Death in a Serene City

by Edward Sklepowich

  “That’s Pantalone.”

  “Pantalone?” said the husband. “I’m afraid I’m not familiar with these characters.”

  “Pantalone, now,” Cavatorta began with enthusiasm, lighting a cigarette, “is most interesting. He’s an old Venetian merchant, the husband who—how do you say in English?—who wears the horns. What is the word?”

  Neither of his customers helped him but from the expression on their faces he could see they understood. The wife put back the mask and took down another. This could go on forever. It was already long past five and he was in a hurry to close early. He had pegged these two from the moment they walked in as browsers. If they bought anything, it would be only one of the pamphlets on mask making stacked next to the cash register.

  “Now this one,” the wife said. “Let me guess.” She held up the black papier-mâché mask with its prominent cone-shaped nose to one of the lamps placed throughout the shop to illuminate the display. She turned it in profile. “Yes, I know! Pinocchio!”

  Cavatorta smiled.

  “A logical guess but also a logical mistake. It’s the medico.”

  “Medico? It means ‘doctor,’” she said for the benefit of her husband, who seemed bored. Cavatorta wondered if he would get even the price of a pamphlet from these two. The wife gave him a puzzled look. “But I don’t understand. Why is this one the doctor? Is he another one of those characters from the Italian theater—what is it called?”

  “The commedia dell’arte.” He shook his head and took the mask from her, pointing to the nose. “It’s not really a nose. It’s a device to protect the doctor from the plague in the old days. Some chemical or other was put here”—he turned the mask over and indicated the deep hollow—“and the doctor breathed safely, or so it was thought.”

  “I see.” Then to his irritation she took down yet another mask, one that he didn’t feel inclined to talk about. “And this one? It’s lovely.” She cupped the delicate silver papier-mâché mask in both her hands as if it were a face.

  He crushed out his cigarette.

  “That’s a replica of the mask covering the face of Santa Teodora over in San Gabriele.” That should be enough but then he risked adding, “I’m the only mask maker in Venice to have the honor of making copies.” He probably shouldn’t have said it but maybe he would make a sale and they would leave him alone. “Do you like it? It can be shipped anywhere you want. It isn’t as fragile as it looks.”

  The husband frowned. He took the mask from his wife and put it back on the wall.

  “We must be going, Jill. We’ve been out all day.”

  Looking embarrassed, the wife thanked Cavatorta and started to follow her husband into the Calle dell’Arcanzolo. Noticing the pamphlets, she picked one up.

  “How delightful.” She riffled through the pages, then looked at Cavatorta with a bright smile. “I’ll take one.” She gave him a ten-thousand lira note. “Make that two. I have an actress friend. She should find it interesting.”

  Then, with the air of someone doing her bit for local art and culture and a starving not-so-young artist, she told him to keep the change.

  As soon as they left, Cavatorta went outside to pull down the metal shutters, holding himself back from banging them down the way he wanted to.

  3

  THE couple went down the Calle dell’Arcanzolo to the Campo San Gabriele where the wife stopped to look through her guidebook for a few minutes, frowning at a page and then up at the facade of the church. With a quick glance over her shoulder at her husband, she went across the campo and up the steps of the church. The door was locked.

  “This way,” she said, as she went down the steps and along the riva that bordered the canal. “Let’s slip in here.”

  She pointed to a partly open door.

  “But the church is closed, Jill.”

  “Don’t be afraid, darling. She’s been dead for a long time.”

  She gave a nervous laugh. It echoed from the other side of the canal and came back to them dead and hollow. She shivered, looking down at the dark, murky waters beside the footpath. Her laugh had sounded like a stranger’s. Yet one more weird transformation of the city. It must have something to do with all the water and all the stones—there was hardly anything else in the city. Nothing was what it seemed here. Some of the time you couldn’t even be sure if you were looking at the real thing or its reflection.

  Her husband was still hesitating.

  “Come on, Andrew. You know how I love these churches. Indulge me and then I promise we’ll go straight on to Harry’s.”

  “I swear they would have hanged you for a Papist in the sixteenth century. To think your dear old pater is a respectable Oxford atheist. Come on then. Let’s get this over with.”

  He pushed the door open a bit but when he saw how dark and empty the hall ahead was, he hesitated once again. Thirty-one years of queuing up and never ignoring a sign or sensible advice held him back now.

  “Well barely see anything, it’s almost completely dark. Why don’t we come back first thing in the morning?”

  “Because we’re off to Murano then. And tomorrow’s not today.”

  “Don’t delude yourself, sweetheart, your father will know of these tendencies. I’m not sure how he’ll react. They’re shocking enough for me to discover in my new bride.”

  But before he had finished speaking she had pushed past him and was already halfway down the narrow hall. He sighed. Here it was their honeymoon and it seemed she was almost always bustling ahead of him. Either that or waiting for him with a touch of impatience. But the dear girl always seemed to know exactly what she wanted to see and exactly where it was, perhaps not so remarkable in Rome or Florence but in Venice it was a downright miracle.

  All day she had been talking about this relic. “What do you think it’s going to look like? Do you think there’ll be a postcard? Do you think they’ll let us take a snap?” She had an old school chum named Theodora and thought it would be a scream to send her a card or a snap.

  He imagined it would be. You go to your front door to pick up the usual bills and circulars only to find the face of some bloody RC mummy staring at you. And to make it worse it’s got your very own name!

  “Andrew dear, are you coming or not?”

  Did he have a choice? He caught up with her. She was standing in front of a large dark portrait in a heavy frame.

  “And who do you think be is?”

  He looked up at a dour-faced man in red robes.

  “A cardinal.” He pointed to the man’s head. “See the red hat?” He paused. “But there’s only one problem. I don’t see any portraits of his so-called nephews, do you?”

  “You’re impossible! Come on, let’s finish this before the whole building falls down on your heathen head.”

  Once again she led the way, this time down the hall to a door. It opened smoothly, with barely a sound, showing them the dimly lit interior of the church. They entered a side aisle near the baptismal font. To Andrew it looked like just about every other church they had visited in the city, though shabbier and—from the smell of it—quite a bit farther down the watery decline. Perhaps to Jill it looked different. She certainly seemed spellbound.

  Without saying anything she squeezed through a row of pews. She had told him that the glass coffin was in a chapel on the other side and he thought he could see a corner of it in a dim recess beyond. He followed, picking up a leaflet from a pew.

  Jill screamed. He dropped the leaflet and ran over to her, tripping over a kneeling board.

  When he reached the chapel, Jill had stopped screaming and had her hand over her mouth. At her feet sprawled a dark-clothed figure facedown. It was a woman, apparently an old woman with thinning gray hair. His first thought was that he was looking at the saint herself, for the casket was empty, the glass broken. Pieces of glass crunched under his feet.

  A rivulet of blood was seeping from the woman’s head. It was staining a large white cloth and collecting around the e
dges of some dried flowers.

  Although he knew the RCs had numerous bleeding saints in their crowded pantheon, he couldn’t believe that this indeed was one of them. He bent down to put his fingers to the woman’s throat. She was still warm but there was no pulse.

  4

  MARIA was late returning Urbino’s laundry. During the week since his trip to Padua he had noticed that she was struggling a bit more than usual under the basket’s burden. For this last pickup he had taken out some of the heavier items.

  This was the first time she had been late. If she couldn’t be on time, she sent Carlo.

  Urbino put down the George Sand novel and went to get another glass of wine, pausing at the study window to look down at the garden. It was a mere postage stamp but incredibly precious in a city with barely forty acres of earth. Although he loved this time of year, he was anxious for spring with all its flowers, especially the bougainvillaea that cascaded over the garden walls.

  On his way back to his chair and the amiable company of Sand’s Consuelo the bell rang. Before he was even halfway down the stairs there was another long ring.

  When he opened the door, it was Carlo. He started talking rapidly in dialect. Even in the best of circumstances it was somewhat difficult to understand him. All Urbino could make out was that he was asking for help.

  Perhaps realizing that Urbino was confused, Carlo stopped speaking. He held up his hand. In it was one of Urbino’s monogrammed pillow slips. It was stained with red.

  5

  THE honeymoon couple had been gone only ten minutes when Commissario Francesco Gemelli of the Venice Questura learned that Urbino Macintyre was on the line. Gemelli sighed. What did Macintyre want this time? He seemed to have an endless stream of complaints and suggestions for a better and safer Venice. The last time he had called was about some supposedly unauthorized renovation in the Cannaregio.

  “Tell him I’m busy, Flora.”

  “I’m sorry, Commissario, but he insists it’s urgent and wants to speak only with you.”

  Gemelli cursed under his breath. This was what came of socializing, he supposed. Ever since he had met Macintyre at one of the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini’s parties, the American seemed to think he was entitled to special treatment.

  “Put him on then.”

  Gemelli thought he was prepared for just about anything Macintyre might say but realized how wrong he was when the American said,

  “Commissario, you must send someone over here right away. There seems to have been an accident. I have a pillow slip covered with blood.”

  “What?”

  “Carlo Galuppi, the son of the woman who does my laundry, just came here with a bloody pillow slip, one of my pillow slips.”

  “Are you sure it’s yours?”

  “It’s monogrammed.”

  “Listen, Signor Macintyre, do whatever you can to keep Galuppi there.”

  “I’m afraid he’s already gone.”

  “He just came and went, leaving you with a bloody pillow slip?”

  “Not quite. I had him come in and sit down. He was very upset, almost incoherent. He was asking for help from what I could understand. I went for some brandy but when I got back he was gone. I’m afraid he’s been hurt.”

  “Not him, his mother. Maria Galuppi had her skull bashed in at San Gabriele and that saint’s body was taken. If Galuppi returns before my men arrive, try to keep him there this time. Talk to him, give him that drink, serve him dinner if you have to. Do everything you can—everything, that is, except physically restrain him. We don’t want you to put your own life in danger. Just keep reminding yourself that you’re probably entertaining a murderer.”

  6

  THE rest of the Corvo was doing nothing to dull the pain Urbino felt about Maria’s murder or to reconcile him to the possibility of Carlo’s hand in it. Gemelli’s men had come and searched the Palazzo Uccello, then taken away the pillow slip and posted a guard for the night.

  Maria murdered? And possibly by her own son? Such things happened in someone else’s world, certainly not his, nor that of people like the gentle, hardworking Galuppis. And yet Maria was lying at this moment in the city morgue and her son was somewhere out there on this January night afraid, confused, and—if the Commissario was right—someone to be feared. Anyone could be the victim of violence, Maria or anyone equally gentle and harmless—of this he had no doubt—but he wasn’t cynical enough to believe that anyone, given the proper set of circumstances, might be the perpetrator of violence. And certainly not Carlo, not the Carlo he knew.

  He was going over once again his encounter with Carlo and his conversation with Gemelli when the phone rang. As soon as he heard the Contessa’s voice he realized he had made a mistake in not calling her.

  “I can’t believe what I just heard, caro,” she began, the ache in her voice cutting into him, “I just can’t. Sister Veronica rang me a few minutes ago with the most terrible news, you won’t believe it either, caro. It’s Maria—Maria Galuppi—”

  Her voice broke, her fabled control deserting her. There was no way he could let her go on.

  “I know, Barbara,” he said quietly. “She was murdered.”

  There was a short silence, then:

  “How long have you known?”

  “An hour.”

  “An hour!” It was as if he had said “days.” “My God, Urbino, whatever is the matter with you! What were you thinking of? Why didn’t you ring me?”

  “Try to understand, Barbara.” And then he told her how he had come to know about Maria’s murder, giving her all the details of Carlo’s visit, his conversation with Gemelli, and the search of the Palazzo Uccello. “There’s even a guard posted outside.”

  She didn’t say anything for several moments but when she did she said it quietly yet with a clear edge of urgency: “We must do something, Urbino, we must.”

  “Do something?”

  “Well, Carlo asked you to help, didn’t he?”

  “Barbara, nothing can be done now. I’ll go to the Questura tomorrow to make a statement.”

  “I’m not talking about doing something at this moment, Urbino, and I’m certainly not talking about making a statement at the Questura. I think it would be disloyal to make a statement anyway.”

  “Disloyal? To whom?”

  “Can’t you see? To Carlo. And not only to Carlo but to Maria, too. She loved her son, no one will convince me any different—and he loved her.” She paused. “And there’s someone else to take into consideration, in case it hasn’t occurred to you.”

  “Who?”

  “Me! I’ll never forgive you if you do anything to prevent the return of Santa Teodora.”

  How his friend had reached this point in her logic was far beyond him, but he had come to expect such things of her.

  “Aren’t you being a bit extreme, Barbara? I’m only going to make a statement at the Questura. That can only help everyone concerned. At any rate, I don’t have any choice, do I? I’m sure it’s required by law.”

  “Oh, the law!” she said angrily. It was a few moments before he realized she had hung up.

  7

  EARLY the next morning he went to the Questura to make his statement. On his walk to the plain building in the quarter beyond the Bridge of Sighs he put from his mind any thoughts of disloyalty. He was a man going to do his duty, something he would have done with just as clear a conscience back in New Orleans.

  He gave his statement to Gemelli and a stenographer as gulls screeched outside the windows. The sound startled him, making him realize he was more on edge than he had thought. When he finished describing what had happened the night before, the stenographer left to have his statement typed for signing.

  Alone with Gemelli, a dark, good-looking man in his early forties, with a military bearing, Urbino decided to take a direct approach.

  “For what my opinion is worth, Commissario, I don’t believe Carlo Galuppi is the culprit here.”

  Gemelli raised his eyebrow
s.

  “‘Culprit,’ Signor Macintyre? Come, come, you know our language very well. I prefer ‘murderer.’”

  “But he wasn’t acting like a criminal at all. He was afraid, yes, but in a pathetic kind of way. His speech impediment was more pronounced than usual. No, Commissario, I don’t believe it. In all these years I’ve known him I—”

  He broke off as Gemelli shook his head.

  “Murderers are seldom strangers to others, Signor Macintyre. In fact, they usually know their victims very well. And believe me, they have family and friends like everyone else. They can even give to charities and love children and animals.”

  “What I meant, Commissario, is that Carlo Galuppi is not the kind of person who would do something like this.”

  “I am well aware of what you meant, but let me say again that I disagree. Galuppi is our primary suspect precisely because he could have done something like this, as you express it. Once again your euphemism is amusing. ‘Something like this’ happens to be the brutal murder of an old woman and the theft of the body of a so-called saint. I call it theft, but perhaps I could just as easily call it body snatching or grave robbing or the kidnapping of a prominent figure, we’ve seen enough of that in this country lately.”

  “But what motive could he possibly have had?”

  “Forget about motive for a minute. Galuppi had opportunity. He’s one of the few people who can come and go freely in that church at any time. Despite his deformity many parishioners have probably stopped seeing him. He’s just part of the scene. As for motive, he hated his mother, for one thing.”

  “Hated her? If my observation of human nature means anything, Carlo Galuppi—”

  Gemelli waved his hand in the air.

  “All right, maybe hate is too strong. Call it resentment, deep resentment. I’ve already had two phone calls from people who, understandably, want to remain anonymous. But both said the same thing: Galuppi had good reason to hate his mother.”

  “What exactly did they say?”