Page 24 of The Venice Murders (Flora Steele Mystery #11)

24

It was well after midnight, Flora saw from the boat’s dashboard, before their rescuer, having left his colleagues still working at La Zucca, dropped them at the Cipriani steps. Disturbed from his doze, the evening porter jumped guiltily to his feet as they walked through the entrance and scurried across to the reception desk to hand them their key.

‘A shower and bed, I think,’ Jack said, taking her hand.

But their ordeal was not yet over. The policeman who’d brought them to the hotel had followed them into the foyer.

‘There are some questions,’ he said, stopping them in their tracks. There was a smile on his face which Flora didn’t entirely trust. ‘We do them now or we do them tomorrow?’

‘Now,’ Jack said emphatically and she supposed he was right. Better to get this terrible evening finished for ever.

‘Please.’ He gestured to the comfortable furniture that lined one wall and, obediently, they walked over to a sofa and sat side by side. It was fortunate that, by now, their clothes were a good deal drier.

The officer took out his notebook. ‘You were at the restaurant?’

Both of them nodded.

‘And you were locked in the cellar?’

They nodded again.

‘Why were you at La Zucca?’

‘We’d gone for a drink on the terrace,’ Jack said calmly. ‘It was another beautiful evening and we wanted to make the most of it.’

The policeman looked sceptical. ‘Other customers had a drink on the terrace. Why did the owner lock you in the cellar? It makes no sense.’

‘I’m fairly sure it wasn’t the owner who took us prisoner.’ Jack remained calm. ‘It would have been one of the young men, though I don’t know which.’

The man shrugged. ‘But still…why?’

Flora had a sudden sinking of the heart. Was the man suspicious of them ? Thought they might have something to do with the theft of the painting? Surely not.

Jack must have decided to come clean, she realised, or at least half clean, because he admitted, ‘We were hoping to discover if Filomena Pretelli was being held there. Father Renzi, her employer, asked us for help when she went missing.’

The officer frowned. ‘This is a matter for the police in Venice.’

‘The police in Venice weren’t interested,’ Jack said drily, ‘and the priest was exceedingly anxious.’

‘But why would you think this lady was being held at La Zucca?’

‘There had been trouble before between Father Renzi and the young man who died this evening – he seemed to us to have a strong connection to the restaurant. It was a guess on our part, but it turned out to be right. Flora – my wife’ – he took her hand – ‘went to the washroom and thought she heard noises in one of the locked rooms and was listening at the door when she was swooped on by this individual, pushed into another room and the door locked.’

Flora wasn’t sure how much of that the policeman had followed, but he seemed satisfied and passed on to his next question.

‘And you, signor?’

‘I was tricked into following. Told she needed my help but then bundled into the room beside her.’

‘That is quite a story,’ their questioner remarked.

‘But a true one,’ Flora was quick to say. ‘And what will happen now?’

The policeman tucked his notebook out of sight and gave another awkward smile. ‘The young man who is alive will be accusato – with murder, maybe. Or perhaps something not so serious. Signor Fabbri has told us that he saw the fight and does not believe that Pretelli wished to kill. It was an accident, he says, while they were fighting. The boy will be in prison for a very long time. And Signor Fabbri will be joining him. He keeps a painting that was stolen and he knew that a poor lady was rapita .’

‘Kidnapped?’

The officer nodded, getting to his feet. ‘It is possible we ask for a statement from you, Signor Carrington, but also possible that we will not contact you again. Your part this evening has been…unimportant.’

He had turned to go before Flora, unable to contain herself, burst out, ‘Unimportant!’

Jack took hold of her hand and pulled her to her feet. ‘A shower and bed, I think,’ he repeated.

It seemed they would not be talking over the terror they’d just lived through – at least, not yet. In their present state of exhaustion, perhaps it was best. She must banish it from her mind, Flora decided, and behave as though she were simply returning from a late dinner and a delightful evening. Except that tonight, her beautiful red dress was a sodden rag and her best shoes forever unwearable.

Taking her cue from Jack, she went straight to the bathroom and, after a swift shower, wrapped herself in the towelling dressing gown and plumped down on the bed while she waited for him to reappear. Suddenly, out of nowhere, there were tears coursing down her cheeks. A non-stop flow of tears. Flora was crying, without even realising.

‘Good to get the canal water out of your hair, isn’t it?’ Jack had sauntered out of the bathroom and was towelling his head dry.

‘Flora?’ She’d made no response, and, frowning, he looked across at her. Then walked quickly over to the bed and knelt down, cradling her face between his hands. ‘What on earth’s happened?’

‘I don’t know.’ She sounded pitiable, she thought, like a small child trying to explain a bad fall. ‘I really don’t know.’

‘Brandy,’ he said, ‘that’s what you need. And a double.’

‘Not again, Jack.’

‘Yes, again,’ he insisted. ‘It’s exactly what you need and I should have thought of it earlier.’ He made for the telephone on the bedside table and gave his order to whoever was awake at that hour.

Flora looked up and managed a watery giggle. ‘You’d better put pyjamas on before the waiter arrives.’

‘OK, but then we take our drinks out onto the balcony and you tell me just what’s going on in that head of yours.’

Within minutes, the brandy had arrived at their door – the service in the hotel was amazing – and they were sitting side by side in the comfort of cushioned wicker. Glasses in hand, they looked across the narrow stretch of water at the spellbinding scene ahead: a shimmering San Giorgio Maggiore, rising like a fairy-tale palace out of the dark waters of the lagoon.

For a long while, Jack was silent, allowing the peace of the night to settle around them, but finally, he said, ‘Now tell me.’

Flora wanted very badly to share the jumble of feelings she was battling, but how to make sense of them? She supposed it must be the fear she’d felt, a fear like no other, clutching at her husband – not even her husband, but a fragment of his shirt – as he’d swum them to safety. Then the relief, the hardly believable moment, when somehow, she had no idea how, she had emerged from a watery tomb to climb steps to the quayside. To stand once more upon dry land.

‘I don’t think I’ve ever been so scared,’ she began. ‘Well, maybe once before when I was locked in the priest’s hole. That was probably as fearsome. You rescued me from that, too.’ Her voice had a wobble she couldn’t control. ‘It’s impossible to describe the terror I felt, Jack. The darkness, the water suffocating me, the sense that I would never see light again.’

He reached across and grasped her arm, stroking it gently. ‘You made it, though. We made it.’ There was a long pause while he sipped his drink. ‘I think…I think perhaps…that maybe we should re think these adventures. Stop trying to solve the world’s problems.’

She pulled a small face. ‘You’ve said that before,’ she reminded him. ‘More than once. But somehow, we always get involved.’

‘Then we need to try harder.’

‘It’s difficult to refuse when people close to you ask for help. Or you can see there’s a wrong that needs putting right.’

‘That’s the one that always gets you! Somehow, Flora, you have to stop being a warrior for justice.’ He clinked his glass against hers. ‘Tonight, though, we should celebrate – just a little. Filomena is home where she belongs, the painting will soon be hanging in Santa Margherita once more – as long as the Church deems it safe – and some very bad men are on their way to prison.’

‘Will the team from Rome take over the case, do you think? Or will they just deal with the stolen painting? I wasn’t clear from what that policeman said – except that at one point I thought he was going to arrest us !’

Jack grinned. ‘He was wavering! I’m really not sure whether it’s the team from Rome or the Venetian police who will do the charging, but Matteo Pretelli is a murderer whatever, though it seems he’d no wish to kill his friend. And the officer this evening acknowledged that.’

‘He’ll plead self-defence, won’t he, and probably escape a life sentence? But whoever takes on the case, it looks as though Fabbri will be charged as well.’

‘Which is justice,’ Jack said, stretching tired limbs towards the balcony rails. ‘He may not have planned the theft or been involved in the fighting, but he kept silent when he should have spoken. He let friendship triumph over doing what was right.’

‘So did Enrico Tasca, I’m pretty sure. The policeman tonight said nothing about him, so perhaps it will be the Asolo police who make the arrest.’

‘Whether or not he’s locked up will depend on how much involvement he actually had. At the very least they’ll want to talk to him. Did he know his son had stolen the painting? Was he the one who arranged for Fabbri to store it in his cellar and to imprison Filomena? Or was he completely ignorant?’

Flora shook her head furiously. ‘He knew. Filomena said so. And when we spoke to him in Asolo, I’m sure he knew the housekeeper was alive and, if he knew about her, he knew about the painting.’

‘Several juicy prison sentences on the way then.’ Jack swirled the last of his brandy around the glass and finished the drink with a sigh of satisfaction. ‘Feeling any better?’ he asked gently.

‘A little.’ Flora’s smile this time was steadier.

‘Then if you’re ready…we have another busy day ahead of us.’

Jack was right, she supposed. But though the evening’s tumultuous events had left her drained, she felt tense, not wanting to give up and go to bed but too tired to do anything sensible. And she didn’t want to think of tomorrow. She’d been trying to forget Bianca Benetti, she realised, though that was impossible. They had promised Sally they would visit the girl and offer any help they could, and it’s what they must do. But there were sure to be more tears and, at the moment, Flora had endured more than enough.

Before they fell asleep that night, she turned to him, snuggling her head against the pillow.

‘Do you realise that we never mentioned Franco tonight? Yet it was his death that started us asking questions.’

‘The truth might come out at the trial but, in any case, Franco’s murderer is now as dead as he is.’

‘You’re sure Luigi Tasca killed him?’

‘Who else? We know that Franco went to La Zucca and confronted Silvio Fabbri the first night we ate there. You were guessing when you said that something had happened in the time between Franco recommending the restaurant to us and the furious quarrel we witnessed, but I think you were right. I reckon his mother must have telephoned and told him what was being said in Asolo. That their old priest was in trouble again. That Father Renzi had lost a painting and a housekeeper.’

‘And Franco immediately suspected that both of them would be at the restaurant?’

‘He could have picked up stories, hints, of what was in the offing on one of his many trips home. Then his mother phones and his suspicions become real, so he steams round to La Zucca to have it out with them. Tasca takes fright. His plot has been uncovered and Franco is a danger to him – the man has to go. Luigi seems to have been particularly handy with a knife.’

‘But Franco was pushed into the canal, not stabbed.’

He yawned. ‘What difference? Tasca is a killer.’

‘But—’

‘No more thinking, Flora. Stop those wheels of yours turning and let’s go to sleep.’