The Last Gondola (35 page)

Gildo said this in a voice that became increasingly stronger. When he finished, he stared back at Urbino, a muscle quivering at his jaw.

“Right. And if you see the man who dresses in black—or anyone else? What do you do?”

“Oh, Signor Urbino, I hope I don't see him! But—but if I do, I tell him that I must find you, you and the Contessa, if she comes with you.”

“And if we aren't in the room with the big door?”

“I push the button to call the police again.”

“And then?”

“Then—then I go outside and wait for them if they haven't arrived yet. But, signore, I could not leave you and the Contessa in the house if you need help! I must stay.”

“It would be best for you to go outside. That's how you could help us if it comes to that. Maybe none of this will be necessary. Maybe you'll never have to go inside the Ca' Pozza.”

“I hope not, for the sake of all of us!”

Urbino got up. He threw his arm around the young man to reassure him, but it was also for his own sake.

82

“It's impossible!” the Contessa cried out at three thirty that afternoon. Casting a nervous glance at the closed door of her
salotto blu
, she added in a lower voice, “And yet, considering what I can now admit I saw the other day, it's completely possible!”

She had denied seeing any figure in the attic window of the Ca' Pozza, she had explained earlier, because she feared she had imagined it, as Urbino had suspected. She was particularly susceptible because of all the worries she had been going through—and still was, she had emphasized—about her lost items.

“Probable is more like it,” Urbino said. “I don't know all the details. I can only speculate about many of them, and that's what I've just done with you as I did with Gemelli. But I needed to tell you everything to—”

“To make me want to lock all the doors,” she interrupted, but still in a quiet voice. “To make me want to pull the bed covers over my head even more than I wanted to before! Is that it?”

“To make you decide whether you still want to come with me. If you do, it could be unpleasant. I don't believe you'll be in any real danger though, not with the arrangements I made with Gemelli and Gildo.”

“Remember that you tend to trust too easily.”

“You mean Gildo? Believe me, Barbara, I'm not making a mistake with him.”

“Let's hope neither of us turns out to be a fool today. Let's hope a lot of good things.” She took a sip of tea. “So tell me,
caro
, how did you figure it out? It couldn't have just been because you suspected that I saw someone in the attic window.”

“No, but that took its place. The clipping of you in your Fortuny dress in Armando's room played a large role. Not just in itself but along with the belt. The more I thought about that belt, the more I became convinced that it was a woman's. Even before you told me earlier that you're missing a snakeskin belt, I realized that the belt in the Ca' Pozza had to be yours. It all fitted together so well. And then, of course, there were all the sounds. Possle couldn't have been making them. I heard them sometimes when we were together. Admittedly, Armando was a possibility though until I ruled him out.”

“The mute who might have cried and laughed like a woman?”

Urbino shrugged.

“Emo told me he was a good mimic. But Elvira was the logical explanation, if you threw in the city's strange acoustics, but none of that ever satisfied me. And then there was what Elvira said about some evil old woman in fancy clothes and makeup who hid in her house like a spider. What better description of Benedetta Razzi could she have given, I thought at the time, unless she had mentioned the dolls, too. And I thought of what happened on San Michele with Elvira. And then I went to the Villa Serena.”

The Contessa looked at him steadily for a few moments.

“You can't outfox a fox,” she said. “Possle's already taken enough advantage of you. All you can see in front of your eyes are those Byron poems. They're coloring everything else. I don't think I need your protection at the Ca' Pozza. If I'm going with you, it's because you may need mine!”

She drained the last of her tea and stood up. With his eyes on her embroidered vest, whose sequins were sparkling in the light, Urbino finished his flame red Campari.

83

The first thing that was strange about the Ca' Pozza on this visit was that Armando was nowhere in sight.

A few moments after Urbino rang the bell, a buzzer sounded to release the lock on the door. Urbino clasped the handle and opened the door. He checked to see if the lock was the same. It seemed to be. It was rusted and showed no sign of recent repair or replacement.

He looked back at the Contessa. She was staring up at the building. “Do you see anything?” he asked her. She shook her head. “It's the first time I've ever been let in this way.”

Urbino peered into the darkened recesses of the foyer.

“Who pushed the buzzer? Armando or Possle?” the Contessa asked.

“I have no idea. Possle could have one within reach from his gondola.”

They passed into the foyer.

“It's chilly in here,” the Contessa said, pulling the collar of her coat against her neck.

“It's warmer in the gondola room.”

As Urbino closed the door behind them, Gildo was approaching the building from the bridge where he had secured the gondola. They exchanged a quick look.

Urbino placed the Contessa's coat, along with his cloak, on the gargoyle clothes stand. Her eyes moved with a silent question toward the door to Armando's little room. He nodded. They ascended the broad, stone staircase.

They paused for a few moments in the large empty
sala
. Late afternoon light gleamed through chinks in the closed shutters. The door of the gondola room was open. The smaller door at the far end of the room that connected with Possle's suite and the back staircase was ajar. The door had always been completely closed before.

A few minutes ago Armando's absence had disconcerted Urbino, but now he hoped that the man might stay away long enough for him to say what he wanted to say to Possle. It would be easier without Armando lurking in the background.

Urbino tried to remember whether Possle had mentioned the precise date of their next appointment in Armando's presence. He didn't think so.

They were about to proceed, when his heart sank. Footsteps, slow, stealthy, sounded from beyond the partly open door at the far side of the room.

The Contessa turned her head in that direction. She, too, had heard the footsteps, which now came to an abrupt halt.

Urbino sensed the Contessa's nervousness. As they advanced toward the gondola room, he touched her hand.

The floor and the walls around and beyond the open door squirmed with the shadows thrown from within by the candles and the fire.

They entered, the Contessa's step more hesitant than his own. A wave of hot, stale air struck them. Possle looked more dwarfed by the mass of the gondola than usual, as if he had shrunk since Urbino had last seen Armando lift him up in his arms. He was dressed, as he invariably was, in his rich purple silk and red satin, but he wasn't wearing his glasses. The past days following his seizure appeared to have taken a severe toll. His eyes were more sunken in his skull, and the less wrinkled side of his face was turned down ever so slightly. His head covering was loose and had crept farther down on his brow.

Sheets of paper, many of them cracked, flaking, and browned with age, were spread on the cushions around him and across his chest. The great majority were newspaper clippings, but other sheets appeared to be letters and official documents of some kind. None, however, resembled the sheets of paper that Father Nazar had described to Urbino.

The carafe and the goblets stood on the small, inlaid table. One of the goblets was half filled with water.

The candles, the small ones at the base of the gondola and the two stately ones flanking it, were lit. Possle's eyes reflected their flickering light, but something else burned in them, distantly but hungrily.

“You've brought the divine Contessa.” He wriggled weakly up against the cushions. “I've sent Armando away from the house on an errand—to allow us to be alone. I released the lock.” He indicated a button on the wall behind the gondola that Urbino hadn't noticed on his previous visits.

Urbino was pierced with sharp anxiety. Armando would return and find Gildo by the door. It was an unforeseen development. But if he and the Contessa were lucky, they might be able to accomplish what they had planned before he returned.

Possle was staring at Urbino. Urbino had the impression, not for the first time in his contact with the man, that Possle knew what he was thinking. But when Possle spoke again, it was not to him but to the Contessa.

“Welcome, dear Contessa!” he said. “The last time we met so many years ago, you were la signorina Barbara Spencer. Ah, time! But surely you know how little you've changed. If only the same could be said of me.” Possle's voice sounded more fragile than usual and it had a slightly slurred quality.

“Thank you for inviting me,” she replied simply and smoothly, mastering whatever shock she felt at his appalling appearance.

“And thank you for coming. Please make yourselves comfortable.”

They seated themselves in the two high-backed armchairs drawn up in front of the gondola. The Contessa looked apprehensively at the candles gathered on the floor a few feet away.

“I'd like to make one thing clear at the start, Mr. Possle,” she said, turning her attention to his wizened form. “I've come here out of courtesy to you and Mr. Macintyre. I thought it best to tell you in person that I have no intention of buying a collection of poems by Byron, even if they are authentic. He informs me that you've been kind enough to offer them to me before anyone else.”

“To have them in your hands and thus in those of your good friend Mr. Macintyre would be a great pleasure to me,” Possle responded. He was making an effort to keep the tremor out of his voice and to inject as much firmness into it as he could. “But as he certainly must have told you, I'm ready to consider other—what shall I call them?—other
interested
parties. It will be some trouble to me, but I know what the end will be. I'll have my money and someone else, not you and your dear friend, will have the poems.”

“We're prepared to accept that,” the Contessa replied. “We wish you good luck in finding a suitable buyer.”

Urbino had let the Contessa take the lead so far as they had arranged. Possle turned his head toward Urbino expectantly and with a condescending smile on his gaunt face.

“But perhaps you will reconsider selling them at all,” Urbino said.

“What do you mean?”

“Perhaps you would be willing to give them to a Byron collection. I could recommend the library at San Lazzaro degli Armeni.”

“But that wouldn't be as convenient for you, would it? San Lazzaro, might be only a short boat ride away—gondola ride,” he corrected, “but you would be competing with other scholars and with the good monks themselves, who would certainly want to publish them. The poems wouldn't be your exclusive possession. That arrangement would be a sad second best.”

Urbino couldn't disagree. It was proving hard to give up the idea of having the poems for his own private and professional use. But at this thought, he had a twinge of conscience. He had to beware of his own form of greed. If not, any real distinction between Possle and himself would collapse, wouldn't it?

“But let me ask you this, Mr. Macintyre. If you believe that these poems are tainted, do they lose their taint if I give them away and get no money for them? Do your own hands remain clean if you take advantage of them under those circumstances? If you make it known, as you surely would, that you have been instrumental in bringing them out into the light? What difference does money make in that respect? It's a mere formality. You're both being overly scrupulous or should I call it hypocritical?”

The uneven quality of his voice, its combination of tremulousness and faintness and indistinct pronunciation, made it necessary for Urbino and the Contessa to strain to catch all his words.

When he finished, there was a moment of silence until the Contessa, after exchanging a look with Urbino, said with spirit, “I beg your pardon, Mr. Possle, I find that quite inappropriate.”

“Inappropriate, you call it? And all the while some perfectly lovely and fascinating poems are waiting to be given life.”

A self-satisfied expression settled on his sallow face. But Urbino's next question chased it away. “Do you know whether Adriana Abdon had an interest in Byron?”

Possle's face was now marked by puzzlement. It gave way to wariness and even fear. “Adriana Abdon?” Possle repeated in a low voice.

His eyes shot in the direction of the
sala
. No shadows except the ones cast from the candles and the fire were visible beyond the door. The large room beyond emitted no sound.

“Why do you bring her up?” Possle said. “And haven't I told you that Armando doesn't like to hear her name mentioned?”

“But Armando isn't in the house, is he?”

As soon as Urbino said this, he thought he detected a soft, stealthy tap against the floor of the
sala
. The Contessa didn't seem to have heard anything.

“But it's best not to fall into a dangerous habit.”

“Why dangerous?” Urbino asked.

Possle gave a rictus of a grin. It had little, if any, humor in it. “Armando can become angry if he suspects that anyone is too free with her name or her memory. And in my position—well, it's best for me if he doesn't get angry, you see.”

His eyes met Urbino's. In them Urbino read vulnerability and loneliness and great sadness. Urbino, uncomfortable and embarrassed and suddenly very sad himself, looked away. It was almost enough to make him reconsider what he was going to say next.