4 - The Iron Tongue of Midnight Read online

  I put down my glass and joined her. The window was secured with not one, but two layers of wire grilling set in the frame an inch apart. Even Sefa’s small hands would have been scraped raw if she tried to squeeze them through the grill. The outside was completely dark. The Red Tulip must back up to the solid wall of another building. Again I asked if Sefa had ever seen Grisella at the brothel.

  “Perhaps,” she replied, irritating me with an actressy attempt at mystery.

  I ordered her to explain.

  “Louis Chevrier popped up about eighteen months ago,” she said. “He’d been traveling through Wallachia, collecting peasant girls to sell in Constantinople. Yanus bought three. One was Danika.”

  “Why do you mention this one? Was there something special about Danika?”

  Before answering, Sefa took another long swallow of wine. “Danika was special in every way. Of course, Yanus only saw her natural red hair and the kind of milky skin that goes with it. That and her trim little figure.”

  Sefa had evidently seen more. To keep her talking, I fetched the bottle and topped off her glass. “What was Danika like?”

  “A true innocent,” she replied dreamily. “A child of the mountains who thought the streets of Constantinople were paved with diamond dust. Poor Danika actually believed Chevrier’s lies. As they traveled south, he promised the girls that they would be trained as Karshilama dancers, perform in city-wide festivals for a few years, and then be married off to rich men who would spoil them with presents. Instead, she was locked up here and starved and beaten until her will was broken. Her red hair made her such a treasure that Yanus saved her for the clients that pay big, the ones that do a lot of damage.”

  Sefa wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, leaving a pink trail of wine across her cheek. “I tended Danika’s bruises and held her while she cried, sometimes for hours. She clung to me, somehow believing I could protect her from Yanus. I couldn’t, of course. All I could do was try to help her adjust to her new life. We became… special friends.”

  I stopped her there. Sefa’s relations were her own affair. I wanted to know what Danika had to do with Grisella and how Chevrier fit into the picture.

  In bitter words, Sefa described Chevrier and Yanus as two of a kind. Vigilant and merciless, like a pair of wolves that hunt together. Chevrier kept bringing girls until every room in The Red Tulip was full. The two men broke them in together, then prowled the city to entice more rich clients. Business had always been good, but with Chevrier around, the girls were forced to work night and day to satisfy a steady stream of men they hadn’t seen before: Russians with vodka on their breaths, moody Poles, even Chinamen with squinty eyes.

  Sefa’s nose was growing pink and her words slightly slurred. I took her glass, saying, “No more of this until you get to Grisella.”

  She nodded gravely and replied thusly, “One morning, Danika’s room was empty when we arose for the day. There was no word or message. She was just gone. The next day, another red-haired woman took her place. She didn’t work on her back, just stayed shut in for almost two weeks. I only know she was a redhead because I took her dinner tray in one day when the cook was busy.”

  Greatly interested, I urged Sefa to tell me more. She complied, looking as if she might be sick at any moment. “I asked the girl a hundred questions. Where was Danika? What had Yanus done to her? But she wouldn’t say a word. She just smiled this hard smile, even when I fell to my knees and begged.”

  “How long ago was this?”

  Sefa took my hand and led me to her wardrobe, slyly reclaiming her wine glass on the way. “Letters and numbers are beyond me, but every morning I’ve wakened without Danika, I’ve made a mark.”

  She opened the door of the wardrobe and pushed brightly hued garments aside. Dots of kohl trailed down the inside of the pine cabinet like black tears. A hasty computation told me Danika had been gone for slightly over a year’s time.

  “What happened to the silent red-haired girl?” I asked.

  “She stayed in Danika’s old room until Chevrier conducted some business with a foreign gentleman in Yanus’ office. After that I never saw the girl or Chevrier again.”

  “Where did they go?”

  Sefa shook her head. “I don’t know and I don’t care. Danika is the only thing I care about. Over and over, I begged Yanus to tell me what happened. At first, he gave me the back of his hand or worse. When he saw I wouldn’t give up, he told me… something.”

  Sefa’s voice trailed off. She took a hasty swig of wine, thought for a moment, then nodded to herself. “Yanus could have been concocting a story meant to shut me up. Or he could have been speaking the truth. You will help me find out which.

  “You want to know what Chevrier and his redhead were up to?” she continued in a new, confidant tone. “There’s a passage that runs beside Yanus’ office. It once led to the outside, but the door was bricked up years ago. Now the passage is curtained off and used to store broken furniture and suchlike. Some time ago, I found a place near the floor where the wall is thin and you can hear everything that is said next door. I crawled to that spot when Chevrier had his meeting with the foreign visitor. If you’ll do something for me, I will tell you what I heard.”

  So, family, you may well imagine that I didn’t like this turn of events one bit. I went to that disgusting brothel to discover information, not to become a whore’s errand boy. But what could I do? Sefa might be hoodwinking me. Still, if there was one chance in ten that she had information about Grisella, I had to play her game. In this part of the world, two red-haired young women are too much of a coincidence. Especially when one is dead and one has disappeared.

  I asked what she wanted me to do.

  “Go to Danika’s village. Ask for her,” Sefa replied with a challenging nod. “Yanus told me that Danika’s brother came to fetch her home to Wallachia. Yanus agreed to release her because her brother offered a generous ransom he’d raised from selling sheep.”

  I found that hard to believe, but Sefa assured me that such a thing had happened several times since she had been confined in The Red Tulip. “A Muslim family would never come after a dishonored girl,” she said, “but Danika was a Christian. They have different ways. And Danika did tell me of an older brother who looked out for her.”

  I was still dubious. If this brother was so protective, why had he allowed her to be taken in the first place? Then I remembered how Grisella had once slipped through our grasp and hung my head in shame.

  Much annoyed, I asked Sefa just where this village could be found. She named a place beyond the Balkan Mountains.

  I paced her tiny room, figuring the journey in my head. I’d have to take a ship up the Bosphorus and north along the Black Sea coast to Varna. Once on land, I’d hire a horse to take me into the rocky uplands, a backward, bandit-infested area if there ever was one. Sefa was demanding a dangerous journey of at least ten days, even with the best of luck.

  I must finish quickly, dear ones. The midday call to prayers has begun. I argued with Sefa, pointing out that Danika would hardly leave without a word of goodby for her dearest friend, but the woman was adamant. Before she will tell me what led up to the departure of Chevrier and the red-haired girl, I must travel to this godforsaken village. If Danika is there, she’s to surrender a little silver ring that Sefa gave her as a present. If not, I’m to bring back the name of the brother as proof that I at least tried.

  Seeing no honorable way to shake off this burden, I will leave for Wallachia as soon as possible and write again when I have news.

  In haste,

  Alessandro

  Anger had started welling up inside me the moment I read of Grisella taunting Sefa at The Red Tulip. Out by the drive, my sister had looked into my eyes, thrown herself on my bosom, and described how Jean-Louis had given her into the care of his sweet, Christian landlady. She�
�d fed me a brazen falsehood, and I’d swallowed it as eagerly as a baby licking sugar off a spoon.

  “I’m an idiot, Gussie, a full-fledged idiot.” I jumped up, knocking my stool aside. “You are right to mistrust Grisella. Her entire story may be nothing more than a web of lies.”

  Gussie stared at me steadily. “It’s no joy to be right in this case. I’m sorry, Tito.”

  “It’s Alessandro that I’m sorry for. He’s setting out on a fool’s errand. No…” I bent over the letter and shuffled back to the first page. “He wrote this on the second of September and today is the thirtieth. He’s actually had time to travel to Danika’s village and return home. If only we could have gotten word to him. If only Constantinople were not so far away.”

  “What do you think really happened to Danika?”

  “I think Jean-Louis, probably with Yanus’ help, transported her to the yali to serve as a duplicate for Grisella. Perhaps they even murdered poor Danika at The Red Tulip, before they set out.”

  “That means the fire must have been planned well in advance. And…” he continued carefully, “that Grisella is not entirely innocent in this matter.”

  Giving a tense nod, I reached for Gussie’s paint rag and molded it into a ball. I voiced my thoughts as I kneaded the cloth: “But why? Surely the fire at the yali was more than an elaborate plan for Jean-Louis to abscond with my sister.”

  “In the letter before this one, Alessandro mentioned that the Russians from the embassy were very interested in where Count Paninovich stored his valuables. What if Grisella and Jean-Louis made away with something—something the Russians prize highly?”

  “You’re right.” I again consulted the papers before us. “And now, according to Alessandro’s whore, we learn that Jean-Louis met with… here it is… ‘a foreign gentleman’ before he and Grisella left Constantinople for good. Was this a Russian, I wonder? And Sefa mentions business. Does that mean something was bought and sold?”

  “We won’t have any answers for several weeks. That’s assuming Alessandro wasn’t kidnapped by bandits and Sefa keeps her promise.”

  I tore at the ball of cloth in my hands. Ripping off stripes of fabric suited my mood precisely. “I’m not worried about Alessandro. He could outmaneuver a pack of bandits with one hand tied behind his back. Whether he can trust Sefa remains to be seen.”

  “What are you going to do in the meantime, Tito?”

  “Do?”

  Gussie bit his lower lip. “About Grisella. You hoped… I mean, you ventured a theory that the murder of the Russian stranger had something to do with Carmela’s earrings. But now Carmela has been killed with her pearls in place. That poor lady has established her innocence rather conclusively, don’t you think?”

  “Yes…” My ominous tone might have stopped some people, but not Gussie.

  “So, what are you going to do? Are you going to tell Grisella what we know about The Red Tulip?”

  “No, not yet.”

  Gussie sighed. “Why?” he asked with a long-suffering look.

  “I don’t know,” I answered miserably, twisting what remained of the paint cloth around my hand.

  “I do.” Gussie stood up and faced me squarely. “You can’t stand to relinquish your dream. You’ve always wanted to see your family reunited. Everyone getting along—everyone happy. You’ve been longing for that ever since your father gambled away your manhood and banished you to the conservatorio in Naples.”

  I shuddered. Gussie had hit the nail squarely on the head. The first few months at the Conservatorio San Remo had been the most difficult of my life. The pain of being separated from my family had far eclipsed the physical pain the surgeon had wrought. For a time, I might have even gone a little mad. I developed a bizarre fantasy: real life existed only in Venice where my father and my brother and sisters were going about their daily activities. My life at the conservatorio was that of a ghost. I moved through my lessons like an insubstantial phantom. I sang, but no one heard. Or so I believed. How could a dead boy who had been cast out of his home produce any sounds? Half a year passed before I returned to a semblance of my old self.

  I took a deep breath, staring down at the cloth I’d been torturing. “We’ll never all be together again, will we?”

  “That time is past. We have to look to the—”

  “Gussie!” My hand shot out and grabbed his wrist.

  “Tito?” My brother-in-law gazed at me as if I really had lost my mind.

  “Don’t you see what this is?”

  “What?”

  “This cloth! Where did you get it?”

  “It’s… just a paint rag…” he stammered. “I tore it off a larger piece. I have it somewhere around here…” Gussie pawed through his supplies and came up with a bundle of cloth.

  I whisked it from his hands and unfurled a nightshift that had seen some rough times. The torn muslin was dirty and stained but not sufficiently to disguise its tiny yellow rosebuds.

  “This is Carmela’s nightshift!” I cried.

  “Her shift was draped across her bed. We all saw it.”

  “That was only one of her nightshifts, a fresh one. I searched her room, remember? She had a stack of these in her chest of drawers. All identical, all cut from the same bolt of sprigged muslin.” I peered at him intently, agog with curiosity. “What on earth are you doing with it?”

  “I found it here.” He crossed the barchessa in a few loping strides and dug into the hay bulging from the nearest rack. “I neglected to stock my painting case with rags. Rather than go back through the house and find a servant, I started looking around for something I could use. I spotted the tail end of the gown protruding from the feed. It was dusty, but once I’d shaken it out, it seemed like the very thing, a discarded garment that had somehow got misplaced.”

  Failing to find anything else tucked in the sweet-smelling fodder, Gussie joined me as I moved Alessandro’s letter aside and spread what was left of the nightshift on the upturned crate. Besides the ruffles that Gussie had torn off to wipe his brushes, a side seam had ripped open and some lace at the neckline had come loose. The front was stiffened in a trail of dried, colorless patches, and the entire shift was liberally stained with purple splotches. One in the unmistakable shape of a handprint.

  “Gussie,” I said over a lump in my throat. “These are grape stains. Carmela must have left her room in her night clothes and come in contact with the grapes. Then she got back into the day garments she was discovered in.”

  Gussie’s eyes went wide. “Or… maybe someone else dressed her.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed slowly.

  With a grim expression, my brother-in-law turned the shift back over and bent to scrutinize the patches on the front. He straightened and asked, “Was she violated, do you think?”

  I took another look. “Quite possibly,” I concluded, then fell silent, nodding. I was considering how easily a clock’s hands can be changed and doubting that the note found in the cantina had ever been delivered to Carmela.

  Chapter Twelve

  The rest of that day and most of the next kept me busy with rehearsal. It was not until after dinner that I was able to set off for a damp stroll to Signor Luvisi’s villa. The deluge had passed, but I was still glad for the beaver hat that sheltered my face against the raindrops blowing off the tree branches. I also reminded myself to add a few extra coins to Benito’s next pay purse, a little reward for his insistence on packing my heavy cloak and knee-high boots.

  Back at the barchessa, Gussie and I had spent some time pondering how Carmela’s nightshift had arrived at that unexpected location. And when.

  Someone had been very clever, we decided. The clock’s hands frozen upward at the traditional witching hour had led everyone to assume that the pendulum had been removed just as it was about to strike midnight. The note
that requested Carmela’s presence in the cantina at that hour had amply reinforced that impression. But now we realized that it could all be a carefully constructed fiction. From eleven o’clock on, the pendulum could have been removed at any time and the hands reset. Eleven was the last hour that Gussie and I agreed we had heard the clock strike.

  Nita’s story of how her grieving young master had allowed his villa to pass into Dolfini hands had already piqued my curiosity. When I remembered that Vincenzo had proudly shown Gussie’s barchessa studio to the Mayor’s party that included Signor Luvisi, curiosity turned to suspicion. I began to wonder just how much Signor Luvisi might resent his new neighbors. In all honesty, I must also admit that I was eager to follow any avenue of suspicion that pointed away from Grisella.

  As I navigated the curving drive that led to the Villa Luvisi, I stopped for a moment and noted what close twins the two houses were. Except for different fencing and the horses grazing in a pasture where Vincenzo had planted a crop of wheat, I could have doubled back and been approaching the villa I had just left. The likeness extended even to the doorknocker, a gauntleted hand clenched in a fist.

  I don’t often manipulate my fame to advantage, but on that chilly afternoon I needed a plausible excuse to pay my address to Signor Luvisi. While the footman carried my card into the recesses of the house, I perfected my patter. When he returned to show me to a study made snug with a cheery fire and camlet window draperies that kept out the drafts, I was ready.

  Signor Luvisi rose from an armchair upholstered in worn leather. A smile played over his aristocratic features. “Signor Amato, you favor me. I’ve often enjoyed your performances at the Teatro San Marco. You are truly one of Venice’s greatest music makers.” Though Luvisi’s tone was polite, I could see that he didn’t quite know what to make of my unexpected visit.

  “I appreciate your seeing me, Signore. I hesitated before imposing myself on you, but since arriving at the Villa Dolfini, I’ve fallen in love with your part of the country. I’m most interested in acquiring a villa of my own and wonder if you might know of a suitable property.”