Death in the Palazzo (3 page)

When the boat turned into the Grand Canal a few minutes later, her raptures weren't therefore particularly surprising, but they were nonetheless sincere.

“Oh my! Just look at it. A real dream! The water's just like a mirror, and the buildings seem to be floating. And the colors! Straight from a painter's palette. It's exactly the way I knew it was going to be. I'm not disappointed in the slightest!”

Robert, vaguely uneasy that she seemed to have forgotten some of the darker associations the city held for her—just as she had failed to notice the inauspicious clouds overhead and the strange quality of the light—patted her hand and said, “I'm glad you're feeling better, my dear. It's going to be a wonderful weekend.”

5

Gemma Bellini-Rhys looked at the finished portrait. It was one of her best. Also, probably her last. And from the way the Contessa had fidgeted and complained, it would probably be
her
last, too.

But the Contessa needn't have been apprehensive that Gemma might exact some kind of vengeance through paint. In fact, Gemma was the closest the Contessa might have come to being “done” by Sargent, her favorite portrait painter.

The Contessa was standing in her
salotto blu
, one hand placed on the lid of a waist-high ceramic Chinese urn, the other holding a morocco-bound volume. She was dressed in a pleated silk Fortuny dress weighted with corded pearls of Murano blown glass and with a pattern inspired by Carpaccio. She had been almost as concerned about how it “came off” as she had been about her face. This attribute, as old as the Fortuny, was equally impressive and for the same reasons. Good design and careful preservation.

The Contessa's face, tilted ever so slightly backward with its generous cheekbones, slanted gray eyes, and patrician air, had been rendered without either flattery or cruel, subtle caricature.

The Contessa should be very pleased when she saw it for the first time this weekend during her house party.

Gemma dropped the cloth over the portrait and went to the window. It looked on to the Grand Canal, but for a moment all she could see was her own reflection in the glass. So different from the Contessa's face, although within only a few years of the same age. It had never possessed any of the beauty of her mother Renata's face, and during the past year serious illness, which she had not revealed to any one, had begun to erode much of its prettiness.

She looked past her own disturbing image down at the Grand Canal. Almost sixty years ago she had sat for hours gazing out of another window of this same palazzo with her doll, waving to figures in passing boats and on the opposite embankment. The view had hardly changed in all these years. This was one of the comforts and mockeries of Venice. No matter what different heart and face you brought it each time, it always was the same.

Always the same, she repeated to herself. Someone coming for the weeknd was all too content to have things remain the same—the way they had been for almost sixty years. But Gemma was determined that this weekend she would strike out and put an end to it. Her hand grasped the drape more tightly as she thought of what she would do.

As she looked down at the Grand Canal, a sleek white water taxi pulled into the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini landing. Mauro, the Contessa's majordomo, appeared a few moments later and helped out Angelica. She was a little unsteady on her feet. Gemma hoped she wasn't going to take to her room and stay there the whole time as she had at the country weekend last year in Sussex. Gemma sighed. She had the impatience of the truly ill in the presence of the hypochondriacal. What she wouldn't give for one of the girl's bad days!

Robert emerged from the boat and squinted up at the building. Feeling not unlike the little girl of half a century ago, she waved at her son but he didn't see her.

6

“And here at last is my dear friend, Urbino Macintyre,” the Contessa said as Urbino joined the small group in the
salotto blu
. “This is Angelica Lydgate and Robert Bellini-Rhys. They've only just arrived.”

The young woman's eyebrows rose in amazement. She could barely find her voice to say how pleased she was to meet him.

“Are you all right, Angelica?” Robert said. “She got a bit queasy on the boat from the airport.”

“Of course she's all right,” Gemma said, a touch of irritation in her voice. She moved closer to the plain girl and squeezed her arm. “She just needs a chance to catch her breath. One minute you're in the modern world, the next you're in the time of the Doges.”

Angelica managed to take her eyes off Urbino only by transferring them to her hands, covered in demi-gloves as if she didn't quite trust the heating of the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini. Robert studied his fiancée's bent head with a slight frown.

“You and Urbino have something in common, Robert,” the Contessa said as she refilled Angelica's teacup. “A morbid taste for the dead of Venice!”

She took only momentary satisfaction in her own bon mot, however, for the disapproving look on Gemma's face told her how unthinking it had been. The poor woman's mother had died in Venice.

“Urbino's a biographer,” she quickly amended. “He insists that his subjects be dead and have some connection with the city.”

“That could put you in a strange position,” Robert said. His tone was slightly jocular, but his blue eyes were humorless. “You must be waiting impatiently for some choice subjects to die. I doubt that we're in much competition, though. I'm interested in relics of the early Church that found their way to Venice. Barbara said there's the body of a female saint in a church near your palazzo. Santa Teodora. An obscure one. Even less documentary evidence on her than the others.”

“There's been quite a bit about her recently, I'm afraid,” Urbino said. “Evidence of a different kind.”

“Now I remember! The theft of the body from the crystal casket. An old woman was murdered, too, isn't that right?”

“It certainly is!” the Contessa chimed in. “Urbino's our resident amateur sleuth. His first case. Tell Robert the whole story while we women chat about less gruesome topics,” she said, apparently having forgotten she had been the one to introduce death into her
salotto
.

She watched Urbino lead Robert over to the bar and pour them both something stronger than tea. When Urbino began his account, she turned to Angelica.

“Excuse me, my dear,” she said in a lower voice than was usual with her, “but do you know Urbino from somewhere? He's so mysterious about his past—sometimes even his present!—that I'm reduced at times to the most pathetic bits and pieces.”

“Know him from somewhere? I don't know what you mean!”

“Oh, come now, Angelica! I'm not accusing you of anything. Ha, ha! I can see how much you and Robert are in love. But I couldn't help noticing how you reacted when he came into the room. Almost as if you'd seen a ghost.”

Gemma's face hardened.

“Really, Barbara, you say the most unusual things!” she said with a nervous laugh.

“Do I, Gemma? To be honest, I thought that you looked at him the same way when you first met him. Oh, don't keep me in the dark!”

Gemma and Angelica exchanged a glance in which there was more than the Contessa could read.

Before the Contessa could decide whether she should pursue the topic further, the door of the
salotto
was flung open and a man's voice said, “Here we are, cuz! Fresh off the
Orient Express!
”

“Sebastian! Viola!”

The Contessa hurried over to them. Behind her angular cousins was a woman she didn't recognize. She knew she could never possibly have seen her before because once seen, how could she have ever forgotten her? The woman was not much over four feet tall, with a twisted body and the thickest glasses imaginable.

She peered into the room and said in a high-pitched voice: “There's blood here, a whole scarlet bath of it.”

She nodded her head with grim satisfaction and looked directly at Gemma.

“Of course there is,” Viola said. “Meet our blood cousin, the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini! And this, Barbara, is Mrs. Molly Wybrow. Sebastian and I have invited her for the house party. We knew you wouldn't mind. By the way, you look marvelous! I'm absolutely not going to tell Mummy. You look so radiant and—and rested! She'd be pea-green with envy!”

7

The Contessa had a fixed smile, as if she were waiting for her photograph to be taken or posing for another portrait. Viola's compliment didn't seem to register. When her lips eventually moved, it wasn't to thank Viola or to greet Molly but to utter the one word: “Thirteen.”

Urbino, who had done his own quick computations and come up with the same ominous number, left Robert abruptly and hurried to the Contessa's side. But once he got there all he seemed to be able to do was to look and feel foolish. Sebastian gave him a lopsided grin, and surveyed Urbino quickly from the top of his head down to his shoes, and then up again.

“Come to kill one of us to even out the number? A bit too drastic, even in the service of a great lady like our Barbara. You must be the local celebrity Urbino Macintyre, who has found his way into our cousin's heart! Maybe Viola and I can accommodate you, too!”

The Contessa, slightly dazed, quickly made all the necessary introductions.

“I tell you what, cuz,” Sebastian said. “Why don't we just have one of your many staff mingle with us all? Be very democratic and keep off the old evil eye.”

The alternatives the Contessa had been considering in the last few moments hadn't included this, but the more logical if no less desperate one of “disinviting” her friends the Borellis or asking a fourteenth guest at the eleventh hour. However, her loyalty and propriety were stronger—at least at the moment—than her superstition. Also, if she had to be so benighted as to believe in portents and signs—which she did with all the fervency of a medieval peasant—she had little wish to appear to.

“Oh, this is ridiculous. Twelve, thirteen, fourteen, what does it matter?” she said, deceiving no one. “We're all thoroughly modern and enlightened.”

This wasn't exactly the most accurate thing to say, since the room contained a specialist in relics, a devotee of all things Victorian, and someone who had turned his back on modern, enlightened America and sequestered himself in a Venetian palazzo.

This latter person—who was of course Urbino—was now introducing himself to Molly. The deformed woman stared at him through her thick glasses and said in a remote voice:

“Unique child. Only child. And an orphan but not at a young age. Fire and sugar. Car crash.”

Urbino paled.

“Don't mind her,” Viola said with a touch of embarrassment. “She's been running on like one of the sibyls ever since we met her.”

“Wrong, dearie! Those Greek ladies saw the future. Remember, the past's my limit!”

“Modesty in a seer! How interesting!” Robert said.

“I'm not a seer, as I believe I've just explained.”

“So sorry. I'm also interested in the past. People like us are often misunderstood. I'm Robert Bellini-Rhys. This is my mother, Gemma, and my fiancée, Angelica Lydgate.”

“Your grandmother, a lady of lovely eyes and lovely lines, of sweet and liquid voice, died in this palazzo, Mr. Bellini-Rhys.
Your
sweet mother,” Molly said, addressing Gemma, who seemed embarrassed and confused.

“I'm pleased to have you join us, Mrs. Wybrow,” the Contessa said, shaken by the unpredictability and accuracy of the woman's pronouncements. If there was one thing she feared in a social situation, it was a person inclined to say whatever might come to mind. Here she was face-to-face with a most aggressive specimen in her own
salotto
. And not only that, but it appeared the woman was to be her guest—her thirteenth guest—for the entire weekend.

“Oh, please call me Molly,” said the little woman. “Don't take such a fright to me, Contessa—”

“Barbara. I assure you that I'm not afraid of you in the slightest.”

“I wouldn't want to scare a hair off your head, dearie. I mean you no harm. I mean no one any harm. It's just that these—these things come over me. If I tried to keep them in, I'm afraid they'd do
me
god-awful harm.”

“We wouldn't want that, especially when you're under my roof—or any other, of course.”

“Ah, much dark harm has been done under your roof, but not since the day it first covered your head.”

“So Barbara leads an exemplary life and all these Italian palazzi have dripped with blood in the past!” Sebastian said. “You aren't telling us anything we don't already know. Isn't Molly delightful? We struck it off immediately on the good old O.E. And how could we help it? We didn't have to tell her a thing about our pasts! It got us to the intimate stage long before we finished our first drinks. Speaking of which, I'm as thirsty as the Ancient Mariner!”

“Oh, excuse me!” the Contessa said. “Would you like some tea?”

He eyed the teacup cradled in Angelica's demi-gloved fingers.

“How Elizabeth Barrett Browning! If I were sporting my colored gloves like the Baron de Montesquiou, I just might consider a cup of
thé à la bergamote
—just!—but considering my shabby state, I'll settle for a simple gin.”

“That suits me down to the ground, too,” Molly said. She seated herself next to Angelica on the sofa. “So, my dear, tell me all about yourself, and then I'll tell you if you're right!”

As Molly burst into peals of laughter amazingly robust for such a small person, the Contessa gave Urbino a quick look that screamed for help.

8

Half an hour later, everything seemed to be going smoothly. The twins had made brief visits to their rooms, where they had freshened up. Molly, whom the Contessa hadn't assigned a room yet, had refrained from making any more pronouncements, and now sat on the sofa with her gin. She was listening, with many smiles and few words, to Sebastian, who was giving the women his impressions of their circuitous gondola ride from the railway station. On the other side of the room Urbino, at Robert's insistence, had resumed his account of his first murder case involving the relic of Santa Teodora, but was half-listening to Sebastian's account and watching Viola.