The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  As Sally took this in she heard a key turn and the bedroom door opened. Michèle, still wearing his Harlequin gear and his mask, slipped into the room. He saw her and said, “So you’ve awakened.”

  “Yes.”

  He leaned back against the door. “I must apologize. Considering your husband’s death, these festivities tonight are highly inappropriate. It was too late to cancel them. Did you see my note?”

  “Yes.” She hesitated, then went on, “Michèle, I appreciate your help, but I have to go.”

  He shook his head. “You must not, Sally. That you must not do.”

  “I have to. Brian—”

  “The authorities have been notified about Brian’s tragedy, and they know exactly where you are. It is now a little past four in the morning. I cannot allow you to leave here alone. The police will speak with us later, and they may be able to tell us more about what happened to Brian. In the meantime, I must ask your forbearance.”

  Sally took a step toward the door. “I have to get back. Really.”

  The Harlequin stood straighter. He wasn’t especially large, but he seemed to grow taller. He said, “You are not understanding me, Sally. I am trying to tell you that you may be in danger.”

  Sally stuck out her chin. “In danger from somebody besides you, do you mean?”

  He made a gesture of exasperation. “Yes, somebody besides me. You are not in danger from me, I assure you.”

  She wished she could believe him. “What happened to Brian?” she said.

  “That is what we must find out. That is why we’re going to the police in a few hours. Until we know the answer, I refuse to turn you out to walk through the streets of Venice alone.”

  “You locked me in.”

  “Of course I locked you in. This house is filled with people, many of whom I know only vaguely. Many of whom have been drinking since Carnival began. And all of them are confessed scoundrels. That’s why they’re here. This is the annual Scoundrels’ Ball.”

  As if to punctuate his words, another crash came from not far away, followed by raucous laughter. Sally said, “What is the Scoundrels’ Ball?”

  “It’s a masked ball my family gives during Carnival every year. It began as something of a political joke. Only those who can prove they are scoundrels are included. I mean liars, cheats, adulterers. That sort of thing. You can imagine how much gossip I hear from people vying for an invitation.”

  Sally didn’t reply. Breaking the silence, the Harlequin said, “Now. Here is what I want you to do.” He pointed to the dress hanging on the closet door. “You’ve found the costume, I see. Antonia dressed as a señorita last year, and you and she are quite close in size.” He moved past Sally to the closet. “I asked Maria— ah, here it is.” He emerged with the fringed red shawl and a black gaucho-style hat, which he dropped on the bed.

  Sally took a step past him toward the door. She might still get out, even if she didn’t have any shoes. Then the door began to shake with loud pounding. Voices called, “Michèle! Michèle!” followed by a volley of Italian. He called out in reply, and in a moment the revelers outside seemed to move away.

  Michèle took her arm. “Shoes,” he said. “Your foot is broader than Antonia’s, but Maria has shoes she thinks will do well enough. It’s only for a short time, after all. She’ll bring you the shoes and a mask.”

  Sally stared at him. “You want me to dress in those clothes?’’

  “I do. At dawn, which will be fairly soon now, we will all go to Torcello, an island across the lagoon, for breakfast. I want you to come.”

  “Why?”

  “Because, as I have explained, there is danger. I want to keep an eye on you. You will be safer with me, in disguise, than you would be if I left you here.”

  After a long pause Sally said, “Who’s Antonia?”

  “My wife.”

  “She doesn’t mind that I’m using her room?”

  “She almost never uses it herself. She spends most of her time in Milan.”

  Sally agreed with Michèle on one point. She would be better off clothed and outside, even if she had to be dressed as a señorita, than she would be locked in Antonia’s bedroom. If she went along with this insane plan, she might find a way to escape. She said, “Okay.”

  He said, “I’ll have Maria bring the shoes.” He left, the key turned in the lock, and he was gone.

  The Señorita

  Sally sat at the dressing table in the bedroom, wearing the señorita costume. She had showered, washed her hair with Antonia’s delicately-scented shampoo, dried it with Antonia’s dryer. Antonia may have taken all her clothes to Milan, but she apparently had duplicates of the rest of her possessions. A number of Antonia’s hairpins, from an onyx box on the dressing table, were securing the hair Sally had twisted into a knot on the top of her head. Only the cracked patent leather pumps belonging to Maria, the housekeeper, weren’t Antonia’s.

  When Sally thought of Brian, she felt a wrenching sadness. How could his life have ended, and ended in such a horrible way? How had it happened? It was terrifying. It was wrong. They should have stayed in Tallahassee, as they’d planned. Sally would teach third grade, Brian would go to law school. When he graduated, he would get a place in a law firm, and they would go on like that forever. Until they died.

  Absolutely. Until they died. Her eyes filled with tears, but she blinked them away.

  So here she was. Brian had brought her to Europe, dumped her for somebody else, and now he had left her forever. He had left all of them, even Jean-Pierre. Sally knew only a few people in Europe, the members of the group, and she didn’t even like them. She could manage a few words of French, and almost no Italian. She was dressed in a señorita costume, prepared to go to breakfast with a man whose face she had never seen, and whom she would be crazy to trust.

  Figure it out as you go, she told herself. Just figure it out as you go. There was a rising babble of voices in the hall outside. Sally put the black hat over her topknot and secured the cord under her chin. She tied on her gold eye mask trimmed in black, chin-length lace.

  She was a señorita. The sight of herself in the mirror was profoundly strange. She clasped her hands in the ruffles of her lap.

  A soft knock sounded at the door, and the Harlequin peered in. “Very good, very good,” he said. “Come with me. Don’t forget your shawl. It will be cold on the water.”

  She wrapped herself in the bright red wool and followed him out into the hall, which was jammed with his masked and costumed guests. As Sally emerged, a woman with transparent green wings screamed, “Antonia!” and lunged toward her. Michèle held up an arresting hand, shook his head, and spoke in Italian. The woman put her hands to her mouth, laughed shrilly, said, “ ’Scuse me, please,” to Sally, and fell back into the crowd.

  Michèle bent to Sally’s ear. “I have said you are a friend from America, here for Carnival. No one will ask more.”

  The crowd was moving down the hall. Although they had obviously been up all night, nobody seemed tired, or even particularly drunk. They chattered animatedly, smoked, laughed. Sally joined the flow, Michèle close behind her, his hand on her elbow.

  She might be able to get away when they got downstairs. She wiggled her toes. Maria’s shoes were a little loose, but she could run all right. She would run— well, she’d run to the nearest police station. What was police in Italian? Polizia. So she’d find a place that said Polizia and go in and tell them— provided they spoke English, of course— she’d tell them—

  They emerged on the ground floor into a dim, low-ceilinged room with benches along the wall and an uneven floor in a black and white marble checkerboard pattern. The doors opening on the Canal were flung wide, letting in a dank, watery smell and the morning chill. Water slapped against the outside walls, eddied around the crooked wooden mooring poles in front of the house.

  People were climbing into motorboats at the front steps. Someone called “Michèle!” and the Harlequin’s attention was taken by a
man in a vampire costume. His grip loosened.

  Now was the time. Sally saw a side door standing ajar, and through it a glimpse of the garden. They had come through that way yesterday, she remembered. She took a step backward, keeping her eyes on Michèle and on the people gathering to get in the boats. She would take a few more slow steps, let them flow past her, turn around and go for it. Michèle was slapping the vampire on the arm in a gesture of camaraderie.

  When she was about to turn, she saw Francine.

  She was positive it was Francine, dressed in a rumpled man’s suit and tie. Francine’s frizzy black hair was unmistakable, as was the slouch with which, arms crossed, she rested one shoulder against the wall. She was wearing a simple black eye mask that left the lower half of her face uncovered, so there really was no doubt. As soon as Sally recognized her, someone in the crowd beckoned to Francine and she moved toward the Canal. As Sally watched the top of Francine’s head disappearing as she climbed into a boat, Michèle’s hand closed over her arm.

  “There you are, Sally! We’ll get the next one,” he said. He led her through the doors into the keen morning air and down the moss-slippery steps to a waiting boat.

  Torcello

  Sally stood in a wide doorway, looking out at an arbor. Trestle tables had been pushed to one side of the red-tiled space, and chairs were stacked near them. Bordering the arbor was a brownish lawn edged by empty flower beds. A square brick tower stood in the distance.

  “Torcello was thriving before Venice existed,” Michèle had told her as the boats slid down a weedy canal past quiet fields and a few tumbledown houses. “A cathedral stood here when the Most Serene Republic of Venice wasn’t even dreamed of. And now—” He gestured at the scene, and she watched a flock of birds rise out of the tall, mist-covered grass and fly away.

  A cold wind played through the arbor, making the loose vines sway and the ruffles on Sally’s skirt tremble. The smell of coffee drifted from the dining room of the inn, behind her. There was a blaze in the fireplace of the spacious, rustic, room. Firelight played on exposed beams, silver coffeepots, and trays piled with pastries. Conversation was subdued. The half-hour boat ride in the silvery predawn light, leaving Venice behind like a floating city in a fairy tale, had sobered everyone. The mood had shifted with the location, and it was obvious the Scoundrels’ Ball would soon be over.

  Sally could see Francine not far away, sitting on a sofa drinking coffee and eating a roll. Next to Francine, toying with a bunch of purple grapes, was a tanned woman with platinum hair, wearing a metal breastplate and high boots. As Sally watched, the Amazon picked a grape and offered it to Francine. When Francine nodded, the Amazon pushed the grape into Francine’s mouth, letting her fingertips linger on Francine’s lips.

  When Francine finished the grape, she got up and moved toward the table where the coffee and cups were laid out. Sally walked toward the table as well.

  Francine was pouring coffee and hot milk. Sally picked up a cup. Trying as best she could to disguise her voice, she turned to Francine and said, “Hello.”

  Francine looked straight at her. Sally saw acknowledgment, but no recognition, in her bloodshot eyes. “Hello,” Francine said.

  Sally held out her cup, and Francine poured coffee into it. Sally was overwhelmed by a sense of power. Francine didn’t know her. Francine had no idea that behind this mask, dressed in this beautiful dress, was Sally. Sally knew who Francine was, but Francine didn’t know who Sally was. Her disguise, her mask, had given her power. For once, Sally was in the driver’s seat.

  Sally made her voice even softer and, she hoped, husky. “Are you a friend of Michèle’s?” she asked.

  “Count Zanon? We’re slightly acquainted,” Francine said.

  Count Zanon? Sally’s eyes swiveled, and she saw Michèle in a corner surrounded, as usual, by a group of people. He was a member of the nobility? Sally had never met a count before.

  “You’re a friend of his?” Francine was asking.

  “Yes.” Sally maneuvered her cup under the lace of her mask and sipped carefully. “What brought you to Carnival?” she asked, watching Francine.

  Francine hesitated, then said, “I came with friends.”

  Sally glanced around. “Are the others here?”

  “No.” Francine sagged a little. “Finally we— we got separated.”

  “Oh? How?” Sally knew she had to keep her questions brief.

  Even so, Francine seemed to regard Sally more warily. “Perhaps you’ll excuse me?” she said.

  Before Francine could move away, the Amazon appeared and put a proprietary hand on Francine’s shoulder. There was a sound of spoons tinkling against glass and a general shushing. Sally turned to see that Michèle had climbed onto a bench and was waiting for everyone’s attention. Before the room was totally quiet, someone called out “Bravo!” and there was vigorous applause.

  As the clapping continued, the Harlequin stepped from the bench to a tabletop. He picked up a stool that had been standing next to the table, and placed it on the table. He climbed on the stool, leapt, and caught hold of one of the exposed ceiling beams. Amid rising applause and laughter, he hoisted himself onto the beam and straddled it. He mimicked riding a horse, then pretended to have gotten a splinter in his backside. After removing the splinter in elaborate pantomime, he pretended to impale his finger with it instead.

  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 t
able 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!”