Death in the Palazzo (22 page)

“Would you know what time that was?”

“Three forty-seven. I looked at my watch and was surprised at the hour. I got up and went to bed.”

She frowned slightly and seemed about to add something. She remained silent, however, and examined her bracelet, turning it around on her wrist.

“Was there something else, Miss Lydgate?”

“I suppose it's nothing,” she said in the time-honored manner of those who thought very much the opposite. She looked at him directly with her warm brown eyes. “It's just that I have a very highly developed sense of smell. That and my hearing. My eyes are as weak as a newborn kitten's. Anyway, when I went to the door to be sure it was locked, I smelled perfume. Shalimar.”

“You could smell it from the hallway?”

“Oh yes, it came right through the door. The person had put a great deal on.”

“You're sure it was Shalimar?”

“I know my perfumes very well. I must. I'm allergic to most of them. Not, fortunately, to Shalimar.”

“You say ‘fortunately.' Is that because you particularly like the scent or because your future mother-in-law wears it?”

Angelica seemed only mildly surprised.

“For a man you're very perceptive about a woman's perfume. Robert had to ask me what perfume she wore. Maybe you also know that her aunt wears it, too.”

“There's one other thing I'd like to ask you. It's about your great-uncle Andrew Lydgate.”

She seemed amused when Urbino brought up his name.

“Of course you would! I've been waiting.”

“I'm afraid I don't understand.”

“You're becoming less and less perceptive by the minute, Mr. Macintyre. I thought you knew.”

“Knew what?”

She surprised him by lifting off the gold chain and locket she had around her neck. She opened the locket, which sprang noiselessly outward into three oval frames of slightly diminishing size. He was reminded of his earlier image of Chinese boxes.

“Please look.”

He got up and went over. She handed him the locket and chain.

He looked at the three frames. Each held the black-and-white photograph of a different man. One was Robert. Another was a man who faintly resembled Angelica. The third was a man about his own age, perhaps somewhat younger, who stared back at him with intelligent eyes. The man would probably have been considered by most to be attractive in a refined, vaguely insolent sort of way, but this wasn't for Urbino himself to say, for the man in the photograph could almost have been his twin. The similarity gave him a brief but intense feeling of uneasiness, jolting that sense of complacency most people have about their own supposedly unique self.

Urbino now knew why Angelica had looked at him so strangely when she first met him. Bambina's reaction had been even more marked, but of course she had known Lydgate when he looked like this photograph.

And what of Gemma? Had she noted the resemblance between Urbino and the man who almost had become her stepfather?

“Of course I didn't know him like that,” Angelica said. “I remember him when he was in his seventies, but he never really lost the look he has there. Sort of ironic and disdainful. So what is it that you wanted to ask me about Uncle Andrew?”

“Do you remember your uncle saying anything about the time when his fiancée—Gemma's mother—died in the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini? He was here at the time.”

“Oh my, Mr. Macintyre, have you been reading the same kind of books as I have? Surely you aren't suggesting that there's some kind of relationship between our accidents and that long ago time? If you are, I can't be of any help. Dear Uncle Andrew would entertain me with oh-so-many stories but not one of them was about Gemma's mother. It wouldn't have been a suitable topic for a little girl, would it? The death of a mother who had a daughter my own age? But I must tell you, Mr. Macintyre, that once I grew up and learned that he had lost his fiancée, I remembered the sadness on his face whenever the past was mentioned. And one time when I asked him to look through a picture book on Venice with me, his eyes filled with tears. I asked him why. He said that Venice was beautiful but also very sad and melancholy.

“Once, though, he did mention Gemma,” she went on. “Oh, not by name, but he said that he had once known a little girl who was very sweet and who had always been brave even though she had troubles, and that she was now very happy and successful. It was when I was frightened one night by some childish fear. I was jealous and I stopped crying right away, I remember.”

“Have you ever confided this to Gemma?”

“Never! I know she doesn't want to be reminded about that time.”

“Robert warned you?”

“Warned me?” She gave a little laugh. “We've spoken about it on occasion. He knows how much I think of his mother. I liked her long before I even knew him! I met Robert through her after I went to her London exhibition three years ago.” She imparted this piece of information with a reminiscent smile. “I went out of curiosity more than anything else. I knew her name from family gossip. The sad little girl who grew up to be an artist and who was almost my—my step-aunt, I suppose she would have been. I immediately loved her work. It reminded me of Whistler and Sargent, don't you agree? So old-fashioned, in the best sense.”

She got up and lit a kerosene lamp that deepened the shadows in the room and made her eyes seem to recede more deeply into their sockets.

“I introduced myself,” Angelica went on, “and told her that Andrew Lydgate was my great-uncle. She gave me a big kiss and told me that if it hadn't been for my great-uncle, she never would have been an artist. He paid to send her to school in England when she was eighteen, you know. He was a very generous, kind-hearted man.”

“How old were you when he died?”

“Seventeen.”

“What did he die from?”

“He was an old man, Mr. Macintyre. He got pneumonia one winter and died.” She paused as if expecting him to say something. When he didn't, she went on in a slightly higher voice, “I've always been timid about illness and death. I'm afraid I don't know anything more specific than that.”

Urbino asked a few more questions, but her responses became increasingly noncommittal and a contrast to her recent forthrightness. Maybe it was weariness. He had never considered that she might be anything more than a woman inclined to bookish swoons and vapors, but now he seemed to see the sign of something else in her pale face.

Not knowing if his stronger feeling was one of having imposed himself on her or of having been used for her own obscure ends, he thanked her and left.

5

Viola was standing in the hallway.

“Making the rounds of the ladies' chambers, I see,” she said. “I insist on being next.”

She took his arm and led him across to her room. It was the best bedroom after the Contessa's, with Venetian furniture in the Chinese style and two paintings by Longhi. Urbino seated himself in—or more precisely was almost pushed into—a satin and lacquer armchair. Viola ostentatiously took possession of an ottoman and looked up at him, her eyes shining.

“I've just remembered something! I've been cudgeling my brain. It's about Bambina. Remember how we both agreed”—as he had earlier Urbino took note of her choice of pronoun—“that if we know more about Molly we'll get to the bottom of things? Last night when she was having her tête-à-tête with our resident Dr. Caligeri I overheard them talking about somnambulism. He said that Bambina had been a sleepwalker when she was a young girl. She claims that she occasionally does it now, but he doubts it since it's usually outgrown. Molly seemed to find it immensely amusing. She looked over at Bambina and laughed. I don't blame her! Just picture Bambina walking in her sleep along a roof edge or over one of the bridges here, padding along on her tiny little feet with her hands sticking straight out like timbers! Maybe she's his minion or his agent that he sends off during the night to do his evil bidding!”

When Urbino didn't join in her amusement—even to the extent of a smile—she said, “I hope you don't think I'm treating all this lightly. I'm very serious.”

“I'm sure you are.”

“You probably think I should have remembered it before, don't you? But we should both be thankful I remembered it at all. With so much happening, who knows what else we've forgotten—even you!”

6

Bambina entered the conservatory warily and peered around. The storm beat against the panes of glass and the plants swayed.

“Signorina Zeno, how kind of you to come,” Urbino said as he appeared from behind a screen of plants. He spoke in English because it was his experience that people found it difficult to lie in another language and when they did, they often gave telltale signs.

“Bambina,” she reminded him. Her bright red lipstick looked freshly applied, and the aroma of perfume wafted from her—the same one, he was now sure, that had hung in the air of the Caravaggio Room. “Your note said that you'd like to see me as soon as possible. I've never been the kind of girl to keep a man waiting.”

“I'm hoping you can help me. You seem to be an observant person.”

“I've always been praised for it. I could have made a writer, like yourself—or even a painter like poor Gemma. How is she?”

“Still unconscious.”

“Oh, I hope she regains consciousness soon! The longer she doesn't, the more chance that her memory will be impaired, isn't that right?”

“I really don't know. This house has had its share of troubles this weekend.”

“Accidents,” Bambina quickly corrected him. “Terrible accidents.”

She reached up to touch one of the bows in her hair but seemed to think better of it and pulled her hand back and clasped it with the other in her ample lap.

“I hate to see Barbara torturing herself,” Urbino said. “You know how responsible she feels.”

“But Gemma just lost her footing and Molly's death was an act of God! How can we control them? Look at this storm.”

“You're probably right, Bambina.” He paused and smiled at her sympathetically. “You're being very brave. I want you to know that I realize it.”

“Brave? I don't understand.”

“Brave because Molly died in the same room your sister Renata did. It must bring it all back to you.”

“That was so long ago. I was only a little girl.”

“You were young, Bambina, but Gemma was the little girl. They say the past never dies.”

“I hardly remember what my sister looked like.”

“Very beautiful, I've heard. Exceptionally so.”

Bambina held her head a little higher.

“Beautiful, they say, but I was younger.”

“I think you remember what Andrew Lydgate looked like, though.”

“Oh yes!” For a moment there was an unmistakable tenderness in her gaze. “How funny you mention Andrew.”

“Because I look like him?”

She giggled.

“So you know! I wondered if you did. You could be brothers—or twins!”

“It's sad that your sister died right before they were to be married. He must have taken it very hard.”

“Of course, he was very upset,” she said slowly as if she were reciting something imperfectly learned.

“Did your family see much of him after that?”

“For a few months.” Her face clouded. “Just listen to the storm! It's surprising it hasn't come crashing through the windows here.”

“I think it's dying out. We'll get help soon.”

“I hope nothing has happened to Signor Borelli. That will be one more accident Barbara will have to add to her list.”

“I was wondering if there was something you could satisfy my curiosity about, Bambina.”

“Oh, you writers with your curiosity and your—your imagination! They must carry you far away at times.”

“You're very perceptive.”

Bambina preened under the glow of the compliment. It made him feel not at all pleased at what he was doing.

“My curiosity involves your cat, Bambina. You see, I have a cat, too. I found her shivering her little heart out in a park here. Serena's her name. I couldn't help noticing how disturbed you were when Molly mentioned your cat. Her name was Dido, wasn't it? I found that Molly did have a gift at times. She seemed to know some very personal things about me. How sad that her gift died with her. What happened to your cat? That is, if Molly was right about what she said.”

She stared at Urbino and this time didn't restrain her hand from straying up to one of her ribbons.

“Yes,” she said in a low voice, “she was right. I did have a cat. She died. A long time ago.”

“As long ago as the time your sister died?”

Her eyes started to fill with tears and spilled out onto her heavily rouged cheeks. He took out his handkerchief and gave it to her.

“Thank you.” She dabbed at her cheeks. The handkerchief came away pink. “A month or two before.”

“Perhaps if you tell me about it, you'll feel better. I know how it is.”

Hating himself, he reached out and touched her hand.

“Yes, her name was Dido. I had just read the
Aeneid
. I've always been such a reader. All the classics! I—I could have been a professor. Oh, Dido was so pretty—all white and fluffy—and as sweet as could be. She wouldn't leave my side. How devoted she was! She would follow me everywhere. Poor, poor Dido!”

The tears started again and she was forced to do further damage to Urbino's handkerchief.

“It was some strange cat disease. I'm sure it has a name these days but all I knew was that she got very sick and died. So quickly. Horrible! I stayed by her side every minute. Molly's comment brought it all back. Oh, look at what I've done to your handkerchief! I'll wash it and give it back to you. It will be my pleasure.”