The Last Gondola (36 page)

But burying the sympathy welling up within him, he pressed on. “You've said you never go down, Mr. Possle, but do you ever go up?”

“Up?”

The Contessa shifted uneasily in her seat and didn't look at either Urbino or Possle but at the candles arranged so precariously on the floor.

“Yes, to the upper floors? Especially the attic?”

Possle seemed genuinely puzzled. “What a strange question. You see my condition. And what concern is it of yours whether I go upstairs?”

“Not as much a concern of mine perhaps as it is of the Contessa.”

Possle turned his small eyes on the Contessa.

“What does he mean?” he asked her.

She lifted her gaze from the floor. “I prefer that Mr. Macintyre explain.”

“I prefer that
you
do.”

The Contessa made no response.

“I'm referring to Adriana Abdon,” Urbino said.

He inclined his head slightly toward the
sala
. Once again he thought he heard a stealthy step approach the door.

“I'm not sure whether you know or not,” Urbino went on. “I believe you don't, but maybe you've suspected. Maybe some of those papers you have there are related to the boating accident. What they can say in all truth is that Mechitar and Zakariya Dilsizian drowned that day. Their bodies were found. But Adriana's body never was.” He paused. “Adriana didn't drown that day off the Lido. And for the past five years she's been right with you in this building. Upstairs.”

“Whatever are you talking about? Are you mad? Adriana here? Adriana alive? But Armando—but he couldn't—”

Possle pressed his hand against his chest. A violent cough shook his body. Alarmed, the Contessa jumped to her feet, grabbed the goblet of water, and rushed to the gondola. She leaned over Possle, who was jerking and shaking. Urbino approached the gondola. Possle's hands thrashed upward and knocked the goblet from the Contessa's grasp. It went flying and crashed against the iron
ferro
. Fragments of glass scattered in all directions. Possle seized the Contessa's shoulders.

Urbino fumbled for the cell phone and pressed the number to alert Gildo.

Footsteps, now rapid and loud on the bare floor of the
sala
, rushed toward the gondola room. Urbino and the Contessa, who was trying to disengage Possle's hands from her shoulders, turned in the direction of the footsteps.

A moment later a figure appeared at the threshold like a specter. The Contessa gasped. It was a woman. She was tall and emaciated, with long, black hair thickly streaked with gray and snaking out of a cloche hat with flowers. Her face was lined and wrinkled. The Contessa's lost tea dress, ripped and soiled, hung loosely from her frame. One end of the Regency scarf was tied around her neck like a noose. The cascade necklace shimmered against her shrunken chest.

Her eyes were red. They seemed to be rolling, until they fixed themselves on the Contessa, who had her hands on Possle's arms. Urbino started to put his body between the woman and the Contessa, but with a sudden lunge the woman sidestepped him and rushed to the gondola.

She pulled the Contessa violently away from Possle's grasp. The two women fell to the floor. Possle, who had suddenly stopped coughing as if shocked out of his fit, now lay frozen against the cushions, staring at the crazed woman as she seized the Contessa's throat. His mouth formed the word Adriana soundlessly.

Urbino grabbed Adriana by the shoulders. He strained to pull her away from the Contessa. She had the strength of a man. She finally released her grip and sprawled on the floor.

She scrambled to her four limbs. The dangling edge of the scarf brushed a candle flame. It caught fire. As she sprang up with a scream, she knocked against one of the tall candles. It tipped and fell into the gondola.

Within a few seconds the newspapers were ablaze. Possle beat his hands against the flames, but he only succeeded in spreading the fire to the sleeves of his jacket.

What happened next was a blur in Urbino's mind. His only concern was for the Contessa. He didn't see or hear Gildo enter the gondola room, but suddenly he was by Urbino's side. Urbino registered a pale, stricken face with eyes looking wildly around the room, then a pair of strong arms helping him to pick up the half-conscious Contessa.

Armando rushed past them toward the gondola. He moved more quickly than Urbino had ever seen him do. His lips were drawn back in a grimace of fear and rage.

Urbino and Gildo carried the Contessa out of the room, into the
sala
, and toward the stairs.

Urbino risked a look behind him. The doorway framed the fiery scene.

Possle was engulfed in flames, screaming. The woman reeled against the drapes, her hair on fire. The drapes burst into red and orange.

Armando stood between Possle and his sister. He threw back his head. An animal-like howl rose above the noise of the crackling flames and Possle's screams. Only Adriana, now a torch, was silent.

The gondola room became a crackling inferno.

Smoke and the odor of burning flesh filled Urbino's nostrils. His throat closed. His eyes watered. The heat was intense.

Urbino and Gildo, carrying their precious burden, made their way down the staircase and out into the blessedly cool, fresh air.

EPILOGUE

The Spoils of Florian's

“All those years,” the Contessa said to Urbino as the two friends gazed out into the Piazza San Marco from their seats in the Chinese salon.

On this April afternoon the large space was more theatrical than sociable. Almost everyone seemed to have come either to be the center of someone else's attention or to indulge in calculated displays of enjoyment as they thronged beneath the arcades and milled around on the stones beneath a bright blue sky. Even the orchestra made its contribution in the form of a relentless stream of tunes and classics that were the popular fare of movie theaters and concert halls in almost every capital and province.

The scene was a far cry from its more serene state in February when the two friends had been troubled by the problems that had so strangely resolved themselves within the fiery walls of the Ca' Pozza.

The Contessa turned her eyes to Urbino, who was still staring into the Piazza. He had been abstracted ever since they had kept their rendezvous at their favorite perch.

“Did you hear me,
caro?”
the Contessa asked. “I was saying that it was such a long time for Adriana to be living up in the attic.”

After taking a sip of sherry, he said, “My guess is that he committed her to a much less expensive rest home after the Villa Serena. For her to have lived for seven years in the attic without having been detected would have been quite a feat.”

“Jane Eyre's Mr. Rochester managed to get away with it for longer than that, I think.”

Urbino smiled. “I suppose he did. But I don't see that as having happened at the Ca' Pozza. Armando must have taken her somewhere else. Probably she wasn't there for very long.”

“But how long is not very long? Something for you to find out?”

“I don't think so.”

“But what about filling in all the gaps and answering all the questions?”

Urbino looked around the crowded, cozy room before responding with a shrug of his shoulders. “That's never been possible, not completely. And this time we're going to be left with more unanswered questions than usual. But I don't want to mislead you,” he went on. “I've been trying to sort out a lot of things. Some of them might seem of little importance, but not to me.”

The Contessa's silence was an encouragement for him to continue.

“Yes,” he said, “I've got some black-and-white answers in one particular area. You know how much of what Possle said sounded suspiciously familiar. I made a list of all the suspects. I've found the source of most of them. He was a thief, but not all that more devious than the rest of us when it comes to originality.” He paused. “But his thefts
were
original in a way. He made them his own.” Urbino smiled ruefully. “That's what you said we did with Venice.”

The Contessa, who had been trying unsuccessfully to pinpoint his mood this afternoon, asked with an air of concern, “How does it make you feel, though, not being able to fill in all the gaps?”

“Not as bad as I once thought it might. It's only a comfortable illusion anyway.”

“What is?”

“That things can be tied up in a neat package with a pretty bow on it. Life's not that way.”

“More the pity.”

“Yes, well, it isn't, and I'm not sure we'd want it to be.”

The Contessa considered for a moment. “Maybe you're thinking of what I said about the veiled lady,” she came out with. “Having the cake of the mystery but eating the—the”—she struggled to complete the metaphor—“the solution, too, I suppose it would be,” she finished.

The power of association, perhaps, rather than hunger, drew the Contessa to the plate of petits fours on the table. She selected a delicate oblong. Its mauve icing matched one of the colors in her multicolored Fortuny dress that had provided Urbino with one of his essential clues.

“But how do you feel about losing the poems?” she continued. “Not getting all the answers is one thing. Not getting the poems is another—if they existed.”

“They existed. I have no doubts about that. Possle had them, and now they're gone, along with Possle, Armando, Adriana, and almost everything else in the Ca' Pozza.”

The conflagration had spread rapidly and consumed most of the old building. It was the worst fire the city had seen since the one that had destroyed La Fenice. Nothing could be done to save Possle, Armando, or his sister after the fireboats had arrived. Urbino and the Contessa had been lucky to escape with Gildo's help.

“If only things had worked out differently,” the Contessa said.

“It wasn't meant to be.”

“I see Habib's influence on you more and more. Fate! There's a great deal to be said about accepting the inevitable instead of fighting against it.” After a few moments she added, “Sickness, age, death.”

She gave a soft pat to her hair. It had become a habitual gesture during the past week. After the singeing her hair had received in the fire, it had been cut and restyled into something shorter and sleeker than she usually wore. It became her.

“One minute Possle is scheming over how he's going to get enough money from the poems to keep him and Armando going for a while longer,” Urbino said, extending the implications of the Contessa's comment, “and the next minute they have no more worries in this world.”

“Nor in the one after, let's hope. Possle and Armando didn't murder anyone, did they?”

“No. The reports make it clear beyond any doubt that Mechitar and Zakariya drowned accidentally. Armando saved Possle, and Adriana saved herself. She was a good swimmer, according to what Demetrio Emo told me, much better than Armando. But it must have been a horror for him until he found out that she hadn't drowned. He seems to have made a choice between saving her and Possle.”

He was spared the same decision at the Ca' Pozza last week. There was never any chance that he could have saved either of them, but only himself. Urbino would never forget the frantic look on the man's face and his guttural cry as he took in the situation and remained in the gondola room to share the doom of the others.

“But why didn't he tell Possle about Adriana?” the Contessa asked. “Not only that she hadn't drowned, but that she had gone back to the Villa Serena?”

“Yet another one of the questions,” Urbino replied. “I'd say that it was something he wanted to do for his sister all by himself—look after her. Remember that Possle seems to have rejected Adriana's overtures before his marriage to Hilda and after their divorce. Armando must have assumed that Possle wouldn't have been inclined to help. As it was, he was probably siphoning off money from the house for Adriana's expenses. Possle said that the money had been disappearing quickly. If he had only known why.”

Urbino took a sip of his sherry before adding, “And then there's jealousy.”

“Jealousy?”

“Possle's bond with Armando was very close. Cipri implied that Hilda had a story to tell there. I wish I had got it, but now…” He trailed off and gave a little shrug. “Possle would have resented the attention Armando was giving to Adriana. He needed almost all of it himself when his own world was becoming diminished. Yes, there were many reasons why Armando decided it might be best to keep it all a secret.”

“But what was he thinking? Keep it a secret forever?”

“He did a pretty good job of it, didn't he?”

“Until you came along. Until
we
came along.”

“Right. If neither of us had gone anywhere near the Ca' Pozza, she'd still be Armando's precious—and dangerous—secret. And still be alive.”

“We can't think of that. And Possle set it in motion himself by asking you to come to see him,” the Contessa pointed out. “Now you know why Armando felt animosity toward you from the beginning. You were endangering everything. Snooping around after Marco's death. He must have thought that was your main motivation. Thank God he didn't try to prevent you from coming, by doing something violent, I mean.”

“He probably saw the good sense of not trying. If I had thought that anyone was trying to scare me or put me out of commission, it would have made me even more suspicious. And it would only have drawn attention to the house, given my reputation as a sleuth. He was relieved that Marco's death hadn't revealed his secret, but he was nervous about Elvira. I once thought that with her lovely voice she reminded him of his sister, but actually she was a danger and a constant reminder of what his sister had done to Marco. And if he had known that I had seen the belt and had discovered the clipping of you in his room—an illustrated item in Adriana's shopping list of your clothes, let's call it—he might have realized he had little to lose by going after me.