Death in the Palazzo (12 page)

Molly sat in a chair placed between the two facing sofas on which the rival groups sat.

Urbino's team got off to a bad start. Robert, despite his original reluctance, gave an energetic impersonation of a crazed bull, enacted an assault on a woman he carved in the air with his arms, and then pointed furiously at the painting over the mantelpiece. It was only a few seconds before their time was up that Urbino identified the painting as Veronese's
Rape of Europa
at the Doges' Palace. Sebastian's smirk identified the topic as his own.

Sebastian's moment of victory was short-lived, however, for it fell to his lot to draw “Giorgione,” his sister's offering. He spent many long precious moments trying to act out the syllables but he—and Gemma and Bambina along with him—became completely confused as he switched without any indication from English to Italian words and back again. Then his face lit up and he started pointing repeatedly to Bambina, pulled the skin of his face down with his fingers, and gave a slow, labored walk between the two sofas.

When he pointed again to a bewildered and increasingly uncomfortable-looking Bambina, Gemma leaned forward and, in a voice that managed to contain a strong suggestion of both reproach and victory, said, “
La Vecchia!
It's ‘Giorgione'!” She had identified the artist from one of his most famous paintings,
La Vecchia
, or
The Old Woman
, which hung in the Accademia.

Gemma's eyes took in Bambina's shocked expression, and the ghost of a smile played across her lips.

“Thank God I remembered the painting!” Sebastian cried.

It would have been better—and easier, considering the storm outside—if he had remembered Giorgione's
La Tempesta
instead, thought Urbino. Bambina was totally discomposed. Her painted face had collapsed and there were tears in her eyes. At the moment, if you ignored the vivid, curled hair and imagined a white cloth cap on her head, she did indeed resemble Giorgione's painted warning of what we all would become with time.

She glared first at Sebastian, then at Viola, who was proudly acknowledging that “Giorgione” had been her choice. It was obvious that Bambina considered the twins to have been in league to humiliate her. With an abrupt gesture she reached deep into the pocket of her dress, took out her little flask of perfume, and proceeded to douse herself with a liberal amount.

Molly, who had followed all this with a bemused expression, announced that “Giorgione” had been guessed in three seconds less than “
The Rape of Europa.
”

Fortunately, Urbino next had an easy time with “
The Love of Three Oranges
,” the play by the Venetian dramatist Carlo Gozzi. He was tempted to use Viola as a convenient prop for love but instead settled for a ridiculous but convincing display of his two hands interlocked over his heart. Bambina's dudgeon was increased by the rapidity of Viola's correct guessing, for “
The Love of Three Oranges
” was her own selection.

She wasn't so upset, however, that she couldn't throw herself back into the game. In good time, through a blowing out of her rouged cheeks and furious gestures at the roaring fire and the pagoda chandelier hung with glass and beads, she left Gemma and Sebastian in no doubt that she was making all this effort on behalf of “Murano.”

But despite her performance and the quickness of the others' response, Molly announced that their rival team was fifteen seconds ahead. When Sebastian started to protest that Molly might have been distracted or, as he put it, “roaming around in the past,” Angelica revealed that she had been keeping time on her own wristwatch, and that Molly was dead right. Robert, who was responsible for “Murano,” gave her a smile of gratitude.

Only two clues remained. Viola, with a few flowing strokes of her hands, conjured up a bed hung with drapes and placed herself within it, only to writhe and try to remove something from her face. It seemed to Urbino that Molly, Bambina, and Gemma—whose clue it was—watched with just as much nervous attention as did he and Robert.

“Desdemona!” Robert cried.

“Right you are,” Viola said. “I absolutely refused to take out my handkerchief and drop it or point to a cushion. That's cheating, the way I look at it.”

Molly, corroborated by Angelica, told them that the other team would have to guess their clue in ninety seconds or less. Gemma got a little unsteadily to her feet and managed to confound what Urbino had intended as a difficult though not “esoteric” clue by simply sketching a Star of David in the air and getting Sebastian to cry out in considerably less than the needed time: “The Ghetto”!

Encouraged by his victory, Sebastian suggested that they play another round, this time with “the gloves off,” whatever that might mean. No one seemed inclined. Bambina stood up and said she should see to her mother. Her earlier enthusiasm more than a little dampened, she had perhaps decided that she had already suffered enough buffets for one night from the gentle version of the game and wanted to avoid risking a more robust contest.

After saying good night to the Contessa and the other card players, she left.

The bridge game was far from over, but from a look the Contessa threw Urbino it appeared that she wished it were so that she could call it a night. He had noticed that she had at times shown as much interest in their game as her own, straining to catch the clues and to access the dynamics.

As often happens when one guest leaves, most of the others acted like lemmings to the sea. Gemma, looking more fatigued than before, followed quickly on the heels of her aunt. A few minutes later Angelica and Robert left, then Sebastian, but not before he tried to persuade Viola that she was more tired than she claimed she was.

“I'll stay awhile longer,” she said, “and keep Urbino company.”

“He still has Molly.”

“Not for long, he doesn't,” the little woman said. “I think I'll go up with you, Sebastian. Time to rest these weary bones. Good night, Countess Barbara, and all the rest of you. Sleep tight, and don't let the bedbugs bite—only in a manner of speaking, of course!”

Dr. Vasco watched her retreating figure with intensity.

“Alone together again at last!” Viola said when Urbino had furnished her with a cognac and they were sitting on a sofa by the fire. She looked at the bridge players. “Except for the others caught up in
their
game.”

She accompanied the emphasis with a smile that she quenched by bringing the cognac glass to her lips.

“I got the sense this evening that a lot was going on that I didn't catch, and I don't consider myself a particularly dull-witted girl.”

“I'd say that you're very much the opposite.”

“But still not witted enough to catch what might have been going on,” she pursued, deflecting his compliment.

“Perhaps you're just being hard on yourself because you feel guilty.”

“Of what?”

“Of having stirred things up by bringing Molly along.”

“Yes, it has something to do with that, but I don't feel guilty.” She gave him another smile, but it was a pensive one that quickly faded. “I'm a little bit apprehensive. I get this way from time to time and usually it means nothing but—but sometimes it means a great deal.”

She looked down into her glass and seemed to be considering all the times her uneasiness had presaged something disagreeable. She laughed nervously and looked at him. Her deep green eyes held no glint of humor.

“Don't tell me that you're psychic, too.”

“Just call me susceptible,” she said with an attempt at lightness. “I keep getting the feeling that I've been through all this before—all our talking and squabbling and drinking and eating this evening. Déjà vu, as I said. I guess the Conte's memoirs made a strong impression on me—or maybe it was your incomparable skills as a raconteur,” she added, once again trying to be light.

But her face revealed that she was uneasy. She looked at the bridge players again and her eye momentarily caught Dr. Vasco's.

“That man gives me the creeps!” she said in a carefully guarded voice. “He reminds me of Dr. Caligeri. He's even interested in mesmerism! I wonder if the victim who does his evil bidding is Mamma Zeno or Bambina? Or maybe he's preparing Molly for the job, judging by the attention he's been giving her.”

As if by some sixth sense, Dr. Vasco suddenly lifted his head and looked in their direction. Viola gave a shiver when the physician turned his eyes back to his cards.

“I'm definitely going to lock, bolt, and bar my door tonight,” Viola said. “His room is right next to mine. Whatever was Barbara thinking? I thought she was the type to put all the men in a bachelor wing. Well, Sebastian's on my other side, thank God.” She took another sip of her cognac and put the glass down. “I think I'll call it a night. Oh, no need to accompany me through these dark and drafty halls. Just see that Dr. Caligeri doesn't steal up after me. Besides, there still might be services you have to render Cousin Barbara.”

8

As it turned out, Viola's parting comment proved to be true, but not until an hour after the bridge party broke up and everyone had retired for the evening.

Alone in his room, a copy of E.T.A. Hoffman's
Doge and Dogaressa
lying ignored in his lap, Urbino at first sat mulling things over.

Viola, he felt, had been right. The atmosphere of the Contessa's house party was charged with something he himself was unable to understand. It had been in the air all afternoon and evening, and wasn't only—or even largely—attributable to their thirteenth guest and her sallies into the past. If he believed in strange correspondences, he would have said that the storm crashing outside his windows now had been conjured up in some fateful way by the bad weather within.

Almost everyone seemed to be on edge. He could understand the Contessa's nervousness. She had been dreading this get-together for months. As for the others, they were all related, directly or otherwise, to the tragic death of Renata almost sixty years ago—all of them, that is, except for the Borellis, Molly, and the twins, unless there was some hidden connection he was as yet unaware of.

Urbino, not only as a biographer but also as a sensitive—sometimes, according to the Contessa, a too-sensitive—man, was well aware of the chill breath that past sorrows and tragedies could blow across the decades. He didn't need to go any farther than himself to find an example of this. Hadn't the death of his parents in the car accident, which Molly had referred to this afternoon, dropped a pall on him that still hadn't quite lifted after all these years?

This question led him to another: Where had Molly's information about his parents come from? That it could have originated from some power or “gift” that she was blessed or cursed with was too difficult for his logical mind to accept. But if not from there, then from where? And what of her other pronouncements? How much on the money had they been? To judge by the startled reactions of almost everyone, she had hit the mark as precisely with them as she had with him.

What game, if any, was she playing?

At this point in his ruminations there was a quiet knock on his door. It was Lucia, the Contessa's maid. She handed him a note and left. He opened it and read:

Urbino,

Would you please come to my room at once? And whatever you do, don't draw any attention!

This somewhat intriguing and vaguely troubling summons sent Urbino out into the hall within seconds, his caftan and Moroccan felt slippers giving him a stealthy feel as he in fact crept stealthily to the Contessa's bedroom door.

Out here in the hall the sound of the storm was muted. A light showed under the door of the Caravaggio Room at the end of the wing, where Urbino imagined Molly convening with the resident spirits of the place. Vasco's room was directly across from it, and Robert's was adjacent to it. Their rooms were dark, as were those of Sebastian and Angelica. Viola's room was the only one other than the Caravaggio Room that showed a light under the door.

Urbino had to pass by the broad stairway to get to the other wing of bedrooms where the Contessa's suite was. Here were the rooms of the Borellis, Gemma, Mamma Zeno, and Bambina. All were dark except Bambina's, near the head of the stairway.

No sooner did he give a muffled knock on the Contessa's door than she opened it and practically pulled him into the room. She wore a blue dressing gown and patterned Moroccan slippers.

“It's gone! My peacock brooch!”

“Gone? What do you mean?”

“Gone! Taken! Stolen! Please keep your voice down!” she said loudly. In fact she had been almost shouting ever since he came into the room. “Look.”

She brought him over to the jewel cabinet. The drawer held a glittering assortment of jewelry and little boxes. The peacock brooch wasn't among them.

“It was with the other pieces. I took it out of its box before dinner. I was going to wear it and then remembered the bad blood between the Da Capo-Zendrini and Zeno families about it. No point in flaunting it, so I put it back. But not in its box,” she added, anticipating his question. “I just laid it on the top of the other things. It was taken sometime between when I came down for drinks and when I returned after the bridge game.”

“Why didn't you lock the cabinet?”

“This isn't a hotel!” she shot back at him. “I never imagined there was a thief in the house!”

“But who?”

“I refuse to speculate! And I don't want anything said about this. It's embarrassing.”

“But don't you want to retrieve it, if possible?”

“How? By calling in the police? By locking everyone in the library and frisking them? Isn't that what it's called? And then we can search their rooms. No, let it be! At any rate, it's insured,” she said, but he knew it was more for his benefit than because she was concerned about the monetary aspect.