THE IRREGULAR CASEBOOK OF SHERLOCK HOLMES (16 page)

‘Then, as I will be unable to earn my living as an artist, I may as well go back to being a consulting detective!’

‘Holmes, you look every inch the elderly gentleman artist! And these sketches are very good.’

We made for our rooms.

‘They did not help me to play the Venetian, Watson. The dialect defeats me. I have picked up enough Italian in my visits to get by as a visitor from another region, though, which has enabled me to achieve rather more than these hopeless daubs. I have been down to the area of San Trovaso, called
Squero.
It is the repair yard for gondolas, much used as a picturesque subject for artists. Vessels are taken there for caulking, repair, and painting. They also repair
sandalos
, like the one we saw after its collision yesterday.’

Holmes paused to let us into his room.

‘They say
Squero
is a Venetian term for a carpenter’s chisel, but I have a feeling it might derive from
eskharion
, a launching slipway.’

He smiled at my impatience.

‘As I guessed, the boat had been taken there for repair. It was minor damage, but our dapper friend would realise that it must render the boat instantly identifiable, and therefore easy to trace. It was being licked over when I left, and will be ready for collection later today. Whoever collects it may well lead us to our quarry. It may mean a boring wait. I am tempted to hang on to that borrowed easel and finish one of my artistic masterpieces!’

By the time we embarked on our mission, the fog had thickened again.

‘Curse our luck, Watson. If this gets much worse, we will not be able to follow a hand in front of our faces, let alone the
sandalo!
Still, we must treat life as a game of chance, and make something of even the worst of throws.’

On our orders, Paulo stopped our vessel out of sight of the repair yard, and we moved closer on foot. Holmes set up his easel and made a play of working on a view of the misty scene of beached vessels. I smoked my pipe and watched him work. Despite his self-denigration, his work clearly showed that the artistic streak of his family was strong in him. Despite the chill, it was a not unpleasant hour or so before Holmes dropped his brush and tapped me on the shoulder.

A remarkable scene was taking place on the slipway. A giant figure was shambling towards the water, carrying the
sandalo
as a normal man might carry a Gladstone bag! The easel and picture were left forgotten as we ran back and entered the gondola.

The
sandalo
was a limber craft, and those immense arms well capable of powering the boat at a speed that might have embarrassed us, but the giant seemed to be in no hurry. We overtook him and moved just fast enough to keep him in sight. His position, facing backward at the oars, prevented him from seeing us. At times he would disappear from view but a brief reduction of speed from Paulo would bring us back in range. If he had turned to look, he would have glimpsed only one of many black vessels anonymously plying their trade on the canals.

It was a weird journey, slowly ‘following’ our quarry from in front, wallowing through the foggy, weed-hung canals to the sound of water slopping against the walls of
palazzos
and the mournful, muffled clangour of bells. Once, a fully decked funeral barge swept by with a cargo of white faced, black swathed figures holding dark garlands. We never knew if it was a real funeral, or some mad excess of the carnival.

Our patience was rewarded by the sight of the
sandalo
pulling into a mooring place by the steps of a crumbling
palazzo
. As we edged our way back, Holmes said, ‘See the cones carved on the tops of the mooring poles, Watson. It was once the home of an Admiral of Venice.’

To our surprise, the giant did not ring the bell, or let himself in with a key, but slipped along the front of the building and edged his way down a perilously narrow walkway that bordered a tiny side-canal.

‘This is interesting,’ said Holmes. ‘Our friend does not want to present himself at the door. I wonder why? Let us follow at a safe distance.’

Paulo dropped us at the steps and stood off, while we crept to the corner and craned our heads to peep into the narrow side canal. He was hanging on to the wall, peering through a barred window. As we watched, he took one of the bars in his hand and tested its strength.

A stone fell from the path by my feet and splashed in the canal. The sound was surprisingly loud in the narrow space. The giant turned and glimpsed our craning heads. At once he set off along the narrow ledge at such a pace that it seemed only his forward momentum kept him from plumetting into the canal. He was already gone from sight when we set off in pursuit.

We soon came to a place where a side turning behind the
palazzo
offered a dividing of the ways. Holmes gestured that he would turn aside and try to cut our quarry off, and that I should continue the pursuit.

The narrow ledge terminated in an arch with an old bronze gate hanging drunkenly on one hinge. I had come to a complex network of
calli
, not one of them straight, and not one turning a right angle. In no time I was lost. I was however, in no doubt that I was in pursuit of someone, for a heavy thunder of boots sounded from the fog up ahead.

I stumbled on over uneven pavements, buffeting against walls, struggling to gain glimpses of the fleeing figure. He led me across deserted, grass-grown
campos
, up and down the stepped bridges that spanned darkly glittering waters. Catching sight of his great bulk as it disappeared into a
corte
, I followed, and almost fell over a group of small children who shouted, ‘
Non si passa! Non si passa!
’ I slowed, and gripped my revolver, confident that he had run into a dead end.

It was an eerie space: a little courtyard with crumbling walls on every side, so close that I could see them in the mist. The paving under my feet was very ancient and somewhat treacherous.

At the centre of the
corte
stood an ancient well-head, its edge dabbled with mosses, the heads of monstrous form around its sides discoloured with damp growths. Here and there a head still gaped, emitting a slow drip or trickle of water into the small, cup-shaped troughs around its base.

The whole structure seemed scarcely big enough to conceal the giant’s bulk, but he was nowhere to be seen. The only door in the surrounding walls was blocked by debris and timber. I edged around the well-head, one hand clutching the revolver in my pocket, the other tracing the slippery edge of the well. I must have looked ridiculous circling with increasing speed to satisfy myself that he could not be crouching on the other side.

The silence in the
corte
was frightening. Then the faint sound of the children’s shouts came from the alleys and I shrugged off the irrational fear that had assailed me. There had been no inexplicable disappearance. I had merely mistaken the glimpse I had been allowed by the fog. He had turned down another way.

I retraced my steps, took another turning, and came against a gate securely locked. Beyond was a stretch of black water. As I turned, a tall shape came out of the fog and blocked the mouth of the passage.

I drew my gun and took aim.

‘Don’t shoot, Watson,’ said a familiar voice.

I lowered the gun, and told him of the weird incident in the
corte
. Holmes shook his head ruefully.

‘He took a dreadful chance, and may have paid for it with his life, but I suspect he got away with it. Oh yes, you were right to think he went in, and that there was no way out. He hid in the one place you did not look.
In
the well. He will surely be gone by now. Let us use our time more constructively by paying a visit to the
palazzo
that fascinated him!’

We found our tortuous way back to the great bronze doors of the
pallazo
, where Holmes pulled on the ornate, but corroded, bell that hung there on a dolphin bracket. A servant, hardly less time-worn, opened the door and listened patiently to Holmes’s urgent monologue. He then closed the door, leaving us on the steps.

‘I told him that we had seen a burglar trying to gain entry, and had pursued him. That might encourage the occupants to accede to my request for an audience. If they do not, we will at least know that something is not right, for who could hear of a narrowly foiled attempt to break into their home and not wish to know more! We shall see.’

A few minutes elapsed before the servant returned to gesture us inside. An overwhelming smell of damp met us as we entered a once magnificent entrance hall of green-veined marble, where a dry, dust-choked fountain and empty niches in the walls told of a tragic fall in fortunes. On we were led, past moth-eaten tapestries and bronzes eaten with verdigris, into a room with vast windows that would have opened on to the half light of the canal, were it not for the immense swathes of damask drapes that all but smothered them.

The fugitive light struggled to pick out a profusion of cobweb-hung ornaments and dead flowers, peeling gilt frames, and mottled mirrors. In the middle of the room, a carved cassonne supported the weight of a bronze depicting a winged putto riding a dolphin. Beside it stood a finely sculpted chair, too magnificent to be called anything but a throne. In it sat a very old, but regally beautiful, lady in a faded gown of the kind worn at balls perhaps fifty years ago. Her grey hair was caught up and piled above her thin face. At her throat was a pendant in the shape of a mermaid admiring herself in a hand mirror: it was beautiful, but where there had been precious stones, only ugly gaps remained, making of it the very image of ruination.

After a brief exchange in Italian, Holmes turned to me and said, ‘May I introduce my friend Dr Watson. This is the Marchesa di Garzoni, who has kindly consented to conduct our conversation in English.’

‘I should thank you both,’ she said, ‘for protecting my house from an intruder. I fear it has become a common occurrence of late, perhaps because I am old and alone in the world.’

Holmes inclined his head.

‘It is possible that we can assist you in that regard. I am a consulting detective, engaged on a matter with which this unfortunate incident may be connected. It is possible that your home may hold some object of significance to a person, or organisation, using the Salamander as a symbol.’

The effect on the Marchesa was remarkable. At once she became animated in the extreme, rising up and walking back and forth.

‘You have spoken a word unused in my family for many years, Mr Holmes. It concerns a period in our history over which a veil has been drawn. I have always felt that one day the veil would be torn aside. I did not think it would be by an Englishman, and on a day of Carnival. Such is Fate. I can see I must tell you all.

‘The Garzoni family has always played a prominent role in the defence of the Serene Principality. During the
Rinascimento
, Admiral Garzoni was a hero and confidant of the Doge.

‘Those were days of great dreams and deadly intrigue. Plans were afoot to establish Venice as the dominant city of all Italy. As one part of this plan, the Doge commissioned and had brought from Florence, a great masterpiece of sculpture, intended to stand in the Doge’s palace as a sign of the power of Venice. He wished to have before him a glorious sign of
La Serenissima
as the jewel of Italy. It was rumoured that the treasure was a masterpiece by no less than Benvenuto Cellini.

‘Cellini came to Venice, under the cover of some trumped up problems in Florence. He met with Titian, Jacopo Sansovino, and Lorenzo de’ Medici. How much involvement any of them had in the matter I cannot say, but he brought with him the great work, and left it in safe keeping for presentation at the Palace.

‘It was the Age of Machiavelli and the Borgias, Mr Holmes; of poison rings and stiletto blades at night. Intrigue and counter-intrigue were rife. There was a group of men, secretive and deadly, who wished to ensure that power, if it came, would lie with them, and not the Doge and his successors. They were known as the Sect of the Salamander. A plan was hatched to steal the treasure and set it up as a symbol of their independence from the Republic. They succeeded in stealing the great work, but they were betrayed, and the plot was foiled.

‘Retribution came swiftly. Assassins killed all but one of the conspirators: the Admiral, who, it is said, had time to conceal this great treasure. He died in this very room without revealing its resting place.