I found Liya in the foyer searching for me with a worried frown. By the bronze entry doors, guests were making their bows and curtsies to the Savio, who stood with a weary-looking Angeletto. No one paid me the slightest attention. Except Liya. My wife made a quick inspection of my person and her dark eyes peered intently into mine. “Where have you been?” she whispered. “What happened?”
I brushed a stray hair from her neck and bent to her ear. “It’s best told at home.”
My wife grabbed the lace at my wrist. “Tito, this is blood!” she exclaimed, still in a whisper. “And your shirt!” To her credit, she didn’t immediately attempt to unbutton my jacket. She merely stated, “I’ll find Annetta and Gussie—then we go.”
I nodded, feeling like a weight had been lifted from my shoulders. But I had one more duty to perform. “I must say goodnight to Maestro Torani.”
As Liya hurried off, I stepped into the salon and scanned the diminishing crowd for Torani’s hawk-nosed profile. I didn’t see him, but I did spy Tedi’s delphinium blue. She and another singer were in deep conversation by the harpsichord. Tedi seemed to sense my stare. She turned and our gazes met across the space grown smoke-hazy from hundreds of burning tapers.
Torani? I silently mouthed, injecting a question into my expression.
Tedi shrugged her shoulders and made a vague gesture towards the tables. I hurried into the banqueting hall but saw only a few stragglers clinking their spoons to scrape the last of their ices from crystal bowls. Along the wall, a quartet of footmen waited to clear the table with silver trays. Thinking back, I realized that I hadn’t seen the maestro since I’d huffed away directly after Oriana had sung her pieces. That was at least thirty minutes ago.
I rubbed my chest, which was aching under the clumsy bandage. Torani wasn’t in the salon or banqueting hall. Had the old man gone in search of the water closet? He could have passed unseen while I was talking with Liya.
I’d just stepped out of the salon when chaos was unleashed.
Carlito ran into the crowded foyer, yelling incomprehensively, his rounded features distorted by fright. In one hand, he waved an empty silver salver. With every bound, the tail of his powdered wig bounced on his shoulders.
Signor Passoni met the boy on the fly, caught him in mid-bound, and gave his shoulders a rough shake. For a moment, I thought the Savio was going to slap him. “What do you mean by this display?” he cried.
The remaining guests pressed in, alarmed and curious. I was dimly aware of Maria Luisa rushing to her brother’s side. Where had she been all evening? I’d barely seen her.
Carlito’s cheeks had been drained as pale as ivory; his freckles stood out like spots of mud. “The old maestro. In the card room. He is dead.”
Chapter Eleven
Torani—more than merely dead.
He’d been murdered. Murdered!
The word drummed in my head as I stared down at the maestro’s lifeless body on the floor of the card room where I had so recently faced my own end. A wave of grief inundated me. A sharp grief of the kind I hadn’t known since my sister Grisella had met her terrible death.
Torani lay on his stomach, neck twisted to show the profile of his razor-sharp jaw jutting up at an acute angle, curving nose, and one rheumy eye staring at…nothing. Shafts of light from several branching candelabra shone on his bare, shiny skull and made a melting glow of the dark red blood seeping onto the terrazzo floor. I gulped back tears at the sight.
Tedi was kneeling beside the body on an island of blue skirts. She rocked back and forth, emitting desolate whimpers of distress. Tears also welled unshed in her eyes. I wanted those tears to flow, for me and for her. I sank down, reached for her hand. It lay limp in mine.
“Tedi, Tedi,” I soothed. And then, squeezing her fingers. “When did he leave you? Did he go to meet someone?”
The grieving soprano appeared deaf to my questions. She was dazedly asking and answering her own: “How is this possible? It’s not—it’s totally impossible—it makes no sense.” She removed her hand from mine and wiped the tears that finally began to flow. “Why did I let the fool wander off alone? Because our troubles were over, that’s why—we had nothing to fear.”
Nothing to fear? This was the third time an anonymous villain had caused harm to Maestro Torani. This time, the ultimate harm. What did Liya always say—the third time seals the charm? I felt a mad laugh rising up my windpipe.
Swallowing hard, I looked up at Signor Passoni. He stood a few feet away, still clutching Carlito’s collar in his bony fist. The footman stared at me with aching eyes, and then dipped his chin to the floor.
Candlelight glinted off the Savio’s emerald ring as he released Carlito, underscoring the authority and power concentrated in that aristocratic hand. The Savio’s usually pleasant, cultured expression had turned as craggy as the Dolomite cliffs. Venice’s most revered opera director had been cruelly struck down within the confines of his ancestral palazzo, and he was taking it hard.
Passoni announced, to no one in particular, “I’ve summoned Messer Grande.”
I was dimly aware of people edging into the room from the narrow passageway. There were murmurs, gasps, and the rustle of silk skirts. Oriana hastened to coax Tedi away from Torani’s body. The soprano’s tears became a flood as her friend embraced her. Balbi patted Tedi’s shoulder awkwardly. He and a few other musicians murmured words of disbelief, then comfort. Rocatti stood by himself, one hand squeezing the curved back of the sofa, staring down at Maestro Torani’s body with opaque slate grey eyes. My family was suddenly there, hovering over me without speaking. Then people I barely knew crept in, people I hadn’t even spoken to during the evening.
The only noticeable absences were Angeletto and Maria Luisa. Were they displaying a marked degree of tact? Or had Maria Luisa dragged her brother away so that he would not be exposed to any taint of unpleasantness?
The room had grown quite crowded when Signora Passoni finally pushed through. For once it was Beatrice glued to her side instead of Franco—the flitting yellow bird was now sheltering under mama’s wing.
“Arcangelo, what has happened here?” the signora asked her husband. He ignored her. Instead of repeating her question, she turned to beam compassion upon our miserable tableau. I was too dismayed to take any comfort from it.
The Savio addressed me with grim determination. “Signor Amato, I must ask you to remove your jacket.”
I rose slowly. My grief surrendered to a mounting sense of horror. I was a suspect! Of course, Carlito had been forced to tell his master about my injury. I unbuttoned my jacket, shrugged out of it, and removed my waistcoat for good measure. What else could I do?
An ascending arpeggio of sharp, indrawn breaths ran around the room when I revealed the torn linen shirt flecked with blood and stained rosy pink where I’d tried to cleanse it.
Liya pressed herself to my side with a little moan. Annetta was suddenly on the other, and both women wrapped me a protective embrace. Gussie’s blue eyes were aflame. He took a step forward and addressed the Savio hoarsely: “Excellency, with respect, you can’t mean to accuse Tito.”
Passoni gestured toward Torani’s body with a scoop of his long hand. “I see before me one man bloodied and one man covered in blood. What else can I make of it?”
“Hardly covered.” Liya fumbled with my shirt ties. Frustrated in her efforts, she tore the fabric farther. “Look, Tito has been wounded. He’s bled through this bandage and onto his shirt. He just needs to tell us what’s happened.”
Passoni glanced at her sharply. “I’m giving Tito the opportunity to explain himself. If he can well and good, if not I’ll be forced to think the worst.”
With a nod, Gussie echoed Liya. “Just tell us what happened, Tito.”
Everyone peered at me with expectant gazes. Many leaned forward encouragingly; a few held back, smirking suspiciously.
“I was attacked,” I said evenly, raising my voice. “This is my own blood that you see.” “Attacked by Maestro Torani?” The Savio stiffened. “The very idea affronts me.”
“No, not by the maestro…not at all.…” I stammered. “By…someone else.” I quickly unwound the cloth that bound my chest, revealing a thin, angry red line, still seeping in places. “I fought with…another man. Right here in this room. He attacked me with a stiletto. I managed to bloody his brow before he escaped.”
Beatrice had left her mother and sidled over to stand behind her father. She looked white and frightened. Her pleading gaze drilled into me with palpable force. I drew a deep breath, frozen in indecision.
Telling the entire truth about my fight with Grillo would drag a young woman’s name through the dirt. In Venice, married women who’d produced several children had a great degree of latitude. Fidelity had been out of fashion for decades. A man and his wife might attend funerals, christenings, and formal entertainments in tandem, and then pretend not to know each other when they met at the Ridotto with their respective lovers. The situation was quite different for unmarried girls. If they weren’t convent educated, they were kept close at home, virginal and untouched. Many an advantageous betrothal had been scuttled by scandal.
How much could I tell without utterly destroying Beatrice’s reputation?
“Who?” the Savio barked. “Who was this mystery assailant? And where is he now?”
“He left by the open window, right there.” I pointed. “Take a look. You’ll see a broken pot that he knocked over as he ran away.”
I was almost surprised that the Savio did as I asked. He crossed the floor, and his head and shoulders disappeared through the casement. The moon had moved on in its arc across the sky; it would take a moment for Passoni’s eyes to adjust to the darkness. I intended to put that valuable moment to wise use.
Steeling myself, I studied the maestro’s earthly shell. He’d been struck on the head, perhaps while sitting in the overturned chair beside the tripod table. The fragile, old man’s skin over his visible cheek and brow was abraded in several places, but it was obvious that one violent blow to the opposite temple had delivered the fatal injury. It looked to have swooped down from above and behind.
I extended my gaze. The chair was on its side, a few feet away, but the tripod table was upright with its pack of cards stacked in a neat rectangle and the candle stand I’d used to brain Grillo standing innocently by with burning candle in place. Had I righted the table before I’d left the room? Yes, I thought so. The candle stand? I wasn’t sure where it had landed. But I hadn’t stooped to pick up the scattered cards. I was certain of that much.
One more thing. When Grillo had leapt through the window, his green cloak had been draped over the chair’s back. Now the cloak was gone.
Signor Passoni had pushed away from the window embrasure to address the room. His face had softened a bit. “I see the overturned rose tree, and I agree that it was upright before the reception. I took a turn in the garden, and I would surely have noticed it down. Now—” He crossed his arms. “Who did you fight with, Tito? I require a straightforward answer.”
After one more glance at Beatrice’s tight face, I took a moment to straighten the remnants of my shirt. Then I raised my chin and looked the Savio in the eye. “The fight was my own affair. Nothing that had anything to do with Maestro Torani.”
“You refuse to give me the man’s name?” Passoni’s tone was incredulous. How dare I thwart a member of the Doge’s inner council?
“That’s right. I refuse.” I felt Liya squeeze my arm. Hard.
Then the Savio did something that made my stomach roil worse than my old opening-night jitters: he smiled. “All right,” he said. “Be obstinate with me if you wish. Here is someone who knows how to make a man beg to cooperate.”
I looked over my shoulder. Messer Grande stood in the doorway. Swathed in his red robe of office, tricorne brim pinned up with a red and gold rosette, medal of San Marco hanging from a ribbon around his neck, Venice’s preeminent officer of the law had never appeared less amiable or more official. A pair of uniformed sbirri at his back amplified his majesty. Without a word spoken or order given, the crowd in the room shuffled back toward the walls.
Messer Grande—in the present circumstances, I found it impossible to think of him as Andrea—moved to scrutinize the corpse. First he stared down from his six-foot height, then he knelt, his wide sleeves making a great sweep of scarlet. With one stiff forefinger, he raised Torani’s poor old head, took a long look, and lowered it with a gentle sigh. Then he probed the maestro’s clothing. From the brocade waistcoat, he withdrew a handsome watch attached to an embroidered fob; from the inside jacket pocket, a snuffbox and a purse that appeared as thin as an apple stamped by a horse’s hoof. He passed all three to a waiting constable.
Messer Grande spoke only once. “Where is Maestro Torani’s wig?”
A flurry of searching turned up his formal powdered wig among the pillows on the low sofa. Its curls were crushed, but I could detect no blood from where I stood.
Messer Grande turned it over and over in his hands, but his impassive expression gave no hint of his conclusions.
After a moment, he addressed the Savio, “Direct your major domo to cover this man, then clear the room. Your guests will await me in the salon.”
***
One of Messer Grande’s sbirri conducted me to the Savio’s study, where I spent a long, lonely hour in anxious thought, acutely aware of the constable stationed right outside the open door. At least throwing myself into the Savio’s chair and grinding my plebian heels into his patrician footstool gave me a fleeting morsel of reprisal against his baseless, but understandable, suspicions.
But I was soon prey to a host of warring emotions: grief, bitterness, anger, and—slashing like a sharp-edged sword—regret.
It was hard to imagine the Teatro San Marco without Torani’s guiding hand. Hard to imagine how I’d go on. I’d been dancing to his tune for so long, I wasn’t altogether certain I even had my own tune to dance to. I recalled the day I’d first entered the opera house. It had been called the Teatro San Stefano then, and belonged to a reprobate nobleman instead of to the Republic. I’d crept in the stage door, a shy, reluctant castrato with more technique than art, and found Maestro Torani mediating an argument between two of the fieriest female sopranos who ever trod the boards.
My mentor had seemed old even then. Not decrepit, but aged with experience and steeped in the joy of making music. From the beginning of our collaboration, he’d devoted himself to pushing me toward the pinnacle of vocal artistry. He demanded that each performance be better than the night before. Together we analyzed my faults, experimented with new technique, and practiced, practiced, practiced in a constant quest for perfection.
When I came offstage after curtain calls—exhilarated, spent—he’d be waiting in the first wing to gather me into his arms no matter how my performance had gone. In many ways he’d been more of a father to me than Isidore Amato, the cold, unyielding man whose blood ran through my veins.
Now Torani was gone. And the last emotion I’d felt in his presence was anger. I cradled my head in my hands, elbows on knees. If only we hadn’t parted in that manner. If only I’d had one more chance to talk with him—to express my frustration and come to an understanding. I shook my head. We don’t choose the hour of our death—God disposes in that as in all things. But why, oh why, couldn’t life have ended better for the old man?
Ambitious, passionate, and without family, Torani had come to see Venice’s leading opera company as his monument to history—instead of leaving a son to carry on his name and work, he would leave the Teatro San Marco to delight our countrymen for generations. He had suffered the theater’s recent reverses keenly, and he’d died without knowing whether The False Duke would be the success that would save the San Mar
co from ruin.
I sank back against the soft upholstery. The regular ticking of the desk clock filled the room, seeming to grow louder with each second. Feeling closed in by the Savio’s books and models, I forced myself to consider the murder itself.
Had The False Duke killed Torani? I asked myself with a sigh.
Venice, already hectic with carnival preparations, was buzzing about Angeletto and the revolutionary opera he would star in. Promenading on the Riva or the Broglio, or hobnobbing in the coffee houses, you rarely heard talk of the Teatro Grimani’s Venus and Adonis. Unless someone happened to speculate that Emiliano, their primo uomo, would be so completely trounced by Angeletto’s performance that he’d pack his bags and slink away to the mainland with his tail between his legs. Was Caprioli so desperate to prevent a San Marco triumph that his intimidation had escalated to murder?
Caprioli wouldn’t commit the deed himself—I knew a physical coward when I encountered one. But Scarface or another of his bravos could have slipped through the garden and climbed through the open window as easily as Grillo. My train of thought skidded to a halt, reined in by the memory of that scoundrel’s face at the window: the face of a man without pity or scruple. Grillo!
I jumped up and began to pace the study. Twelve steps to the edge of the Persian carpet, then back again. Messer Grande’s man stuck his head in the door, alarmed at the sound of sudden activity.
“I’m thinking,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. “I walk when I think.”
He shrugged and returned to his post.
If, as I suspected, Grillo was in Caprioli’s pay to spread rumors about Angeletto’s sex, then why couldn’t Caprioli have also hired the libertine to kill Torani. Grillo wouldn’t have put Torani on his guard nearly as much as Scarface. Grillo could have easily returned to the card room once I’d left and summoned Torani, perhaps by the same method that he’d used to tempt Beatrice. After some desultory talk, Grillo could have struck the unsuspecting old man, and absconded. Only this time, Grillo hadn’t forgotten to take his green cloak with him.
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