The Veils of Venice (7 page)

Were Urbino and the contessa playing into her hands? What could her motive be? The Pindar family was fond of games, and this could be one of Olimpia's, and a very serious one indeed.

As Urbino crossed the hump-backed bridge by the Palazzo Uccello, another possibility, closer to his original one, occurred to him.

Maybe Olimpia was not so much clever in making the visit as she was desperate to put them off a scent.

Desperation or a game? Which of the two might it have been?

Four

The next day, after the contessa had taken lunch in the conservatory with only Zouzou as her companion, she waited for Mina.

Earlier, she had told Mina that there were two pots of orchids that she could have for her room. Mina had said she would collect them after the contessa had her lunch.

After the dishes were cleared away, the contessa walked around the conservatory, examining the plants. It was one of her favorite spots, especially in the winter. It looked very much the way it had when she had married the conte. An incongruous scattering of old sofas, chairs, footstools, small tables, and bookcases were set amidst the plants and flowers. Ivy twined in and out of the back of the cane sofa.

Zouzou, from her position beneath the cages of parakeets, kept looking toward the door to the hallway. The contessa felt that she was waiting for Mina, too. It was one of the times of the day when Mina walked her. Zouzou was solid white – or as solid white as a cocker spaniel could be bred. Unfortunately, whatever genetic manipulation had made her white had also made her partly deaf – a disability that endeared her even more to the contessa and Mina.

The contessa sat down in an upholstered chair between two potted palms and paged through magazines. When almost an hour had passed, the contessa went in search of Mina. On the staircase to the staff's quarters, she met Vitale.

‘Have you seen Mina?'

‘Earlier, contessa. But she hasn't come back yet.'

‘Hasn't come back yet? Where has she gone?'

The major-domo raised his eyebrows ever so slightly. ‘I have no idea. But she left an hour ago. I assumed she was going on an errand for you.'

The contessa, who was protective of all her staff and especially Mina, nodded her head. ‘I'm sure she's doing something that she knows needs to be done.'

‘Yes, contessa. Mina is a good worker, a good girl. None of us likes to see her upset.'

The contessa's heart started to beat more quickly. ‘Did she seem upset?'

Vitale took a special pleasure in having everything run smoothly in the house. The contessa detected some uneasiness in him.

‘She did. It was when she asked me if Signorina Pindar had been here recently. I told her that she had paid a visit the day before yesterday when Signor Urbino was here.'

‘Thank you, Vitale. Would you please tell Pasquale that I'd like to go out in ten minutes?'

The contessa continued down the staircase with what she hoped was the appearance of a calm she did not feel. She felt a sense of urgency and anxiety. She needed to get to the Palazzo Pindar as soon as she could.

The wind insisted itself against the cabin of the motorboat as Pasquale manoeuvred it to the water steps beside the Palazzo Pindar. A few people hurried along the
fondamenta
. The attic windows of the building reflected the gray sky.

Pasquale guided the contessa to the pavement and watched her as she went up to the door of the building.

She was about to press the bell even though she knew the door was probably on the latch as usual. But even in the contessa's present state of mind, her sense of propriety was strong.

Before she pressed the bell, she noticed that the door had not been closed. Her immediate thought was that Mina had been in too much of a hurry to close it, for the contessa had no doubt that this was where the young woman had come after rushing from the house.

The contessa pushed open the door, slipped into the vestibule, and closed the door behind her.

The vestibule was chilly and silent.

‘Gaby?' The contessa's voice echoed in the large space.

There was no sign of Gaby. The door to the museum was open and the lights were on. Perhaps she was taking one of her naps on the chaise longue.

On the other side of the vestibule, the blue doors were closed on whatever was inside.

The contessa ascended the staircase to the landing of the
piano nobile
. She didn't pause outside the Pindar
portego
though she threw a quick glance inside the large room with its high-backed, square chairs, broken chandelier, and flaking plaster.

She continued up the staircase to the story occupied by Apollonia, Eufrosina, and Alessandro. The door to their apartments was closed.

A low cry, like a cat in distress, broke the silence. The cry became louder. As the contessa hurried up the staircase, which was narrower here than below, the cry had turned into a howl. The door to Olimpia's atelier was open. She stepped inside.

Winter light poured through windows on the large open space. Magazines, sheets of paper, a mannequin, tape measures, pins, ribbons, books, a lampshade, and fabric of various kinds, including a piece of Fortuny material in a floral design, littered the floor.

Olimpia lay on her back on the floor, surrounded by scattered Euro notes. Her eyes were open wide, staring sightlessly up at the ceiling. Blood seeped from her chest, staining her dove-gray dress.

Kneeling beside her was Mina. Her blue coat was still on. She turned a tormented face to the contessa. Tears ran down her cheeks. Her hair was disheveled.

‘I killed her! I killed her!' She started the keening again.

In her right hand was a pair of scissors, with long blades, blades that were covered in blood.

The contessa moved forward a few feet, but stopped. The scissors remained in Mina's hand. The contessa felt ashamed, now and later, of her hesitation, but she remained rooted to the spot.

Footsteps sounded behind her.

Gaby stood in the doorway, her clothing rumpled. A few seconds behind her came Ercule, carrying a thick book, and then Eufrosina, with her coat thrown over her dress and held clasped at the throat by a pale hand. None of them ventured any closer than the doorway, taking in the bloody scene as Mina continued to scream, the scissors still in her hand.

A few moments later Apollonia, helped by Alessandro, joined them. As soon as Apollonia took in the scene, her lips started moving, but the contessa could not catch her words.

She hoped it was a prayer. The dead woman needed it. And so, the contessa feared, did both Mina and herself.

Part Two

Moving in Mysterious Ways

Five

Olimpia Pindar's funeral was held at San Giacomo dell'Orio, the church Apollonia Ballarin visited more in a month than Olimpia had probably visited in her whole life.

There were only a few mourners. Not even the funeral of her sister had been able to induce Gaby to leave the Palazzo Pindar. Among the family members it was only Apollonia, white-faced and peaked-looking and still suffering from her bronchitis, who seemed at ease – and not just at ease but as if she were entertaining in her own home.

Eufrosina, Alessandro, and Ercule, who sat with her, kept giving her side-glances as if they were following her cues.

Nedda Bari, who presumably would have been a family member if Achille had not died before they could marry, sat with two pews between her and the others. The heavy-set woman wore her alpaca poncho with purple and lilac stripes over burgundy-colored slacks.

Next to Bari was a thin blond woman in her thirties, whom Urbino had never seen before. Dark circles pocketed her eyes. She was wearing a worn cloth coat and a drab brown kerchief. When he asked the contessa whether she knew the young woman, she said that she didn't.

Also in attendance were Italo Bianchi, Savio Santo the family physician, two middle-aged women who had worked as seamstresses for Olimpia, and Natalia, Urbino's cook and housekeeper.

From the time Olimpia's body arrived in a plain wooden coffin, with four church workers as pallbearers, until it was brought out again and put into the motorboat that took it to the cemetery island, the whole service struck Urbino as rushed, although he could not say that the priest had omitted any of the customary prayers.

The air of Olimpia being rushed to her burial remained with him during the time of her interment on San Michele. Even her rest would be far short of eternal, Urbino thought as he stood with the contessa beside the gaping grave. For she had been put into one of the burial fields whose occupants would be dug up after a mere twelve years, at which time her remains would be put in a common grave. It was not always lack of money that dictated this fate, but often the shortness of memory and the waning of grief. Olimpia had left no instructions for a different kind of burial, having been taken from life abruptly and at a relatively young age. Neither Gaby nor Ercule had made any effort to give their sister anything but the cheapest burial.

Although the contessa often assumed the burden of perpetual graves for family, friends, and staff, who would have been consigned to oblivion without her generous intervention, she had not yet made any arrangements for Olimpia.

Some delicacy and calculation influenced this decision because of the contessa's close relationship with Mina, who had been arrested for Olimpia's murder. If the contessa had rushed to assume all the burial experiences, it might seem as if she believed in Mina's guilt and were trying to compensate for her personal maid's brutal act.

Making things worse was that in Mina's statement to the police, she had insisted that she had killed Olimpia. But when Mina had been calmer and after she had consulted with the attorney the contessa had engaged for her, she had explained what she had meant. She had found Olimpia lying on the floor with the scissors in her chest. She had been alive then, grabbing at the scissors. Mina, in panic and confusion, had pulled them out. A few moments later Olimpia had died without uttering a single syllable but only a long sigh. Ercule, Gaby, Apollonia, Eufrosina, and Alessandro – all of whom said they had been in the house all day – claimed they had heard no arguments or any unusual sounds coming from Olimpia's atelier until Mina's screams had drawn their attention.

Despite Mina's revision of her confession, she had been charged with murder. Mina's fingerprints were the only ones on the scissors that could be positively identified. The motive was believed to be either jealousy, given the nature of the relationship between the two women, or robbery, considering the money found around and beneath Olimpia's body.

‘I wish I could have done something for Olimpia now,' the contessa said half an hour after the burial. The two friends had parted from the other mourners and were on the path that would take them to another area of the cemetery island. The destination had become a ritual. It was the Russian and Greek Orthodox compound, where Serge Diaghilev was buried. The ballet impresario had been a friend of the contessa's mother.

‘I feel so guilty,' the contessa said as they neared the brick wall of the compound. ‘But I had to tell the police what Mina said.'

‘The others told them the same thing, remember.'

‘I still feel guilty. Maybe if I had told Mina that Olimpia had come to see me, this would not have happened. What I mean is that she would not have been there at all. Olimpia would still have been murdered, but Mina would have been safe with me in the house.'

Urbino gave her elbow a gentle, comforting squeeze through her gray wool coat.

They walked in silence toward the brick wall at the end of the graveyard. Beyond the wall, boats were making their way to Murano and Burano. Dark clouds moved over the water from the direction of the Dead Lagoon, unwashed by any tides. The Orthodox compound and the Protestant graveyard next to it were filled mainly with foreigners who had died in Venice and been buried there, far from their families.

‘What a state Mina must be in! How terrible she must feel!' the contessa broke out, disturbing the quietness of the scene. ‘How I wish I could see her.'

So far, the contessa had not been given permission to visit Mina at the women's penitentiary on the Giudecca. Mina's attorney was working on the problem, as was one of the contessa's friends, who had contacts with the Questura.

‘Mina is so sensitive,' the contessa went on. ‘God only knows how she's coping. Lanzani says that she's doing all right.' Giorgio Lanzani was Mina's attorney. ‘But he doesn't know her. He can't read her the way I can.'

When they reached Diaghilev's grave, she said, ‘Thank God there are some certainties in this life of ours. There will always be a slipper on his grave.'

A worn, mouldy ballet slipper lay on the simple tombstone. A spider had spun a web across its opening.

Small stones adorned the top of the memorial, placed by visitors in the Russian tradition. On the ground were a vase of red roses, flickering votive lamps, and a sheet of musical notation encased in clear plastic. Urbino picked the sheet up. He read aloud what was handwritten across the top in black ink: ‘
Le Scarpine di Diaghilev. Diaghilev's Ballet Shoes.'
The musical notation had been done by hand. He hummed several bars.

They went to the nearby grave of Stravinsky and his wife. Small stones, votive lights, and fresh cut flowers, which had been left by admirers, adorned the composer's modern-style marker as they did Diaghilev's grave.

Urbino and the contessa made a circuit of the compound, tracing out the inscriptions, some of them faint, on the markers. Most of the graves bore Russian names, written in both Western and Cyrillic script. Whenever Urbino was in this section of San Michele, he felt as if he were surrounded by the graves of characters out of a Tolstoy novel.

They stopped in front of a stone effigy of a recumbent woman, who had died at twenty-two. A bouquet of fresh red roses lay in her stone arms.