4 - The Iron Tongue of Midnight Read online

  Vincenzo had a point. I was a confirmed Venetian, never quite comfortable unless the undulating waters of the lagoon were a short walk away, but I had to admit that my city had changed in recent years. Venice’s abiding tragedy was the shift of trade to Atlantic routes just as she was losing her territories in the eastern Mediterranean. Now England and Spain ruled the waves, and Venice, once the mighty queen of the seas, had become a tawdry harlot, surviving on tourists lured to her nearly endless Carnevale.

  “At least you will have my scenes of the estate hanging on your walls in town.” That was Gussie, ever able to find the patch of blue among the storm clouds.

  “Ah, yes. Your paintings will be a comfort, but it won’t be like living at the villa. By the middle of October, I’ll have to leave my beloved farm for that den of thieves and murderers.”

  Vincenzo seemed determined to ignore the murder that had invaded his Arcadia only the night before, but I couldn’t be so indifferent. “Signor Dolfini, I hope you won’t think me impertinent if I ask a question about the man who was killed here last night.”

  His shoulders stiffened, but he inclined his head.

  “Has any progress been made in identifying the unfortunate victim?”

  “No, and I don’t expect there will be.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Ernesto had all the workers on the estate file past the body in the ice house. No one recognized him.”

  “Did Ernesto give you his pistol? It’s of a rather unusual make.”

  “Yes, it’s in my study, awaiting Captain Forti. But I don’t see how it will be of help. It’s obvious what happened.”

  “Is it?”

  He shrugged and handed the sketches back to Gussie. “When the boys and I went downstairs, we found one of the long windows in the front corridor open. The shutters stood wide apart, the bar undone. All the intruder had to do was step over a low sill from the porch. One of your company must have let him in.”

  “But why do you suspect one of the musicians?” Gussie asked quickly. “There are others living in the house.”

  Vincenzo shrugged. “My valet Alphonso and the other servants from our house in town have been with us for some time. All perfectly trustworthy, I assure you. Then we have Nita and the maids, but they are simple country people. Intrigue and scandal are quite beyond their comprehension.

  “No.” He shook his head. “This… er… unfortunate incident has nothing to do with my household. It must relate to some trouble among you singers, some vulgar exchange that no one wants to own up to and I’d rather not even speculate about. I mean…” He interrupted himself to send me an abashed smile. “You two seem decent enough, but the rest of your lot impress me as living one step from the gutter. As my good wife is determined to have you, I can only hope your squabbles won’t result in further violence.”

  I was at a loss for words as Vincenzo excused himself and ambled off in the direction of the villa. Unbelievable! He was content to pass the murder off as a petty quarrel among theatrical riff-raff. Our host might be aping the life of a noble estate holder, but he was nothing but a bourgeois iron merchant at heart. Dull, narrow, and utterly devoid of imagination.

  ***

  Dinner was served at the normal hour of half past three. Several more hours of rehearsal followed. I had hoped for an opportunity to have Grisella to myself, but Jean-Louis hovered like an anxious chaperone and bore her upstairs to rest as soon as she had sung her pieces. My sister did look tired, and it was clear that the palsies that had afflicted her girlhood were still with her. Though she concealed it well, her eyes blinked when she became excited and her left shoulder seemed to roll without her volition. I wondered if she still took her calming elixir.

  I found it much easier to question Carmela Costa. Since she had boasted of her presents from the Czarina, Carmela was no longer shy about recounting her Russian adventure.

  “Consider yourself fortunate if you’ve never performed in Russia, Tito. I’ve never been so cold in my life as I was last winter. I had to cover myself with a mountain of furs just for the short trip from my lodging to the theater.” Carmela and I were sitting on the loggia just beyond the double doors to the salon. A breeze had picked up. The soprano drew a lacy shawl around her shoulders.

  Inside, Maestro Weber was putting Romeo and Emilio through their paces. Intriguing snatches of airs and duets floated through the door. Emilio’s clear, keen soprano complemented Romeo’s thick basso like mustard on roasted beef.

  “The management in St. Petersburg were tyrants,” Carmela continued. “Just imagine, if we were late to rehearsal we were fined for every minute. Double fines once full dress rehearsals commenced.”

  “That must have been hard on your purse,” I replied with a smile. I was well aware how Carmela tended to dawdle in her dressing room.

  “Other, more pleasant things made up for it.”

  “Oh?”

  “It was the vogue to end each performance with a rendition of the Preobrajensky March, a stirring military hymn. I was chosen for that honor and had to learn it in Russian. No small feat, believe me. Both the men and women of that country are a bloodthirsty lot. When I reached the part about going abroad to vanquish the enemies of the fatherland, they would jump to their feet, yell ‘Huzza’ with all the force of their lungs, and fling flowers until I was knee-deep. Every night, the stage manager had to rescue me from a mountain of blossoms. So exhausting.” Carmela finished on a sigh, twining her fingers in the fringe of her shawl.

  “You can’t fool me,” I teased, “you were loving every minute.”

  Her mouth turned down in a solemn frown. “We must enjoy our triumphs when we can, Tito. They make up for… the bad times.”

  “Were there bad times in St. Petersburg?”

  She reached into her skirts for her fan. Keeping it closed, she tapped it on her lips thoughtfully. Finally she said, “The theater had a backstage lounge where the artists of the company and the audience mingled for long, sociable intermissions. Only the best people were allowed backstage, of course. That’s where I met Nikolai.”

  “Nikolai.” I encouraged her with a nod.

  “He was one of those tall, fair-haired Russians with eyes like blue ice. As so many of his countrymen, he wore a mustache, a bushy caterpillar that he treated with wax before he dressed for the evening. At first I thought it very comical—facial hair is so out of fashion everywhere else. But apparently these were made popular by their late emperor. Anyway…” She trailed off, staring over her shoulder at the evening swallows wheeling and diving. “The day after we met, Nikolai sent a troika filled with yellow hothouse roses, the color of my costume on that fateful night.”

  “The expense must have been huge.”

  “Everything is done on a grandiose scale in Russia. When we would dine in his apartments, the table was covered with enough fine dishes to feed an army and the champagne truly flowed like water. The servants poured your glass and you never saw the same bottle return. Every glass was poured from a bottle newly opened.”

  “What happened to this charming Nikolai?”

  “He was a widower, not as young as I had first thought. In fact his eldest son was very near my age.” Carmela’s voice grew husky, and she tugged at one of the pearl earrings that I hadn’t seen her without since I’d arrived at the villa. “Nikolai wanted to marry me. It was a serious proposal, not an empty promise made in the heat of passion. He introduced me to a priest of the Orthodox Church who was going to tutor me in their beliefs. Nikolai even made me a present of these earrings to celebrate our engagement.”

  I gazed at the lustrous gems hanging from delicate wires that pierced her earlobes. As large as the tip of my little finger, with a slight golden cast, Carmela’s pearls were fit for a queen, or at least a duchess. I told her so in admiring tones.

  “Yes,” she answ
ered with the smile of a cat who’d had an uninterrupted session with a cream pitcher. “They once belonged to his grandmother, and I believe she was a duchess. My gems have traveled far and wide. Nikky said they were retrieved from oyster beds off the shores of Ceylon and set by a jeweler to the imperial court. Now they’ll tour the opera houses of Europe on my ears.”

  She paused for a moment and we sat quietly, listening to Romeo sing of Bajazet’s tragic defeat. When she resumed, the sorrowful aria made a perfect background for her tale’s denouement. “Nikolai’s children were much against the marriage. A foreigner, an opera singer, what should I have expected?”

  “I once knew a count who married a rope dancer from Constantinople,” I observed.

  “In Venice?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ah, but that is La Serenissima, city of masking and romance, and I was in St. Petersburg, the very seat of darkness and gloom. My lover’s son marshaled the troops—Nikolai’s elderly mother, brothers, cousins, uncles, friends. They all lined up against me. I fought hard, but I lost.”

  “I’m sorry, Carmela,” I said, reaching for her small, white hand.

  As I squeezed it, she pressed her lips together and shook her head so hard that her pearls swung back and forth like a chandelier in a windstorm. I had never seen Carmela so full of unfeigned emotion. At least it seemed genuine. I had to remind myself that the soprano was, after all, an accomplished actress.

  Watching her face closely, I said, “I believe the man who was killed last night may have been Russian.”

  “What?” She paled and grew still.

  “Yes. Gussie and I were helping to move him when we discovered a pistol of Russian make in his waistband. Are you quite sure you didn’t recognize him?”

  She snatched her hand from my grasp. “As I said last night—he’s a complete stranger.”

  “I’m not accusing you of whacking him on the head, my dear, just trying to uncover the truth. It might be awkward to admit you know him, but if you do, you should say.”

  Carmela jumped up. Two dots of color had sprung to her cheeks. “Now I realize all the gossip I’ve heard about you must be true.”

  “People are talking about me? Behind my back?” I sat up tall, ears wide open.

  “Oh, there’s plenty of talk. You didn’t leave Rome of your own accord like you said—a magistrate ran you out for being involved in the murder of a serving girl. Then you installed your Hebrew mistress and her bastard brat in your house in Venice, practically cheek by jowl with her humiliated parents. But the worst thing…” Carmela paused her tirade to draw a breath and shove her fan into a pocket. “You’ve become a damned, nosy busybody, Tito Amato.”

  I had to smile as Carmela made a regal, angry exit. She was correct on one charge: I was a busybody. Even Liya would’ve agreed with that.

  ***

  Later that evening, as blue-black shadows descended over the fields and woods of the estate, the company and its hosts assembled in the salon. A fire crackled under the marble mantelpiece, providing just enough warmth to counter the slight chill in the air. Lamps and candles splashed the frescoed walls with golden light. It was a lovely, harmonious room, but everyone in it seemed bored, peevish, or somehow out-of-sorts. It was the awkward hour, the limbo of the evening. Rehearsals were over for the day, and supper wouldn’t be served for an hour or more.

  At a card table, Romeo and Carmela were playing a desultory game of three-hand Tarocco with Jean-Louis. Bright kings, queens, devils, and monks shuffled through their hands. Grisella—I couldn’t think of her as Gabrielle no matter what Gussie advised—sat reading her book nearby. Octavia’s settee had been moved near the fire, but her needlework lay idle as she and Karl chatted quietly, heads only inches apart. Vincenzo was also reading, alone, in a far corner. One of his treatises on farming, no doubt. Emilio and the Gecco brothers slouched at the loggia doors, arguing about an opera that had lately been performed in Venice.

  Gussie caught my eye and raised his voice. “Care to stretch your legs, old fellow?”

  I forced a mammoth yawn and replied lazily, “I suppose I could do with a circuit or two around the house.” Actually, I was doubly glad that Gussie had proposed a walk. Understandably curious, he’d been observing Grisella with such intensity that people were bound to notice.

  Carmela was the only one to acknowledge our departure. She fluttered her fingers in a wave, and her gray eyes followed us all the way through the foyer to the front door.

  “You must stop staring at my sister,” I said as soon as we stepped onto the circular drive. As Ernesto had predicted, the air had turned cooler. An almost full moon shone above, shrouded in mist.

  “Just can’t stop myself, Tito. Every time I catch sight of her, I think she looks like a hardened version of Annetta. Only with that brassy hair, of course. Then I start thinking of the life Grisella must have led in Constantinople.” He shook his head. “But you’re right, I must be more careful.”

  After a judicious nod, I asked, “Did you find the ice house?” Earlier, Gussie had offered to use his freedom to roam the estate to locate the murdered stranger’s current resting place.

  “Yes, it’s not far. We can go through the garden.”

  Strolling as if we had no definite destination, mutually aware of the prying eyes that could be watching from the villa’s dark windows, we rounded the house and crossed the back lawn. The garden path stood out as a pale ribbon winding through umber foliage. Tendrils of fog roped our ankles as we trod its graveled surface.

  We had just rounded a bend graced by a marble nymph that seemed to hover like a luminous phantom when Gussie paused. “This way,” he whispered, turning onto a side path that was little more than a cleft in the shrubbery. “Mind the stair.”

  I followed him onto a sunken path defined by stone retaining walls that came up to our knees. It was darker here, and dominated by the smell of dampness and leaf mold. I slipped once or twice; my slick-soled dress shoes weren’t meant for traipsing this country path. Just as I thought we would have to go back to the villa for a lantern, I spotted a thin wedge of yellow light spilling from a door some distance ahead.

  “That’s it,” Gussie said near my ear.

  We drew closer, and I saw that the ice house was really just a façade of masonry built over the sloping bank. From within, a flurry of movement met our ears and a shadow blocked the light.

  “Carissimo?” The question was a caress bestowed by a deep feminine alto. Not receiving a reply, the alto turned harsh. “Who’s there?”

  Chapter Six

  “Friends,” I cried. “From the villa.”

  The door opened wide, framing the silhouette of a large woman outlined by candlelight. After a brief moment, she bobbed a curtsy and stepped aside.

  With Gussie on my heels, I entered a small cave with a hard dirt floor and reinforced walls. My head barely cleared the ceiling rafters as I shuffled around the pit that contained blocks of ice transported from nearby mountains. Carcasses of birds and rabbits hung from hooks suspended over the pit. An odor of stale meat and blood permeated the cool air.

  “We… came to pay our respects,” I said, noting signs of a vigil in progress.

  The stranger’s corpse rested on a shelf that would normally have held foodstuffs. The rough wood planks had been covered with a threadbare Persian carpet, the sort of thing that the lady of the villa would offer to a tenant once its usefulness was over. Candles burned at the dead man’s head and feet. His hair had been washed of gore, and his hands were crossed neatly over a winding sheet that covered him from foot to chin.

  “I was beginning to think I would be the only one to keep the watch.” The woman spoke softly, dark eyes liquid in the flickering light, black curls escaping her kerchief of snow white linen and falling to the shoulders of her short, red cape. Her face was too round an
d her skin too brown from the sun to be considered beautiful. But there was something about this peasant that compelled attention. An aura of calmness clung to her, like the mist encircling the moon outside.

  She continued, “Last night, after my husband and Santini brought him in, I washed and dressed him for burial. I’ve kept the candles going since, but I haven’t been able to sit with him for a proper vigil.”

  “You must be Ernesto’s wife,” I observed.

  She nodded. “I’m Pia Verdi.”

  “I’m Signor Amato and this is Signor Rumbolt.”

  Gussie favored Pia with a warm smile.

  She nodded again, grinning shyly. “I know. I saw your carriage arrive yesterday, and I asked Nita who you were. I heard the singing earlier today, and…” She paused to gesture toward Gussie. “While I was on my way to feed the pigs, I saw you out in the vineyard, drawing the grapes.”

  “I didn’t realize we were so interesting,” I replied lightly.

  “Oh, Signore, anything new is interesting in a place where one day is exactly like the next. Some may complain, but I’m glad the mistress brought the opera to the villa. I never heard such beautiful music before in all my life.”

  “I suppose we create a great deal of extra work, though.”

  She shrugged within her red cape. “I don’t mind. And Nita shouldn’t either, not since I’ve been helping her with the laundry and cooking.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at the body on the makeshift bier. “Then it’s doubly good of you to take so much care with someone you don’t know. You could have let his body stay as it was. No one would have faulted you.”

  “That wouldn’t be right. The poor man may be a stranger to me, but he has a mother somewhere, perhaps a wife and children. If one of my boys should ever chance to die in foreign parts, I hope someone will do the same.”