Black Bridge

by Edward Sklepowich

  No diary, no money, no passport or identity papers, no letters, no postcards. He was about to leave when he thought of something. Bobo’s toiletry kit. He found it on the shelf in the armoire. Sleeping pills, sedatives, throat lozenges—what seemed to be a gross of these—scissors, nail clippers. Then, beneath the other things, was something that gave him considerable pleasure if not the enlightenment he was seeking. It was a tube of paste used to affix dentures more firmly.

  He didn’t want to risk looking through Bobo’s bathroom. He was already pressing his luck. He slipped out of the room and down the hall.

  Harriet’s former room was obviously still in the process of being cleaned. The window was open, the shutters thrown back. The furnishings were simple and tasteful, having been collected from other rooms to suit Harriet’s unpretentious taste. The most unusual piece was an Empire escritoire that used to be in the morning room. Its drawers and pigeonholes held nothing. The blotter was slightly soiled, but there were no doodles or mysterious lines of script that might be conveniently held up to a mirror to spell out the incriminating name or number.

  The armoire was empty except for hangers. The bookshelf contained nothing but a map of Venice that could be bought at any kiosk in the city. He unfolded it. The Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini on the Grand Canal was marked with a neat “X” as were the Palazzo Uccello and what Urbino realized was Marco Zeoli’s apartment. He refolded the map and put it back.

  Regretting that he hadn’t looked through Harriet’s room immediately after she had moved out, he went to the open window and peered out from behind the curtains. The garden was below. Urbino searched in vain for any sign of Bobo and Festa on the paths or among the boxwood and laurel.

  He was about to go back downstairs when he heard Festa’s voice floating up to him as clear and distinct as a bell. They must have been in the pergola, one of the few concealed spots in the garden. The fact that Festa’s voice, then Bobo’s quick response, came so distinctly was not a result of their loudness—for they were in fact quite low—but of the peculiar acoustics of the Contessa’s garden, something Urbino had noted before but forgotten. The couple’s voices soon faded away, but he had heard enough. It set him to thinking of the night of the Contessa’s gala, the night Orlando had fallen ill. Bobo and Festa emerged from the pergola and started to walk back to the palazzo, still engaged in what seemed to be intimate conversation, which he could no longer hear.

  Urbino turned quickly from the window and bumped with considerable force into a corner of the armoire. It was proof of the force with which he hit it that not only did he get an excruciating pain in his shoulder but that the armoire shifted ever so slightly. And when it did, he heard a rush of sound as of something slipping and sliding. The sound, which came from behind the armoire, moved to the floor and stopped. He rubbed his shoulder and looked behind the armoire. A small space was visible where it didn’t quite meet the wall, a space that his collision had obviously made wider. He looked down at the floor behind the armoire and saw a thin, dark rectangular object. His hand was too large to fit in the space. He pushed the armoire farther from the wall so that he could put his hand in. It touched and then grasped paper.

  He withdrew the object. It was a large envelope not at all unlike the one he had just found in Bobo’s room. Inside were what he had found in Bobo’s envelope. Clippings. And each of them was autographed with an intimacy. If the clippings had shown naked men and women instead of ones fashionably dressed, they couldn’t have been more revealing.

  Things slotted into place. He folded the envelope of clippings and stuffed them in the inside pocket of his jacket.

  He hurried from the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini before Bobo and Festa could see him. He had to call Gemelli.

  PART FOUR

  The Isle of the Dead

  1

  Everyone had been provided with votive candles or lamps. Urbino turned around to look behind him when he was halfway across the bridge. A string of lights snaked back to Venice. The city itself lay dark and sleeping beneath a low sky. The weather had become overcast, but the night had turned warm, sending fog drifting in from the lagoon.

  Ahead of him the Contessa, dressed in black with silver trim, was helped by Bobo over the pontoon bridge. Her step was firm, but careful, and she held her candle in front of her, although lanterns illuminated the way.

  How many of this small procession really wanted to be there? To judge by their expressions and the way they plodded along, certainly not the priest who had officiated at midnight mass at the nearby Church of the Gesuiti or the scattering of city officials.

  Festa, sans Peppino, had the air of someone suffering through it all only for the pleasure it gave to rivet her kohl-rimmed eyes at the Contessa’s and Bobo’s backs in anticipation of a misstep by one or both of them.

  Oriana had begged off, but Flint was there with a bouquet of violets for her parents’ grave pressed against his dark velvet jacket. His countenence was suitably solemn as if he expected his picture to be taken at any moment.

  Zeoli, his long face in a scowl, stepped over the planks with the caution of a man who knew from professional experience the indignities caused by injured limbs. Harriet, whom he occasionally helped to make her timid way, was so be-scarfed, behatted, and be-gloved that she was barely recognizable except for the fearful eyes that contemplated the invading fog as if it were a pestilential vapor.

  The only people, other than the Contessa, who seemed to be in the spirit of things were half a dozen hobbling women in widow’s weeds who clearly preferred the damp and the fog to sleepless hours in front of their heaters.

  And so they all slowly made their way to the island of the dead, whose brick walls, cypresses, and coffin runway, wreathed with fog, were barely visible in the near distance.

  2

  The procession, stately when it had crept across the bridge of boats, scattered soon after reaching the island. The officials, after enduring the priest’s benediction, were now slipping out of the church to their waiting boats. The widows, for whom the fog and darkness presented little problem given their familiarity with the cemetery, moved off in a flock with their flowers and spades and lamps.

  “Urbino,” Bobo whispered, “I must talk with you. Join Father Vida and me in the Cappella Emiliana. Excuse us, Barbara.”

  Bobo drew Father Vida into the chapel and started to speak to him enthusiastically. When Urbino joined them, Bobo turned to him and said in English: “I’ll speak quickly. I’m sure we’re being observed. No, don’t look around. Our good priest here doesn’t understand a scrap of English, but I’ll throw out some words about the chapel to confuse him or whoever else might be listening. I got another blackmail note! Mauro found it in the little courtyard by the outside door an hour ago when someone rang the bell. I haven’t told Barbara. Gugliemo dei Grigi!” he threw in, naming the artist who had designed the chapel. The Contessa glanced at them nervously from where she was standing with Harriet and Zeoli. “And no, I haven’t even had a chance to tell the police—1530! Tutto marmo! A map of the cemetery was attached. I’m to go to a place marked on it. Somewhere on the other side. The grave of the Baron Corvo. I assume it’s supposed to be ironic or something, since Rolfe gave himself the name and title. Ruskin! Leave us here in the chapel and don’t attract any attention, but follow me to the grave. Do you know where it is? Gotica!”

  Urbino said he did. He remembered that both Festa and Flint had displayed a knowledge of the Baron Corvo on separate occasions. He left Bobo and the bewildered, faintly smiling priest to join Flint. The former model was looking down at a map of the cemetery, the one given out at the cemetery office.

  “Can you help me, Urbino? Oriana marked her family’s tomb but I’m still confused. Could you give me my bearings so I can bring these there?”

  He indicated the demure bouquet of violets. Urbino explained the best way to get to the tomb. It wasn’t far from the Da Capo-Zendrini mausoleum. To get his own bearings Urbino’s eye strayed to the other co
rner of the map where the Baron Corvo was buried.

  “Thank you! I’d better go right away. I don’t want to miss the boats returning to Venice. A cemetery isn’t my idea of a place to spend the night!”

  “Mine either!” Festa said from a nearby pew. She threw an angry glance at Bobo, who was still talking with the priest. Flint excused himself and left. Fog curled into the church from the briefly opened door.

  “I’ve told Bobo and I’m telling you,” Festa went on. “You can tell her if you want!” There was no need for the irritated nod in the Contessa’s direction for Urbino to know whom she meant. “I’m sitting right here until the boats go back so don’t forget me! I don’t know why I came!”

  “Why did you?”

  She pressed her plump lips together and frowned. Urbino excused himself and joined the Contessa, who was moving slowly toward the door with Harriet and Zeoli.

  “Harriet and I are going to the mausoleum. Why don’t you come with us? Marco was going to come, but he’s feeling ill.” The man in fact didn’t look at all well. His eyes were bloodshot and his sallow skin had a sickly shine. “You should rest here, Marco dear. Maybe you can keep Livia company. I think she’ll be on the first boat back.” She cast an amused glance over at Festa, who was rummaging through her large pocketbook. “So will you join us, Urbino? Bobo says he has his own respects to pay. Where, I don’t know. He’s being mysterious.”

  “Why don’t you and Harriet go on ahead, but if you don’t mind, give me about twenty minutes before you leave the church. I’d like to go to Pound’s grave first.”

  “That fascist!”

  “Don’t let the Barone hear you say that,” Zeoli said with a sickly grin. “D’Annunzio had his sympathies with II Duce, too.”

  “No more of your criticisms of D’Annunzio tonight, Marco,” the Contessa said. “You should have heard him, Urbino. Filling poor Harriet’s ears with all sorts of terrible stories. Now, you just sit right there next to Livia, Marco. You take good care of him, Livia. I’m sure you must have a whole pharmacy of medicines in that big bag. You doctor him up if he needs it. As you wish, Urbino. If you must go to that ghastly man’s grave, do it. You know where the mausoleum is. We’ll give you your twenty minutes.”

  Very little of this interchange seemed to register on Harriet, who had a preoccupied look on her plain face.

  Urbino hurried through the door and into the fog-filled cloister, then into a crypt on the other side of the cloister where Gemelli had said Urbino’s contact would be. Urbino informed him about what he was going to do and what Bobo had told him about the newest blackmail note and the Baron Corvo’s grave. He made sure the police officer knew exactly where Corvo’s grave and the Da Capo-Zendrini mausoleum were.

  Then he went into the cemetery.

  3

  Fog swirled around him and invaded his clothes. What little he was able to see gleamed as if lit by an unearthly light. Sounds, all of them muted and most of them indistinguishable, fell dully upon his ears like some manifestation of the fog. The only sounds he could identify were the scratching of what were either the cemetery’s ubiquitous rats or the salamanders that had frightened Harriet, and the periodic bleat of a foghorn out in the lagoon.

  He proceeded a short distance along the wall to the left of the entrance, then stopped. He pressed himself up closely against one of the tombs built into the wall. He had only to wait a few minutes. Footsteps sounded from the cloister, paused briefly at the entrance to the cemetery, then turned right without any perceptible hesitation. They continued in the general direction of the Baron Corvo’s grave before being swallowed up in the thick air.

  Try though he did, Urbino couldn’t make out any form, nor could he identify the footsteps as belonging to a man or a woman.

  He went onto the same path the footsteps had taken. He advanced slowly because of the fog and because he wanted to make as little sound as possible on the gravel. Old-fashioned lanterns placed close to the ground provided only minimal illumination, so that someone could have been within touching distance without being seen. Occasionally he thought he saw the glimmer of a lamp and heard a voice, but the fog and the dark deceived as well as concealed. If he hadn’t taken this path so often, he would have had to feel his way even more than he was.

  Yet he didn’t catch up with whomever was ahead. If he could only see who it was, it would be enough. If it was Bobo, his mind would be more at ease, for the man couldn’t be in two places. Then he could be almost assured that Bobo had told him the truth about the blackmail note. So much depended on this, for this last blackmail note had been an unforeseen development that might ruin everything. If he had been wrong about the realizations he had come to in Harriet’s former room—

  But he didn’t allow himself to reconsider. He had to be right. He continued to crawl through the fog, calculating how much more time he had before the Contessa and Harriet started out from the church.

  The grave of the Baron Corvo, who had taken part in a similar procession to the cemetery at the turn of the century, was farther to the right near the surrounding wall. Urbino continued along with the slight help of the lanterns, but mainly by instinct and habit. Occasionally the fog lifted to reveal more of the path ahead, a water spigot with a pail, or one or two grave markers. Most of the latter were cheap wooden crosses about three feet high with ceramic photographs or plastic-covered snapshots of the dead. The name of the dead was painted crudely on the horizontal bar of the cross, sometimes without any dates.

  He made good progress and was soon in an area of burial niches built in tiers near the outer wall of the cemetery. He stopped behind a column near the water gate. Globes on top of the wall cast their meager light down on the scene. The Baron Corvo’s niche was on the topmost tier and faced the lagoon and the sleeping city. A movable metal stairway nearby provided access to the higher graves. Broken pieces of marble, large rocks, discarded crosses, urns, and grave markers with photographs littered the area.

  Before the fog drifted in from the lagoon again, Urbino made out a tall figure standing beneath the skeleton stairway. It was Bobo. His cigarette glowed brightly and then dimmed. Urbino was tempted to stay longer, but he now knew that Bobo, who hadn’t seen him, was where he had said he would be. Somewhere nearby were policemen. They would have to handle whoever might show up to meet Bobo.

  As for Urbino, he had to get to the Da Capo-Zendrini mausoleum as quickly as possible now.

  Still not sure, however, that he wasn’t being tricked in some way that took advantage of his blind spot about Bobo, he started to retrace his way with a sense of urgency.

  Surely those were footsteps behind him. He stopped, but heard only the fog horn moaning. A few seconds later a blow smashed against the back of his head. He dropped to his knees. He looked up and saw a figure looming above him. He put his hand up to avoid the next blow.

  4

  The Contessa and Harriet groped along the path, using the feeble illumination of the lanterns as their only guide. At the insistence of Harriet, who seemed anxious to get away from Festa and Zeoli after everyone else had left the church, the Contessa had shaved five minutes off the twenty she had promised Urbino to wait before leaving.

  The fog was one of the thickest the Contessa had ever had the misfortune to be out in. So absorbed was she in what Harriet was saying that it was a wonder the Contessa didn’t fall flat on her face.

  “Don’t you see, Barbara? He abandoned Helen Creel when he found out that she had no real money—that it was all her son’s, because of her father’s will! I know you love him but love can do terrible things. I’ve been driven mad!”

  Harriet grabbed the Contessa’s hand and moved a step ahead of her, as if she were urging the Contessa to the mausoleum, afraid she might now turn back. The Contessa suddenly wished that she had waited those extra five minutes. She desperately wanted Urbino to be at the mausoleum waiting for them. Whyever did he have to go to Pound’s grave?

  The mausoleum rose up in her mind wit
h its cold marble walls and its eroding statues, with her name and birthdate engraved and waiting. How could she ever have thought that she had banished her dread of the place?

  “Moss never forgot Bobo’s face,” Harriet was saying, her breathing shallow and wheezy, her voice seeming to come from a long way off. “You know how little he’s changed in the past ten years. As handsome as ever. My mother always told me to run as fast as I could from handsome men. As if I ever had to do the running!”

  Harriet broke out into her loud, hysterical laugh, but cut it off as if with a knife and clapped one hand over her mouth, with the other pulling the Contessa along.

  The Contessa peered into the fog. She could see only vague shapes—peculiar flickering lights, mausoleums, grave markers, trees, unmoving forms that looked like men and women but certainly must be statues. Perhaps Urbino was somewhere nearby on the path ahead or behind them. She thought she heard a footfall.

  “Urbino? Is that you?”

  Her voice was swallowed by the fog.

  “We’ve both been fools, Barbara. But I’ve been the bigger one. I—”

  The Contessa felt as if the fog had crept into her mind, confusing it, and into her heart, giving it a mortal chill. She started to lose track of what Harriet was saying.

  “—and he said that all we needed was money, that we already had love, and I believed him. And when I told him what I heard Moss and Quimper say in the garden the night of your reception, that was all he needed to get his mind going. I’m so sorry for what I’ve done to you, Barbara.” She gripped the Contessa’s arm more tightly and the Contessa started to pull away. “I never thought he was the one who killed them! And now I think he knows that I know! Oh, my God, what was that?”