Farewell to the Flesh (40 page)

“You know, Barbara, in the excitement and confusion of the murder and all, we forgot about something.”

“What?”

“Why Berenice Pillow was so anxious to see you.”

The Contessa nodded.

“She was going to mention something about Gibbon. I don't think she knew exactly how much or how little she was going to tell you, but when she knew she would be in Venice to see Gibbon—he had arranged the place of their meeting as he usually did—and that you were here too, she thought she would talk to you about him. She had kept it a secret for so long from even her closest friends. You were going to be the one she finally confided in. All those years since St. Brigid's she's remembered you.”

“But why didn't she confide in me? She had plenty of opportunity. And if she had done it right away, she might not have ended up killing Gibbon.”

“Remember how you were waiting for her at Florian's last week and she didn't come? I don't mean when I was with you, but the first time you arranged to meet each other.”

“How could I forget?”

“Gibbon and Dora Spaak came up to your table and you spoke with them for a while. She saw you through the window from outside. There you were talking with the very person she wanted to tell you about. She lost her courage. She thought that you couldn't be as objective as she had thought you might be. And then there was the business over
Casa Vogue.”

“What about it?”

“When she saw that you knew Gibbon, she thought that he might have taken the pictures for
Casa Vogue
. She had read most of the article but not the first page where the photographer's credit was given. That's why she wanted to see the whole article.”

The Contessa stood up.

“Would you mind if we took a little walk? I don't mean outside, but only out to the loggia. Let me get a shawl.”

While she was gone, Urbino went to the bar and took the Corvo and two clean glasses. When the Contessa returned with a large wool challis scarf, they walked toward the
salone
.

“I was just thinking of a few things,” the Contessa said. “Why was Porfirio in San Gabriele? Why did he go up on the scaffold?”

“We'll never know for sure. Maybe he wanted a closer look at the restoration. He told Josef he didn't think he was doing a good job. Or maybe he wanted to take photographs of the fresco himself now that Gibbon was dead. If Porfirio had lived, he might have approached you about finishing up Gibbon's work in San Gabriele.”

The Contessa shook her head.

“He had too much pride for that. If he didn't get the commission to start with, he wouldn't have wanted it after Gibbon had been murdered. You're lucky he finished taking the photographs for your Proust book.”

They were passing by the private chapel where the Contessa had received her ashes that morning. One of the priests from the Madonna dell'Orto came over several times a month to say Mass. It was one of the Contessa's sorrows that she had never had any children who would have been baptized at the ornate marble font.

The altar was bare of flowers and the statues of the Blessed Virgin, Saint Teresa, and Saint Nicholas of Bari were shrouded in purple material that matched the color of the Contessa's dress. She kept to many of the old traditions, among them this veiling of the statues in penitential purple for the forty days of Lent. It created a solemn effect that brought Urbino back to the days of his youth when all the churches used to do it.

As they entered the
salone
, the Contessa started to sing softly a patch of Amelia's “Morrò” aria that had been such a success last night. The words about the acceptance of the inevitability of death and the consolation of a son's kisses touched her face with melancholy.

“You know, Urbino, I can't help thinking how much of a role mothers and sons played in all of this sadness. There's Berenice's love for Tonio. She was more of a mother to him than many natural mothers are. And there's Xenia Campi, who lost her son in the accident.”

Urbino nodded.

“And don't forget Stella Marts Spaak and Nicholas,” he added. “Or Josef and his mother back in Cracow.”

What exactly it might mean, however, he didn't know, except that without the tender bonds between these particular mothers and sons—without the delicate system of their interdependence—there might have been less sorrow, but also, certainly, less happiness.

The Contessa regarded the scene of last night's ball. Workmen had removed the stage and the buffet table. They were now in the process of putting back the Aubussons and the furniture that had been brought to the storeroom.

“Did it all have to come out at my ball?” the Contessa asked. “You might have arranged things differently.”

“I didn't arrange things at all, Barbara. I certainly didn't set up Xenia Campi to come in with her accusation, spouting that the password was death as if she were intentionally playing the role of Ulrica!”

“I'm not so sure of that. I had an uneasy feeling you had something up your sleeve.”

“As far as Dora Spaak is concerned, it was your fault that her story came out in the little parlor and that she was there to hear Mrs. Pillow's revelations.”

“My fault?”

“Do you forget that you snatched her away from me and gave her to Filippo? If I could have spoken with her privately, things might have been different.”

“Well, thank God it didn't happen in front of everyone! I keep hoping that most of them didn't even know what happened in the reception room.”

“I'm sure they didn't—and they still might not.”

“Not until they read the paper—and
my
friends, I assure you, read the paper!”

She greeted the workmen and asked one of them to open the doors to the loggia. When he did, they stepped outside. Yesterday's storm had blown out to sea and had left only a small deposit of icy snow that had soon melted with the coming of the new day. The sky was a clear blue, the air fresh and bracing. The Contessa gathered her scarf more tightly around her throat.

“I don't know what's going to happen to Josef,” she said, “but he can stay with me for as long as he wants.”

“I wouldn't be surprised if the prosecutor overlooks his role in Porfirio's death.” He paused. “How is Hazel?”

“Oh, didn't you know,
caro?
She's left already.”

“Left?”

“Not Venice, but the Ca' da Capo. She's staying at the Danieli for a few more days before going up to London.”

“What about Tonio?”

“I doubt he has anything on his mind now but his mother—and that's the way it should be. I don't think your Miss Reeve conducted herself very well last night in the reception room, even if she was under a strain. Perhaps Tonio saw something in her that he didn't find attractive. And there's another thing. I don't think that Miss Reeve is ready to doff the role of lover for the equally difficult and perhaps less gratifying one of beloved.”

She looked sideways at him quickly.

“Do you remember how I said at the Regatta in September that you might be on the verge of a mistake? You were feeling so ridiculously guilty and saying that you wanted to ‘do' something, as if you had been the prince of indolence! Well, you
have
ended up doing something, you see, something that neither of us could ever have imagined at the time. I don't think I would have even remembered Berenice's name then. And as for your mistake, well…”

“‘Well' what, Barbara?”

“You were in danger, but you never quite went over the verge, did you? I commend you for that.”

They looked down at the Grand Canal. Everything seemed calm and arrested: the vaporetto nursing against the landing across from them, the mirror of the water, the almost motionless figures in the opposite
campo
, a woman drawing aside the drape of a palazzo window. Midnight had released the city from the thrall of
Carnevale
and restored it to its former serenity.

“Thank God it's all over,” the Contessa said. “Next year I intend to be far away.”

“It's a long time between now and then. Whether you realize it or not, your
ballo in maschera
was a success. You might have started a new tradition here at the Ca' da Capo.”

“I doubt it.” She sighed and shook her head, looking across at the palazzi on the other side. “I can't help thinking of poor Berenice. What's to become of her? She won't recover from this, not with her spirit intact. She's parted from something forever.” There was a gentle sadness in her voice. “Poor fiery little Berenice Reilly of St. Brigid's. Oh,
caro
, it was all such a long, long time ago.”

He put his arm around her waist.

“But you're here now, Barbara.” He looked at her. “Did little Barbara Spencer at St. Brigid's ever think she would be standing on her own balcony above the Grand Canal?”

“If she did, she certainly never thought it would be with you,
caro.”

She rested her head against his shoulder.

“I've had enough of remembrance of things past,” she said. “And you're too young to indulge in such things. Save Proust for your old age. That's what I'm doing.”

But then, as they stared down at the Grand Canal sweeping like a flood between the double row of palazzi, she started to reminisce about her days at St. Brigid's, and Urbino poured them each a glass of wine to warm them.

Turn the page to continue reading from the Mysteries of Venice series

1

“Now, Isn't This just what you needed?” the Contessa said softly to Urbino as she seemed to glide past him the next afternoon to greet a newly arrived guest in the gardens behind Villa La Muta.

Urbino smiled. The Contessa's “this” included not just the sixteenth-century villa and its gardens with their grassy parterres and laurel-shaded dolphin fountain, the hidden, apparently random water sprays triggered by secret sources, the herb and medicinal plant beds famous centuries earlier, and the maze and the
giardino segreto
where they often shared tea and drinks. It also embraced the view across the wide Trevisan plain to the Alpine foothills, the walled, arcaded town above them with its castle and citadel, and the lambent air playing over the hills—everything, in fact, down to the brilliantly plumed parrot in the brass cage under the pergola which kept saying “
Ciao!
” in a distinctly clear and welcoming voice.

The Contessa's guests were gathered in decorous groups on the various levels of the gardens. A string quartet played Vivaldi, competing with the rustle of the wind and the singing of the birds. The whole golden scene, suffused with an air of dalliance and genteel conversation, was evocative of Watteau and delicately burdened with that faint suggestion of the melancholy and the transitory so often found in his compositions.

The da Capo-Zendrini family had chosen its retreat well. Instead of following in the footsteps—or rather the boat wakes—of other eighteenth-century Venetians who had made their summer
villeggiature
on the banks of the now brackish Brenta Canal between Venice and Padua, the da Capo-Zendrinis had gone to the hill town of Asolo, twenty-five miles northwest of Venice, where they had taken over La Muta, designed by Palladio's follower Scamozzi. The British, who regularly descended on the area for villa tours, often mistook La Muta for one of Palladio's own buildings.

The woman Urbino was talking with now said that she had once made the same mistake. She wasn't British, however. She was the retired American actress the Contessa had mentioned yesterday on the Lido—the woman renting Silvestro Occhipinti's villa farther up the hill toward town.

Although the Contessa claimed never to have heard of her, Urbino certainly had. Madge Lennox had made a respectable reputation for herself in a dozen American films, playing primarily independent-minded women, and had lived in an air of notoriety because of her rumored interest in both sexes. Known as “the woman whom Garbo and Huston had loved,” she had moved to Europe in the early sixties, after a dearth of roles in the States, and had appeared in Franco-Italian productions until her retirement fifteen years ago.

A tall woman with high cheekbones and skin that had avoided the sun and sought out the best of plastic surgeons, Madge Lennox looked much younger than her seventy years. A broad-brimmed hat shaded a face whose makeup was close to dead white, giving her aging beauty a timeless, even sexless look. She had a pair of large sunglasses that she kept putting on and taking off, drawing attention to both her large dark eyes and shapely hands. Her hair was completely covered beneath the hat by a deep-pink scarf. She wore ecru silk trousers and a man-tailored peach jacket. From the way she was holding her head and looking up at him, Urbino knew that she didn't want his scrutiny and judgment, however, unless they were benevolent. She wanted to be seen as she saw herself on her best days. If he showed that he saw her this way she would treat him with special kindness and care.