“Have you seen either of them since two weeks ago?”
She tried to look at him steadily as she answered but the eye over the scar twitched slightly.
“No.”
“Are you sure?”
She nodded her head but Urbino wasn’t convinced.
“You know Xenia Campi, don’t you?”
“Most people know her. She’s a real character.”
“But you know her better than most. You’ve known her for ten years. You were close to her dead son.”
“Did she tell you that?”
“No. Giuseppe, the boy from Naples, did.”
She made an annoyed face.
“Yes, I know her. And I knew Marco.” A sad look came over her face. “I was almost killed in that accident, too.”
“Does Xenia Campi bother you?”
“Bother me! She watches me all the time! You would think I had been married to Marco. I was only a kid at the time. She thinks she has to watch out for me. I’ve got a mother of my own!”
“Did she bother you about Signor Gibbon, the English photoggrapher who was murdered in the Calle Santa Scolastica?”
Pierina paled and her scar stood out more.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Signor Macintyre! Yes, I know who you are! Xenia Campi pointed you out to me in the Piazza. You like to poke your nose into everything. She said I would have trouble because of you.”
“Trouble from her if you spoke with me?”
“Excuse me, Signor Macintyre, I have work to do.”
She started to straighten some of her masks but he had one more question.
“Do you have any inexpensive plastic masks, a yellow one, perhaps?”
She seemed surprised, looking at him with disbelief.
“Only what you see. I make and sell only quality masks. Good day.”
The next moment she was shouting angrily at the three Gypsy children who had come up to the booth and were eying a row of small porcelain masks. Urbino left.
6
By the time Urbino was approaching the Palazzo Uccello a chill wind was blowing through the dark alleys. He could sense an abrupt change coming in the weather. The last day of Carnevale might see not only confetti and streamers flying through the air but snowflakes as well. He hoped so. Cloaks of snow covering the domes, bridges, and gondolas of the city would only add to the festive air. Venice would seem even more enchanted. He wished he were in a better position to be able to enjoy this year’s celebration.
His walk back to the Palazzo Uccello was at many times like moving against an incoming tide. Crowds flooded the main calli, shouts poured out of café’s, and dancers eddied madly within the larger human maelstroms of the squares as music played loudly over speakers.
So difficult was it to make his way that once again he left the main route. He was happy to reach his neighborhood where the noise and activity were replaced by an almost funereal stillness. Occasionally the quiet was broken by the waxing and waning of voices and other sounds, sometimes loud and other times muted, which seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere. Where only a few moments before he had encountered crowds of merrymakers, he now met only an occasional neighbor with whom he exchanged a quick greeting.
Was it his imagination or did everyone he met now seem just a little eager to get to their destination? Fortunately, he didn’t have far to go.
He had only to turn the corner at the end of the calle, go over the bridge, and apply the key to the lock. He quickened his steps.
As he walked up the steps of the humpbacked bridge next to the Palazzo Uccello, he looked up at the lights Natalia had put on. They gave him a warm, secure feeling. He paused in the middle of the bridge to look down at the narrow melancholy canal. He never tired of peering into it from here or from the windows of the palazzo.
Sometimes on overcast days or evenings like these, with the building reflected in its murky waters, he was reminded of how Poe’s House of Usher had been mirrored in the tarn that ultimately claimed it. As on these other occasions, he now found himself searching the walls of the Palazzo Uccello for some barely perceptible crack that might eventually bring the building to the same fate. It was clearly an irrational fear, considering all the work that had gone into the building’s restoration ten years ago when he had inherited it through his mother.
The thought of a drink and Serena’s greeting after not having seen him all day pulled him out of his reverie. He went down the steps and bent to fit his key in the lock.
“Everything is going to come crashing down around you, Signor Macintyre.”
The voice—a woman’s—seemed disembodied, as if it had been whispered urgently in his ear and yet projected from an impossibly long distance. The effect was all the more eerie because, only a moment ago, the calle that stretched from the bridge past the Palazzo Uccello and beyond had seemed deserted. Surely his mind was playing malicious tricks on him. These words, spoken in Italian, were too close to the unreasonable fear that had just visited him on the bridge to be anything but a figment of his imagination.
He was wrong, however.
A tall figure dressed in a dark knee-length cloak stepped slowly from the shadows of the building next to the Palazzo Uccello. He didn’t recognize the figure, although the resonance of the voice in his mind sounded familiar. A quick laugh preceded another step forward into a dim pool of lamplight.
It was Xenia Campi, her face looking like stone.
“You’re in danger, Signor Macintyre. I’ve brought you a warning of danger,” she intoned. “A red aura bleeds around your head. And tell your friend the Contessa to stay in her palazzo until it’s all over.”
“Until what’s all over?”
It was more a startled, automatic response than a question. In any case Xenia Campi didn’t answer but instead smiled without mirth or apparent meaning. It was an indication of Urbino’s confusion and uneasiness that, as he watched her go over the bridge and turn the corner, he could think of nothing more to say to her.
7
“Whatever did the poor deluded woman mean, Urbino?” the Contessa said over the phone ten minutes later. “Stay here in the Ca’ da Capo until what’s over?”
“I asked her the same question. She only smiled and went away. I assume she meant Carnevale.”
“Carnevale? I’d be most content to stay here until Ash Wednesday, but it just isn’t possible. I have my obligations, you know,” she said as if a long list of social, personal, and charitable missions kept her in perpetual and exhausted motion. “And unfortunately—because of your own insistence—tomorrow the Ca’ da Capo will be in the mad middle of Carnevale itself. Like Mephistopheles in that play I’ll be able to say, ‘This is hell nor am I out of it’! But, seriously, Urbino, do you think there was anything behind Xenia Campi’s warnings?”
“It isn’t the first time that she’s been apocalyptic.”
His response expressed more confidence than he actually felt.
“That may be true but it’s the first time she’s been personally apocalyptic. I would prefer it if she would keep me out of her computations or her prognostications or whatever you want to call them. Either that or be more specific. Have you ever noticed how these people manage to be specific enough to frighten you but vague enough to wriggle out of it in the end? I wouldn’t give another thought to what that silly woman said. She could have been born with two cauls for all I care!”
Urbino asked her if she had seen the police artist’s sketch that looked like Tonio Vico.
“How could I miss it? Even if I had, Berenice called me up right after she saw it herself. It certainly looks like Tonio although he’s much more handsome.”
He told her that many people had seen Vico in and around the Piazza San Marco the night of Gibbon’s murder, that Dora Spaak had said she had seen him talking with Gibbon in the Campo San Gabriele, that her brother—who looked very little like the other sketch—had identified him as the man he had seen in the Calle Santa Scol
astica.
“Are you saying that Tonio is the murderer? You might as well say that poor Berenice did the deed! Stabbed Gibbon in the heart because he had taken away her stepson’s fiancée!”
“So that her stepson could marry a girl she didn’t even like?”
“You’re right. If she were the murdering kind, she would have done in your dear little Hazel, I’m sure!”
“She didn’t even know that they had broken off the engagement.”
“Poor Berenice. Tonio had nothing to do with Gibbon’s death! I don’t think you believe that, do you? You seem so determined to ignore the obvious!”
“And what is that, Barbara?”
“That your cherished Miss Hazel Reeve is up to her shelllike little ears in intrigue! And to think that because of you I’m harboring her here in the Ca’ da Capo!”
“Because of me…?” he began but wasn’t allowed to finish. The Contessa hung up.
Irritated though he was by her accusation that he was protecting Hazel Reeve, the precipitate end to their conversation had solved—for a time—the dilemma of whether or not to tell her what he had learned from Firpo and Pierina.
8
Serena’s cries and ankle rubbing reminded Urbino that in his eagerness to talk with the Contessa, he had forgotten to feed Serena and that he, too, was hungry. After giving her something to eat, he rummaged through the kitchen and fixed himself a plate of prosciutto, Gorgonzola, and an apple. He brought it to the library where he poured himself a glass of Corvo, leaving the bottle near for replenishment. He also put his Proust within easy reach but knew that he wouldn’t be able to concentrate on it tonight until he had thought some things through.
The first thing he turned his mind to was Xenia Campi. What was she in a position to know? She was staying at the Casa Crispina and therefore had an insider’s perspective on the other guests. Because of her self-proclaimed clairvoyant abilities, most people considered her a pazza—a crackpot—and a meddler, someone to be avoided and not to be taken seriously. Dora Spaak and Giuseppe were frightened by her. Most of the time she was very much in evidence in the Piazza San Marco, predicting the doom she saw for the city and handing out her leaflets. Surely she recognized the same people day in and day out, evening after evening, their faces when it wasn’t Carnevale and probably even their masks now that it was. Her best camouflage might very well be her notorious publicity. The quickest way to put yourself in a vulnerable position when you had something to hide was to underestimate the intelligence of someone ideally placed to observe you. Xenia Campi was easily underestimated, was quickly dismissed. Didn’t the Contessa do it? Hadn’t he himself done it from time to time?
Xenia Campi had gone out of her way to come to the Palazzo Uccello to warn him and, through him, the Contessa. Was her warning based on something she had actually seen or heard or was it the product of the fevered workings of her imagination? Could she have been thinking less of their safety than of giving herself—or someone close to her—a clear field during the final frenzies of Carnevale?
Xenia Campi had been sitting in the chair in the vestibule the night Gibbon had been murdered. Had she told him everything she had seen? Sister Agata had been asleep for a while. What might have happened during that period that Sister Agata wasn’t aware of? Had Xenia Campi herself been sitting there for that entire time? Had she actually stayed in her room after Gibbon had left the Casa Crispina?
Urbino tried to fit Xenia Campi into what he had learned from Firpo and Pierina. Might she not know something she hadn’t told him about the night of Gibbon’s murder? If she did, she could be putting herself in a dangerous position by going around giving people warnings. Perhaps it was she who should remain close to home “until it was all over.”
He next went over what Lubonski had told him the other day about Val Gibbon, about the man’s maneuverings and deceptions, and kept coming back to one thing that the Pole had tossed off in passing. If he could get more details from Lubonski, it might be all he needed.
Serena jumped into his lap and started to make herself comfortable, as if she were sure of having a long, undisturbed nap. He helped her settle herself, stroking her soft, glistening coat. Her purr of contentment soothed him and he ate some of the prosciutto and cheese, followed by the Corvo. Although Serena had just eaten, she showed an interest in the Gorgonzola, one of her peculiarities being a taste for cheese, the more pungent the better.
Urbino was restless and he shifted his position in the chair several times. Each time he did, however, Serena accommodated herself to it, always managing to find a comfortable way to nestle again. When his changes and movements eventually became too much for her, she would always jump down and seek her comfort elsewhere. But her patience sometimes amazed him, even if at other times her lack of it made him realize that she was, after all, only a cat.
As he looked down at Serena, who at the moment was the perfect embodiment of her name, he wondered at the patience of people, at their ability to adapt themselves to things much more shattering for them than any shift of his position could ever be for Serena.
He took a sip of his Corvo and considered the adjustments Berenice Pillow had to make. She hadn’t cared for Hazel to begin with. Yet she hadn’t had the brief and bitter comfort of knowing that the girl had fallen in love with Gibbon—brief because death had now ended it and bitter because any sorrow of Tonio’s was surely her own. She was a true mother in this respect. But although Tonio had concealed from her that Hazel had broken off their engagement, he wasn’t doing the same now with what seemed to be their reconciliation. Berenice Pillow had her own adjustments to make and to judge from her behavior at the enoteca that afternoon she was doing a fairly good job of it.
The Italians called it making a bella figura—cutting a good figure, putting a fine face on things, even sometimes pretending to feel other than you did. It was something that Urbino admired in Berenice Pillow and in the Contessa, who was a mistress of its more benevolent forms. It was almost equal parts the art of deception and the deceptiveness of art. Without it the precarious structure of social life couldn’t be maintained, but with too much we all wandered confused, trying to fathom the true thoughts and feelings even of those we loved and who loved us. Our intelligence and our awareness were our Ariadne’s thread through this labyrinth, but even these could take us only so far to the open air.
As Urbino stroked Serena’s coat and she rearranged herself with a murmur, he hoped that the Ariadne’s thread that he had begun to spin out of the facts he already knew and the assumptions he couldn’t help making—the kind of assumptions that had proved him right so often in his biographies—would be strong enough to get him out of the labyrinth.
And he hoped that no one else would be seriously hurt before he did. He was worried mainly about Tonio Vico, yet there was also room—and doubt enough in his mind—for him to worry about what harm Vico might do to someone. But who might that someone be?
9
Next morning, on the last day of Carnevale, Urbino called Gemelli and told him what he had learned from Pierina.
“All of this simply raises more questions,” Gemelli said. “It complicates things, as you well know. The men from London are arriving tomorrow. Maybe they don’t want to be corrupted by our Latin excesses and are waiting until all the celebrations are over. But unless we make some sense of all this, we stand a chance of being put in our place.”
Urbino allowed himself to assume that he was included in the Commissario’s “we.” It was unlikely he was going to receive any more recognition than this.
“Alibis provided by mothers—even stepmothers, as in this case—are even more suspect than those provided by wives,” Gemelli went on. “Signora Pillow can lie until she’s blue in the face, and Pierina from the Campo San Maurizio can come in here and swear to her statement, but the prosecutor would just shake his head and frown. Annoying him is the last thing anyone wants to do, believe me. This is far from the most straightforward murder case I’v
e ever dealt with and what you’re telling me now makes it seem as devious as—as I don’t know what!” he finished lamely for lack of an appropriate example. “Carnevale be damned! None of this business will get into Il Gazzettino, Macintyre. I’ll see to that. It would be a big mistake if it did, so don’t mention it to anyone. And although we’ll put a police guard on Vico, I don’t want him to know that we are. That way you and I will both be satisfied. You can assume that my men are protecting him and I’ll be glad to have them watching him in case anything else develops. A nice, neat package and an economical use of the taxpayers’ money. You do pay taxes here in Italy, don’t you, Macintyre?”
Pleased that his conversation with Gemelli had gone so well, Urbino next called the Contessa. She was on her way out but she said she would be coming back in a few hours.
“If you think everything has already been taken care of for the masked ball tonight, you’re sadly mistaken. I have plenty to do and I’m not sure I’m going to forgive you even if it all turns out to be a smashing success!”
“You said you wanted to go to the hospital to see Josef today, didn’t you?” Urbino reminded the Contessa. “We can go in late afternoon and be back and forth in less than an hour. In addition to Josef, I’d like to see Mrs. Spaak. Sister Teresa called a little while ago and said that she was rushed to the hospital late yesterday afternoon and would like to see me.”
Urbino arranged to be at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini at five. This should give them enough time, since the ball didn’t start until nine.
10
A dark gray sky with a flat, stony look was pressing down on the city like a slate roof when Urbino, in his cape and a heavy scarf, went for a walk half an hour later in the bone-numbing cold.
Ever since he had been a boy in New Orleans, deprived of a bicycle by his overcautious father, he had been a walker. The habit had carried over into his adult years and now he couldn’t feel comfortable in any city that wasn’t walkable. Fortunately, Venice was eminently so, and on those rare occasions when it wasn’t, it more than made up for it by being floatable. The Contessa chided him about his love of walking, avoiding the activity herself whenever possible, but she understood that it could cure him, clear his head, put things in perspective.
Farewell to the Flesh Page 25
