“That Mirko and his mother and father drifted in from Trieste about fifteen years ago. His mother ran off a few years later and his father eventually ended up overdosing on drugs or drinking himself to death. Obviously these things run in families. Mirko’s pathetic. All he probably ever thinks about is where he’s going to get his next hit.” Novembrini inhaled deeply on the cigarette. “He was jealous of Flavia and me. Can’t blame him. Just look at him—ugly and emaciated! I couldn’t say the slightest thing against him to Flavia, though. She was loyal to him, and she believed she had no reason to question his own loyalty. I said to her once that Mirko wanted nothing more than to get his hands all over her. She slapped me. ‘Sex has nothing to do with Mirko and me,’ she said. But I had my doubts—I mean, where he was concerned. He was just burning to be more than friends with her.”
Obviously no love was lost between Novembrini and Mirko.
“‘Beauty and the Beast,’ I used to call them to myself,” Novembrini went on. “I envisioned a painting on the subject, using them both as models but, needless to say, I never mentioned it to Flavia.”
Novembrini finished his wine and poured more into his glass and Urbino’s from the carafe.
“But we’re getting off the point, aren’t we? I don’t know anything about Flavia’s mother and the Conte da Capo-Zendrini. Why she would have told you and the Contessa—and even Ladislao Mirko—and not me, I don’t know. She made it very clear to me, though, that she hated Brollo.”
Novembrini looked off into the thinning crowd in Campo Santa Margherita.
“What did she say about him?”
“Oh, she didn’t mince any words. She despised him. When I asked her why, she would just refuse to say. I assumed it was because of how he might have treated her mother, because Flavia had only good things to say about her.”
“Can’t you remember anything specific about what she said about Brollo?”
“That’s just it. She never was specific. I just knew she hated him. I did get the impression, though, that she was holding back when she talked about him, as if she were afraid of what she might say—or even do—if she let herself go. She was capable of sudden, violent emotions.”
“Do you mean something other than slashing the painting?”
Novembrini spent a few minutes working on the sketch before answering.
“I’ll tell you something only because maybe it will help you see why I’m afraid that she committed suicide. A couple of times when she was spending the night, she became hysterical. All I did was look at her in a way that let her know what was on my mind—which wasn’t just to turn out the lights and go to sleep. When I went closer to her to try to calm her, she slapped me and either ran from the apartment or locked herself in the bathroom for hours. She never wanted to talk about why she reacted the way she did. Most other times we had no problems when it came to sex.”
“What state of mind was Flavia in when you saw her last?”
“You’re not fooling me, Macintyre! What you really want to know is when I last saw Flavia. Well, it was a good week before she died, right after the slashing. I told her that I wouldn’t tell anyone that she had done it but that she should consider getting some help. She just laughed as if it were a joke, but I was serious. Her mother wasn’t all that emotionally balanced.”
“Was Flavia taking any medication?”
“I doubt it. She made a big fuss about taking aspirin and she hardly ever touched alcohol.”
“Did she ever mention a doctor she might have been going to?”
“Flavia hated doctors. She would have had to be dying to let one come near her.”
Novembrini’s dark, deep-set eyes seemed touched by sadness and regret. He drained his glass and stood up.
“I have to be getting back. Zuin and I are having dinner with a buyer. Take this.” Novembrini ripped off the sketch he had been doing of Urbino and handed it to him. “You’ll have to forgive me. I got carried away by your nose. I made it a bit more prominent than it actually is,” he said with a smile.
“Before you go, could you tell me if you know anything about a scrapbook Flavia kept?”
“A scrapbook? She never mentioned she had one. Good day!”
Novembrini strode off into the campo in the direction of San Pantalon.
Urbino looked at Novembrini’s sketch. It was a good likeness, capturing Urbino’s sharp features and even the bruise under his eye, but Novembrini was right about the nose. The sketch looked not a little like Pinocchio after a few of his lies.
Urbino went into the café and called the police. No, he was told, they hadn’t found the muggers and the scrapbook hadn’t turned up. The officer assured him that he would be notified as soon as they learned anything and that the scrapbook would be returned to him immediately, if it were found.
Urbino rang off, not feeling in any way encouraged. He was afraid Flavia’s scrapbook, along with whatever vital information it might contain, was lost to him forever.
As he was walking back to the Palazzo Uccello, he paused in the middle of a small bridge over a side canal. He stood there musing for several minutes, enjoying the relative calm and quiet and watching two young boys play by the canal bank with their dog.
He thought about what he had learned from Bruno Novembrini about Flavia—how she had felt unloved by both Lorenzo and Lorenzo’s sister, how Lorenzo had resented her after her mother’s death, how she had apparently loved and admired Violetta Volpi, her mother’s sister. There seemed no doubt in Novembrini’s mind that his former girlfriend had hated Lorenzo, but yet she had never gíven him any indication that she thought Lorenzo wasn’t her father or had ever said anything about the Conte da Capo-Zendrini. Had she been afraid to tell Novembrini? And what about Flavia’s hysterical reaction to the looks Novembrini gave her—looks that indicated he wanted to have sex with her? Once again Urbino wondered about the possible role of the dark-haired young woman.
Urbino felt he had learned a lot from Novembrini, but he wasn’t clear as to what it might all mean. And neither was he satisfied that Novembrini had been completely honest, that he hadn’t held back something vital. The artist had had a strange relationship with his model, but was it a relationship that could have ended in his murdering her? Novembrini claimed not to have seen her for a week before her death but perhaps he had—on the night she died.
Last week at the café by the Accademia Bridge, Novembrini had seemed afraid of giving Urbino any information about Flavia. Should Urbino assume he was any the less afraid now that she was dead? Perhaps Novembrini was only feeding him the information he wanted him to know for his own reasons.
Urbino was pulled away from his speculations by the sight of a man crossing another bridge about thirty meters farther along the same canal. He was small, wore a straw hat, and walked with quick steps behind a group of tourists.
“Signor Occhipinti!” Urbino called.
The man halted momentarily and light reflected off the surface of his spectacles. Then the man quickened his pace and went down the steps of the bridge and disappeared down a calle.
14
Back at the Palazzo Uccello, Urbino opened the glass doors of one of the bookcases in the library and took out his copy of the catalog of the Peggy Guggenheim Collection. He turned to pages 71 and 72.
On one side of the page was a color reproduction of Yves Tanguy’s The Sun in Its Casket—or, as it was more correctly but less disturbingly translated, The Sun in Its Jewel Case. One of the words of the painting’s original French title described a small jewel coffer or “casket,” but most Americans thought it meant a coffin. The Tanguy, one of the paintings Eugene had passed by in silence and with disdain last week, was a bizarre landscape of amorphous, deliquescent forms that teased with an elusive meaning. The dominant image was a yellow tapered column with long stickline protrusions. Vague shapes on the point of becoming human or forever losing any resemblance to humanity were scattered and embedded in the sand around the yellow object.
On the other side of the sheet was Dalí’s The Birth of Liquid Desires, in which the woman struggled with a naked man. Urbino and Eugene had seen the original at the Peggy Guggenheim a few minutes before Flavia’s body was found floating by the terrace of the palazzo. The images were disturbing. The burst of flowers that was the young woman’s head. The naked younger man reaching down into a pool of water. A pale woman in the background, her face averted from the grappling couple. The bearded older man with a woman’s breast and a prominent erection.
Urbino called the Contessa.
“Are you all right, Urbino?” the Contessa was quick to ask after he said only a few words. She was one of the few people who could detect his mood—disappointment, anger, apprehension, fatigue, whatever—from just a few syllables over the phone.
“I’m fine, Barbara,” Urbino answered quickly, making an effort to control his voice. “Just a little weary.” He didn’t want to tell the Contessa about his mugging until they were face to face. Although he had just been to Asolo, he would make a quick trip there tomorrow and fill her in on everything. He would also accompany Eugene back to Venice. “There are some things to tell you but I’ll come to Asolo tomorrow. What I want to know now is if you had any luck with Corrado.”
“He came through, caro! I’ve got just what you need in front of me.”
She read the names and times that Corrado Scarpa had given her. Urbino copied them down.
“So Lorenzo Brollo was the last person to see Flavia alive?” he asked the Contessa.
“So it seems.”
“Thank you, Barbara. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Urbino, are you sure you’re all right? You seem so abrupt tonight.”
Urbino assured her that he was only tired and said good night.
According to the police investigation, Ladislao Mirko had seen Flavia at seven-thirty on Thursday evening. This matched what Mirko had told Urbino. Flavia had been at the Ca’ Volpi from about ten minutes before eight until eight-thirty and then had gone to see Lorenzo Brollo. Brollo said she arrived before nine and left about forty-five minutes later. It seemed that Violetta Volpi had also paid a visit to the Palazzo Brollo that same night, but she and Brollo said that Flavia had left by then. Annabella Brollo hadn’t seen Flavia, but she corroborated her brother’s story. No one apparently had seen Flavia alive after she left Lorenzo.
The thunderstorm had come crashing down on Venice about ten-thirty. Had Flavia been dead by then? Had she met anyone other than Mirko, Violetta, and Lorenzo that night? Were all of them—including Annabella—telling the truth about the times? It was logical to assume that the murderer would lie about having seen her that night but yet, Urbino reminded himself, just because someone might lie didn’t mean he or she was the murderer. There could be other reasons for not telling the truth, and anyone could have followed Flavia after she left the Palazzo Brollo and killed her.
Urbino was happy to have the list of names. It gave him something concrete to work with. He hoped he would be able to fill in the list more.
15
By eleven the next morning, a Wednesday, the heat and humidity were oppressive as Urbino pushed the brass bell at the Palazzo Brollo. He was looking forward to his brief trip to much cooler Asolo later that day to accompany Eugene back to Venice.
When a woman answered through the intercom, Urbino gave his name and was buzzed into the building. The woman told him to come up to the piano nobile. He ascended the stone staircase to the next floor. There was no sign of the woman who had just spoken.
The sala of the Palazzo Brollo was long and narrow, terminating in the balcony’s closed doors through the chinks of which a dim, aqueous light filtered into the damp, suffocatingly hot room. Pots of ferns were arranged near the balcony doors, and throughout the room vases and urns of flowers filled the air with a heavy scent. Oriental carpets in shades of green covered the scagliola floor and the ceiling was frescoed in vaguely marine designs.
Portraits in heavy dark-wood frames ranged along the walls. With very few exceptions the portraits were in the heroic, romantic style of Hogarth, Gainsborough, Reynolds, and Romney. The Brollo family would seem to have preferred not to be shown “warts and all.”
A low voice came from the shadows at the far end of the room. It startled Urbino.
“You are most punctual, Signor Macintyre,” the voice said in precise British English. “San Giacomo dell’Orio is only now ringing.”
As Urbino’s eyes became accustomed to the darkness, the tall figure of the man to whom the low but commanding voice belonged became visible. He was standing next to a piano. The man walked up to Urbino and shook his hand firmly.
“So pleased that you could come here on short notice.”
Lorenzo Brollo was a handsome man in his late fifties with pale skin, blue eyes, a deeply lined face, and sharp features. A monkish fringe of gray hair around a balding crown did nothing to detract from his aquiline good looks. He was what Urbino often thought of as an Anglicized Italian, the kind that Alvise da Capo-Zendrini had been. Urbino was sure that he was a frequent traveler to Britain and prided himself on his perfect English and knowledge of affairs in the UK. His clothes were Savile Row, not Milan, and despite the heat of the day he wore white flannel trousers, a dark blue blazer, and a cravat—a costume, in fact, not very much different from that in which Urbino had dressed for the Contessa’s garden party.
“My sister Annabella will be bringing us some coffee and anisette,” Brollo said, his glance lingering on Urbino’s bruised eye. “Please sit down.”
He indicated one of two Louis Seize armchairs flanking a matching banquette. On a small, round table was a photograph of a younger Lorenzo Brollo, a girl about ten, and a woman who bore an eerie resemblance to Flavia. Next to it were an English edition of Dickens’s Little Dorrit and a crystal vase overflowing with crimson cattleya orchids. Brollo, who noticed Urbino taking in the photograph, eased his slim frame onto the banquette.
“My wife, Regina, Flavia, and I fifteen long years ago. That’s my late wife on the wall there,” Brollo added almost languidly, nodding his head to a painting across from Urbino.
Brollo’s words struck a familiar chord. They were almost identical to the opening lines of Browning’s My Last Duchess. Silvestro Occhipinti would have appreciated the similarity. And who knew? Perhaps Brollo, with his obvious Anglophilia, had intended the allusion, although he couldn’t also want any comparisons drawn between his own late wife and Browning’s Duchess, whose proud, jealous husband had murdered her. As Urbino gave his attention to the portrait, he caught a smile curving Brollo’s thin lips.
The woman in the portrait was stunning. Regina Brollo and her daughter had shared the same auburn hair and green eyes, strong, arresting face and pale skin, and also slightly uneasy air, if one could judge by Regina’s stiff, Bronzino-like pose. Urbino got up and went closer to the portrait, looking for the signature in the lower right-hand corner.
“Not by my sister-in-law Violetta, but an Englishman who used to live in Dorsoduro. He did another portrait. I have it with several others of my dear wife in a room upstairs. My sister calls the room a shrine and perhaps it is. But I’ve left this one out for all to see. She looks as if she were still alive.” Once again the same smile as he echoed words from Browning’s poem. “Amazing, isn’t it, how much Flavia resembled her?” He picked up the photograph on the table. “Even as a little girl.” Brollo shook his head slowly and replaced the photograph. “Time passes, Signor Macintyre. If only we could freeze it at its best moments.”
When Urbino sat down again, Brollo asked in his clipped, tight speech, “Do you see anything of me in my daughter, Signor Macintyre?”
“She had long, thin fingers, too.”
Brollo spread his hands and looked down at his well-manicured fingers. He seemed casually amused.
“You’re right. The fingers of another pianist, my wife used to say. But Flavia never took to the piano—or to any other instrument. Children usually
don’t care to compete with their parents.” His eyes flicked back in the direction of his wife’s portrait. “Although if my wife had lived, it might have been she who ended up competing with Flavia as her own beauty inevitably faded. Ah! Here is Annabella.”
Urbino hadn’t heard the silent entrance of Annabella Brollo. She was a short woman about fifty, dressed in black. Her fair, graying hair was pulled severely back, emphasizing a sharp, pinched face. All life seemed centered in pale blue eyes that had an insolent look and rested for a few seconds on Urbino’s bruised eye as she advanced, carrying a silver tray with two demitasses of coffee and a bottle of anisette. Annabella Brollo was the woman who had slipped past him into the Casa Trieste on his first visit there to ask Ladislao Mirko about Flavia. Now, as then, he caught the odor of anisette surrounding her.
Annabella deposited the tray and, without a word, padded back across the dark sala.
“A remarkable woman, Annabella. I don’t know what I would have done without her after Regina died. She brings color and beauty into my life in more ways than one.”
Lorenzo Brollo touched the velvety petal of one of the large, flamboyant orchids. Annabella gave no indication that she had heard these words of praise. She closed the door behind her as quietly as she had opened it.
Lorenzo was now considering Urbino with a cool stare.
“I know it’s a hellish day but sometimes something hot is the best remedy. Would you like your coffee corrected?”
Urbino nodded. Brollo poured a generous dollop of anisette into each cup. He handed one of them to Urbino.
“I saw no reason to wait until you contacted me, Signor Macintyre. Why put you through the embarrassment of having to impose yourself on a bereaved father? You seem to be a man of gentilezza. Violetta was impressed, and she isn’t easily. In that respect as well as others, she’s totally unlike her sister, who was much more credulous. We—I”—he corrected himself—“thought it best if we spoke and settled this matter of the Conte Alvise da Capo-Zendrini.” Brollo crossed one long, flanneled leg over the other and contemplated the high shine on his brown wingtips. “You do appreciate directness, don’t you, Signor Macintyre? You Americans are said to have that quality in abundance, whereas we Italians have acquired a completely different reputation—unjustified for many of us. Not all of us own ‘a fine Italian hand’—or ‘tongue,’ for that matter.”
Liquid Desires Page 15
