Death in the Palazzo (23 page)

She quickly stuffed it into her pocket before he might reclaim it.

“I guess this room hasn't changed much since the last time you were here at the Ca' da Capo, has it?”

“Not much.” Her eyes shifted in the direction of the sink and cabinets. “Barbara has done a wonderful job of improving what needed to be improved and—and leaving other things alone. Mamma and I were talking about it. Barbara is such a marvelous woman.”

“She takes such good care of the roses,” Urbino said. “No aphids or anything. Let me get you one.”

“Oh, please don't bother!”

He went to the sink, where he took shears from the cabinet containing other small implements and various plant foods, sprays, insect killers, gardening mittens, and the remaining rubber gloves. He cut off a full-blown rose, returned the shears to the cabinet, and brought the rose to her.

She stared at the rose with a little frown and dropped it in her lap.

“You're a sensitive man, Signor Urbino. Do you think I could ask you a personal question?”

“What is it?”

“Do you walk in your sleep?”

The question, coming after what Viola had just told him, surprised him.

“Sensitive people often walk in their sleep,” Bambina continued. “
I
do! I wouldn't be surprised if someone saw me walking around one of these nights. But if you do, remember: You mustn't wake me. It could be dangerous. Just take me right back to my room.”

She gave him a grotesquely suggestive smile. She put the rose to her nose and sniffed it.

“I'll remember that. But no, I don't walk in my sleep. By the way, Bambina, what kind of perfume are you wearing? My cousin is visiting me at Christmastime and I think it would be just the thing for her.”

A sly, guarded look came into her eye.

“Shalimar, but I warn you it's very expensive! Mamma berates me for spending so much money on it, but she splashes some on herself from time to time, although I pretend I don't know.”

“It's such a nice scent. Did anyone here ask to borrow some of it?”

“No, of course not!” she said. She seemed to regret her quick denial, however, and added, “But—but maybe someone borrowed Gemma's. She uses the same perfume. She's always said it smelled so nice on me.”

“Do you mind if I smell some of it from the little flask you carry around?”

“Oh, you do notice details, Signor Urbino! Do you do it especially because you know we women love it? Of course, I mean only when the details involve
us!
My little flask you say? Pure silver with a craftsman's mark on the bottom. I've had it for the longest time. But how unfortunate! I don't have it with me now. I wish I did, because you've been so kind and it's so unusual to see a man interested in these things. Oh my, look at the time. I should take a little rest before dinner. You'll excuse me, won't you?”

Urbino waited until she had time to return to her room and then went upstairs to see Dr. Vasco.

7

As he sat across from the octogenarian physician, Urbino felt entombed by the past.

From over the massive bed a full-length portrait of Doge Renier Zeno by a minor thirteenth-century Venetian painter dominated the dark chamber, which was known as the Doge's Room. It had the air of a museum, and was directly across from the Caravaggio Room.

Doge's hats, engravings of the doge's annual marriage with the sea, replicas of the gilded Bucintoro, ducal seals and codices, small modeled hands of wood and gold used for the reckoning of secret ballots—yes, the room was very much a museum and its atmosphere, though enlightening, was oppressive.

Vasco had managed to put his personal imprint on the room, although not as extensively or as calculatedly as Angelica had on hers. His was a matter of disarray, with cast-off clothes, bottles of pills and tubes of ointment, and medical magazines.

Then there was the odor, a stale one, despite the strong draft from the loggia doors, of medicines, mustiness, and exhaled breath.

Vasco offered Urbino a whiskey, but Urbino declined. He wanted to be as clear-thinking as possible and regretted the drinks he had already had.

Urbino got the feeling that he had interrupted the physician's dark thoughts. Rather than resent the intrusion or see it as an opportunity to escape their disturbing implications, however, Vasco immediately drew Urbino into them.

“Do you believe in the power of the mind, Signor Urbino? Little Molly did.” His face clouded. “I have since I was a young man. I look at sweet Gemma and try to communicate all the strength of my mind to her. Get up, Gemma! Wake up! We're all waiting for you.” He shook his head. “Nothing. But the mind's power to do good should be equal to its power to do wrong, yes? I try very hard to concentrate my mind on the good, but sometimes the bad has a power equal to ten—a hundred—a thousand times its force! I—”

He reached for a glass of whiskey on the cluttered table and drank most of it down.

“I'm an old man, Signor Urbino. Listen to the old, they say. It's very bad advice. We have seen too much—ah!
done
too much—to offer any hope.”

Vasco's words carried a heavy burden of not just pain but guilt. This was consistent with his behavior on other occasions, and Urbino couldn't help linking it with what he had just said about the power of the mind to do evil. What proofs of this might he be torturing himself with? Did they have anything to do with Renata's death? Molly's? Or with Gemma's fall down the stairs?

Urbino needed information and he could see that he might be able to play on Vasco's apparent feelings for Gemma to get it.

“I hope you won't think that I'm asking you to betray a professional confidence, Dottore, but is Gemma ill? Aside from her accident, I mean?”

“There's no confidence to betray. I'm not her personal physician. I agree that she hasn't been looking well lately. So disturbing to see it. She's always been healthy.”

“She wasn't a frail child, then?”

“Not at all! Very healthy. Perfect in every way—and so intelligent!”

“How did she take the death of her mother?”

Vasco picked up a ducal medal from the table next to him and examined it.

“Children are resilient. Sometimes it can be disturbing how resilient they are.”

“She must have had many questions.”

“Not very many. We told her the things you tell a child. That God wanted her mother for an angel.”

“She must have had more specific questions later.”

“Actually, she didn't.” He put the medal down. “And none of us ever spoke of that time. I'm sure she has only vague memories now, if any.”

Urbino, who couldn't have agreed less, said, “Tell me about her mother.”

Without hesitation Vasco embarked on a long encomium. Renata had been the brightest, the kindest, the most generous, the most beautiful, the most sincere, the most everything, as far as Vasco was concerned. Yet, according to the Conte's memoirs, Vasco had expressed resentment against Renata and had told Alvise that he didn't intend to be made a fool of. None of that animosity seemed to have survived her death. Urbino wondered if Renata had encouraged Vasco only to drop him when Lydgate had come along. What had their relationship been like? Why had she preferred first Bellini and then Lydgate to him?

As he was trying to think of some way to get this information, Vasco surprised him by seeming to show his awareness of Urbino's thoughts.

“Bellini started to come round when she was barely fifteen! Almost three times her age and with a mountain of lire! He made his offer and Renata was obliged by her parents to accept. She didn't care a fig about money, but she was just a girl and couldn't stand up to them. Especially to Marialuisa. She's got a will of iron! When Bellini died, I thought that we might marry. I already loved Gemma like my own daughter. But then Lydgate came into the picture,” he said bitterly.

“Renata must have been independent enough by then. She had inherited Bellini's money, I assume.”

“He had lost much of it. Renata and Gemma were left with very little. With what I could earn, we would have been comfortable enough. But—but Renata had Gemma to think about then, and in those uncertain times she felt she should make a marriage that would secure Gemma's future. She was only thinking of Gemma, I tell you! Lydgate was rich. Renata sacrificed herself—sacrificed us, the life we could have had—and accepted Lydgate.”

Although Urbino knew very little about Renata, this picture of her as a self-sacrificing young woman didn't ring true. He doubted if Vasco believed it now or at any time. The man seemed driven by a desire not so much to remember the past as to revise it.

Vasco got up and replenished his glass. This time Urbino joined him.

When Urbino asked Vasco how Renata and Lydgate had met, the doctor confirmed what Urbino already knew from the Conte's memoir. Lydgate had been a friend of the Zenos' English tutor.

“There was some expectation that he might marry Bambina at first. Marialuisa encouraged it, but then Bellini died and the next I knew, he was courting Renata.”

It was an old-fashioned term, but Vasco was in many ways an old-fashioned man.

“How did Bambina take it?”

“She eventually came to accept it.”

Urbino decided to change his tack.

“Did Molly confide anything in you during the time the two of you spent alone together?”

“We were never alone together!”

“I didn't necessarily mean completely alone, but you retired with her to a corner on one or two occasions.”

“Only to talk about the power of the mind. But I don't see what this has to do with anything! We were talking about poor Gemma.”

“Yes, about Gemma and her mother. But one more question about Molly, if you don't mind. How do you think she died?”

“How? An accident! Just like Gemma.”

“I don't think so, and neither do you. Surely you noticed the same thing I did. There was only a pool of blood around Molly's head. None at any great distance. And yet her artery was pierced by the glass of the door. In all probability she was dead before her head went through the glass.”

Vasco looked lost and frightened.

“There could be other explanations.”

“Possibly. It's your field of expertise, not mine.”

Urbino took a last sip of his whiskey and got up.

“But I'll tell you one thing, Dottore. With this death in the Caravaggio Room there
will
be an autopsy. Whatever might have stopped one from being done on Renata—money, influence, whatever—isn't going to have the same result this time around.”

Urbino expected Vasco to defend himself against the implications of this, but he remained grimly silent. Urbino thanked him for the drink and bid him good-day.

As he was going to his room to rest and mull things over, Lucia approached him with a little silver tray. It held a white envelope.

He opened it and found a soiled visiting card. On it was engraved “The Signora Marialuisa Zeno” and on the reverse side was the handwritten message in Italian: “Signor Macintyre, I would like to see you at once, in my room, if it is convenient for you.”

8

Mamma Zeno was staying in a room with less apt associations than Vasco's. Known as the Room of the Courtesan, it took its name from the Contessa Querini-Benzon, who supposedly had slept in it after her dalliance with Byron when she had been in her sixties. A painting of her by Longhi hung on the damasked wall.

Mamma Zeno was seated on a massive chair at the far end of the room, her thin black cane like a scepter in one hand. She was so small and frail, and the chair so large, that it was improbable she had climbed into it herself; more likely she had been helped into it or even carefully placed and arranged. Feeble light struggled through a crack between the drawn drapes.

“Sit down, Signor Macintyre.”

An almost imperceptible nod indicated which seat it should be: a low one with considerably more history than comfort. Urbino seated himself and had the peculiar sense of having to look up at the tiny, perched woman.

As his eyes accustomed themselves to the dimness, he saw that she had already changed for dinner. Her shrunken body was once again overwhelmed by her clothing—by the stiff black and gold dress, the gray shawl, and the black Burano lace wound around her head that artfully concealed whatever hair she still might claim. No jewelry except for her worn gold wedding band. She resembled one of those effigies of saints, pinned with lira notes and carried through the streets of Italian towns on a litter.

“Best to have come to me first with your questions about my family, Signor Macintyre,” she said in Italian without any preliminaries. “A man living in my country as long as you have should understand these things.”

Her voice, although at the mercy of her shallow breathing, had a peculiar command. It seemed to issue not from the old woman in front of him, but from another, much younger one inside.

“You have been rude,” she went on, “but you yourself have suffered most. Only
I
can answer your questions. Only
I
know the truth.”

Urbino couldn't have been more on his guard if he had seen the hilt of a stiletto glinting in the ample folds of her dress.

“My dear, dead daughter Renata still seems to have the power she had in life. The only immortality we have. Ah, yes, the effect we have on others … yes, on others … I will tell you.”

She remained very still, her little head cocked to one side as if she were listening to something beyond the room, beyond the storm outside.

“Wait until you are an old man, Signor Macintyre. If you are so lucky—or unlucky! My eyes water and my mouth is always dry. And my joints are on fire! There's some virtue in dying young, especially when you are beautiful like my Renata was. You want to know about her. Because she died in the same room … that silly woman, Signora Wybrow … dead and there's an end to her life. We still have it.”