Death in a Serene City (23 page)

“Do you think someone wanted me to see it?”

“What did it say?”

“I read what I could as quickly as possible. As we already know, Beatrice was found in the toilet of the Galuppi flat in November of fifty-four, the fifth, I think it was. The autopsy found a massive dose of arsenic in her system, introduced”—her voice dropped as she added—“vaginally. There was a bruise on her forehead but it wasn't a death wound. It was from when she fell to the floor. According to the medical report Beatrice was a suicide and she
wasn't
pregnant.”

She paused to give him a few moments to take this in but he sensed that she didn't expect or want a response quite yet.

“If she had been pregnant,” she went on, “there might have been some question that her death had been caused by an abortion attempt.”

“But it doesn't make sense. Even if she had been pregnant, injecting arsenic is not one of your usual ways of bringing on an abortion, is it? You don't think she wanted her death to look like an attempted abortion, do you?”

“Why? So her mother could have been spared the shame of having a daughter who committed suicide by having instead one who died while trying to give herself an abortion? There's another possibility. She wasn't pregnant but thought she was.”

“But why arsenic?”

“Maybe she didn't know it was arsenic.” She gave a sigh of exasperation. “There are too many question marks and maybes involved to suit me. They didn't even find any trace of arsenic in the toilet, no pills, no vials, no syringe—just the poor girl herself.”

“Who found her?”

“Maria.”

Urbino tried to imagine what that moment of discovery had been like for Maria. What did she think had happened? Did she call the police right away? Had Carlo been with her? He was so lost in these thoughts that he didn't realize at first that the Contessa was saying something.

“Are you still there, Urbino? I was asking what was on your sleuthing agenda for today.”

“I thought I'd go to Murano. Marietta said that Maria went there the first week of every November.” He stopped and took in his breath. “My God, I just realized! There's that November date again!”

“Maybe we'll find out why it keeps popping up when we go to Murano.”

“We?”

“Yes, we. Elsa is doing my hair at ten so the morning is impossible. If I ring up Angela, however, I'll be available for the afternoon. Shall we say about twelve-thirty here? We'll have Milo take us over in the boat. I haven't been using it much lately and he feels a bit neglected. I dare not tell him that if it were a gondola he couldn't get me out of it!”

20

THE Contessa's motor launch left the Sacca della Misericordia and headed toward Murano. Off to their right was the cemetery island with its brick walls and cypresses. The early February sun had broken through the clouds and the lagoon shimmered ahead of them toward Burano, Torcello, and the other islands.

“If Beatrice didn't commit suicide, couldn't she have been killed by the woman she was involved with?” the Contessa asked, breaking the long but not uncomfortable silence between them.

Urbino had been staring back at the Fondamenta Nuove and trying to pick out Benedetta Razzi's building.

“So you've become reconciled to the possibility that Beatrice could have been having a relationship with another woman? You felt differently a few days ago.”

“That was before I read about a Sapphic nun from seventeenth-century Tuscany. After that I'm receptive to just about anything on the topic.”

She buried her hands deeper into the sleeves of her sable coat until she seemed to be hugging herself and peered through the window of the cabin. They said nothing more on the short crossing to Murano until they reached the quay in front of the superimposed arcades of the Basilica of San Donato.

“I'm still not completely convinced, though,” the Contessa said with a touch of belligerence.

“I didn't think you ever could be.”

Urbino helped her on to the steps of the quay.

Inside the Veneto-Byzantine church there was much to remind him of Maria. It wasn't only the relics of San Donato enshrined with the bones of the dragon that legend said he had slain but also the baroque statue of San Teodoro on the high altar. The mosaic peacocks and cockerels on the floor even had him thinking of Beatrice's lovebird.

“Yes, I knew Maria Galuppi, God rest her soul,” the old sexton told them by the baptistery door in the almost empty church. “She came every November, around the Day of the Dead, even insisted I open when we were
in restauro
. She would stay five, ten minutes, say a prayer, go behind the altar there to pay her respects to our San Donato. Hardly ever said a word to me or anyone else but she always would light a candle and leave something for
i poveri.
”

“What about the pastor?,” Urbino asked. “Did he have any contact with her?”

“None that I ever saw. She never came to Mass or went to the rectory. She would come in, pray, then leave. Always alone.”

“Do you know why she came?”

The old man looked offended.

“Our church is very beautiful. What more reason?” Looking at the Contessa, he added more softly, “But it might have been because of
il Giomo dei Morti
. As I said, she always came around then. Maybe she was remembering her dead.”

Before they might ask him anything else he turned and went back into the baptistery.

21

THE iridescent lump of molten glass at the end of the long tube started to swell from the force of the
maestro
's lungs and then to take gradual, miraculous shape. Around him his workmen were fashioning what looked like vases, putting pieces of the glass paste on places the
maestro
indicated when he paused briefly from his own work.

They looked like brawny priests officiating before a glowing altar, the object of their devotion an indestructible dish filled with the burning substance only they could magically transform into all the myriad shapes of creation.

Urbino looked over at the Contessa. Surely she must have seen this dozens of times before, as he had himself, but to judge by the expression on her face you would think it was the first time.

The
maestro
, within a remarkably short period of time and with the help of only his imagination, a spatula, and a pair of pincers, formed his paste into a delicate swan.

Something out of nothing, Urbino thought as the glassmaker put the swan in the cooling gallery with numerous other little animals, vases, ashtrays, and candlesticks. Then he turned to his two visitors with an inquisitive look on his broad, flushed face.

“Signor Macintyre and I have come to Murano for information,” the Contessa said in her unaccented Italian. “You are the first of the
maestri
we're speaking with.”

Because the Contessa was well known on Murano through her contributions to the Glass Museum and her patronage of the glass factories, they had decided she would be the one to ask the
vetrai
most of the questions. The smile that came over Bartolomeo Pignatti's face showed how right they had been. It was as if she had paid him the highest compliment.

“I will do what I can, Contessa, but what information could I have that might be of interest to you?”

“It's about Maria Galuppi.”

“
Sì, la poverina
, but I don't understand.”

He took a handkerchief from his back pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He was a good-looking man in his late forties with curly black hair and a trim moustache. His sleeves were rolled up to reveal well-developed arms with several scars that looked as if they were from burns.

“We would like to settle some things about her life so she can rest in peace. We've learned that she came to Murano regularly.”

“
Sì
, Contessa, regularly but not often.” He stuffed the handkerchief back into his pocket. “Every November like the
festa
of a saint.”

“She came to see you?”

“And before me my father and most of the other
vetrai
as well. We would talk about it among ourselves. She had the same business with us all. She came to ask questions, Contessa, just like you. And always the same ones, one November after another. Did we know a girl or woman named Domenica? Never any last name and she never could tell us what this Domenica looked like. Did this Domenica ever buy from our factory a crystal dove, a
cocorita
? Did we make such things back in the fifties? She would describe it so well that I could see it in front of me every time—small, fragile, with ruffled wings, the kind of thing you learn how to do when you first begin. I have made such
uccellini
myself but never one with an elegant ‘D' on the bottom.”

“And she came every November, you said.”

“
Sì
, for more than twenty years—and always the first week, even at the time of the big flood.”

“Did you know her daughter?”

“Beatrice? More's the pity! But I heard of her although I was just a boy at the time.” He didn't meet the Contessa's eyes. “My friend Alberto has an older brother, Vittorio, who was
innamorato pazzo
but it did him no good.”

“Did Maria ever mention Beatrice when she came?”

“Not that I heard, only questions about this Domenica and the glass dove. She was determined to find out what glassworks the trinket came from. She was sure it was from Murano. If only I could have examined it, there might have been a chance, who knows?” He shrugged. “But it was gone, she said, she didn't have it any longer. I told her I would make her another free of charge but this didn't please her at all. Sometimes she would be angry when she left us but she would always be back again the next year.”

One of the workmen asked Pignatti to come over to the furnace.

“You'll have to excuse me. I hope I've been of some help. Let me give you a suggestion. After you've talked with some of the other glassmakers you should visit Caterina Zanetti farther along the Fondamenta dei Vetrai toward San Pietro Martire. She knows a lot about Murano—at least the Murano of many years ago. Her name isn't on the bell but look for the name of her nephew, Agostinelli.”

Going from the chill wind blowing off the lagoon to the heat of the glass factories and then back again gave them no new information but the feeling that if they continued it for much longer they might find themselves confined to their beds for a week.

“Get me to the nearest restaurant,” the Contessa said as they stepped out onto the quay again. “I don't care what it's like.”

Buffeted by the wind, they went along the quay toward a restaurant they had passed a few minutes before. The shop windows were crowded with gaudy and cheap-looking glass objects meant to catch the eye and open the pocketbook of tourists determined to bring back something—anything—from the island of glass before the next boat left. Only occasionally was there something that might have tempted them to linger for a few moments if the weather had been better—an elegant chandelier or chain lamp hanging above all the trinkets, goblets of milk-glass filigree, fragile little cups, bowls, and salt cellars. But they hastened toward the haven of the restaurant, not even bothering to heed the warning of the soiled
menu turistico
taped to the window. They managed to satisfy themselves with simple
frittate
and a bottle of red wine and talked about everything else but glass and Maria Galuppi.

22

CATERINA Zanetti, a thin, papery-skinned woman who looked at least as old as the century itself, was propped up with pillows in an overstuffed chair by her bedroom window. The chair was positioned so that she could see what was reflected in the little mirror affixed to the outside of the window. On a small table next to her were a Bible, an empty glass, and a half-empty bottle of grappa.

“So pleased to see you both,” she said in an almost inaudible voice, pushing stray strands of white hair back under her cap. She was seeing Urbino and the Contessa for the first time but was treating them as if she had known them for years. “Can my niece get you anything?”

“
Non grazie
, Signora Zanetti,” the Contessa said. “All we will trouble you for is your knowledge. We were told that you're the person to see if we want to know anything about Murano.”

Signora Zanetti gave a self-satisfied smile.

“What do you want to know? I can tell you all about the Palazzo da Mula and San Pietro Martire and the dragon of San Donato. Or maybe you want to know about the Golden Book of Families or the Room of the Mirrors in the Glass Museum.” Her voice was getting stronger as she went on. “Or maybe about how the daughters of the glassmakers were allowed to many into the Venetian aristocracy?”

She looked at them expectantly.

“Not about any of those things, Signora, but about something much more recent. We would like to know about Maria Galuppi.”

“
Una brutta morta.
” The old woman shook her head and sighed.

“Did you know that she came to Murano every November?”

“
Mariavergine! Certo!
I would see her in my mirror.”

“Did she ever visit you?”

“Never, but Lodovico Pignatti was my good friend, God rest his soul. He would say, ‘Caterina, she came again.' No need to ask who ‘she' was. Always the first week of November, always the same questions about a woman and a glass bird. I would say, ‘Lodovico, tell her to stay away, tell her you will call her on the telephone next year if you happen to remember this woman.' But he was a
gentiluomo
, was Lodovico. He wouldn't stop seeing her even though I told him he might end up
morto.
”

She looked at them both sharply to see the effect of her words, then reached for the grappa. Urbino poured her some. Without thanking him except for a nod, she downed it quickly.