He felt himself observed, turned easily and smiled with more pleasure than worry. It was almost as if he’d planned that I’d follow him to this obscure campo and tiny museum filled with silver liturgical objects.
“Cassandra, my dear. Are you here for the tour as well?”
Fourteen
“NO, I’M NOT HERE for the tour!” I said. “I’m here to ask you some questions.”
“No need to blurt. We have plenty of time, my dear,” he said, putting a black-gloved hand on one of my waving arms. “We can talk while we’re being shown about. I’ve been looking forward to this tour of the Ghetto’s synagogues for ages. I like what you’ve done with your hair, by the way. It seems to have grown since I saw you last.”
“Humidity,” I muttered.
“Yes, I expect a storm is coming,” Albert said. “The air feels quite tingly.”
He had led me firmly down the stairs to the group standing in the forecourt of the museum. Almost everyone looked American to me, and few of the couples seemed to be traveling well.
“We could of bought the same exact menorah at home, Daniel,” one frosted blonde was chiding her husband.
There were five synagogues for us to visit. When the Jews were moved on to the small island they’d had to take what buildings were given them, but over the years they had modified the interiors and extended the number of stories on the houses. The scola, or synagogues, meeting houses for public prayers as well as general assembly halls and study halls for the daily reading of the Torah, were usually on the top floor of a house, with five windows visible from the outside. Only those five windows gave an indication from the campo that a holy place was hidden above.
We trudged up some back stairs to the Scola Canton, a jewel-box of a synagogue built in the early 1500s. Inside, it was like being in an ornate Renaissance chest, all inlaid with wood and decorated with small paintings illustrating stories from the Bible. Albert had taken out tiny binoculars and put them to his eyes to more closely inspect Moses parting the Red Sea. Questions peppered the guide, a young woman with a streak of orange through her otherwise sedately styled dark hair. Did the Ashkenazim speak Yiddish here? Yes, they did. They were poorer than the Levantines, who came later and were Mediterranean merchants, and the Sephardim, who were ousted from Spain, but who brought wealth with them as well as a habit of praying in secret. The Ashkenazim had been forced since medieval times to be the bank for the poor as well as the rich. I listened with half an ear while I considered what I really wanted to know from Albert.
As the yarmulkes swarmed, I mentally reviewed what I knew of the recent events.
A rare bassoon belonging to Signore Sandretti had been stolen from Nicola’s room while she was sleeping. Although the bassoon was mysteriously recovered by Albert, Sandretti had claimed he didn’t recognize it. The evening of the bassoon’s attempted return, Gunther was found dead in the canal. Anna de Hoog was first on the scene, followed by Sandretti. I knew Gunther had left the Pietà during Act Two of Orlando Furioso after receiving a phone call, and Bitten had followed him. She said they took a walk, in the direction of the naval museum. They were observed in the act of quarreling by Marco and Andrew, who’d left the performance during the interval between Acts Two and Three. Marco and Andrew then walked in the opposite direction and went to the bar of the Danieli for a drink. That left about a half an hour for someone to push Gunther into the canal.
Bitten had the opportunity, but unless she was someone other than who she said she was, unless she had been faking an attraction to Gunther, unless he had so roused her to anger that she considered killing him, she didn’t really have the motivation. That’s what it came down to.
“Let’s get one thing out of the way,” Albert said, sidling up. “Then you can stop giving me those terribly suspicious looks. Tell me you don’t suspect me of murdering Gunther.”
“No,” I said grudgingly. “You were with me the whole time.”
“And it’s precisely for that reason that I don’t suspect you.”
“Me!”
We left the Scola Canton and started downstairs with the rest of the group. In front of us were Daniel and his wife, still arguing about the menorah. About whether the one they had bought, that Daniel Big-Spender had bought, was the exact replica of one easily found at Bloomingdales. For half the price.
“Here’s my question to you,” said Albert. “Who called Gunther on his cell phone during the concert?”
“Frigga, I assume.”
“And she is?”
“His great-grandmother. She raised him after his mother died. She arrived in Venice yesterday.”
“It would be easy enough,” said Albert, “to check the cell phone and see what the last number on it was.”
“Except that the cell phone went into the drink with him.”
The tour guide was now leading us up another set of stairs in another building. Some impatient male members of the group had taken off their yarmulkes, and the guide reminded them they had to put them on again. This synagogue was crimson and dark wood. It too was small and had a hidden feeling.
“Where was the elder Sandretti during the concert?” asked Albert, and then darted away to observe some carvings close up.
I waited until the guide had finished her description, and then closed in on Albert again. Signore Sandretti had definitely been there at the beginning—he’d introduced the opera—and at the end, but I hadn’t seen him, at all, during the concert.
“But why would Sandretti murder Gunther?” I whispered to Albert, as the group began to leave the room.
Albert was still enthralled by the wooden bas-reliefs. With difficulty he put his binoculars down and turned to me, sighing. “I’m not suggesting that. I’m only saying that he is not what he seems.”
“Because of the bassoon?”
“Exactly. Here we have a well-known Venetian musical impresario, whom one suspects might be in a little financial difficulty. He reports that a bassoon has disappeared. Not just any rare bassoon from a museum, but a bassoon from his private collection. A bassoon that he repeatedly asserts is a musical instrument once used by the Pietà performers and one which has been in the family for generations.”
“Don’t you believe him?”
“That’s hardly for me to say. But I suspect that his assertion adds to the value of the instrument. That’s usually why people make such assertions. Perhaps he even has some documentation to back up his claim. No, the interesting question has always been, why was this particular bassoon taken?”
“To get Nicky in trouble,” I said promptly. We were walking en masse down the street that led off the island and connected the old enclosed Ghetto with the area where the Sephardim had moved. Once it had been open and farmlike, according to the guide, with an inn and various shops. Now it was as dense as any place in Venice. We passed the shop where Daniel had apparently purchased the menorah. “No, I am not exchanging it. This is not New York; it is not a department store kind of mentality, Doris!”
I added, “Bitten stole it to punish Nicky for…something. A jealousy thing.”
“Ah, the psychological factor,” Albert said. “And yet there may be a far simpler explanation.”
“Such as?”
“Insurance, my sweet. If a rare bassoon from a museum had been stolen, it would have been a serious offense as well as a loss to the Italian people—not exactly on the order of a Bellini Madonna being stolen in broad daylight from a church, but a loss all the same—but it would not have personally enriched Signore Sandretti.”
“Which might explain why Sandretti claimed the bassoon wasn’t his when you returned it.” I thought back to that peculiar scene. “Bitten and Marco recognized it immediately.”
“Marco strikes me as unhealthily loyal to his father,” Albert said. “I’m not sure what Bitten’s silence meant.”
“The psychological factor again?” I suggested. “She wanted Nicky to be guilty.”
“Psychology is all very wel
l,” said Albert as we stepped into the last synagogue on the tour, a small one below that of the Levantines, which was closed to visitors. “But in my profession, money is usually the great motivator.”
“Even for murder?”
“I have seen it happen,” said Albert, enigmatically.
When the tour was over, we stepped out into the silvery stone street of late afternoon. The clouds above were pink and thunder blue: cool colors, in spite of the retained warmth of the pavement and houses. The air rumbled quietly, as if to itself, as if contemplating further action.
The guide’s talk in the last small family synagogue had sobered us. For she had told us about the rounding up of Venice’s Jews during the war. Compared to Germany and Poland, the numbers were minuscule; still, only sixty people returned. The population had remained small in the Ghetto. There were no Ashkenazim left, only Sephardim. Daniel and Doris were no longer arguing, I noticed, and several people wiped away tears.
As Albert and I walked back in the direction of the campo, I asked, “But how did you come up with the bassoon in the first place? And where is it now?”
“Since we’re in the neighborhood,” he said, “I suggest we pay a visit to my old friend Graciela.”
Graciela’s antique shop was a tiny, tasteful place in a quiet square nearby. It was not overly stuffed with objects like many stores of its nature, where you find potato mashers rolled up in Turkish rugs, African masks thrown into Mexican baskets along with broken toys and silver-plated pepper mills. Here one would not discover any odd treasures like a box of doll’s heads or an old travel book titled By Camel Across the Desert, by Two Ladies. In Graciela’s shop, the display was deliberate, not random. A few silver teaspoons tied together, a mottled green flask of hand-blown glass, a single delicate wine glass of a beautiful rose color, a spill of glass beads. On a velvet scarf was arranged a handful of old jewelry that made me think of the once frivolous dead. On the walls were nails with coat hangers from which swung a few garments: two embroidered men’s coats, one faded red, one sky blue, a sateen vest that suggested Regency England, some silk scarves from the Orient.
Graciela came forward and kissed Albert three times on the cheeks. “My dear,” she said in perfect English. “I did not expect to see you again today.”
“Graciela, cara,” said Albert. “My dear friend Cassandra, whom I ran into quite unexpectedly and who has been the source of all this whirlwind woodwind business, has some questions that I thought we could answer together.”
“Certainly,” said Graciela, motioning us onto three rickety but beautiful eighteenth-century chairs. Graciela was not like some of the secondhand dealers I’d known and loved over the years, the shabby and eccentric purveyors of all that was useless, abandoned and mysteriously compelling. Not only was she coiffed and elegantly dressed, but Graciela had the precise gestures and regal manners of a duchess. She reminded me, oddly, of Olivia Wulf, except that her smile was genuine and her voice more kind than gruff. She was a bit older than Albert, I guessed, but then, I had no real idea how old Albert was. He could be thirty-five; he could be sixty.
“Cassandra would like to know how the bassoon came to you,” Albert prompted, since I seemed suddenly tongue-tied.
“Of course. When Albert told me what he was looking for, I put the word out immediately, especially among my colleagues who specialize in old musical instruments. I didn’t have much hope, to tell the truth. Generally whatever is stolen in Italy is out of the country within twenty-four hours. To my surprise I got a call back very quickly. My friend Andreas said that a gondolier had brought the bassoon in two days ago, saying it had been left under a seat. It appeared to have been privately owned. It had no museum markings at any rate. I called Albert, and he retrieved it from my colleague and brought it to the Sandretti palazzo. It wasn’t a question of selling it back to Sandretti, of course; still, we did expect a small gift, a token, for our help and honesty.”
Albert nodded, his domed head gilded in the chandelier light. “When Sandretti refused to accept the bassoon or even acknowledge that he recognized it, I realized something else was going on.”
“A gondola!” I said. “Isn’t there a Lost and Found for gondola boats?”
They both laughed politely.
“What did you do with the bassoon before the concert then?”
“As you suspected, I placed it in the Danieli’s left luggage room with my friend the porter, who was under strict instructions to report to me if anyone came asking about it and also to deny that it was there. The next morning I picked it up and brought it here to Graciela’s for safekeeping.” Albert paused. “Three people came to the left luggage room to ask about it.”
“I bet I can guess. Marco, Bitten and Sandretti.”
“Partially right. Bitten came first. About a half hour later, Marco inquired. But the third person was not Sandretti. It was Anna de Hoog, who came after the concert. It was while she was asking about the bassoon that the doorman on the Danieli dock discovered Gunther’s body in the canal.”
“Which is why Anna was first at the scene of the crime,” I said. “Sandretti and Anna de Hoog must be in this together somehow. Is that why you left me the note at the hotel asking what orchestras she played with?”
“A word in your ear, no more,” said Albert. “As several people have noticed, Anna de Hoog is not the world’s most remarkable musician.”
I blushed, recalling the previous night. She had completely disarmed (and disrobed) me.
Graciela brought out the bassoon from the back of the room. “It would be curious indeed if this were one of the instruments from the Pietà. My colleague who specializes in musical instruments says that the Correr Museum owns and displays many of the instruments from the musical school of that ospedale. There are a number of violins as well as horns and flutes and oboes. There is even a pianoforte. But there are no bassoons among the inventory.” She patted it somewhat regretfully. “I would not think of selling this, of course. I really hate to see beautiful and historical examples of the national patrimony leave the country.”
“What about all this?” I gestured to the shelves around me. Did she think I was simple? The woman had an antique shop.
“Oh, very little of this is Italian,” smiled Graciela. “Most of it comes from my visits to the big auctions in Great Britain, in the north of England and Scotland, particularly. That is how Albert and I met, didn’t we?”
“But, but,” I said, “Don’t people come into your shop, your shop in Venice, expecting to buy something Venetian?”
“Collectors don’t think that way, my sweet,” Albert said with amusement. “And as for ordinary people…”
“They don’t think about value and appreciation,” said Graciela. “They love what they love. They love what speaks to them.”
I looked around. The only thing that spoke to me in the shop was Graciela herself, but that was out of the question. Actually, the bassoon spoke to me as well. It said, “Give me to Nicky. She’ll appreciate me.”
I said, “I’ll need to get Nicola over here. She could definitely recognize the bassoon. I mean, officially. At least that would get her out of being accused of theft.” I looked around again. “She might recognize some other things. She’s from Scotland, from a family that sold off quite a bit, I believe, on their descent from castle-living a few generations back.”
“Some fall and some rise,” said Albert, with a wink. I gathered he considered that he and I were among the latter. As he showed no signs of wishing to leave, I got up without having destroyed the antique chair and made my way to the door. This hardly seemed the place, in front of his elegant lady friend, to ask him the question I’d saved for last: You wouldn’t by any chance have noticed that the combination to Nicky’s safe is kept in the lentil jar?
“If you’re not going to sell the bassoon and you’re not going to give it back to the Sandrettis, at least right away, what are you going to do with it?”
“I’ll keep it safe her
e,” said Graciela.
“I had an uncle who was a tuba-player,” said Albert. “Perhaps now is my chance to carry on the family talent for tooting. I might take up the bassoon. Just might. After all, it’s one of my favorite instruments.”
“Why?”
“Of all the instruments in the orchestra, it is the most emotionally distinctive. Other instruments, the piano and the violin for instance, have far greater tonal range. Yet what other instrument can alternate between bittersweet lyricism and outright jocularity with such engaging finesse?”
“Are you quoting someone, Albert?”
“Magazine article by Andrew McManus.”
“And where would you have come across an article by Andrew McManus?”
“Stuffed inside the bassoon, oddly enough.” Albert held a crumpled piece of newsprint. “Can’t think how it got inside the tube.”
Fifteen
I DIDN’T FIND ANNA de Hoog or, for that matter, Andrew or Bitten at the palazzo when I went by.
“Miss de Hoog took them out on an excursion to the cemetery,” said the unhappy Marco. He was back to baby-sitting Frigga, who had slept for a while, but was now up and pacing again. We could hear her overhead. “San Michele is a very interesting island in the lagoon.”
That Anna had some sly reason for taking Andrew and Bitten to the cemetery island of San Michele, I had no doubt. Still, I didn’t think she would actually do away with them. Nor were they the characters in this drama I was most worried about.
“The police inspector came by here looking for you at four o’clock,” Marco added. “He waited for a while, but then he left. He gives you his card and respectfully asks that you call him as soon as you can.”
“Thanks. Listen, why don’t you slip out for a drink, Marco? I’ll go up and sit with Frigga a while.”
“I am only gone a half hour, no more,” said Marco gratefully. “I am only around the corner.”
“Take your time.” Not only did I wish to speak to Frigga, but I was curious about the library at the top of the stairs. I had caught only a glimpse when Sandretti opened it the other day, but I wondered if there might not be some interesting things in the desk or on the shelves, and not just the collected works of Plutarch.
The Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists Page 12
