Murder in Venice

by L. B. Hathaway

  But what was he wearing? It looked like one of those great flapping black storm capes from Mrs Persimmon’s, complete with hood…

  ‘Over there,’ she found herself hissing at Dickie. This wasn’t quite how she had imagined it would happen. She had expected a confrontation, a meeting face-to-face.

  The Mass, complete with a wailing organ crescendo, had now begun in earnest, and Posie found herself skirting the brick walls, followed by Dickie sharp on her heels. She pulled back and hid behind the white marble overhang of the huge triangular tomb. She sensed rather than saw that Alaric and someone else, similarly black-caped and black-hooded, were now sitting together up on the marble steps of the tomb, not two foot away from Posie and Dickie. She strained to listen but it was a few seconds before her ears got used to the measure and tone of the conversation.

  Alaric was speaking first, tired and irritable:

  ‘What did you want to speak to me about? You sent me a note from the police station, didn’t you? To meet today, here at Canova’s Tomb?’

  And then the second voice: a man, a young man, an Italian, his English perfect and measured, but his voice sounding nervous.

  ‘I felt I could trust you, sir, despite never having met you. I’ve seen you in the newspapers and in magazines, of course. Did you know I’m a wanted man? The police let me go yesterday, but now they want me a second time around: for killing someone, for murder. There are rumours that someone died in that fire yesterday, and now the papers are full of Bella’s death, too. It’s too dreadful. There are “WANTED” signs with my name and picture all over town. I have no idea how to flee.’

  Pietro Corsetti, Posie breathed to herself. It had to be.

  Alaric sounded bitter. ‘And you thought I could help you? What do you need? Money?’

  ‘No!’ The Italian almost laughed. ‘I have enough money, though much good it’s done me.’

  ‘What then? Surely you could have contacted the Count? Got him to come here and organise your safe passage out of Venice?’

  ‘I need someone to take something to the police for me. Poor Giancarlo isn’t impartial, and he won’t remain calm. I don’t know how he’ll react. You are famous, and you have good standing. If I tell you this information, you can take it to the police, can’t you?’

  There was a silence and a rustling of a storm cape. Without seeing him, Posie could imagine Alaric’s head in his hands, his exasperation at being dragged into something which didn’t involve him. This man she didn’t know anymore…

  ‘Please, my life may depend on it.’

  A sigh. ‘Go on then.’

  ‘I did start the fire yesterday. I started it in Bella’s apartments. Just before two o’clock.’

  ‘The police figured as much.’

  ‘But I was paid to do so. I was following instructions: it was all arranged. That’s what I want you to communicate to the police for me. I wasn’t going to tell them but this new murder charge changes everything.’

  Posie held her breath. She sensed Dickie behind her, listening intently, every nerve of his body tensed.

  ‘You’d better tell me all you know, Corsetti. Was it the Count who paid you to start the blaze?’

  There was a muffled laugh. ‘Giancarlo? Want his precious Palace burnt down? No way. It was a woman. A devil-woman.’

  ‘A woman?’ Alaric sounded disbelieving. ‘Which woman?’

  ‘I only realised who the devil-woman was yesterday, when I met her for the first time for my big payment. But the big payment she made wasn’t just for the fire, you know. It was for two months of work. Two months ago she contacted me out of the blue – I suppose she had heard I needed money – and asked me to organise a few men to look like they were spying on Bella. It seemed harmless enough at the time, I just got a couple of friends with a boat to do it when they had free time. I didn’t get involved. But it got weirder: a couple of weeks ago, the woman asked me if I could translate a note she’d written into Italian – I translated it – even though it was vile.’

  ‘Was this the thing about Bella ending up dead in the secret chamber?’

  ‘That’s right. Well, when I sent the translation back I wrote to say that I really did know where the secret chamber was, because my family – who are as old as the Romagnolis but are their sworn enemies – had kept journals obsessively down through the centuries, recording everything they could about the Romagnolis, in case it came in useful one day. I’d come across an entry in a journal about this secret chamber as a boy. There was a map with it, too. It certainly never seemed important enough to discuss with Giancarlo. He never expressed an interest in it until after Bella had received that note, and I could hardly tell him then about my involvement, could I? He was very upset.’

  ‘So let me guess: you searched out this old journal and sent across the map of the secret room when it was later requested by this woman, who probably couldn’t believe her luck?’

  ‘That’s right, I was promised more money for sending the map of the secret chamber. I certainly didn’t think I’d be asked to start a fire at the Palace later, or that the secret room would be a death-trap.’

  Alaric’s voice was rising in anger. ‘But you did start the fire, didn’t you? That was completely unforgivable.’

  There was a sound very like crying. Posie sensed that Dickie was standing as still as one of the grotesque carved statues over on the tomb, waiting, breathing shallowly.

  ‘The devil-woman said it would be a sort of joke. She told me firemen would be on hand very quickly to put it out.’

  ‘Who told you this? Who organised this?’

  ‘The old one. That old red cat…’

  There was a sharp intake of breath behind her. Turning, Posie saw Dickie had gone grey in the face. Alaric was continuing:

  ‘What? You mean Minnie? Minnie Alladice? She’s the oldest of the women in the party. That doesn’t sound right. Where would Minnie have got the money from to pay you? She seems as poor as a church mouse. And why on earth would she want Bella Alladice dead?’

  And suddenly everything came together and Posie knew the answers to both of Alaric’s questions.

  But before she could think it through Posie was aware of a dreadful gasping, and before she could stop him Dickie had turned on his heel and was running, running away across the terracotta paving, through the still darkness of the church.

  Posie drew back instinctively into the shelter of the jutting marble, just as Alaric stepped out.

  ‘What was that noise? No, I must be wrong. For a minute there I thought we were being listened in on. It’s a nice story, but how can you prove it, Corsetti? It could just be a lot of hot air about Minnie. Lies…’

  There was a sound of paper being drawn out. A triumphant tone in the young man’s voice. ‘There. You see? She was foolish enough to write to me. This is the note where she asks me to spy on Bella, and here is her next note asking me to translate her frightening little letter about the secret chamber…and here is her note asking about buying petrol to start a fire and promising me money. She doesn’t sign her name but I’m sure the police can match her handwriting. Stupid woman probably thought I would just chuck the notes away!’

  There was a rustling noise as they were obviously passed over. ‘So can you give them to the Commissario for me? And now I must try and flee. Thank you for bringing me this cloak. It makes everything a little easier, in the darkness especially.’

  And a flapping hurry of a shadow flitted past, also headed towards the main door, and Posie realised with a sudden stab of irony that she still hadn’t seen Corsetti’s face. She was still standing well back against the wall, tensed, waiting for Alaric to depart when she realised that he was standing right in front of her.

  He had swung around the marble overhang, soundlessly. ‘Posie,’ he said, wearily. But there was a dull anger in his eyes. ‘I thought it might be you.’

  Posie shrugged. ‘I saw your note. On your hand, yesterday evening, and so did Dickie. We wanted to check you
were safe, especially as you didn’t come back last night.’

  Alaric raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m surprised you noticed.’

  ‘How can you say such a thing? Of course I noticed.’

  ‘Well, as usual you have a precious little case running, and you’re so quick to jump to conclusions that it made me see red. I had to get away. I stayed at the Metropole Hotel overnight. I needed to calm down. To breathe. Things have been so dreadful…’

  ‘“Things” meaning Silvia? Yes: her death must have been a shock…’

  The anger intensified in his beautiful eyes. At his infuriating silence Posie lost her cool. Fire was in her belly but her heart was breaking at the same time.

  ‘Why couldn’t you have had the guts to tell me about Silvia, Al? That the wedding had been called off? Did you really expect me to present myself at that church today to be jilted at the altar? Dragging Lovelace out here to watch my misery? I’m worth so much more than that, you know.’

  ‘Of course I know that, Posie! But the last couple of days have been a living hell, I’ll be honest, with barely a moment to breathe, let alone explain anything. I’ll admit: I’m barely in the mood for anything, let alone getting married. I told you I loved you last night, didn’t I? Wasn’t that enough? And what did you mean just now?’

  ‘About calling it off? Why, I…’

  Just then from behind a pillar by the next side-chapel a figure stepped out. A black-cloaked, rain-glistening figure, sinister as death and spookier than the marble grave-attendants on Canova’s Tomb.

  One quick movement and the drawing down of the hood revealed it to be Max, who stared at Posie and Alaric with a completely expressionless face, half-shadowed in the dark. So Posie had been right. She had been followed out here.

  Alaric snapped. ‘What’s this, darling? You’ve brought your little blonde friend along here for the thrill of spying on a fella when he’s about as down on his luck as he can be? Is this tit-for-tat for Silvia? This church is worse than that dreadful guesthouse. People listening in at every corner…’

  Alaric thrust some flimsy-looking letters at Posie.

  ‘Take these, will you? You probably heard every word Corsetti uttered so you’re just as well placed as me to drop these off at the police station. Probably better-placed, I’d say. I expect you’re running their investigation for them by now.’

  And before she could say anything, Alaric had stalked off, anger etching his every movement into quick, strong lines.

  In all of his conversation, only one line stood out. ‘I’m barely in the mood for anything, let alone getting married.’

  Posie wiped a tear away before it fell on the evidence in her hands, the inky loops and whorls of a foolish, murderous woman. And when she looked up, Max, who was a self-proclaimed non-guardian angel, had disappeared too: his purposes in following her here and his bad timing at interrupting Posie and Alaric left as unexplained as almost everything in his strange life.

  And as usual, she was quite alone.

  ****

  Twenty-Five

  Tucking the precious evidence inside her coat, Posie found herself walking almost without thinking, tracing the route of the canals she had sailed up just half an hour earlier, vaguely aware of Venice throwing off its night-time cloak of strange mystery.

  Cafés were opening up on corners, and men were shouting at each other from bridges. Skiffs and barges were blocking up the small waterways with their deliveries of fresh fish and milk and bread and a thousand other household necessities which had to be brought into the city in this chaotic, medieval manner every single day. Rubbish men were handling vast, stinking bins on slow-moving black barges whose scent seemed to pervade the wet air, even when Posie had left the last of them far behind.

  By some minor miracle Posie found herself back at the Grand Canal, at the very same stop she had alighted from before, with Dickie. Abandoning all thoughts of navigating herself safely to the Questura and to Commissario Salvarocca, she decided to head back to the guesthouse the same way she had come, back to Inspector Lovelace.

  She would let him take the evidence into safekeeping.

  As she stood on the prow of the next vaporetto, her face stinging from the now driving rain, her clothes sopping wet, Posie ran over the conclusions she had come to while hiding in the shadow of Canova’s tomb; the conclusions to Alaric’s questions.

  Minnie Alladice, with a hatred for her whole family which had been simmering away for years, had come up with a particularly dreadful and unique means of setting past wrongs to rights. It was a lethal case of double-dealing.

  She had been blackmailing the Count, threatening to reveal all there was to know about his relationship with Pietro Corsetti to the Venetian press. And with the self-same money she had been paying Pietro Corsetti – a weak and notoriously cash-strapped gambler – to start a crusade of terror against Bella Alladice, who had become her specially-chosen prey.

  The conversation which the maid had overheard between the Count and Minnie Alladice when he had handed over money in the church doorway was now easy enough to understand.

  It seemed Count Giancarlo was all too aware of Minnie’s involvement in the fire. And even, perhaps, he was aware of Pietro Corsetti’s part in the dreadful proceedings. The Count had probably been suspicious ever since he saw the note about the secret chamber, when he’d recognised Pietro’s handwriting. Bella had said, after all, that he had reacted weirdly to the note: he had seemed disappointed. It was a horrid, slippery mess of a thing.

  But why had Minnie acted as she had, now? Posie bit at her lip. It fitted: it was all a question of timing. Posie had been hearing the same thing, without really thinking about it, over and over again during the last couple of days.

  Two months…

  It had been two months since Bella Alladice had drawn up a new Will, organised by Roger Valentine, her efficient secretary, a man who was ‘quite wonderful’. But Roger Valentine was also a man who chased money at every available opportunity, and, to go by Lucy’s reports, he was a man who was indiscreet. Roger had told Lucy about the contents of Bella’s Will in a show-off manner, and probably, in the hope of financial reward, he had then revealed the contents of the Will to Minnie, the person who had everything to gain by it.

  And this had been the start of the end for Bella Alladice. A carefully thought-out plan of terror and murder had been planned over a short period of time, escalating in intensity and seriousness.

  For the prize was too great, the temptation too strong.

  Posie had failed to understand, until last night, when Lucy had let the fact slip into the conversation, that Minnie would effectively end up running Alladice Holdings. It would be a reversal, after all these years, of her fortunes. A way of getting back what Minnie probably thought of as rightfully hers. A chance to hold her own at the English Ladies Club of Venice, unburdened by a niece who was consistently an embarrassment. A chance to step out of the shadows…

  What a mess.

  Posie pushed a wet strand of hair from her eyes. Ahead of her was the Accademia Bridge, and Posie stood at the exit of the boat, barely noticing when it drew level with the jetty.

  ‘Signorina? Hello? Are you leaving us or not, Signorina?’

  ‘Oh, sorry. Yes, of course…’ Posie crossed over onto the slippery jetty.

  So Bella’s death had all been planned carefully by Minnie, including the use of Pietro Corsetti as a useful and obvious scapegoat. But plans don’t always work out. The wrong woman had died in the fire, and Bella had escaped.

  Just how desperate was Minnie for her prize? Had Minnie really seized upon the second silver flask yesterday morning and poisoned Bella in a desperate last-ditch attempt at murder when her original plan had failed?

  There were so many things which didn’t ring true if that was the case. Why had Bella’s folio papers gone missing? Why had Roger disappeared so suddenly? And what was the significance of Bella’s telephone calls to London? And what about that burnt photograph…<
br />
  Campo San Vio passed Posie by in a rainy blur, the English church a particularly unwelcome sight.

  What was particularly sordid, Posie thought with disgust, was how much this case revolved around blackmail, or people selling information, or their very chances of happiness, for money. Where did it all end? Posie stopped outside the front door of the guesthouse, her mind reeling.

  And what about the secret room? How did that fit in? Was it just a morbid interest of Minnie’s which had led her to acquire that knowledge? Had she really meant to follow through on her note to Bella about putting her body in there?

  And if Minnie hadn’t meant for Silvia Hanro to die in the fire, as she surely hadn’t, it seemed certain that she was culpable for the movie star’s death anyway. She must have told the newly-arrived Silvia about the secret room yesterday morning, perhaps in a bizarre attempt to curry favour with the famous girl, and Silvia had remembered it later when disaster struck. Minnie Alladice certainly had a good deal of blood on her hands…

  Sighing, Posie tore off her coat and trudged up the staircase to the piano nobile above, and it was then that Posie heard a low hum of voices coming from the dining-room, which seemed to have been made accessible again. Of course, it was breakfast time.

  With no appetite, Posie glanced in briefly through the half-open doorway, and saw a sombre-faced Jones laying out serviettes. A bored-looking young policeman was sitting nursing a cup of coffee at a cloth-covered table in the corner, leafing through a newspaper. With Bella dead, Roger and Alaric both disappeared, Lucy in custody, Max a general no-show, and Dickie presumably too upset to risk facing his aunt after the allegations he’d heard earlier at the Frari, the place was very quiet. There was also no sign of the Count or Inspector Lovelace.

  Only Minnie Alladice and Mrs Persimmon sat in the dining-room, together, at a small table, coffees and pastries laid out between them, a couple of magazines spread about. Posie tightened her grip on the thin bundle of letters in her hand.

  I’ll show her what she can get away with, she thought to herself angrily, taking the stairs double-time. But without thinking, Posie had ended up on the larger, more impressive corridor of guest bedrooms.