The Alchemist's Code aa-2

by Dave Duncan

  “You are a very good witness, Pignate,” the inquisitor said. “I wish there were more like you.” Without turning his head, he added, “Alfeo, have you any questions?”

  To be treated as a colleague by an inquisitor was a scary experience. Why should he so flatter me? Was he just putting me at ease, planning to catch me off guard later?

  “Just one, if I may, Excellency. Yesterday I brought back the dead man’s portmanteau. Did you unpack it for him?”

  The boy glanced uneasily at Giro. “No, er, sier Alfeo. I was not told…I have not attended sier Danese in the past.” A cavaliere servente might be better rewarded for his services than a valet, but he was still only a servant to the other servants.

  “I just wondered,” I said. “That is all. Thank you.”

  Pignate was dismissed.

  Giro closed the door behind him and turned to the inquisitor. “I am embarrassed to report, clarissimo, that Fabricio Muranese, our gondolier, appears to-”

  “Does he have any money?” said Gritti, that patient, understanding grandfather.

  “He probably has some,” Giro admitted, face frozen into inscrutability. “He has been in my employ for six or seven years.”

  The inquisitor nodded. “And did he tell you anything before he left?”

  That was a leading question, but Giro ignored the implications. “He repeated what he told us earlier, when we learned that Dolfin was missing. He brought my parents home, carried in his oar and the cushions from the gondola, bolted the front door, checked the rear door, went to bed. About two hours after curfew, roughly, I came home and he let me in. The men sleep at the front, so they can hear the knocker, and I have a special knock-I am often late.” He glanced at me and showed a rare trace of a smile. “I tip whoever comes, so they almost fight over the honor.”

  By now Fabricio would be on the Mestre ferry, or even already on the mainland. As a suspect, he was too obvious. Whether or not the Sanudos had suggested it to him, his flight was a sign of prudence more than of guilt; better exile than interrogation. If the real culprit could not be found, Fabricio could be labeled a murderer and the case closed.

  At that moment Vasco slipped in, nodded meaningfully to Gritti, and sat on the chair he had chosen earlier. The nod meant that he had found blood.

  Gritti did not criticize Girolamo for letting the gondolier flee. “Before we meet with the ladies, sier Alfeo has a question to ask you.”

  Giro turned an inquiring gaze on me. Again my hair follicles twitched in alarm. More and more the inquisitor was making me think of cats and mice, with me in the supporting role. I swallowed hard.

  “ Clarissimo, since you mention that you were late coming home, may I inquire where you went last night?”

  The navy minister stared at me in silence for a long moment, letting me stew in my impertinence, before saying, “It is no secret. I spend most afternoons and evenings helping out at the scuola. Last night I was cutting elderly toenails.”

  Charity work. If true, that would be a better alibi than just about anything. I evicted Girolamo Sanudo from my mental parade of suspects.

  “And who hired the servants here?”

  “I did. While my father was closing the house at Celeseo, I was opening this one. You approve of my taste?” Giro’s cold stare said that he could guess what I was thinking and nothing in the world mattered less than my opinion.

  “So none of them has been in your service more than a couple of months?”

  “Fabricio. And Danese, but he was no longer a servant at the time of his death.” Giro did not express any hypocritical regrets. “I hired him about five years ago. Before my duties for the Republic interfered, I provided legal advice for the poor at nominal fees, and he came to me with a problem. I was able to help him with that and he revealed that he was in the service-unwillingly, he assured me-of a man of high standing who is also a notorious pervert. I offered the lad a job as a clerk, which he accepted eagerly, and eventually he graduated to being my mother’s companion.”

  But he had not won his way back into his own mother’s favor. Had he even tried? Giro waited to see what else I wanted, but I understood that I had been thoroughly put down and just thanked him politely.

  “If the ladies are ready for a few questions?” Gritti prompted. Girolamo nodded and went to see.

  The inquisitor said, “Vizio?”

  Vasco drew a deep breath. “Excellency, I have the honor to report that I found no bloodstains in the yard here, but a large amount of blood had been spilled in the calle three houses east of here, near the watersteps. Fante Bolognetti was there, calming a trio of sbirri, who were supervising a worker cleaning it up. Much of it had already been washed away by the rain, but traces ran all the way to the watersteps.” Vasco looked smug at having completed so difficult a mission successfully. “We informed the sbirri that Their Excellencies know who died there and I took their names in case they are needed as witnesses.”

  So Danese had left Ca’ Sanudo, gone south to Ca’ Barbolano to get his sword, returned north to Ca’ Sanudo to die, and then been transported back to Ca’ Barbolano again. In the names of all the martyrs, why? He had probably never gone near his mother in San Barnaba.

  Gritti nodded. “Very good.” The shrewd old eyes stabbed at me. “Why did you ask the page about Dolfin’s portmanteau, Alfeo?”

  Prevarication time. I wanted to locate Danese’s gold and find out where it had come from, but if I mentioned the gold itself, I might have to reveal that he had been ferrying sequins from Ca’ Sanudo to Ca’ Barbolano, and out would come the Maestro’s extortionate fee. I must find an alternative explanation. The Maestro insists I cannot tell lies with a straight face, but I can. I did.

  “I wondered after I brought it here whether I should have gone through it to check for migrating silverware. You noticed that sier Girolamo admitted Danese had been in some sort of trouble when-”

  “Your master said he sent you to pack the portmanteau. Did you or didn’t you pack it yourself?”

  “It had never been unpacked. I just threw in a few loose clothes he had left lying around. Hosts shouldn’t rummage through their guests’ luggage.”

  Gritti gave me the sort of silent stare that is intended to make a witness keep babbling. I took the chance to change the subject.

  “I admit I misjudged sier Girolamo. I am impressed by a member of the Collegio cutting old folks’ toenails.”

  He shrugged and allowed the diversion, although he had noticed it. “Be more impressed by a man who does the Lord’s work being elected to office. That was mostly a compliment to his father and I am sure that sier Girolamo will be glad to see his term end. Young Sanudo took a vow of celibacy when he was sixteen, you see. His father talked him out of entering a monastery, but I think there is a time limit on that promise.” The old rascal was flaunting the Ten’s intimate knowledge of the nobility’s secrets. “A few years later Zuanbattista married again to try for an heir, but madonna Eva has given him only one daughter and a stillborn son.”

  No doubt Girolamo’s religious zeal explained his drab clothes and frigid self-control. I had never known Violetta to be so wrong about a man before, but he was not a potential patron and had only just come into the public eye, so her error could be excused. “He likes to keep pretty boys and girls around just to torture himself?” I asked.

  “Or to test his resolve. For all I know he wears a hair shirt, too.” The inquisitor rearranged his jowls in a pout to indicate that the subject was closed.

  But for me a new door had opened. “So madonna Eva’s hopes of one day being dogaressa were not so unreasonable after all! If Girolamo takes holy orders and turns his back on the world, and Grazia is married off to a wealthy Contarini, then the family fortune need not be saved for the next generation. The mainland estates can be cashed in to finance sier Zuanbattista’s continuing career?”

  Gritti’s answer was a stony stare. I ignored it as I recalculated motives. I had not given enough thought to the matt
er of dowry, which in Grazia’s case could be several tens of thousands of ducats, enough to make the lapdog Danese into a very rich man by normal standards. Surely the murder on top of the elopement scandal would destroy whatever was left of Zuanbattista’s reputation? Would he banish Grazia to a convent now, or find her another husband? How much dowry would she bring the second time around? For that matter, how much had Danese been promised? Now my personal list of suspects had acquired some new names-the rejected suitor, Zaccaria Contarini, who had been cheated out of a large fortune in dowry, and even Danese’s sisters, who had all married commoners. If Danese had left a will…

  “What’s squirming around inside your agile young brain now?” the inquisitor demanded.

  I jumped. “I hadn’t realized, Excellency, that if the marriage contract was signed before last night”-which might explain why Danese had been allowed to move back in as Grazia’s acknowledged husband-“then he may have died a comparatively rich man.”

  Gritti snorted. “And perhaps the young scoundrel had debts that had suddenly become worth collecting? Have you gotten that far, Alfeo Zeno?”

  23

  Z uanbattista ushered in his womenfolk. Madonna Eva was magnificent in full mourning, swathed in black lace and taffeta. She had experience of mortality and funerals, of course, and would keep a complete outfit ready in her closet. Black flattered her fair coloring. To Grazia a brush with death must be a new experience, and even to my untutored eye her gown looked as if it had been assembled in haste and fastened on her with pins. We visitors rose and bowed, remaining standing until the ladies were seated, side by side on a divan.

  Eva lifted back her veil. After a moment’s hesitation Grazia copied her, revealing the red eyes and pink nose of recent weeping. Her mother had not wept, but any joy she felt at being rid of an unwanted son-in-law was well hidden behind maternal concern for her bereaved child. Even if the romance had been a flash in the pan or puppy love contrived by an experienced seducer, Grazia’s shock and loss must be genuine. I felt truly sorry for her, and perversely happy that at least one woman mourned Danese Dolfin.

  “I realize that this is very painful for you,” Gritti said, “and I will be as quick as I can. When your husband announced that he had to go out last night, madonna, where did he say he was going?”

  Grazia sniffled. “To visit his mother in San Barnaba.”

  “He did not mention anyone else he might see on the way?”

  Another sniffle, a head shake.

  “She says he did not arrive, and we have reason to believe that he was killed on his way back here, not far from this house, about two hours after he left you. So what was he doing in the meantime?”

  She whispered, “I do not know, Your Excellency.”

  There was a long pause, while the inquisitor sat as if half-asleep. I wondered if he was about to spring some dramatic catch-them-napping question, as he had with the maids, but all he said was, “Alfeo, have you anything to ask?”

  “No, Excellency.”

  He smiled without looking at me. “Then why don’t you reveal to us the terrible curse that your master thinks has been laid upon this house?”

  If I blurted out my suspicions without confirming them first, I would be dismissed as a lunatic. “We are still one short, Excellency. Madonna Fortunata Morosini is not here.”

  Gritti frowned as if annoyed that he had forgotten her.

  Still standing by the door, Giro said, “She is having one of her bad days,” as his father was saying, “She could not contribute anything, Your Excellency.”

  Nothing could have aroused an inquisitor’s suspicions faster than those simultaneous refusals. Gritti ruffled up his feathers. “Nevertheless, if my precocious young friend wants to try interrogating her, let us humor him.”

  He could have been more tactful. Zuanbattista glared at me as if he were about to choke, and Giro marched angrily out of the room, which was his version of a screaming tantrum.

  The icy silence remained behind.

  “That portrait of your honored brother, madonna,” I asked Eva. “When was it painted?”

  Although she had no choice but to put up with the state inquisitor, she was no more in favor of the upstart, busybody apprentice than her husband was. The clefts framing her mouth deepened into canyons. “When they were married, of course.”

  “And how long ago was that?”

  “Fifteen years ago, just a month before Grazia was born.”

  Assuming that the painter had not flattered his subjects too extremely, the woman ought to be in her thirties by now, if she still lived. I was about to ask her name when a cane tap-tap-tapped outside.

  Giro entered, walking slowly and supporting Fortunata on his arm. The men rose while he guided her to a chair. Once she was settled, he presented the inquisitor, speaking loudly. She peered at us as if the room was filled with dense fog and perhaps it was, for her. I could imagine nothing in the world less likely than the decrepit Fortunata Morosini wrestling a rapier away from a ruthless young ne’er-do-well like Danese Dolfin. Nor did I expect her to be much help to the inquisitor in the investigation. But the Maestro had been right-her resemblance to the bride in the portrait was undeniable now that I knew to look for it. My scalp prickled.

  “Ottone Gritti?” she muttered. “I knew a Marino Gritti.”

  The inquisitor sat down again and stretched his legs as if his left hip hurt. “My son, madonna. You have heard of the sad death of sier Danese?”

  “Eh?”

  Louder: “You have heard of the sad death of sier Danese?”

  “Not sad!” She bared a few yellow fangs. “Pretty-boy thief, that’s what he was. Good riddance.”

  “Why do you call him thief, madonna? What did he steal?”

  In the background Giro was shaking his head.

  “Stole my pearls!” she said. “Stole my ring.”

  “You mislaid them, Auntie,” Giro said softly. “We found them for you.” She was not expected to hear that and did not seem to.

  “When was the last time you saw him?” the inquisitor asked.

  “Who?”

  “Danese Dolfin.”

  She mumbled and mouthed a while, then pointed her cane at me. “When he was here.”

  “Yesterday at midday,” I offered.

  “Fortunata suffers from terrible headaches,” Giro said. “She retired to her room soon after Zeno left and would not have seen Danese after that.”

  Gritti said, “Then I do not see…” He looked at me.

  “May I ask first,” I said, “how long the jewels were mislaid?”

  Zuanbattista frowned at me, but this time there was calculation mixed in with the resentment. “About a week, I think. Old people get confused. She had hidden them inside one of her shoes.”

  “Or somebody else did? I mean someone stole the originals, had them copied, and then hid the replicas there to be found?”

  He nodded. “I see what you mean. I will have them appraised.”

  That, I thought, had been the source of Danese’s gold, which I could not mention but might manage to discover later if I got the chance to explore his room. I turned to the inquisitor and pointed at the painting.

  “Your Excellency, did you ever meet sier Nicolo?”

  “Several times. Very tragic. Why do you…” Gritti’s reaction was everything I could have hoped for. He lost his normal high color, his eyes bulged. Then he stared at the wizened crone on the chair.

  “How old is madonna Fortunata?” I demanded.

  “She has aged a lot recently,” Eva said defensively.

  “But how many years?” I persisted. The family frowned at my insolence.

  “What possible business is that of yours, apprentice?” Zuanbattista barked.

  Fortunata Morosini wore widow’s weeds, but most Venetian women continue to use their maiden names after marriage. She was not a sister of Eva’s father, but of her brother, Nicolo. Not Eva’s aunt but Grazia’s. Zuanbattista had said so on the day he
and his wife came to Ca’ Barbolano, but after meeting the old woman I had made the natural mistake, or the jinx had deceived me also. I had skipped a generation in my thinking. She had done worse than that, something unthinkable.

  “Call it my business,” Gritti said grimly. “How old is this woman?”

  Zuanbattista shrugged. “Thirty-four? No, thirty-three. As my wife said, she has gone down a lot in the last few years. I admit I was shocked when I returned from Constantinople.”

  “She looks at least seventy!”

  I would have said eighty, but I was engrossed in watching the reactions: Giro’s horror, Vasco’s disbelief, and the overall confusion of the Sanudos as they fought free of the web the jinx had spun over them. Giro muttered, “Seventy?” to himself and dismay crept over his face. Eva, also, and Zuanbattista…and Grazia? Too late! I had missed it, but there had been something wrong with her reaction. Had Grazia approved of her tutor’s misfortune?

  Ancient Fortunata herself had caught up with the conversation. Her face had crumpled into a wad of creases and she was trying to clench her knurled fists. “Old!” she mumbled. “Old! Don’t want to be old, old, old.”

  Giro crossed himself. “She is younger than I am,” he said, almost inaudibly. “She has failed a lot these last few years. Every time I went across to Celeseo I was…shocked…”

  “The curse blighted her and blinded the rest of you,” I said.

  “Foul witchcraft!” the inquisitor growled. “Whom do you accuse, Zeno?”

  My scalp prickled again. Even in Venice, where the law is fairer than anywhere else, there is really no defense against an accusation of witchcraft. You can be tortured until you confess and then you are put to death. Just by exposing the curse I might have revealed too much knowledge of the Devil’s works. I was saved from having to answer by Fortunata herself, who suddenly exploded, hammering her cane on the floor and shrilling, “The book was cursed! The book was cursed!” After a dozen repetitions she broke off into coughing and weeping.

  “Nicolo’s death?” Gritti demanded of nobody in particular. “Is that what she means? Was there such a book?”