I nodded as another thought occurred to me. “Have you considered that the killer could have been one of them? One of those…admirers. Hot with jealousy or feeling the stab of humiliation over her romance with Alessio?”
“I’ve had a word with all four men who shared previous arrangements with Zulietta,” he explained with a grimace. “Unofficial talks wherever I could corner them—I spoke to one at the Ridotto in between faro turns. Strange what a man will submit to in order not to ruin a night of gambling. But that’s neither here nor there—” He waved an airy hand as his attention flitted to a boy bearing a bucket toward a well in the center of the courtyard. Apparently finding this errand of no interest, Messer Grande turned back to me and continued, “They have all transferred their affections elsewhere and harbor nothing but pleasant memories of their dalliance with Zulietta. Apparently, she gave them their congé around the same time—Ascension Day.”
I stopped short, my boots scraping on gravel. “But that was six months ago! Pamarino said Zulietta and La Samsona made their wager over Alessio’s affections no later than early September.”
Messer Grande slanted an eyebrow. “Interesting, is it not? We have a beautiful courtesan without a protector for a space of months. A long time when you consider the expenses of her establishment.”
“Perhaps the dwarf was mistaken.”
“Not at all. I’ve had confirmation of the date from La Samsona. The wager was sealed on the first of September. Since the stakes were so high, she marked it down in her little notebook most particularly.”
We started to walk again, more slowly. So Messer Grande had interviewed the former strongwoman. I wondered how he had taken to her charms; she was as well padded as any Venetian beauty could hope to be. Shaking the memory of her burly arms and shoulders from my head, I asked, “Did Zulietta’s rival tell you she had sent her best jewels to the bank vault?”
He nodded with a chuckle. “La Samsona was leaving nothing to chance, but it’s my impression that losing even her second-best baubles would have wounded her. There’s nothing that great whore loves better than diamonds…” He cocked his head like a dog hearing a distant whistle. “Unless it’s pearls.”
Messer Grande seemed to know La Samsona better than one interview would allow. I longed to continue our conversation, but we were nearly at the steps of the factory and a sizeable man had come to fill its doorway. He was outfitted in work clothes, including a leather bib apron that covered him from neck to knees. His rigid stance proclaimed his annoyance at anyone, perhaps most especially the law, meddling in his affairs.
“You again,” he observed with a scowl aimed at Messer Grande.
Ignoring the man’s lack of social grace, the chief constable answered, “Good afternoon, Signor Pino. I’ve brought the man I told you about—Tito Amato, the singer from the theater.”
Cesare Pino stared at me for a long moment, then drew back just enough to allow us to pass into his workspace, a long room dominated by a hulking furnace in the far corner. I saw why Cesare was immediately recognizable. His right cheek was marked with the shiny, puckered pink of an old burn. The same fire had also damaged his right eye, rendering it lashless and sunken. Above it, his eyebrow had been scorched away. The rest of the glass master’s appearance was unremarkable, if severe: white hair cropped so short it resembled an ermine skull cap, high-bridged nose, firm jaw, muscular forearms emerging from rolled-up sleeves.
“Do you still have my boy?” he asked gruffly.
“For now,” said Messer Grande. “If Alessio weren’t so stubborn about what he did and where he went between leaving here and showing up at the opera house, I might see fit to release him. Someone needs to drum some sense into that young buck’s head.” He finished with a pointed look at the young buck’s father.
“Don’t expect me to go running over to Venice. The boy has closed his ears to me these many months. If he respected my counsel, he would never have taken up with that squalid, grasping Jew in the first place. Filthy puttana. Zulietta Giardino! Bah!” He spat on the sand-strewn floor as if her very name were poison. “She’s roasting in Hell with the rest of her deceitful race, and I can’t say I’m sorry.”
Stung by the force of his anger, I jumped in without leave or preamble. “Perhaps you’re the one who sent her there.”
“I might well have done—if I’d ever met her, Signor Capon.” He snorted and fixed a scowl on his lips. Whether he disliked eunuchs as much as Jews or was vexed to have missed the opportunity to dispatch his son’s mistress, I could not tell.
“You were at the theater the night she was murdered,” I observed through gritted teeth.
“So I was, but all I accomplished was pounding on the door to our box.”
“It was locked?”
“That’s right. I didn’t have the key. Alessio carries it. I called his name and banged repeatedly, but whoever was inside wasn’t opening up.”
“Did you hear any noise from the other side of the door?”
As Cesare shook his head, Messer Grande murmured, “How could he, with all the racket he was making?”
I showed the chief constable my palm, intent on completing my questions. “Was there anyone in the corridor?”
“Not a soul.”
“No small man? Or perhaps a man with a weathered complexion, completely unmasked?”
“Are your ears made of flannel? I told you no.”
“What did you do then?”
“I hurried away to make the lout who runs the box office find someone to get that door open. By the time I got to the bottom of the grand staircase, the whore had crashed into the pit. But I must say, Excellency,” he twisted his thick neck to face Messer Grande, “I’m surprised at you. Since when do you let a twittering nightingale from the opera conduct your investigation?”
A smile flitted across Messer Grande’s lips. “Tito is so diligent, I hate to stop him. But you are right. Questions are not the point of this visit.”
“You want to see if I’m lying—if your nightingale recognizes me as the man in the box with that jade of a Hebrew.”
Messer Grande nodded.
“I suppose he’s already taken a look at my son.”
Messer Grande nodded again.
“Whatever he must do, then, be quick about it. The fritta is almost ready for transfer.” Cesare cast his gaze toward the brick kiln that was shaped like an oversized beehive. Its maw glowed yellow-orange; the flames within roared and groaned. Through the bright, wavering haze, I could see pots baking in the searing heat. They must contain the sand and potash and other ingredients that made up the molten glass. My eyeballs burned after peering at them for only a moment, and a rivulet of perspiration ran down my nose.
Messer Grande was sweating, too. He wiped his face with a handkerchief that came away from his cheeks with a brown stain. Odd. I’d barely had time to wonder about that before the chief constable challenged Cesare in a voice that brooked no argument. “We’re here on the Doge’s business—you’ll give us as much time as we need.”
The glass master replied without flinching. “I understand that a crime has been committed, but even so, you must respect the needs of a man’s business. The fritta doesn’t wait. When it’s ready for the pipe, it’s ready.”
“Let your other masters tend the glass.” Messer Grande gestured toward several middle-aged men who were arranging wicked-looking pincers and grippers on a bench near the furnace.
Cesare stiffened his shoulders and pushed his chin up into a frown. “I’m the only master here, and today I’m blowing aventurine. There’s a lot can go wrong with aventurine. It requires my hand.”
“Then we had best get to it. Remove that apron, if you please. Tito, do you want Signor Pino to move a certain way or strike a pose?”
I shrugged as the glassmaker untied his apron and jerked i
t off with a snap. I required nothing special from Cesare Pino. From the moment I had observed him in the doorway, I began measuring his face for the killer’s chalk-white mask. A bauta fits snugly over forehead, nose, and cheeks, leaving the mouth free for conversing and drinking. In such a disguise the mutilated face of Cesare Pino would look like everyone else’s.
Messer Grande questioned me with a cocked eyebrow.
I rubbed my jaw, thinking intently. There was one other thing I’d noticed. Cesare had moved across the floor with a slight limp. Had the accident that burned his face also injured his leg? It didn’t matter how he’d come by his walk. It was enough that his gait reprised the clumsy, lurching steps of Zulietta’s killer.
Still I hesitated. Cesare Pino was an arrogant, self-righteous man. He was also prone to ire and obviously hated Jews. I would have loved for Messer Grande to clap him in irons on that score alone. But I had to tell the truth as far as memory would allow, and I didn’t sense that Cesare’s wounded eye possessed the blistering power that had carried all the way across the theater as I locked gazes with the murderer.
“Well, what do you think?” Messer Grande’s voice took on an impatient tone.
“I suppose…” I started slowly. “Yes…it’s possible…”
The constables by the door jumped to attention. One reached into his jacket where he would keep his truncheon. The glass orkers traded questioning looks, then shuffled closer to their master. Reluctantly, I thought. Cesare Pino flung up an arm to ward them off.
“I didn’t kill that woman.” Cesare’s expression was loathing itself. With his puckered skin bathed in the kiln’s orange glow, he could have been a demon coughed up from Satan’s own mouth.
“I was going to add that you don’t seem quite right,” I quickly replied, wiping sweat from my forehead with the back of my hand. “It’s only that you’re of the same size and carriage as the man in the cloak and bauta.”
“Well, I never made it from the corridor into the box, and I never wear a mask. Anyone can tell you that.” He spread his fingers and flicked them upwards from his chin. “As ugly as it is, this face of mine is honest. God given, you might say, and fairly earned. I see no reason to hide it.”
Messer Grande had waved his constables back.
“You’re not going to arrest me?” Cesare asked.
“Not today,” Messer Grande replied cheerfully.
The glassmakers also shuffled back. Returning to their implements, they sneaked glances at their master as they sharpened pincers and fiddled with paddles that looked like stout versions of those used in a baker’s oven. The sudden tension was abating.
Cesare continued, “What about my son? As rash and disobedient as Alessio has been of late, I don’t think he killed the woman either. The fool doesn’t have it in him—he can’t bear to kill anything—even the goose for our Sunday meal.” The glass master shook his head. “Alessio needs to get back here. I won’t be able to salvage the marriage contract, but the boy can devote himself to the kiln. You may be sure I’ll be giving up that box at the opera house where he idles his time away with Jews and who knows what other trash.”
Messer Grande replied mildly, “Your son would hardly be the first man, or the last, to make a fool of himself over a woman. That is not a crime, of course, but obstructing an official inquiry is. I’ll be holding him until he decides to answer my questions.”
Cesare grunted, gestured impatiently, and threw a glance toward his bench and blowpipe. “So—our business is concluded?”
Messer Grande nodded as he gathered the folds of his long red sleeve that had been trailing on the sandy floor. “For now, but I would like very much to see your wares. Do you have a showroom?”
“In the building next door,” Cesare replied in a flat tone.
“Perhaps one of your workers could show us?”
The glass master jerked his chin at a small fellow who separated himself from the group near the workbench. Cesare didn’t give us another glance. His focus had shifted, and I recognized his expression. It was the same that Maestro Torani exhibited when he was composing a melody in his head. Or Gussie when he was at his easel.
A pang of jealousy coursed through me. I admired artistic creation, whether it resulted in notes that lived for only a moment or a beautiful painting that could last forever. Someday, when life became more settled, I meant to try my hand at writing my own music.
***
As his men took their ease in the courtyard, Messer Grande and I followed the glassmaker into a larger building. Empty of workmen or clerks, the spacious, high-ceilinged room was piled with crates and barrels labeled for shipment. Along the front wall, boards on trestles were laid with examples of the Pino tableware. The range of colors was dazzling, even in the low light. Goblets, compotes, bottles, trays, even baskets woven of thin glass strands glimmered as if Cesare and his men were wizards capable of entrapping nature’s bright hues in wonderfully wrought crystal prisons.
I hovered over the array, tricorne tucked carefully under my arm, especially admiring a set of decanters and glasses the color of the cerulean sky on the clearest summer day imaginable. No, I was wrong. The pieces actually resembled the blue of the lagoon reflecting the sky on such a day. What subtle workmanship!
Then there were graceful oil and vinegar cruets made of the aventurine that Cesare must be blowing even now. Paper-thin, reddish-brown glass shot with flakes of shiny copper and overlaid with findings of beaten gold. They were exquisite things, fit for a Doge’s table, not mine. But I could still look. I was amazed that a man with Cesare’s belligerent disposition could create such fragile beauty. It was Messer Grande’s low voice that tore me away from the treasures. Smarter than I, the chief constable was taking advantage of this few moments of privacy to question Cesare’s workman. I drew near.
The glassmaker was short in stature, with angular cheekbones that looked as if they were about to burst through his sooty skin. Two tufts of graying hair made horns on each side of his balding head, and he gazed at Messer Grande with bulbous blue eyes. He was my senior by at least a decade, but he quailed before the Doge’s representative like an untried youth. Even though Messer Grande was using his kindest, most reasonable tone, the workman’s voice quavered, and if he hadn’t been wringing his hands, I’m certain they would have trembled. His name was Zenobio.
“How long have you worked for Cesare Pino?” Messer Grande was asking.
“Almost twenty years, Excellency.”
“It takes many years to master the craft, yes?”
“Yes, Excellency.”
“Twenty years is quite a span, Zenobio. Surely, you’ll soon become a master of the glass yourself.”
Zenobio answered with a small shake of his head. He seemed to be making an effort to keep his lips clamped shut.
“No?” Messer Grande questioned. “I don’t understand. Garzone, servente, then master. Isn’t that the way it’s supposed to go?”
Zenobio blinked once, twice. He cast a desperate look round. Checking for any stray clerks? Then a torrent of whispered words escaped his lips. “No one will ever be master at this factory unless his name is Pino. I was only advanced to servente last year, even though I do the best work of any man here. Signor Cesare was going to name Signor Alessio master of the glass on his marriage celebration. Now even that will be put off.”
Something in the longing way Zenobio explained that last bit gave me an idea. “Are the men expecting things to change once Alessio becomes a glass master?”
“In the shadow of his father, Signor Alessio can change nothing. Beyond Signor Cesare’s reach—” A sudden smile enlightened Zenobio’s face but was quickly doused. The man dipped his chin and raised it to display his previous anxious expression. “Will Signor Alessio be coming back to us soon?”
Messer Grande frowned. “That depends on a number of
things. Signor Alessio is involved in a very serious matter.”
The glassmaker shook his head, wildly this time. “Signor Alessio didn’t kill that woman. It’s impossible, everything would be ruined.”
“Why impossible, Zenobio?” Messer Grande fired off. “If you know something of your young master’s dealings, you must say.”
He lifted trembling hands to pull at his tufts of hair. “No, Excellency, no. I know nothing of my master’s business. I work the kiln and take care of my family, that’s it.”
During the ensuing strained silence, I contemplated Zenobio’s statement: everything would be ruined. I’d heard someone else use that phrase. But who? For a moment, I felt as if a curtain had parted to reveal a glimpse of a secret play, but Messer Grande asked another question and the curtain closed again.
“Tell me about your family.” Messer Grande’s tone was calm and soothing.
Zenobio gulped and replied, “I have a wife and five children.”
“How have you kept them fed on the wages of a garzone?”
“Everyone must work. My boy fetches water all day, though he’s going on twelve and should be learning to fuel the kiln by his age. He’s not even a true garzone, just a boy to be ordered to turn his hand to any small chore that needs doing. My wife and daughters work next door where they make cheap glass beads. They thread the beads for shipping. All day—bead after bead, five hundred per strand, strand after strand. My wife’s eyes are going. When she can’t work the beads…” He finished with an aggrieved shrug.
“You could threaten to leave,” Messer Grande said. “Tell Signor Cesare you’ll find work with a rival if you’re not promoted.”
Zenobio didn’t bother to respond, merely sent the chief constable a withering look.
“I know how it is,” I put in. “Murano is like the theater where I practice my craft. Everyone has his place, and a man knows he’d best stick to it whether he sings, plays the violin, or lights the tapers in the chandelier. If a man makes trouble, word gets around fast. Then he is ruined where all the opera houses in Venice are concerned.”
5 - Her Deadly Mischief Page 13
