He took another step nearer.
“‘And if vice or virtue operates so as to obtain plunder or honorable empire, I am infamy for the former and for the latter fame,’” he said.
“Gordon…step back. You know I don’t want to do this.”
My palms were wet with sweat and my fingers were shaking.
“Really? Are you sure? Hasn’t it always been your greatest desire, your secret wish, to kill people?”
“Gordon—”
“‘Vice has only blame from me while virtue has glory, palms and crown.’”
Just as he intoned the last word of the quotation—and was now almost near enough to reach out and touch me—I pressed the trigger again, this time aiming the gun directly at him. The tension that had built up inside me over the last few months found perfect release in that one moment. The bullet hit his chest, near his heart. Crace fell backward, his face transformed not so much by agony but by what I can only describe as love. As he staggered like a drunken man desperate to find his footing, he clutched at anything around him, grabbing the back of a chair and the edge of the door frame before finally holding on to the cabinet of his treasures, most of them now smashed into pieces. He looked at me and past me, smiled, and then pulled down the cabinet, and all its objects, on top of himself. A stain of blood began to spread itself across the front of his nightshirt like a sinister bloom. I bent down over him, cleaning the debris from his body.
“Gordon… I’m sorry,” I said, dropping the gun onto the floor.
He looked directly into my eyes with an expression of gratitude, his mouth forming itself into a word he never said. Blood sprouted on his lips and bubbled over down his chin before his head dropped to one side. He was dead.
I looked at the scene of devastation around me, the floor littered with shards of broken pottery and slivers of glass, the air thick with the smell of the gun. Blood continued to seep out of Crace, pooling below him—a body drowning in dark water.
I tried to stand up, but the pain in my foot crippled me. I held on to the corner of the cabinet and raised myself upward. Blood trickled out of the wound in my foot, a nasty little cherry red mouth, mixing with Crace’s on the floor. I already felt faint and nauseous, but now I trembled so badly that every movement I made, no matter how small, seemed to spawn a kind of underlying counterpoint, a vibrational echo that made my whole body shake. I dragged myself out of the study, through Crace’s bedroom and into the bathroom, leaving a trail of blood behind me. Using my hands, themselves covered in scratches and cuts, I lifted my right leg into the bath and turned on the cold tap. Pain stung deep inside me as the wound came in contact with the water, and I had to grip the side of the cold bath to stop myself from screaming out. The water turned red as I cleaned the blood from my foot.
After I finished washing it, I grabbed a white hand towel from the rail and pressed it down onto the wound, wrapping it around my ankle and securing it with a safety pin I had found in the medicine cabinet. I tried to walk by shifting most of the weight onto my left foot. My first step was agony and I almost doubled up in pain, but somehow I managed to hobble out of the bathroom and into the portego. Through the windows I could still see the lightning fissuring through the sky, and I heard the sound of thunder over the city, the noise sending shock waves through the water.
In the grand hall I stopped by Battista del Moro’s An Allegory of Fame. I peered closely at the figure of Fame standing high above the representations of vice and virtue, under which was written the verse that Crace had quoted to me. What had he said? That I would need to remember something about the etching? I recalled our first conversation about the picture and how he had mentioned that Fame seemed more intrigued by the satyr of vice than the feminine ideal of virtue. As I examined it, I noticed that there was something sticking out from behind the bottom right-hand side of the frame. It was the corner of an envelope. I pulled it out and saw that Crace had written my name on the front. Inside was a sheet of white paper, blank except for one cryptic line, also in Crace’s handwriting: “If you want to find the manuscript, first seek out the sunshine muse.”
What on earth did that mean? Was Crace playing some kind of game? And why would he want to help me find the unpublished book that had effectively ruined his writing career? In my head I ran through our various conversations we had had over the past few months. The sunshine muse. I limped down the portego looking at the windows, trying to remember what the hall looked like during the day when light streamed into the space. Did the clue suggest I should look in one particular place that was struck by the rays of the sun? The figure of the muse suggested inspiration, but did that mean I should search out the spot in which Crace felt creatively invigorated? I walked back to his bedroom and into his study. The shock of him lying there, his limbs spread out at odd angles on the floor, nearly turned my stomach.
I searched through Crace’s bedside cabinet but came across nothing except a dirty dried tissue and a pile of books. I hobbled back into the portego and was just about to turn into the drawing room when it came to me. How could I have been so stupid? I turned around and scanned the wall for the Francesco de’ Lodovici woodcut, the Triomphi di Carlo. The clue had been staring me in the face all along—the figure of the poet kneeling before his patron, the inspirational figure of his muse portrayed as a sun shining above him. As I lifted the frame from the wall, another letter dropped onto the floor.
Again it was addressed to me, again in Crace’s handwriting. I tore open the envelope, almost ripping the letter inside, and read the sentence Crace had written: “You are one step nearer. Answer this: who wrote that a prisoner in the Sala del Tormento ‘sustaineth so great torments that his joints are for the time loosed and pulled asunder?’”
I knew immediately what Crace was referring to. It was the book that he had been reading on my very first day at the palazzo, the one that had made him laugh, the one about the man who had visited Venice a few centuries ago and who had claimed to have introduced the fork to England. But what was it called? I couldn’t believe I had forgotten the title. Fuck. I could see Crace sitting in his chair with two books covered in red leather, their spines embossed with gold leaf. But what was the name? In frustration, I hit out at the wall, smashing my fist into the glass that covered one of the etchings. Then I remembered that I had written about that day in my notebook. I was sure I would have mentioned the title in my journal.
I moved as fast as I could, my foot still smarting, toward my room. Inside, I turned on the lights, pulled open the drawer of my desk and took out the chisel. I dropped onto my knees and wrenched up the wooden floor panel. I split open the plastic bags, tearing into them with a fury, and grabbed my notebook from inside. I flicked through the pages, the words dancing before my eyes, until I reached the beginning of my time with Crace. I scanned the entries, searching for the day, jumping past records of our conversations, details about my life before I came to Venice and dreams of what might happen after I had left, until I found what I was looking for. I had indeed written down the name of the book. The author was Thomas Coryat and the title was Coryat’s Crudities.
I turned and, as quickly as I could, stumbled down the corridor, through the portego and into the drawing room. Since arriving at the palazzo, I had arranged the books neatly on the shelves, so I knew that it shouldn’t take me too long to locate the volume. I ran my fingers down the spines of the books, remembering how dusty they had been when I had first started to sort them out. By my recollection the volume I wanted should be on the first shelf near Crace’s collection of books on Venice, along with Ruskin’s The Stones of Venice, W. D. Howells’s Venetian Life, The Letters of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, and Aretino’s Ragionamenti. But it was nowhere to be seen. I checked the titles, making sure it had not slipped behind one of the other volumes, and then looked down the entire shelf, a feeling of panic rising within me. I told myself that I had to keep calm. Perhaps he had placed it in a different part of the room. I picked up the library step
s and, my foot still throbbing with pain, climbed onto them. I stretched up and looked along the shelves but could not see the name. I moved the steps farther toward the other end of the library, but again there was nothing.
I heard a crack of thunder crash above the palazzo. The titles of the books danced in front of my eyes until I could no longer focus. I swept my hand along the shelf, dislodging a whole set of books and sending them flying onto the floor, the impact causing the glass shards of the chandelier to shiver and ring above me. I thrashed out again and again, clearing most of the shelves of their books, tearing off spines and ripping out pages. I felt consumed by anger, a murderous rage. By the time I had finished, I had reduced Crace’s fine collection of books to a chaotic heap, a pyramid of loose paper, creased leather and twisted spines.
Feeling weak and sick, I pushed my way through the chaotic pile of broken books. I cleared off some torn pages that lay on Crace’s chair and sat down, my head in my hands. What on earth was Crace trying to do? What kind of sick game was he playing, even now when he lay dead? I took some deep breaths and tried to think. I knew the volume wasn’t in his bedroom or his study, and I had checked all the shelves in the drawing room. Where else was there to look? There weren’t any books in the kitchen, the portego or the bathroom. The only place I hadn’t searched—in fact, the only part of the palazzo that I had never stepped into, apart from the flooded lower quarters—was the floor above. Now that Crace was dead, I could explore it for the first time.
I left the drawing room and stood by the entrance to the apartments, by the internal staircase that led to the next floor. Dragging my injured foot, I slowly climbed the stairs, listening to the wailing of the wind outside. At the top there was an old, thin door, its surface mottled by woodworm, secured by a small padlock. I pulled at the lock, trying to wrench it open. It wouldn’t budge. In frustration, I ran at the door, using all the power of my shoulder, channeling the pain in my foot and anger I felt toward Crace. The wood began to splinter, but the lock remained fixed. Taking a deep breath, I launched myself at the door again, gritting my teeth as the pain consumed me. I heard the sound of the padlock hitting the floor as the door banged against the wall.
The vast space was dark and, as Crace had said, completely empty. I felt around the wall for a light switch, my hands swathed in cobwebs, and finally found one. A single bulb hanging from the middle of the room flickered for an instant before fading away, plunging the space back into darkness. Fuck. I would have to go back down to the study to retrieve my torch.
I retraced my steps, lowering myself gently down the staircase, and edged along the portego and back through the bedroom to the study. Crace lay there, his skin now a ghostly white, the blood around him beginning to darken. I stepped over the debris and found my torch nestling by the desk. I picked it up, wiped it as if it was covered in blood or the fingerprints of a guilty man, and made my way back up to the empty floor.
I shone the torch into the darkness, illuminating nothing except for bare walls, cracked plaster and dirt. As the light hit the far corner by the window overlooking the canal, I heard a scuttling sound, the noise of rats running to safety. I walked forward into the emptiness, feeling the brush of spiderwebs on my face, scanning the room for the book. Then something seemed to glint above me. I raised my torch to the ceiling and saw an elaborate octagon of gold leaf, still luminescent despite the buildup of years of grime, surrounded by what looked like folds of decaying skin and the disembodied heads of dozens of baby boys. I stepped backward, unsettled and confused by what I had just seen, and as I did so, I fell over something on the floor. I dropped my torch and suddenly found myself encased in blackness. The memory of what had happened in Dorset flashed into my mind. The velvet darkness. The sharp edges of the rock in the palm of my hand. Lavinia’s bloodied face, her skin studded with jewels of glass.
I heard the rats, suddenly liberated by the lack of light, scuttle across the floor toward me. I scrambled around in the dust, stretching out into the darkness to find my torch. I reached out and felt something. It was moving.
I kicked out in the direction of the rat. As I did so, I felt something near my feet. I stretched my hand out slowly, fearful that I might touch one of the creatures again, and pushed my way through a mass of powdery dirt. I felt something cylindrical. It was my torch. I picked it up and shone it over the surface of the floor. The rats dispersed quickly into the dark corners of the room, which looked more like a vast underground tomb than a former living space situated at the top of a grand palazzo. As the torch light pierced through the gloom, I spotted something on the floor. I eased myself up, another wave of nausea threatening to consume me. I bit on my lip and pushed myself forward. I realized, as I got closer, that the object was a book. I picked it up. It was Coryat’s Crudities. The satisfaction I felt on finding the volume was erased by an overwhelming sense of dread. For a moment I considered dropping the book on the floor, leaving it to decay among the filth and the rats, and escaping the palazzo before it was too late, but I realized that this was impossible. I had to know. I had to find Crace’s manuscript.
As I hobbled back toward the staircase, I shone the torch onto the ceiling. The sight that had unsettled me—the seemingly infinite number of babies’ heads—was actually nothing more than an old stucco velarium, the decoration formed to make it look like a vast piece of fabric supported by winged male infants. I took a deep breath and limped toward the door. Slowly, I descended the stairs, each step sending stabs of pain up my leg.
At the bottom of the staircase I brushed the dust from my body and sat down. I opened the book. Sandwiched between two of the leaf-thin pages was another note, this time a much longer one. Again, it was written in Crace’s spidery handwriting.
Dear Adam,
First of all, thank you for what you have done. It’s a blessed release. Life had lost all its sparkle, and I’ve been thinking how best to go for quite some time. Suicide always strikes me as a little banal, don’t you think?
Murder, however, is a lot more interesting. If you forgive the bad joke, there’s nothing like going out with a bang.
I must also congratulate you on your resourcefulness, which is, frankly, much more than I had ever expected from you. What a sleuth you’ve been to get this far, to find this letter. You are really quite the little detective, aren’t you? Who would have thought you could unearth so much about me? But I suppose some of your methods are, how shall I say it, a little unconventional.
Unfortunately, you were not clever enough, my dear boy. I became aware of your little “project” soon after you moved in here. Did you really think I could be that blind? I knew about those letters, the ones from Lavinia Maddon and Shaw, a long time before you even set foot in this palazzo. They were a little test for you, one that I’m sorry to say you failed. And as for all those silly stunts, such as the one when you tried to get the key for the letter box from me, well, I don’t know what you must have been thinking. I may be old, my eyesight is notwhat it was, but I am far from stupid. Of course, I was terribly disappointed in you, extremely angry, and even considered getting rid of you. But then I thought, why not have a little fun with you instead? And how could I dismiss you, you who reminded me so much of my golden boy, Chris?
The first time I saw you, when you came to deliver your letter, I thought a ghost had emerged from the canals to haunt me. That or I was going mad. I had to make sure. And when you came for the interview, there was no mistaking it. The similarity was just too striking to ignore and so, as I told you, I had to get rid of the boy I had previously employed.
He did not, however, come back to demand money from me. That was a little poetic license on my part. I simply threw the Francesco de’ Lodovici onto the floor, stamped on it with my shoe and cut my hands with the glass. Of course it hurt a little, but it was nothing but a few surface grazes. And all that with my back—when you had to help me undress and bathe—well, it was just an elaborate put-on, one I must say I rather enjoyed. In fact, t
he whole thing has been a sham, including my nightmare.
Did you really think I could find you attractive in any way? You are a pretty boy, you certainly do look like him, but you’re not that special and certainly not in the same league as Chris. There’s something about your personality that’s a little odd; let’s just leave it at that, shall we? However, I must congratulate you on the way you dispensed with the enterprising Ms. Maddon. You know my opinion of biographers. I’d say she got her just deserts, wouldn’t you? But if you want to make it as a real novelist, I have two pieces of advice for you. One: you’re going to have to learn how to be a lot more observant. I didn’t take those sleeping pills that you gave me tonight. In fact, I’ve never really needed them. I pretended to swallow them, and when you left me alone I wrapped them in a little piece of loo paper and flushed them away. Two: if you ever go on a trip to the shops or the post office again (which I very much doubt you’ll be doing, at least in the near future), make sure to hide your notebook in a place where peeking eyes can’t find it. Oh, and if you do insist on fashioning a hiding place under the floor, you must make an effort to check it more regularly.
It’s a shame, as we could have had such a happy future together if you hadn’t started on your so-called biography. But having said that, I don’t regret a thing. I think it’s all turned out for the best, as they say.
For the record, I want you to know one thing. Despite what you might have heard from Levenson, I loved all those boys at the school in my own way. But my relationship with Chris didn’t start out like that. He was different from the others. There was no need to persuade him. In fact, he was the one who initiated it. He loved me you see, loved me like none of the others could have.
The Lying Tongue Page 27
