4 - The Iron Tongue of Midnight (26 page)

“Get out of my room,” she cried on a snarl from some deep animal place. “Leave me be.”

“It’s too late for that, Grisella. I know you killed Carmela and Jean-Louis. I can’t just walk away.”

“I didn’t kill Carmela. Far from it. I tried to save her.”

“What are you talking about?” Gingerly, I released her arms but kept my position astride her narrow hips.

“Jean-Louis was determined to get rid of Carmela,” she cried.

“Why?”

“When she boasted of performing for the court in St. Petersburg, Jean-Louis convinced himself that Carmela had heard about Vladimir’s death and later realized that I was his mistress who was supposed to have died with him.”

Yes, that might be, I thought silently. Carmela had been singing in Paris just before she came to the Villa Dolfini. Who knows what scraps of backstage gossip she could have picked up concerning Grisella and Jean-Louis, then knit in with other news she’d heard in St. Petersburg? Blood trickled from a gash on my cheekbone and reached the corner of my lips. I stanched it with my ruffled cuff, never taking my eyes off Grisella’s face.

Her words continued to pour out. “Jean-Louis recognized the body Carmela discovered in the corridor right away. He was a Russian agent who had been following us off and on for months. We’d changed our names and thought we’d lost him before I appeared in Paris. Then, one night, there he was in the audience—with the audacity to hand me a bouquet over the footlights. It went on like that for weeks. He was stalking us, taunting us, biding his time until he struck.”

“Why didn’t you run away? Go into hiding far from Paris?”

“We were desperate to leave, but Jean-Louis’ high living had left our purse as thin as a pauper’s. Maestro Weber’s offer seemed heaven sent. Without telling a soul where we were going, we came to the Villa Dolfini only to find Carmela in the cast. I knew her for a first-rate gossip, and Jean-Louis was wary of her from the outset. When she boasted of hobnobbing with Empress Anna Ivanova’s inner circle in St. Petersburg, he decided that she was the one who had alerted our pursuer to our whereabouts.”

“The Russian’s murder must have been quite a surprise—your enemy dead at your door without either of you lifting a finger.”

“We thought Carmela had killed him, perhaps because he refused to pay as much as they’d agreed on.” She gazed up at me with a scowl, calmer now. “But when Captain Forti announced that the stranger had been shot, none of that made sense anymore.”

I held my tongue about Manuel and Basilio, instead asking, “You say you tried to save Carmela. How?”

She twisted under me, her mouth and shoulder tensing rhythmically. “Let me up. If I’m going to explain, I’ll need a few drops of my medicine.”

I studied her for a long moment. Slowly I eased back. One foot found the floor, and then the other. Grisella moved more quickly, springing up and fetching her bottle of elixir from a dresser drawer. The brown liquid nearly reached the stopper. She returned to sit on the edge of the bed, tipped her head back, and consumed several gulps.

I also sank down on the mattress, turning to face her.

“Jean-Louis was determined to get rid of Carmela,” she went on, her voice low and dreamlike, the muscles of her face and shoulders going slack. “We fought nonstop for two days. What a shame to consign Carmela’s wonderful voice to an early grave, I argued. The Russian who had pursued us so intently was dead, and I was sure that Carmela could be persuaded to forget who we really were. The very thought of murdering a fellow singer sent shivers up my spine. But Jean-Louis said he could never feel safe as long as Carmela was alive. He decided to duplicate the first murder—use the pendulum, strike at midnight, all of it.”

“Why?”

“Last year a killer terrified Paris for weeks—people were still talking about him when we arrived. He was a lunatic who murdered prostitutes in a particularly gruesome way—always the same weapon, the same park by the Seine, the same hour of the night. Jean-Louis thought making Carmela’s murder appear to be the work of such a demented soul would cast suspicion away from him. Besides, at midnight I could quite believably insist that he was in bed with me.”

“Had Jean-Louis already identified Santini as a convenient scapegoat?”

“No, I’ll wager he hadn’t even noticed that filthy mute until Carmela’s nightshift was found in the
barchessa
. Why should he, after all?” She tossed her brassy curls. “But if my plan had worked, the man would not have been accused because Carmela would have packed her bags and left. I meant to warn her. That’s why I sent that message.” Grisella pointed toward the table where the candles burned brightly over the book and the note. “I first tried to pass it to her during that silly game of blind man’s bluff, but Jean-Louis watched me like a hawk. It wasn’t until the next evening at supper that I managed to tuck it into her shawl that had slid off the back of her chair. Once Jean-Louis and I had gone up to bed, I doctored his brandy with a few drops of my elixir. He fell asleep at once, and I was able to sneak downstairs to keep our appointment in the cantina.”

“Why did you choose the cantina? Why not just have a talk in her room?”

“I wanted a private place where we wouldn’t be interrupted. With Romeo around, Carmela’s room might as well have had a swinging door on it.”

I nodded. “What happened in the cantina?”

She dropped her chin, no longer able to look me in the eye. “I’d barely started to explain what danger she was in when Jean-Louis rushed in like a raging bull. I’d misjudged his plow-horse constitution. To lay him low, I should have used half a bottle.”

“So he hit her with the pendulum?”

“Yes, when he woke in an empty bed and found Carmela’s room empty, too, he grabbed the pendulum from the clock and started searching for us. He began with the cantina because he’d made a point of telling me about watching the grape stomping that afternoon. It all happened so fast. When Jean-Louis swung the pendulum, Carmela didn’t even have a chance to scream. I heard her skull crack and watched her crumple to the stone floor.”

Looking up, Grisella wrapped her arms around her midsection and swayed from side to side. “It was terrible, Tito.”

I nodded, sick. “You must have helped Jean-Louis arrange her body in the stomping vat.”

“Yes, I suppose I did. I don’t know why he insisted on it, but he did. Oh, don’t give me that accusing look. What was I to do? Carmela was already dead, and Jean-Louis was furious with me. If I hadn’t cooperated, I would have been floating in the grapes, too.”

“Why did you leave the note where it would be found?”

She shook her head. “I didn’t. I thought I’d cast it into the vat to dissolve in the slurry.”

“I see,” I answered dully, wondering how much of my sister’s tale was the truth.

“Tito?” Grisella reached out to curl her fingers around mine. “Do you understand now?”

“Understand?”

“Why I had to kill Jean-Louis…”

Chapter Twenty

The stark memory of Jean-Louis’ corpse in his bloody bathwater flashed through my mind. Then I pictured the man I had grown to know during our stay at the villa: a greedy ruffian with a craving for luxury who wasn’t ashamed to live off the earnings of his pretend wife. “I understand why you wanted to get rid of him, Grisella. But plunging the clock hand into his jugular? Do you really expect me to condone that?”

Her eyes glimmered brightly. “But I had to kill him. You made me do it.”

“Grisella!”

“You did! When you promised to take me home, you became my protector. I was saved! Saved from the cruel Frenchman who’d taken me in with honeyed words, then used me in the most shameful ways imaginable. Finally everything was going to be all right. But then Alessandro had to stick his long nose into our business. He convinced you that I was at fault for what happened in Constantinople. What does he know? He wasn’t there the night of the fire. He didn’t see Jean-Louis cut Vladimir’s throat and carry in that lifeless girl’s body. He didn’t see how I threw myself at Jean-Louis, trying to stop him catching the curtains on fire from the lamp’s flame. No, Alessandro turned you against me so that you refused to take me home even though you knew what a monster Jean-Louis was. What else was I to do? I had to kill him.”

“You could have told me that Jean-Louis killed Carmela. I would have seen that he faced the law for his crime.”

She shook her head stubbornly. “If I told anyone, he assured me that I would also be implicated. He would swear that I wrote the note to lure Carmela to the slaughter, not to warn her.”

I sighed, running a hand over my face. What frustration! My sister had an answer for everything and took blame for nothing. “Grisella,” I said. “Jean-Louis stole something from Count Paninovich. The woman Alessandro met at The Red Tulip was a witness to Jean-Louis selling something of great price to the Russian Envoy. Can you honestly tell me you had no part in that?”

She narrowed her eyes. “Vladimir owed me that. I’d been with him for two years, and he was making plans to cast me aside like an old stocking that isn’t even worth darning. While I waited and worried, he was smiling and happy because he was going back to Russia, back to Anna Ivanova’s court to be given a hero’s welcome. Every time I looked at him, the unfairness made my blood boil.”

“You took this valuable item to get some of your own back,” I observed, keeping my tone gentle in hopes that she would tell me more.

“I did and I’m proud of it, no matter how much trouble that damnable list has caused.”

“List?”

She nodded fervently. “The list was the reason that Vladimir had been dispatched to Turkey in the first place. He’d been given unlimited funds to become friendly with the staff of all the embassies and as many Turkish military officers as would extend their courtesies. Vladimir was full of dash and quite liberal with his purse, so he gathered a substantial set of hangers-on, mostly young men with more vigor than brains. The Turks hold themselves above many of our pleasures, but when someone else is paying, you’d be surprised what they get up to.”

“It was a list of corruptible officials?”

She raised an eyebrow. A smile cold as mountain frost split her lips. “That would have been an excellent idea. But no, Vladimir used his naïve young men to develop a complete list of the boundary forts around the Black Sea, including their manpower and artillery stocks.”

Aha! Based on what Alessandro had told us of Russia’s continuing designs on Turkish waterways, Count Paninovich’s list would have been very valuable indeed.

“I saw the list as my safe passage back to Italy,” she continued. “I knew where Vladimir kept the key to the box that secured all of his important papers, but what could I do with the list once I had it in my hand? To transform this document into gold, I needed a man who knew his way around the underside of Constantinople, a man who wasn’t afraid to take a chance. Jean-Louis popped up at just the right moment…” She paused, shrugging. “I truly didn’t expect him to be so ruthless—there was no need to kill Vladimir, no need for the substitution of the red-haired girl. We could have simply run away, sold the list back to the Russians through a safe intermediary, and lived on the proceeds.

“But Jean-Louis wouldn’t have it, and once we’d left Turkey behind, he gobbled up our gold like a pig at a trough. We visited every grand city in Europe, always the best accommodation, the finest clothing, food, drink. With no vice beyond the reach of his purse, he fell into deeper and deeper depravity. If he wasn’t at the faro table, he was bedding another woman, sometimes two and three at a time. If I so much as whispered a word of caution, I felt the back of his hand. Within six months, the money we’d received for Vladimir’s list was totally gone. To keep us from starving, Jean-Louis put me on the stage. I was just starting to enjoy a bit of success when we realized that the Russian had caught up with us again.

“Do you understand now?” Grisella regarded me with her hands on her hips, radiating the same self-satisfaction that followed one of her stupendous arias. “Jean-Louis was a pig, and I slit his throat like a pig at slaughtering time. Why not?”

I gazed at her in wonder, my breath constricting in my throat as I tried to detect one particle of shame. There was none. Finally, I asked, “How did you manage without getting any blood on your caftan?”

She giggled brightly. “How would you manage it, Tito?”

“I wouldn’t.”

“Well, my dear brother, if you ever find yourself in a similar predicament, you must strip down to your skin…” She nodded heartily. “Yes, I removed every stitch. After I dealt with the clock, of course. Being spotted running naked through the hall might have attracted unwanted attention. After I’d dispatched Jean-Louis, I cleaned myself up and slipped back into my Turkish costume.”

Shaking my head at that discomfiting revelation, I rose to my feet. “And what are we to do now?”

“I don’t suppose I can rely on you to take me back to Venice,” she replied disparagingly. “You’ve become a harsh judge, Tito. Even with the wrong that’s been done to me, you find your little sister too soiled to take her place on the Campo dei Polli with the sainted Annetta and her English buffoon.”

“No, I can’t take you home, not while a man sits in jail unjustly accused.”

“That’s hardly my fault. The peasant must have been guilty of something or he wouldn’t have broken out of the stable. No wonder Captain Forti arrested him.”

“I have no way of knowing if most of what you’ve told me is the truth or more of your deceit, but I am certain of one thing.” My voice was thick with anger as I removed the spangled scarf from my pocket and shook it just out of her reach. “You let Santini out of the tack room intending for him to be blamed for the murder you committed. You left one of your baubles from this scarf behind, and I’m taking it to Captain Forti.”

After an instant of paralysis, Grisella made a grab for the gauzy fabric. I was ready. I whisked my prize behind my back and plunged toward the table where the volume and note rested.

Grisella did her best to stop me. With her entire face twitching, she tugged at my arms and the tail of my jacket, grunting, barking, and uttering curses as vile as any I’d ever heard. I pushed her away only to be assaulted anew. In the midst of our struggle, Vincenzo and two footmen burst into the chamber.

“What’s this?” Vincenzo cried, with the boys frozen wide-eyed behind him. “Madame Fouquet excused herself for the water closet some time ago. We only just realized that she’d slipped upstairs.”

“Help me!” I begged. “Quickly! She killed Jean-Louis.”

At Vincenzo’s nod, both footmen laid hold of Grisella and wrestled her up against the stout wardrobe. She spat at them.

Panting, I slid the note between the volume’s pages and crammed it and the scarf into a deep pocket. I clasped Vincenzo’s shoulder. “There’s no time to explain everything that’s happened. I promise I won’t leave you in the dark any longer than need be, but right now, I must get to Captain Forti. Keep Grisella in this room. Lock the door, and for God’s sake, don’t let her out no matter what she tells you.”

“Yes, yes. We have her now. She won’t fool us again.”

“I’m depending on you,” I cautioned sternly.

“Trust her to us, Signore.”

I shot one more glance at Grisella. Squirming and twisting in the footmen’s grasp, she could have been a savage attired in a lady’s gown. Her eyes bulged from their sockets, her hair hung in frowsy clumps, and spittle covered her chin.

I ran from the chamber as if pursued by the Furies of Hell.

***

The carriage bucked and bounced over the rutted lane. Ernesto was on the driver’s seat, pushing his team as fast as the terrain and darkness allowed. As we sped on, the coach lamps illuminated the margin of the fields bordering the road. Heartsick and exhausted, I saw sinister forms where daylight would have revealed a gentle, prosaic landscape. Shocks of grain became phantoms in the mist. Hanging vines, gibbets. And twisted tree trunks, hulking giants.

Finally, I closed my eyes, sank back against the leather cushion, and rehearsed what I would say to Captain Forti. I could give a coherent account of the murders of Carmela and Jean-Louis; it was the first death that presented problems. I had already decided that true honor did not demand that a pair of boys defending themselves from a Russian assassin should face the hangman. And Ernesto’s noble determination to sacrifice himself for his sons’ sake would be a mockery of justice, as well as a tragic waste. I couldn’t allow either. In this case, truth must be forced to bow to justice.

I pondered uneasily. I would have to convince Captain Forti that Jean-Louis shot the Russian. Not an impossible task. After all, the Russian had come to the villa to exact revenge from Grisella and Jean-Louis, giving one of them more reason to kill him than anyone else. Only a few rough details might need to be smoothed over. Had Jean-Louis possessed a pistol? Would the impetuous Captain Forti even think to search through his belongings?

The carriage drew to an abrupt halt. It was quite late and the village of Molina Mori had put itself to bed. I saw a shuttered house through the carriage window, and rising behind it, the black profile of the church tower blotting out the stars.

Ernesto jumped to the ground and pounded on the door. By the time I joined him, Captain Forti had appeared in dressing gown and nightcap. Grey tufts of hair surrounded owl eyes in a countenance that seemed oddly shrunken. It took me a moment to realize that the man hadn’t stopped to put his teeth in. At first, the constable refused to admit us, but once I started spilling out my tale on the doorstep, he opened the door and allowed us to pass into his drafty hall.

Forti wasn’t at all happy with my revelations, but he was a sworn officer of justice and possessed enough integrity to hear me out. After listening to my story and duly examining the exhibits I’d brought forth from my pockets, he sent for a pair of mounted deputies with torches. He then found his teeth, dressed, and joined me in the carriage.

As our entourage set off for the villa, the bell in the church tower sounded a deep-throated note. One, then two, then three. I counted the mournful strikes for a total of twelve. Midnight. The bell may as well have been tolling Grisella’s death knell. I shivered miserably as Captain Forti peppered me with questions I could barely answer.

The Villa Dolfini had never gone to bed: when we came up the drive, yellow light poured from every window. My anxieties multiplied as I led the constable and his deputies to Grisella’s room. Had my desperate sister been throwing herself against the door the whole time I’d been gone? Would she go with the deputies quietly? If not, how would they subdue her? And further afield, would Annetta ever forgive me for giving Grisella up?

Vincenzo met us at the top of the stairs. He gestured toward the door that Giovanni and Adamo were flanking like sentries. “She’s been very quiet for a half hour or so. At first she begged me to let her speak with Octavia, but once she saw that I was deaf to her pleas, she went completely silent.”

“You’ve done well,” I replied with a nod. Relief began to unfurl within me, but then a new horror jerked it away. Grisella’s elixir! I’d had my sister locked in with nearly a full bottle of her powerful medicine. What if she was silent because she’d swallowed the lot? Just as quickly, another thought came on the heels of the first: Would the gentle death of the apothecary’s potion not be her best course of action?

Vincenzo was handing the room key to Captain Forti. I swiped it from his fingers. Under their startled gazes, I drove the key into the lock, turned until I felt it click, and threw open the door.

I blinked, struggling to get my bearings in the dim light. Two candles had burned themselves out. By one wavering flame, we all saw… nothing. The room was empty. Grisella had disappeared.

I whirled on Vincenzo. “You let her escape.”

“No, not at all. The boys and I haven’t left the corridor since you set off for Molina Mori. Madame Fouquet hasn’t set a foot through the door.”

“You must have stepped away at some point,” rumbled Captain Forti.

“No. Not for a second,” Vincenzo insisted with a raised chin.

“Then…” I suddenly realized that cool, damp night air filled the room. One of the windows stood open, and in the shadows beneath it, a stool had been overturned.

Captain Forti and I reached the window at the same moment. He tried to shoulder me aside, but I squeezed my head through beside his. Peering down, I saw a ledge that separated the first level of the villa from the second. It was a lip of stone barely four inches wide. By hanging full-length out of the window opening, Grisella’s toes would have just made contact with it.

“Impossible,” Captain Forti murmured.

“Surely not,” I agreed, trying to picture a woman in a full skirt clinging to the smooth side of the building, inching her way along. Even a rope dancer would have thought twice before embarking on such a daring feat. And yet.

“What’s that?” I whispered, wiggling my arm through to point down the side of the building to a sinuous shadow that climbed from ground to roof. “A vine?”