Death in the Palazzo (31 page)

Light glowed behind shuttered windows on the second story. The windows belonged to the Contessa's bedroom. If it had been the windows of her
salotto blu
, it would have been almost definite proof that she was waiting for someone. Instead the Contessa, who usually retired before eleven, had turned on her lights because she couldn't sleep, as was her custom.

Should he ring the bell and speak with her? As soon as he formulated this question, however, he moved backward slightly, to conceal himself in a mass of shadows cast by the building behind him. He didn't want her to see him if she happened to look out of the window. This was the indirect, but clear answer to his question. He wouldn't disturb her, for he knew his friend well. Whatever distress she might be feeling would only be increased by this sudden descent on her privacy. When she was ready to confide in him, he would be there to help. Until then, he would keep his distance.

As he turned away from the Contessa's palazzo, he felt the presentiment again that something was not quite right behind its walls. Exactly what, he didn't know, but he was certain that it must have something to do with the old woman who had been staring so solemnly at her outside of Florian's.

3

Since that first day in Venice when Urbino and Habib had floated in style to the Palazzo Uccello, Urbino had played the indulgent
cicerone
, answering the younger man's constant flow of questions and showing him around the city that he himself was discovering again. It wasn't just that absence, like some fine gold dust, had restored value to all the familiar scenes, but that in the deep pool of Habib's enthusiasm he saw a distant reflection of his own original feelings.

It would be wrong to assume, however, that everything was a delight to Habib. He was critical, usually of smells, and impatient of all the walking.

On more than one occasion, he would come to an abrupt halt on the parapet of a bridge or at the foot of a palace's staircase or in a long museum corridor, and loudly lament, “
Sidi
, my uncles!” Urbino would good-humoredly correct him—“
ankles
, not uncles”—and, with just as much good humor, wait for him to regain his strength so that they could cross off another sight from Urbino's impossibly long list.

The Contessa had been making things a bit easier for the both of them lately by putting her motorboat at their disposal when she didn't need it herself.

One of the things Urbino could count on during these outings—other than Habib's malapropisms and theatrical displays of fatigue—was his painter's eye for details. Whether it was a question of a bossage of gargoyles and
putti
on the facade of a palazzo, or a lion's head door knocker, or a shrine in an out-of-the-way corner, Habib saw it and pointed it out to Urbino. He then drew it in his sketchbook, which he always had with him.

At one-thirty in the afternoon, two weeks after Urbino's conversation with the Contessa at Florian's, Urbino went to join Habib in the Corte Seconda del Milion. Habib was completing some sketches of the boyhood home of Marco Polo and one of the nearby covered passageways. He showed them to Urbino.

“Very good, Habib.”

“I want to come back and capture this same spot with my paints. The light in Venice is very tricky.”

“And it's not the only thing that is! You've done enough for today. You've more than earned a good lunch.”

“I could eat a horse!” Habib enthused, for whom idioms and cliches were mint-new.

“Good, but I have something different in mind. But not here. On Burano.”

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 1997 by Edward Sklepowich

Cover design by Elizabeth Connor

ISBN: 978-1-5040-0133-5

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