The Venice Atonement

by The Venice Atonement (retail) (epub)

  ‘I don’t need to promise. You know it will.’ He pulled her close into his arms and nuzzled her neck. Then kissed her passionately on the lips. ‘And you’re a sweetheart,’ he said, releasing his hold. ‘Thank you for being so understanding – not many wives would be.’

  Or so devious, Nancy said to herself. While Leo had been busy justifying his absence, inspiration had been busy, too, and found her waiting and eager. Clear, bright, inspiration. If her husband were not here this evening…

  * * *

  She saw him off at seven o’clock sharp and went upstairs to finish her packing. But there were several garments she deliberately put to one side: that pair of grey slacks and a lightweight grey pullover. She would need to melt into the night – she mustn’t be seen by anyone who knew her or Leo. Soft-soled shoes completed the ensemble, soft enough to creep downstairs without being heard by an over-curious assistant.

  She had her hand on the outside door when she heard his voice from the top of the staircase.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that.’

  Archie was leaning against the white plastered wall, arms folded, and shaking his head.

  ‘How do you know what I’m doing?’

  ‘It doesn’t take too much brain power to work it out. As soon as Leo announced he was out for the evening, I knew you wouldn’t be able to resist.’

  ‘You can’t stop me going.’

  ‘True enough.’ He shifted his position, so that from where she stood at the bottom of the stairs his figure loomed large. ‘You can charge off like a deranged demon, gatecrash the palazzo and harangue Angelica Moretto, but do you think it’s wise?’

  ‘Wise or not, I’m going. And I’ve no intention of haranguing the woman. All I want is to know what happened – why Angelica left the convent so abruptly. Maybe even how her mother died. For two weeks, no nearly three, I’ve tried so hard to discover the truth. Now before I leave Venice I have a chance I didn’t expect. And I’m going to take it.’

  Archie began to walk purposefully down the stairs. ‘Then I’m going with you.’

  ‘No.’ Nancy put up her hand to stop him. ‘I’m going alone.’

  ‘You don’t need to worry. I won’t follow you into the palazzo. All I’ll do is stand guard outside.’

  ‘What good will that do? In any case, I don’t need a guard.’

  ‘You never know when you might need an ex-soldier.’

  He started down the stairs again. When he drew level with her, she turned to face him. His blue eyes were looking directly into hers and she almost weakened. ‘I appreciate the offer, Archie, but I think an ex-soldier is the last person I’ll need tonight. We’ll just be two women talking together.’

  Archie shrugged his shoulders, his face a sudden blank, and turned to go back. ‘On your own head be it then!’

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Walking to the vaporetto stop, Nancy felt a new hollowness. It was the thought that now she was truly on her own. Nevertheless, she was relieved that Archie had not been difficult and insisted he come with her. The meeting with Angelica would be, as she’d said, just two women talking, and that would be far easier without a third person in the room.

  Archie was a curious combination, though. At one moment he behaved like so many other men, judging women on their looks, seeing them as objects to appreciate – or not – but at others, he appeared willing to treat them, to treat her, as an equal. When he had turned back up the stairs a moment ago, she was sure he saw her not as a defenceless girl needing protection, but as a woman who knew her own mind.

  She wondered if that were his mother’s influence. Morwenna Jago would be strong and confident. She had worked for years under harsh conditions in a tough industry and for little pay. She would be a woman who deserved respect. And on occasions Archie had shown her respect, Nancy thought, even if it had come grudgingly.

  How different Morwenna’s life had been from that of Leo’s mother. Rachel Tremayne had enjoyed comfort and ease, but with an existence dictated by her husband. She had relinquished any professional ambition, to settle instead for painting pictures that would adorn the walls of Penleven. What had Leo said? That like so many women, his mother had not reached her potential. Had her son unconsciously imbibed the sense that women must always fall short, that their dependence was a natural trait?

  Leo would not have allowed her to walk out of the palazzo door tonight for sure. Of course, he was her husband and had greater care for her. But over the weeks she had noticed that his desire for equality did not run deep. He was unhappy if she adopted an independent stance. He preferred to be the one making the decisions and expected her to go along with them. And for the most part she had.

  He was not a controlling monster like Philip March. She found herself shaking her head to dislodge such a dreadful thought. No, her husband was simply over-protective. And he had good cause, hadn’t he? She wondered if a time would ever come when Leo would no longer feel the need to shield her, a time when she would escape her stalker’s shadow and live the way she truly wanted.

  Tomorrow they were to return to London where they would stay a few days while Leo fulfilled his most pressing engagements. Then on to Penleven for a week or so and back to London and more of Leo’s engagements. His schedule was meticulously organised and it had become hers, too. Nancy wasn’t averse to these plans – Leo had to earn a living and she knew she had a duty to visit his family and his old home – but she’d had no say in them, and more importantly no say in how they would live when they were back in London once more.

  She had seen Leo’s diary and it was packed, but where would she be while he was busy meeting potential contributors to the fund, or engaged for hours in valuing, or teaching eager students how to read a Renaissance painting? Doing a little shopping for herself? Not for the household, that was certain. Mrs Brindley guarded her post as housekeeper jealously. A little light shopping then, a visit to the hairdresser, drifting through galleries, meeting women she hardly knew and calling them friends. It was not the future she wanted, but it was the one that Leo had assumed for her – until any children came. And she’d not yet found the courage to challenge it. The burden of gratitude still weighed heavily on her.

  Suddenly conscious of her surroundings, she shivered. While she had been deep in thought, it seemed she had boarded a vaporetto and was on her way to the Zattere. At this time in the evening, the Giudecca Canal was quiet, the commercial traffic finished for the day and only a few small private boats and taxis passing by. She had taken an outside seat – a rare pleasure, they were always the most popular – but a damp mist had settled over the city, drifting in from the sea, and wrapping her in its tendrils. She wished she had worn a jacket.

  The journey was swift, though, and a ten-minute walk along the Zattere brought her to calle dei Morti. She stood at the corner of the street, glancing with some apprehension across the road to the terrifying gap that yawned dark beneath a dim lamp. The fencing had been restored but it was still a fearful place, and she made sure to keep to the palazzo side of the calle, hugging the garden walls as she passed. At the Moretto gates, she looked around and took courage. The street was empty; there was no sign of Mario Bozzato.

  Stiffening her shoulders, she pulled the bell. No one came. She pulled again and sensed the slight movement of a blind on the first floor. In a few minutes, the front door opened and what seemed in the muted light to be a dark column appeared in the doorway. It was a woman, her dress flowing to her ankles and a curtain of hair to her shoulders.

  Nancy was mystified. It was Angelica herself who walked towards the gates. Where was the male servant who had admitted her previously?

  ‘You!’ The woman sounded surprised when she came closer. Nancy caught a glimpse of a beautiful face, but Angelica’s expression was difficult to read.

  ‘Come in, Mrs Tremayne.’ She pressed a button and the gates swung open.

  Something made Nancy unsure and she hovered in the gateway. ‘Come in,’ Angelica repeated, beck
oning her to follow her up the path and into the house. The front door closed behind the two women with a sharp snap; neither of them had noticed the figure standing in the shadow of the garden wall.

  Angelica’s statuesque form led the way to the salon that Nancy remembered from her first visit. The room had seemed gloomy then – she remembered how she’d instinctively made for the window in an attempt to lighten the oppressiveness. Now it seemed a dark cavern of a space, lit not by electric but by several oil lamps that flickered restlessly in the slight draught passing through the room. The space appeared smaller, too. Was it the pools of darkness the lamp light did not reach, or was it solely her imagination? Whatever it was, Nancy felt the room closing in. The huge central sculpture seemed to have moved nearer, the scattered bowls and trinkets grown larger and row upon row of paintings glowered more fiercely.

  ‘May I offer you a drink?’

  ‘A glass of water would be fine.’ The room was unnerving her, something about it chimed wrongly, and Nancy felt hot and uncomfortable. Water might help.

  ‘I can do better than that,’ Angelica said. ‘A cordial – the recipe is an old Moretto secret – but I promise you will like it.’

  ‘Thank you. I’m sure I will.’ Nancy’s voice betrayed her nervousness.

  Her hostess walked over to a side chest and poured two glasses of a claret-coloured liquid, handing one to her guest and sipping from her own glass before she sat down opposite.

  Nancy took the chance to glance swiftly around. Something was missing. Even amid the overwhelming treasure, she could feel an absence. She looked again, trying to pierce through the gloom. In the far corner, the statuette of Saint Susanna was no longer there. She felt Angelica staring at her and looked quickly away, concentrating on the glass in her hand, but she was certain even from that brief glimpse that the statue had gone.

  Something else was missing too. Noise. Not that it had been noisy on her first visit, but there had been a gentle buzz below stairs, the humdrum sounds of a small staff at work. Now there was silence. Nancy took a sip of her drink. It was sweet but palatable, and she drank a little more before she spoke.

  ‘Have your servants deserted you?’ she asked lightly.

  ‘They must have a holiday, too, Mrs Tremayne. And really I am quite able to look after myself for a short while.’

  Nancy nodded, seeming to agree, but that Angelica had allowed her entire staff to leave at the same time seemed curious.

  ‘So,’ the woman continued, ‘why are you here? I confess I did not expect to have visitors tonight. The last time you came it was to warn me. Have you brought another warning with you?’

  ‘No. I’m not sure. Perhaps.’ Nancy hated that she sounded so uncertain, but she was struggling to know where to begin. ‘I wanted to speak to you. Really to set my mind at rest. I hope you don’t mind my calling unannounced.’

  ‘Not at all. It is most diverting.’

  It seemed an odd adjective to use, but Nancy pressed on. ‘You see, Signorina Moretto, something very odd has been going on and I think you might have the answer. I hope you’ll be able to help me… I think I may be able to help you, too.’ At the moment Nancy couldn’t quite see how, but she was extemporising wildly.

  ‘I doubt that.’ Angelica relaxed back into her chair. ‘But you seem an altogether inquisitive young woman. I will answer your questions, whatever they are, though you may come to wish you’d not asked so many.’ She leaned forward and put her glass down on the onyx table top. ‘What does it matter, though? Tonight one sinner more or less is nothing.’

  Nancy had no idea what the woman was talking about. She suspected that living so isolated, after the close communion of the convent, had begun to affect Angelica’s mind.

  ‘Go ahead,’ her hostess urged. ‘Ask away.’

  She took a deep breath and launched into her tale. ‘The statuette of Santa Susanna – I saw it. Today.’

  ‘Really?’ There was the slightest lift of an eyebrow.

  ‘At the convent of Madonna del Carmine. The convent where you lived for years, where you took your final vows.’

  She saw Angelica flinch, but carried on. ‘The nuns said there were two identical statues once, but one had been stolen this year. I saw that one when I visited here.’

  ‘So?’ There was a marked arrogance in the woman’s voice.

  ‘It’s not here now.’

  ‘No, it isn’t. Santa Susanna belongs elsewere – at Madonna del Carmine. And right now she is on her way there.’

  ‘What good news. The convent will be delighted.’ Nancy took another drink, then an even deeper breath. ‘But why ever did you take it?’ She couldn’t bring herself to accuse Angelica directly of stealing. Some part of her kept hoping there might have been an arrangement whereby the nun had taken the statue for cleaning as she’d claimed, and perhaps only the Reverend Mother knew of it.

  When she looked up, though, it was to see Angelica’s face transformed into a rigid mask.

  ‘You accuse me of stealing?’

  Nancy shivered, feeling the ice pierce her warm skin. ‘But the statuette was here. I saw it,’ she stuttered. ‘Who else could have taken it?’

  ‘Think, Mrs Tremayne. Am I the only person who has lived here?’

  Nancy was bewildered. A servant could not have been responsible. They would not have had the opportunity to steal.

  ‘There has only been you and your mother?’

  ‘Precisely.’

  Nancy felt the breath punched out of her. Her mouth dropped open, her lips making the shape of an ‘O’. ‘You are saying… you are saying that Marta stole the statuette?’

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  ‘I’m not suggesting she put the statue in her handbag and walked out of the convent with it,’ Angelica said drily. ‘But it was certainly stolen on her orders.’

  ‘That can’t be.’ Nancy’s voice hardly sounded her own. This was something she could not believe. Would not believe. Her image of Marta would not allow it.

  ‘Why not? Is it that you think my mother is an innocent? A saint herself? You have much to learn.’ Angelica sat forward in her chair, fixing Nancy with a fierce glare. ‘My mother was a sacrilegious woman, a monster who ordered the theft of some of the most beautiful icons in this region and sold them at a fraction of their value – to unbelievers – for her own personal gain.’

  Nancy shook her head violently. ‘She can’t have done.’ Her mind refused to accept what Marta’s daughter was saying.

  Angelica’s top lip formed a sneer. ‘You are stupid as well as too curious – but I cannot blame you.’ She gave a small shrug. ‘Marta Moretto was known as a devout woman, a woman who took mass regularly, who was generous in her contributions to the church. I, too, found it impossible to believe – until I saw the evidence with my own eyes.’

  ‘How?’ Nancy swallowed hard. She didn’t want to know, but she had to.

  ‘My mother visited Madonna del Carmine several times. I did not see her on her last visit, but a few days afterwards, the chapel was violated and the statue stolen.’

  ‘But that means nothing.’ Hope flooded Nancy’s heart. Angelica had no proof of her mother’s wrongdoing after all. She was grasping at straws and perhaps had an ulterior motive in wanting to find Marta guilty.

  ‘It means nothing, does it? Nothing to find the missing statue here in this palazzo, hidden deep in a cupboard in my mother’s bedroom.’ Angelica spat out the words, as though they bit her tongue to utter them.

  ‘You must have gone looking.’ Nancy was determined to defend the dead woman as long as she could. ‘Why would you poke around in your mother’s room?’ All pretence of politeness had gone. They were two warriors crossing verbal swords.

  Angelica’s smile was almost lazy. ‘Father Conti. Enrico Conti? You may have met him when you visited the convent. He talked to me of other thefts from other chapels. Thefts that went back several years. And I remembered the names of those chapels. Shall I tell you why, Mrs Tremayne?’ Th
en without waiting for an answer, she said exultantly, ‘Because they were all places my mother had visited and I had her letters to prove it. She would actually write to me of how she visited this or that chapel and how wonderful each was. What amazing artifacts they housed – a golden candlestick, a filigree censer, and so on. There was a pattern emerging. Marta Moretto would visit and several days later there would be a theft – the candlesticks, the censer, would disappear.’

  In an instant Nancy saw the answer to the question with which she’d come. ‘That’s why you left the convent so suddenly.’

  ‘Ah, you are not so stupid. I left because I was convinced I had a mother who was the blackest sinner. One who must be brought to justice. And who better to do it than a righteous nun?’

  And a fanatic, Nancy said quietly to herself. Aloud she asked, ‘Why would Marta have arranged such thefts? Moretto is a prestigious firm and your mother was greatly respected as a business woman.’

  Angelica gave a delicate yawn. The conversation was evidently beginning to bore her. ‘Money, of course. Isn’t that always the case? However prestigious, the business was not doing well. My dear brother took it on himself to obtain a loan that Moretto could not repay. Marta could have sold the business, of course, but that would have meant losing face. She preferred to commit a mortal sin.’

  Nancy felt her body slump, as though she had been winded by a physical blow. She wanted to shout, to protest that this could not be, but everything Angelica was saying possessed a horrible ring of truth. Only the details were left to discover.

  ‘If your mother was a sinner, she was not alone. Do you know who else was involved?’

  ‘The thief naturally.’

  ‘Who was?’

  ‘A man called Salvatore. I made my mother tell me. He is a small-time criminal who pretends respectability by working as the captain of Dino Di Maio’s yacht.’