Thief of Venice

by Jane Langton

  She caught up with them as they stood bewildered outside Sam Bell’s door. The house bore the correct number in the sestiere of Castello, but no one answered Homer’s loud knock.

  The little girl had a key. Dumbly she insetted it in the lock, opened the door, and looked up at them.

  “Possiamo entrare anche not, per favore?” said Mary, who had been working on her Italian.

  Without speaking, the child held open the door and they all went in.

  In the Treasury of the Basilica of Saint Mark bronze figures support a rock thrown at Christ during the Flagellation.

  CHAPTER 4

  On this day in early October, Doctor Richard Henchard knew nothing of the arrival in Venice of Mary and Homer Kelly. His entanglement with the Kellys, especially with Mary Kelly, still lay in the future.

  Doctor Henchard spoke faultless Italian, although his parents were English. He had been brought up in Plymouth and educated at the University of London, and then he had studied medicine at the ancient University of Bologna and completed his residency in Venice at the Ospedale Civile.

  There was a prim Victorian saying, An Englishman Italianate is a devil incarnate. It made Henchard laugh. At home in Plymouth he had been humble Rickie Henchard, the son of a butcher. In Venice he was Dottore Primario Richard Henchard, a rich and respected oncological surgeon, and his Italian wife was related to a principessa. Henchard’s medical colleagues had trouble with the initial H of his name, and they often called him Riccardo ’Enciard. Even so it was a name to be reckoned with. He was qualcuno, a somebody, a person of significance, with or without the H.

  As the Kellys walked in the door of Sam Bell’s house in the sestiere of Castello, Doctor Henchard sat in a realtor’s office in Cannaregio. He was looking for an apartment.

  “It’s for a friend,” he told the agente. “Cheap. It must be cheap. My friend isn’t rich.”

  Signorina Pastora looked at him shrewdly. He had said amico, meaning a male friend, but she strongly suspected his friend was a woman, un’amica. She took out her list, thinking with amusement that she wouldn’t mind moving into the doctor’s little place herself, he was so good-looking.

  Her suspicions were correct. Doctor Henchard’s friend was a woman, all right, but Giovanna was a tiresome old girl, a pain in the ass, always threatening to call his wife.

  “There’s a place just around the corner,” said Signorina Pastora, getting up. “We’ll start with that.”

  They walked to the Fondamenta dei Mori, across a bridge over the Rio della Sensa. At the moment the canal was a muddy gulf in which a couple of men in rubber boots were shoveling out a channel. “This ugly view is of course only temporary,” explained the signorina hastily. “This sort of dredging goes on all the time, as you know, all over the city.” Stopping in front of a doorway, she produced a key and added learnedly, “To keep the water moving as a preventive measure against high water.”

  “Of course,” said Henchard, who didn’t give a damn what sort of view Giovanna would have.

  “Tintoretto lived a few doors down,” said Signorina Pastora. “You know, the great painter. Did you see the plaque on the wall?”

  Doctor Henchard didn’t care about Tintoretto either. He followed her upstairs and watched her unlock another door. “How much? ” he said, looking around at the small room.

  She named the price. It was extremely low. She explained. “The Nettezza Urbana rents out the space below the apartment for the storage of carts. So the place is cheap. Your friend is lucky. The spazzini will not interfere with—him at all. They merely pick up their carts here and push them around the neighborhood to collect everybody’s trash.”

  Henchard made a cursory examination of the bathroom, which was minimal, and glanced at the excuse for a kitchen. “What’s that door?”

  Signorina Pastora frowned at it. “A closet, I think.”

  “A closet?” Henchard opened the door and looked at the narrow space within. “Strange.”

  “True. These old places don’t usually have closets.”

  Henchard ran his hand over the back of the closet, which was lined with wood rather than plaster. One board was loose. As though in disgust, he pulled it off and dropped it to the floor. Turning to Signorina Pastora he said coldly, “My God, this place is in terrible shape. I’ll take it for a week on trial.”

  “Only a week!” Signorina Pastora tried to seem shocked, but she only succeeded in looking tired. The apartment had been without a tenant for a year. If this Casanova wanted a grubby love nest for a week, why should she give a damn? She shrugged. “Well, all right. A week it is.”

  “The key, please.”

  She handed it over and said, “Ciao,” and thumped down the stairs.

  Henchard went to the window and watched her cross the bridge over the empty gulch of the Rio della Sensa. Then he went back into the closet. Bending down, he peered with intense curiosity through the gap in the wooden wall at what lay on the other side.

  He had to see more. He tried to rip off another board, but the nails refused to give. He would have to go home for a crowbar.

  It took him an hour to go home and come back. Part of the time was spent in explaining to his wife what the crowbar was for. “Rats,” he said impulsively. “Doctor Bruno in the office next to mine has rats in the wainscoting. If Bruno has rats today, I’ll have them tomorrow.”

  “Oh, Riccardo, wait,” said Vittoria. She ran into the kitchen and came back with a small bottle of dark fluid. “Rat poison. Remember? This is how we took care of it before.”

  Henchard looked at the bottle with distaste, but he put it in his bag.

  As it turned out, it came in handy. When he got back to the house on the Rio della Sensa, he was shocked to discover a real live rat on the premises.

  The door to the cart-storage space was wide open. Henchard paused and looked in. He was astonished to see a young man, obviously one of the spazzini, standing up in a big steel cart, using it as a stepladder. His head was out of sight through a hole in the ceiling.

  With horror, Henchard understood the geometry at once. The storage space for carretti was directly below the little hidden chamber in which he was so feverishly interested.

  He walked into the storage room and said softly, “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

  The legs of the spazzino jerked with surprise, and his head came down into view. His hair was white with plaster dust. He coughed and grinned hugely at Henchard. “Ceiling’s cracked. A piece fell down.” He gestured with a hammer, and said slyly, “I just helped it along a little.” His eyes were bright with excitement. “My God, you should see the stuff up there. Gold! All kinds of gold. Hey, wait a minute, look at this!” He reached one arm through the hole, scrabbled around, coughed, and drew his hand out again, holding a large gold plate. He coughed again, and croaked, “Ecco!”

  Henchard looked at the plate. Slowly he said, “The room upstairs is private property. It belongs to me.”

  “It does?” The young man’s face fell, and he said, “Mi dispiace.” Coughing, he pushed the plate back up through the hole and stepped down from the cart.

  Henchard looked at him soberly. “You have a nasty cough.”

  “It’s just the plaster dust. And you should see all the stuff up there, it’s covered with dust.” The spazzino produced another dry cough.

  “Look here,” said Henchard, sounding concerned, “I’m a doctor. That cough sounds really serious. It’s far down in your lungs. You should take something for it.”

  “I should?” The young man began coughing in earnest.

  If at that moment some wise man had been sitting in a corner of the storage room for carts, looking on with his chin in his hand, some worldly philosopher like the figure of a donor in the painting of a grisly martyrdom, he might have observed that a surgeon’s power over life and death could sometimes be too easy.

  No philosopher was watching as Henchard opened his bag and took something out. “It just happens tha
t I’ve got some good stuff right here. You’ll have to drink it out of the bottle. It tastes nasty, I’m afraid, but it will do the trick.”

  It did it very well. The spasms began almost immediately. Henchard laid the boy down on the floor, and said kindly, “I’ll call the ambulanza.”

  The key to the cart-storage space was still in the lock. Henchard went outside, shut the door on the boy’s groans, turned the key and put it in his pocket. Then he began walking quickly in the direction of the hospital. It wasn’t far, and like every other Venetian citizen he was used to walking.

  And it gave him time to think. There was a great deal to be done, at once, without delay.

  The problem of disposal was one he could handle. After all, he was a surgeon. He knew precisely how to find the point of separation between the patella and the femur. But perhaps there was no point in making careful separations at the joints. He could just go straight across. Of course it would be a messy business, but by the time he came back with his equipment, the blood would not be so apt to spurt all over the place.

  And the whole thing could be done right there on the spot. The mess would be no problem. There were ways of dealing with it. And afterward the boy’s own colleagues in the employ of the Nettezza Urbana would dispose of the remains. There would have to be a number of plastic bags, but all of the bundles would be quite small. He would simply tie them shut at the top and place them tenderly outside the doors along the fondamenta, and in the morning the good workers of the city would pick them up, along with everybody else’s plastic bags, and cart them to the nearest canal.

  One of the things that had charmed Henchard from his first days in the city was the smoothly working perfection of Venetian civic arrangements. All the problems of life in a watery metropolis had been solved long ago. Since there were no fields, no orchards, no cows or pigs or chickens in this city of stone, everything had to come from the mainland. And of course since there was no extra land anywhere for the disposal of rubbish, every scrap of refuse had to be removed by boat. Henchard had seen rubbish carts hoisted over the seagoing boats of the Netturbini on the edge of the Riva degli Schiavoni, he had seen their bottoms fall open and the debris tumble out. He had seen the fully laden boats chug away into the lagoon.

  Out there somewhere, far from the city, they dropped their cargoes. And then, freed of their trash from yesterday—all their smelly garbage and used diapers and tin cans and empty bottles and occasional severed heads and arms and legs—the citizens of Venice could begin the day as fresh and spotless as newborn babes.

  Of course the hole in the ceiling would still be a problem. It would call for heavy-gauge chicken wire, a trowel, and a bag or two of plaster of Paris. Non c’è problema. Nothing to it.

  CHAPTER 5

  “Ware renting the top floor,” said Homer to the little girl, trudging after her up the stairs. “Siamo qui—wait a minute—siamo qui per visitare Dottor Bell. Dov’è—oh, sorry, hold it a sec.” Homer ran over the possessive pronouns in his head. “Dov’ è il suo appartamento?”

  The child seemed not to have heard. She clumped ahead of them, bent nearly double under her backpack. Homer and Mary followed, lugging their baggage up the steps. On the level surface of the pavement in the square, the little wheels had made it easy to drag the suitcases, but hoisting them up a flight of stairs was a different matter. Mary and Homer struggled and heaved.

  At the first landing the little girl stopped and took out another key. Instantly the door was flung open. A woman stood in the doorway and began scolding the child in a torrent of Bostonian English. “Ursula, you are a very inconsiderate little girl. Did it occur to you that your grandmother might have something important to do? Where have you been?”

  Silently the child edged past her. Only then did the grandmother notice the man and woman climbing the stairs half a flight down. She stared at them blankly and began to close the door.

  “Oh, please, ma’am,” said Homer loudly, “perhaps there’s some mistake. I spoke to Doctor Bell on the phone yesterday from Concord, Massachusetts.”

  The woman glowered at them through a crack in the door.

  “Oh, Homer,” said Mary, embarrassed, “it must be the wrong address. Can you tell us, signora, if Doctor Samuele Bell lives here?”

  At last the face of the grandmother lost its grumpy expression and wreathed itself in smiles. She opened the door all the way. A queenly graciousness replaced the chill. A plump hand was held out in a gesture of royal welcome. “Professor and Mrs. Kelly, of course. Do, do come in.”

  Homer dragged his bag up and up, wanting to say, It’s not Professor and Mrs. Kelly, it’s Professor Kelly and Professor Kelly, but he held his tongue.

  “Allow me to introduce myself. I am Dorothea Wellesley. I am an artist. Do come in.” But she was still standing in the doorway, a plump elderly woman in a Laura Ashley dress.

  Move out of the way, woman. Mary and Homer bumped their bags up the last few steps to the landing and stood there, breathing heavily, two exhausted Americans who had just hoisted two hundred pounds of baggage skyward against the downward pull from the center of the earth.

  At last Mrs. Wellesley—artist, grandmother, and obviously the mother-in-law of Samuele Bell—stepped aside and they were permitted to enter. At once there was another blockage.

  “My art, you see, is here on the wall. This is a portrait of my beloved daughter.”

  A respectful mortuary pause was required. Mary and Homer supplied it, their book bags dragging from their shoulders, their fists gripping the handles of their suitcases.

  “In Venice one can only walk in the footsteps of the masters.” Mrs. Wellesley backed up slowly, delivering a lecture on every painting along the corridor. They were apocalyptic scenes in violent colors, the Virgin and child in flames, the crucified Christ in a bonfire, a conflagration of church steeples, a manger scene like a fiery furnace, a robed figure burning at the stake.

  Mary inched her bag forward. “Is that the—uh—?”

  “The pope? Of course.”

  Homer was desperate for a bed, a chair, a stretch-out on the floor. He peered past Mrs. Wellesley’s livid watercolors at the room beyond the hall. It was a pleasant-looking chamber with cozy chairs and a sofa and delightful puffy pillows. There was a charming sideboard with splendid-looking bottles. Homer recognized one from afar, Old Fence Rail.

  He groaned aloud. Mary stepped on his foot, and Homer said, “Ouch,” just as the door burst open and Samuele Bell came hurrying in, gasping, shouting a glad greeting.

  “I’m sorry to be late. I wanted to be here to welcome you.”

  Immediately another door opened and the little girl reappeared and ran to her father. He hoisted her with one arm and reached out with the other to shake hands.

  “Now, Ursula,” said her grandmother severely, “remember your manners.”

  But the atmosphere was warmer by a dozen degrees. “Sit down, sit down,” cried Sam.

  Mary and Homer sank into the cozy chairs. Mrs. Wellesley lowered herself daintily into a straight one. Sam plumped himself down on the sofa, bounced his daughter on his knee, and asked urgent questions about their flight from Boston and their state of weariness. Then he set Ursula down and stood up. “You must be perishing for a drink. Speak your poison.” He looked around, laughing. “I hope that’s right. It’s what my father used to say. Something for you, Dorothea?”

  “Oh, dear, nothing for me, Sam. Well, perhaps just a smidgen of whiskey.”

  Homer accepted his Old Fence Rail and laughed with relief, because now at last they had finished their journey. They were at home in this foreign land. He looked around the room, recognizing with pleasure a fellow scholar’s quarters. The round table in the middle was littered with books. In the bookcase between the windows other books stood upright, leaned sideways, and lay flat. On the top of the bookcase a bust of Dante looked down at them severely. On the walls, instead of Mrs. Wellesley’s frenzied watercolors, there were framed maps of the city of
Venice. Originals, decided Homer, and very old. The sailing vessels had high poops, and the puffed cheeks of the four winds blew east, west, north, and south.

  Mary jumped up to look at another picture on the wall beside her chair, a green-faced Madonna on a gold background. “Isn’t this something pretty wonderful?”

  “It’s a Paolo Veneziano,” said Sam. “There’s a bigger one in the Accademia.”

  “Oh, Sam,” said Mrs. Wellesley. “I wish you’d take it down. It’s a thoroughly unsuitable subject for a household with a growing child.” She tittered. “Worse than pornography, in my opinion.”

  “Dorothea, you need a drink.” Her son-in-law filled her glass. He filled one for Mary too, and she laughed and thanked him, remembering how much she had enjoyed Doctor Bell’s way of speaking English with a slight accent when he had been a visiting lecturer in Cambridge. She tried a toast in Italian, probably all wrong. “Al suo salute!”

  Sam seemed pleased. Mary watched as he pulled the tab on a soft-drink can for his daughter. Then, without making a drink for himself, he sat down again on the sofa and wrapped an arm around the little girl. “Mary and Homer,” he said with mock formality, squeezing the child against him, “meet my daughter Ursula. Ursula dear, these two gigantic people are Mr. and Mrs. Kelly from the United States.”

  Ursula’s stony little face opened up. She was beaming.

  In the Treasury of the Basilica of Saint Mark there are many reliquaries. One contains spines from the Crown of Thorns.

  CHAPTER 6

  On the day after the curator of rare books in the Biblioteca Marciana, Dottor Samuele Bell, came into the office of Lucia Costanza and made his outrageous request to examine a number of sacred relics—and an equally outrageous proposal of marriage (it was only a joke, of course)—Lucia descended the stairs from her office and crossed the piazza to consult Father Urbano.