“Might I borrow it a few minutes while I’m downstairs?”
“I’ve got another pair,” she said with a shrug. “You can keep it.”
A glance in the mirror with the pince-nez on told Addison he’d now added another level of disguise.
Diane’s floor plan had been accurate, and he moved from drawing room to drawing room before he finally espied the stalwart back of the blackguard. He stopped dead, wondering what next when he heard the Comtesse to his left say, “Here’s my cousin now.”
She half stood from out of a fauteuil next to a double window. In front of the windows was a loveseat, and in it was—well, it was her, wasn’t it? Alone on the sofa, dressed in cobalt blue with a light veil lifted aside from her face onto a small grey cap.
“Come meet a countrywoman of ours also visiting Venice,” Diane said, making a funny face at him because, he was certain, of the glasses he wore. “My cousin is rather bookish and hopelessly shy, which really won’t do in Venice,” she said to the Marchioness. “But then he is young and completely unaccustomed to our manners on the Continent.”
“My pleasure.” Addison was certain the Marchioness would recognize him as he half bowed to take her hand in its pale blue lacework glove. From this close she looked different, more free somehow, more relaxed certainly, and yet it was her. They’d meet and then what? “Lady…?” He turned to the Comtesse for a hint.
“Mrs. Smith,” the Marchioness said.
“Mrs. Smith.”
“Mrs. Smith is staying here at Ca’ Inginieri, but was just retiring for the afternoon,” Diane said. “Please don’t let us hinder you.”
The Marchioness stood up, and her blackguard suddenly moved in to accompany her, throwing a half-questioning, half-disdainful glance at Addison, who turned toward the Comtesse and affected not to know him or to notice he’d been the focus of his observation.
They waited until the two were out of sight, then Diane said. “It was her. I only met her once, but I’m certain.”
“It was definitely her. But do you think she knew it was me?”
“You’re joking. I barely knew it was you!” she said with a laugh. She led them to a floor-length pier glass built into one wall.
“Look for yourself. With those—don’t they call them peepers in America—you are completely changed somehow.”
He bussed her soft cheek, watching himself in the glass as he did so. He looked like no Addison he’d ever seen before, or had ever expected to see. “Mrs Smith” would have had to be a brilliant detective to recognize Lord R.’s security man from England.
“So now,” Diane asked as they went over to the grand staircase where the luncheon party was finishing itself in departures, “now, are you content? Can you now report back to your lord that you have tracked down his traveling distaff?”
“Completely.” Addison didn’t totally lie. “But now I’m wondering how in the world I could possibly begin to thank you. Do any ideas come to mind?”
19 October 188—
Palazzo Di Moderi, Calle Guardi
Venice, Italy
My Lord,
You will, I hope, be gratified to learn at long last that conversance has been achieved between myself as your agent and Her Ladyship! She did not appear at all to have made the connexion between the surly fellow in black garb who was on guard at the wedding festivities in Cumbria and this more colourful figure that I cut in demi-disguise. Nor did I in any manner allow her to do so, thinking it still imprudent.
The scene was an afternoon luncheon at a local Palazzo attended by various British of high birth and their assorted companions. Not that Her L-ship was in any way on display. To the contrary, she was virtually hidden and had to be sought out. Your—and now my own—resourceful friend, the Comtesse, provided the means for that. It was but the briefest of connexions. How to get closer for a longer amount of time remains the problem. Her Cerberus was only a yard distant, as usual. Getting him separated further or for good is the next logical step. I am not yet decided of which means to invoke in doing so.
As you can infer, My Lord, our nets slowly enclose them.
Yr. Servant
Addison Grimmins
✥ ✥ ✥
It was almost bedtime when Luca tapped on his chamber door. “He goes out soon, as I told you. Again. We follow now? You and I?”
“Since you insist,” Addison said, quickly dressing for the outdoors in darker and heavier clothing. It had been another sparkling beautiful day in the city, but just before sunset, a large storm cloud had moved in, hovering over the nearby streets. Suddenly, it began precipitating. He hugged himself more closely within his heavy mariner’s coat, and Luca, ever the native, rewrapped the woollen scarf Addison had thrown to him more closely around his neck and shoulders.
One of Luca’s relations was their awaiting gondolier, and his craft was a slender bullet of a boat, moving so rapidly Luca barely had time to ring a bell in warning whenever they approached or crossed another canal as they must do at night to avoid collisions.
In mere minutes, they were at the Ca’ Inginieri, and another relation, seeing them slip into place at a wall-pier across from the palazzo, held up five fingers to Luca and then added two more.
“He comes out in seven minutes,” Luca whispered.
“He is that regular?”
“He does it every night.”
Addison lifted out his pointer; the little fob watch read ten minutes past midnight. He watched the minutes pass, and in time heard the tinkle of the bell on Luca’s relation’s gondola. Out of the shadowy palazzo doorway stepped the blackguard, tall, dressed in black, and moving rapidly.
He spoke Italian in too low a voice for them to hear, but he quickly got in the other gondola, and Luca’s relation was already poling them into the centre of the canal.
His own gondolier waited until they were just in sight, and then he poled them out in deeper water where he would make less noise and be less conspicuous. As they followed, Luca hung over the front, a partly shaded lantern in hand.
Although he carefully noted every turn, Addison was soon lost. The other craft’s own orange-gold half-light ahead was often obscured by sudden mists, and once by two other larger craft crossing in between. At times, his gondolier suddenly stopped and listened, after which he would furiously pole them ahead. From one side or the other, they would hear two or three people laughing in darkness, or someone moaning from some dim alleyway, whether with pain or pleasure was never clear.
Whenever they would stop, he heard water splashing against one unknown object or another from one indistinguishable source or another. As they sped along, the walls danced in reflections, rising and declining in little wavelets. Eventually the canals they entered became narrower and longer, and the light in the gondola ahead drew steadier, even as sudden sheets of fog dropped to enclose them so as to not allow them to see a foot around.
His boatman stopped suddenly, and they heard a scraping of the side of the other boat’s bowhead against a wall.
“Now!” Luca said, and their boatman guided them into a wall with a half stairway up.
“On foot now!” Luca said, leaping out and up. He turned and threw a hand down to Addison.
Ahead of them, the figure got out of the gondola and said something.
“He wants my friend to wait for him,” Luca said. They heard coins clanging onto the gondola’s flat wooden bottom.
Luca kept himself close to the walls, mostly because there was sporadic light from building entryways and even at one corner a duo of what looked like carriage lanterns from an earlier, more ornate century fixed atop twelve-foot poles driven into the ground. Two cats squalled ahead and then screeched as the shadow Addison and Luca followed either trod upon or kicked them. They heard him mutter dark imprecations. Ahead they could make out the calls and responding replies of small groups of revellers, but before they could reach this canal, they split off at a tangent and he heard them celebrating deep into another via.
/> The blackguard stopped ahead. Addison could see his figure clearly now. Stopped, looking ahead.
“Where are we?” he asked Luca in a whisper.
“You see that arch and gate? This leads into Il Ghetto.”
“Which is what?”
“Where the Papa meant for the Jews-people to live.”
“The Papa? Oh! You mean the Pope! As exiles? For their safety? Or what?”
Luca shrugged. “All, perhaps.”
“He comes here every night?”
“Every night.”
“He meets a woman here? A Jewess?”
Luca shrugged. “No. He stands. Then he goes back.”
So he did again. He stood for maybe ten minutes, then rushed back to his gondola, taking the boatman by surprise. He shouted at him to wake up and return him to the palazzo.
The boat swept past and Addison caught a glimpse of the big man’s face, half covered by his own large hand, facing down into the gondola’s bottom, in anguish or… Addison didn’t know what, but clearly disturbed within the light of the gondola’s lantern. Then it was gone.
“He returns now?” Addison asked.
“Every night,” Luca said once more.
Well. It was a mystery. But mysteries required solutions.
“Remain here!” Addison walked slowly ahead until he’d reached the very spot where the blackguard had stood. Ahead was the arch with some lettered inscription in Latin, which he could not read, and also in what he recognized as Hebrew. It looked like an ordinary street within the gate, with four- and five-storey buildings on either side and occasional street lamps, all of it vacant of life and gleaming wet. A few windows with grilles looked out directly to the canal, all of them unlighted. What could possibly be here, to draw the man night after night?
Whatever it was, this forlorn site did provide a potential spot for mayhem, whether mere assault or more. He wasn’t certain whether he could depend upon Luca for anything like that. He rather suspected not. But surely the man would know of some—bravos, Diane called them—to put the fellow out of commission, in hospital at the least. Would the Marchioness then remain huddled in the palazzo? No, she had to come out sometime, and that’s when she could be snatched.
He had turned around slowly during these ruminations and was walking away from the ghetto arch when his olfactory sense was suddenly alerted to a new aroma. Well, not so new, as not unfamiliar. Once it had been familiar by association, and not to him directly but to someone he’d once encountered. Who?
He followed it through the mist into a short via that dead-ended away from the ghetto arch. He found himself in front of a shoddy tenement, but the smell was gone. Then the doorway opened and two thin women came out, wretchedly clothed and poorly shod, all but clasping each other to stay erect. Not women of the night, but as they passed him, the aroma from before did too, wafting off their clothing, as though soaked into it. And now it was the unmistakeable dragon curling incense of Chinese opium! The Cerberus must know someone who—or wait! No, he must himself be an opium addict!
23 October 188—
Answer: Post Restante
Venice, Italy
My Lord,
They are gone, all three of them, and I must guess where to!
Surely they debarked in darkness and by very late or very early hours, because not myself nor my confederates witnessed them leave. My layabout lad for hire came much in use here and earned his pay well. We went about the railroad yards, such as they are, and there, by simple bribery, obtained a direction and time of departure. We go now after them, awaiting a train upon the other shore of Venice and then across the great valley of the River Po. These trains and stations are so small, it will be easy to follow them. Few but local people travel on such small trains, and the three must be conspicuous.
But the fewer travellers here means I should be better able to take advantage of the blackguard’s first moment off guard to remove him from the equation altogether.
This I promise to do as soon as can be done. I still await the fate of the Lady herself. Does your continued silence on this important matter mean that you are yourself not yet decided, My Lord? Or is it rather that you await the tenor of politics within London to decide you?
Yr Servant
Addison Grimmins.
✥ ✥ ✥
He wondered, of course, if he had gone too far in that most recent missive back to Whitehall. But for his peace of mind, never mind his further activity in the matter, he needed to know exactly where he stood and what Lord R.’s intentions actually were. More than once, he’d been complimented to others of Lord R.’s employ as being one who “follows my intentions to the letter.” Well, wasn’t this now exactly what he did not possess, Lord R.’s intention to the letter? He’d been told to follow after Her Ladyship and find her. He had done so, and although she had moved on to this other town, he was certain he’d have her again within an arm’s reach. But where was the letter with Lord R.’s intentions?
The small train, which would be called a “milk train,” brought him and Luca to a terminus at Florence. Addison’s farewell to Diane, Le Comtesse, took place late at night in her boudoir, after which he’d slipped out and into his own chamber. There he had packed, including those few pieces of the count’s clothing he worn that she’d insisted he take as mementoes, and there he’d set his pointer to repeat quite early, letting the Italian sleep on the carpet in front of his bed. As Addison supposed most younger men did here, Luca awakened rather early and had them and their bags out of the palazzo and into a relation’s gondola in minutes. The gondola to the railroad yard, and then on to the train.
Nor was he surprised when Luca said, “I come also.”
“You’re certain?”
“There, too, Luca has famiglia. And large aid to Sir Grimmins.”
“I’m no sir, Luca. But of course, you are useful and welcome.” So he secured another rail ticket for what passed for first class on the dinky little four-car train. Luca once more proved his use by slipping away while the compartment was being filled, and returning with another relation who had a wicker basket containing little cups he filled with macchiato, and napkins he wrapped around some sort of warm bread containing ham and cheese.
The pottery was handed back out as the little steam locomotive started up with a jerk and slowly pulled away. It would do that a score of times in what didn’t even pass for a town before Addison lost count. Luca meanwhile slept the sleep he’d missed and then some.
Addison tried to do the same, but he had a two-day-old, single-sheet newspaper that served the British and American community that he’d snatched out from under a diner at a restaurant last night. He’d read a headline, “Government Trembles.” He waited until he had all of his faculties, and then today on the train, he read with some but without full understanding, he had to admit, but with some foreboding. It was all about the “current occupants of Ten Downing Street, Whitehall,” and some other office he was unfamiliar with being “on the alert for a vote of no-confidence being bruited about in the House of Commons. With the Peers remaining aloof when not actually indifferent.” The reason for all this was assumed to the reader, but never specifically given, so he wasn’t able to follow very well, knowing so few of the names involved.
What he could do was go to the Thos. Cook & Son office in Florence immediately upon arrival and get updated news, a better understanding—if possible—and as much in the way of Lord R.’s available or already wired in-funds as he could in the event the governmental “trembling” turned into shakes, and worse, into an actual earthquake that tumbled them all. Although being with Diane he’d been able to hold on to his usual weekly cash allotment, he had no intention of having to do without it while several thousand miles from the paymaster in the City of Westminster.
Those thoughts, however, were soon surpassed by the countryside outside the train’s windows, which was remarkably varied and quite beautiful. Every little farm house or stable yard or grain barn was picture
sque to some extent. The landscape itself changed from coastal villages to little cisalpine towns and then into a broad alluvial plain where numberless dark specks on a fuzzed greyish cloth were actually women up to their knees in water picking what Luca assured him was rice shoots, that Oriental grain quickly adapted to the Mediterranean land.
Over the next stretch of ribbed low mountains and hills, rain showers became animated deluges aimed at their little car. When he delved into his bag for his Marine coat, he found a note from the Comtesse, with her card and what he had to assume was the address of one of her homes in England. With it was a simple gold linked bracelet she’d made him wear their most recent night out.
“You look so severe without it,” she’d said. “Look around, every man here has some golden gee-gaw. You might as well be a cleric. And we both know very well that you aren’t!”
Also in the bag was a small, beautifully bound and gold-tipped-leaved book, Two Stories by Mrs. Gaskell. He opened it to the frontispiece where those two were delineated as “Cousin Phyllis” and “Half A Life Time Ago.” A fine ink inscription read, You are clever enough to enjoy these and lover enough to be moved by them.
He began reading the first little novel after one stop in which contadinas came to the stopped cars with warm milk, wine, and a type of vegetable sandwich they called panini and crostini which Luca showed him how to eat. And he was indeed touched by the sad tale. He said aloud, “She knows me well.” Luca looked up in question. Addison showed him the book and explained what she’d written.
“This great lady you may return to when here you are complete your mission,” the younger man said.
“Who told you that?”
“La donna. Tutte lei donne.”
But no matter what her servants said, he knew he couldn’t possibly feel that way. The Comtesse was married, and her lover was on his way.
Having eaten and drunk wine, Luca began to snooze again. Addison took out his little lap desk, a gift from much earlier in his travels, and looked over those pages he’d scribbled he knew not for whom, some future person of importance. Having read that, he scribbled on, surprised when he looked outside to see that so much time had passed, all he saw was the bare sketch of a sunset, a vague roseate object glowering behind thick strata of clouds.
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