Death in a Serene City

by Edward Sklepowich

  “Ah yes, poor Maria, God rest her soul. To think I remember her when she was a little girl.” He lowered himself carefully into a chair near the door. “What is it that you want to know? The police have been here twice, very kind of them not to insist I go to the Questura.”

  “You saw Maria the day she died.”

  “Yes, she came by with Carlo to pick up my laundry about eight and they brought it back at four-thirty, as usual. She always came every other Monday.”

  “Did you notice anything different about her? Did she say anything that struck you as strange?”

  “Quite the opposite. She was very happy, especially in the afternoon.” His birdlike face, with its slightly irritated look, softened as he said, “And she wanted me to be happy, too. She would bring me a nice zuppa di pesce the next day, she said, she didn’t want me to worry about my laundry, she would do it as long as she could, no matter what happened. She was filled with gentilezza, was Maria Galuppi. She knew how insecure and worried we old people can get; we’re always afraid of being forgotten, pushed aside. But Maria assured me she would never forget me.” He scratched his bald head with his thumb and looked up at Urbino with a slight frown. “But excuse me, Signor Macintyre, why are you so concerned about Maria Galuppi? The good woman is dead. All we can do now is pray for her soul.”

  “I might be making a fool of myself, Signor Tasso,” Urbino said, deciding to be completely honest with the old man, “but I can’t believe Carlo killed his mother. All this is none of my affair, surely, but I’m looking for something that will clear his name.”

  “And will reveal who really did it! Good for you, Signor Macintyre! Many of us would be grateful to you for that.”

  “There are some in the Cannaregio who think he did it because he resented the memory of his sister. Did you know her?”

  “She was a vision, la bella Beatrice! If I had been thirty, even twenty years younger—!”

  He shook his head

  “Do you know if she ever had a little bird as a pet?”

  “Could have, I suppose, she had a dog, a cocker spaniel, I think it was. She was interested in many things—people, animals, why not a little bird? She was bright too, she liked making clever little jokes. She could tell you everything there was to know about the Queen of Cyprus, Tintoretto, and so many other things when she wasn’t much more than a little girl. I even had a conversation with her once about Casanova! Just because she was the daughter of a washerwoman didn’t mean that she didn’t have a sharp mind and mightn’t have gone places. She liked to point out that Tintoretto was the son of a dyer from the Cannaregio.”

  “Did she have many girlfriends?”

  “I saw her with girls her own age on occasion but less and less as she got older. It was because of how lovely she was. The other girls couldn’t help being green with envy, they told tales, ignored her, you know how it is at that age. You’re wasting your energies there if you want to learn anything about Beatrice. Any woman who knew her back then would probably still be filled with envy. Couldn’t trust what she said.” He laughed. “And as for the men, you couldn’t trust them either. She seems to have rejected every single one of them.”

  “Every one?”

  “Ah yes, there was talk of someone special, but I don’t think there was any truth in it. But who knows? It was a long time ago. I was young then myself, a mere fifty!” A wistful look came over Tasso’s face and he sighed.

  18

  THAT evening Urbino sat in the library turning over what he had learned in the past two days. He resisted the urge to start reading Quinton’s Venice notebook, wanting to think things through before he did. Quinton belonged to Maria’s recent past, whereas his inquiries had been taking him into her life twenty and even thirty years before.

  He hoped that his interest—and, yes, let him admit it, his fascination—with Beatrice Galuppi, this beautiful girl of wit and intelligence who had died under mysterious circumstances, wasn’t going to prove to be his blind spot. Surely the more he knew about Maria, the better chance he would have of discovering what had actually happened on that afternoon almost three weeks ago. To understand Maria completely he would have to understand Beatrice, and then even Carlo might fall into place. Families often had one pivotal figure, one key member around whom the others grouped and in relation to whom they even defined themselves. In the Galuppi family it had been Beatrice.

  She was a problem he was determined to solve, even if it didn’t bring him any closer to the ultimate answer he was seeking. Like Ruskin on his ladder at San Zanipolo, exploring behind the tomb of the Doge, he must find out the true dimensions of Beatrice. Ruskin’s suspicions about the sculpted Doge had been confirmed—he had found only one hand, only one finished cheek, and one half of an ermine robe. By his own admission he had discovered a monster.

  What would he, Urbino, discover about the beckoning figure of Beatrice?

  Had she been having an affair with a man who had rejected her? Had she been pregnant? Had she killed herself because of it? Benedetta Razzi had described symptoms that sounded like morning sickness.

  But who was this woman who had given her the gift of a lovebird and had been the source of arguments between mother and daughter? Was it possible that Beatrice had encouraged rumors of a man in order to camouflage her relationship with this Domenica? After all, no one appeared to have known of Domenica except old Marietta on the Rio della Sensa, who had overheard the heated exchange between Maria and Beatrice several weeks before the girl died.

  The Contessa might shy away from the lesbian possibilities but he didn’t, he couldn’t. He understood them with that knowledge of things Venetian that, as Tasso had pointed out, had been one of Beatrice’s characteristics. Perhaps Beatrice had been able to feel more comfortable with her love for another woman in a city that had once been a flourishing center of the so-called “unnatural vice.”

  Aside from all this, there was also the theft of her artwork. Had the paintings Cavatorta had not seen—if, in fact, he hadn’t seen them—been stolen, or was there some other reason for his apparent ignorance? And why hadn’t the rest of the paintings and sketches been taken? Had there been a discriminating thief who had selected only the more accomplished work? Sister Veronica had said that the scenes from the Wedding Cup at the Class Museum had been the best of everything she had seen of Beatrice’s work.

  Having got nowhere with all this speculation, he decided to put Beatrice from his mind for a while and go over what he had learned that day about Maria. He had been struck by Netta Tullio’s conviction that Maria had seemed excited the afternoon of her death. Although Giulietta Pagano and Rodolfo Tasso hadn’t noticed anything unusual about her, hadn’t they both perceived a greater kindness, a special consideration for her son and for Tasso himself? And hadn’t she said to both Carlo and Tasso something that had indicated a coming change in her life? Could she have had a premonition of her death? But Urbino discounted this as soon as it occurred to him. What she had said to them had suggested something positive, something desirable.

  In addition to all this, something else he had heard teased his mind, but exactly what it was eluded him. Despite his fluency in Italian, he feared he might have missed or overlooked something that had been said.

  Deciding to wait to read Quinton’s notebook until tomorrow, when he would be more alert, he took Italo Calvino’s Fiabe italiane down from the shelf, a book he read in randomly from time to time, enjoying the Italian versions of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen.

  He had read only a few paragraphs of “I due gobbi,” the first tale he had turned to because of what Signora Pagano had told him earlier, when he closed the book with a crack.

  One little piece had fallen into place. Even if it wasn’t the most important, it gave him the expectation of more important ones to come.

  19

  THE next morning he was jarred out of sleep by the phone.

  “I thought I’d make it my responsibility to wake you this mo
rning,” the Contessa said. “Ever since you told Natalia she didn’t have to come in until noon, I’ve had fears you’ll sleep the whole day away.”

  “My God, Barbara,” he said, squinting at the clock, “it’s not even seven-thirty!”

  “That’s precisely my point, caro. More industrious souls are up and about at six.”

  Urbino, who needed at least an hour and three coffees before he could function in the morning, began to tell her listlessly about his visits of the previous day, starting with his trip to the Europa e Regina to see Voyd. By the time he had described his conversation with Rodolfo Tasso he was more alert but yearning desperately for his first cup of coffee.

  “Haven’t you been the sleuth! What do you make of it all?”

  “Not much yet, I’m afraid, except for one thing, something I realized late last night.” He sat up in bed. “Giulietta Pagano said her children used to taunt poor Carlo with the song from “I due gobbi.” Maybe you know it. It’s not much more than a list of the days of the week.” He cleared his throat and, with the realization that this might be a small way of paying her back for her early morning call, recited in a high-pitched voice that he hoped was suggestive of an old woman’s, “‘Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday.’”

  “What’s come over you, Urbino, have you—?”

  “But in Italian, of course,” he said, savoring the Contessa’s confusion, “it’s ‘sabato, domenica, lunedi, e martedi.’”

  She took in her breath sharply.

  “I see what you mean—or I think I do!”

  “I made a simple enough mistake although it was really Giulietta Pagano who did. She passed it on to me. I should have picked up on it when she said that Maria told Carlo that things would be different for them after Sunday. What she must have heard was not that but something about this woman Domenica.”

  “But what does it mean?”

  “Just what I kept asking myself last night as I tossed and turned. By the time I finally got to sleep, I convinced myself of what it must be. Maria must have meant that after she saw Domenica—after she talked with her—there would be a change of some kind. I don’t believe Giulietta Pagano caught everything Maria said but Maria thought she did because she was embarrassed. It was probably nervousness at being overheard.”

  “Do you think that Maria was waiting for this woman at San Gabriele? That might mean …”

  “That this Domenica killed her,” Urbino finished for his friend. “If we find her well find the murderer.”

  The Contessa’s response wasn’t what he expected.

  “Now I shall let you indulge your interest in Beatrice Galuppi to your heart’s content. I thought you might be falling in love with her—posthumously of course. I don’t think I would have shown you her photograph even if I had had one.”

  Despite her little joke, there was an unmistakable nervous edge to her voice. Obviously uncomfortable, she was probably relieved that they were speaking over the telephone instead of face-to-face.

  “The fact that no one except Marietta seems to have heard of this Domenica,” Urbino went on, “might be more significant than if her name were on everyone’s tongue. By now she could be as old as Maria was or somewhere in her fifties—that is, if she’s still alive herself.”

  “Mysteries within mysteries,” the Contessa said without any of the enthusiasm that had been in her voice at the beginning of her reveille call. He almost expected her to hang up with a perfunctory good-bye, but instead she said, with some of her earlier animation, “But I think you’ve forgotten that I was going to try to find out when Beatrice’s artwork was stolen. It took a trip to the Questura and as much of my charm and the da Capo-Zendrini influence as I was capable of with three absolutely obnoxious officials. And they say the carabinieri are cloddish! Anyway, it appears the Galuppi flat was broken into a week after the flood in sixty-six. Some of Beatrice’s sketchbooks and paintings were taken—the copies of the Tintoretto Presentation and of the Wedding Cup. Maria didn’t report anything else missing. And nothing, it seems, was ever recovered. Obviously Sister Veronica and I didn’t know anything about the theft because we were up in Geneva at the clinic with Alvise.”

  There was no reason why they might not have learned later upon returning but Urbino let it pass. There had been such satisfaction in her voice at having settled at least this personally troubling detail.

  “So Cavatorta must have been telling the truth when he said he never saw any of the other things. Maria asked him to look at Beatrice’s work sometime between the flood in November and when he left San Gabriele in May.”

  “Or he could have been misleading you about the period of time.”

  He could feel her waiting for a response. When it didn’t come, she said, “And there’s something else. Maybe you’ll be more impressed with what I’ve been able to accomplish. I also saw the report on Beatrice Galuppi’s death.”

  His silence now was one of surprise.

  “I was alone in the room for a good ten minutes. There were folders on Maria and Beatrice in the same tray as the one about the theft. There might even have been one on Carlo too but I’m not sure. I didn’t have time to look through everything.”

  “It’s strange for all the Galuppi files to have been out like that unless someone at the Questura has been reviewing Beatrice’s file along with the others. Maria’s murder is closed. Why would Beatrice’s file be of interest to them?”

  “Do you think someone wanted me to see it?”

  “What did it say?”

  “I read what I could as quickly as possible. As we already know, Beatrice was found in the toilet of the Galuppi flat in November of fifty-four, the fifth, I think it was. The autopsy found a massive dose of arsenic in her system, introduced”—her voice dropped as she added—“vaginally. There was a bruise on her forehead but it wasn’t a death wound. It was from when she fell to the floor. According to the medical report Beatrice was a suicide and she wasn’t pregnant.”

  She paused to give him a few moments to take this in but he sensed that she didn’t expect or want a response quite yet.

  “If she had been pregnant,” she went on, “there might have been some question that her death had been caused by an abortion attempt.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense. Even if she had been pregnant, injecting arsenic is not one of your usual ways of bringing on an abortion, is it? You don’t think she wanted her death to look like an attempted abortion, do you?”

  “Why? So her mother could have been spared the shame of having a daughter who committed suicide by having instead one who died while trying to give herself an abortion? There’s another possibility. She wasn’t pregnant but thought she was.”

  “But why arsenic?”

  “Maybe she didn’t know it was arsenic.” She gave a sigh of exasperation. “There are too many question marks and maybes involved to suit me. They didn’t even find any trace of arsenic in the toilet, no pills, no vials, no syringe—just the poor girl herself.”

  “Who found her?”

  “Maria.”

  Urbino tried to imagine what that moment of discovery had been like for Maria. What did she think had happened? Did she call the police right away? Had Carlo been with her? He was so lost in these thoughts that he didn’t realize at first that the Contessa was saying something.

  “Are you still there, Urbino? I was asking what was on your sleuthing agenda for today.”

  “I thought I’d go to Murano. Marietta said that Maria went there the first week of every November.” He stopped and took in his breath. “My God, I just realized! There’s that November date again!”

  “Maybe we’ll find out why it keeps popping up when we go to Murano.”

  “We?”

  “Yes, we. Elsa is doing my hair at ten so the morning is impossible. If I ring up Angela, however, I’ll be available for the afternoon. Shall we say about twelve-thirty here? We’ll have Milo take us over in the boat. I haven’t been using it much lately and he feels
a bit neglected. I dare not tell him that if it were a gondola he couldn’t get me out of it!”

  20

  THE Contessa’s motor launch left the Sacca della Misericordia and headed toward Murano. Off to their right was the cemetery island with its brick walls and cypresses. The early February sun had broken through the clouds and the lagoon shimmered ahead of them toward Burano, Torcello, and the other islands.

  “If Beatrice didn’t commit suicide, couldn’t she have been killed by the woman she was involved with?” the Contessa asked, breaking the long but not uncomfortable silence between them.

  Urbino had been staring back at the Fondamenta Nuove and trying to pick out Benedetta Razzi’s building.

  “So you’ve become reconciled to the possibility that Beatrice could have been having a relationship with another woman? You felt differently a few days ago.”

  “That was before I read about a Sapphic nun from seventeenth-century Tuscany. After that I’m receptive to just about anything on the topic.”

  She buried her hands deeper into the sleeves of her sable coat until she seemed to be hugging herself and peered through the window of the cabin. They said nothing more on the short crossing to Murano until they reached the quay in front of the superimposed arcades of the Basilica of San Donato.

  “I’m still not completely convinced, though,” the Contessa said with a touch of belligerence.

  “I didn’t think you ever could be.”

  Urbino helped her on to the steps of the quay.

  Inside the Veneto-Byzantine church there was much to remind him of Maria. It wasn’t only the relics of San Donato enshrined with the bones of the dragon that legend said he had slain but also the baroque statue of San Teodoro on the high altar. The mosaic peacocks and cockerels on the floor even had him thinking of Beatrice’s lovebird.

  “Yes, I knew Maria Galuppi, God rest her soul,” the old sexton told them by the baptistery door in the almost empty church. “She came every November, around the Day of the Dead, even insisted I open when we were in restauro. She would stay five, ten minutes, say a prayer, go behind the altar there to pay her respects to our San Donato. Hardly ever said a word to me or anyone else but she always would light a candle and leave something for i poveri.”