Farewell to the Flesh

by Edward Sklepowich

  Dora Spaak was still staring at Tonio Vico. Urbino remembered how Xenia Campi had said that the ghost of death—of murder—could be seen in this young woman’s eyes.

  “You recognize him, Miss Spaak, don’t you?” Urbino said.

  Dora Spaak’s eyes flew from Tonio Vico to Urbino.

  “He—he’s the man in the newspaper you had.”

  “But you saw him somewhere else, didn’t you?”

  Dora was speechless. Everyone stared at her—everyone except Hazel, who was still lying on the sofa with the cloth over her eyes. She seemed to be holding her breath as she waited for Dora Spaak to answer.

  “You did tell me yesterday morning that you saw Mr. Vico in the Campo San Gabriele talking to Val Gibbon, didn’t you?”

  Vico jumped to his feet.

  “What’s this? Talking to Gibbon? Where’s the Campo San Gabriele?”

  “It’s where the Casa Crispina is,” his stepmother said quietly, “the pensione where Mr. Gibbon was staying. Mr. Macintyre asked me if you had been there but I told him I wouldn’t know.”

  “I certainly wasn’t! I never saw Gibbon here in Venice. I didn’t even know he was here until he was dead.”

  Hazel put her hand up to the cloth as if she was going to remove it but didn’t.

  “Well, Miss Spaak,” Urbino said, “he is the same man, isn’t he? The one you saw arguing with Val Gibbon.”

  For a moment Urbino thought that Dora Spaak was going to brazen it out. She opened her round little mouth to say something but nothing came out. She made her way to the nearest chair and sat down in it slowly. Fear gripped her face as she looked at Urbino.

  “I—I must have been mistaken,” she said in a quiet voice. “It must have been someone else.”

  “You seemed so sure yesterday morning, Miss Spaak. But of course you were upset over your mother being taken ill. So you never saw Mr. Vico in the Campo San Gabriele talking to Val Gibbon?”

  She shook her head.

  “What about in the Calle Santa Scolastica? Could it have been there that you saw someone who looked very much like Mr. Vico?”

  She put her face in her hands and started to cry.

  “Oh, poor Nicky, what’s going to happen to him? I wanted to be so careful! I knew I had to watch everything I said! Poor, poor Nicky!”

  “Don’t worry about your brother, Miss Spaak.”

  “What is going on, Urbino?” the Contessa said.

  “I’m trying to settle some very important points, Barbara. You see, Miss Spaak didn’t stay in the night of the murder, did you, Miss Spaak? You thought your mother was asleep when you came in and borrowed her scissors and her mask to follow Gibbon, but she was awake—and she was awake when you brought them back about midnight. She was only pretending to be asleep, as she frequently does, so that you wouldn’t worry about her. You followed Gibbon to the Calle Santa Scolastica. Tell us about the mask, Miss Spaak—the portrait mask that looked like Tonio.”

  “A mask that looked like me? What are you talking about?”

  “Miss Spaak knows. She saw Gibbon put it on at some point and go into the Calle Santa Scolastica. And then she saw her brother go in—and come hurrying out after only a short time, looking very nervous. But he didn’t know it was you there, did he, Miss Spaak? You were wearing the yellow mask. You went back to the Casa Crispina and returned the scissors and the mask to your mother’s room—and ever since you found out that Val Gibbon was murdered you’ve been trying to protect your brother.”

  Dora Spaak nodded.

  “Are you saying that Miss Spaak killed Gibbon? Or her brother?” the Contessa asked. “I thought that Rigoletti—”

  “Forget about Rigoletti, Barbara. He had nothing to do with Gibbon’s death.”

  “Oh, poor Nicky!” Dora Spaak wailed.

  “I told you not to worry about your brother, Miss Spaak. He hasn’t done anything wrong. It would have been better if you hadn’t lied to protect him. But now is your chance to help. Before you left the area of the Calle Santa Scolastica, did you see anyone else there that you recognized—or perhaps no one you recognized at the time but whom you do now?”

  “I didn’t go into that alley. I was so surprised when I saw Nicky there. I figured what he was up to. I know my brother very well although we never talk about a lot of things. I knew what he was looking for, but when he went into that alley after Val did and then rushed out, I was so shocked that I went right back to the Casa Crispina.”

  “You’re sure you didn’t see anyone else?”

  “I saw many people once I got out by the water but I didn’t recognize anyone. I was in a state!”

  “Of course you were, Miss Spaak. You were in such a state that you could have passed by any number of people you might otherwise be able to recognize now.”

  “I suppose so.”

  Hazel sat up quickly, the damp cloth falling from her eyes onto the sofa. The Contessa didn’t seem to notice—or if she noticed, not to care. She was staring at Urbino.

  “Because there is someone here who was also there that night, one of the few other people who know about the mask that looked like Tonio Vico.”

  Urbino turned toward the handsome young man who was standing ramrod straight a few feet from the sofa, looking back and forth from Urbino to Dora Spaak.

  “Tonio, do you still say you were in the hotel during the time Gibbon was murdered?” Urbino asked.

  “Of course I do! I was in all night! Tell them, Mother!”

  “I already have, Tony.” She looked levelly at Urbino. “I assure you my son was in that evening, Mr. Macintyre.”

  She put down the jasper cup that she had been holding in her hand during the last few minutes.

  “But you don’t know for sure if he was, do you, Mrs. Pillow? You couldn’t swear to it?”

  “Are you accusing my mother of lying?”

  Urbino ignored Tonio and continued to look at Mrs. Pillow. From the tail of his eye he saw the Contessa moving slowly away from the door.

  “Why don’t you admit that when you said Tonio was in the hotel during the time of Gibbon’s murder you couldn’t swear to it?” Urbino pursued.

  “But I was in that night! Mother, tell them I was in!”

  “She’s already said it several times, Tonio, but it doesn’t mean that she knows you were in that night. Tell him, Mrs. Pillow, tell him and Hazel and all of us that you don’t know, you couldn’t possibly know whether Tonio was in during the crucial time.”

  “Of course he was in!” Mrs. Pillow said. “Why are you trying to make it seem as if Tony has something to hide? If you think my son had anything to do with—with Mr. Gibbon’s death, you are wrong, Mr. Macintyre.”

  “Urbino, what is going on?” the Contessa said again, more nervously this time.

  “I’m sorry, Barbara. Why don’t you sit down. Your guests can wait a little longer,” he added as if this was still her main concern.

  Almost sheepishly, the Contessa complied, going to an armchair on the other side of the table with the jasper cups.

  “He was in that night, Barbara,” Berenice Pillow said, looking at her old friend.

  The Contessa reached out and took her hand.

  “Of course he was, Berenice. I don’t know what’s got into Urbino. Is this some kind of Carnival prank?”

  “My son was where he said he was, Mr. Macintyre.”

  “Why don’t you tell us about the mask, Mrs. Pillow? The mask that looked like Tonio.”

  If Mrs. Pillow had any, doubts before that he knew what she had hoped no one else knew but herself, she couldn’t delude herself any longer. Where her face had looked only unnaturally soft earlier, now it seemed to have collapsed. She pulled her hand from the Contessa’s and stood up. She looked regal standing there next to the walnut table with its collection of jasper cups. Her eyes blazed under the bronze lamp.

  “You’re very astute, Mr. Macintyre. You’re right. I don’t know if Tony was in the hotel that night.”

 
“But Mother!”

  “It’s all right, Tony. There’s nothing for you to worry about. I just hope you won’t hate me when you learn the truth. I never wanted to do anything to hurt you or—or Val. Don’t ever think that! All I ask is that you be gentle in your heart with me, Tony darling. If I can count on that, I don’t care about anything else.”

  She was speaking only to her stepson now as if no one else was in the room.

  “You see, Tony, Val Gibbon and I—” She stopped and took a deep breath and said with quiet emphasis, “What I did I did because I loved him—I still love him—and because I love you. But nothing is your fault, Tony, nothing!”

  Hazel got unsteadily to her feet.

  “Loved him? Loved Val? What are you talking about!”

  “Yes, Hazel, I loved him! Is that so hard to believe? And I’ll tell you something else,” she said moving closer to Hazel, who took a step back. “Val felt something for me, too! When you all look at me—even you, Barbara, who should know better—you see only a woman who isn’t young any longer, who isn’t attractive. What does she have to do with love? What could that kind of love have to do with her? I’m just a silly old fool to you, aren’t I? But I see something different! I see what I used to be, and not that long ago, the woman Val could have loved, the one I still like to believe he once felt something for. I felt everything you feel, Hazel dear, and maybe a lot more. But now I finally have to say good-bye to all that. I said good-bye to it in that alley.”

  Stunned, Hazel sat down on the sofa and put her hands to her face. Once again Tonio seemed caught, as he had been on the stage earlier, between his fiancée and his stepmother. He stood rooted to the carpet. The Contessa was staring straight ahead, blank, amazed, and shaken. Dora Spaak had settled back in her chair and looked exhausted and still a little fearful.

  “It was because he loved me that you killed him,” Hazel shouted. “You didn’t want anyone else to have him. You’re hateful! Thank God you’re not Tonio’s real mother!”

  “Hazel! That’s enough!” Tonio said.

  “Was it because of the money Gibbon wanted, Mrs. Pillow,” Urbino asked, making an assumption that could prove wrong despite how strongly he felt about it, “or because he was planning to marry Hazel?”

  Berenice Pillow appeared to ponder the question. They all waited expectantly but no one, it seemed, more than her stepson, who was still standing between her and Hazel.

  “He humiliated me,” Berenice Pillow said with quiet emphasis. “After everything we were to each other, he had to humiliate me. He couldn’t let me go in dignity. And he threatened to humiliate me in your eyes, Tony. I would have continued to give him just about anything, as long as he treated me with some tenderness and consideration—or as long as I believed he did. No, Mr. Macintyre, it wasn’t the money and it wasn’t you either, Hazel. I felt as if I were losing everything that meant something to me—my son, Val, and my dignity. I snapped. I loved him but at that moment I was filled with hatred. No, I wasn’t thinking about the money. If I had been, I might have taken it back. And I wasn’t thinking of you, Hazel. If I was thinking at all, I was thinking of myself and of you, Tony. You can’t imagine what it was like to do what I did when he was wearing that mask!”

  “You’re an evil, selfish woman!” Hazel screamed, her face livid with anger.

  Tonio Vico, poised between Hazel and his stepmother, made his decision.

  “Mother,” he said, going over to Mrs. Pillow and taking her in his arms. “You didn’t know what you were doing. You did it for me.”

  His two contradictory explanations seemed to echo through the heavy air of the room. Outside in the salone the orchestra was playing “Funiculì-Funiculà.” In the Contessa’s absence her ballo in maschera seemed to have taken an even more festive turn, which was only fitting since, as the ebony clock on the mantel indicated, it was almost midnight.

  Epilogue

  ASHES

  “The question I keep asking myself, Urbino, until my head is spinning, is whether you’re to be thanked or not.”

  In the middle of the Contessa’s forehead was a black, ashy smudge that she wore like a badge of honor. In her deep purple dress of simple lines, she looked reserved, almost chastened, her honey-brown hair pulled back from her face and fastened with a black comb that had belonged to her mother and that matched the onyx beads around her throat.

  It was early afternoon of Ash Wednesday, the day after her ballo in maschera—her “notorious” ballo in maschera as she lost no time in calling it as soon as she had seen Urbino.

  Urbino and the Contessa were sitting in her salotto. She would have preferred the Oriental salon at Florian’s now that the crowds had left the Piazza, but the café was always closed after Carnival for several days of what the exhausted management referred to as “recuperation.”

  “I lose my dear friend Berenice for a long time,” the Contessa went on with intentional vagueness, “and just when she’s found again she’s swept away from me like this—and all because of you!” She looked at his forehead pointedly for what must have been the fifth time since he had arrived ten minutes ago from the Questura. “And you’re not even the slightest bit penitential, are you!”

  “Barbara, I’m sorry that it had to happen the way it did.”

  “I’m all in a muddle. It makes everything so much easier when good people are killed and terrible ones do the killing! That’s the way it should be! Poor, poor Berenice! I’ll tell you one thing, caro. I’m going to help her as much as I can. I know she has to be punished but I intend to see that it’s as painless as possible.”

  Exactly how she was going to accomplish this she didn’t explain but Urbino was sure that she had already considered various possibilities.

  “When I said last night that you could make me feel like a cretina today,” she went on, “all I thought you had to explain was about Rigoletti! Now there’s Berenice!”

  “Don’t forget Dora Spaak.”

  “I’ve managed to piece together some of her sad little story. Correct me if I’m wrong.” Her gray eyes narrowed. “She went to the Piazza after borrowing her mother’s mask and scissors. I assume the scissors were for protection. But what did she hope to do?”

  “Follow Gibbon and then reveal herself. She slipped out the front door past the sleeping Sister Agata while Xenia Campi was having her anisette and after Xenia saw her coming out of her mother’s room. Dora thought she would have a drink with Gibbon afterward and they would laugh about it. What happened was different, of course. She found him in the Piazza taking pictures and then followed him to the Calle degli Albanesi where he put on the portrait mask. When he slipped into the Calle Santa Scolastica, she went into the service alley for the Danieli across the way, waiting for him to come out. Her brother came along but didn’t recognize her, and then he went into the Calle Santa Scolastica. She was surprised, of course, but she knew Nicholas was gay and that he might wander around in places like this. What was shocking to her was that Gibbon was in the calle, too. When her brother came hurrying out, apprehensive when he saw Gibbon in the portrait mask waiting for him—although he didn’t know who it was—she got frightened. She waited a few minutes longer but when Gibbon didn’t come out she realized she should leave herself, that it was a silly game she was playing.”

  “Did she think that her brother had killed Gibbon?”

  “Not then, but she did when she heard that Gibbon had been murdered. She couldn’t imagine what the scene of only a few moments between them in the alley could have been like, but she was determined to protect her brother. That’s why she didn’t want to admit knowing anything about a mask, but she saw a chance to put me off the track when she saw the artist’s drawing in Il Gazzettino. If she could make me—and perhaps through me, the police—believe that Gibbon had been arguing with the man pictured in the paper, then this man became an even stronger suspect, and her brother less of one. She wasn’t thinking completely clearly, of course, or else she would have wondered wh
at had happened to the portrait mask.”

  “What did happen to it?”

  “Berenice took it from Gibbon’s face. She couldn’t leave it. The finger—or the face—would have pointed right to her stepson. Taking the mask was the first thing she did that was completely intentional. Murdering Gibbon wasn’t, and that will be in her favor. She stuffed the mask into the pocket of her coat but didn’t realize it was gone until she was out in the Calle degli Albanesi. She heard someone walking toward her from the direction of the restaurant where the kids hang out, so she hurried to the Riva degli Schiavoni and from there back to the hotel. Needless to say, the realization that the portrait mask was out there somewhere made her very nervous. She expected people to say they had seen her stepson in different places that night. In fact, she said more or less the same thing to us, if you remember, when she and Tonio came over the night Hazel was here. She must have prayed that the mask wouldn’t surface—and it didn’t until the early hours of this morning.”

  “Where?”

  “In a trash bin on the Riva degli Schiavoni. Whoever found it after it fell out of Mrs. Pillow’s pocket seems to have made good use of it for Carnevale. Maybe it was the person Mrs. Pillow heard walking toward her. I have no way to prove it, but I think the person who found the mask was someone associated with the restaurant in the Calle degli Albanesi, possibly Lupo, who not only dislikes Rigoletti but might be a frequenter of the Calle Santa Scolastica himself. Lupo—or someone else—could have been on his way there, found the mask somewhere along the first stretch of the Calle Santa Scolastica or in the courtyard, and taken it. For some reason, he didn’t notice Gibbon’s body. He might have just taken the mask, thought no one of interest was in the area, and left.”

  “So this person probably wore the mask until Monday when the artist’s sketch was in the paper.”