Liquid Desires (36 page)

He waited for Madge Lennox to go on. She looked down at the coffee table as if in search of something.

“I hope you won't mind if I smoke.” She didn't wait for an answer, but took out a gold cigarette case from her purse and extracted a cigarette. Before Urbino could light it for her, she did it herself with a small gold lighter. She inhaled, but quickly blew out the smoke. Urbino got her a small ceramic dish he used for burning incense.

“Why Flavia told me, I still don't understand,” the actress began. “It was a few weeks after we met at Eleonora Duse's grave. I was telling her about my own life, confiding in her, woman to woman. I felt a strange compulsion to tell her things only a few other people know, but many suspect. I may as well be completely frank with you, Urbino. I was attracted to Flavia. I'm not ashamed to admit it. Years ago there were rumors about me and we all tried to keep them down. It wasn't too difficult—especially since there were also rumors that I had had a child out of wedlock. Those
were
rumors.”

She gave a distant smile and put the cigarette to her mouth, inhaling, but once again quickly blowing out the smoke.

“Flavia was a modern-thinking young woman. She wasn't judgmental and—I have to emphasize—neither did she need to be afraid I might force my attentions on her. I never have with anyone, and I certainly wouldn't have with her. She was fragile beneath all her bravado. I knew she couldn't easily bear being taken advantage of in any way. That evening, confidences encouraged confidences, as they so often do, and by the end of the evening I had learned everything about ‘Lorenzo il Magnifico'—how he stifled her mother, controlled her every move, every thought, how he had done the same to her, being scornful of her friends, especially a boy several years older than she was. She tried to get her mother to stand up for her, but Regina was afraid and wasn't emotionally or physically strong. Flavia had to endure everything alone: She was in Lorenzo's control both before her mother killed herself and afterward. Very
much
in his control.”

Madge stared down at her cigarette.

“You wonder what happens in a family,” she said, shaking her turbaned head slowly. “How love can become all twisted around and become hate or something even worse! I think you know what I mean, Urbino. An ailing, bedridden wife, a beautiful young daughter who looked like her, and a father who expected compliance from everyone! Lorenzo at first just made her feel uncomfortable and uneasy, opening her bedroom door when she had closed it behind her, sitting on the edge of her bed and consoling her when she cried over her mother's illness, sometimes lying next to her most of the night. As you probably realize now, it eventually went beyond such innocent things—if they were so innocent—when she was eleven or twelve. She endured it. She told no one at the time, especially not her mother. Lorenzo said it would make her mother sicker and they would have to institutionalize her.”

As Madge Lennox spoke with nervous energy, Urbino saw the closed shutters of the Palazzo Brollo with its wicker basket tied to the balcony to draw up provisions. A world turned in on itself, as Urbino had thought, looking up at the building after his last meeting with Lorenzo Brollo. Now Madge Lennox was revealing what had gone on behind its walls, where Lorenzo Brollo—the man who had never shown any affection for his daughter in front of Tina Zuin, who had seemed cold and detached—could do what he wanted within his domain. Over the years Lorenzo must have lived in fear of being exposed as the man he really was. How much closer was Urbino now to zeroing in on Flavia's murderer? Was this the crucial strand—Lorenzo's sexual abuse of Flavia? Was this the break that he needed, or did he still have a long way to go?

Urbino didn't want to interrupt the actress to ask her questions or to make any comments. He just continued to listen. Madge seemed to have almost as much a need to get all this out as Urbino had to hear it.

“Then Flavia's mother drowned herself. Flavia blamed Lorenzo and, in part, herself. She thought that maybe her mother did know what Lorenzo was doing to her and might even have held Flavia responsible. And yes, Urbino, she did say that her mother told her about Alvise da Capo-Zendrini—that he was her father—and Flavia threw it in Lorenzo's face. It was one of her ways of coping with what Lorenzo was doing to her, of pretending it wasn't as terrible as it actually was. Can you understand why I didn't want to get involved? To betray Flavia's confidences when she had been betrayed so horrendously in her life? And I was sure that she had killed herself. When you first mentioned murder, I didn't give it much thought, but the second time we talked, you seemed so much more positive that it—it frightened me. I began to think that Flavia
could
have been murdered, like that girl she was friends with. I was afraid to say anything.”

Madge stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another.

“What changed your mind?” Urbino asked gently.

“Seeing that horrible Dalí painting! It made me realize how it must have affected her. It was like a distorted mirror of what she had gone through. It must have haunted her. She must have seen Lorenzo's face on that naked older man's. Who knows? Maybe she even associated her poor mother with the woman whose face is turned away! I felt her pain all over again when you showed me the painting. And the whole idea of murder kept going around and around in my mind. If Lorenzo had done such a beastly thing to her—and I never had any doubt that she was telling the truth—then what might he have done to keep her quiet once she started talking about it? What might he do to
me?
Or
you?
Would it be better to tell you or to keep quiet? I was afraid. I still am.”

She took a deep breath.

“But I couldn't keep my secret any longer. I knew I had to tell you. But it doesn't mean I'm any less afraid.”

Madge shivered involuntarily, snuffing out the cigarette that had never touched her lips.

“Do you know someone named Ladislao Mirko?” Urbino asked her.

Madge appeared to think for a few moments.

“The name is vaguely familiar. Should I know who it is?”

“He was a friend of Flavia's—short, thin, not particularly attractive.”

“Very
un
attractive, right? Yes, I saw him with her once. They came to Asolo together one day about a month ago. I'm afraid I got her upset by what I said about him.”

“What was that?”

Madge seemed embarrassed.

“It was stupid, really. I said that he looked like her D'Annunzio. I meant Gabriele D'Annunzio, you know, the homely writer who was Eleonora Duse's lover. You remember how I told you in the Sant'Anna cemetery that Duse was Flavia's heroine.”

“What was Flavia's reaction?”

“She became very upset, as I said. I felt terrible. She said that this man was only her friend, nothing else, and that she wished people would stop thinking anything else and would also stop saying that he was ugly. What difference should that make? she asked. Needless to say, I never brought the topic up again. I shouldn't have in the first place.”

Madge Lennox looked at her watch and got up.

“I should be getting back to Asolo. I don't want to spend a night in this city. I'm going to be nervous until I get on that train.”

Helping her with her light jacket, Urbino said that he would see her to the train station. She was clearly relieved.

“Poor Flavia,” she said, understandably not able to let the topic go now that she had finally told Urbino the story. “She carried around a photograph of herself as a young girl. She used to take it out, look at it, and show it to me from time to time. It reminded her of when her life used to be different—before Lorenzo started to bother her.”

Flavia had shown the photograph to Urbino and the Contessa in the
salotto verde
of La Muta. He remembered how sadness had permeated her voice when she had explained that the photograph had been taken a long time ago.

“I'll say whatever you want me to—and to whomever you want—as long as it's the truth. Be careful! And please give my apologies to the Contessa—my apologies for not having spoken when I should have and, now, for having such a sad story to tell about her husband's daughter.”

13

The telephone was ringing when Urbino returned from escorting the fearful Madge Lennox to the train station. It was the Contessa.

“I'm at sixes and sevens,
caro!
Silvestro confesses.”

“Confesses?”

“Not to killing Flavia, you silly boy, if that's what you're thinking, but to taking the clippings from the scrapbook! Oh, he's such a dear man. How you could ever think he would harm anyone even in his thoughts! He said he wanted to help me. I held his hand most of the time and Pompilia was getting so upset. You know she hardly ever makes any noise and there she was yapping away and—”

“Barbara,” Urbino interrupted, “are you trying to avoid telling me what he said?”

“Of course not! I've already told you, haven't I? Silvestro took those things on Tuesday just as you thought, but don't be upset with the poor little man, Urbino. I told him I forgave him. It's to his credit that he didn't try to conceal it.”

But he did, Urbino thought, up until now—and what else was he still hiding? Occhipinti had given very little information to either Urbino or the Contessa without being pressed.

“And he did it for me and Alvise, just as I thought. After Flavia died he found out where she had been staying and went there to see if he could find out anything about her. He said he thought he might be able to learn something and help you in your sleuthing. He went into Ladislao Mirko's pensione, found the scrapbook, saw the clippings with the pictures of him, Alvise, and me, and pulled them from the scrapbook. The cleaning woman interrupted him and he left. He thought he was doing the right thing.”

Much of Occhipinti's story didn't add up. How had he known where Flavia was staying and where to find the scrapbook? And although Occhipinti had told the Contessa that he had just wanted to see what he could learn about Flavia so he could pass it on to Urbino, he had done just the opposite: removed potentially important information and concealed it until now. Had he been to the Casa Trieste on another occasion, perhaps when Flavia was alive? He had been in Venice on the Thursday Flavia was killed. No, Urbino said to himself, there was more to Occhipinti's story than this, and the Contessa was too sharp a woman not to realize it herself.

As if to illustrate this very thing, she said, “I failed, didn't I,
caro?
I let him get away with something. Oh, I realized it at the time, but I couldn't press him. He looked so ravaged.”

Urbino allowed the Contessa to ring off without telling her what he had learned from Madge Lennox. His reason, he convinced himself, was that he wanted to wait until he could present her with a more neatly wrapped package. He had her peace of mind at stake.

After the Contessa's call Urbino considered the major suspects.

Lorenzo Brollo would seem to have had the strongest motive to murder the woman who might have been his daughter. With Flavia out of the way he no longer had to live in fear that she would reveal his sexual abuse. His world would remain closed, private, and inviolable. His sister Annabella, who had lived in the Palazzo Brollo from the time of Regina's death, might have desired the same end and done what she could to bring it about—or she might have been driven by jealousy and resentment.

As for Violetta Volpi, what motive might she have had to murder her niece? How much had she known about Flavia's life behind the walls of the Palazzo Brollo? If she had discovered the truth, however, she wouldn't have struck out against Flavia, would she, but against her brother-in-law? But the emotional life of the Brollos and of Violetta and her sister Regina was far from conventional. Urbino realized that little, if anything, about them could end up surprising him.

Urbino's mind now turned to Silvestro Occhipinti and to Ladislao Mirko, both of whose love and loyalty might have ended up being as twisted as that of the others. Urbino believed that a person's virtues, whatever they were, had their shadow sides, which could be even more powerful. How dark and destructive were the shadows of Occhipinti's devotion to Alvise and the Contessa, and of Mirko's devotion to Flavia? And what would happen if self-interest was thrown into the picture?

Lorenzo Brollo, Annabella Brollo, Violetta Volpi, Silvestro Occhipinti, and Ladislao Mirko—a rogues' gallery unlike any Urbino had come across before. During the hours he tossed and turned in bed that night, he couldn't shake the feeling that whichever one of these had murdered Flavia, the others were also, in their own dark fashion, responsible.

Madge Lennox's masklike face then gleamed in front of Urbino's closed eyes as it had earlier tonight in the fog. Despite whatever truths she had told him, he couldn't yet exclude her from his gallery. Perhaps it was this realization, carrying with it as it did the Contessa's benediction, that finally helped him drift off to sleep.

14

Early the next morning Urbino went to the cemetery island of San Michele. The new day was already stifling and the sky was as gray as it had been yesterday, but from the wind blowing damply across the water Urbino could tell that a change would come soon.

He had little trouble finding Nicolina Ricci's grave, with its bouquet of fresh flowers and a porcelain photograph of the dead girl. It was like a wound in the stretch of green grass at the eastern end of the cemetery island. Salamanders darted across it.

Not far from Nicolina's grave was a field in the process of disinterment. The requisite twelve years had passed, and the dead were now being interrupted from their brief rest to be brought to a common grave or to one of the ossuaries in the cemetery walls. Space for the dead was limited on San Michele.