Farewell to the Flesh (19 page)

“He certainly might,” the Contessa said.

“But I'm afraid, Mother.”

Berenice Pillow got up and put her arm around him. Tears welled in her eyes and as she spoke, her voice quavered.

“I know you are, Tony. But we don't have any choice. He knows he has to go, Mr. Macintyre, but he said he would feel better if someone other than ourselves and the police also knew about all this. We of course thought of you—and Barbara, too,” she added with a weak smile at the Contessa.

“She's right. I know I have to go, Mr. Macintyre, but will you go with me? And do you think we could wait until tomorrow morning?”

The way Vico appealed to him made him seem like a little boy trying to postpone the inevitable deserved punishment.

“Tomorrow would be all right, I suppose, but as early as possible. I'll be at the Splendide-Suisse at eight.”

“I want to come, too,” Berenice Pillow said.

The gentle arm she put around her stepson and the look she gave him—and them all—were more convincing than a monologue would have been to express her belief in his innocence.

27

Like all the palazzi on the Grand Canal, the Contessa's turned its aristocratic back on the activity of the alleys, squares, and bridges. It was into this bustle that Urbino now plunged on his way back to the Palazzo Uccello. Several horns were blown in his face and he was dusted more than once with confetti on the busy
strada
that funneled the crowds between the train station and the Piazza San Marco.

It might be past ten o'clock but it was the Saturday night of
Carnevale
and people were still pouring in from the train station.

Fortunately, it didn't take Urbino long to leave this commotion behind as he walked away from the Grand Canal deeper into the Cannaregio. In Venice just one turning could make the difference between the thick of things and an almost funereal calm. Sometimes the division was as sharp and as sudden as that between life and death. One moment you were at the feast, the next moment beyond feasting, beyond caring, beyond feeling.

His thoughts were consumed with how Hazel's disappearance might fit into what he had learned tonight about Vico and Gibbon. Berenice Pillow had explained that there was no way for her or her stepson to have seen Hazel leave the Montin from where they were sitting, but what about when they had come in? Urbino had little doubt now that Hazel had noticed the two of them coming in with the Contessa when he had left the table. That explained the change in her behavior.

Gibbon's murder, followed only a few days later by Hazel's disappearance after she had been in the same restaurant with Vico, didn't look good for Mrs. Pillow's stepson. Urbino felt that he hadn't been told the truth tonight, not the whole truth. One thing that he was convinced of, however, was that Tonio Vico had kept Hazel's involvement with Gibbon a secret from his stepmother. Vico would never have told her. That Mrs. Pillow hadn't known of Gibbon's existence was one thing, but it was not as easy to believe that Vico had been unaware that Gibbon was in Venice. Yet, if Vico had had something to do with Gibbon's murder, would he have waited for a whole day to “discover” that Gibbon had been killed? Wouldn't he have taken advantage of yesterday's
Gazzettino
article to come forth right away and admit his acquaintance with the murdered man? What would a guilty man gain by delaying the revelation except the suspicion of intentional concealment? Had Vico actually not read
Il
Gazzettino
until today?

The faces of guilt and innocence were unfortunately sometimes the same, except in one respect. One was actually a face, the other a mask indistinguishable from it.

When he got back to the Palazzo Uccello, he tried to give his attention to Proust. He started to read at random. He was familiar with the vast gallery of characters as well as with the story—the plot—if you could give these names to the ruminative narrative that re-created the loves and disillusionments of its main character, a thinly veiled version of Proust himself.

He hoped that Proust would be able to soothe him tonight. He also hoped that, as often happened when he put aside a problem, he would be visited with some sudden clarity, an insight that would have eluded him if he had sought it out. Urbino supposed that it wasn't much different from the unexpected power of involuntary memory that was at the heart of
Remembrance of Things Past
. First there was the intuition, followed by rational examination. It was what Urbino always hoped for in his biographies. It was also what he hoped for in this present business with Hazel Reeve and the murder of Gibbon.

Tonight no sudden clarity came, however, and he had to be content with the pleasures of the text alone, with characters changing into their exact oppsites, with a social world in which the reality behind appearances and illusions was only gradually revealed. It wasn't long before his mind was filled with Proust's notions about passion transforming our normal character, about the difficulty of ever knowing another person, about the inseparable trinity of love, suffering, and jealousy. He couldn't get Hazel, Val Gibbon, and Tonio Vico out of his mind as he considered Proust's belief that jealousy can not only outlive love but frequently can't be cured even by the death of the beloved.

But perhaps the thing he thought about most, so much so that he put the book down in his lap, upsetting poor little Serena, who had climbed into it, was Proust's notion that another person is not like some garden with everything blooming for us to see beyond its railing but instead a shadow we can never penetrate—a shadow behind which the imagination can alternately see, with equal justification, both the fires of hatred and those of love. This wasn't particularly encouraging for someone in the business of getting at the truth about people, but Urbino took Proust's belief as a sensible admonition more than anything else, as a warning about presuming to know too much too soon. He saw no solution except in pursuing the truth as quietly and methodically as he knew how, all the while hoping for one of those fortuitous stumblings on the truth that Proust said gave some support to the theory of presentiments.

To clear his mind Urbino went for a walk. The weather was still cold and crisp, but no longer completely clear. Clouds moved quickly, pushed by winds from the Dolomites.

By avoiding the Piazza and the main squares and thoroughfares, he had the solitude he wanted for his reflections. He moved deeper into the Cannaregio, going along quays and up narrow alleys, past shuttered palazzi and bars and hostelries. He went past the dilapidated House of Tintoretto and the leprous statues of the Moors, one of whose noses had been refashioned out of metal, and then turned up toward the Madonna dell'Orto. When he stood on the bridge by the church and looked down at the black funeral motorboats moored against one of the buildings, the image of Hazel Reeve lying injured or dead somewhere in the city drifted into his mind like some dark fog.

When he went to the Madonna dell'Orto boat landing and looked out over the lagoon toward the cemetery island, the image was even stronger. Hazel's body might be in the mortuary on San Michele along with Gibbon's. If this were centuries ago and Florence instead of Venice, her body could now be under dissection at Maria Novella for a
presente cadavere
lesson to which the public was invited twice a year during
Carnevale
.

Urbino turned from the lagoon and made his way back to the Palazzo Uccello by the most direct route.

A figure was leaning against the building next to the Palazzo Uccello as he came over the bridge. The person was looking up the
calle
away from Urbino as if he wasn't familiar with the area or at ease in it either.

Until Urbino got closer, he didn't know if it was a man or a woman. Everything seemed meant to camouflage. Not just the long dark coat with the hood pulled up but the stance of the figure that betrayed nothing about sex or age.

As Urbino approached, the figure turned toward him but the facial features were in shadow beneath the hood, pulled forward as it was. Then the figure spoke, and with one word all ambiguity disappeared. Sex, age, and personal identity were clear.

“Urbino!”

Hazel Reeve came forward and touched his arm, She didn't throw back her hood but looked nervously up and down the
calle
.

“Can we go inside?”

Urbino unlocked the door and preceded her up the stairs to the little parlor.

28

“Give me a brandy,” Hazel Reeve said, throwing back her hood and taking off her coat, “and I'll explain everything.”

On the two previous times Hazel had confided in Urbino she had obviously kept things in reserve. Was he really going to hear the whole story now? He doubted it.

Hazel settled into the deep blue cushions of the chair, closing her eyes and putting an arm across her face. Urbino handed her the brandy.

“I'm sorry for whatever trouble I caused you, Urbino. It wasn't until this morning that I realized that dropping out of sight like that after dinner might put you in a bad position.”

“I was worried about you.”

She took her arm away and looked at him with a smile before taking a sip of her brandy.

“‘Worried about me.' That's nice but I don't think I deserve it. In fact, I know I don't. I went to Mestre.”

Mestre! It was only a few minutes across the causeway from Venice.

“But I don't understand.”

“How could you? I wandered around for a while after I left you. I went to the Piazza and had a drink at Florian's. It was a madhouse! Then I took the boat as far as the train station and got on the first train that was leaving. Of course it stopped in Mestre like all the trains from Venice. I got off and went across the street to a hotel.”

“But why Mestre?”

“Because it wasn't Venice. I realized I had to get away, if only for as long as this.”

“Because of Tonio Vico?”

If she was surprised she didn't show it. She nodded.

“So Tonio told you. I didn't think he saw me.”

“He doesn't seem to have—or his mother. I spoke with them at the Contessa da Capo-Zendrini's tonight. She and Mrs. Pillow used to be in school together. Tonio Vico saw the piece in today's paper. He didn't know Gibbon was dead until today.”

“Today's paper? What about yesterday's? But I'm the one who's been behindhand, aren't I? I should have told you last night, I know. When I mentioned another man before Val, there was no reason to tell you who he was. But last night when I saw him come in with his stepmother, I couldn't believe it. I knew the woman who was with them was your friend the Contessa. Porfirio showed me some pictures of her. When I saw Tonio, I got very frightened.”

“For yourself?”

She laughed without much humor and drank some of her brandy. With her cheeks flushed and her short haircut disarrayed from her hood, she looked even more girlish.

“For
him
—for Tonio. If Tonio was here when Val was killed, it might mean—”

She floundered and looked at him helplessly.

“That he killed Val Gibbon?”

Although he had finished her statement for her out of sympathy, the sudden anger in her eyes showed that she had taken offense. It went as quickly as it came, however.

“What I meant is that the police would be in a good position to make his life uncomfortable. He would be their major suspect. It's just the kind of violence most Italians understand. A crime of passion involving a faithless woman.”

She put down her glass and took out a handkerchief. Urbino thought she was about to cry but she only blew her nose. Her words reminded him that the Italians—and many others as well—would also be able to understand another crime of passion, one committed by a spurned woman.

“Tonio is going to the Questura tomorrow morning and tell Commissario Gemelli everything.”

“Everything?”

There was a note of fear in her voice.

“Everything about his relationship with you and about having known who Gibbon was. He says he didn't kill Gibbon.”

“Of course not!” She shook her head slowly. “Well, it's obvious that nothing's going to be a secret now. Tonio's going to be humiliated.”

She put away her handkerchief and took another sip before going on.

“Commissario Gemelli must be furious. I might even have broken the law but I don't care. Last night I was so frightened and confused that I had to get away! I had to think, and I knew I couldn't do it staying with Porfirio. I'm moving out.”

Where she might be moving to close to midnight in a city without a spare room was something she had probably not worked out yet. There was a determined look on her face, however, that seemed to say she wouldn't go back to Porfirio's even if it meant sleeping in a vaporetto or going back to Mestre.

“I can't trust anyone but you, Urbino.” When she said this, it was as if Urbino could hear the Contessa whispering in his ear to be careful. “Let me tell you about Tonio. I met him two years ago at a lecture on Palladian architecture at the V and A. I hadn't had a relationship in—well, a long time—and we got along from the start. Tonio was studying architecture in London then and we started to see a lot of each other. Surely you can see even after only a short time that he's Italian in the best ways and none of the worst, yet he's very much American, thanks to his stepmother. I thought he understood me better than any other man ever had or could. He was intelligent, handsome, sensitive—everything that a girl could want.”

She hadn't mentioned “rich” but she was rich enough herself.

“But you didn't love him,” he said, risking her anger again.

“But I didn't realize it, not until Val came along. And when Val did, then I knew. I was in love with Val almost from the first. As I told you, he appeared like magic just when I needed someone to photograph my parents' things at the house in Knightsbridge. He was completely different from Tonio.”