The Stargazer: The Arboretti Family Saga - Book One

by Michele Jaffe

  But his relief was short-lived. Less than half an hour after he had cloistered himself in the library, Giorgio entered, looking grim.

  “You told me you’d want to know right away if I had any success tracing the source of this,” Giorgio laid the jeweled dagger on Ian’s desk as he spoke, “but I think you might want to reconsider.”

  Ian knew that Giorgio, while prone to joking and mockery, would never deliberately toy with him, especially not in his present mood. “What are you suggesting?”

  “Merely that maybe the information is not worth having anyway.”

  “S’bones, Giorgio, cease your evasions. Who made the dagger?”

  “That question is easy, Federigo Rossi made it. I told you none of the goldsmiths in the city would own up to it the first time I asked, but when I tried the strategy you suggested, pretending it had been a betrothal present and we did not know who to thank, they opened right up. And no wonder, because your idea was even more plausible than you imagined.” Giorgio paused, deciding whether to continue or try to change the subject. “You see, the dagger was commissioned by Giovanni Salva.”

  “Bianca’s brother!” Ian echoed loudly, and then sat glaring at the weapon on his desk. Damn that woman, damn her with her protestations of innocence, her sensual words, her promises. Damn her for toying with him. Her brother! How could she be such a fool? Or how could he be? He found he had gotten so used to the idea of her probable innocence that he could scarcely believe her guilt, did not want to believe it. But what else could explain this? His incredulity turned to icy rage. He would confront her with it and she would have to crumble. There would be no more fancy lies and excuses from her now.

  “Send Bianca to me.” Ian’s lips were pressed together so tightly that they were barely visible.

  Giorgio hesitated. “Before I do that, I think I should tell you one more thing, something you are not going to like any better. It may not be true, I heard it myself only a short time ago in the kitchens, but I think you had better know. That man, Enzo, that I brought up here yesterday to meet with you and Bianca?” Ian nodded for Giorgio to continue. “His body has been found floating in a canal not far from here.”

  Master and servant regarded each other morbidly, each with the same unpleasant thought.

  “I asked around a little, but the answers are inconclusive.” Giorgio preempted Ian’s question. “Marina, that is, her new maid, says she was with her from about half ten until the clock struck twelve, but none of the staff saw her after that. Your uncles claim that she came to the dining room as they were finishing luncheon, sneezing and covered with bumps, and they sent her to bed. She is there now, I just looked, but no one checked on her between, say, two o’clock and five. And even if she really was ill then, there is still the period from about noon until one when no one saw her. One of the serving men said he thought he saw her heading for the back stairs and puzzled over it at the time, but he did not stop her. I have not yet confronted her with any of this, figuring you would want to do that yourself.”

  Ian nodded. “Bring her.”

  When Bianca entered the library, all the stoniness that Ian had shed in the course of the previous week had returned and even redoubled. He sat more like a mountain than a man, contemplating her silently. All that remained of her horticultural reaction were the red rims of her eyes and a slight pink tinge on her nose. She did not look sick, Ian told himself, and another part of him whispered, nor does she look like a murderer. It was not enough that she had infiltrated his household, but she seemed also to have taken hold of some part of his mind. He heard her dreamy words from the previous night in his head, and a tremor went through him. She had tried to manipulate him, tried using the most familiar of tricks, and it had almost worked. The idea that a woman could do that to him augmented Ian’s fury and deepened his steely glare. He was determined not to let the moments they had shared together blind him to the truth. His earlier softness and the strange emotions he had begun to feel galvanized instead into a steely determination to make Bianca confess her guilt. When he spoke, his voice came from the deepest, coldest, stoniest part of him.

  “It is time for you to tell me the truth. All of it.”

  This again? They were back to this? Bianca, too tired to argue, was filled with despair. “I have already told you the truth. The whole truth. You know everything.”

  Ian pounded his fist on his desk and looked at her with fury. “Lies, all lies!”

  “Why? Why must they be lies? There is nothing to contradict them. Nothing.” Bianca, as if infected by Ian’s anger, felt her rage returning and with it her strength.

  Ian held up the dagger. “There is this. And I know who ordered it.”

  “Who?”

  Ian would have sworn that Bianca was genuinely interested. Damn, but she was sly.

  “Your curiosity is so persuasive,” he sneered, “that I think I shall gratify it. It was commissioned by Giovanni. Giovanni Salva. Your brother.”

  Ian had to compliment her again on her performance. Her look of surprise was very real, and her gasp added a nice touch. The hands flying to her face might have been too much, but he supposed she was stalling for time, trying to compose her next elaborate lie.

  Apparently she could not think of anything adequate. Looking bewildered, she asked only, “Are you sure?”

  “You mean, is there any way for you to wriggle out of this? No, there is not. I am sure. You had your brother commission this dagger, and you planted it on the body. I am still not certain whether you or your brother committed the actual murder, but I am certain you will soon tell me. Is that who you have been protecting all this time?”

  The idea of Giovanni as a murderer rendered Bianca dumb. She and her brother were not particularly close, but she knew him well enough to know that he was not evil. At least she thought she did.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know what to say. I wish I had some way to explain Giovanni’s actions, but I really don’t. We are not that intimate.”

  “Ha-ha! Just like a woman to worm out of it by letting the blame rest somewhere else. I tell you, the theory I favor is that you did the whole thing yourself, just using your brother for this one little chore. And I’ll tell you why I prefer it. Because I know about your other murder.”

  This would have been the appropriate moment for the flinging-of-hands-to-face maneuver, Ian thought, completely unimpressed by Bianca’s blank, puzzled look. He should have known she was too slick to confess, so he went on. “Enzo’s body has already been found. I am surprised you did not work harder to conceal it. Surely a few well placed rocks could have done the trick. We know you have no discomfort pawing the bodies of the dead.”

  “Enzo? Isabella’s Enzo?”

  “Very unoriginal to feign ignorance. Yes, Enzo, the man whom you pretended not to be bribing so generously yesterday. Now I understand why you were so willing to let him walk out of here with my money.”

  “It was my money,” Bianca interjected.

  “Yes, well, it probably is now, as I am sure you liberated it from him when you killed him.”

  “The body was found naked.” Giorgio spoke from behind Bianca. Not caring to leave his master alone with a murderess, he had decided to linger through the conference.

  “Easier than going through his pockets.” Ian nodded to himself. “I bet you are saving his clothes for the next time you decide to go gallivanting around dressed like a man. And I am sure you had no trouble enticing him out of them, probably inviting him to enact one of your perverted fantasies. What was it, whips? Animals? Oh, I know. You like to watch.”

  Bianca let out a yelp. Until then she had been in a state of shock, but when Ian spoke his last words, she felt as if she had been punched in the stomach. Trembling and on the verge of tears, she tried to speak, but no words would come out.

  “Don’t bother to speak unless
you are planning to confess. I will not tolerate any more of your lies.”

  “How dare you? How dare you, how dare you, how dare you?” Bianca was on her feet, moving to the desk where Ian sat, her hands balled into tight little fists. Before she got close enough to make him her next victim, Giorgio grabbed her from behind and held her, squirming, in his arms. It was then, with Bianca suspended in midair, that the door opened to admit Francesco and Roberto, who, finding her absent from her bed against doctor’s orders, had gone in search of their ward.

  “Bravo, fine performance,” Ian was saying caustically when they entered the room. “Your ‘outrage’ is much better than your ‘surprise.’ I almost found myself believing it.”

  As they regarded the sputtering figure still clasped in Giorgio’s arms, Francesco and Roberto were completely persuaded.

  “Set her down at once!” Roberto commanded Giorgio, who reluctantly acceded but remained standing behind Bianca’s elbow, just in case.

  “What under heaven is going on here?” Francesco demanded, deeply flushed.

  “I was trying to kill him.” Bianca gestured at Ian.

  “I see.” Francesco was nodding. “Certainly you are not the first to want to do that, he is very provoking. What exactly did he do to you?”

  “I caught her in a web of lies too sticky to escape from.” Ian spoke before she could, sounding satisfied. “I now have proof of her guilt.”

  “You have no such thing!” Bianca worked to control the rising tide of her anger. “You have a dagger that someone close to me ordered, and you have a dead body that someone in this neighborhood discarded. Neither of those point to me in any way.”

  “Bosh! I know you and I know your cunning ways. Your signature on these crimes could not be clearer.”

  Bianca was shaking her head in disbelief. This, this was the man she had bared her soul to. This was the man to whom, she feared, she had revealed the deepest secret of her heart. And he had misunderstood everything. Willfully. What had happened to him to make him so blind and so unyielding? And why did she have to be its innocent victim?

  Half of her wanted to jump into a canal and keep company with Enzo’s corpse, but the other half of her told her to persevere—if only for the pleasure of vindicating herself and proving that horrible, hateful, stern, stony, implacable, unlovable, irresistible man wrong. Using cold, hard, reason she saw that the first option precluded the second, but the second did not preclude the first, therefore the most advisable course was to pursue the second until it was proven unfeasible and then implement the first. Thus, she decided to continue her search for the murderer and jump into the canal only when all hope was lost. Relieved to have found such a sound solution, she faced Ian with renewed vigor.

  Francesco and Roberto were remonstrating with him when she broke in. “You gave me, my lord, one hundred and sixty-eight hours to prove my innocence. I still have ninety-one hours left. Have you so lost your sense of honor that you would break our agreement?”

  Ian glared at her. “Given that I now have proof of your guilt beyond any shadow of a doubt, I see no reason to let you continue your investigations.” Bianca tried to interrupt, but Ian would not let her. “However, as long as you do not leave this house, I see no reason not to let you continue to try. It might be amusing to watch. I warn you, however, I am going to arm the staff. And don’t imagine you can seduce them into compliance like you did poor Enzo. My men will not be ruled by the dictates of their bodies.”

  Bianca spoke reassuringly. “Don’t worry. If I have learned only one thing from you, it is that seduction is far more tedious than it is worth.” With that she turned on her heel and marched out under the astonished gazes of four sets of eyes.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Ian spent the rest of the evening very out of sorts. He felt as if his world were somehow crumbling, the Arboretti suspicious of one another, his household in an uproar. At the first opportunity, he sought Crispin in the plant rooms and apologized to him, an occurrence so rare that Crispin almost fainted. While Ian was there, Luca mentioned Bianca’s morning visit, which accounted for at least part of the gaps in her day. Ian was surprised at himself. He felt glad to hear that she had an alibi for the morning, probably because, he reasoned, it narrowed his field of inquiry and thus made his investigation easier. Certainly, that was it.

  Still restless, he decided a walk in the rain would be good for him, and he set out without any particular direction. He was surprised, or at least tried to be, when he found himself confronting the two street doors of Isabella’s house. He was shocked when he noticed that he was tinkering with the lock on the side door, and astonished when he felt himself entering.

  Once inside he moved quietly and quickly, not wanting to disturb his conscience or anyone who might be there. Deciding that Isabella’s room was the likeliest place, he went there first, relying on the light from a small window. Miraculously, he had thought to bring candles and flint with him on his walk, you know, for eventualities, but he did not yet want to use them. He paused at the landing to listen, heard nothing but the beating of his heart, and proceeded to Isabella’s door. It opened soundlessly and he walked in.

  Then someone broke his back. At least that seemed to be the goal of the man pinning Ian against the floor, where he had been thrown during the initial assault. That the rug needed to be shaken out was Ian’s first thought after he gratefully realized that his back was only severely contorted, not actually broken. Nonetheless he kept still, his mouth pressed into the dirty rug, as his adversary replaced the knee he had been using to hold Ian down with the barrel of a gun.

  “What are you doing here?” the adversary demanded. Ian had an antagonizing comment ready on the tip of his tongue, it being his noted practice to provoke anyone and everyone, but he swallowed it when he recognized the unmistakable voice.

  “Valdone! Damn it, man, you nearly killed me.”

  The aggressor thought he also recognized a voice but was not sure. He scrambled to his feet, as quickly as his large size would allow, and held a lighted candle up to Ian’s face.

  “D’Aosto! What are you doing here?”

  “Investigating, at your request.” Ian’s tone was dry. He moved his head from side to side, testing to ensure that it was both still attached to his body and fully functional. “Were you waiting for me, or did something else bring you here?”

  Valdo shook his head and dropped onto the bed, setting the candle next to him. He ran the fingers of one hand over the peach silk bedspread.

  “She loves this color. It is her favorite. I had it specially dyed for her in England, and when she saw it the first time…” It looked as though the large man was going to cry, and less than a crying woman or a crying baby could Ian tolerate a crying mountain.

  “It is very nice. But you still haven’t said what you are doing here.”

  “I am waiting. Sunday night is the night she and I always spend together. We have dinner, then, you know. I thought maybe she would come back for it.” His voice suddenly lost its wistful edge. “You heard about Enzo?”

  “Yes, most disturbing. That is part of why I am here. I want to check a theory which, ah, I am developing. You could give me a hand. It would help to pass the time.” Ian hated himself for perpetuating Valdo’s hope.

  “I may as well.” Valdo shrugged and dismally lifted himself off the bed. “What are we looking for?”

  “Peepholes.”

  Working by the light of two candles, the two men covered every inch of the floor and found nothing. No loose boards, no prying holes, not a single sign of a secret place for listening or watching the dealings of those below. Then they moved to the next room, and the next. Ian’s back ached doubly, from Valdo’s attack and from leaning over to scour the floor, and his outlook was bleak. He stood to stretch, cursing himself for acting on the harebrained idea of a woman, when an idea of
his own developed. Women were such petty creatures that their tolerance for discomfort was very low, and listening to hours of conversation bent over with your ear pressed to the floor would be very uncomfortable. Clearly they had been looking in the wrong place. The peephole or listening device would have to be located somewhere more commodious.

  Almost tripping on Valdo, who was sprawled in the middle of a floor testing the floorboards for looseness, Ian rushed back to Isabella’s room. He stood in the middle and took it in, slowly. He went first to the bed and lay down, using his hands to search the wall behind him. Though he did not know exactly what he was looking for, he was sure he would recognize it when he found it.

  Whatever it was, though, it was not behind the bed. Not ready to give up, he went and sat at Isabella’s vanity table. He opened all the drawers, one by one, then the cabinets. Nothing. He uncorked all the perfumes, unscrewed all the unguents. Still nothing. The mirror was hinged so that it could be angled in a variety of ways, so Ian began adjusting it, folding each piece along its hinge. That was how he saw it.

  Behind the third and fourth sections of the mirror was a wide tube with a cork in it. Ian removed the cork and looked into it. All he saw was darkness, but a tingling in his body told him he was right.

  “Valdone!” he called, and waited for the large man to lumber over. “You sit here while I go to the parlor. Keep your eyes on the tube, and if you hear or see anything, shout.”

  Ian had taken his candle and was rushing down the stairs before Valdo could question him. Based on the position of Isabella’s room, Ian guessed which of the three doors went to the parlor, found it unlocked, and entered. He put the candle in the middle of the large table and began to recite poetry.