Death in the Palazzo (15 page)

Carefully stepping around Molly's body, he took several photographs of the loggia, so awash with the rain driven in by the storm that the drains were inadequate to deal with it. The wind whipped at him.

He noticed something in the water and picked it up. It was a piece of silk ribbon, as soddenly pink as the blood mixed with water. He took out his handkerchief and unfolded it, placed the ribbon in it, refolded it carefully, and returned it to his pocket.

He began his search of the room, wearing the gloves that made him feel both furtive and foolish.

The Caravaggio Room was one of the few bedrooms without its own bath, since the locked room hadn't been included in the renovations after the Contessa's marriage.

However, at some point after coming upstairs last night, Molly must have been to the bathroom across the hall next to Vasco's room, for a bath towel, hanging from a wooden rack, was damp. She could possibly have mopped up water coming into the room from the loggia, but it wasn't even slightly soiled, as it probably would have been if it had been used for this latter purpose. If she had taken a bath upon retiring to her room, it would seem that she had then applied perfume. It wasn't something one usually did before sleeping—unless, that is, one was expecting a guest.

Molly's only medication was a half-filled bottle of aspirin. There was a rather Spartan collection of toothpaste, creams, and an inexpensive perfume. He sniffed the perfume. It wasn't the scent that seemed to be emanating from Molly's body.

He next looked through the clothes in the armoire and the chest of drawers. The dead woman appeared to fall into the category of the sensible, perhaps even the seasoned, traveler, for she had brought only a modest wardrobe, with interchangeable pieces. Two pairs of comfortable shoes were neatly lined up in the wardrobe.

No Ouija board, no Tarot cards, no crystal ball stored away—but, after all, Molly had insisted that her gift was one for the past, not the future. He looked at her body lying so exposed and undignified on the floor. No, her gift, if she had had one, certainly hadn't included the future. Otherwise she might still be alive.

On the bedside table were a paperbound copy of a popular guide to Venice and a lacquered lap desk of vaguely Oriental design.

He thumbed through the guidebook. He read a few underlined passages and quickly a pattern emerged. Each of them dealt with some aspect of Venice's sensational side. The stabbing of Paolo Sarpi on a bridge not far from Urbino's Palazzo Uccello. The
acqua alta
of sixty-six. The intrigues of the Council of Ten. The theft of St. Mark's body from Egypt. The Black Death. The skinning alive of a Venetian general by the Turks. The cholera plague of the nineteenth century. The beheading of the traitor Doge Marin Falier. The ghost legends surrounding the Casino degli Spiriti.

Molly's ticket from the
Orient Express
, quoting the high fare, was between the pages of the guidebook. Molly hadn't seemed the kind of person with that kind of money. Her humble collection of belongings attested to this.

He put the book down and opened the lap desk. It held pens and pencils, a letter opener, stationery with Molly's Northwest London address, British postage stamps, an address book, a checkbook, a small notebook, a packet of file cards fastened with an elastic band, and an envelope with the address of a London literary agency. Urbino opened this latter and found a standard literary contract, duly signed, for a “nonfiction book, tentatively entitled
The Blood of Venice
,” by Molly Wybrow. A modest advance was quoted, as was the delivery date of the manuscript nine months from now.

He removed the elastic band from the file cards and shuffled through them. About a dozen were written on in a small cramped hand. They appeared to be notes—quotations and summaries about Venice, with once again Venice's frequently dark history as their theme.

He put everything back in the lap desk to take to his room. His slight nausea of before was now replaced by a more general uneasiness and discomfort.

He looked down at Molly's body again. He rejected the possibility that the source of his discomfort was the feeling that he was violating her privacy. After all, as a biographer, he had had many occasions to settle this particular qualm. If he didn't quite subscribe to the maxim that the dead had no claim to privacy, he nonetheless knew the dangers of being overly scrupulous. And certainly those who had died under mysterious circumstances could claim no privacy—and neither could anyone who had been associated with them.

No, the uneasiness was coming from somewhere else, perhaps from the fact that, in the absence of the police, he was acting without authorization and setting himself up for censure. Yet, didn't the present situation—the storm, the isolation, the need for immediate action—call for something more than just sitting back and waiting?

Urbino thought that he had resolved—or was it “rationalized”?—his feelings, until something else occurred to him. It was the possibility that his uneasiness came from another quarter entirely. From fear. The circumstances that might excuse his present behavior were the very ones that contributed now to his apprehension.

For if his suspicions were correct, he was in the palazzo with a murderer.

Urbino wasn't a physically brave man. He would be the first to admit it. But physical bravery wasn't something particularly required in that small, floating corner of the world that he had so comfortably sequestered himself in. Even his amateur sleuthing had required no heroic efforts. What he did have, however, was moral courage and a cold fury against almost all forms of injustice. These things, along with his intelligence and tact, hadn't failed him yet, and he hoped they wouldn't now.

6

Urbino picked up the lap desk and the camera, and walked toward the door. He stopped short. The door was slowly opening. Cautiously, stealthily, a head appeared. It was Bambina.

She started when she saw Urbino, and a hand flew up to her heavily painted mouth, accompanied by an involuntary gasp. Then her dark, round eyes focused on Molly's body. She stared at it intensely for a few moments as if it were important to take in every distasteful detail.

“What do you want, Bambina?”

The harshness of his voice startled even him in this room of the dead.

Bambina, who had paled, seemed at a loss. Her eyes wavered again in the direction of Molly's body. A guarded yet also somehow childlike expression passed over her face.

“Mamma sent me,” she said quietly. Then, glancing quickly back at Molly's body, she lowered her voice even more and said, “To keep vigil. She didn't like to think of Molly being all alone. She would have come herself but Mamma—Mamma isn't feeling well. Dr. Vasco is with her. She insisted that I come by. I meant no wrong.”

“That's very considerate of you both, but right now we're going to move Molly.”

“Move her?”

“To the bed. Then the room will be locked.”

“Locked? But why?”

“Out of respect.”

“I see. I'll tell Mamma that she's being looked after. It's only because of her that I came. Good-bye.”

She went out into the hall. Urbino followed and closed the door behind them. He then took the key from his pocket and locked the door. Bambina watched him. For the first time she seemed to notice his rubber gloves, then, with a puzzled expression, the lap desk and the camera. She said nothing further, but now seemed eager to leave and hurried toward the other wing, where her room was.

Urbino peeled off the gloves and went to his bathroom to throw them in the wastebasket.

7

Urbino and Milo, the Contessa's chauffeur, managed to move Molly's body to the bed fifteen minutes later. There was no doubt in Urbino's mind now that the scent of perfume was coming from Molly's body. He said nothing to the Contessa, however, who stood solemnly watching them and then placed the little woman's spectacles on the bedside table. She had brought one of her scarves to arrange around Molly's head.

She had no success in keeping alight a small votive candle. The draft from the broken pane—Urbino had closed both the louvered and the glass doors to the loggia—kept blowing it out. When Milo left to have Lucia bring up a candle guard, Urbino mentioned Bambina's visit.

“To keep vigil at Marialuisa's suggestion? Strange,” the Contessa said. She sighed and looked down at Molly's body, which was more grotesque lying on the bed, with the Contessa's scarf around the head, than it had been when it was impaled by the glass. “But—but death makes everyone act strangely, don't you find? Out of character, I mean.”

Lucia came in with the candle guard. The votive flame was properly set alight.

“I think I'll stay here for a few moments by myself,” the Contessa said. She drew her shawl more tightly around her shoulders. “It's very cold in here.”

“I've shut off the radiator.”

The Contessa looked puzzled.

“But why—?” She broke off. “Ah, I see,” she said. “Yes, perhaps that's the best thing to do.”

As Urbino was leaving he reminded her to lock the door behind her.

“And I'd like to have the key, if you don't mind.”

“There's only the one.”

“If you need to go in, I can unlock it easily enough, but Molly should be kept undisturbed.”

“Yes, I suppose you're right,” she said vaguely. She looked at the broken pane. “But there's no lock on the loggia doors and with the pane broken—Listen to me!” She gave a nervous laugh. “As if anyone would want to come in that way. All anyone has to do is just ask for the key.”

“If you want the key to let yourself in, you can have it, but no one else is to come into the room. Do you understand?”

The Contessa might have been about to point out to him that this was, after all, her house, but she held her tongue.

8

In his room Urbino poured himself a whiskey, sat down in the armchair, and opened Molly's lap desk. He first took another quick look at the contract for
The Blood of Venice
, and wrote down the name of Molly's literary agent in London in case he needed to contact him. He then went through the index cards, but found nothing different to add to his original impression. Each contained some episode of Venice's more sensational history.

The small notebook seemed at first to have only more of the same: brief anecdotes about Venice and Venetians throughout history, in which death figured prominently and often melodramatically and grotesquely. Many of the anecdotes had also been on the cards.

From the cards and these entries he could form no opinion of what the book itself would have been like, or might even already be like if she had begun to write it.

But then he came upon an entry with the title “Houses with Pasts.” On the list were the Casino degli Spiriti; the “unfinished” Palazzo Venier dei Leoni, with its history of wild parties both before and after Peggy Guggenheim bought it; the so-called House of Desdemona; the Ca' Rezzonico, where Browning had died, and the Palazzo Vendramin-Calergi, where Wagner had died; the cursed Palazzo Dario. Even the Doges' Palace, which certainly didn't quite qualify as a “house” the way the others did, was on the list.

What surprised him was the last name: the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini. As far as Urbino knew from his own research on the building, it didn't have any bloody or even dubious history, as did the others, but it did have the Caravaggio Room—and the deaths that had taken place in there: the Conte's grandmother, Flora, and Renata.

And now Molly.

She had obviously been interested in the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini before coming to Venice. What had she known about it and where had she gotten her knowledge? And since she had included it on her list of “Houses with Pasts,” he assumed that either she had known about the Caravaggio Room—or had discovered something dark about the palazzo that even he and the Contessa didn't know.

Urbino next went patiently through the address book. It must have been redone recently for there were none of those inevitable crossing-outs of defunct names, addresses, and phone numbers. He didn't recognize any of the names, other than that of Molly's agent. There were five “Wybrows” listed, all of whom lived in London, scattered across its various districts.

He got up and went to the window for a few minutes, looking out at the driving rain. The doors to the loggia were buckling slightly inward from the force of the wind. Worries about the Palazzo Uccello came again, and he went to the telephone and picked it up. Still dead.

Urbino poured himself another whiskey and returned to the contents of the lap desk. At the bottom of a pile of envelopes were two folded sheets of inexpensive notepaper. He unfolded them. They were filled with writing.

Urbino's surprise at finding the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini on Molly's list in her notebook was nothing to what he now felt as he read the two pages. The writing was in Molly's hand, but in something approximating shorthand, with initials and abbreviations, dashes and symbols. It wasn't, however, hard to read. It had a breathless, rushed quality, as if Molly had been transcribing something that was being dictated to her or had been writing it down as quickly as possible because she was afraid of being interrupted.

The sheets were filled with information about himself and the Contessa. The circumstances of his parents' death in the fiery crash with the sugarcane truck outside New Orleans. His brief marriage to Evangeline Hennepin. His inheriting of the Palazzo Uccello through his mother, an Italian-American. His decision to live in Venice. His biographies, with the names of the subjects. His amateur sleuthing. And his friendship with the Contessa.

The Contessa's life was also fully if briefly documented. Her education, when she was simply Barbara Spencer, at St. Brigid's-by-the-Sea in England. Her studies at the Venice music conservatory. Her marriage to the Conte Alvise. Her renovation of the Ca' da Capo. The Da Capo-Zendrini summer house, La Muta, in the hills of Asolo. The childlessness of her marriage. The Conte's death from pneumonia. Her patronage of Venetian causes. What gossipy Venetians called her “Anglo-American alliance” with Urbino for the past fifteen years.