The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  After some moments of hesitation Jean-Pierre said, “I shall be Pierrot.”

  “Okay.” Brian didn’t ask why, gave Jean-Pierre no opportunity to explain that Pierrot represented the debasement of his own true self.

  After that, Jean-Pierre had feared desperately that everything was lost. He castigated himself constantly for forcing Brian to cheat at the game. He tried to apologize, but Brian said it didn’t matter, and something in his tone made Jean-Pierre feel completely cut off.

  This morning, Jean-Pierre had received the poem. The concierge who gave it to him at breakfast had no idea when it had been delivered, or by whom. It didn’t matter. Only Brian could have sent it, for only Brian knew where Jean-Pierre was staying. The clumsy, silly poem told Jean-Pierre what he had dreaded and known— that it was over. Yes, trusting friends had become people alone, and faithful lovers were transformed into men in despair. The last line had been the most cruel: Who can predict what she’ll change about you? The gratuitous malice of it made Jean-Pierre cringe as if he were hearing a constant, whining, high-pitched noise.

  Heavy footfalls and laughter came from the hallway outside Jean-Pierre’s room. Jean-Pierre pushed himself up from the pillow, turned over, and sat hugging his knees. His tears had not abated. His eyes were so swollen he could hardly see.

  How could Brian have been so cruel? Abruptly, Jean-Pierre thought of Sally. Perhaps the poem hadn’t been Brian’s idea. Sally had always been in the background, spoiling things, coming between Brian and Jean-Pierre. She might have said something to Brian about a poem. She might have convinced Brian, against his better judgment, to go along with the idea.

  Jean-Pierre had believed that love was the most destructive emotion. He discovered, as he sat weeping, that other passions can be even more dangerous than love.

  The Amazon

  The first grappa made Francine’s eyes water, but the second went down more easily. She rested the glass on the long table, noticing how much steadier her hand had become. She loosened her tie.

  The head of Sartre she had constructed so laboriously was disintegrating in the dank canal where she had thrown it during her flight. She couldn’t keep it and risk having been seen following Brian. She made a fervent mental apology to Sartre, knowing he understood, as he understood everything. Violence and death were not unknown concepts to him. The thought, and the grappa, made her feel more calm. She had to make a plan. In a few minutes, it would be easier.

  The little taverna was hung with bright garlands of twisted paper. Gaudy, cheap masks adorned the walls. A few patrons were singing, swaying back and forth, their arms around each other. Francine had left the padding from her suit in the bathroom trash receptacle. With her belt cinched all the way in she could still wear her trousers.

  She wanted another grappa. As she looked around for the waiter, the couple sitting next to her, a man and woman in space suits, got up and left. Their place was taken immediately by someone else, whom Francine didn’t notice until the person spoke to her in Italian.

  It appeared to be a woman, her face half-hidden by a fierce-looking helmet mask that swept up in wings at the sides of her head. Bleached blond hair fell to her shoulders. She was wearing a bronze-colored breastplate with conical protuberances at bosom level. The breastplate ended in a short skirt that suggested the dress of a Roman centurion. Between the bottom of the skirt and the tops of her thigh-high black leather boots was an expanse of six inches or so of deeply tanned flesh. She wore studded leather gauntlets around her wrists and carried a coiled whip in one hand.

  The eyes that stared at Francine through the eyeholes of the ferocious mask betrayed frank interest. The woman spoke again.

  “Non parlo l’italìano,” said Francine.

  The woman hesitated, then said, “You speak English?”

  “Yes.”

  “I am asking if I may buy you a drink.”

  Francine looked at the woman again. She thought in a situation like this Sartre would probably have said yes. “Grappa,” she said.

  The woman waved her coiled whip at the waiter and ordered two grappas. She turned back to Francine. “You are from?”

  “Paris.”

  “Ah, Paris.” The woman shrugged away Paris with a slight movement of one broad shoulder.

  Francine had never doubted that Paris was the most desirable place on earth to live. “And you?” she asked, nettled.

  “Here and there,” the woman said. “Often here. In winter I sometimes stay in Switzerland for the skiing. In summer my friends and I go to Crete. But I always return to Venice.”

  The drinks arrived, and Francine quickly swallowed half of hers. Just in time, because her stomach had begun to quake again. As the liquor slid down and she could forget, she began to disapprove of this wealthy, suntanned Amazon.

  The Amazon was leaning close to Francine. The metallic point of one of her breasts dug into Francine’s arm. “Your disguise is amusing,” she said.

  Francine looked down at her worn brown suit with its too-long legs and sleeves, the beige tie with green dots. “Thank you.”

  “May I ask what it is supposed to represent?” The woman’s breath disturbed the hair next to Francine’s ear.

  Francine would not discuss Jean-Paul Sartre with this person. A thought came to her. “I’m disguised as my father,” she said.

  Francine’s father, who ran a thriving butcher shop in Poitiers, would never have dreamed of wearing a suit and tie as threadbare and unfashionable as the ones she had on. Still, what she had said was true in the spiritual sense. Intellectually, spiritually, Sartre was her father.

  The Amazon regarded Francine with even more interest than before. Her tongue flickered out and wet her lips. “Intriguing,” she said. After a moment she asked, “Are you in love with him? Your father, I mean?”

  Francine finished her drink. She was feeling too warm and more than a little dizzy. She unbuttoned her collar. “Yes,” she said. She nodded vigorously several times. “I am. I am, really.”

  The woman reached under Francine’s hair and put her hand on the back of Francine’s neck. She pulled Francine’s head down to rest against the hard, uncomfortable breastplate. “Yes,” the woman said. Her voice hissed off into a sigh.

  Francine’s eyes closed. Sartre jumped on the insides of her eyelids. He gabbled,

  The creature whose visage turns others to stone

  Changes trusting friends into people alone.

  Francine shivered and sat up.

  The Amazon looked at her curiously. “Are you all right?”

  The creature who has snakes for hair— Francine wished she hadn’t had so much to drink so fast. “I’m fine.”

  “I don’t want to hurt you,” the Amazon said. She held up the whip. “This is only for show. A little joke.”

  “I see.” Francine felt slightly ill.

  “You’re so charming, dressed as your father. I don’t suppose he’s here, is he? Dressed as you, perhaps? What fun the three of us could have together!” The Amazon had a greedy look in her eyes.

  “He isn’t here.” Francine thought of the head of Sartre, drowned by now.

  The Amazon’s hand was on Francine’s back. She said, “There is a masked ball tonight— an important party. Would you like to go?”

  Questions were going to be asked, and Francine wanted to avoid them. “All right,” she said. The Amazon smiled and put money down to pay for the drinks.

  Tom And The Tiger

  In the lobby of the Hotel Danieli a satyr bowed balletically, his bare torso gleaming under a garland of leaves. After a ripple of applause he strutted among the onlookers, the shaggy brown hair that covered the lower half of his body flouncing at each step. In the background, almost drowned by murmured conversations, a piano tinkled through “The Girl That I Marry.”

  As the satyr was lost amid champagne-sipping bystanders, a woman in a white robe and an elaborate headdress of crystal beads took his place at the foot of the staircase. Beads swung nex
t to her cheeks, cascaded to her shoulders, caught the light as she curtseyed to enthusiastic applause. Someone cried “Stupenda!” as she began her circuit of the room.

  Rain Goddess, Tom thought. Sitting in a leather chair on the edge of the crowd, he watched her pass. Even now, he couldn’t prevent himself from guessing what costumes represented.

  In his fevered wanderings Tom had finally stumbled into the Danieli to get out of the cold and happened upon this costume fashion show. He himself was still wearing his robe covered with alchemical symbols. He had drawn the figures on the silver cloth himself, using up an entire afternoon. Vibrating, he stared at the sickle moon for silver, the slashed pyramid for air, the trapezoid for salt. Everything was wide open now. He was back on the edge, where he’d been in ’68.

  He had dressed as the alchemist: the seeker, experimenter, transformer. The members of the group, he reasoned, were his materia prima, the raw material for experimentation. Venice was to be his crucible and Carnival his sacred flame. He wanted to watch his materials meld and glow and change. He wanted to see them become, at last, the lapis philosophorum, the philosopher’s stone, capable of transforming dross into gold.

  Capable of transforming the dross of his life into gold.

  He was back on the edge, and it was up to him to do something with it. Images crowded his mind: Brian with the Harlequin; the scene at Brian’s hotel last night; the floating Medusa, the creature whose visage—

  The creature whose visage turns others to stone

  Changes trusting friends into people alone.

  Tom’s mind was skyrocketing out of control. He had to calm down, figure out what to do.

  He thought of Olga. She’d been with him in ’68, right beside him, caught up in it, too. Funny how she had changed— gotten a job, settled down to an ordinary, uninteresting life. If you wanted to be harsh about it, you could say she’d betrayed her ideals, which was something Tom was determined never to do. He had a chance, now, to prove that his way had been best, after all.

  A flurry of exclamations brought Tom’s attention back to the staircase. Spotlighted at the top were two figures in gold eye masks, dressed identically in turbans and robes of patterned gold and wine-red. As they descended, their flowing sleeves swept the staircase, their trains slithered behind them. Only because of the courtly way the hand of one lightly supported the hand of the other did Tom think they were male and female.

  Tom knew, watching them, that they didn’t have to worry about dross or betrayed ideals. Their impurities were gone, burned away in some refining fire.

  The couple reached the bottom of the stairs and sank simultaneously into deep obeisances to the crowd. They rose and circled the room. As they passed him, Tom heard the whisper of their robes against the carpet.

  He got up abruptly and pushed his way to the bank of telephones he had seen in a hallway. He had a pocketful of gettoni because of all the calls he’d made tracking the group. He pushed one in the slot, got the operator, and gave the number, reversing the charges.

  Olga sounded surprised and happy to hear from him, but once he had her on the phone, he couldn’t think of anything to say.

  “How’s Stefan?” he asked, his voice sounding thin and high in his ears.

  “Fine. He’s studying. Stefan!” she called. “It’s your father.”

  “He doesn’t have to—” Tom began, but there was a shuffling sound as she passed the phone to Stefan.

  “Hello,” Stefan said.

  “Hi,” said Tom. “Just wanted to say hi from Carnival.” He waited for a response, and when none came, he went on, “It’s really fantastic here. You wouldn’t believe some of the costumes.” He racked his brain to think of a costume that would interest Stefan, but couldn’t. “What are you doing?” he finished lamely.

  “Studying.”

  “Yeah? Studying what?”

  “History.”

  “Great. Well, listen. I wish you were here to see what Carnival is like. Fantastic!”

  “Here’s Mom.”

  The shuffling sound came again, and then Olga said, “So you’re having a good time?”

  “Oh, yeah. It’s— intriguing.” Tom thought of something. “Let me ask you a question, Olga.”

  “What?”

  “Suppose you were going to dress up in a costume that would represent your idea of your true self. What would you dress as?”

  Olga laughed. “My true self? I guess it would have to be a middle-aged researcher at the Pasteur Institute who lives in Montparnasse with her husband and son.”

  “No, that’s no fair. You know what I mean.”

  He could almost see her pursing her lips, thinking, could almost feel her sorting through responses in search of one that would please him. Finally, she said, “I think I would dress as a tiger.”

  He was so surprised he could hardly speak. “A tiger?”

  “It’s what came into my head. It’s the idea of being a hunter. I pursue things, you know, in my work. I mean, I track down answers. It sounds silly—” she gave a little laugh, but he could tell she was serious— “I think of the tiger as silent, and tenacious, and independent—”

  And merciless, ferocious.

  “It’s silly, I know,” she went on. “If I had more time to think about it, I’d come up with something better.”

  “No. That’s very interesting.”

  “And you? What would your costume be?”

  He was blinking rapidly. “I don’t know. I hadn’t really thought about it.”

  She started to say something else, but he interrupted. “I’d better go. Just wanted to check in,” and they said good-bye.

  He left his hand on the receiver, resting against it, thinking of Olga, the fierce, lithe tiger, padding intently through the jungle. He had lived with a tiger, and he had never known it.

  Brian

  Brian was held, surrounded, supported by the cold, foul water of the canal. His troublesome beauty had dissolved at the moment of his death. People who drowned felt pain, but now he felt nothing. He stared into the dark water and saw nothing. His mouth and nose were filled with water, and he tasted nothing, smelled nothing. He was flotsam on the Adriatic tide.

  Brian should not be dead. He should hear reverberating footsteps, a voice saying his name. Brian had loved, or believed he had. He had been loved, or so his lovers believed. Now that he was drowned and lost, none of it counted.

  He was heavy and cold. Death was the coldest, heaviest thing he had ever tried to carry. If his lips could move, if he were not strangled by salt water, Brian would scream out, No matter how afraid you are of death, you aren’t afraid enough.

  If there were other voices, other footsteps, Brian didn’t hear them. He shouldn’t be dead, but he was. The only thing left was a rage so acrid and hot that it could boil every canal in Venice, blacken every statue, mosaic, cupola.

  In Venice, a juggler tossed glittering balls high in the air in front of an open-mouthed crowd. Stray cats crouched under a bench in the Giardinetti, eating leftover pasta from a paper plate. A chubby-legged baby in a high chair threw a spoon across a kitchen. The canal where Brian had floated was empty. Ripples moved along it, stirred by the wind.

  The Scoundrels’ Ball

  It was raining in Tallahassee: a warm, gray, tropical rain. A little girl huddled under the cape jasmine bush for shelter. Inside the house, her grandmother’s house, people were talking loudly, laughing. Music was playing. She heard breaking glass.

  Sally woke herself, groaning. She lay still for a moment, then sat up.

  The talking, laughter, and music that had invaded her dream were real, and not far away. She was in a dark room, a soft bed. Light seeped around the door frame, and by the faint illumination she made out a large dressing table with a three-part mirror, a fireplace, heavy curtains, paintings on the walls.

  She was in the house of the Harlequin, Michèle. Brian was dead.

  She was still wearing her leotard and tights, but her gauze wrapping and
gloves were gone. Yes, she now remembered that the Harlequin had removed her gloves, and a piece of paper had fallen out of one of them. It had been, she now remembered, a map and a message: The game is over. Come see me now. She had not recognized the writing.

  She got up. It was time to get out of here. She saw that a nearby door led to a bathroom. She winced as the light glared abruptly on white ceramic tile and chrome fixtures. She used the toilet, then washed her hands and splashed water on her face. On a glass shelf under the mirror lay a silver-backed hairbrush. She picked it up and pulled it through her hair a few times.

  Back in the dark bedroom she felt under the bed for her ballet slippers, but didn’t find them. There must be a closet here where she could find shoes and clothes. She turned on a lamp on the bedside table. Next to the lamp was a note, written in spiky black handwriting on a thick, cream-colored card with some sort of crest imprinted: Sally, the police have been here. They are investigating the death of your husband, and they wish to speak with us in the morning. M.

  So, according to Michèle, the police had been here. Maybe they had, but maybe they hadn’t. The music and babble of voices that had invaded her dream continued. Sally went to the bedroom door and tried to open it. It was locked.

  She crossed the room and pushed back the curtains. The single large window was made up of many small panes of glass. Several floors below, a canal— she was pretty sure it was the Grand Canal— shimmered darkly. A deserted vaporetto stop glowed with bluish light. A motorboat droned by. It must be very late. She tried the window latches but they were locked or jammed, and she couldn’t move them.

  There was another door between the bed and the window. She opened it and saw a large closet. On a hanger on a hook inside the door was a dress with a black bodice and voluminous white sleeves. The skirt was a mass of white ruffles edged in black. Draped over a hanger in the closet was a red fringed shawl and a gaucho-style hat, hanging by the chin strap. Maybe it was a Carnival costume that belonged to the person whose room this was. Other than those items, the closet was empty.