Frail Barrier (37 page)
Authors: Edward Sklepowich
Gaby started to dust Alessandro's theater with the orange cloth. Urbino bid her goodbye and brought the box upstairs to Apollonia. Bianchi was still there, sitting with her in front of scattered papers that looked like legal documents. She hardly said a word, took the box, counted the letters inside, and gave him a curt nod. It was his dismissal.
It seemed warmer outside the Palazzo Pindar than inside. Sunshine fell from a pale blue sky, and even though a cold wind was blowing from the Dolomites, it had an invigorating effect. Most of the snow had melted, but wherever it lingered, it maintained a purity that provided refreshing accents to the scene.
Urbino set out for the Campo San Giacomo dell'Orio. The
calli
were lively with local residents. Tourists seldom found their way into this area, even in the height of summer. In a few minutes, he was walking past the round-apsed church with its square brick campanile that dominated the large, but somehow secretive, square. Children, bundled up against the cold, ran across the stones and rode their tricycles.
He went into a restaurant beside the canal and ordered a plate of
tramezzini
sandwiches and half a liter of red wine. As he ate, he picked up a copy of that day's
Gazzettino
that someone had left on the table. He read the headlines, but nothing caught his interest. His mind was a jumble of many things, and they all centered on the Palazzo Pindar.
The contessa had asked him to keep his ears and eyes open. Olimpia's visit to the contessa, although apparently intended to quench any worries, had had just the opposite effect on him. His curiosity was fired even more.
The time he had spent in the Palazzo Pindar had brought a few revelations. Ercule had showed something other than his usually genial side by mocking Gaby's devotion to the collection and the absence of visitors. He had also made a point of emphasizing that the collection belonged to him and Olimpia as well, and not only Gaby.
As for Gaby, she was as troubled as ever, and her attachment to the family collection was one of the symptoms of her illness. Olimpia and Ercule seemed concerned about her, as well they might be, and they seemed to have genuine feeling for her. But Olimpia's dismissals of her fears of being in danger and Ercule's barbs suggested that their concern and feeling might be compromised by more selfish elements.
Gaby had confided her fears in Mina. Would she be inclined to confide them in him? He had known her for a much longer time, and there was his relationship with Barbara to recommend him further. By telling Mina, she might have hoped that Urbino and Barbara would become aware of her fears. There might be reasons she did not want to speak with either of them directly. Or maybe she had told Mina in the hope that she would say something to Olimpia, and not necessarily to Urbino or the contessa.
Urbino's thoughts returned to the collection, unusual in its inclusion of many disparate objects whose only reason for being together was that they were related to the Pindar clan.
The latest edition to the collection was one of the strangest of all: Alessandro's theater with the carved wooden figures of four living family members, and with those of him and his sister Eufrosina waiting in the wings to make their appearance. Was affection behind the curious effort? Or was it his intention to poke fun at his relatives by turning them into caricatures? Urbino was curious to see what Alessandro did with the figures of Eufrosina and himself.
Urbino finished his wine. Fifteen minutes later he was crossing the Grand Canal in the
traghetto
that ferried passengers between Cannaregio and Santa Croce. The cold wind whipped against his Austrian cape and his eyes smarted.
When the
traghetto
reached the landing at the Campo San Marcuola, he headed toward the Palazzo Uccello, which was in a quiet area of the Cannaregio between the Grand Canal and the lagoon. He kept going over Olimpia's visit to the contessa. She had seemed determined that Gaby's fears should be discounted. It had been the purpose of her trip, hadn't it?
But then Urbino, as he often did, considered the situation from the opposite point of view. This way of thinking often rewarded him with insights that might never have come to him otherwise.
Suppose Olimpia's whole purpose in coming to the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini had not been to influence the contessa to discount Gaby's comments but instead to take them more seriously? She had seemed pleased to find Urbino with the contessa. Perhaps she knew that her visit would have its devious effect more surely and more quickly because of his presence. She must know that she could count on his skepticism, given his experience as a sleuth.
Were Urbino and the contessa playing into her hands? What could her motive be? The Pindar family was fond of games, and this could be one of Olimpia's, and a very serious one indeed.
As Urbino crossed the hump-backed bridge by the Palazzo Uccello, another possibility, closer to his original one, occurred to him.
Maybe Olimpia was not so much clever in making the visit as she was desperate to put them off a scent.
Desperation or a game? Which of the two might it have been?
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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 © 2007 by Edward Sklepowich
Cover design by Elizabeth Connor
ISBN: 978-1-5040-0136-6
This 2015 edition published by MysteriousPress.com/Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
345 Hudson Street
New York, NY 10014
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