Whispers of Vivaldi Read online

  “All right. Firstly, only a blockhead could ignore the heightened feelings swirling around Angeletto.”

  “Skirts or breeches, you mean.” I had banned all talk and speculation about Angeletto’s sex from the theater. I wasn’t being naïve—I know an opera company dines on gossip—I was merely trying to tamp down the worst of it. I also hoped that the rumors Grillo had spread among his patrician acquaintances were a flash in the pan, soon to be replaced by fresh scandals.

  Venice usually offers endless diversions in the way of outrages: a genteel young widow marries her late husband’s gondolier, or a kitchen boy is discovered in the papal nuncio’s bed, or a popular courtesan inherits a tidy fortune and purchases her own vineyard. Unfortunately, my countrymen had been rather restrained of late; fresh gossip was at a low ebb.

  While I’d been working long hours at the opera house, Benito had been gadding about the city, listening to the ribald tongues flapping fast and loose about Angeletto. As my manservant worked his tongs around my brow, he repeated what he’d heard in the salacious language of the tavern and the casino. No wonder Maria Luisa had taken me to task over Venice’s boorish welcome to her brother.

  Benito coaxed the rest of my hair into a neat braid asking, “Are you still quite certain that our angel is a valid castrato?”

  I thought back to the beautifully dressed and wigged creature who had patiently greeted the Savio’s guests, especially delighting the women. The fashion of the day called for excess in all things; Angeletto’s face had been heavily painted right up to the smooth seam of his white wig, and layers of lace had obscured his neck and chest. As any woman will tell you, the stratagems of fashion can hide as much as they enhance.

  “Let’s say I’m wrong, Benito. Let’s say that Carlo Vanini is really Carla—just for argument’s sake, mind you.” I turned my head this way and that to admire Benito’s work in the mirror. “How would Angeletto’s masquerade provoke an attack on Maestro Torani?”

  “I don’t know, but I sense something…off, something wrong where Angeletto is concerned. Don’t you?”

  “Possibly.”

  “Don’t you want to discover what it is?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t see how Angeletto could have had anything to do with Maestro Torani’s death. The first time he laid eyes on Torani was in the foyer last night—there wasn’t time to exchange more than a few words—and until the footman announced that Torani was dead, Angeletto was constantly on view. Besides, he is such a mild creature. It’s his sister who burrows under my skin like some biting insect.”

  “Well,” Benito was fussing with the ribbon at the top of my braid, “as you’ve always told me, murder is much like the opera—it hinges on life’s great passions: love, hate, envy, revenge. Any of those motives floating around?”

  His comment suggested a new train of thought. “No one envies Angeletto more than Majorano,” I said.

  Benito broke into gleeful soprano spasms that sounded like a peahen clucking over a chick. “Majorano can strike a belligerent pose with a pasteboard sword. But…” The laughs were still coming. “Wielding an actual weapon? Bashing Torani over the head? That scrumptious poppet drawing blood? Oh, it’s just too funny.”

  Shoulders shaking, he crossed to the wardrobe, pulled out a drawer, and held up several neckcloths for my inspection. I ambled over and chose one of plain linen. I lowered myself to the cushioned window sill so that my much shorter manservant could tie it.

  “Besides,” Benito continued, “why would Majorano take his spite out on the maestro when his rival was also on the spot?”

  “Because it was Maestro Torani who assigned the roles—while you and I and Gussie were in Milan. The day I returned, Balbi was nearly out of his mind with frustration as he tried to instruct Majorano in one of the huntsman’s arias. It makes sense that a singer would direct his anger at the director who gave him the inferior part, but…No!” I pushed Benito’s hands away and jumped up. Pacing the floor, I stabbed my fingers through my newly curled locks. Over Benito’s groan, I cried, “What am I saying? Majorano wasn’t even at the Ca’Passoni. He never showed up at the reception.”

  “Anyone could have climbed through that open window. Correct?”

  “I’m not sure.” I halted, thinking. “No, I believe the entire garden is surrounded by a wall. If there is a gate, it would surely be kept locked. But Grillo got in somehow. Oh, Benito.” I sighed and let my arms flop at my sides.

  The emotional ache that had kept me abed was welling up again, tightening my chest and making the wound throb.

  “We know nothing, Benito. Messer Grande has shut me out. The Savio suspects me of killing Torani and would never allow me on his property to inspect the garden or question Angeletto. I’m not even welcome at the theater. All I have is a dog’s dinner of random suspicions. Nothing certain—”

  “No, Master,” Benito interrupted my tirade. “There is one thing we know for certain.”

  “What’s that?”

  “That you didn’t do it.”

  I nodded solemnly, then stepped through the curtains and out onto the balcony. The midday sun had turned the narrow canal that ran between our house and the next building to glistening jade. I stared down at the lapping water, gripping the iron railing. Every instinct told me that Maestro Torani’s murder was tied to the opera. The very thing that was his life had become his death. I didn’t know who, much less why, but someone connected with the San Marco or the rival Teatro Grimani had killed my old mentor. Finding his murderer would be the only balm for the throbbing ache within me.

  But where to begin, persona non grata that I’d become? I could locate most of the singers and musicians at their lodgings or in a public place, but how could I question them without arousing suspicion? I didn’t want to startle my prey. Or did I? Hunters trained their dogs to sniff out a rabbit and startle it into running right past their master’s hidden stand. If the hunter was a sure shot, the rabbit ended up in the stew pot.

  I entered the chamber and cast a brief, longing look toward my bed. It would be so easy to crawl back under the sheets and stay there, much as I had when I’d suffered the fatal injury to my vocal apparatus.

  Benito looked up from tidying my dressing table, one eyebrow cocked expectantly.

  “Fetch my hat,” I said. “I’m going out.”

  ***

  I decided to begin with the easiest quarry: Tedi. The soprano kept modest lodgings in the parish of San Lorenzo, but for the past several months she had been staying with Maestro Torani in the Calle Castangna. I shunned the most direct route so that I could take in a water view of the Ca’Passoni on my way.

  I walked over several squares and found a free gondola near the entrance to the Ghetto. That curious compromise between Venice’s acceptance and expulsion of the Hebrew race had been built on the site of an old copper foundry. At this time of day, the Ghetto’s stout wooden gates had been thrown back to allow both Christians and Hebrews unfettered passage, as the Republic’s law permitted from dawn to dusk. When night fell, the Hebrew population would be locked in behind closed gates that were guarded by a pair of sbirri. That the Ghetto officials were obliged to pay the salaries of the very guards who contained them formed a deep well of resentment in Liya’s mind.

  My wife wasn’t forced to live in one of the lofty, slope-roofed houses behind those gates because she had submitted herself to the priests at the House of Catechumens. So that our lives could be forever intertwined, Liya had renounced her family’s faith and kissed the cross of our Lord. Was it a false swearing? An outright lie?

  Assuredly. A wise woman had performed our hand-fasting, because my Liya had years ago embraced the oldest faith of all, the secret worship of the mother goddess in the guise of Diana. My born-Hebrew, ostensibly Christian wife was a true Pagan. In a secluded garden lined with pomegranate trees, the wise woman had bound our forearms with a silv
er cord and proclaimed us “twined as the vine as long as love doth last.” No matter that the Christian world looked on Liya as my mistress—a castrato is not allowed the sacrament of marriage at any rate—no matter that our upstanding neighbors thought of our household as a dirty nest of theatrical riff-raff. As long as Liya loved me, I wouldn’t have it any other way.

  After all, what in Venice wasn’t a masquerade in those decadent days?

  Once the boatman had pushed away from the Ghetto landing, I had him row down the Canal Regio to the Grand Canal. After we’d passed under the Rialto Bridge, I directed him into the narrow waterway where the sprawling mass of the Ca’Passoni lay. Three times I ordered him up and down the canal that was barely five feet wide, pausing at certain points before finally sending him back across the city. At Maestro Torani’s landing steps the gondolier accepted his coins with the irreverence of his kind: “Maybe next time the signore will be able to make up his mind.”

  At least I’d discovered one thing. The Savio’s garden wall rose sheer from the water without handhold or foothold. A stone railing with urn-shaped balusters topped it. No tree branches or vines dipped to meet the canal. The garden itself, like most in my soil-poor city, was small and narrow. It ran only half the length of the side of the palazzo. The only way in, except through the house, was by an austerely barred gate at the top of a short flight of water-lapped steps. If Grillo—or anyone else—had entered the garden from the canal last night, he’d arrived by boat and someone had raised the gate’s iron bar from the inside. Someone who’d been watching and waiting for him—the pretty maid, I’d be bound. One more thing: if Grillo had scrambled over the wall after our fight, he would have had a thorough dunking in the canal.

  At Torani’s lodgings, I was surprised to find the recessed door to the building’s vestibule standing wide open. An untidy, twine-bound pile of musical manuscripts sat on the red and black tiles; the breeze sweeping down the canal ruffled the top pages. A peota was tied up at a nearby mooring post, and the cargo boat already held several wooden crates and a large trunk. Wondering what was going on, I trudged up the creaking stairs up to the maestro’s apartments.

  Instead of Tedi, it was Peppino who greeted me in the cramped foyer. Torani’s gondolier had traded his boatman’s sash for a canvas apron. His shirt sleeves were rolled up to his elbows, and his lank curls were plastered to his forehead with sweat.

  Huffing from exertion, holding my aching midsection, I listened to Peppino’s halting explanation.

  “Signora Dall’Agata ordered us to pack it all up—at least everything she didn’t take.” He made a vague gesture toward the sitting room where Torani’s valet was pulling books off shelves. Open crates stood ready to receive them. “She hired the boat down below. I don’t know where it’s taking Maestro Torani’s things. A warehouse? Or maybe she’s sold them.” His voice broke with emotion. “The maestro wouldn’t like this…no, not one bit.”

  “Where is Signora Dall’Agata?” I asked, irritated by this unexpected development.

  Peppino shrugged. “She’s gone.”

  “Yes, but where? Her lodgings?”

  He shook his head violently. “No, Signor Amato. She ran out several hours ago. Said she had to get over to the mainland and meet the boat to Padua.” His damp brow furrowed. “She spoke of traveling north to take the waters.”

  “Dio mio!” I could scarcely believe what I was hearing. “She’s left Venice for a spa?” I was growing more disturbed by the second. It appeared that Tedi had taken flight less than a day after Torani’s murder, leaving her lover’s affairs to his pair of servants.

  I stepped into the sitting room, momentarily confounded by its emptiness. The striped sofa and chairs and the marble-top table were gone. On the green flocked walls, lighter rectangles showed where paintings and mirrors had been removed. Torani’s manservant was working at the nearly empty shelves. He was sharper than Peppino; his name was Maurino. “What is going on?” I asked him.

  “Signor Amato.” Maurino wiped his dusty hands on his apron. He was a small, white-haired, pot-bellied man of sixty years or so. Despite his age he was quite robust, but today Maurino’s shoulders drooped and the wrinkles spreading from his reddened eyes had deepened. The man’s been crying, I thought, and it suddenly struck me that Maurino had served Torani for over ten years, the same amount of time that Benito had been with me.

  Grasping his shoulder, I shook my head. “It’s a terrible thing, Maurino. I can’t make sense of it.”

  “No.” He cleared his throat. “What is the world coming to—when a man like my master can be beaten down like a mad dog?”

  “I mean to find out who did it.” I gave his shoulder another squeeze before dropping my hand. “The killer will be punished, I promise you.”

  The old manservant nodded, sadly and without enthusiasm. He’d lived long enough to understand the vagaries of Venetian justice. Wearily he reached for another book.

  “Wait,” I said. “Tell me what’s going on here.”

  “Signora Dall’Agata has gone. She charged Peppino and me with clearing the apartment, and…” He sighed from the tips of his toes.“When we’re finished, that’s it. We lock the door and go.”

  “Is it true she’s set off for a spa?” I still couldn’t credit it.

  “Yes.”

  “Which one?”

  “She didn’t say, Signor Amato.”

  Damnation! Tedi could be headed practically anywhere. Mineral cures were the latest rage. On every Alpine foothill with a bubbling spring, a hopeful entrepreneur had built a hotel and offered a casino and other amusements to keep the health-seeker content between baths.

  “No mention of a town or village?”

  He shook his head. “Signora Dall’Agata awoke before dawn—I’m not certain she actually slept. Throughout the morning, she was in a great hurry, giving orders about the maestro’s papers, his belongings. She sold the bedding and furniture to the first Jew who showed up—she accepted his offer without bargaining at all. I’ve never seen the like. And then Signor Passoni came, and she shut them both in the maestro’s study for a long time.”

  Signor Passoni? The Savio alla Cultura paying a call on the mistress of a dead opera director? Well, the circumstances of Torani’s death were unusual to say the least.

  “I don’t suppose you would know what they discussed?”

  “When they came out, Signora Dall’Agata told us that tomorrow Maestro Torani would be given a funeral mass at San Nicoletto and afterward laid to rest in the crypt—in the Passoni family’s own vault. The Savio agreed to bear all expenses of the ceremony.”

  “And Tedi won’t be there,” I said faintly, wondering if Liya and I would be welcome in the church founded by the Savio’s illustrious ancestors. Then, as carefully as if I were picking my way across a rain-slick bridge, I said, “I know you for an honorable man, Maurino, always with your master’s best interests at heart. Is it possible you were still caring for him by…ah…”

  “Listening at the door?” He raised thick white eyebrows, daring me to criticize.

  I wouldn’t think of it—that was precisely what I hoped to hear.

  Chapter Thirteen

  Maurino pressed a forefinger beside his red-veined nose, then glanced warily over his shoulder. Peppino was shifting valises from the bedroom to the foyer. Maurino called to the gondolier, “Take those down to the boat. I’ll have another crate ready in a few minutes.” As Peppino complied, the manservant rubbed the back of his neck in a gesture of relief. “That will buy us few minutes. A snail moves faster than that facchino.”

  “You don’t trust him?”

  Maurino crossed his arms. “Peppino is a good lad, if you overlook his laziness. He doesn’t cheat at dice and would never take a soldo that wasn’t his. But,” the manservant interrupted himself with a snort, “the poor boy’s tongue is a slave to drink. If you sit Peppi
no down in a tavern and keep the wine flowing, he’ll spill everything he knows and more.”

  I nodded. “What did the Savio and Signora Dall’Agata discuss that you’d rather all Venice didn’t hear?”

  Torani’s manservant drummed the fingers of one hand on the back of the other. Several emotions warred on his face. After a momentary struggle, a sorrowful sheepishness took the field. “My master was ruined. He liked to call it ‘a situation of temporary necessitude.’ Penniless, strapped, beggared is what I say.”

  I was stunned, jolted. After years of service to the Teatro San Marco, Torani made a handsome salary, nearly as much as the opera’s castrati stars. And he didn’t live high. The maestro was simply too busy to indulge himself in costly travel or luxuries. His new wig was the first he’d had made in years, and he always bought a modest grade of snuff, confining himself to one pound a month. Maintaining his own gondola—until it was smashed—would have been Torani’s most flagrant expense.

  “How could this be?” I asked, wondering if Maurino knew Maestro Torani’s business as well as he thought he did.

  “Some months ago, my master came to a decision. I don’t know what prompted it. He wasn’t ill. He seemed as vigorous as ever, but he took it into his head to retire to the mainland with Signora Dall’Agata. She argued for staying in Venice. ‘Who wants to stare at a lot of pigs and geese and grapevines all day?’ she said. ‘There would be no amusement whatsoever.’ But it was as if an insect bearing the idea had drilled itself into his brain.” Maurino took up a dust rag and twisted it through his hands. “My master would talk of nothing else. He and Signora Dall’Agata would go to the banks of the River Brenta and live in a villa—not a modest villa, mind you, but an estate as grand as any owned by the families of the Golden Book.”

  The manservant regarded me pleadingly. “I ask you, Signor Amato, what made the old man hunger for something so far above his station? It’s just not right.”