Murder in Venice

by L. B. Hathaway

  ‘But I thought the Count was doing fine for money. He married Bella for it, didn’t he?’

  ‘A fortune, yes,’ agreed Lucy, biting at her lip. ‘But word is that he’s blued it already. He lives very fast, does our young Count. Venice is a party playground for him and no mistake. Between you and me,’ and Lucy tapped her nose confidentially, ‘I think that half the treasures of the Romagnoli family didn’t actually burn over there today. Most of their paintings, jewels and precious artefacts have been pawned by Giancarlo and are sitting right now in the safe at the Palazzo Corner, the city’s official pawn shop. He snorted the monies he got for the treasures a long time ago…’

  ‘Gracious!’

  ‘Not that I know anything, of course. I’m just a humble companion. A servant really.’

  ‘Come! Don’t sell yourself short! It must be difficult working for such a woman as Bella Alladice?’

  ‘Perhaps. I’ve had six years to get used to her, though…’ Lucy shrugged, refusing to be drawn.

  Posie decided to blow caution to the wind, putting her trust in the girl. ‘Can I ask if you know what the Countess meant when she said I had lost Alaric to “another woman” earlier?’

  Lucy shook her head in embarrassment. ‘No, I’m sorry. Bella’s probably jealous of you. You’re about to make a happy marriage, aren’t you?’ She gestured towards the Palace, and Posie had the feeling she was changing the subject on purpose. ‘Bella’s not in an enviable situation here at all. For all the shock involved, I expect she isn’t actually that upset to see the Palace burn down, and neither am I. I’ve lived there for over a year, since Bella’s wedding last June, and I hate it with a passion.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I can’t tell you why exactly, save to say it always gave me the creeps, from the moment I entered it. When you imagine living in a Venetian palace you conjure up a dream. At least I did. But my dream was about as far from the truth as could be. Everything was wrong.’

  ‘What was wrong exactly?’

  ‘Many things. The dampness, the smell of the latrines, the stinking waters outside. There were worries about floods, and rising waters. And the dreadful rats, and the traps for rats everywhere, and the incessant dripping noises at night. All the money in the world couldn’t seem to fix the place. Bella realised quite quickly it was going to be a losing battle to restore the Palace to its former glory, although she tried. She and her brother. But there is a darkness over there you can’t hide, or paper over.’

  ‘A darkness? You mean ghosts?’ Posie demanded.

  ‘No,’ Lucy replied in a slow, measured tone. ‘That’s not quite what I mean, although I’m sure you could look for such things if you were that way inclined. The Palace has a chequered history, of course: sieges, attacks, murders. What building wouldn’t in nearly six hundred years of history?’

  ‘Quite.’

  ‘What I mean is that the place is unfriendly. It hides things. It never felt comfortable, or cosy. It has secrets and it won’t yield them up.’

  ‘That’s how the whole of Venice felt to me tonight.’

  ‘Have you heard the legend of the Mistletoe Bride?’

  Posie thought for a moment, frowning. ‘You mean that awful old poem by Thomas Haynes Bayly, popular in our great-grandmothers’ time?’

  Lucy nodded. ‘Yes. About how a tragedy takes place at a Christmas wedding when the bride, in a game of hide-and-seek, accidentally locks herself in a cupboard and is never discovered. The corpse is discovered years later.’

  ‘How horrible! And ridiculous. But what’s that got to do with the Romagnoli Palace? That story was set in Yorkshire, wasn’t it? It has nothing to do with Venice?’

  ‘True, but it’s a similar story, actually. As part of its chequered past, the Palace was used as a Casino in the eighteenth century. A series of multiple tunnels and hiding places were incorporated by the Romagnoli family at the time, as a way of making sure they would always be able to catch any absconders from the Casino who hadn’t paid their bills, and as a way of hiding themselves if trouble ever broke out. There is a story of how, years later, when the earlier Casino-building generation had died out and the Palace was a simple house once again, one of the Romagnoli daughters hid herself one night in an old secret chamber when her father asked her to come down and meet a rich but odious potential suitor. Everyone looked for the girl but they never found her. No-one was left who knew exactly how the hiding places worked, or where they were located and the family almost knocked the place down to find her.’

  ‘But they never did?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘I don’t believe in that old rubbish. The poor girl must have got away by gondola, surely?’

  ‘That’s the nice way of looking at it. It’s a horrible thing to think about when you have to live there. I know Aunt Minnie worries about it: it plays on her nerves. She’s always harping on about it.’

  In the absorbing tale of the Venetian Mistletoe Bride, Posie suddenly realised that the man who had seemed familiar had disappeared from the window-seat, leaving the Count all alone. She asked Lucy about him.

  ‘I can’t tell you much, I’m afraid. He only appeared here an hour or so before you did. I think he’s a commercial traveller. Mr Löhri? Löhrson? Swiss, I think. You’d be as well to ask Mrs Persimmon; he’s one of her normal paying guests. Nothing to do with the Romagnoli party. Although it seems Giancarlo was quite taken with him…’

  Posie scowled. The man wasn’t who she had thought, then. But she had been sure, almost certain…

  ‘I’ll go up and grab that detective book I promised.’ She excused herself, happy to escape the oppressive atmosphere in the salon. But before she had got far across that strange hall of mirrors, the door barged open, and there was Alaric, black and sooty and clutching at a curiously clean and shiny portable silver safe, the size of a wicker cat-basket.

  Alaric…

  Posie gasped, trying to bring her eyes to rest on the real-life figure of her fiancé, amid all the swimming reflections of him. He was safe! Everyone stared at him, particularly Bella Alladice, whose gaze seemed peculiarly scornful and accusing. Posie felt a huge wash of relief seeping through her every fibre. In her nervousness Posie instinctively tugged at whatever was in her pocket, and the rustling paper from before crackled between her hands.

  ‘Dickie! I found it! Thank heavens Sargent and Greenleaf make such robust devices! This little number here is as sound as when you left it!’

  And then he took in Posie, whose heart was inconveniently skipping several beats.

  ‘My darling!’

  He started to beam and come across to her but then, like in a bad dream, he glanced down at her hands and frowned in incomprehension. And then Posie looked down too and realised she was still holding onto the wretched red and yellow magazine cover which she had ripped off and thrust into her dress pocket yesterday at Victoria. Alaric’s face fell immediately: ‘You found that bally thing?’

  ‘Well…’

  Her head was spinning. So he knew about the magazine cover, after all.

  Two months it had been. Two months of Alaric’s absence: of going to work each day at the Detective Agency on Grape Street and going through the motions; of returning home to Museum Chambers at night to eat a scratch meal for one in her neat pale-green living room, or else meeting a friend to share a hurried London supper with. All that time with nothing but a fancy ring to remind her of him. And every day wondering how it would be when they met again in a joyous, funny, tender, romantic reunion. Not like this.

  She hadn’t as much as looked at another man in all the time she had known Alaric, and certainly not since their engagement the previous December, despite opportunities. Had she been some kind of doormat?

  Alaric was angry now. ‘I say, what rotten timing. Of all the things to be toting about, you have this along for the ride?’

  But before Posie could reply properly, albeit in front of everyone, a massive, heavy shadow loomed behind Alaric, filling
the doorway. It was Salvarocca.

  The Commissario stepped ponderously into the salon. ‘Ladies and gentlemen.’ He looked around. ‘Your Graces.’ He nodded at the Count and Countess. ‘Good evening.’

  He indicated with a quick but authoritative sweep of the hand that no-one was going anywhere.

  ‘Sit down. I have bad news.’

  ****

  Five

  ‘I can confirm that somebody meant to set fire to the Palace today.’ The Chief of Police shrugged his statement into the room breezily. ‘Or worse, to kill one of you. The fire was started at about two o’clock.’

  Posie and Alaric sat in rattan chairs side by side, but not very close.

  ‘Two o’clock?’ Bella Alladice demanded. She snatched off her headdress, dragging the tiara’s comb-attachment across her plump cheek, making angry red track-lines on the puffy skin. ‘This was arson?’

  ‘It was, Countess. And it was started in your own suite of rooms. A can of petrol has been recovered from that exact location.’

  Alaric was leaning forwards, his singed eyebrows pulled together, puzzled. ‘By Gad, it seems the devil of a thing to set fire to such an old place, with such a shocking disregard for human life. We all could have died.’

  He turned towards his host in Venice: ‘I say! What a mercy you’d organised that last-minute gondola trip, Dickie, hey?’

  But his friend was sitting drunkenly slumped in a chair, wild-eyed, his arms tightly clamped around the small safe. So instead Alaric turned to the Countess: ‘And what a relief that you decided to come with us, Bella!’

  The Countess sat very still, almost frozen. ‘It’s as if somebody knew that I usually have my nap at two o’clock. I always take a sleeping draught with a dash of my favourite liqueur and I’m out like a light in a second.’

  ‘So why didn’t you nap today?’ cut in Posie, urgently.

  The Countess scowled. ‘I thought I’d be a good hostess for your fiancé, Miss Parker; show him the sights on his first full day here. I’d have done the same for you. Dickie told me about the boat ride he had booked just in time and I put down my flask and my pill and came out with the whole group instead.’

  The Commissario coughed importantly.

  ‘Well, the good news is that we have our suspect already. We are holding Pietro Corsetti in custody. He was arrested not half an hour ago in a bar in the Campo Rialto Nuovo, just past the Rialto Bridge, a known stomping-ground for dissolute youths, particularly of the poker-playing variety. He was blind drunk and stinking of petrol and was in receipt of a good deal of cash. He was in the process of getting through it all as quickly as he could.’

  The Count had emitted a strange kind of groan, tearing at his beautifully waved hair in distress, and Posie looked over at him with frank interest. Giancarlo burbled something in a snarl of quick Italian, but the only word which Posie understood was ‘fascists’.

  Her irritation must have shown plainly on her face, for Lucy Christie, who was on Posie’s other side, breathed in a low whisper:

  ‘The Count says that Pietro had nothing to do with the fire. He says the big man is barking up the wrong tree! And he has warned the Commissario not to use “fascist ways” to get the truth out of Pietro.’

  ‘I see. I wonder which tree the Commissario should be barking up?’

  Salvo Salvarocca was checking through a large black leather notepad. He looked around, his sad brown eyes resting on each person in turn.

  ‘It goes without saying that the Palace is completely inaccessible: it’s a lot worse than we thought. Most rooms and staircases may collapse at any moment, so please, no going back there.’

  The Commissario moved towards the door, replacing his cap. He turned, and said in a slow, measured tone, probably the same voice he used in Court when convicting criminals:

  ‘Please take this seriously. One of you was meant to die in that blaze. If any of you have any information, please do not hesitate to contact me. If any of you believe yourself to be in personal danger, I can try and ensure your safety. I will take all of your statements entirely seriously, and by the way,’ he threw a mortified look towards the Count, ‘I never, ever use “fascist” methods.’

  As soon as the policeman had departed, the smart snap of Jones’ step entered the room. Which was just as well, as no-one quite knew what to say, and the atmosphere was as treacly on the lungs as the smoke wafting in the streets outside.

  ‘Your Graces, ladies and gentlemen, dinner will be served in the dining-room, next door, in half an hour,’ Jones announced. He threw an anxious glance over towards Alaric: ‘Which should give certain parties sufficient time to, ahem, refresh themselves…’

  People were leaving to dress, but the mere thought of dinner made Posie feel sick. She wanted to be alone with Alaric. So many things seemed not quite right here. How could she eat? She’d pretend to. Maybe there would be a plate of nice biscuits to be had later on. Amarettis, perhaps?

  ‘My room? Shall we?’

  Alaric turned, raising an eyebrow, throwing Posie a challenge to enter a socially unacceptable situation, and publicly, too. But Posie couldn’t give a hang what other people thought, so she started to follow Alaric.

  However, upon reaching the top of the staircase and coming out into a wide corridor of the guesthouse’s very best rooms, Posie felt a quick tap on her shoulder. Lucy Christie cast an apologetic look at Alaric, and then back at Posie.

  ‘I’m sorry to intrude,’ she murmured, her brown eyes genuinely troubled, ‘but the Countess would like to have a word in private with Miss Parker. In her room. Now. Before dinner.’

  For a second Posie was distracted. She had seen something glitter at the girl’s neck in the darkness. It was an old-style diamond ring hanging from a thin chain. It must have been obscured before by Lucy’s purple dress with its high neckline. Posie felt a stab of real surprise: for all its old-fashioned setting, the solitaire at the centre of the ring was huge, and obviously very valuable. Lucy Christie had obviously got a love story of her own to keep close to her chest, hidden from prying eyes. But why was that so surprising? With a face like that…

  Alaric frowned. ‘Can’t it wait, Miss Christie?’

  ‘I’m afraid not, Mr Boynton-Dale. The Countess says, and I rather believe she is speaking the truth, that she needs to see Miss Parker as a matter of some urgency.’

  Posie touched Alaric’s dirty sleeve. ‘Darling, I’m sorry.’

  Alaric shrugged Posie’s hand away and walked off irritably. Posie sighed, watching his retreating back. ‘Show me the way then, Lucy.’

  ****

  The Countess’s room was a candy-coloured wreck. Whispers of gossamer-fine silk trailed from paper carrier-bags, and discarded slippers and opened packages of candied fruit were thrown around in a blaze of abandon. It was hard to believe that Bella Alladice had only been in situ at Mrs Persimmon’s since late afternoon.

  Posie stared hard through all the chaos.

  And then her eyes came to rest on the bed, where Bella Alladice was propped up, sipping at a pink drink through a glass straw. A huge smoke-grey Persian cat sat heavily on Bella’s lap. It stared at Posie menacingly and its orange eyes glimmered across the room. Normally Posie loved cats – she had a very old Siamese cat called Mr Minks who resided in some splendour back at the Detective Agency in London – but this one sent a chill down her spine. The Persian cat looked like a puff-ball full of menace, just like its owner. The two were perfectly suited.

  Posie hadn’t brought her carpet bag up with her, but she dug in her pocket for the small silver notepad and matching pencil she always carried.

  Bella Alladice stroked the cat in deft, measured moves. ‘Petrucci here survived the fire, lucky boy. He must be onto his ninth life by now, I reckon. A fireman found him sitting on my balcony as the flames rose higher in the room behind him; not a whisker out of place.’

  ‘How fortuitous, Your Grace.’

  ‘Do quit calling me “Your Grace”. I don’t think ei
ther of us can stomach it for a minute more. Call me Bella. And I’ll call you what I like.’

  Posie sat down on a nearby slipper chair, staying quiet, and it was not until a couple of minutes had passed that she saw Bella Alladice was quivering all over. It was hot as Hades in the bedroom so it wasn’t the seeping Venetian cold which was making the girl shiver.

  Posie relented a little. ‘I suppose I am here in a professional capacity?’

  The meltingly dark grey eyes flashed. ‘Of course. I need you to cover my back. I read about how you were hired to protect Silvia Hanro, that wet-weekend of a movie star. And she’s still alive, isn’t she? So you must be good at your job. I’ll pay you well.’

  ‘I’m a Private Detective, Bella, not a bodyguard. And I think the Venetian Chief of Police is sufficiently worried to make sure that none of us are exposed to further danger. Tell me, what is it you’re so afraid of?’

  ‘Off you go, Petrucci, my love.’ The Countess released the huge cat and he hissed at Posie, stalking into a corner. Bella had edged herself off the bed, grunt by grunt, until she was right next to Posie. The smell of almonds on the girl’s breath was overpowering.

  ‘It’s like this. I’m being watched.’

  ‘Watched?’

  ‘Watched. For about two months now. Sometimes when I go out – I have my own gondola, of course – I’m aware of a white boat, a skiff really, following us around. I go out often: I play Bridge with other English women at the Café Florian in St Mark’s Square, or else I go shopping, or to the English Ladies Club. I’m a patron of a number of charities here, too. Whenever I see this white boat I tell my Gondolier to pull in at random spots, at a jetty where I’d normally have no business, for example. And sure enough, it always slows down before racing off again. It happens at least three or four times a week. I find it very menacing.’

  ‘I should imagine so. Have you seen who is inside the white boat?’

  ‘Oh yes. Usually the same couple of men, but I’ve never got close enough to speak to them.’

  ‘What do they look like?’