The Four Horsemen

by Gregory Dowling

  “I see,” I said. “And presumably all reports since the beginning of September have gone to the Inquisitors.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” He gave a resigned shrug at the sheer senselessness of this.

  “Do we know what salotti he was referring to in his last report? Have we any idea if he was attending one in particular?”

  “Unfortunately not,” he said, shaking his head with a kind of mortified dismay. He clearly considered this gap in their knowledge of Padoan’s movements inexplicable.

  “So that is somewhere to begin,” I said. “And perhaps I should go and see this sister of his. Did they live together?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I believe she is still in the house, although the neighbours are a little worried about how she can cope by herself.”

  “Well, she’ll certainly have problems hanging the clothes,” I said, and then felt a twinge of guilt at my flippancy.

  5

  Sior Padoan had lived near the church of Sant’Isepo in eastern Venice, very near to where my gondolier friend and co-worker Bepi lived. So it seemed sensible to start with Bepi. Our working relationship had altered over the last few months. As my little jobs (lavoretti was the conveniently vague term I used for them when talking to Bepi) for the Missier Grande became more frequent I had encouraged Bepi to consider himself as no longer exclusively bound to me as a working companion. Fortunately he had accepted this with his usual composure; my self-esteem might have been more flattered if he had shown clear signs of dismay, but I forced myself to take comfort from his adaptability. We now worked as a team from Monday to Wednesday, and the rest of the week he did other jobs, sometimes with other ciceroni and sometimes just at the regular ferry stages. I had also worried that my clients might fret at not having the same person on permanent beck and call, but found that they too accepted with equanimity the notion of having a different cicerone and gondolier (friends of Bepi and myself) cater to their needs for half the week; it was all a good lesson in humility.

  It was Thursday morning and I found Bepi at his usual place at the gondola station near San Moisè. He was playing dice with his fellow gondoliers and looked up in mild surprise at seeing me during what he usually referred to as “the other half of the week”.

  “What’s the matter?” he said. He rarely asked me about my other work, presumably from a sense of delicacy.

  “Nothing the matter,” I said. “I’d just like to ask you about a neighbour of yours, if you’ve got a moment.”

  He glanced at his two companions, who both gave a half-shrug. Although perfectly civil, they were rarely very forthcoming in my presence. Bepi got up from his bench and walked towards the bridge, where we paused and watched a colleague of his helping a large and nervous German visitor into a gondola.

  “Who’s the neighbour?” Bepi asked.

  “Well, ex-neighbour. He died a week ago. Fell from his altana.”

  “Oh, the old teacher,” he said.

  “That’s right,” I said. “Did you know him?”

  “Well, not to speak to,” he said. “Never had a long chat with him.”

  I thought that there were probably very few people Bepi had long chats with, but quite probably he considered long stretches of companionable silence as an integral part of a chat. “But you knew who he was,” I said.

  “Oh, everyone knew old Padoan,” he said. “One of the local characters.”

  “What sort of person was he?” I asked.

  “Funny old man,” he said. “Loner. Children used to make fun of him.”

  “You mean his students?”

  “Oh, he gave up teaching some years back. I mean the local street boys. Nothing too nasty. Just used to imitate the way he walked.”

  And Bepi himself strutted a few steps, with his head pushed forward, bobbing like a pigeon.

  “I can imagine children finding that funny,” I said. “What are people saying about his death?”

  Bepi looked sharply at me. “This is for your other job?”

  “Yes,” I said. “I’ve just been asked to look into it.” I deliberately kept things vague. I knew better than to mention the Missier Grande, both because his name tended to scare people into silence and because telling people I was working directly for him could sound like boasting.

  “What do they want to know?” he asked.

  “Well, has anyone suggested there was anything suspicious about it?”

  “Not that I’ve heard,” he said. “It was a fairly old altana. Rotten wood. And he was not very steady on his feet.”

  He was obviously uncomfortable at being involved in my “other job” but was too polite to say so. I went on regardless. “Nobody ever suggested that he was anything other than an old teacher?”

  “You mean like – like you?”

  “Well, yes,” I said.

  He shook his head, perhaps in dismay that there could be other people who had fallen so low. “No,” he said. “Nothing like that.”

  “All right,” I said. “I just wondered. Sorry to bother you.”

  “No bother,” he said, obviously lying through his teeth.

  “See you Monday morning then,” I said.

  “Yes, of course,” he said. This return to the normal Monday-to-Wednesday world of our real work was clearly a relief. “See you then.”

  He returned to his two friends, and I crossed the bridge in the direction of Saint Mark’s Square.

  I had other acquaintances in eastern Castello and decided to garner their opinions too. These were three boys aged between ten and twelve, often to be found in the boatyards at the eastern end of the Riva. They had been of great help in my earliest investigation as confidential agent, and I knew them to be quick-witted, resourceful and highly observant. During the mornings, they worked in the boatyards with their families, but they were usually left free in the afternoon to play; their games nearly always seemed to involve mud.

  I made my way down the Riva in the early afternoon. A mist had descended on the city, so that when I turned round to look towards the bell-tower of Saint Mark’s the golden angel on its peak was wispily unreal. I was glad I still had my cloak, and I wrapped it more closely around myself. I had not replaced the tricorn hat that had been lost in the night attack, so that one or two people gave me curious glances. Well, maybe I would start a new fashion: hatless in autumn.

  I found the three boys playing with fishing nets by the water’s edge near the boatyards; the aim of the game seemed to be to retain as much mud as possible in one’s net. I suspected that at a certain point it would turn into a mud-hurling competition, so I remained at a prudent distance.

  “Bondì, fioi,” I greeted them.

  They recognised my voice and greeted me with their usual mixture of curiosity and wariness. I had rewarded them for performing some minor tasks of surveillance in the past, taking care never to ask them to do anything risky and never to pay them amounts that would arouse undue suspicion among their families.

  “What do you want?” said Lucio, a sharp-looking boy who always wore a red Castello cap. He was usually their spokesman and had a refreshing tendency to get straight to the point.

  “I just wanted to ask you about a man who died recently,” I said, responding in kind. I had found that any attempts to approach matters circuitously were not appreciated.

  “Who?”

  “A man called Padoan. He fell from his altana.”

  “Oh, him,” said Lucio, and instantly performed the same pigeon-strut I had seen done by Bepi. Lucio’s parody was more emphatic and caused his fishing net to spatter mud in a generous radius all around him. I stepped back a pace or two.

  “Yes, him,” I said.

  “What about him?”

  “I just wondered if you knew of anyone who had visited him, any strangers who had been seen around this area.”

  “You mean like you?”

  “Well, maybe,” I said, a little disconcerted. “What do you mean, like me?”

  “A foresto,” s
aid Lucio, using the Venetian word for a foreigner.

  I was a little uncertain how to take this. Had they detected an English intonation in my Venetian? Or did they just consider anyone not from the parish of Sant’Isepo as a foresto? I said, “I was just wondering if Padoan had been seen with anyone you didn’t know.”

  Lucio looked at his two companions, who both gave quick shrugs. “He was always alone. No friends. And he used to talk to himself.”

  “Did you ever hear what he said?”

  “Just once,” said Lucio. “Sounded foreign to me.”

  “Foreign? You mean he had a non-Castello accent?”

  “No, strange words.” He suddenly imitated an old person’s feeble tones: “Amamamamus . . . Habababamimus.”

  “Ah,” I said. I wondered if he had overheard Padoan rehearsing one of his Latin proverbs. “What happened after he died?”

  “The sbirri came. They say there was blood everywhere.”

  “All right,” I said. I didn’t want to encourage them to dwell on this part of the story, although I suspected they were hardy enough to have got over any shock they might have experienced at the time. “And what did the sbirri do? Who did they question?”

  “Everyone. My aunt’s friend’s cousin told them she’d seen him fall, but they soon found out she couldn’t have: her house faces the opposite way. But she still insists she heard the thump.”

  I winced. “And did anyone see it?”

  “Don’t know,” said Lucio.

  Marco, the smallest of the trio, with a high-pitched eager voice, spoke up. “My aunt did.”

  The other two boys made contemptuous sounds of disbelief, but Marco insisted, lifting his mud-filled net, ready to give battle if necessary. To avert this I said hastily, “Go on, Marco. Tell me what she saw.”

  “Well, she lives in a house over by Sant’Antonio, right on the top floor. She’s often at the window. She says she saw him on the altana.”

  “And then?”

  “And then he wasn’t there any more.”

  The other two boys snorted with contempt at this feeble anticlimax.

  “So she didn’t see him actually fall,” I said.

  “No, because she had to pick up my cousin, who had fallen off the table. He was screaming. He can scream really loud.” He seemed quite proud of his cousin’s abilities in this area.

  “So did she tell the sbirri about this?”

  “No. She doesn’t like them.”

  That was far from unusual. Perhaps only their mothers had any fondness for them. “And they didn’t question her?”

  “No, her house wasn’t nearby. They only talked to the neighbours: people in the same building or the ones next to it.”

  “Like my aunt’s friend’s cousin,” said Lucio, reasserting his leadership. “She lived right next door.”

  “But she didn’t see anything,” said Marco. “She just heard it.”

  “Yes. A great crash, she said. She thought another chimney-pot had fallen. Then she heard people screaming.”

  “We all heard that,” said Marco.

  “Yes,” said Piero, the middle boy, not wanting to be left out. “I reckon everyone in Castello heard it.”

  “Yes, but my aunt’s friend’s cousin was one of the first. And then she started screaming as well. And she probably has the loudest scream.”

  “Bet it’s not as loud as my cousin who fell off the table. And he’s only four.”

  “Bet it is. She can scream like this . . .” Lucio put his head back and sent forth an unearthly wailing noise.

  “My cousin’s much louder,” said Marco. And he leaned forward and let out a high-pitched screech, which did sound very much like that of a distressed four-year-old child.

  I could see men at the nearby boatyard turning to stare at us. “All right, all right, boys, that’s enough,” I said quickly, seeing Piero preparing to join in the crazed cacophony, presumably in imitation of some vocally gifted relative of his own.

  They left off, the two rivals looking defiantly at each other.

  “Can you tell me your aunt’s name?” I asked Marco. “And where she lives?”

  “Anna Biasin,” he said. “A big palazzo next to Sant’Antonio. But don’t tell her I said anything about her. And don’t tell the sbirri.”

  “Of course not,” I said. “You know me.”

  They all gave a slight shrug at this. They were only being honest; there was no point in either my or their pretending that we were on close terms. As the conversation was clearly coming to an end, and I didn’t want the men at the boatyard to become any more inquisitive, I pulled out a lira and gave it to Lucio. I knew that the other two acknowledged his role as treasurer. They nodded their thanks and returned to their muddy game, letting out an occasional competitive scream as an added feature.

  I walked towards the church of Sant’Isepo, their clamorous shrieks getting fainter behind me in the mist. As I walked I began to plan my investigative strategy. My pace quickened as I mulled over different possibilities; as usual the challenge of having to invent a new role for myself was a welcome stimulus. There was no denying that Lucia had a point when she accused me of enjoying the opportunities that my work as a confidential agent provided to put on a performance. Sometimes I had found myself inventing a character for myself when there was no reason for it at all and the questions I was asking could perfectly well have come from Alvise Marangon, cicerone. But just as I had divided my week into two separate halves, so I seemed to find it necessary to further divide my personality into multiple fractions.

  If I thought hard about it I might find in my past all sorts of reasons for this constant tendency to self-division: there was the fact that I had grown up in England, son of a Venetian actress, and I was now living in my mother’s city and using my English background to get work as a cicerone for English visitors. I was always Venetian to English acquaintances, and English to Venetian ones. And I had been a performer since childhood.

  But I rarely did think hard about it; it was too much trouble.

  I reached the house where Sior Padoan had lived. It was in a side street off the fondamenta on the other side of the canal from the church of Sant’Isepo. In the second of these streets lived Bepi with his formidable mother and numerous siblings. I walked swiftly past this one, just glancing at the usual row of old women in black shawls keeping a beady eye on their grandchildren. No one called out “Foresto!” to me, or asked me why I continued to prevent their Bepi from getting a lucrative position as gondolier for a noble family.

  I reached the last street. This was quieter than Bepi’s, with just one old man sitting on a stool outside one of the houses, smoking a pipe. I looked at the buildings on either side. They rose to four storeys. I examined the pavement and was relieved to see no sign of lingering bloodstains.

  I approached the old man and greeted him with a courteous “Bondì.”

  He shifted the pipe in his mouth and made an incomprehensible noise, which could have been a reply or just a throat-clearing gargle.

  “I’m looking for Siora Nela Padoan,” I said.

  He eyed me up and down. Then he said, “Sbirro?”

  I shook my head. “No. From the Scuola dei Marangoni da Case.” For once I could exploit my own surname by claiming to be a representative of the guild of house-carpenters. Maybe I could even admit to being called Alvise, if pressed.

  He continued to look me up and down. Perhaps he was looking for my tools.

  “It’s just an enquiry,” I said. “We heard of the accident because of the altana, and so we thought we should find out who the carpenter was, whether he officially belonged to the scuola.”

  He took his pipe out and eventually spoke. “I was a carpenter,” he said. “Forty-seven years.”

  Oh, wonderful, I thought. Now he’s going to test me.

  “At the Arsenale,” he said.

  Well, that was a relief at least. Ship-carpenters had a different scuola. “A great profession,” I said respect
fully. “You must be proud of what you did.”

  “Worked on the railings,” he said. “For the decks.”

  “Wonderful,” I said.

  “Forty-seven years.”

  “Yes, so you said.” I tried not to show my impatience.

  “I never saw a railing give way like that one.”

  My feeling of impatience vanished. “Really?” I said.

  “If that’s the way house-carpenters work they should be ashamed of themselves.” He stared aggressively at me.

  “Well, yes, that’s what I’m here to investigate . . .”

  “Lock them up. Just make sure the jail doesn’t have doors made by them.”

  “Did you see the broken railing?” I said.

  “Just the broken bits that came down with him.”

  “And how had they broken?” I said. “Was it a clean break? Jagged edges?”

  “I didn’t get a chance to look. The sbirri took them all away with them.”

  I wondered whether these had been the regular sbirri, or confidenti sent by the Inquisitors. Well, there was no way this old man could tell me that. “So can you tell me where I’ll find Siora Nela Padoan?”

  He pointed at a house towards the end of the street. The door was slightly ajar. “Top floor,” he said. “She’s still there, though they’re trying to get her to move.”

  “Who is trying?”

  “The other people in the building. They’re worried she’s going to burn the house down or something. She’s not all there.” He tapped his head with his pipe.

  “Did anyone call on the Padoans before the accident?” I said. I was not sure I would be able to justify this question in my role as representative of the guild of house-carpenters but decided it was worth a try.

  “Nobody that I saw,” he said. “But I’m not always out here, you know. It was windy that day.”

  Fair enough. Presumably a good day for drying clothes.

  “Why do you want to know?” he said suddenly.

  “Well, thank you for talking to me,” I said with equal suddenness, pretending not to have heard his question. I walked briskly towards the door, just giving one glance back before entering it. He had put his pipe back in his mouth. I doubted he was really concerned with the oddness of my question.