Death in the Floating City

by Tasha Alexander

  As our boat started to slip under the bridge, he lifted his arms and stretched them wide above him before lowering them again, as if he were reaching to grab us from the boat.

  * * *

  After I’d returned Caterina home, I detoured through the Danieli en route to Ca’ Barozzi. I had known I needed to speak to Emma even before Caterina provided this additional information. I wasn’t particularly looking forward to it. Which was why I collected my husband before starting for Ca’ Barozzi. What, after all, is the point in having a partner if you cannot depend upon him to make unpleasant situations more bearable?

  Colin’s expression was grim as we settled back into the gondola and I told him about the return of the plague doctor, but he was not overly alarmed. “So long as you are in a gondola, he cannot reach you or pose much threat.”

  “It’s disappointing, really,” I said. “If he had even the slightest initiative, he would have leapt off the bridge, tackled me in the boat, and demanded that I abandon the investigation at once.”

  “Why do you think he didn’t?”

  “Because I am acquainted with him,” I said, “and he knows I’d recognize him without the mask. Or perhaps even find his voice familiar—notice that he has never spoken to me, and he was silent, too, when he tried to grab Donata. All of which suggests he’s not sent some underling to do his dirty work. He’s doing it himself.”

  “Either because he has no underlings,” Colin said, “or because he’s so afraid of being caught that he can’t risk bringing anyone else into his fold.”

  We had just about reached Emma’s home. Colin put a hand on my arm. “You should know that the police think they have found Facio Trevisani. We’re waiting for confirmation the body has been identified.”

  “Body?” I asked, my heart sinking.

  “He was found hanged in a barn on the grounds of the Villa Tranquillità.”

  “No. It’s too sad.” What a wretched ending for a man who had already suffered so much.

  “It may be too sad. Or it may be that he could no longer live with his guilt.”

  A deep sorrow filled me as Colin helped me off the boat and into Ca’ Barozzi. Seeing Emma was not likely to improve my mood.

  “Where is my husband?” she demanded almost the instant she saw us. No need for polite greetings, apparently. “He has written to me. I know you’ve spoken to him.” She waved a sheet of paper in the air in front of us.

  Colin and I looked at each other, and I could see that he was silently cursing Paolo just as I was. Why had he decided to write to her after having only just told us he feared she might even be the murderer?

  “Your husband is under my protection at the moment,” Colin said. “As I’m sure you can appreciate, he’s in a rather delicate situation.”

  “You should have brought him to me at once,” Emma said. Petulance suited her. “Go and get him now.”

  “That’s not possible at the moment,” I said. “You wouldn’t want the murderer to know where to locate him, would you?”

  “I’m not so sure about that anymore,” she said, dropping onto the nearest chair like a spoiled child. Her mouth was fastened in a firm pout. “I have learned, through idle gossip, where my husband was while his darling father was being brutally killed.”

  Then she stopped. Just stopped.

  “Yes?” Colin asked. “Where was he?”

  “With his mistress.” She spat the words. “She’s not even attractive. I don’t care what she can do with tarot cards and séances. It’s embarrassing! If she were homely but rich and powerful, one could manage to wrap one’s head around it. But this? It is not to be borne.”

  “Tarot cards and séances?” I asked, shooting a quizzical look to my own husband. “Not Caterina Brexiano, surely?”

  “The one and the same.” Emma pushed her bottom lip out. Her eyes sprang to life as if she’d just figured it out. “How do you know who she is? Were you covering for him? Had you already learned this?”

  “No, no,” Colin said. “Paolo gave me a different name altogether. Margarita da Forli.”

  “Margarita da Forli?” I asked, stepping close to my husband and lowering my voice. “Signor Polani mentioned her as a particular, er, interest of his.”

  Colin clapped his hands together and held them in place in front of his chest. He started pacing, which told me he was at least as upset at this revelation as I was.

  “Well, what are you going to do?” Emma asked. “I think he should be paraded through the city and have rotten vegetables flung at him.”

  “I shall take the suggestion under advisement,” Colin said.

  “Where did you learn this, Emma?” I asked.

  “The usual channels of gossip,” Emma said. “No one respects mourning these days. No one. You would think I’d have a reprieve from being its target during a time of grief, but apparently gossip knows no bounds.”

  “I know this is extremely upsetting,” I said, “but there are other things we must discuss. If this woman can corroborate Paolo’s alibi, then you don’t have to worry that he’ll be charged with murder. Surely that’s a good thing?”

  “I suppose.”

  “This brings me to the reason we called on you,” I said. “Caterina Brexiano admits to having been in this house the night of the murder, and she says you saw her.”

  “I thought she was with my husband,” Emma said.

  “Perhaps that was later,” I said. Or a lie, I thought.

  “I don’t remember any such thing. So far as I recall we had no visitors that evening.”

  “She says you were hiding, trying to keep out of sight, while she spoke to Paolo’s father,” I said. “She swears he was still alive when she left.”

  “Well, I don’t recall any such thing,” Emma said, “and I would like to believe I’d remember if I’d been hiding, particularly in my own house. Perhaps I was just at the other end of the room, minding my own business. Were they in the portego? It’s enormous. I might not have even seen them. Whatever is the case, if she did see me, that would suggest she left before he was killed. I spent at least half an hour alone with my father-in-law on the loggia before I retired for the evening. We both drank limoncello and made up stories about the people in gondolas going by on the canal. It was our usual routine. Caterina Brexiano was certainly not there.”

  It was decent of her not to throw Caterina to the wolves, even though Emma couldn’t remember being in the portego. If it was true she couldn’t remember. I was getting tired of subterfuge, and none of this made any sense.

  “We’ve learned quite a bit more about what your father-in-law was looking for,” Colin said. “It appears that a man tried to leave his estate to Besina Barozzi’s son. If that had been his intention, and it can be proved, it is possible that your husband stands to come into a not insignificant amount of money.”

  “He does?” she asked. “Is this true?”

  “The question, Emma, is, would a fortune have made a difference in your own standing in the family? It would have taken financial pressure off Paolo, but would his father still have counseled him to abandon you?” Colin asked, not pausing as he circled the room with slow, measured steps. His words stunned me. I hadn’t expected him to drop that particular tidbit of news on Emma.

  Her reaction could be taken as evidence that she’d never heard this suggested before. She clutched a shaking hand to her throat. Tears streamed down her face. “You can’t be serious. It is a lie—a lie! Paolo may have been upset, but abandon me? He would not have done such a reprehensible thing.”

  “The old conte thought he should have your marriage annulled,” Colin said. “On grounds of you not being able to produce an heir.”

  All color had gone from Emma’s face, and her whole body was visibly trembling. “I don’t believe it. Not for a second. Not the conte. He wanted the marriage to work more than Paolo.”

  To someone cynical, her reaction could also be take as evidence of her guilt, as a sign that she was very, very
afraid of getting caught. At that moment, however, I believed her—and as I watched her come unhinged in front of my eyes, I felt terribly, terribly sorry for her.

  * * *

  Colin frowned as he read the message the concierge handed to him as we walked into the Danieli. “A neighbor has positively identified Facio Trevisani’s body. He was found in a barn on the grounds of the Morosinis’ villa.”

  My heart sank. It must have been the young mother to whom I spoke, or her husband. I hoped for the latter. “What a senseless tragedy,” I said.

  “We don’t know that yet, Emily,” Colin said. “As soon as we’re finished with Paolo we’ll go investigate the scene. Until then, we can’t draw any conclusions.”

  Paolo and Brother Giovanni were bent over a manuscript when we entered the room. The monk was carefully undoing the stitches that held the volume together. He’d already removed the heavy leather binding and placed it to the side.

  “What is going on here?” Colin asked, crossing to them.

  “We think this is where we will find the secret text,” Paolo said. “There is hidden writing beneath The Divine Comedy. You can just make it out with the magnifying glass.”

  I stepped forward and looked at the top page of the book they were in the process of taking apart. Sure enough, there, extremely faint, were lines of text that ran perpendicular to Dante’s poetry.

  “Because vellum was so expensive, it was often reused. They would wash the old ink off, you see,” Brother Giovanni said. “Which is what I’m going to attempt to do now. We just have to hope it won’t also remove what’s below.”

  “Are you certain this is a good idea?” Colin asked. “You’re destroying a valuable book. Not just in terms of money, but in terms of the intrinsic artistic value of the illumination.”

  “There’s no other way,” Paolo said. “I have to know what it says.”

  “Shouldn’t I have a say in that?” Emma appeared in the doorway behind us. “The book does belong to me, after all. I could have you arrested for theft and vandalism. You are wantonly destroying my property.”

  “Emma?” I asked.

  “I had my gondolier follow you back here when you left my house,” she said. “It’s outrageous that you wouldn’t tell me where I could find my own husband. Though I suppose, knowing what he is, one could question the wisdom of my wanting to find him.”

  “Emma, cara, I am so happy to see you!” Paolo rushed to her and took her in his arms.

  She pushed him back. “I don’t think so, conte,” she said. “Not now that I know about your secret assignations and your extremely poor taste in ladies. What am I supposed to think about myself now that I know how base you are?”

  “I have no idea what you are talking about,” Paolo said.

  Emma slapped him soundly across the face. “Why don’t you ask your mistress if she might know what’s upsetting me?”

  Paolo stood there, silent, a great red welt developing on his cheek.

  “I knew you had not been faithful, but to throw that sort of woman in my face—”

  “Cara, cara, you are getting excited about nothing,” Paolo said. “I have no mistress.”

  “Everyone is talking about it,” Emma said, “and I had suspected for months. There’s no sense denying the truth. You’re the one who should’ve been killed, not your father.”

  Paolo’s eyes drooped and he gave a sad sigh. “Who has told you these lies?”

  “Only half the city,” Emma said. “Caterina Brexiano? It was bad enough when she was just a medium, but now she is the lowest of the low in a brothel. How could you do this to me?”

  “She was the only one who could help me, Emma,” Paolo said, “but she was not my mistress.”

  “I won’t listen to this tripe,” she said.

  “Nor will I.” Colin had grown increasingly impatient during the course of this conversation. “Go sit in the other room and work this out at a considerably lower volume. I want to see what Brother Giovanni is doing.”

  The estranged couple, scowling, followed his direction. The monk continued his work.

  “I have carefully studied each of the books,” he said. “Every one has an older text, but I have found in this one—here.” He carefully turned the pages until he’d reached one more than halfway through and then held up the magnifying glass to a particular spot. “You will see the word Besina.”

  It was there. Faintly, barely legible, and certainly all but invisible to anyone who didn’t know to look for it, but it was there.

  “I will use a mixture of milk and oat to dissolve the top layer of paint and ink. It is a gentle combination and may not be enough, but I want to work slowly in order to minimize any damage to what lies beneath.”

  “You’re confident in the method?” Colin asked.

  “Confident enough.”

  “Then proceed,” Colin said.

  Using a slim blade, Brother Giovanni cut the remaining stitches of the binding and pulled the thread from the pages. He opened the book—if it could be called that any longer—to the middle and then gently flipped the stack of unfolded pages so that he could start at the beginning rather than the middle of what we hoped would be a narrative of some sort.

  Perhaps even a more easily defensible version of Nicolò Vendelino’s will.

  The monk dipped a paintbrush into the opaque mixture that filled a bowl in front of him on the table, and then, with great care, he started to wipe it over the vellum page. “If this does not work, there are stronger potions I can try, but they would likely cause more harm than good. I can’t justify ruining this book unless there’s a fair chance of finding something better on the pages.”

  It pained me to see the beautiful illumination begin to fade from the page. The ink came away less readily than the paint, but it soon became evident that Brother Giovanni’s method was working, though extremely slowly. We watched him for approximately a quarter of an hour. In that length of time, he hadn’t yet removed enough Dante that we could start to read what was below.

  “We shall leave you to it,” Colin said. “Tell my man outside if you require anything.”

  Emma and Paolo were still arguing in the next room. Colin and I left them to return to the Brenta Canal and see what remained at the site of Facio Trevisani’s death.

  Un Libro d’Amore

  xx

  Those few stolen minutes in Santa Maria dei Miracoli were all the comfort Besina had. Her life with Uberto Rosso did not improve. In the following years, she lost four more infants soon following each of their births. Rosso did not hide his disdain for her inadequacy, but he did not beat his wife again.

  Not then.

  Not until he found the small cassettina hidden at the bottom of one of the deep trunks containing her clothing. Not until he opened the cassettina and saw the letters she’d saved. Not until he began to believe his son’s blue eyes might match those of whoever was the author of these lurid documents.

  Rosso burned them all, but not before he’d stormed into the room where Besina sat, embroidering. He pulled her to her feet and flung the letters on the ground before her.

  “This transgression will not be forgiven.”

  Besina did not reply. She did not cast stones of her own. She did not tell her husband she knew about all the courtesans, both the cortigiana onesta and the cortigiana di lume, the onesta’s lower-class counterpart. She did not tell him they took his money but despised and laughed at him. She did not tell him she’d heard rumors about the strange requests he made of them. She did not think it was her place, because she did not question the world into which she’d been born. It did not occur to her to defend herself.

  Instead, she dropped to the floor and covered her head as best she could with her arms, hoping to shield it from the bulk of his blows.

  Rosso’s anger blinded him to everything else. He did not stop his evil work on Besina until she no longer moved when he kicked her.

  Much later, when she woke up to find herself being car
ried down the steps of her house by a servant, she commanded he release her.

  She wanted to see Tomaso. To make sure Rosso had done nothing to harm the boy.

  The servant did not obey his mistress. He did not so much as acknowledge her request. He carried her to the water entrance and put her in the family’s gondola, closing the door of the felze only after he’d made sure the curtains had been pulled to cover the windows. Besina screamed and cried out, calling for Tomaso. No one came to her aid.

  When the boat stopped after a short journey, her father stood at the water entrance of Ca’ Barozzi, anger in his eyes.

  “Daughter, what have you done to bring such shame to this family?”

  21

  This latest trip along the Brenta River provided no respite from the heat of the city. I felt no sense of relaxation while we were on the boat, only an oppressive sense of anxiety and dread. My heart ached for Facio Trevisani. Colin, who knew my temperament all too well, took my hand and stood on the deck with me, not interrupting my silent thought.

  On the outside, the barn in which Facio had died looked quaint and perfectly rustic, much like Marie Antoinette’s hamlet at Versailles. It was the only such outbuilding remaining on the estate and, being situated in plain view of one of the gardens, could not be allowed to mar its surroundings. Its inside, however, was not so pleasant. Facio had left this world in a shabby, grim space, hanging from a rough beam. So far as Colin and I could tell, he’d climbed a ladder he’d leaned against a supporting vertical beam and crawled across the horizontal until he reached almost the middle. That’s where he had tied the noose. He would have had to drop himself from there, after having placed the other end of the rope around his neck. There was no evidence suggesting anything but suicide.

  “It’s slim consolation, I know,” Colin said, “but most likely his neck would have broken at once. He probably didn’t suffer long.”