The Bellini Card (25 page)

Antonio didn’t respond.

“Unmarried, curiously.” For Vosper, an unmarried woman was a rare and rather unappealing idea. “But she has men in her life, I’m thinking. Admirers.”

Antonio looked blank. “It’s not for me to say.”

“You can confide in me, Antonio, because I am a policeman.” Vosper took out a toothpick and put it into his mouth; he saw no point in beating about the bush. “I wonder, has anyone new come calling on her recently? A new friend, perhaps?”

Antonio smiled to himself. He didn’t have much time for the friends, or their policemen. “You mean, the American?”

“The American,” Vosper returned, noncommittally. “Tell me about him.”

Antonio obliged. There was very little to tell, but he was reasonably sure that a fellow as stupid as Vosper could waste a lot of time pondering Signor Brett’s involvement in the case. He hoped Signor Brett would not be much inconvenienced: he had seemed like a decent man.

“He took the neighboring apartment? Interesting.” How better to manage an affair?

He found the details of Brett’s last—albeit first—public visit to the palazzo interesting, too.

“He felt sick, you say?” Sick with jealousy, no doubt. Brett had seen his rival in the room. He left early and then, having carefully brought Antonio to the door of his apartment to establish an alibi, he waited until the coast was clear and doubled back.

An open-and-shut case, just like the chief said.

“Thank you, Andrea, you’ve been most helpful.”

“My pleasure,” Antonio said.

Only one thing troubled Vosper as he made his way back to the Procuratie.

He was not, he would have admitted, the brightest candle in the chandelier. So why hadn’t Brunelli pounced already?

B
RUNELLI
returned to the Procuratie after a quick lunch, to find an anxious Scorlotti waiting for him in the office.

“Trouble, Scorlotti?”

“Vosper’s taken over the Barbieri case, Commissario. The chief told him it was a crime of passion.”

Brunelli sat down heavily at his desk and rubbed his eyes. He felt terribly tired.

“Thank you, Scorlotti.”

“Aren’t you—I mean, don’t you want to see the chief?”

Brunelli looked up. “Frankly, Scorlotti, no. He won’t be back from lunch for another hour or two, anyway.”

“Not today, sir. He’s in his office. Vosper thinks he’s found the murderer.”

“Well, that was quick. At least he ruled out suicide.”

Scorlotti grinned.

“So.” Brunelli clasped his hands in front of him and swiveled on his chair. “Who did it?”

“The American, apparently. Brett.”

“Ah, yes.” Brunelli nodded slowly. “Has he asked to see my notes on the case?”

“Not necessary, the chief says.”

“No. No, of course not.” He stood up. “If anyone asks for me—I don’t suppose they will, Scorlotti, but you never know—tell them I’ve gone for a walk.”

“Bene
, Commissario.” Scorlotti hesitated. “It’s a mess, isn’t it, sir?”

“For Signor Brett, Scorlotti, it has the makings of a nightmare.”

S
CORLOTTI
understood that the commissario wanted to be alone. He was not fooled by his air of weary calm. Brunelli might despise the politics of his situation, but he hated injustice even more—especially injustice perpetrated by people whose job was to dispense it fairly.

The walk, Scorlotti dimly supposed, would lead to a resolution.

Brunelli’s own thoughts were equally vague, as he stepped out of the Procuratie and began to stump angrily along the Molo. He did not exercise enough, as it was, and as a matter of course he liked to eat too well—
seppia con nero
was just the tip of the iceberg. He counted himself lucky that he could eat well, for many people in Venice had been on rations for years, ever since the arrival of the friends and the decline of the port. Sometimes his wife reminded him to be more forgiving. Hunger makes thieves, she said.

He walked, without really choosing where he went, following the invitation of a bridge or the angle of an alleyway, but the intricacy of the walk pleased him, not least because it reflected the intricacies of his own mind. The stadtmeister complained of having nowhere to ride, or to hit his stride when he wanted a walk; sometimes he had himself shipped out to the Lido for an afternoon. “I like a straight line, Brunelli, and—let us not delude ourselves—that goes for police work, too.”

Brunelli knew every inch of his city, from the water and from the land. The Grand Canal curved in a lazy backward S between islands with different dialects, different loyalties, different saints, and separate traditions.
Even faces could vary from parish to parish. But Venice itself was compacted out of all these differences. Together, Brunelli sensed, they made a whole.

That explained how the city had subdued a straggling empire, fought and traded and conceded ground when pushed, and regained what it could when the opportunity arose. The money that had built Venice—the money that had paid for the bricks and stones and crockets and secret gardens, for the handsome wellheads in every
campo
, and the churches and the schools—came from anything but following the straight line. It came, Brunelli thought, as he turned into a
sotoportego
beneath a building constructed on the profit of camel trading in the Negev, from a habit of looking around the next corner, from regularly observing juxtapositions—the curve of a bridge, the redness of an old wall, and the reflection of a tiny votive niche in a canal at night. It came from a certain sort of efficiency—not the straight-lined sort, but one that could hold a thousand turnings and windings in the mind at once.

He found himself at the Rialto and crossed the bridge.

According to the stadtmeister, the Austrians had plans to fill in canals and bring a railway across the lagoon. Why not? The city was dying on its feet. Carrots were cheaper in Padua or Mestre. Lawyers were busy along the coast—but in Venice, for sure, they wanted work like everyone else.

Brunelli found himself on a bridge with a parapet—another Austrian felicity—and leaned on the wall, looking down into the green water of the canal.

B
RUNELLI
raised his eyes from the canal and let them rove across the façade of a palazzo he recognized as belonging to the Contessa d’Aspi d’Istria.

This was where Barbieri took his last ride in a gondola.

And in the palazzo next door, one Signor Brett, who came from New York and spoke Italian like a—like what? He spoke it well: in the Tuscan dialect.

Which made three turns of the alley, three pieces of the labyrinth. There were corners to Signor Brett and no straight lines.

But Brunelli knew he was innocent of murder.

“Spare a copper, my dear?”

Brunelli glanced down at the ragged figure at his feet and frowned. “You should move along.”

“S’what the other policeman says,” the beggar remarked. He sounded foreign—Genoese, maybe. He had pink sores in his scalp and his face was puffy.

Brunelli glanced up—and there was Vosper, standing in a doorway up the alley with his back turned.

“How long has he been here?”

“‘Alf an hour, maybe less. But there ain’t nobody home.”

“Nobody home?”

“The gentleman in the apartment went out.”

Brunelli looked at Vosper and felt a surge of irritation bordering on contempt.

“Did—did the gentleman come this way?”

“Right over the bridge.”

Brunelli knew what he had to do. “If he comes back—if he comes past again—will you tell him not to go home?”

“Not to go home,” the beggar repeated. “I’ll let him know.”

“Here’s fifty,” Brunelli said, fishing out a coin. He put it into the beggar’s hand. “Tell him to keep away.”

“Very good, your honor. I’ll be here.”

Brunelli turned and began to retrace his steps.

Straight lines!

Stupid people!

P
ALEWSKI
walked briskly home through the alleys and switchbacks until he reached the bridge, where the beggar hissed at him.

The sound made Palewski jump.

“I didn’t mean to frighten your honor,” said the beggar obsequiously, touching his brow in a vague salute. “But I’m told to let you know, you’re not to go back to your ‘ome.”

Palewski looked down with astonishment. It was the first time he had really seen the beggar, who wore a pale beard and whose eyes were half closed as if they could not bear the light. He was, with his head sores, a fairly pitiful sight.

“Not go home? What do you mean?”

The beggar shook his head and looked apologetic. “I don’t exackly know, your worship, it’s just like I was tole an’ all.”

“Told? Who told you?”

“P’liceman, sir. What’s got a kindly face. ‘Cos there’s another one, see, hangin’ about the alley now. Reckon ‘e’s waitin’ fer ya.”

Palewski’s heart skipped a beat.

Why would one policeman leave a warning, while the other was waiting outside his house?

“The man you spoke to—did he give you a name? Brunelli?”

The beggar seemed to cringe. “‘E didn’t leave no name, sir. Big bloke, carries some weight. I wager ‘e likes his vittles an’ all. Tell ‘im not to go ‘ome, he says. Tell ‘im to keep away. On account of the other nark, ‘e says.”

Palewski had gone very white.

“It’s no good,” he muttered. “I’ve simply got to get into that apartment.”

The beggar looked interested. “If wishes was gondolas,” he remarked in his reedy voice, “I’d be on the Grand Canal, instead of ‘ere on this bridge all day and night.” He paused. “Is it jewels, your honor? Or cash?”

Palewski ignored him and bit his nails.

Alfredo would be here within the hour. Shortly afterward they’d make the deal and he’d be on a ship, bound for Trieste; tomorrow he’d leave for Corfu, with the Bellini in his bag.

The bag now lying under his bed, containing the letters of credit.

And a policeman watching the door.

He was aware that the beggar was speaking again.