Sebastian kept his own voice low, and watched Captain Saltini closely. ‘The other day someone here told me that people thought somebody wanted the Count dead, that it was murder, not an accident.’
‘Si, I heard that, but nobody knows who or why and, after all these years, well…’ The policeman shrugged. ‘No chance of any new answers.’ His dark eyes surveyed Sebastian thoughtfully. ‘If that is what you’re looking for?’
He was smart, thought Sebastian. ‘I’m just curious. I was only six at the time and my father never talked about it, so I really know nothing about what happened, and I’d like to find out exactly how my mother died.’
‘That’s natural,’ Captain Saltini agreed. ‘In your place, so would I.’ He glanced at his watch and pushed back his chair. ‘I’m sorry, I have an appointment at three, I must go. I’ll try to get a copy of that file for you and let you have it tomorrow.’
Sebastian shook hands with him and walked him to the hotel door, said goodbye and went back into the bar. He stood at the window, watching curled flakes of snow flying past like goose feathers.
The weather had been exactly like this on the day his mother had died. As he continued to stare out at the Grand Canal, he could almost hear the crashing, the screams, the splash. He closed his eyes, feeling again the terror and misery he had felt all those years ago as he stood on the landing stage in front of Ca’ d’Angeli, listening to his mother die while the Contessa watched and listened above his head.
Suddenly he realised he had always blamed the Contessa, without ever thinking about it. As a child of six he couldn’t have put it into words but, instinctively, he had feared and disliked La Contessa.
He still did.
By the time Laura flew into Venice the production crew had already been at work for some days. Ca’ d’Angeli was littered with equipment, cables snaking across the floors, the great arc-lights, under their hoods, waiting to be put into position. A carpenter was busy laying a hardboard track on which they could nail the camera dollies, so that the marble and parquet floors would not be scratched, broken or marked in any way. A girl in a tracksuit and big, bulky sweater went backwards and forwards with an automatically rewinding tape measure, checking distances and scribbling notes in her spring-backed pad, while Sidney and Sebastian stood beside one of the gilt-framed mirrors, so absorbed that they didn’t notice Laura’s arrival.
She had been met at the airport by a tall, skinny girl in black ski-pants and a scarlet sweater under a black leather jacket speckled with snow, who took her case from her and hustled her out to a waiting launch. ‘I’m Carmen, assistant director on the film.’ Then she made a face. ‘Sounds good, but there are five of us! There are three units working out here. Sorry to rush you, but I have to shoot a street scene once I’ve dropped you back at the house.’
Laura had felt sick throughout the flight, partly because of turbulence over the Alps, but also from a foreboding that kept her nerves jangling.
The chilly, snow-laden wind outside the airport was another shock to the system. It had been quite mild in London. Keeping her head down, Laura dived into the launch and collapsed on to the seat in the tiny cabin. Carmen joined her and the engine started a second later.
Pulling a walkie-talkie out of her pocket, Carmen said into it, ‘Hallo, Mama San? Carmen here. Carmen. Can you hear me? You’re breaking up a bit. Oh, that’s better. Okay, I found her. We’re just starting back.’
Pocketing the walkie-talkie, she subsided with a sigh. ‘I never seem to stop running. My feet are twice their normal size, I swear it.’
‘But you like the job?’
Carmen glowed. ‘Oh, yes! It’s so exciting, especially working for Sebastian Ferrese. He’s wonderful, I’ve been very lucky.’ Then she gave Laura a funny sideways look, and flushed, as if remembering something. Laura could guess what.
‘Isn’t it cold?’ Laura changed the subject. ‘I was here in August and we had a heatwave then.’
‘The weather’s been bitter ever since I got here. I’m beginning to feel like a polar bear.’
‘You don’t bite like one, I hope!’ Huddled inside her tweed jacket Laura pulled up over her head the thick wool scarf she had been wearing around her neck: she didn’t want her hair blown to hell when she got out of the boat. ‘It was almost spring-like in London when I left, but snow was on the way there too. You said you were shooting a scene today? I didn’t think production had started yet. How many other actors are here?’
‘You’re the first. We aren’t expecting anyone else for a few days. We’re using local extras to dress up the scenes, but that means finding dozens of costumes. Wardrobe and Props have been having nightmares.’
‘They always do!’ Laura stared out of the window, which was glazed with snow and white spray. Grey sky, grey sea. The launch bounced over high waves, flinging her about. ‘Lovely weather for filming!’
Carmen laughed. ‘The director of photography’s mad as hell about the weather. We have to have umbrellas over the cameras to keep them dry, and that casts a shadow, but if we get snow inside one we’ll lose that camera while it’s being dried out and maybe even a day’s shooting.’
‘Sidney’s a perfectionist.’
The odd look came again. ‘Of course, you know him.’
‘We worked together before.’ Laura avoided the girl’s curious stare. This was going to be even more difficult than she had expected. It was hard enough to be working with Sebastian again, but it looked as though she was going to meet avid curiosity from everyone else on the production. It would be a nightmare. Even without the added fear of knowing that, somewhere out there, somebody dangerous was watching her and planning … what?
She wished she knew. Acid flooded into her throat, the bile of terror and dread.
‘Tell me what you did before you got this job,’ she asked Carmen, to give herself something less worrying to think about.
It always worked: people loved nothing better than to talk about themselves, and Carmen was no exception. During the rough boat-ride she took Laura through her training at film school, the dozens of letters she had written in search of work, her amazing luck in finally getting a job with Sebastian as a runner on a film he made eighteen months ago.
‘They paid me peanuts and I was on my feet eighteen hours a day most days, but I learnt a lot and worked like a dog, which is why Sebastian gave me this chance as an assistant director. I’m the lowest of the low. All the others are more experienced than me, but it’s pure luck to get a chance to show what I can do.’
Laura smiled. ‘He took a big chance on me in my first film – I knew absolutely nothing about acting or making films. Everything I know I learnt from him.’
Carmen went pink, and averted her head. That look again.
Laura had had a vivid picture of the palazzo in her mind ever since she had first seen it, in August, but as she stepped on to the landing-stage and looked up she found that the reality was even more powerful than she remembered it, although the great archangels were now robed in folds of snow, the little cherubs half obliterated by it.
‘Isn’t it gorgeous?’ But Carmen was in a hurry to get inside, out of the blizzard, and urged her towards the entrance.
Face stinging with cold, lashes wet with snow, Laura stumbled inside the empty ground floor, and climbed the great marble stairs into the upper hall – to be met by a scene of utter chaos, which was comfortingly familiar.
Then she saw Sebastian in the middle of it all, talking to Sidney. He was too preoccupied to notice her, but Valerie Hyde, standing close to him, making notes on everything he said, lifted her head and glanced sharply towards Laura, nose beaky, eyes fierce, as if warned of her presence by the instinct with which an owl, hunting in the dark, picks up the invisible fieldmouse hiding in deep grass.
She really hates me, thought Laura. And loves him. Does he know? Jealousy stung in her throat like heartburn, a physical pain, as if she was going to be sick.
Carmen touched her arm. ‘You kn
ow you’re staying here? Will you mind? It isn’t exactly the Hilton, although it’s so grand. No central heating, but they’ve had an electric heater in your room for hours. The bathroom’s a frozen waste, I’m afraid. Oh, a magnificent tub with gold feet and bronze fittings – it should be in a museum – but without heating it must be like Siberia. You’ll have to warm the room before you can take your clothes off, I expect. We’re picking up the tab on their electricity while we’re here, so keep your heater on as long as you like. Sebastian told me to make sure you were comfortable. I’ll take you up to see your room now. It’s very beautiful – it could be a set for one of those Hollywood epics about the Borgias or whatever.’ She laughed, and Laura pretended to laugh, too.
‘It will be an experience, anyway.’
Carmen nodded. ‘Come on, then. If we walk round the wall we won’t get in their way.’
Skirting the busy film crew, Laura followed her until the sounds faded and they were in the part of the house kept exclusively for the family.
Stopping at a door at the far end of the great hall, Carmen tapped and waited. ‘These rooms are out of bounds to everyone who isn’t on a special list.’
‘Who is on it?’
‘Sebastian, you, Valerie, Sidney, the heads of the production team. It’s essential that Sebastian has a room he can use during the day as well as at night, so that he can talk to us quietly in private. But the house is crammed with antiques and the insurance is astronomical. If anything was damaged or stolen we’d be out of a job, I should think.’
The door opened and she stopped talking, her face glowing with excitement as she smiled at the man who stood facing them. ‘Oh … I hope we didn’t interrupt you. This is Laura Erskine – she’s just arrived from London. Could she see the room you’ve given her?’ Carmen made a confused introduction. ‘Count Niccolo d’Angeli … Laura Erskine.’
‘Hallo, Nico,’ she said, holding out her hand with the same sense of pleasure she had felt the first time they met.
‘Oh, you know each other already, then,’ Carmen said, watching them with the same curiosity she showed every time Sebastian’s name came up. Film companies were always hotbeds of gossip.
Laura had forgotten how tall Nico was: she had to tilt her head a little to meet his eyes. There was something so familiar about his long face, olive skin, dark hair and eyes – seeing him again, after this long gap, made his likeness to Sebastian seem stronger, irrefutable.
He took her hand and kissed it lingeringly. ‘Ciao, welcome back, Laura, I’ve been waiting impatiently for you.’ He gave Carmen a smiling nod, ‘Grazie, Carmen,’ then drew Laura through the doorway, closing the door on the other girl, who looked distinctly glum at being excluded. She obviously fancied him – and who wouldn’t? thought Laura.
He asked, ‘Did you have a good flight? What was the weather like in London? When do you have to start work on the film?’
‘The flight was trouble-free and it was much warmer in London. I don’t start work here until tomorrow.’ She had the impression that he barely listened to her polite replies.
Eagerly he asked, ‘Then will you have time to sit for me today? I’ll have to push ahead at once, and if I could just take some photos of you to begin with? It wouldn’t take long.’
They were moving through one tapestried room after another. Laura gaped at the ornate furniture, the high, painted ceilings, the gilt on ormolu clocks glittering under the crystal blaze of chandeliers, highly polished walnut and satinwood tables and chairs, rich brocade sofas, paintings of landscapes, Venetian scenes, portraits of the family.
She recognised Niccolo in some paintings and in the fading tapestries; that face of his, which looked as if it came from another period, like the horsemen in those sixteenth-century landscapes with their frozen stares, their sense of life stilled, men going somewhere, busy with killing animals, riding home, or going off to war. He did not belong to today, he came from the past.
The snow blowing outside the windows made strange reflections on ceilings and mirrors. The rooms had the unreal beauty of a troubled dream she had had. Laura felt she was being led through a maze to a place she had known in another life.
‘This is your room,’ he said, opening a door and standing back to watch her face.
Her first impression was that she had wandered into a hall of mirrors: they hung all around the room on the rich green-silk-covered walls, with sensual, blatantly erotic paintings of naked women hung between them. The mirrors were of all sizes, gold-framed, some ornate, some a plain gilded wood; they reflected the snowy light from the high windows, and, as she and Nico walked right into the room, reflected them, too, back and forth, like an army of shadows flowing through the chamber.
A huge four-poster bed, with baroque carving on the oak columns supporting the canopy, dominated the room, the green-silk hangings around it drawn back to show the matching coverlet. The canopy had a pleated edging of dark green silk but its main fabric was delicate white lace that cast a dappled light over the coverlet.
‘That’s unusual. I’ve never seen a lace canopy over a four-poster bed.’
Nico gave her an odd look. ‘Once there was a mirror on the ceiling above the bed.’
Laura looked startled, then giggled. She studied the sumptuous bed and imagined what that mirror had once reflected – scenes like those depicted on the ceiling above, where gilt cartouches held pictures of gods and goddesses making love, a bearded Jupiter with dark, slanting eyes kneeling between the thighs of a full-breasted Juno.
‘Really? Well, I’m glad you had it taken down before I moved in. It would have made me very self-conscious.’
‘Oh, it came down years ago.’ His face had a sombre shadow across it. ‘I hope the room’s warm enough now. It was like a refrigerator a couple of days ago, but we’ve had a fire going since this morning and electric heaters, too.’
She walked over to the huge, carved white stone hearth in which a great pile of logs burned spitting resin and giving off a scent of pine. Holding out her cold hands, she sighed with pleasure as warmth invaded her for the first time since she had arrived. ‘Oh, that’s wonderful. Lovely to have a real fire, on a day like this. You’re very thoughtful.’
‘I wish I was a painter, to capture the firelight on your skin,’ Nico said. ‘It makes your skin almost transparent. I can see the blood moving through your veins.’ He walked over to a white, serpentine-fronted, dressing table in a corner of the room, the thin, elegant legs gilded, ending in tiny bird-like feet. He picked up a little pile of clothes that lay on it and came back to Laura. ‘Could you put these on now so that I can take a roll of film of you?’
Laura looked at the pale cream straw hat, a wreath of pink and yellow flowers around the base of the crown, the calf-length boots made of bronze leather, which had a fringe around the top, the thin gauze tunic.
‘That looks transparent!’
‘I’ve seen photos of you wearing less.’
She couldn’t deny it. ‘That was years ago, when I was a model.’
‘In a British film I saw, you wore just bra and panties! Black lacy ones, very sexy.’ His eyes were wicked; she couldn’t help giggling. ‘Oh, what you are wearing now is elegant …’ He stared at the jade green sweater, the warm, chocolate brown woollen pants. ‘But you’ll look gorgeous in this tunic. Please put it on. The Donatello David is naked – Renaissance statues generally are – and this tunic will show me the shape of your body.’
‘Yes,’ she said drily, but took the pile of clothes and looked around the room. ‘Is there a bathroom?’
He gestured to one of the long wall hangings. ‘Behind there. While you’re changing I’ll set up my tripod. First I’ll take a few Polaroids to check the lighting and background, then we’ll get down to work. Oh, yes. I nearly forgot – here’s Goliath’s head.’ He held out a string bag.
‘Well, at least it isn’t a real one!’ Laura said wryly. ‘I won’t be a minute.’
The bathroom was as ornate and spl
endid as the bedroom, and as chilly as a tomb. It had a high ceiling, an arched window, looking down on to a deserted back canal, a white marble floor and green marble walls. The free-standing bath was enamelled dark green with gilt taps, gilt legs and gilded lion’s feet.
An oil heater stood in one corner but it looked so old-fashioned that Laura was reluctant to switch it on in case it blew up, so she stripped off quickly, shivering, and put on the tunic, the boots and the hat.
When she went back. Nico was adjusting his camera on the tall tripod. He straightened to look round, eyes bright. ‘Ah … yes … perfect … Pity your hair isn’t longer, but never mind. Maybe it’s better short, to underline the symbolism.’
‘That bathroom is a morgue. After two minutes in there I feel like a corpse!’ Laura said, accusingly, and rushed over to stand in front of the hearth.
‘My God, if only I was a painter,’ Nico said, as he had earlier. He wandered over to her and put out a hand to smooth down the hem of the tiny tunic. His fingers lingered on her upper thigh for a second too long. ‘The firelight is making that tunic totally transparent – your body’s perfect. You look wonderful standing there with your Titian hair and those cat’s eyes spitting temper at me.’
‘It’s my cat’s claws you need to watch out for, if you touch me like that again,’ she warned him, but he merely smiled at her.
‘Film directors never come over to shift your position, when you’re working on set?’
‘Well, yes … but—’
‘And when you modelled, you never allowed the photographer to push you into poses?’
‘Is that what you were doing?’
He nodded. ‘Put this hand on your hip.’ He watched her, shook his head. ‘No, like this.’ He adjusted her wrist, then took the football out of its string bag, knelt down, lifted her right foot and placed it on the ball. ‘Yes, that’s about it. Now I want you to bend this left knee, hitch your right hip a little, camp it up – yes, that’s the look I want. Tilt your head slightly, half close your eyes, half smile, a sleepily triumphant look. Great. Now, don’t move.’
Deep and Silent Waters Page 20