Farewell to the Flesh

by Edward Sklepowich

  The Contessa seemed uncomfortable as Hazel made her recitation.

  “If he could have proof of any of that, he would probably be happy to write off Val’s murder as a meeting between an all-too-willing victim and a pathetic murderer of whom you couldn’t expect much less,” Hazel continued. She shook her head in exasperation. “I told him I had no reason to think any of those things, and he just smiled at me. Then I told him that it wouldn’t have made any difference to me anyway. That took the smile off his face! And I meant it, too! I judged and loved Val by the way he treated me, what he was like with me. I believe he was faithful. I wanted him to be, and I certainly don’t like the idea of his sneaking around in dark alleys looking—looking for someone, something. Val was a very attractive man. He was an artist. I know what the world is like. I know—”

  She didn’t finish her sentence but burst into tears again. This time they flowed more copiously. Before she reapplied the hastily drawn handkerchief to her eyes and before the Contessa once again reached over to comfort her, for one brief, somewhat unsettling moment she looked at Urbino through her tears. It didn’t strike him as a look soliciting sympathy but one assessing his reaction.

  The door to the Contessa’s salotto opened. Mauro announced the arrival of Berenice Pillow and Tonio Vico. The two of them started to enter the room but stopped abruptly when they saw Hazel weeping in the arms of the Contessa as Urbino looked on.

  15

  What happened in the first few moments of the arrival of Mrs. Pillow and Vico determined the direction of the rest of the evening.

  Tonio hurried over to Hazel and took her hand. The Contessa gave her seat to the young man and went up to her friend Berenice, guiding her to one of two chairs near her collection of eighteenth-century ceramic animals. After Urbino had fixed the drinks—a Corvo for Berenice Pillow, a Courvoisier for Vico, and another bourbon and water for himself—he went back to his own chair, feeling very much alone and very much the spectator.

  This feeling of exclusion, however, lasted only as long as it took Berenice Pillow to exchange greetings with the Contessa and turn to him.

  “We’ve come here tonight because of you, Mr. Macintyre. I don’t mean it in a rude sense, Barbara dear, but Tony and I are very frightened by this latest development. Who wouldn’t be? Can you believe that someone would say that they saw him in that terrible place the night Mr. Gibbon was murdered?”

  “What happened, Tonio?” Urbino asked the young man who now had both his hands around one of Hazel’s.

  “After you went in to talk with Commissario Gemelli, I went to another part of the Questura to wait for my statement to be typed up. It took forever and then I read it more than once. I kept thinking that what I had said had become all scrambled up and meant something completely different. When I finally finished and was walking along the fondamenta past the pharmacy, a man—I later found out it was this Ignazio Rigoletti—was walking in the opposite direction, toward the Questura. He stared at me in the strangest way. When I passed him, he stopped and turned around, then started to shout after me. I stopped too. Before I knew it I was back in the Questura. Unfortunately you had already left.”

  “How long did they keep you?”

  “For another hour. This Rigoletti swore up and down that he recognized me from the Calle Santa Scolastica, that he wasn’t mistaken. I told them it was impossible, that I never left the hotel that night. I wish to God there was some way we could prove that we were in that night, but the simple fact is we can’t, and I won’t pretend anything else. I took a shower about ten o’clock and my mother was already in her room on the other side of the foyer. She knows I didn’t go anywhere. If I had, she would have heard me. She’s a very light sleeper.”

  “I wasn’t even asleep yet,” Mrs. Pillow said. “I have my little rituals before bedtime.”

  “I told the Commissario to ask if anyone saw me leaving the hotel that night, that no one possibly could have because I didn’t! He said he had already spoken with the hotel personnel on duty that night and with some of the guests. He didn’t say what they told him, but he did say that it was Carnevale and everything was in a state of confusion, that unfortunately the Splendide-Suisse wasn’t set up in such a way that anyone could be sure if someone came in or out. He’s right, of course, if you know the hotel. There are two entrances, but is that my fault? Does that make me guilty?” Vico sighed. “Fortunately it was my word against Rigoletti’s, and I was eventually told I could leave. But I could tell that the Commissario didn’t believe a word I was saying. As it was, he hadn’t believed me when I told him that I didn’t even know that Gibbon had been in Venice—let alone that he had been murdered—until I read it in the paper yesterday.”

  Berenice Pillow’s face was mottled with anger.

  “I wanted to go right to the Questura and tell the Commissario what I thought of his tactics. Tony didn’t tell you some of the terrible things he accused him of.”

  It seemed a somewhat inappropriate comment. What after all could be more terrible than the suspicion of having murdered someone? But Urbino could understand why Commissario Gemelli’s insinuating questions about the Calle Santa Scolastica could rile Berenice Pillow and throw things somewhat out of perspective. The poor woman was visibly agitated. He sensed something in her that he both admired and feared: a righteous anger. Her son—it made no difference that technically he was her stepson—had been accused of terrible things, things that he couldn’t possibly have done from her point of view, and she was seething.

  “There is no way anyone is going to say that Tony was in the calle that night. He was in the hotel with me.”

  “We were,” Vico said. “You have to believe us.”

  “This man is mistaken, and no wonder that he is,” Berenice Pillow said. “Look at the chaos out there! How does this man know what he saw? There are many handsome young men in this city. It could have been any one of them—someone who resembled Tony superficially. In the dark, who would know for sure? I wouldn’t be surprised if other people say they saw Tony—but no matter how many might say it, it’s not true! He never went out that night—and he certainly had nothing to do with the death of Mr. Gibbon!” Her voice was taut with anger. “Anybody wanting to do something wicked and evil would probably wear a mask anyway, wouldn’t they?”

  “Poor Tonio,” Hazel said. She reached out and touched the side of his face with her free hand.

  Mrs. Pillow looked at her with a tight-lipped smile.

  “I didn’t have a chance to thank you, Hazel, for coming to our suite as quickly as you did this afternoon after Tony spoke with you. I’m afraid I was in such a sorry state that I might have ended up being rude.”

  “Not at all.”

  Mrs. Pillow got up and went over to the sofa, slipping in on the other side of Hazel. There was a strain on her face as she placed her hand on Hazel’s, the hand that her stepson had just been holding. Vico looked on, taking a sip of his cognac.

  “I’m also afraid I’ve been guilty of not taking your own feelings into consideration. I know we’ve had our differences, and I hope you can understand how upset I was when I found out yesterday that you had broken—that you and Tony had decided to break off your engagement. Tony can certainly keep a dark secret but I could tell that something was troubling him. I want you to know, Hazel, that I couldn’t be more upset by all this for your sake. Whatever differences you and Tony have—that’s your business. I only wish you well.”

  “I should certainly hope so, Berenice dear,” the Contessa said with a laugh. “The good sisters at St. Brigid’s raised us for that and more!”

  Mrs. Pillow smiled, patted the sleeve of Hazel’s dress, and returned to her chair. Vico looked after her with a pleased smile on his dark, handsome face.

  “So what do you think you can do for my Tony, Mr. Macintyre? We’d like to leave as soon as we can, by Ash Wednesday at the latest. Tony has to return to a project in London and I must be back in New York. I know Ash Wednesday is only t
wo days from now and things move slowly here in Italy, but do you think Tony will be free to leave by then? If he isn’t, I’ll stay in Venice for as long as necessary.”

  “And you’ll stay right here,” the Contessa offered.

  “We wouldn’t impose on you, Barbara dear,” Mrs. Pillow said, glancing at Hazel. “But if we can’t leave by the end of Carnevale, perhaps you could help us find another hotel.”

  “You should be at the Danieli or the Gritti if you can’t be here. Don’t worry about it. That will be my welcome little task. But I doubt if it will be necessary. We can all count on Urbino to do his best, can’t we, caro?”

  Urbino nodded, not at all sure of what he was committing himself to.

  16

  Late though it was, Urbino went to the Splendide-Suisse after leaving the Contessa’s. Mrs. Pillow and her stepson were obviously going to be at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini for at least another half hour and he thought it was best to take advantage of their being away from the hotel.

  After getting off the vaporetto at the fog-shrouded Rialto, he hurried as quickly as he could through the clogged calli. He became trapped among a boisterous group of men in fur skins and women in black shawls singing an almost incomprehensible song about a wild man who loved an elfin spirit. When one of the men, wearing a chaplet of twisted leaves on his head, shoved an open bottle of red wine at him, it fell to the stones and shattered. This only added to the group’s excitement. Up ahead a man in a domino and white mask was preparing to jump from the parapet of a bridge into a tarpaulin-covered boat. Urbino didn’t wait to see what happened but heard a splash and loud laughter a few moments later.

  There was a merciful break in the crowd and Urbino quickened his pace. The paving stones were treacherously slick from the fog and he almost slipped and fell down the stairs of the bridge nearest the hotel.

  A canal ran along one side of the two buildings that housed the Splendide-Suisse. The reception area was in the first building off the calle that led to the Piazza. Urbino went up to the desk and waited while a French couple in matching feathered masks were given directions to the Danieli. When they left, the clerk was at first reluctant to give Urbino any information, but when Urbino showed that he was willing to persuade him as he had the boy in the Calle degli Albanesi earlier in the day, the clerk was more cooperative. He told him that he had been on duty the night in question and had given the key about eight-thirty to Signora Pillow and Signor Vico and that he hadn’t seen either of them leave the hotel that night.

  “I’ve told the same thing to the police, signore, and so have my colleagues.”

  Urbino went out through the connecting alley into the other part of the hotel, where the lounge, rooms, restaurant, and bar were located. The lounge was filled with guests in costume, the air stridently alive with their voices. Occasionally words and phrases in English, Italian, French, German, and Spanish were distinguishable, but most of the time all he could hear was the confusing but universal language of excitement and expectation. It might be past eleven o’clock on Sunday night but the night was still young for Carnevale. Many people wandered in and out. There was no need for them to go across the alley, past the reception desk, and out the other doors.

  Urbino spoke to several other employees who had been working the night of Gibbon’s murder and got the same information as he had from the desk clerk. It was obvious that the only alibi Vico had was the one provided by his stepmother. Given all the chaos of the lounge during Carnevale and the ease with which someone might bypass the reception desk, the fact that no one had seen him leaving or returning around the crucial time meant little.

  As Urbino plunged back into the mad Carnival crowd, retracing his steps, he reminded himself of something that Hazel had said at the Montin—that it was usually the guilty who had alibis. He went over all the alibis he had been given during the past several days.

  Lubonski had perhaps the best of all. He had been lying very ill at the Casa Crispina, soon to be rushed to the hospital. Yet he had already been out once that night. Poor little Stella Maris Spaak had her asthmatic condition, her breathing machine being set up near her bed in case she needed it. Xenia Campi claimed to have spent the evening on the chair in the reception area in full view of the front door of the Casa Crispina and of Sister Agata—that is, when the old nun hadn’t been snoring—but Giuseppe had seemed to imply that he might have seen her around the Piazza. Giuseppe, along with the other two boys from Naples, had been in the Piazza, and Nicholas Spaak had been cruising the area. Dora said she had been in the Casa Crispina for the whole evening after dinner and, according to Mrs. Spaak, had checked in on her mother twice during the evening.

  And what about Hazel Reeve, now the pampered guest of the Contessa? Where had this young woman with the green eyes and the perfect Italian gone on her walk during the time her fiance was being stabbed in the Calle Santa Scolastica?

  Urbino was so lost in thought that it took him a few moments to realize someone had grasped his shoulder and was speaking to him. He looked up into the face of a brown bear with sad eyes. Around his neck was a heavy metal collar with half a dozen links of a chain attached to it.

  “Hide me, signore, hide me! I’ve broken away from my post in the Campo Santo Stefano but the dogs are still after me. They want to bite and scratch me to death! Look!”

  Holding up a mangled paw glistening with wet, he touched Urbino’s cheek with it, leaving something sticky behind.

  “Help me or I’m finished!”

  As Urbino took out his handkerchief to wipe his cheek, the bear plunged madly along the calle toward a couple in scowling leather masks and repeated his plea.

  Urbino stopped in front of a brightly lit shop to look at his handkerchief. It was smeared with what looked like blood.

  As he continued to the Rialto, all he could think of was the look Hazel Reeve had given him at the Contessa’s when she had burst into tears for the second time.

  17

  When the phone rang only five minutes after he got back to the Palazzo Uccello, Urbino knew who it was even before he picked it up. If he hadn’t, he might have been somewhat mystified by the voice that came through the receiver. It was the Contessa, but the Contessa speaking in unusually hoarse, low tones as if she had strained her voice or were afraid of being overheard. Having left her only an hour and a half before in what seemed to be full possession of her well-modulated voice, he could only assume that his friend was taking precautions.

  “Where are you speaking from, Barbara?”

  “From my bedroom. Where else would I be at this hour? And where have you been?”

  He told her about his quick trip to the Splendide-Suisse and his walk back home and also filled her in on his conversation with Nicholas Spaak earlier in the evening, which they hadn’t had a chance to discuss. But it was Tonio Vico she wanted to talk about.

  “No one saw Tonio come out because he didn’t come out. It’s as simple as that,” she said in almost a whisper.

  “I admire the trust you put in the word of an old friend.”

  “It has nothing to do with Berenice at all! The Berenice I remember was completely capable of lying for someone she cared about. She did it for me a few times in the days of St. Brigid’s, and I’m sure I did the same for her, though I’m also sure we both ran to confession as soon as we could.” The Contessa sighed, perhaps in recollection of those simpler days of simpler faults. “No, caro, if I believe that handsome young man it has nothing to do with Berenice. It has everything to do with his eyes and his mouth. He was telling the truth.”

  He could barely hear her.

  “Barbara, why are you whispering?”

  “I am not whispering, Urbino.” She said this no louder than anything she had already said. “Why do you say I’m whispering?”

  “Because you are. It wouldn’t have to do with Hazel Reeve, would it?”

  “With her? Whyever should it?”

  “Because she’s staying with you, Barbara, and perh
aps you don’t want her to hear you.”

  Could the Contessa be having second thoughts about her act of charity?

  “However could she hear me?” She was almost shouting now. When she went on, he was happy to hear that she was now using her normal voice. “Oh, I suppose I am being silly, caro. That girl makes me feel not quite comfortable. I can’t shake it from my mind that she knew Gibbon, and he’s dead, and she was staying with Porfirio, and now he’s dead, too. I’m not superstitious but—”

  “But you think you might be the next one to go? You are being superstitious, Barbara. You might say with much more sense that I could be the next one to go, or Josef.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Gibbon and Porfirio were both associated with the fresco, weren’t they? So are Josef and I.”

  “But the fresco is only a thing!”

  She said the last word disdainfully.

  “I stand corrected. I forgot that ‘things’ never bring about misfortune. Never has money or jewels or a painting by a Great Master or an incriminating letter brought death and discomfort.”

  “Shame on you, Urbino, you’re making fun of me—and you’re saying nonsensical things.” She paused. He could almost hear her thinking. “But you don’t really think the fresco has something to do with all this, do you?”

  “I would be surprised if it did.”

  “More or less surprised than if Hazel Reeve has something to do with it?” Once again she was almost whispering. When he didn’t respond immediately, she added, “I mean something more to do with all this than just being an attractive, intelligent young woman who was engaged to a murdered man and was staying in the home of another man who’s just met a violent death.”

  “And now she’s staying with you, Barbara.”

  “That’s right, caro, and don’t forget it!”

  With this parting warning the Contessa hung up.