Death in the Palazzo (19 page)

He had reached no conclusions when he met Viola coming down the staircase to the dining room. He led her into the picture gallery through a large doorway above which was a marble coat of arms of the Da Capo-Zendrini family. He closed the door behind them.

Only three Venetian walnut divans and a gilt chest competed with the offerings of the room. The lacquered walls were covered with portraits of various sizes, although the full-length monumental predominated. There were several pastel portraits by Rosalba Carriera, mainly half-lengths of old women with fans and gentlemen in wigs. But their delicacy was more than a little overwhelmed by the more dramatic offerings of Titian, Lorenzo Lotto, Tintoretto, Veronese, and Van Dyck. Soon Gemma's portrait of the Contessa would take its place among the portraits by the great and by those only slightly better known than their subjects.

The different styles in dress and art could in no way disguise the characteristic Da Capo-Zendrini features—the aquiline noses, shrewd eyes, pale Venetian skin, and unmistakable air of unconsidered privilege. Even those who were Da Capo-Zendrini by marriage and not birth seemed to share these features, perhaps by that peculiar sympathy and transformation wrought between husbands and wives through the years.

This couldn't be said for the Contessa, however, whose portrait was soon to hang on these walls; exactly where, given their crowded condition, was far from clear.

Urbino thought that he and Viola would retire to one of the divans, but the portraits were initially too much temptation for her. She preferred to walk around the room, examining them silently. Urbino wondered how much of them she was taking in, for she had the air of having just awakened. Her eyes were dreamy and slightly out of focus, and her angular face seemed as pale as the powdered face of the eighteenth-century woman she was now standing in front of.

“Would you tell me again how you came to meet Molly?” he asked quietly, as if afraid of disturbing her train of thought.

She said nothing at first but passed from the pastel to the dark, passionate Tintoretto of an elderly bearded man with the mien of a biblical patriarch.

“So you think Molly's death wasn't an accident.”

It was a statement, not a question. Before he could respond, she went on: “And you probably think that Gemma's fall is related in some way to Molly's death.”

Her directness reminded Urbino of how different she was from her twin despite their unsettling physical similarities.

“I've been doing a lot of thinking myself, and I agree with you,” she went on, treating his silence as a tacit agreement. “The more we know about Molly, the better position we'll be in.”

Urbino didn't fail to note the “we.”

She walked over to the bright silks and brocades of a Veronese lady. On the bodice of her gown was pinned the peacock brooch. Viola bent closer to look at the way Veronese had rendered it. Still looking at the portrait, she described how she and Sebastian had met Molly on the train. It matched what Sebastian had already told him in every detail, even down to how she had been the one to suggest that Molly join the Contessa's house party.

“It seemed the right thing to do,” she said, turning to Urbino. “Barbara has always said that Sebastian and I could come down with one or two of our friends. I didn't think she'd mind—and I really don't think she did, except for the number thirteen, that is, and because she had to use the Caravaggio Room.”

“Did Molly give any indication that she had an ulterior motive in accepting?”

“I've been going over all my conversations with her with just that in mind, but I can't come up with anything. I've been thinking of something—Oh, it's silly, but you know what it's like when an idea gets lodged in your head!”

“What is it?”

She stared with a little frown at a nineteenth-century portrait of a woman with all the Da Capo-Zendrini features, displaying the peacock brooch on her black bombazine.

“It's just that I was wondering if—if she could have known who the other guests were? Other than Sebastian and me and—and you and Gemma, that is. You see, Sebastian and I mentioned you both. Don't you see what it might mean if she knew ahead of time who was going to be here?” She gripped Urbino's arm. “That all her spouting away about the past was arranged ahead of time! She seemed to know such a lot of strange things,” she continued with a touch of what sounded like wonder in her deep voice. “But why did she do it and what does it have to do with everything?”

That Viola's thinking so closely paralleled his own was only marginally less surprising to him than that she was so freely expressing it. Was she trying to gain some kind of advantage? For what purpose? Urbino still felt sufficiently disconcerted from his encounter with Sebastian in the library to be sure of his own responses. Something of what he was feeling must have communicated itself to her.

When she looked at him, her eyes seemed wounded. It wasn't just their usual melancholy cast, but something different, deeper darker.

“You don't trust me, do you? Oh, I know how it is! Everyone's a suspect—everyone except the detective and his sidekick! And that's indisputably Barbara, isn't it? You've got to follow the rules. But don't get too clever or—or you might fall into a trap of your own making! I don't care what you think about me—or what you
think
you should think about me, which is more to the point—but I'm going to do whatever I can to help you find out what happened to Molly. Whatever we manage to discover we can turn over to the police, once this bloody storm is over. Agreed?”

Urbino, who felt that there was much to ponder in her behavior, said, “I think you should stay out of it.”

“But I'm already right in the middle of it, aren't I?” She looked around the room at all the portraits of the dead Da Capo-Zendrinis and seemed to shiver.

15

Lunch was strained. Oriana and Mamma Zeno stayed in their rooms, and Robert was still with his mother. Looking around at those who had come down, Urbino wondered if they had done so only to show they had nothing to hide from the others' scrutiny and to remove any suspicion that might be generated if they chose to be alone.

Of course, there was also the very real possibility that they were afraid to be alone—all, perhaps, except one, who only wanted to give that appearance and had come down for that very purpose.

The Contessa used a lot of nervous energy seeing that everyone got what they wanted at the sideboard, and then sat down with a small plate. As if in imitation or comradeship with Angelica, she only picked at it for form's sake. Her eyes kept darting from one guest to another as she carried on what turned out to be a monologue about how she was sure the storm was abating and how Filippo must have reached the hospital or another source of help by now. They needed to wait only a short time more.

No one pointed out that the storm seemed to have renewed its strength during the past hour and that they should have started fearing for Filippo a long time ago. Surely if all had gone well with him he would have managed to get Gemma some help before now.

Only Bambina, who made three trips to the buffet—twice for herself and once for Vasco, who seemed drained of all energy—ventured to utter anything longer than a sentence. She said that Molly wouldn't want them moping around just because she was lying upstairs dead. She somehow seemed to think—and expressed herself vividly on the point—that Molly had been a game sort and that her “gift” had made her as philosophical as Socrates. As for Gemma, she had known her since Gemma was a child and was sure that she'd want the party to go on.

“Or at least to have her portrait unveiled,” she said, directing this to the Contessa. “In honor of her.”

“Little Gemma's not dead,” Vasco said, showing more energy than he had since entering the dining room.

Bambina looked as if she were about to snap something back at him, but instead popped a piece of bread into her mouth, then got up and began to prepare another plate, this one for her mother. Vasco excused himself and said that he wanted to look in on Gemma.

When he had gone, Sebastian, in his inebriated state, came close to shouting that he agreed with Bambina. He got unsteadily to his feet, made a self-conscious gesture of throwing back his thick auburn locks, and raised his wineglass. “To each his hemlock! Let the revels go on!”

Urbino, who throughout lunch had preferred close observation of the others to conversation, noted the look of disgust on Viola's face and the shocked one on Bambina's.

“You've had more than enough to drink, Sebastian,” the Contessa said.

“But there you're absolutely wrong, dear cousin! I intend to get thoroughly soused before the cavalry ride in—or should I say float in!”

16

“Never! Not one single, solitary word!” the Contessa insisted in a low voice. Urbino and the Contessa were alone together in the
salotto blu
after lunch, the others having gone their individual ways. He had just asked her if she had ever said anything about his parents to either Sebastian or Viola.

He had told her about his searches of Molly's and Gemma's rooms, his reading of Molly's journal and other writings, and his conversations with Vasco, Robert, and the twins. He hadn't told her, however, that Viola had expressed strong doubts about Molly's accident or that Molly had apparently written out a large check to Sebastian. The twins were family, and he wanted to get a clearer picture before he spoke to her about them. Neither had he told her about having found the brooch in the pocket of Gemma's robe or his belief that the scent of perfume surrounding Molly's body was the same perfume Gemma used.

“And neither Viola nor Sebastian knew about the Caravaggio Room before you told them about it,” she was saying. “It's been a well-kept secret, as you know.”

“Yes, but as I also know, secrets are shared with a select few.”

“Never the twins or anyone in my family at all!”

“You never said anything to Gemma?”

“But she didn't need to be told about the Caravaggio Room. Oh, you mean about your parents. No, not a word.”

Urbino thought for a few moments, then said, “But Oriana knows.”

“Of course she knows! She has for years! You're not suggesting any connection between her and Molly?”

“No, but Oriana isn't the most discreet of people, and she and Gemma spent time together.”

“A couple of visits to the Guggenheim, that was it. Oriana appreciates all that insane art, and you know how I hate that place even more since the murder.”

The Contessa was referring to one of his previous cases that involved a Dali painting at the Guggenheim and a beautiful young artist's model whose body had been discovered floating by the water steps of the museum.

“Let me ask her,” the Contessa went on after giving a sigh that seemed to evoke all the personal sorrows for her at that time. “I know how to handle her. She's a bundle of nerves at the moment.” She shook her head slowly. “But aren't we all?”

Together they listened to the rain driving against the window, as it had so many years ago during the original house party.

“I hope Filippo is all right. He should have reached the hospital long before now.”

“True, but maybe even the ambulances can't get out. They might be sending someone on foot.”

Surely she, too, must realize this was an unrealistic hope, but she said nothing to contradict him.

Without in any way preparing her, Urbino took the brooch out of his pocket and put it on the table next to her collection of ceramic animals.

“My brooch! Where did you find it?”

When he told her, she was speechless.

“Gemma took it?” she eventually said. “But why?”

“It's not at all definite that she took it. It was in her pocket. Someone could have put it there before or after she fell. Or maybe she found it in someone's room and was bringing it to me.”

“When the thief pushed her down the stairs? The person who murdered Molly? Because that's what you're thinking, aren't you? That the theft and the murder are somehow related?”

“Yes, but maybe they aren't at all.”

“But that would mean that there are two maniacs around—one pushing a woman's head through a door, if that's what happened to poor Molly, and another one pushing an ill woman down a flight of stairs! No, they're one and the same, you can be sure of that.”

“Unless Gemma did steal it and was the one to murder Molly.”

“The only comfort that would give me was that we wouldn't have to sleep with our doors locked. Gemma's in no condition to do anyone any harm.”

“But that doesn't mean that someone else might not carry through what she set in motion.”

“An accomplice?”

“Or someone who might want to protect her. And there's another thing. Remember I mentioned the scent of perfume from Molly's body? Well, I'm almost convinced it's Shalimar. Gemma used Shalimar.”

“I could have told you that! And so does Bambina!”

Urbino now realized where his other association with the scent came from: the flask that Bambina carried with her all the time.

The Contessa stood up abruptly.

“I'll leave you to sort it all out and go up to talk with Oriana and get some real work done!”

“Here,” Urbino said. “Take your brooch.”

He handed it to her.

“I'd prefer if you kept it,” she said. “I know it's unlikely that it would be taken twice, and if what you suspect about Gemma is true—”

“It's only a possibility,” he interrupted. Before she could launch another exasperated stream of retorts, he quickly told her what he wanted her to do with the brooch. Her gray eyes opened wide.

17

After the Contessa had gone, Urbino sat thinking. His intuition told him that there was a link between Gemma and Molly other than the perfume, which was as much of a link between Bambina and Molly.