But Sally hadn’t seen the mirror-man— Rolf, if that’s who it was— attacking Brian, but bending over his body. That wasn’t proof Rolf had killed him. Wasn’t it suspicious, then, that Michèle seemed eager to convince her and the police that Rolf was guilty?
Michèle was playing a game of his own. Sally was beginning to see how he had capered in circles around her while she’d made herself dizzy spinning to keep up with him. He was exasperating, maddening, but worst of all he was attractive, too, and he knew it and used it to keep other people in line and get his way. But what, in this case, did “his way” consist of? He could be playing detective to impress Antonia, or he could even have killed Brian and be scrambling to cover his guilt.
She got up, crossed the room, and opened the door a crack. She couldn’t hear anything. She assumed Francine had left quite some time ago. She closed the door and leaned against it.
It was time to have a serious talk with Michèle. He might still have explanations he could convince her to believe. She was willing to give him that much.
She opened the door again and went downstairs toward the little library once more. She was almost at the door, which was ajar, when she heard Michèle’s voice and drew back, thinking Francine must still be there. Michèle was saying, “— that even the most profound loves have their times of difficulty and upset. Perhaps the greater the love, the greater the difficulty, do you think?”
“I don’t know.”
The voice that replied was muffled, although clear enough for Sally to know it wasn’t Francine’s, but a man’s. She hesitated, listening.
“This has been terrible for you,” Michèle continued.
“Yes.” The voice sounded hollow, wistful. It went on, “How did you meet Brian?” Sally realized the speaker was Jean-Pierre.
“Just briefly, by chance. He told me a bit about you.”
“He did?” Jean-Pierre sounded animated for the first time. Sally leaned her forehead against the door frame and closed her eyes in order to hear better.
“Yes. He did.” Sally could picture Michèle’s face in an expression of exquisite sadness.
“I loved him,” Jean-Pierre said.
“I hope you were spared seeing his body.”
Sally heard Jean-Pierre draw in a breath. “I was. I had followed him from the Piazza because, of course, I recognized him, even in costume. I lost him in the crowd. I never saw him again.”
A few moments passed, and then Michèle said, “There is a saying I heard once: Slime is the agony of water.”
Sally’s eyes opened. Slime is the agony of water. One of the four sentences in the stolen letters. Michèle knew about, had read, the letters.
Sally took a step backward. She barely heard Jean-Pierre’s choked, guttural sob. She turned and hurried back to Antonia’s room.
Jean-Pierre Comforted
Jean-Pierre heard steps behind him on the gravel walk of the palazzo garden. He felt an arm around his shoulders. “My poor friend, I can’t possibly let you go like this,” Michèle said.
Jean-Pierre shook his head. Through his tears he saw wavering gravel.
“I feel dreadful,” Michèle said. He shook Jean-Pierre gently. “We’ll walk awhile, eh?”
They passed through the wrought-iron gate. Jean-Pierre blotted his eyes and saw Michèle’s hand proffering a crisp handkerchief. He took it and dabbed at his face.
Michèle said, “I am so thoughtless, so careless. I wear the costume of Harlequin, you know, and sometimes I act too much like him. Can you forgive me for hurting you?”
Jean-Pierre intended to say, “Please don’t mention it.” He said only, “Please don’t—” before tears choked him again.
As they continued, threading through the streets and campos, Jean-Pierre began to get hold of himself. He cast sidelong looks at Michèle Zanon, the man who claimed to have been a friend of Brian’s, the man Francine said was Sally’s lover.
“You are feeling better?” Michèle said.
“A little.”
They leaned on the railing of an arched wrought-iron bridge, gazing down a gloomy canal. A gondola slid silently beneath them, the black-clad gondolier alone in his boat.
Slime is the agony of water. Jean-Pierre swallowed. “I would like to ask you. What made you say— the thing you did?”
Michèle sketched a shrug. “I must have read the phrase somewhere, and it entered my mind to say it. Of course it was macabre, awful. I didn’t think.”
“It’s just that— with Brian—”
“Please. You don’t have to explain.”
Jean-Pierre studied Michèle’s profile, with its long, straight nose. The face was not interesting at first. The face became interesting after you looked at it for a time. Francine said this man was allied to Sally. Jean-Pierre found the thought intensely disturbing.
Michèle turned to Jean-Pierre. “Will you allow me a question?” he said.
“Yes.”
“Your face. It looks as if someone hurt you badly.”
Jean-Pierre’s mouth twisted. “I did it to myself.” He remembered the blows falling, the numbing pain.
They continued to gaze at the canal. The sky was darkening. Slime is the agony of water, Jean-Pierre thought.
“I expect that soon the police will arrest the killer,” Michèle said in a comforting tone.
And what does that matter, Jean-Pierre thought, when the truly guilty still go free?
They walked a little longer, and then Jean-Pierre excused himself, thanking Michèle Zanon for his kindness, pardoning him once more for what the count called his unforgivable insensitivity.
As Jean-Pierre watched Michèle walk away, he felt certain that the count was not Sally’s lover. The real connection had been between Count Zanon and Brian. Jean-Pierre closed his eyes and descended into the familiar blackness.
An Unexpected Meeting
Rolf shrank back, his gloved hands splayed against the plate glass window of a bakery, as he tried to avoid being pushed toward the Piazza. People thronged the street leading out of the Campo Francesco Morosini. Twenty or so men and women dressed in multicolored ruffles and shaking rattles were trying to squeeze a conga line through. One of the dancers, stalled next to Rolf, smiled and shook her rattles in his face. Automatically, he picked up the game and plucked the rattles out of her hands. She laughed, grasped his black net ruff, and sang, loudly and tunelessly:
“Au clair de la lune Mon ami Pierrot—”
He saw the beaded sweat on her upper lip, smelled the wine on her breath; then the crowd started to surge forward, and she snatched the rattles from him and danced away.
At last he got through the worst of it and emerged in a wider street. He found a sheltered corner and stopped to adjust his mask and get his bearings.
Earlier, he had seen Francine, Tom, and Jean-Pierre sitting around a table in the campo. Everyone was there except Brian. It was curious, Rolf thought, that all of them were here in the neighborhood of Michèle Zanon’s palazzo. Rolf felt that in some fashion they had betrayed him.
Filled with loathing, Rolf had stood in the doorway watching them— Francine talking with her mouth full, Tom rubbing his naked chin, Jean-Pierre slumped over like a zombie. Rolf hadn’t been able to get close enough to hear their conversation. He was afraid Jean-Pierre might recognize the Pierrot mask and costume, although Jean-Pierre looked incapable of recognizing anything. Besides, with so many Pierrots around, and since Jean-Pierre believed his disguise was in a pile of garbage, it wasn’t likely.
Jean-Pierre was stocky and of medium height and Rolf tall and thin, but Jean-Pierre’s costume fit Rolf surprisingly well. The long overblouse and pajama trousers were appropriately loose and floppy, even though Rolf was fully dressed underneath. The arms and legs were too short, but that was all right. Rolf wanted to hide his identity, not win a prize at a masquerade party.
Because of Michèle Zanon, Rolf had to leave Rosa and Gianni’s, but he was not leaving Venice before he showed Michèle
Zanon he couldn’t screw around with him. Rolf clenched his fists as he thought about the smug little count who looked as if he wanted to laugh in Rolf’s face.
Rolf had, by exercising all his skill in Italian, managed to get from Rosa fairly complete directions to the palazzo. She had even drawn a rough map, which Rolf now laboriously extracted from the pocket of the jacket he wore under the white satin blouse. Luckily for Rolf, Rosa was so crazy about him now that she’d do whatever he wanted, as long as he could make her understand what it was.
Rolf consulted the map. He wasn’t far away now. He stepped out of his corner and bent into the wind.
The wrought-iron gate leading to the palazzo garden was located down a narrow cul-de-sac. The gate stood ajar, but the two ground-floor windows were barred, and the door appeared heavy and was surely locked. As if that weren’t enough, Rolf could see someone, probably a doorkeeper, moving behind one of the barred windows.
The larger street dead-ended at a stone archway through which Rolf could see the cold glimmer of the Canal. Exploring, he walked to the archway, then went through it. He was on the edge of the Canal. Seagulls, with their heads tucked down, perched on the wooden mooring poles in front of the palazzo, and the wind chased ripples along the water. Rolf thought the chances of rain were better than fifty-fifty. He looked to make sure of what he already surmised. The only way to approach Count Zanon’s house from the front was by boat. He moved back inside the archway.
Rolf was not going to be kept out of this palazzo. Michèle Zanon, with his locks and his doorman, thought he was safe from Rolf, but he wasn’t. Rolf felt invincible, blazing with determination. He had thought about weapons, but he didn’t want a weapon. He walked back to the gate of the palazzo, through the garden, and up to the door.
As soon as he rang the bell, a man wearing a blue smock peered through one of the barred windows at him.
Grinning beneath his mask, Rolf made an elaborate, Pierrot-like bow, bending low with many flourishes.
The man in the blue smock opened the door a tiny crack and said, “Signor?”
“I’d like to see Count Zanon,” Rolf said.
“Your name?”
Grinning even wider, Rolf gave Tom’s name.
The man said, “Momento.” He was closing the door.
Rolf hurled himself against the door, knocking the man backward. He rushed inside and, before the man could regain his balance, tripped him so he fell heavily to the floor. The thump the man’s body made sounded good to Rolf. He almost shouted with joy as he threw himself on the man, grabbed him around the neck, and gave his head a couple of solid whacks against the marble floor.
Rolf was almost disappointed to feel the man’s body go slack. He wished there had been more of a fight. With Count Zanon, he’d make sure it didn’t end so quickly.
The unconscious man’s breathing was labored and noisy. Rolf closed the door to the garden and surveyed the long room with its upright benches along the walls, the upended boat and oars in a corner.
There were three doors in the wall opposite the staircase, one standing ajar. Rolf glanced in and saw a lounge where the doorkeeper must spend his time.
The other two doors led to dark little storage rooms— one with crates and trunks stacked along the walls, the other filled with paint cans, bits of lumber, and— yes— several coils of rope of varying thickness.
Rolf dragged the inert doorkeeper into the lumber room and tied him up. He felt intensely satisfied with the feel of the rope in his hands, the strength and intricacy of the knots he tied. He took a paint-encrusted cloth, gagged the man, and left him behind a pile of cardboard boxes. He closed the door of the room softly when he left. He felt wonderful. He crossed the room to the staircase and began to climb.
So here Rolf was, in the stronghold of Michèle Zanon. Michèle Zanon had tracked Rolf down, discovered Rolf’s secrets. He’d find that Rolf, too, could track people down, breach their security, invade. Rolf longed to see the count’s self-satisfied face crumple as he realized what Rolf was going to do to him. Rolf reached the top of the stairs and started down a hall. His senses heightened, he touched the wall, listening to the tiny scratching of his glove against the silk wall covering. He passed a closed door and breathed the lemony smell that emanated from the wood. He was strong, at one with the house.
The hall ended at a high-ceilinged dining room. Rolf peered through the doorway at the long table, the bouquet of yellow roses, the chandelier, the windows with filmy white curtains. The room was empty. Rolf entered, moving stealthily through the still air and subdued light. He ran his fingertips over the table and bent to see his Pierrot reflection in its polished top. He thought he saw a sparkle from the tear in the cheek of his mask. He turned toward the door at the opposite end of the room, and was about to take his next step when Sally walked in.
Rolf felt an intense desire to urinate. She had stopped when she saw him, and she stood there, just as always, pale and freckled and scared-looking, wearing her awful sweater with the flying geese on it. Rolf’s knees gave, and he supported himself against the table. It was Sally. Sally wasn’t dead.
Sally looked startled, too. Even at this distance, he saw— or thought he saw— her lips tremble. She said, hesitantly, “Who are you?”
Rolf didn’t speak. He heard her. He saw her. She was there.
She said, “Are you looking for Michèle?” Her voice was shaking.
Rolf couldn’t move. He couldn’t move, then he could. He turned and ran down the hallway, bouncing from wall to wall, desperate to get out.
Rolf’s Escape
Sally’s voice, high and thin, calling “Michèle!” reverberated in Rolf’s head as he stumbled down the staircase. Perspiration washed over his face under the Pierrot mask. All he knew was that he had to get away.
By the time he reached the bottom of the stairs, he had had a semi-rational thought: He should get rid of this costume. The doorkeeper had been attacked by Pierrot. Sally had seen Pierrot.
Rolf ducked into the trunk-filled storage room. There was no sound from the next room, where the doorkeeper was probably still unconscious. He tore off the skullcap, mask, satin blouse, and drawstring trousers and left them in a heap on the floor. He opened the door and listened. Nothing. He ran for the garden door and in moments was on the street.
Once in a more populated area, where costumed crowds surged under a darkening sky, he had time to think. Sally was alive. Who, then, was the dead Medusa, the creature whose visage turns others to stone? He had been so sure it was Sally. The words fit her perfectly.
A burst of applause and jangling bells disturbed his thoughts. An acrobat in a jester’s costume was performing to an adoring crowd in a corner of a campo. Rolf passed by without stopping. In a way, everything made more sense now. He had thought, during the struggle, that Sally was surprisingly strong. But if it hadn’t been Sally, who was it?
Brian. Of course. It was surely a member of the group, and Rolf had seen all the rest of them sitting in the campo. The Medusa had been Brian, and Sally was alive, and she was staying with Michèle Zanon in his palazzo.
At the thought of Michèle Zanon, Rolf’s anger began to seep in again, crowding out the shock and confusion of his unexpected meeting with Sally. He had acted like a chickenshit jerk, running as if he’d seen a ghost, which he guessed he’d thought he had. He had let it throw him off, and he’d lost his advantage and knocked out the doorkeeper for nothing. They’d be doubly on guard now, although that wouldn’t stop Rolf if— when— he decided to go back.
When he did, nothing would stop him.
He had to make plans, but first he would meet Rosa and get his backpack. He pulled out her map again. He wished he and Rosa could communicate a little better. What he thought he had told her was that he felt uncomfortable staying in her home since they’d started this romance, and he needed to find another place. What he thought she had told him was that her cousin, or somebody, had a room above a coffee house called the Colombiana. The
cousin worked for a family that had gotten out of Venice for the duration of Carnival, so the place was empty, and Rosa had a key. She was meeting him there with his stuff, since he hadn’t wanted to carry it with him on his foray to Michèle Zanon’s.
Having her cooperation was a stroke of luck, but Rolf wasn’t sure how well she’d handle it when the police turned up on her doorstep asking about him. Since he was now fairly certain they were going to, her cousin’s room could be only a pit stop.
The Colombiana was little more than a smoke-filled hole-in-the-wall with a bar and two tables crowded with people drinking espresso. None of them was wearing a costume. Obviously, this was a working-class hangout where people didn’t have time to prance around pretending to be what they weren’t. Rolf was doubly glad, now, to have shed the Pierrot disguise.
The stairs were off to one side, through a glass door. They smelled like coffee and smoke. Rolf climbed to the second floor and tapped at a door on the drab little landing. He heard Rosa’s voice asking who it was, and he said, “It’s me. Let me in.”
She was overjoyed to see him, pulling him into the room and embracing him, pushing her body close to his. This was one place, anyway, where he was still in charge. When he kissed her, deeply, she rubbed her thigh against him, making noises of admiration and gratification. Rolf felt good again, powerful again, ready. He walked her over to the bed he had barely glimpsed when he came in, and they collapsed on it.
She was as ready as he was, had probably been thinking about him the whole time they were apart, and she had already contracted, gasping and mumbling in Italian, pulling on handfuls of his hair, when he pulsed and shot, with Sally’s scared face wheeling through his mind.
After that, all he could hear was his own hoarse breathing and Rosa’s in his ear, and it was a long time before he opened his eyes and saw Rosa’s husband Gianni standing in the doorway.
Sally Makes A Plan
The Complete Mystery Collection Page 74
