‘She had no business bringing you in here! You shouldn’t have been left with a maid at all.’
‘Well, I was, that day. She didn’t notice what I was doing. I played with it for a while then pushed the rug back over it. It was some time before I realised exactly what I’d found. At the time it never occurred to me that my mother might know it was there. This house is full of secrets. There’s a staircase that leads up from the boat-house to the bedroom Laura is using. That was how my father’s visitors got up to his room without being seen.’
The Contessa rose to her full height, her face cold and forbidding. ‘Please leave my room, all of you. Niccolo, you forget your manners. You know I dislike my privacy being invaded.’
‘Why were you prying into Laura’s privacy, then?’ demanded Sebastian.
She didn’t look at him. ‘I was doing nothing of the kind.’
‘Oh, yes, Mamma,’ Niccolo said. ‘You were up here, peering down through this spyhole. Don’t bother to deny it.’
‘Why were you spying?’ insisted Sebastian.
‘I was not. I heard raised voices – it sounded like fighting. I was worried about my son, that’s all.’
Sebastian’s mouth twisted cynically. ‘Is that why you were watching Laura and me making love the afternoon she first arrived here?’
A spot of dark red flared up in her cheeks. ‘How dare you!’
Niccolo asked, ‘Did you watch my father through that spyhole?’
She shot him a furious look. ‘I am not discussing your father in front of them!’
‘But he wasn’t just my father, was he, Mamma? He was Sebastian’s father, too.’
Laura had suspected this, but it was still as big a shock as a volcano erupting. Sebastian was white-faced, rigid, like Lot’s wife frozen into a block of salt.
Laura put a hand to her mouth to stop herself from crying out and betraying her presence.
‘Gina and my father were lovers, weren’t they? And Sebastian is their child.’ Niccolo turned to look at Sebastian, his face grave. ‘I guessed long ago but I was sure when he came back and I saw him face to face. He and I are so alike. It was like looking into a mirror.’
‘No! You’re nothing like him! Nothing!’
Her son gazed at her with an expression of mixed pity, impatience and regret. ‘I’m sorry, Mamma, but it’s time to stop pretending, stop lying. You aren’t going to convince me. I have a mind of my own, I can do my own thinking. It’s all so long ago. What does it matter, anyway?’
‘The past always matters! The present springs from it,’ Sebastian said, and Niccolo looked at him quickly, his face mirroring his half-brother’s, thoughtful, interested. Watching them, Laura saw again how alike they were, not merely in body but in the creative mind of the artist, inventive, curious, speculative, capable of red-hot passion and cold theory.
‘Yes, of course.’ Looking back at his mother he said, ‘Gina had her baby just before you had me, didn’t she?’
Her face worked violently. ‘Yes, you know she did. I had such a bad time when you were born that I was ill afterwards, I had no milk, but she had milk enough for two. Those great breasts of hers were fountains of it. They took you away from me. I woke up and you were gone, and however much I cried and begged they wouldn’t give you back. They only let me see you once a day! I was your mother, but they kept you from me.’
‘That scene in Canfield’s book, where the wife’s baby is taken from her and given to her husband’s mistress? Is that where he got the idea for that? But how did he know? Who told him about it? He knew my father. Those descriptions of tapestries, rooms, paintings always seemed very familiar to me. Was the palazzo in the book based on Ca’ d’Angeli?’
‘Of course,’ Sebastian said, slowly. ‘And the love affair, the betrayal of the wife, the plot against her. That was you, wasn’t it, Contessa?’
She didn’t answer, her eyes black holes in space, empty and desolate.
‘So that’s why you hated the book so much!’ Niccolo was looking at her as if he had never seen his mother before. ‘Was it all true, the way Canfield wrote it? Did Papa and Gina conspire to get you married to Papa? All he had were the house and the works of art. He didn’t want to sell any of them – but although he loved them passionately he loved Gina, too, and she had no money, either.’
‘How on earth did Canfield know all that?’ asked Sebastian.
‘They were at school together, Gina and my mother and my aunt Olivia,’ said Niccolo. ‘She’s dead now, years ago, but the three of them were close friends when they were children. After the war my mother went to the same finishing school as my aunt, in Switzerland – the family photograph album is full of photos of them skiing together. That’s how my father and Gina knew you were going to inherit the Serrati fortune, Mamma. That’s what happened, isn’t it? They got Aunt Olivia to invite you to Ca’ d’Angeli, and Papa and your brother Carlo made some sort of deal.’
She laughed bitterly. ‘You make it sound so sensible, Niccolo. You left out Canfield. Oh, yes, he was in the conspiracy. He was obsessed with Machiavelli, you know. He wrote a book about him just after the war. Canfield enjoyed plotting, making things happen, playing with people’s lives as if they were puppets. I only saw later what a part he played in my own life. It wasn’t just spite or a love of conspiracy – he adored Gina, he was in love with her too. Maybe they’d been lovers.’
Sebastian shouted, ‘That’s a lie!’
‘How would you know?’ the Contessa threw at him. ‘She was my husband’s whore. She could have slept with half Venice for all you know! Throughout those years Canfield haunted this house. He had dinner here several nights a week.’
‘None of the books about him mention Ca’ d’Angeli.’
She shrugged. ‘How could they? I didn’t talk to any of the reporters and academics who tried to get in touch with me, so they left us out. I think one or two said he had briefly been a tutor to an Italian family but, again, by the time they wrote about that none of my family were alive, except me. There was nobody to tell them anything.’
‘Why didn’t you ever tell me?’ Niccolo demanded. ‘You knew how much I admired his work. I’d have been fascinated to discover he used to come here.’
‘I didn’t want to talk about him. I loathed the man. All my life I hated him, from when I was very small. And later, after I married your father, I hated him even more. They would all sit talking and drinking in the salon, after dinner …’
‘Talking about what?’ asked Niccolo. ‘Can you remember?’
‘Art, books, God knows, I never listened. I was usually told to go to bed, as if I was a child. Domenico would tell me I looked tired, didn’t Canfield agree? And Canfield would say I needed my beauty sleep – one of his little jokes, a double meaning he seemed to think I wouldn’t pick up, as if I couldn’t read the mockery in his face, the way he looked me up and down. He thought I was ugly, even as a child. I didn’t argue, my pride wouldn’t let me – but Antonio used to wait on them, and afterwards he would tell me everything they said.’
Niccolo’s face turned ashen as he listened, watching his mother with pity. ‘They all betrayed you, even your own brother.’
‘Carlo didn’t know about Gina. He thought it was an old-fashioned arranged marriage and he didn’t see what was wrong with that. He was an old-fashioned man and, anyway, he knew I loved your father, and if he suspected that Domenico didn’t love me, well, Carlo didn’t think that mattered, so long as I became a lady, one of the aristocracy, the mistress of a house like this. Don’t forget, our family was in trade – the upper class in Milan looked down on us even when they invited us to their parties because we were so rich. But once I was the Contessa d’Angeli I was in another bracket. It was our father’s dream come true.’
‘You brought money to the marriage and Papa brought class,’ Niccolo muttered. ‘A typical tradesman’s bargain.’
‘But your father wasn’t prepared to marry me until he was sure I had the factory and
the money. Only when Carlo was dead did he set a date for our wedding, and all that time he was living with Gina in America.’
Her son and Sebastian both stared fixedly at her.
She nodded, her mouth a thin line. ‘I only found out after my honeymoon when I got back here and found her in the house. Domenico said she was his housekeeper, but Antonio told me the truth. He owed his loyalty to me, not to your father. I brought him here from Milan. He and I had been through so much together – it was Antonio who helped me take care of my brother during his last, terrible illness. I needed Antonio then, I needed him even more, later, after my marriage. Without Antonio’s support I couldn’t have gone on living under this roof, knowing that my husband loved his mistress, not me.’
‘God, Mamma, why didn’t you throw her out the minute you knew?’
‘Domenico wouldn’t let me.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous, Mamma! You were his wife. You had every right to dismiss a servant.’
She laughed harshly. ‘In theory, yes, but with my husband on her side, what could I do? Oh, I threatened to sack her, but he said if I told her to go they would both leave. I would be shamed in front of all Venice. A laughing-stock. The new bride deserted for the daughter of a grocer! The whole of Venice already knew, of course. They were waiting, watching, to see how I would deal with it – and all I could think of doing was to pretend I had no idea, play deaf at parties, ignore the whispers, the secret mockery, the smiles and gleeful eyes. How do you think I felt?’
‘I don’t know how you could bear it, Mamma,’ Niccolo said.
‘It was like wearing a hair vest. At first it chafed and was agonising, but in the end it became almost an obsession. When I discovered the mechanism in the floor that let me watch them, I couldn’t stop myself doing so every night. In the summer, they slept naked without a cover, and I could see … everything … everything they did. I don’t think Domenico knew about the eye in the ceiling, or else he had forgotten it. He came up here only rarely. He hated sharing my bed. He only did it in the hope of getting a child. They never seemed to sense they were being watched. I could listen to what they were saying, find out their plans, hear just what they thought of me, watch them caressing, kissing, doing it …’
‘Stop it, Mamma! That’s enough! I don’t want to hear!’
She ignored him. ‘I prayed I would become pregnant, because I hoped that if I had his child Domenico might turn to me at last, but then she was pregnant. I was bewildered when she suddenly married the gardener. I couldn’t guess at first why she did it. After all, it was Gina who really ran this house. Gina was the hostess at dinner parties, garden parties, lunch. She wore fabulous, expensive clothes he bought for her. With my money! Not to mention the jewels! I was left in the background, and Venice pretended politely that I didn’t exist. When she married, Domenico gave them an apartment in the palazzo, but she went on sleeping with him, not her husband, and that was when I knew she was pregnant. She was about four months gone and I saw her walking about naked in the bedroom down there. Her swelling belly was obvious. I nearly went out of my mind with jealousy and rage. I broke some valuable glass in here – it was all over the floor, great jagged splinters of it. I felt they had gone into my head, into my heart.’
Niccolo put an arm round her plump shoulders, said awkwardly, ‘Mamma, poor Mamma, it must have been so terrible.’
She leant on him and sighed. ‘You can’t imagine! And then a month after I found out she was pregnant, I discovered I was going to have a child, too. I hoped I’d get Domenico back, but it was too late. Her son was born first and it was him Domenico loved, never you.’
‘That isn’t true!’ Niccolo’s arm dropped and he moved away from her. ‘Papa loved me! I know he did!’
‘Not the way he loved her son!’ She shot a bitter look in Sebastian’s direction.
He had listened in silence, his face grim.
The Contessa spat out, ‘He hated knowing that his first-born was known as another man’s child, was thought of as a gardener’s son, a peasant. He brooded on it all the time. Then one day he told me he was going to adopt Sebastian, change his will, leave everything equally divided between the two of you.’
Sebastian drew a harsh breath.
‘I couldn’t let that happen,’ the Contessa ground out. ‘He wasn’t taking my money to give to Gina’s child! He told me if I tried to stop him he would turn me out of Ca’ d’Angeli, said he would get a papal annulment. He had a dozen highly placed relatives in the Church who would help him get one, on some trumped-up reason. Then he would marry her and make their son legitimate.’ She looked pleadingly at her own son. ‘I couldn’t let him do that to you. You see that, don’t you?’
‘So you killed them,’ Sebastian said.
Niccolo’s head swung towards him. ‘What?’
‘My mother and our father – don’t you see? She killed them. I don’t know how she did it, but I’ve suspected for a long time that their deaths weren’t an accident. My assistant went through the newspaper files, talked to the police and was certain their deaths were never seriously investigated. And I met an old man in Venice one day, last August, who recognised me from when I was a child. He told me he had worked at Ca’ d’Angeli at the time my father died, and all the servants believed it wasn’t an accident. They were all sure it was murder.’
‘Servants’ gossip,’ said the Contessa. ‘You can’t take notice of what they say.’
‘You just said that Antonio always knew what was going on!’
She changed tack. ‘I was here all the time – you know that, you saw me yourself. You were outside, you looked up at me, at the window.’
‘You may not have done it yourself, but you planned their deaths. You paid someone to kill them.’
She laughed hoarsely, her face ugly now. ‘Prove it! Go on, find some proof. You try. It’s too many years ago. There were no witnesses then, there are no witnesses now. You can’t prove anything.’
For the last few minutes Niccolo had been silent, his eyes fixed on his mother’s face. Now he said, very quietly, ‘Did you kill my father, Mamma?’
Her dark eyes flicked to him warily. ‘Don’t take any notice of him. He hates me, hates us both. He’d say anything to hurt us. Ignore him. We should never have had him in this house, I told you that, but you would invite him, and see what has happened! He’s a jinx. His wife jumped out of a window, then that woman he called his secretary but who was his mistress once, she jumped out of the window upstairs. Don’t you think that’s a strange coincidence? Two women dying in the same way? He’s the murderer, not me!’
Niccolo leant on the back of a red-velvet-covered armchair. ‘You were here that day, Mamma, but Antonio wasn’t. He was out doing the marketing. In the old launch. You see, I remember that whole day very clearly.’
‘Niccolo, don’t let him come between us! He’s his mother’s child! She was the same – she came between me and your father and—’
He interrupted her. ‘I loved my father, his death was the worst thing that ever happened to me. I found the old launch, years ago, in the boat-house. The side was stove in, dented and scratched, as if it had hit something very hard. It hadn’t been used for years, but I remembered Antonio setting out in it that day to go to market. I had watched him leave and then, half an hour later, I watched Papa and Gina go.’
‘No, Niccolo, Antonio had had an accident a week before. The boat was waiting to be mended when your father was killed. He wasn’t using it that week. He did the marketing on foot. It’s all in the police records – check them!’
‘I don’t believe you. You had my father murdered.’ Niccolo’s face had turned bone white.
‘No!’ She clung to his arm, desperation in her eyes. ‘Niccolo, think what they did to me – what they were going to do to you! They both deserved to die.’
He pushed down her hands and stepped away, face cold. ‘No. If you had left him, forced an annulment on him, I could understand that. He deserved it. But mur
der? That’s something else. I don’t want you under my roof any more, Mamma. Or Antonio. You can both leave tomorrow. You can find yourself a nice villa by the sea, but stay away from Venice in future. I never want to see you again.’
The Contessa staggered as if she might fall, tried to grab hold of her son but he took another step away.
‘Niccolo …’ She held out a hand. ‘You can’t do this to me! You can’t turn me out of my home after all these years!’
‘You’re a murderer. What I should do is call the police, but I won’t, because I don’t want all the trouble it would cause. But I can’t go on sharing a house with my father’s killer. I’d never feel safe again.’
Her voice rose almost to a shriek. ‘I won’t go! You can’t make me!’
‘I can, and I will.’
They stared at each other, oddly alike in that long moment: obstinacy and tenacity in both faces.
Sebastian turned and began to walk to the door. The Contessa screamed after him, ‘You’re to blame for all this – you and that bitch you brought under my roof, that whore, your whore, with her red hair and those sly eyes. I know what you see in her – she’s the image of your mother, that slut Gina. Do you know she’s been at it with my son? I’ve seen them, watched them, seen Niccolo touching her, naked, his hands all over her—’
Sebastian left the room and shut the door. Laura was leaning on the wall outside, her face wet with tears. He picked her up and carried her down to her room, under the curious eyes of the film crew. There, he put her into the bed and sat down beside her, still holding her.
‘Poor woman,’ she whispered, her arms round his neck. ‘Oh, Sebastian, that poor woman.’
‘The Contessa?’ His face was flinty, closed to all pity. ‘Laura, she’s a murderess! She killed my mother and father. Don’t waste your sympathy on her. You heard what she just said about you, all that sick stuff about you and Niccolo! Or was it true? Was it, Laura?’
Deep and Silent Waters Page 32