Finally, he stretched out along the beam, put his hat over his eyes, and lay motionless. Faint snoring sounds mingled with the titters of the crowd. A limp hand slid from his chest and dangled in the air, followed by the leg on the other side. The crowd began chanting in unison. Sally heard the Amazon say to Francine, “They are calling him to wake up.”
Michèle’s other hand fell and dangled, then his other leg. The chant grew louder, more rhythmic.
Eventually, the Harlequin stirred. His head moved, tentatively at first, then quickly. His hat fell off as, to the shouts of the crowd, he rolled off the beam, catching himself at the last minute, his legs flailing in simulated panic. The crowd screamed as he clambered back onto the beam. He steadied himself and rose to his feet, then bowed to the plaudits of his frenzied audience. Sally heard Francine, beside her, calling, “Bravo!”
When the noise had subsided, he made a short speech in Italian. There was more applause at the end and a general stir in the room. The Amazon said to Francine and Sally, “You have not understood? He has said that dawn has come, the sun is up, and it is time to take off our masks.”
UNMASKING
Sally was about to be exposed in front of Francine. Sally’s hand moved to her mask. She would have to take it off, as everyone around her was doing.
She needn’t have worried. The Amazon seemed to want nothing more than to remove Francine from Sally’s company. The Amazon nodded curtly to Sally and ushered Francine away amid the exclamations and chatter.
Michèle had lowered himself from the beam and was standing on the tabletop. Sally watched him loosen the Harlequin mask. The heavy-featured, sensual face came off in his hands and she saw him for the first time.
She was dismayed. Having become so accustomed to Michèle’s mask, she had somehow expected his face to look much like it. Unmasked, he looked pallid, diminished, tired. He was, she guessed, somewhere in his forties. His face was thin, his nose narrow, his eyes brown and not especially large. His straight, light brown hair was neatly barbered. It was impossible to believe that, moments before, he had been the magical, acrobatic clown, the focus of the room. Now, no one would glance at him twice. Sally felt an unreasonable, complicated pang. She was almost angry, as if she’d been fooled and led astray.
She fumbled her own mask off and surveyed the room. Francine was across the way, blinking dazedly. Her companion, the Amazon, had pouches under her eyes and looked older and less formidable than before. The faces of the others, faces that had been so mysterious and intriguing, so much like characters in a dream, were naked and reduced.
Michèle had descended from the table and was standing beside her. She was almost embarrassed to look at him, afraid she would betray her disappointment. “So the scoundrels go home to bed,” he said.
“You give a party like this every year?”
“Since Carnival was revived. Many Venetians say they hate Carnival, with its crowds, noise, and confusion. They close their houses and leave until it’s over. But I love crowds, noise, and confusion, and I give the Scoundrels’ Ball in celebration of them.”
People were calling “Ciao!” The room smelled of smoke. Boats were starting up at the landing stage. When Michèle excused himself and went to see to his guests Sally stood by the fireplace, watching the embers. If Michèle looked less magical now, he also looked less threatening. She was not afraid to let him take her back to Venice.
Sally was the only one left by the time Michèle returned. “The last boat is just for us,” he said. “Now we can talk.”
She turned from the glowing embers. “Talk about what? We’re going to the police.”
“We are going to the police, but we must get some things straight between us.”
“What do we have to get straight?”
He seemed to gather himself. “First, I want you to know that I will do my best to protect you.”
Sally frowned. “Protect me?”
“The law recognizes only its own definition of justice. But we know, don’t we, that there is also a fundamental justice of the heart?”
Sally stared at Michèle. His unremarkable face was almost radiant with sincerity. “The fundamental what?”
Michèle leaned toward her. “I am saying I will help you,” he said. “But we must agree on what to tell the police.”
“What to tell them? Tell them Brian’s dead! Tell them to find out what happened to him!”
Watching her closely, Michèle went on, “Nobody could blame you. No thinking, feeling person could blame you at all.”
Blame her? Sally began shaking her head.
Michèle’s eyes were very bright. “No one but the two of us need ever know.”
“What do you mean, blame me?” Sally said. “Wait a minute.”
Michèle was standing with his back to the fireplace. Behind him, embers pulsed and died. “You had ample reason for what you did,” he said smoothly. “Brian treated you abominably. He himself admitted as much. It must have been intolerable for you.”
“What are you saying, Michèle?”
“Finally you couldn’t bear it,” he murmured. “You couldn’t bear it, so you took the opportunity to free yourself.”
Sally’s head was shaking vehemently, as if of its own accord. “No. No. I didn’t. Are you saying I killed Brian? I didn’t!”
Michèle looked perplexed. “Why do you deny it, Sally? I have said I understand and will help you.”
“Listen. I told you about the mirror-man.” Sally’s voice was jerky, as if she’d forgotten how to talk. “Brian was in the water when I got there, and the mirror-man was leaning over him.”
“If only I had seen him, too,” said Michèle regretfully.
This must be what drowning is like, Sally thought. She said, “The mirror. The broken mirror on the staff. It was there. You saw it.”
Michèle shrugged. “I saw it. But can you prove you didn’t bring the staff there yourself?”
“Prove?” Sally said. Michèle seemed gigantic, looming in front of her. The two of them stared at one another.
The next moment, Michèle dropped his gaze. “My poor Sally,” he said. “Forgive me for showing you how careful, how extremely, absurdly, careful you must be.”
Sally was numb. “I didn’t kill Brian,” she said.
“No, no, no.” His tone was one he might have used with a fretful child. “The boat is ready,” he said. “Come along. Come along.”
As they walked across the withered lawn toward the landing stage Sally said, “Michèle, you told me Brian treated me abominably. You said he admitted it. How could you say that? What do you know about it?”
Michèle was silent for a step before he said, “Brian told me.”
“Brian told you?”
“When I talked with him the night before he died.”
Michèle, Sally realized, had explained almost nothing. The spurt of anger she felt was as much at herself as at him. “You never said you’d talked with Brian.”
Michèle didn’t respond to the accusation in her tone. He said, “Brian was a terribly unhappy young man.”
“Yes.”
“He was so stunning, so American, so unhappy. His sadness interested me as much as his beauty.”
Michèle’s face took on a remote look. “We met by chance in a taverna near the Fenice. He was alone. We shared a carafe or two of wine, and he told me everything— about the group, you, Jean-Pierre, the game you were to play. Once he’d started he went on and on. I have never seen a man so obsessed by his own guilt with so relatively little— if I may say so without wounding you— to feel guilty about.
“He felt he had treated you horribly, shamefully. He was also anguished because he couldn’t return Jean-Pierre’s love with a fervor equal to Jean-Pierre’s, and so he felt both suffocated and inadequate. Lastly, and very keenly, he felt guilty because he had betrayed the game.”
“Betrayed the game? How?”
“At Jean-Pierre’s insistence, the two of them told each
other what their costumes would be.”
“Brian told Jean-Pierre he was going to dress as Medusa?”
“Yes.”
“What was Jean-Pierre going to be?”
“Pierrot.”
“Pierrot? But he was supposed to dress as his true self!”
Michèle shrugged. “He told Brian he intended to dress as Pierrot.”
Sally wondered which of the many Pierrots she’d seen had been Jean-Pierre. One had pushed past her, hadn’t he, when she was following Brian after Brian left the Piazza? A Pierrot with a long, floating ruff of black net?
“But listen,” Sally said. “You talked to Brian, and he told you everything. Why are you involved now? Why are you saying you’ll protect me? What is any of it to do with you?”
Michèle stopped walking and turned to face her. “I have a reason,” he said. He cleared his throat. “I hope you won’t hate me if I tell you the part I played in Brian’s death.”
Sally had known, hadn’t she, that he was involved somehow? “The part you played? Did you kill him?”
Michèle shook his head. His eyes were shadowed. “I did not kill him,” he said.
After a moment he continued, “You don’t know how many times I’ve relived that evening with Brian in the taverna, wishing I had let it be. We could have remembered each other always with warmth. That wasn’t enough for me.”
Suddenly, his face was flooded with color. “I wanted to be part of it!” he burst out. “I couldn’t let something so interesting slip away. Can you understand me if I say it seemed too good to waste? I can sum it up most easily this way— I played the Harlequin.”
“You mean— acted like a clown?”
“The Harlequin is much more than a clown! He is a trickster, a troublemaker, a manipulator who brings about confusion but stays aloof from it. The Harlequin is a very compelling image for me.”
“Obviously,” Sally said.
Michèle grimaced. “Yes. Obviously. So, in Harlequin fashion, I set out to cause trouble. Your group’s game, I reasoned, was already spoiled, so I would hurt nothing by meddling further. How much did the game mean to its participants? Would they leave it for an intriguing, mysterious summons? Brian had given me a poem he wrote about Medusa. I typed it out— laboriously indeed, since I have never learned to type— and had a copy delivered to everyone in the group except you and Brian. I expected confusion, mistaken identity, farcical misunderstanding, perhaps even a bit of shouting— everything except what happened.”
Sally frowned. “Brian wrote a poem?” She had never thought of Brian writing poetry.
“Yes. I didn’t send it to you, because you were not to be involved in my game-within-a-game.”
At last he’s telling me something, Sally thought. Just like he said, all along it was his game. “How did you know where people were staying?”
“That was easy enough. A few telephone calls. By midmorning, the poems were delivered. I was prepared for an amusing afternoon.”
Michèle rubbed his eyes with thumb and forefinger. “So Rolf, Tom, Francine, and Jean-Pierre received intriguing poems about Medusa. Jean-Pierre was the only one who knew the Medusa was Brian, but all of them would see the Medusa in the Piazza. What would they do? I intended to give them something to do. I wrote out a message asking Brian to meet me and gave it to him in the Piazza.”
“The game is over. Come see me now,” Sally said. “It was in Brian’s glove.”
Michèle nodded sadly. “Yes. I drew a map to show the meeting place. He answered my summons and left the Piazza.”
Of course he did, Sally thought. “I saw him leave, and went after him,” she said.
“Yes. How did that happen? Had you read the poem after all?”
“No. I recognized Brian and wondered what was going on.”
He looked surprised. “You recognized him, without knowing anything beforehand?”
“Yes. I knew him right away.”
Michèle went on, “I myself left the Piazza and waited at the point I’d indicated on the map, near the Rio della Madonna. It was enough out of the way, I thought, so crowds wouldn’t add to what would obviously be a fine scene of confusion. I waited, and Brian didn’t arrive.” He hunched his shoulders, as if against the cold. “I became concerned after a time, although please understand that I never thought anything horrible had happened. I simply didn’t want to miss the fun. I retraced my steps, and I found you.”
“Bending over Brian’s body.”
“Yes.” He fell silent again, then breathed deeply. “So you see, I’ve been tormented by what happened. I want to do everything I can to make it right.”
He waited. Sally said, “But do you think— do you think Brian was killed because of what you did? Because of some silly joke?”
“I don’t know, Sally!” he burst out. “This is what I must find out. I meddled, and things went wrong, and I consider myself responsible for what you have suffered. I am begging you to let me help you.”
They were at the landing stage. The driver of the boat was holding out his hand. “You said we’re going to the police,” Sally said.
“They are waiting for us now.”
Sally looked at Michèle, who was blinking in the sudden dazzling sunlight on the water. She thought in a couple of hours at a taverna he had learned more about Brian than she had ever known. Michèle said he had screwed up, he was sorry, and he wanted to help her. As far as she could tell, he was sincere. Now that Brian was dead, nobody else on the continent of Europe gave a damn about her. Maybe that was enough to justify taking a chance on Michèle, at least until they got to the police station. Sally took the driver’s hand and stepped into the boat. Michèle followed her, and they pulled away.
FRANCINE AND URSULA
Slouched in the open back of the boat, her head ringing with the damnable buzzing of the motor, Francine looked Ursula, the Amazon, with a feeling approaching dislike. Ursula had on sunglasses, and a fur coat over her breastplate. Her hair was whipping in the wind, and she was smiling dotingly at Francine.
Admittedly, it was thanks to Ursula that Francine had been able to disappear when she needed to, but now Francine was less desperate. Her next moves were going to be delicate, and she didn’t want them hampered by Ursula.
Francine had discovered early in her acquaintance with Ursula that Ursula cared nothing for ideas. The kind of ideas Ursula got were ideas about having Francine dress in a white, high-necked nightgown, brush her hair so it floated around her head, and lie in a narrow bed with a crucifix on the wall above it and pretend not to know what Ursula wanted when she crept into the room.
With Francine’s help Ursula had enjoyed herself immensely, and when she was enjoying herself most, she referred to Francine as Silvia, with gasps and even a few quickly dashed away tears. All this had been fine with Francine. Her sexual experience was wide and fairly indiscriminate, but her true passion was for the intellect. Ultimately, the physical bored her, so she had been happy when Ursula announced that it was time to go to Count Zanon’s masked ball.
Ursula wanted Francine to change disguises so the two of them could go to the party dressed as nuns, but Francine insisted on wearing her Sartre costume. She allowed Ursula to give her a black eye mask, but that was all.
As they got ready before the party, Francine smoked a cigarette while Ursula, sitting in front of a light-encircled mirror, patted her face with lotion.
“Jean-Paul Sartre contended that when another person looks at us we become objects,” Francine said.
“Mmf.” Ursula was massaging lotion into her neck.
There was a short silence. Finally, Ursula said, “Interesting.”
“Yes, it is. And what classical myth does that remind you of?” Francine demanded.
Ursula took Francine’s cigarette and sucked in a long drag. She expelled the smoke toward her reflection, and the smoke curled back at her. “Classical myth? My God, cara, do you know how many years it has been since I was at school?”
“Certainly. Of course it does.” Ursula’s eagerness to please was obvious.
“Yes, certainly.” Francine leaned forward. “So couldn’t we say—”
Ursula had been staring into the mirror, flicking with a painted fingernail at a patch of peeling sunburn on the side of her nose. She turned to Francine. “Cara mia, why do you worry about unpleasant things like Medusa? What counts isn’t the head, but the heart.” She put her hand on her bosom. “The heart, my darling.”
Ursula was hopeless. During the entire night at the party, she had watched Francine closely. When Francine refused to dance, Ursula pouted and danced by herself, but she kept her eye on Francine even then. The result was that, after all, Francine hadn’t had a very good time.
Now it was over. Ursula was leaning closer to bawl something in Francine’s ear over the noise of the motor. “The woman in the Spanish costume! The señorita! Who was she?”
Francine shrieked back, “I don’t know!”
“No? The way the two of you were talking I thought you knew her!”
Francine shook her head, and Ursula sat back, but the question made Francine think. The señorita had looked familiar. She had also, it seemed to Francine, been rather forward and prying in her questions— wanting to know what had happened to Francine’s friends, how they had been separated. It was so typically American to ask personal questions as if one had a right to know everything. Francine had noticed it many times with Brian and Sally—
She sat up straighter, squinting into the brisk wind. The señorita had reminded her of Sally, which was utterly ridiculous. Francine hadn’t seen the señorita’s face after the unmasking, but the señorita had undoubtedly been much more beautiful than Sally. The voice— Francine had no particular recollection of Sally’s voice, since Sally so rarely spoke. Besides, Sally would never have the nerve to put on such a costume, to carry it off with any sort of aplomb. What had the señorita said, so casually? “Are you a friend of Michèle’s?” Unsophisticated Sally could never have spoken of a Venetian count in such familiar terms. Being completely awed by a title was even more typically American than asking rude questions. The señorita, even though American, was obviously much more a woman of the world.
The Grand Tour: Four International Mysteries Page 48
