The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  As Ursula’s elbow landed in his ribs again Tom said, “Michèle Zanon, per favore.”

  The young man inclined his head politely and said something.

  “He is asking what is your name,” Ursula hissed to Tom.

  Tom said his name.

  The young man’s jaw sagged, and he stepped back. The older man, on the contrary, leaned forward and spoke in a loud, interrogatory tone.

  “He is asking your name again,” whispered Ursula, sounding nonplussed.

  Unnerved, Tom repeated his name, more loudly than he had intended.

  The man with the bandaged head gave an angry, inarticulate roar. He pushed the young man out of the way, reached out and grabbed Tom’s wimple and dragged Tom into the room. He shoved Tom into a corner and started to pound his head against the wall.

  Tom began to flail. He pushed his assailant, who, still roaring, pushed Tom back. Tom fell against a bench, lost his footing, and bumped painfully to the floor. The man jumped on top of him.

  Gasping and struggling, Tom became aware that other things were happening around them. Ursula was screaming. The young man was shouting and trying to pull Tom’s assailant away. As the young man pulled on the older one’s shirt, Tom managed to loosen the thick fingers from his throat. “Are you crazy?” he yelled furiously. As the man was hauled off him, Tom landed a punch and heard a satisfying click as the man’s lower and upper teeth made contact.

  “What the hell is going on?” Tom demanded as he staggered to his feet. His mask was askew, and he adjusted it, glaring at the man with the bandaged head, who seemed to have been considerably sobered by Tom’s punch. “You want to fight, I’ll show you a fight!”

  He heard Ursula’s voice, high-pitched, speaking rapid Italian. She was in a little side room, on the telephone. She made several vigorous, hysterical-sounding points before slamming the phone back into its cradle.

  She turned to face the doormen, and delivered another stream of words which left both of them looking sheepish and apprehensive. Then she spoke to Tom. “I have told Michèle that his doorman made a vicious, unprovoked attack on you,” she said angrily. “He has asked that all of us see him upstairs.”

  Rolf Succeeds

  With swelling excitement, Rolf felt Sally struggling against him. It was beautiful, beautiful. The hysterical arch of her backbone, the shudders that seemed to come from her center and ripple outward, the pounding blood in her neck. It was as good as he’d hoped.

  She was breathing in long, ragged snorts through her nose, because, of course, he’d gagged her first. That was the beauty of having prepared beforehand. He had bought a large handkerchief for a gag, a coil of twine to tie her hands. Now Sally could only tremble and arch away from him, her eyes staring and wide with the terror he had imagined so often.

  Her hair was falling down. A drop of perspiration crept along one of her eyebrows. Rolf watched, fascinated, as it slid to the corner of her eye.

  He had thought he would wait until the house was dark and quiet, but he hadn’t been able to wait any longer. When he heard her leave her room and go down the hall, he’d slipped downstairs. Crouched in her closet, he’d left the door open a little, and when she came in, very pensive, and tossed her hat on the bed, he had been watching. He had been ready, completely prepared, when she opened the closet door.

  She was trying, clumsily, to kick him. He almost laughed aloud. Give up, little girl. Behind the devil mask, his face pulsed with heat. He pushed open the closet door and dragged her with him to the door of the bedroom. Now to get her out of here. Everything was going his way, that much was obvious, so he knew they’d get out.

  She continued to pull and writhe. He opened the bedroom door a crack. Everything was quiet, but then Sally started to make a gargling noise. Rolf closed the door softly. He slapped her, medium hard, across the face, watching her eyes widen and then redden. “Shut up,” he whispered hoarsely.

  When he next opened the door, he heard faraway voices, and a few minutes later an army’s worth of footsteps on the stairs. He shrank back and watched as four people, two masked nuns and the two doormen, filed down the hall.

  Rolf couldn’t believe his good luck. The downstairs door, at least for the moment, was unattended. As soon as the four had disappeared he frog-marched Sally into the hall. The two of them stumbled, practically plummeted, down the marble stairs.

  They had reached the ground floor when Rolf heard pounding on the garden door. He stopped still. Now what? Somebody, or perhaps more than one person, was out there. He was trapped.

  He thought fleetingly of the storage rooms, but as quickly discarded the idea. He wanted out. Then he noticed the rowboat just inside the Canal door. This room had two outside doors, after all— one to the garden, and one to the Canal.

  The pounding on the garden door continued. Surely somebody would be coming down, but Rolf didn’t hear anyone yet. Maybe Count Zanon had had enough company for one evening. The door to the Canal was fastened with a long, heavy bolt. Rolf dragged against it, and it slid easily. The door swung open. Christ, the water was so high it was practically coming inside.

  The oars were in the boat. Rolf shoved the boat to the door with his foot. In his highly excited state he thought it weighed nothing. It slid over the mossy stone stoop and nosed a few inches down into the Canal. Rolf pushed Sally into the boat and jumped in himself. The boat rocked as he pushed them away from the stoop with his oar. He settled down, fixed the oars in the oarlocks, and began to row.

  Francine Pierrot

  Breathing heavily, Francine stood, the bundled-up Pierrot costume in her arms, in a small but well-appointed bedroom. How had this happened? After her long wait she had had not even five minutes’ conversation with Michèle, and now she was hiding like a thief. She hurled the satin bundle at the bed, where it unfolded loosely. The mask, face down, rocked back and forth. She glared at it until it was still.

  Francine had waited downstairs an outrageously long time after Michèle and Sally ascended. At last she insisted, using sign language, that the doorman call Michèle and ask if she could come up. She had been considerably mollified when he indicated that she could.

  Michèle, still in his Harlequin garb, had mollified Francine further by being very apologetic, albeit in a harried way. He begged her forgiveness and offered her wine, saying he’d had complicated family matters to attend to.

  After that, matters deteriorated abruptly. There were noises from below, and then the telephone rang. Listening to Michèle’s end of the conversation, Francine could tell that something disturbing had happened. When he hung up he said, “How strange. Your friend Tom and Ursula, an acquaintance of mine, are downstairs, and they’ve had a terrible fight with Sandro and his son.”

  Francine jumped to her feet. “Ursula!”

  “That’s right, you know her, don’t you? The two of you were at the Scoundrels’ Ball together. Yes, she and Tom—”

  Francine could imagine. Ursula, storming into the palazzo in search of Francine, had already injured the doormen. “Oh, God. Don’t let her know I’m here,” she cried.

  Michèle looked confused. “But she’s on her way upstairs now.”

  “No!” Francine blotted her face. She forced herself to say, “She thinks I’m having an affair with you. She’ll make a horrible scene.”

  Michèle looked astonished. He darted to a chair, picked up a black-and-white bundle, and pushed it into Francine’s hands. “Go quickly,” he said. “Change into this in one of the bedrooms. Avoid Antonia’s, the second on the right, but any of the others will do. Then, if Ursula sees you leaving, you’ll be just a friend in costume who came to have a Carnival drink.” He led her through the dining room and pointed. Without thinking, Francine fled down the hall and through the nearest door.

  So here she was, thwarted once again by Ursula. Tears of rage filled her eyes as she stared at the Pierrot costume. There was nothing to do but take Michèle’s suggestion and put it on.

  The cap would be
a problem. Francine would have to braid her frizzy and abundant hair and pin it up. She took comb and pins from her purse, parted her hair in the middle, and gave it an angry yank before she began to braid.

  Her hair secured, she pulled the satin trousers on over her jeans. The legs were far too long, falling in folds around her feet as she pulled in and tied the waist. She slipped the blouse over her head. It reached to her knees, and the sleeves fell past her fingertips.

  This was absurd. Making an effort to get hold of herself, Francine pinned the skullcap over her braids, tied on the mask, rolled up her pants legs as best she could, and left the room.

  In her disguise, makeshift as it was, she felt oddly safe. She could hear voices in the salon. In her head, also, she heard Michèle’s voice: Avoid Antonia’s, the second on the right—

  That door was standing ajar, and the room was dark.

  Francine, it seemed, had had some luck at last. She knew, because she’d seen Sally entering it earlier, that this room was not Antonia’s, but Sally’s. She had assumed that Sally would be in it, but obviously Sally was elsewhere.

  It was a risk, but it was also Francine’s opportunity to salvage something from the appalling comedy of errors this evening had become. She had to take that opportunity.

  Francine entered the room. She found the light switch, turned it on, and closed the door. She gazed around her at the carved furniture, the marble fireplace, the paintings, the silver-backed brushes on the dressing table, the half-open closet.

  Francine had an uncomfortable feeling that she might have been mistaken, that the woman in the señorita costume was Antonia, not Sally after all. Then she caught sight of Sally’s tapestry handbag lying on a chair. She picked up the bag and began to go through it methodically.

  She was briefly elated when she saw the folded paper, but it proved to be only a handwritten copy of the Medusa poem. Food for thought, but not what she was looking for. Francine put down the tapestry bag.

  Then she saw the suitcases, standing side by side in a corner by the dressing table. Here was the answer. Feverishly, she turned one of them on its side and opened it. It was Brian’s. What fantastic luck. Francine plunged her fingers into the side pockets, shook out the neatly folded sweaters and underwear. Totally intent on her task, she heard nothing. Only when Michèle’s hand touched her shoulder did she realize he had entered the room.

  “You won’t find what you are looking for here, but I may be able to help you,” he said. “Shall we have the talk you wanted?”

  Michèle Gets Ready

  “I thought they were from you. I suspected you all along,” Michèle said. He was putting on his Harlequin mask, looking at his reflection in Antonia’s dressing table mirror.

  Francine sat sullenly on the bed. The four letters she had sent to Brian lay on the dressing table. Desire is defined as trouble. Fear is a flight; it is a fainting. Slime is the agony of water. To be dead is to be a prey for the living. She had been found out. She was filled with disgust.

  “They’re quotations from Sartre, aren’t they? From Being and Nothingness?”

  Francine nodded. “You must know Sartre extremely well, to have guessed.”

  Michèle positioned his bicorne hat. “I don’t know Sartre at all, but I thought there was a literary feeling about them. They sounded ominous and threatening, but not like the normal sort of threat.”

  “They weren’t meant to be real threats. I only wanted to put him off balance, reduce his arrogance.” From the first, it had been a laborious, ill-fated effort. Francine had gotten an English translation of Being and Nothingness from the library. After days of intense inner debate, she had selected the quotations on the basis of brevity and ominous tone. She had then had to bribe Sophie, her landlady’s daughter, with ice cream and nail polish and pieces of cheap jewelry to convince her to copy the quotations and address the envelopes. At the time, she had found it rather satisfying and had enjoyed seeing Brian grow jumpy and preoccupied.

  Michèle turned toward her, his disguise complete. “Very literary, and a bit passionless and hollow,” he said. “I considered also that they might be quotations from Tom’s book, which I know no better than Being and Nothingness. But Tom didn’t react to the line I said to him.”

  “That’s surely the only time Jean-Paul Sartre’s work has been confused with Tom’s,” said Francine.

  “So you sent the letters, and then Brian was murdered, and you were in the position of having sent him quasi threats. No wonder you wanted them back.” Michèle picked up the letters from the dressing table. He unbuttoned a front button of his diamond-patterned Harlequin jacket, tucked the letters inside, and refastened the jacket.

  Francine didn’t reply.

  Michèle looked around the room. “You didn’t see Sally at all? Or hear her leave?”

  “No.”

  “What has she done? She didn’t even take her bag with her.”

  “Michèle—”

  “Yes?”

  “I have to know. What are you going to do?”

  He stood in the doorway. “What am I going to do? I’m going to look for Sally.” He sketched a wave, and left her.

  Misunderstanding Unraveled

  Tom sat in the salon, glowering at Ursula. This enterprise, all her idea, had been every bit the disaster he had known it would be. Because of her wild-assed notions, Tom had been beaten up by a psychotic doorman and embarrassed in front of Count Zanon. After the four of them came upstairs, the conversation had slipped in and out of Italian— more in than out— and Tom hadn’t completely grasped what was going on. First, Ursula delivered a tirade. Then, the man with the bandaged head spoke, haltingly at first but gathering passion and volume as he went, casting accusatory glances at Tom. At some point Ursula jumped in again, and the two of them talked, or, more accurately, shouted, simultaneously for a while. The younger doorman, although initially deferential to his elders, had also insisted on having his say, and since the other two hadn’t shut up, the duet became a trio. Through it all Count Zanon listened with a bemused look on his face. When at last he held his hand up for silence, they had heard the faint sound of someone pounding on the door below.

  The young man started to leave, but Michèle stopped him with a gesture. He turned to Tom. “I must ask you an important question. Did you dress as Pierrot this afternoon, come here, announce your name, and savagely beat Sandro? And after you had knocked him unconscious, did you tie him up and gag him and leave him in the storeroom?”

  Tom looked at the man with the bandaged head, who he guessed was Sandro. “Of course not!” he said indignantly. “I was never here before. I never saw him before.”

  Michèle nodded. “And if you had, you would hardly return and boldly announce your name to your victim again. No, our Pierrot was someone else.”

  Michèle spoke to Sandro. Sandro, still looking doubtful, came and stood in front of Tom. “Scusi, Signor,” he said.

  “It’s okay,” Tom said.

  The pounding started again, and both doormen got up. Michèle, too, stood. “I’d better see what’s going on. Will you wait for me here?”

  That had been fifteen minutes or so ago. After they left, Ursula said, “So it was a mistake in identity. Not serious.”

  “Not serious at all,” said Tom sarcastically. “Just a little beating.”

  “Yes,” Ursula said. “And still we know nothing of Francine.”

  Tom lapsed into hostile silence. At least his notebook, which he could still feel prodding his rib cage, didn’t seem to have suffered in the fray.

  Michèle reentered the room. He had put on his Harlequin mask and hat. “I must leave you. I have been called away urgently,” he said.

  Tom couldn’t believe it. After all the trouble Tom had been through, Michèle was taking off. “But why?” he blurted, and then, to cover his consternation, “Did the person at the door have bad news?”

  “The person at the door was no longer there when we arrived. No, this is something e
lse. I must go. Forgive me. Ciao.”

  “Wait!” Tom cried, and Michèle, halfway out the door, turned back. “I have to ask you,” Tom blundered on. “You know the cops are looking for me. I wondered if you told them about— you know, what you heard—”

  “About the bearded man who was ejected from Brian’s hotel? The bearded man who is bearded no longer? No, I didn’t. I suppose they are looking for you because I told them a man in a Pierrot costume, who gave Sandro your name, was here this afternoon. He attacked Sandro, and at that time I believed he had abducted Sally as well.”

  “Oh,” Tom said. As Michèle moved away, Tom added, hoarsely, “I cheated, I admit that, but I didn’t—”

  He stopped talking, because Michèle wasn’t there any longer.

  In The Rowboat

  The man in the devil mask rowed, leaning forward and back as they moved over the black water. Sally lay in the bottom of the boat, watching. Sometimes they crossed a patch of light, and she could see drops of rain sliding in the creases of his mask, giving an impression of intense effort or intense grief. Mostly, it was dark, and she saw only a dark figure looming up and leaning back, the oars rattling in the oarlocks as he rowed.

  She eased herself to a semi-sitting position. Her hair was streaming, and Antonia’s shawl, still around her shoulders where Michèle had placed it when they left the masked ball, was sodden. She could see over the side, now, see that they were close to shore. They bobbed past lighted palazzos and dark ones. The water was very high, streaming over the walkways bordering the Canal, slapping at the water gates of the palazzos, shining under the infrequent streetlamps.