The Complete Mystery Collection

by Michaela Thompson

  They were close to shore, but that was no good to Sally. Tied up as she was, if she jumped in, she would simply sink and drown.

  She bent her head back into the darkness. The rain seemed to be letting up a little. A frigid wind gusted past and left her quaking.

  She hadn’t been thinking about being attacked, there in Antonia’s room. She had been thinking about Michèle, about the story he had just told her. She hadn’t been thinking of protecting herself from a black figure who hurled himself at her when she opened the closet door, whom she had barely glimpsed before she was his prisoner.

  She moved her head from side to side. She wanted this gag off. If it were off, everything would be better. She felt the knot pressing into the back of her head. She moved her head from side to side again.

  The man in the devil mask loomed forward, then leaned back. Forward, back. Sally moved her head again and felt that the knot was soft, loosened with rainwater.

  She pushed at the cloth with her tongue. Was it a little looser? She moved her head, scraping the knot against the side of the boat. She kept doing that, using gentle pressure, until the gag fell and settled wetly around her neck.

  He hadn’t noticed. Now she could scream, but she quickly decided that would be a mistake. She could scream, and somebody might hear her, and even if they did, he could throw her overboard or choke her before she could be saved. She wouldn’t scream. She’d work on freeing her hands.

  She had only begun to test the strength of the cord binding her wrists when they passed a brilliantly illuminated palazzo. Music floated out from it, and the boat was surrounded by music and light. Sally froze and turned her head to one side, hoping he wouldn’t look at her. The rhythmic sound of the oars stopped. Reluctantly, she faced him. In that moment, she realized that the man in the devil mask was Rolf.

  His eyes gleamed. He leaned toward her, reaching for the gag, and she scrambled backward and said, “No! Don’t put it on again! Please!”

  She thought he laughed. He leaned back, picked up the oars, and started rowing again.

  Michèle said Rolf was the mirror-man, the figure Sally had seen leaning over Brian’s body. Michèle said Rolf had killed Brian, thinking Brian was Sally. Maybe he had, and now he was going to try again. Day after day, at the Café du Coin, he had watched her, and she had never understood why.

  Sally cleared her throat. “Rolf,” she said.

  He stopped rowing. He shifted his weight toward her, and she cowered back. In his eyes she saw an eerie avidity.

  He likes me to be scared, Sally thought. That’s what he wants. She straightened her shoulders. “I know it’s you,” she said, trying to make her voice steady and strong.

  He began rowing again. Soon, they came to the entrance of a side canal. Rolf turned the boat, and they glided down the narrow black waterway, so full it was licking over its edges. “Talk to me,” Sally said. “If you’re going to kill me, tell me why.”

  They were coming to an arched bridge. As they passed under it, Rolf caught the stone edge of the bridge with his hand and stopped the boat. It was very dark. Faint reflections from the water played on the bridge’s underside. Rolf’s end of the boat rested at the canal’s edge, while Sally’s stuck out in the water.

  “I wasn’t going to kill you. That wasn’t the idea,” Rolf said.

  Sally could have wept with relief that he’d spoken. She worked at the cord binding her wrists. “What was the idea, then?”

  “I don’t have trouble with women. Not a bit,” he said in a boastful tone.

  She pulled at the cord. It was still tight. She set her jaw and pulled again.

  “It’s not that I have trouble.” His voice was louder, querulous.

  “I don’t imagine you do,” said Sally in a soothing tone.

  “I didn’t mean to hurt her. I told her I wasn’t going to.”

  Sally’s wrists were raw, but the cord was loosening. She said, “Her? Are you talking about Brian?”

  He guffawed harshly. “Brian? What do you mean?”

  “I mean— the Medusa? Is that who you didn’t want to hurt?”

  “The Medusa? Are you crazy?”

  “I just meant—”

  Rolf leaned toward her, or she sensed he did. “I thought the Medusa was you,” he said.

  “No. It was Brian.”

  “Yeah. That’s why the Medusa was strong enough to grab the staff away from me. Because it was Brian and not you.”

  “The Medusa grabbed the staff?”

  “Oh, I said something about ‘Changes trusting friends into people alone,’ and he grabbed the staff. So he’s holding the staff, with the mirror on the end, and I tried to grab it back, and he wrestled it away from me, and then somebody jumped on me from behind and started hitting me. I couldn’t see because of that damn mirror-face; all I could see was the mirror on the staff, and it flashed bright and blinded me. I couldn’t see, so I ran.”

  Sally’s hands were free. “You don’t know who jumped on you?”

  “No. I thought it must have been Brian, and he was hitting me because you and I were fighting. I was really pissed off. A little later I went back to get the staff, and I saw the Medusa in the canal. Then a loony-looking bride saw me from across the canal, and I took off.”

  Sally wondered whether to tell him she had been a corpse, not a bride, but decided to let it go. “You didn’t hit the Medusa with the staff?”

  “Shit, no. I didn’t get a chance.”

  After a moment’s silence, Sally said, “But why did you come after me?”

  “Because of something else. Something else.”

  He sounded more calm and sane now. Sally thought maybe she could talk him out of whatever he had in mind. She could try, at least, while she figured out how to get past him and out of the boat.

  Just then, a shadowy figure appeared behind Rolf’s head. She could just make out that it wore a black bicorn hat and a diamond-patterned costume. It raised a weapon— a wooden baton— and brought it down toward Rolf’s head. It caught Rolf with only a glancing blow, knocking his mask askew, and he stood and started to turn as the boat rocked wildly. The Harlequin swung the baton once again and this time he connected with the side of Rolf’s head. Rolf lurched sideways and fell out of the boat. He fell heavily on the strip of pavement that ran under the bridge and lay still. The Harlequin stepped into the boat, and he and Sally drifted slowly beneath the bridge.

  Sally And The Harlequin

  “How did you find me?” Sally said. She cooled her burning wrists with the dripping ruffles of Antonia’s skirt.

  The Harlequin didn’t answer. He put his white-gloved finger to his lips in a hushing gesture.

  Sally lowered her voice, but her sense of release wouldn’t let her stop talking. “That was Rolf, in a devil mask. He was hiding in Antonia’s closet, and he gagged me and tied me up and made me go with him. I still don’t know if he really planned to kill me. He said that what he was doing was connected to something else. Did you hear him say that?”

  The Harlequin sat down, but said nothing.

  “I don’t believe he killed Brian. I’m pretty sure you’re wrong about that,” she said. “I think I know who did it, now. I’ll tell you something. Don’t take offense, but for a long time I thought it could be you.”

  The Harlequin gave no sign that he had taken offense.

  “I’ve wondered a lot about you,” Sally said. “You’re good at getting people to love you, I can see that. But I can’t see if you care about them at all. The way you played with Brian and the rest of them. The way you played with me…”

  Her voice trailed off. They were drifting slowly beneath the bridge. In the light of a street lamp ahead, she could see water curling over the sidewalk. “Remember when you and I danced?” she said. “It was almost as if we were one person. I didn’t imagine that, did I?”

  The Harlequin made no response. Sally bowed her head. “I feel so sad about Brian. Imagine how he must have hated himself. The creature whos
e visage turns others to stone. The strangest thing is, I don’t think I knew him well at all, but the minute I saw him in the Medusa costume, I was positive it was Brian. I had no doubt.”

  The Harlequin shifted his weight. The boat rocked. They had passed under the bridge now, and the light rain that continued to fall wet Sally’s face. The boat bumped and rubbed against the edge of the canal. All at once the Harlequin was moving toward her, the wooden baton still in his hand. As he raised it to strike, Sally threw herself to one side and felt wet stone slipping beneath her fingers.

  Acqua Alta

  The baton smashed against the side of the boat, which tipped precariously as Sally tried to clamber out. The edge of the canal was an inch or two under water, and the boat’s violent motion washed more water over it. Sally struggled to her knees and flung her upper body onto the inundated pavement. She kicked herself free of the boat, her legs and skirt dragging in the icy water, and managed to get a knee onto the edge. An oar cut through the air beside her head and hit the pavement with a shivering blow. Sally dragged herself up onto the pavement and struggled to her feet.

  The Harlequin stood in the rocking boat, close enough to jump to shore. She ran, splashing along the walkway, her brain paralyzed with shock. Moments later, she heard him behind her.

  Her boots squelching, wet clothes clinging, she stumbled through the twisting streets. He wasn’t far behind. He’d surely catch her, light on his feet as he was.

  Her breath was short, her side beginning to hurt. As she became more exhausted, she began, insidiously, not to care whether he caught her or not. Let him kill her, get it over with. Why was she struggling so hard to stay alive, running through this nightmarish labyrinth?

  Sally thought of Otis Miller. She saw Otis Miller, from Eufaula, Alabama, behind the desk at his hotel. Otis would help her, if she could only find him.

  Surprisingly, the Harlequin’s steps behind her seemed to be slowing. Sally entered a campo. If she was going to find Otis, she had to get her bearings. She glanced around, trying to figure out where she was and which way to go.

  Suddenly, a hideous howling cut through the air. All Venice seemed to be howling. Sally froze, at bay before the cacophony, which at first she assumed was directly related to her own troubles.

  When she realized it was sirens, she also realized that she had, for a moment or two, stopped running. The Harlequin, perhaps also immobilized by the sudden noise, had not yet followed her into the campo. Off to one side was a sottoportego, one of the low, covered passages that led from one street to another. That might be a place to catch her breath. She ducked into it and pressed close to the wall.

  Almost immediately, he appeared. The sirens continued. The two of them seemed encased in an envelope of noise. Now he wouldn’t have the clue of her footsteps to guide him. She edged to the other end of the sottoportego and looked out. She had a general idea of where the Piazza San Marco was. If she could get there, she knew she could find Otis Miller’s hotel.

  She slipped out of the passage and started to run again and, as abruptly as they had begun, the sirens stopped. Venice was dead quiet except for the reverberating thuds of Sally’s footsteps— and, almost immediately, the Harlequin’s as well.

  The way began to look familiar. The square in front of the San Moisè Church was under water. She splashed across it, and heard the Harlequin splashing behind her.

  On the street beside the San Moisè, Sally kept to the narrow swath of pavement above the level of the water. She was close to the Piazza now. Otis Miller’s hotel was on the other side. She careened past closed shops displaying shoes, glassware, porcelain masks of Pierrot and Harlequin.

  The Piazza was a cold, dark lake. She rushed into it calf-deep before she could stop herself. Opposite her, at the other end, stood the Basilica, ghosts of its domes floating on the water. Mindlessly, she pushed toward it, fighting the water’s freezing drag against her legs. She had gone only a few feet before she saw that the Harlequin had outflanked her and was watching her from the arcade of the Procuratie Nuove. She was wading through the deepest part when she could have gone through the shallower water at the top of the steps.

  She backed away, but the Harlequin leapt toward her. She heard his breath wheeze as they shoved and grappled.

  He lurched against her and lost his footing. As the two of them went down, she felt under her own feet the submerged bottle that had tripped him. They fell with a splash. He was underneath, and she felt the breath go out of him.

  Frigid water darkened the diamond patterns on his costume. She pushed down on his neck. His hat slipped off and floated near them, riding the waves of their struggle.

  Water washed over the black mask with its prominent brows, flowed into the holes where his eyes stared. She pushed down harder, and his body convulsed and went limp.

  She would drag him to the steps. She didn’t want him to drown. She had pulled herself to her knees and raised his head when she heard someone calling her name.

  Sally Answers

  Sally sat on the pavement of the Procuratie Nuove, gazing out over the drowned Piazza. A breeze ruffled the waters where a bicorn hat still floated.

  “My God, I am so stupid,” said Michèle.

  Sally didn’t reply. Despite being wet through, she didn’t feel cold. She didn’t feel anything.

  Jean-Pierre retched and pushed himself up on one elbow. Water ran out of his mouth and splattered on the stones.

  “It isn’t the same costume at all,” Sally said.

  “His Harlequin disguise? It’s a common one you can buy anywhere. But all of them look very much alike.”

  Especially when you see what you want to see, Sally thought. So instead of Jean-Pierre, I saw Michèle. When you factor that in, it makes sense.

  The police would be arriving soon. Michèle had phoned from a call box.

  Michèle dangled his own Harlequin mask and hat from his fingers. “I was wrong about everything,” he said. “I thought I could solve it. I was certain I could. Instead, I caused terrible pain.”

  Sally looked at him. He was the picture of dejection, but how did he really feel? “Do you ever do anything but play, Michèle?” she asked.

  His shoulders lifted in an almost imperceptible shrug.

  “It seems to me that you enjoy stirring things up, but you don’t want to take the consequences.” The bitterness in her tone came from the knowledge that, even now, if she could dance with him again at a Venetian masked ball, she would do it eagerly.

  He winced, but his glance held a flicker of defiance. “Be fair, Sally. I wanted to put everything right. I did a bad job of it, but I tried.”

  “You wanted something else, too,” Sally said.

  “Yes?”

  “You wanted something to do.”

  He said, almost eagerly, “It was Carnival. Things should happen at Carnival. If they go on just the same, there’s no reason for Carnival at all.”

  They were silent. Across the way, a group of men arrived and began moving planks and metal stands. “They are putting up platforms for people to walk on during the acqua alta,” Michèle said.

  “Is that what the sirens were about?”

  “Yes. To warn everyone. By tonight, it will have receded. Until the next one.”

  The sky was brightening, and the wind picked up.

  Jean-Pierre whispered, “Sally.” She looked down at him. His pale face was mottled with bruises. “Tell me,” he said. She bent to hear him. “Did Brian make love to you again, ever, after he fell in love with me?” he asked.

  Sally remembered the night before Brian’s death— his breath smelling of wine, his body sliding into hers. She knew only one answer would see Jean-Pierre through what he was going to face. He had killed Brian, and had tried to kill her as well. Still, she gave him what he needed. “No. Never.”

  Jean-Pierre’s face relaxed a little. Sally didn’t want to look at him, didn’t want to see what love could do. She turned away. In a few minutes she heard voi
ces and footsteps. The police had arrived.

  A Reconciliation

  “You have lied to me at every opportunity,” said Ursula. The look on her face was so ridiculously tragic that Francine wished she would put on the equally ridiculous mask she held in her hand.

  “What have I done to deserve such treatment?” Ursula continued. She ticked off her points on her fingers. “I have given you a place to stay. I have translated, copied, and delivered your silly letter to the police. I have given you my deepest, most profound—”

  Her voice broke, and she took a swallow of Michèle’s red wine. They were in the salon of the Zanon palazzo. Francine stared at the toes of her shoes, which just peeked out from the white satin folds of the Pierrot trousers.

  Ursula’s reaction when she found Francine sitting on the bed in Antonia’s bedroom had been utterly predictable. Fired with suspicion as she was, the Pierrot costume Francine wore hadn’t fooled her for an instant. “So here you are!” she cried. “Dressed up to play funny games with Michèle! Is this how a murder investigation is conducted?”

  Now, Francine judged that the scene had almost run its course. It was time for her to think of some palliative explanation, so Ursula could forgive her and they could move on.

  “Your other lovers turn up at my door, making scenes,” Ursula said. “This latest one, poor Tom. You can’t imagine how he has suffered. Only I can imagine.”

  Francine looked around. “Yes, Tom was here, wasn’t he? Where is he?”

  Ursula gave a dismissive wave. “He said he had work to do. He’s in the library.” She blotted her eyes and went on, “And there was the other lover, the brutal one. And now Michèle—”

  Francine finally broke. She threw the Pierrot mask to the floor and said, “I am sick of this! You have whined at me, dogged my footsteps, humiliated me! I can’t stand any more! Leave me alone!”