Frail Barrier (31 page)

Night had fallen by the time the taxi finally came. Urbino had waited impatiently for it by Harry's Bar, and had almost considered jumping on the next vaporetto to San Tomà.

And now, to add to his anxiety, they were making slow progress up the Grand Canal. Urbino wished they could go faster but too many boats were in the water, not just public transportation and taxis, but more gondolas than usual, crammed with revelers, and numerous rowboats and small craft in which families and friends were extending the day's celebrations.

Light spilling from the windows of the palaces and from lantern-lit boats was doubled in the dark waters. The Gritti Palace was illuminated, its terrace restaurant busy with diners. The windows of the suite that Urbino believed might be Hollander's seemed to show the glow of light behind its draperies, but like the death's head of the fiery-haired woman it was most likely a deception of the eye.

On the other side of the Grand Canal across from the hotel, the windows of Zoll's apartment were not only dark but also tightly shuttered.

People danced on the Accademia Bridge, and waved and shouted from the railings. Amplified rock music and a laser beam came from the Campo Santo Stefano. From the windows of the palaces beyond the wooden bridge drifted quieter music and softer lights. People stood on balconies. Occasionally their laughter and an odd word or phrase found its way to Urbino's ear despite all the other sounds. It reminded him that most people on this evening, at least for these hours, were far removed from the kind of anxious thoughts troubling him.

The taxi passed the
machina
that had been constructed between the Ca' Foscari and the Palazzo Balbi. The floating platform was now empty of its dignitaries. Its carved and gilded details, its garlands and flags, only reinforced its ghostlike impression, its evocation of how death swept across every person's stage, no matter if it was as sumptuous as Zoll's frescoed and tapestried rooms or as humble as the Gonella apartment.

A few moments later, Urbino was getting out at San Tomà.

The narrow
calle
leading to Claudio's apartment was dark. None of the celebration had spilled into it.

Lights showed behind the windows of the apartment.

The broken entrance door gave Urbino access without any trouble. Two dark rectangular spaces along the hall marked where doors had led into the former apartments, which were now gutted.

He started to walk carefully – and quietly – up the staircase to the first-floor landing. He remembered the damaged steps near the landing and managed to move close to the wall where the steps were intact.

The building was silent.

Urbino went up to Claudio's door. It was slightly ajar, as if it hadn't been closed properly. Muffled voices came from inside, but Urbino couldn't identify them.

Suddenly, a woman's high-pitched laughter shattered the silence. Urbino started. It sounded exactly like Perla Beato's laughter. Urbino couldn't tell if it had come from Claudio's apartment or through the broken window that opened on to a well.

He pushed the door inward as carefully as he could. Light showed at the end of the dark hall.

Framed in the doorway of the living room, with his back toward Urbino, was Claudio. He was still wearing his white trousers and striped T-shirt. All Urbino could see of the person he was staring at was a hand. In the hand was a small, delicate pistol, the kind preferred by women.

Urbino exchanged a look with Claudio. Urbino hoped he understood what he should do.

Claudio moved toward the bedroom. Hollander watched him sharply. Claudio stepped into the dark room. He turned to the left along the wall. Moments passed. No sound came from the bedroom.

‘What's going on?' Hollander was breathing heavily.

He edged sideways to the empty doorway. With rapid movements of his head he tried to keep on eye on both Urbino and the bedroom.

He entered the bedroom, looking toward the left, where he trained the pistol, seeking out Claudio.

He emitted a sharp cry as he stepped on one of the rotted, exposed beams. The pistol went off as he fell to the stone floor below.

Epilogue

Florian's Ribbon

A few days after Nick Hollander fell to his death, Urbino and the contessa were in the Chinese Salon at Florian's. It was their first opportunity to discuss what had happened.

The Piazza San Marco beyond their windows had regained a less frenetic rhythm. The tourist wave that had crested during the weekend of the regatta had fallen back, leaving something resembling whirlpools and eddies. People had more time and certainly more space to appreciate the beauty around them, and the Venetians, who had partied themselves out, had settled back into the far more placid manner that was characteristic of them.

Urbino watched two elderly Venetian ladies pass by the windows. They moved slowly, talking in a quiet manner. With an air of patience they regarded the tourists taking photographs and feeding pigeons on the stones of the square. It wouldn't be long before their walks under the arcade skirted a much more serene and sociable space. They only had to wait a little while longer.

Urbino turned his attention to the contessa, dressed in royal blue knits that set off her honey-blonde hair and the gold of the bracelet that the conte had given her.

On most occasions, she had a keen appreciation for food, but this afternoon she was ravenous.

She had already devoured almost an entire plate of tea cakes, except for the one that he had taken when he saw them disappearing so rapidly. She had then gone on to scones, marmalade, and clotted cream, and was now giving the
Coppa Fornarina
no chance to begin to melt. Delicately but determinedly, she took spoonfuls of the macaroon-and-cherry-garnished
gelato
.

‘Are you all right, Barbara?'

‘I've decided not to restrain myself these days if that's what you mean. I intend to get my fair share, and more than that. Look at poor Zoll – and Albina and Luca Benigni. Just a month ago, they were alive, and thought there would be a tomorrow. Maybe even Zoll did.'

Urbino couldn't disagree with the contessa's philosophy. He remained silent. She finished the ice cream. The waiter brought her a pot of first flush jasmine tea and a Campari soda for Urbino.

‘How did you know,
caro?'

‘It turned out to be quite simple. Tables and chairs, for one thing. Not the ones here. The ones at Da Valdo. But they would have meant nothing without the circumstances of Albina's restoration of your bracelet.'

Urbino explained how the chairs upturned on the table tops in the café on his way to Florian's after the regatta had finally made things fall into place. He had remembered Albina doing the same at Da Valdo the night she died. It had been the dose that formed the precipitate.

‘I noticed that the bottoms of the chairs at Da Valdo had loosely intertwined slats. You could put your fingers through in places.'

‘What does it signify?'

‘Everything. According to the waiter at Da Valdo, Luca Benigni was there on the night of the first storm – the one he died in. He must have had the new will with him. He probably had just had an argument with Hollander. He had to keep the will out of his hands. If anything happened to it, Luca would have had nothing.'

‘And Hollander almost everything.'

‘Exactly.'

‘Hollander must have pursued him through the streets. Luca stopped at Da Valdo, could easily have slipped the will in its envelope between the slats of his chair, and left. He figured that when Hollander accosted him, he'd have no way of getting the will from him. Luca could go back after getting rid of Hollander, collect it from under the chair, and put it in a safe place, where it should have been to begin with.'

‘But all of this is speculation. All three are dead – Zoll, Luca, and Hollander.' Then the contessa added, ‘And Albina.'

‘But we have the will. Albina must have found it between the slats of the chair when she was cleaning up. Because Zoll had written it in German, she couldn't make any sense of it. She might not even have known what language it was. She turned it over to Claudio as she did everything else she found – or rather she left it at Florian's for him. She figured he would know what it was, what it meant.'

The contessa nodded.

Urbino then explained how Hollander, who assumed Luca had the will on his person, must have struck him with a brick or a stone after pursuing him from Da Valdo into Dorsoduro.

‘It could have been with any of the bricks at the building site,' Urbino said. ‘Or maybe it was even with a piece of the parapet stone if it had already fallen from the building. One way or another, if the parapet stone fell before or after Luca was dead, it was something that played nicely into Hollander's hands. As for the will, a quick search after he had Luca didn't turn it up.'

Urbino paused and took a sip of his Campari soda.

‘And then Hollander knew he was really in trouble,' he went on. ‘As long as the will was in existence, it could link him to Luca's apparently accidental death during the storm. He had to find it. He probably backtracked along Luca's route to Da Valdo and then to Zoll's apartment. But of course he found nothing. He was tortured by the thought that maybe the will had blown away and was waiting to be found somewhere. He must also have turned Zoll's apartment upside down – on more than one occasion. When I was in the apartment the day you went to Torcello with him, I noticed how books and letters and other things seemed to have been taken from their places and haphazardly put back.'

‘And he thought that Luca had given it to Albina or that she had found it at Da Valdo.'

‘As I see it, he accosted her the night of the second storm after she went out again. I sensed that someone was following us earlier. Maurizio felt the same thing the night of the first storm. Hollander must have been stalking her both times. On the night she died, he approached her, threatened her, perhaps pushed her around a bit. She might have mentioned that she found something at Da Valdo, but I doubt she had time to tell him she had left it at Florian's for Claudio. She collapsed. It was all too much for her weak heart. He left her dying in the storm. But the will was still out there somewhere.'

‘And it was only logical for him to assume it was in the Gonella apartment. So he was the one who broke in.'

Urbino nodded.

‘But what he found was Giulietta's little pistol,' he said. ‘He pocketed it just in case he might need it. The man was desperate. It wasn't only a question of the money. He was now responsible for two deaths. It wasn't the sale of Zoll's apartment that kept him here, but finding the evidence of the will and destroying it. It was your regatta party that showed him the last step he had to take, the one that could save him.'

‘My party? What do you mean?'

‘Your bracelet. Perla mentioned how Albina restored it to you through Claudio after you had lost it.'

‘And so he went after Claudio.'

‘And found him easily enough. Any of the waiters could have told him where he lived. Florian's was very proud of him. Still is.'

Not only was Claudio the hero of the scene at Florian's these days, with his photograph displayed in the entranceway, but also Urbino. He had saved Claudio – not to mention himself – from probable death at Hollander's hands. Giulietta's little pistol could have disposed of them both after Hollander had got what he was looking for.

‘Claudio says that when he returned from Florian's after the regatta, he fixed himself a drink, and then opened the envelope. Inside, he found two pages written in what he knew was German. With the signatures on it, he figured it was a contract of some kind. He decided he'd call me in the morning. I would look at it and decide what should be done. He had just put the will between the pages of
Regate e Regatanti
when there was a knock on his door. Hollander rushed in, took out the gun, and demanded the envelope.'

‘If you had arrived any later than you did, you might have known Hollander had killed Claudio, and even why, but you would have had no proof.'

‘It would have been a terrible situation.'

‘You and Claudio aren't going to have any problem with the police, are you?'

‘There will be an investigation, but depending on how you look at it, it was either self-defense or an accident.'

‘I feel guilty saying this,
caro
, but it's a good thing he died the way he did.'

‘Don't feel guilty. It's possible that he might have escaped any punishment. After all, the will doesn't prove that he was responsible for Luca's and Albina's deaths but only that he had motivation. With a good lawyer …'

The contessa stared at him.

‘And Zoll's death?'

‘There was no reason to kill Zoll. Hollander had to wait for only a short time.'

The contessa eyed a wedge of chocolate cake being carried on a plate by their waiter to a French couple in the corner.

‘Who will get what Zoll left Luca?' she asked.

‘First of all, the will has to be authenticated. There most likely will be some legal wrangling by Zoll's relatives, maybe even Hollander's mother. The witnesses to the will are Germans, a married couple, it would appear, since their last name is the same. They were probably tourists Zoll met. The police are going through their records to see where the couple was staying.'

All tourists had to be registered with both the police and the Ministry of Tourism. It would only be a matter of time before the two Germans were located, and their signatures verified.

‘Once that's done,' Urbino said, ‘Clementina will get everything. It doesn't seem as if Luca had a will of his own. Not that he would have thought about it at such a young age. Clementina is his only living relative. She'll be able to give her shop a big infusion.'