4 - The Iron Tongue of Midnight (7 page)

“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 answered 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 th
e 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 and 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.”

“We saw one of your boys,” Gussie put in. “He wanted to help fix our carriage wheel, but Ernesto sent him back with the pig.”

“That was Manuel. He’s fourteen. Basilio is just a year older. They’ve been working in the hemp all day.” She bit her lip and looked toward the door. “I really should be seeing to their supper.”

“Go on, then. We’ll say a few prayers for the unfortunate stranger.”

“God be praised,” she answered, keeping her eyes on the door and touching the small crucifix that hung in the hollow of her throat. I noticed that her fingers slid down to caress the shadowy cleft between her breasts as she ducked her head to clear the lintel and pass into the night.

Pia’s breadth and height had taken up a good deal of space, but somehow, after she’d gone, the ice house seemed even smaller.

Gussie also seemed affected by the change in the atmosphere. He shook his head like a dog emerging from a stream. “What an amazing woman. I’d love to paint her.”

“A portrait? Of a peasant woman?”

“I’d seat her on a throne in a field of ripe wheat, as naked as the day she was born, with her black hair streaming over her shoulders. I’d crown her with a wreath of red and yellow grapes and call it… Harvest. No… The Bounty of the Harvest.”

I chuckled. “Somehow I don’t think that’s what Vincenzo had in mind when he asked you to paint the estate.”

“Nevertheless, think how impressive that could be. Something to make the Academy sit up and take notice.”

My poor brother-in-law. Though Gussie’s talent was obvious and his pictures sold well, the Venetian painters’ guild had turned down his request for admittance for four years running. The tradition-bound Academy was not about to sully its register with the name of an Englishman, even one who had adopted Venice as his permanent home.

I grasped his shoulder. “The Devil take the Academy. Let’s see what we can make of this corpse.”

Our mysterious friend had been dead almost twenty-four hours. Long enough for his limbs to stiffen and his skin to mottle where it met the rug-covered shelf, but not long enough for the stench of corruption to take hold. Nevertheless, we made haste, mindful of the passing time and wanting to avoid any awkward questions our late arrival at supper would provoke. Gussie helped me undo the linen winding sheet, but the stranger’s pale, pitiful nakedness had no stories to tell. He was simply a well-cared for, virile male in his early middle years.

We wrapped him back up, and I bent over his face. Very lightly, I ran my fingertips over his upper lip.

“What are you looking for?” asked Gussie.

“Does it seem that this patch of skin under his nose is lighter than the rest of his face?”

“Yes, now that you mention it. But what does that signify?”

“It tells me he’s a Russian, not just a man with a Russian pistol.” I elaborated after Gussie shot me a fish-eyed stare. “Carmela gave me an account of her adventures in St. Petersburg. She mentioned that the men of a certain class wear mustaches in honor of their late Czar.”

“Yes, I saw a Russian delegation in London once, all bushy mustaches and tall sealskin hats. The only other man you might see with facial hair would be a Mohammedan of some sort, and our examination proves that our poor fellow doesn’t follow their tenets. But he doesn’t have…” Gussie shook his head, then broke into an eye-crinkling grin. “Oh, I see what you mean. He had a mustache and shaved it off. Quite recently.”

I nodded. “His cheeks are lightly tanned and toughened like a man who spent at least a few hours a day in the open, but his upper lip is as pale and soft as an infant’s.”

“You think he didn’t want to be recognized?”

“Perhaps,” I answered, as I used both hands to part the hair over his shattered temple. “It’s also possible that he shaved because he didn’t want to stand out or call attention to himself. Hmm, this is odd…”

“What is it, Tito?”

I frowned. I’m not unduly squeamish, but probing a dead man’s skull isn’t high on my list of preferred activities. Above the Russian’s left ear, at the center of the concave depression that I expected to find, my forefinger encountered a deep, narrow well of flesh, bone, and a yielding substance that I didn’t even want to name. “
Dio mio
! He has a hole in his skull. The clock pendulum couldn’t have caused this.”

“Are you sure?”

I stepped back and ransacked my jacket for a handkerchief. Wiping my hands more times than was strictly necessary, I replied, “You take a look.”

Gussie traded places with me. With a greenish cast to his complexion, he gingerly repeated my examination, then straightened with a solemn frown. He reached for his own handkerchief and brought something else out of his pocket. Candlelight glinted off a metal blade: the slender knife that he used to sharpen his drawing pencils and chalks.

I closed my eyes as Gussie probed the Russian’s skull, but opened them when I heard his sharp exhalation. With the tip of his knife, he rolled something on the cambric square that covered his outstretched palm. I stepped close and peered over his shoulder at a ball of lead shot.

***

We escaped to our room after a tedious supper dominated by Octavia’s cooing attempts to coax Karl from a melancholy silence. Ernesto, this time accompanied by his silent shadow Santini, had already made his rounds and closed the shutters. In the enclosed space, the air felt heavy and the pale green walls seemed as bleak as the stones of a prison cell.

“This is a damned rotten business,” Gussie muttered.

“What? The composer who’s set himself up as Octavia’s plaything while her husband looks the other way? Or someone arranging the body to look as if the Russian was killed by the pendulum instead of a gunshot?”

My brother-in-law threw off his jacket and slowly unbuttoned his waistcoat. “Both, I suppose.”

“I can sympathize with Maestro Weber’s position,” I replied. “Few composers can afford to mount productions loaded with the best singers and the lavish scenic effects that audiences expect. That leaves a lot of talented fellows scrambling to find a patron with a deep purse and an itch for speculation.”

“Don’t the backers make money? Everyone from the humblest gondolier to Doge Pisani goes to the opera.”

“Some backers succeed royally. Domenico Viviani, for instance, when he owned the Teatro San Stefano. But most lose their shirts. So many things can go wrong—the fickle public takes an instant dislike to the prima donna, a visiting star cancels at the last moment, a fire destroys the scenery. Expecting an opera to make you rich is sheer lunacy.”

“Then why do so many of the wealthy gamble their fortunes?”

“Some are genuine music lovers. Some are simply mad for the stage and relish being a part of its inside workings. Others, like our hostess I suspect, seek to raise their stock in society by becoming connoisseurs who discover hidden genius. Maestro Weber is lucky to have attracted Octavia’s interest.”

Gussie snorted. “That’s debatable. I have a feeling that the formidable Octavia forces the poor chap to earn every
zecchino
two times over. Vincenzo is hardly an idiot. I keep wondering why he allows such a flagrant affair right under his nose.”

“Saintly forbearance?”

“I doubt it. I believe that Vincenzo simply grew weary of arguing years ago and finds life a good deal pleasanter if he lets Octavia have her head.”

I threw my jacket on the bed, poured some water in the basin, and grinned as I splashed my face. “I bow to your wisdom, my sage elder. Can you also supply as easy an explanation for that bullet that now resides in your pocket?”

“I’ll have to think on that one a bit.” He produced the lead ball and gave it a quizzical squint. “Obviously, the Russian wasn’t killed inside the villa—someone would have heard the shot.”

“His body must have been carried in from the outside,” I replied as I toweled dry. “The only one of our company who has the strength to accomplish that on his own is Romeo Battaglia.”

“Oh, I don’t know. What about Jean-Louis? I saw him taking some sun with his shirtsleeves rolled back. Under his fancy clothing, the Frenchman is all muscle and sinew.”

“No, not Jean-Louis.” I shook my head firmly.

“Why not? When we discovered the body, did you not notice that he wore his outside shoes while everyone else in the corridor was in slippers or barefoot?”

“I noticed, but it means nothing. A pair of shoes can be changed in the twinkling of an eye.” I added hastily, “It’s much more likely that two people acted together.”

Gussie pulled his chin back. Concern flickered in his blue eyes. “Tito, I’m surprised at you. You act as if you’re afraid to even speculate that Grisella’s husband might be involved. It’s not like you to shy away from the obvious, even if it’s not to your liking.”

A light knock forestalled my reply, and Giovanni’s boyish face appeared around the door. “Your letter is on its way, Signor Amato.”

“Oh, yes.” Our foray to the ice house had almost made me forget the footman’s errand. I fetched my jacket to find the
zecchino
I’d promised.

“There’s more,” he said, fanning a fistful of letters like a winning hand of cards.

“You found those waiting for me?”

“Just this one.” He handed over the thickest missive. “These others are addressed to the German.”

I raised my eyebrows at the letters in his hand. They all bore the same curlicued, feminine hand. “Maestro Weber must be quite the correspondent.”

Giovanni shook his head. “Oh, he doesn’t answer them. He doesn’t even read them, just tears them to bits or feeds them to the fire the minute I give them over. Doesn’t even seem to appreciate the trouble I go to fetching them from the Post.” The footman presented his palm with a smile, obviously hoping I would place a suitable value on his efforts.

I added a few small coins to Giovanni’s
zecchino
and sent him on his way. Gussie hurried over, the mystery of the murdered stranger put aside. “Is the letter from Liya? Is there some trouble at home?”

“It’s Benito’s writing.” I broke the red seal and removed a short note wrapped around another sealed packet. “He says this letter from Alessandro arrived soon after we left the house. He thought it might be important so he posted it at once.”

“Let’s see it, then.” Gussie lit the table lamp with a wax-tipped spill and we both drew up chairs. I slid my thumb under Alessandro’s seal and spread his pages out in the circle of lamplight.

Constantinople, 28
th
August 1740

Dear family,

Excuse my scrawl. I write in haste, eager that you should know my good news as soon as possible. Grisella may yet be alive!

Gussie gave a low whistle and drummed his fingers on the tabletop. “I say, Tito. For once you’re a nose ahead of Alessandro.”

“Shush. This isn’t a horse race. Let’s see what he’s found out.”

Pray don’t blame me for leaping to conclusions. What else is a man to think when he stands over a grave with his sister’s name carved on the tombstone? I’m still not certain, but I’ll set my roundabout tale down as best I can, and you can come to your own conclusions.