we made our way cautiously to the back of the house.

  What met the eye there was a scene of peaceful domesticity. A line of laundry hung drying in the sun, a few plump chickens cut-cutted back and forth beneath it, a pair of milch goats, their udders sagging, stood masticating some vine leaves. But what caught and held the eye was the girl lying spread-eagled on a blanket in the middle of the scene.

  She lay on her back in deep slow-breathing slumber, arms and legs outflung as if inviting the sunlight to fill every pore, and her face and body gleamed with oil. A tall, slender girl, very young—she couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen—she wore the absolute minimum of bikini, the halter of which had been untied so that it was simply draped across the small, pert cones of her breasts.

  I motioned Anne to remain where she was and stealthily crept up to the girl. Close up, I saw she was a Florentine type, blonde, fair-skinned, and with the sharply chiseled little nose one finds on Florentine portraits as far back as the de’Medicis. The closed eyes were probably gray. When I nudged the girl’s shoulder with the gun the eyes opened, and they were gray. I aimed the gun between them and put a finger to my lips in warning.

  A momentary fear showed in the eyes as they stared into mine, then it was replaced by a veiled interest. Either the girl found me more entertaining than menacing or she didn’t appreciate the situation at all. Whichever it was, when I gestured her to stand up she did so with lithe ease, casually tying the bikini halter behind her as if to provide me with the best possible view of the breasts thrusting against it. Only when Anne appeared from around the house did the girl grasp that she wasn’t the real object of my interest. She looked disappointed.

  I turned her about-face and got my left arm tight around her naked, oily waist so there would be no chance of her breaking away and making a dash for it. That way I steered her toward the kitchen door, Anne following close behind.

  “Who�
��s inside the house?” I said into the girl’s ear.

  “My mother.”

  “Who else?”

  “No one.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that. I rapped on the door with the gun. The tall, handsome woman in housedress and apron who opened it and stood gaping at us bore a striking resemblance to the girl.

  “Be quiet,” I warned, “and nothing will happen to your daughter.”

  The woman glared at me. “Then take your dirty hands off her. Ah, sciattone!” she spat at the girl. “Pig! What did I tell you about going around naked?”

  “Never mind that,” I said. I shoved her back into the kitchen and we all followed, Anne closing the door behind us.

  Recognition dawned in the woman’s eyes as Anne moved toward her. “Signora de Villemont! So it’s you, is it?”

  “It is. Where is my son, Signora Braggi? Where is Paul?”

  “Gone.” The triumph in Signora Braggi’s voice left no doubt that she was telling the truth. Anne swayed and braced a hand on the kitchen table to steady herself, and Signora Braggi openly gloated over this sign of weakness. In fluent French she said, “Gone an hour ago or more. Dr. Morillon himself came to take the child and Madame Cesira to the airport on the Lido. What more is there to say? Now tell this animal to take his hands off my daughter. For all her stupidity she’s a decent girl. There’s no need to punish her for your folly.”

  I maintained my tight grip around the girl’s waist, and she stood at ease in this embrace, making no show of resistance.

  “What plane are they taking?” I said to her mother. “Where are they going?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How is Paul?” Anne pleaded. “Is he well?”

  Signora Braggi stiffened into an image of outraged righteousness.

  “After what you’ve put him through? After letting the poor little creature watch your lover here commit murder? And then abandoning the child so you could run off and have a time for yourself with this brute? Ah yes, you’ve been a splendid mother to the boy, signora.”

  “Enough!” I said. “Where have they gone?”

  “I told you I don’t know.” But the way she said it did not carry conviction.

  “Take that carving knife,” I told Anne, “and cut down the clothesline in the yard.”

  It was Anne herself who tied Signora Braggi hand and foot to the kitchen chair with lengths of clothesline, tugging the knots fast with a savage strength that made the woman wince and cry out. Then, keeping a grip on the nape of the girl’s neck, I turned her around so that her hands could be bound behind her. Her mother watched this with mounting horror.

  “What are you going to do?” she asked hoarsely.

  “Get the truth. Where have they taken the boy?”

  “I don’t know! Even if you torture me—!”

  “I don’t intend to torture anyone.” I turned to the girl who stood there passively. “What’s your name?”

  “Daniela.”

  “You’re a very pretty girl, Daniela.” She eyed me warily at this but I could have sworn there was the shadow of a smile on her lips. “Now, so my visit here won’t be wasted, you and I are going into the next room to have some fun.”

  “Murderer!” Signora Braggi struggled so hard against her bonds that she almost overturned the chair she was tied to. “God himself will strike you down if you harm that girl! He’ll fill your guts with a cancer so you’ll rot away in agony! And your woman, too!”

  “Maybe,” I said, “but it’ll be a little too late for Daniela by then, won’t it? Now, where was Paul taken?”

  The woman set her teeth stubbornly.

  “You must be well paid by Signora Cesira to sacrifice your daughter like this,” I said.

  “Nobody buys my loyalty, murderer. Or my husband’s. And he’ll be back from the airport very soon. Any minute now. If you dare lay a finger on that girl, he’ll cut you to little pieces.”

  “We’ll see when the time comes, signora.” I must have made a highly convincing picture of lust incarnate as I looked Daniela over from head to foot, then shoved her out of the kitchen into the room beyond. Even Anne started to put out a protesting hand but dropped it when I coldly said to her, “Stay out of this. Just keep an eye on the lady there so that she doesn’t try any tricks. If she changes her mind about talking, I’ll be waiting to hear about it.”

  I steered Daniela through a dining room and into a living room, leaving the doors open behind me. In Signora Braggi’s mind, I was sure, was a clear image of the couch in the living room and our progress toward it. Still, even when we reached the couch there was no outcry from the kitchen.

  “Your mother is a stubborn woman,” I said to Daniela.

  “Very.” The girl regarded me slyly. “Who knows what might happen to me because of that.”

  “Aren’t you afraid of what might happen to you?”

  She pointed her chin over her shoulder to indicate her hound hands. “Not as long as I’m tied up like this. Otherwise, I might be expected to do something about it and that would be pretty frightening. This way I’m resigned to my fate. Go ahead and do your worst.”

  “Gladly.” I undid her halter and pulled it off. Then I gently ran a hand over the unkempt blond hair which fell to her shoulders, gathering a few strands between my fingers. The girl swayed close to me, eyes half closed, lips parted with anticipation, and when I suddenly jerked the strands of hair loose from her scalp she screeched with honest pain.

  “You bastard!” Her face was contorted, her eyes filled with tears. “That hurt!”

  There was an echoing screech from the kitchen. “Let her alone!” Signora Braggi shouted. “I’ll tell you what you want to know. Just stay away from her!”

  I shoved the girl down on the couch. “Wait here and don’t make a sound or I’ll have you bald before I’m done with you.”

  I walked into the kitchen, and Anne looked a little sick when she saw the bikini halter dangling from my hand. Signora Braggi saw it, too. The sight seemed to choke the words in her throat.

  “The child was taken to Rome,” she whispered.

  “Start at the beginning,” I said harshly. “When was this decided on?”

  “I don’t know when. All I know is that Dr. Morillon suddenly arrived here early this morning and had me pack for Signora Cesira and Paul so he could take them to Rome. The child isn’t well. Dr. Morillon said his friend, Dr. Linder, would come to Rome and attend him there.”

  So before I could call checkmate, the pieces had been moved again.

  “Rome,” Anne said dully, voicing my own despairing thought. “Oh, God.”

  With only five thousand lire left—not even ten dollars—most of which would have to go to our boatman, we couldn’t take plane or train to Rome. That meant I would have to hitchhike it, risk being picked up by the police along the way. No matter how furiously I groped for an alternative, I couldn’t come up with any. Meanwhile, Fra Pietro, our friend of the train, would have to see to it that Anne was safely deposited in the convent in Chioggia. I didn’t need her as a guide in Rome, and I’d be better off without her on my hands.

  When I drew her into the living room to tell her this she said, “Maybe there is another way. My mother-in-law keeps a car in the Autorimessa in Venice so that she can visit friends in Mestre and Padua. If it’s there now—”

  “Do you know anyone in charge of the Autorimessa?”

  “No one in charge, but I know one of the attendants.”

  “Is there a phone in the house here?”

  “Right behind you.”

  “All right, then call the Autorimessa and get hold of that attendant. Tell him you need the car right away and to see that it’s ready with the tank full and an emergency can of gas in the trunk. And make sure he understands everything is to be charged to Signora Cesira. Is your Italian good enough to get that across?”

  “No, but he speaks French.”

  She was trying hard to maintain her composure, but her voice
was unsteady. “And what happens when we get to Rome and find they’re gone again? They knew we were coming here, didn’t they? Every move we make—”

  “How could they know we were coming here when they couldn’t possibly know we made it across the border?”

  “But they did! Do you think it’s just coincidence that they were one step ahead of us like this?”

  “I think it’s panic. Why should Dr. Linder come to attend Paul in Rome when the kid could be brought to him in Issy? It’s because all the top echelon of the OEI will be moving out of France until we’re taken care of. We’re like a barrel of nitroglycerin to them right now, and if there’s any chance of our going off with a bang, Rome or Madrid or Lisbon is where they want to be when it happens. Not that they won’t know we’re heading for Rome, unless we sink Signora Braggi and Daniela in that canal out there. That’s all right with me. It means they’ll figure on setting some kind of trap for us, but it also means they’re not likely to try keeping a step ahead of us.”

  “What do we do? Walk into their trap?”

  “Not if we can help it. Now make that phone call to the Autorimessa. I don’t want our taxi man to get impatient and come wandering in here.”

  While she was at the phone I saw to it that the now sulky and resentful Daniela was more or less decently garbed in her bikini halter and then led into the kitchen to be tied to a chair in her mother’s company. Signora Braggi took this opportunity to describe to me what my punishment in hell would be for abusing helpless women. Dante himself couldn’t have described it more colorfully.

  “Your daughter’s still got her virtue,” I said for Daniela’s sake. “What more could you ask from a criminal type like me?”

  “If anything delays my husband,” Signora Braggi retorted, “the food on that stove will be ruined. It will be burned to a crisp.”

  To each his own sense of proportion. I turned off the flames under the pots on the stove as Anne came into the kitchen.

  “Everything settled?” I asked her.

  “Everything.”

  “Then let’s get moving.”

  Outside the house, I saw that Signora Braggi would have still another reason for bloody vengeance against me. The remainder of the clothesline Anne had cut down lay on the ground, and goats and chickens alike were making dirty tracks across hitherto snowy laundry. I had a feeling that leaving the housekeeper with her food unburned and her daughter’s virginity intact wasn’t going to compensate for this outrage.