A Very Venetian Murder

by Haughton Murphy

  “Unless one or both of them doubled back to the murder site,” Reuben said.

  “We’ve checked every boat that might have stopped at the Giudecca—the circolare, the number eight, the nine, the number thirty-four. No one working on them saw Scamozzi or Regillo leave the island. And there’s no record of a water-taxi being ordered. So, unless they swam across, there is not any way they could have been at the Tredici Martiri at the crucial time.”

  “La marchesa doesn’t have a boat of her own, I assume?” Reuben asked.

  “You are very suspicious, Avvocato Frost. But the answer is no.”

  The two were silent for an instant and then Valier asked Frost what he made “of all this.”

  “Let’s go through the list,” Frost said. “You just eliminated Ceil Scamozzi and Regillo, or apparently so. Dan Abbott’s alibi seems to check out, too. Back to the Cipriani before the time of the murder, a nightcap or two in the bar, then a rented movie in his room.

  “I’d like to think the murderer was your young punk, Pandini. But I still have the problem Cynthia mentioned last night—how could he have been linked to the attempted poisoning?”

  “That is a good riddle your wife brought up.”

  “On the other hand, his running away doesn’t exactly help his case.”

  “I’m with you.”

  “Then we have Tony Garrison and Tabita—and uncertainty about their whereabouts in the early morning hours. And finally we have Doris Medford, whose amnesia is either a put-on or was genuinely induced by alcohol. When did she have those drinks from the minibar?

  “Then I can’t quite forget my perfumer friends, Werth and Cavanaugh. They were still here Thursday night, remember, and were staying at the Gritti, right near the crime scene.”

  “I wish we had a stronger case against one of these people—any one of them, or any combination of them,” Valier said. “It’s most unfortunate that so much is nebbioso. But right now, I’m afraid I’d have to say, ‘Ricordatevi del povero fornaretto!’”

  “That’s beyond me,” Reuben said.

  “Remember the poor baker-boy!” Valier replied, smiling. “It’s an old legend told by the gondoliers. There was a baker-boy who one day found the sheath for a dagger on the street. The dagger itself had been used to kill a nobleman and when the baker-boy was discovered with the sheath on his person, he was executed for the murder.

  “Years later, a criminal in Padova, on his deathbed, confessed to the crime. After that, as long as the Republic existed, the Council of Ten never again pronounced a death sentence until they had been solemnly warned, ‘Remember the poor baker-boy!’ We have to watch out that we don’t end up with a poor fornaretto.”

  “Or fornaretta,” Reuben added.

  “Yes. Or fornaretta.”

  CHAPTER

  13

  Caffè Orientale

  Walking down the Riva degli Schiavoni—a perilous undertaking amid the legions of tourists converging on San Marco on a Saturday afternoon—Frost reflected on his meeting with Valier.

  As he almost literally pushed against the sweeping human tides heading toward him, his thoughts turned again to Eric Werth and Cavanaugh. He wanted to bring them into better focus. As he reached the Molo, which was even more densely packed than the Riva, he had the sudden inspiration to contact Ted Demetrios; he was sure that, in their brief encounter at the Cipriani, the banker had said that he and his wife would be around at least through the weekend.

  He decided to walk to the Gritti Palace and check. Demetrios could easily get a line on Werth’s business; the information might be useful. Avoiding the Piazza San Marco, Reuben strode along the water’s edge in front of the Giardinetti Reali, though the area was scarcely less crowded than the Piazza itself.

  Within ten minutes, he was in the lobby of the Gritti, which he was appalled to find had been redecorated in a style more appropriate to the eccentricities of the Gesuiti than to a hotel. A heavy marble reception desk, resembling an altar, was forbidding; those approaching it resembled supplicants, not welcome guests. Here he was told that Mr. and Mrs. Demetrios were still registered but were out at the moment. He decided to linger for a bit and went to sit on the almost deserted deck, outside the bar. It was far too early in the afternoon to resume drinking, so he ordered a mineral water to keep his franchise.

  The view of the Grand Canal and the Salute across the way was breathtaking; as far as he was concerned, it was the finest spot at the Gritti and, indeed, one of the most exciting vistas in the entire city. Noting the complete absence of clouds, he recalled the observation—he thought it was William Dean Howells’—that the sky was “never so tenderly blue over any other spot of earth” than in Venice.

  Reuben sipped at his San Pellegrino as his attention was drawn to the noisy gondoliers at the station next to the hotel. Suddenly he realized that it was here that Gregg Baxter had embarked on his odd midnight ride with Nicolò Pandini.

  He considered going over to interview the striped-shirted gondoliers; Viscusi, the one who had taken Baxter and Pandini on their trip, was probably on duty. Then he had to admit that this would most likely be unproductive. His Italian was simply not good enough to conduct an interrogation with masters of the nearly incomprehensible Venetian dialect. Instead he went inside and left a note for the absent Demetrios.

  Back at the Cipriani, Frost tried to reach Dan Abbott, but he was also out. Gianni told him that he “thought” Abbott, Medford, Garrison and Tabita had gone to explore the Lido. At least Abbott had questioned him closely about the Casino there, and had asked him to make a dinner reservation for four at the Hotel Excelsior.

  Frost gave up and stretched out on his bed waiting for Ted Demetrios to call him back. When the banker did so, just before six o’clock, he said that he was leaving for the States the next day, Sunday, and that he would be back in his office “at dawn” Monday morning. “I get to work early. Have to make the rent, you know, with an early call to Japan.”

  Frost put forward his request, for whatever information could be gathered regarding the House of Werth, and Demetrios said he would see what he could find out. A bad joke about getting out of Venice before they were murdered ended the conversation.

  That evening Sandro Scarpe, the proprietor of the Caffè Orientale, led the Frosts to the small balcony of the restaurant, overlooking the tiny Rio Marin. The half-dozen outside tables were much prized, and they considered themselves fortunate to have captured one on a Saturday night.

  “I hope you have your risotto ai frutti di mare tonight,” Reuben said to the owner once he and Cynthia were seated—and had expressed pleasure over their placement outside.

  “For you, always. We do. We have.”

  “That’s what I want. I’ve been thinking about it all week.”

  “And to start, Signor Frost?”

  “How about the sardine in saor?”

  “You are in luck this night. We have made them.”

  “Good! Your pickled sardines, if I can call them that, are the best in town.”

  “Grazie, signore. But we are neglecting la signora.”

  “That’s all right, I’m still pondering,” Cynthia said. “I feel like something simple. What do you have that’s grilled?”

  “Ah. San Pietro.”

  While his wife was deciding, Reuben considered the total mystery of why “San Pietro” was never translated into English as “St. Peter,” but instead as “John Dory,” a name that meant absolutely nothing to Reuben or to any other English speaker he had ever asked about it. When fresh, as it was sure to be here, the white fish was succulent, whatever it was called. Cynthia decided to have it.

  “And for you, signora, to start?” Sandro asked.

  “Gamberetti?”

  “Sì, sì. With sauce?”

  “Just lemon, Sandro, please.”

  The owner bowed and hastened off to the kitchen. The waiter, meanwhile, brought a bottle of Tocai Friulano; the white wine had an almost erotic taste in the soft, cool e
vening.

  As Cynthia and Reuben drank, a procession of gondolas passed beneath the balcony. The gondoliers rowed without a sound, though the passage of the graceful vessels was heralded by a stentorian tenor, standing upright in the first boat and singing a vigorous rendition of “Santa Lucia” to accordion accompaniment.

  The tenor’s captive audience was Japanese. As the small fleet passed the restaurant, most of the men in the party snapped pictures of the diners on the balcony, one of their number almost falling into the Rio Marin as he stood up to get a better shot.

  “I wish I had a camera,” Reuben said to Cynthia.

  “Why?”

  “So I could take a picture of them taking pictures of us. It would be one of the weirdest photographs since Man Ray.”

  “Eat your sardine, dear,” Cynthia said, anxious to distract her husband. He was a fair-minded, tolerant and compassionate man, but as a Navy veteran of World War II in the South Pacific, he could occasionally be heard to mutter less than flattering remarks about the erstwhile enemy.

  Before leaving the hotel, Reuben had told his wife about his meeting with Commissario Valier. He had also aired his new, and totally unfounded, suspicion of Eric Werth and Jim Cavanaugh. Cynthia brought this up as they waited for their entrees.

  “You know, Reuben, I was thinking on the way over here about Eric Werth and what you said earlier. You may be entirely right, but I think you have the same problem pointing the finger at Werth or Cavanaugh as you did with Pandini—there doesn’t seem to be any connection between them and the poison attempt. They couldn’t even get to see Baxter, for heaven’s sake. How could they have been in a position to tamper with medicine in his bedroom? You think about it while I make a pig of myself with this San Pietro.” Reuben, for his part, attacked his risotto. He motioned for a new bottle of wine. When Sandro Scarpe returned with it, he was shaking his head.

  “You Americans,” he said.

  “What have we done now?” Reuben asked.

  “Six of your compatrioti came in just now and asked if we served Chinese food. Can you imagine?”

  “Did they think that ‘Orientale’ implied Chinese?” Cynthia inquired.

  “I suppose so,” Sandro said.

  “What did you do?”

  “I sent them to La Grande Muraglia, over in the Castello.”

  “The Great Wall. I’ve never eaten there,” Reuben said. “But you made a great mistake, Sandro. Six customers wanting Chinese food. You should have told them you have it.”

  “But I couldn’t.”

  “Of course you could. You have spaghetti, don’t you? Didn’t Marco Polo bring spaghetti back here from China?”

  “That’s the story,” Sandro said. “I should have thought of that. You sure you don’t want to go into business with me, Signor Frost?”

  Once Sandro turned his attention elsewhere, Reuben pondered what Cynthia had said earlier and reluctantly conceded that she was probably right, as she usually was, about Werth and Cavanaugh. He asked her where she thought that left the situation.

  “I hate to say it, since I know she’s a fan of mine, but isn’t Doris Medford the most likely murderer? Not to dwell on it, but her alibi—‘I don’t remember’—seems pretty weak. She also had free access to Baxter’s room, and to his insulin. And his shabby treatment of her may have been enough to motivate her to kill him. God knows how much time and emotional energy she had invested in that dinner of his, for which her reward was getting fired.”

  “You could say the same for Garrison and Tabita, alone or together,” Reuben said. “A soft alibi, access to the dead man’s insulin and a motive. With Baxter dead, Garrison stood to become the creative force running one of the most successful fashion houses in America, if not the world. And Tabita would have become even more famous, as well as the wife—or at least the girlfriend—of a very wealthy man.

  “There are a couple of other things to put on the scales, too. The AIDS business—very possibly a life-or-death matter for them. Surely enough to give them a motive, or to buttress one they already had. And going along with that, there’s their failure to tell me or the police about Baxter’s provocative mention of AIDS Thursday night.

  “A final point. We have no idea where the damned glass dagger came from. But let’s not forget that Garrison knows Venice well and speaks Italian—both helpful qualities when in the market for such an oddity, I should think.”

  “Sounds like a stalemate to me, dear,” Cynthia said. “So why don’t you try to relax for one evening?”

  While they had been talking, Reuben had been following a developing scene out of the corner of his eye. He had earlier noticed an empty gondola moored next to the iron gate separating the restaurant from the water. Then he realized that the absent gondolier must surely be the darkly good-looking youth in a boldly striped gondolier’s shirt sitting with an equally attractive girl at the small table across the way.

  From what he could overhear, Reuben figured out that the girl was an American, a student about to take up residence for the fall in Bologna, staying temporarily at the youth hostel on the Giudecca. Her companion was a voluble talker, with a better grip on English than she had on Italian. Though they were holding hands and rubbing each other’s arms, it was also quite evident that they were getting acquainted as well, in a confused mixture of flirtation and foreplay.

  Reuben lowered his voice and described his guesswork to Cynthia. Then, while the Frosts were drinking their espresso, the dashing sailor paid the check, opened the gate, escorted his Yankee prize to a seat in the gondola, leaped onto the prow and rowed off.

  “That’s the damndest thing I’ve ever seen!” Reuben said, laughing aloud. “It must be the wind. What the Brits here call the scirocco. It makes people do odd things in Venice, from seduction to murder. Since I don’t have my gondola here, shall we start walking?”

  CHAPTER

  14

  Torcello

  Once the vaporetto had brought Reuben and Cynthia to San Marco, they decided to walk through the Piazza. Many in the Saturday night crowd were couples, some holding hands. A few stopped to listen to the orchestra outside Florian’s play (inevitably) the theme from “Dr. Zhivago.” The lights along the sides, the Procuratie Vecchie and the Procuratie Nuove, glowed and seemed to warm the crisp September air.

  Thinking of the ardent gondolier and his pretty companion, Reuben took Cynthia by the arm as they walked slowly toward the shadowy magic of the basilica; there was no reason the young should have a monopoly on romance.

  Later, going back to the hotel, Reuben described a stratagem he had been working out since leaving the Orientale. His plan was to invite Abbott and Medford to go the next day to Torcello.

  “It’s a humane thing to do, since they’re stuck here and can’t leave,” Reuben told his wife.

  “Dear, I doubt that humaneness is your real motive,” Cynthia chided him.

  “Okay, it’s to get them talking as well. Gregg Baxter’s still a puzzle. Something of interest might come out during some relaxed sightseeing, or over a good lunch. Besides, we haven’t been to Torcello in years and I’d like to go at least once more before I die.”

  “Don’t be morbid, dear. Your disingenuousness is quite enough. But seriously, it’s a splendid idea. And, you’re right, we haven’t been to Torcello since they finished restoring the mosaics. It’s high time.”

  At the Cipriani Reuben went to the lounge and wrote out a note to Abbott, which he left with the concierge.

  Sunday morning, the telephone rang in the Frosts’ room moments after nine. It was Abbott, accepting their invitation but declining for Doris Medford.

  “I’m sorry she won’t be able to join us but delighted that you will be,” Reuben told him. “Let’s leave from downstairs a little after ten. It takes about an hour, and we want to be there in time to see the church before lunch. There’s supposed to be an excellent new restaurant—new to us anyway—and I’ll make a reservation.”

  “Medford’s no
t coming,” he told Cynthia. “That could be just as well. We may do better zeroing in on Abbott alone. One thing, dear. I hope you won’t be offended if we break away from you at some point.”

  “To talk man-to-man, you mean.”

  “Something like that.”

  “Why should I? It’s a good cause. The sooner the murder gets solved, the sooner I can get you to relax again.”

  “Fine. Let’s leave it like this. If I mention last night’s romantic gondolier, that’s the signal for you to—”

  “—get lost.”

  “Yes.”

  The Frosts met Abbott in the lobby, as arranged.

  “Do I need a jacket?” Abbott asked. He was wearing olive slacks and a blue polo shirt, a Shetland sweater tied loosely around his waist.

  Reuben, who was wearing a wheat-colored linen jacket, assured him that his attire was fine and there was no need to dress up any more than he was.

  “The easiest way to get there is to take the number five out the back door here. We have to go around to the Fondamente Nuove and change to a number twelve. We could, of course, order a water-taxi, but it’s more expensive and less colorful.”

  “You’re the boss.”

  Once aboard the circolare, Abbott seemed distracted and oblivious to either the sights or the sunny weather. “I haven’t had a chance to ask you, but when do you think we can leave this place, Mr. Frost? I appreciate taking this excursion today, I really do. Or spending the day at the Lido, like we did yesterday. Even if I dropped a bundle at the craps table. But I’ve got a business to run. I can’t reassure our customers well enough on the overseas telephone. They need some personal stroking. And Tony Garrison has to get to work finishing the spring collection—by himself.

  “Our biggest emergency is with Doris Medford. She’s got to get to Milan to finalize some details on a huge fabric purchase for next spring’s better line. We run the risk of losing out if she can’t pull out of here soon.”