Page 28 of The Venice Murders (Flora Steele Mystery #11)

28

‘What!’ Flora exclaimed and Jack shared her amazement. It was a very large sum of money to go missing.

‘The deposit went on drink?’ he suggested, wondering how anyone could drink that much.

‘Some of it, probably. But most of it Franco gambled away.’ Bianca must have seen the astonishment on their faces and said quickly, ‘He was not a gambler. Not usually. I did not know, but he began to go to the casinò – he said later that it was to double the money he had borrowed, so that he could repay my father and we would not have the debt on our shoulders.’

‘I’m guessing Franco was a better drinker than a gambler,’ Jack said.

The girl nodded, averting her face. ‘All the money Papa had saved was wasted.’

‘And you knew nothing of this?’ Flora got to her feet and walked over to the girl, holding her hands out in sympathy.

‘It was when those bad men began to threaten Papa that I learn the whole story. They said they would hurt him, Flora – beat him and worse – if he did not pay the money he owed them, now that they ask for it. I begged Franco “get the deposit back from the building company”, but of course he had never paid them. He had thrown away the money. Papa could not pay and was frightened. Very frightened. It put his heart under much stress. It was what killed him.’

There was little in that you could argue with, Jack thought.

‘In effect, they were murderers.’ Flora was less dispassionate.

The girl turned, her face a cold mask. ‘No! Franco was my father’s true murderer. His true killer.’ Her voice was sheeted in ice.

Flora took a step backwards. ‘That’s quite an accusation. Did you confront Franco with it? Did you accuse him?’

The same question had sprung to Jack’s mind, but he wished that Flora hadn’t asked it. Bianca was a cauldron of emotion, none of it good, and his instinct for danger had begun to make itself felt again. He looked across at the two women, holding hands in friendship. No need to worry, he told himself. No need to make mountains where there were only molehills.

Bianca broke away. ‘What if I did?’ she asked angrily. ‘Franco caused hurt, he caused misery, caused death, and you think he should go free?’

‘What I think doesn’t matter. How did he answer your charge?’ Flora asked quietly.

Bianca’s expression was disdainful. ‘He did not answer. Of course, he did not. He was a weak man. To everyone in the world, he was confident. He looked smart and clever. But in truth, he was weak, weak, weak. He refused to meet me, did you know? After all that had happened and when he knew my father was ill and heavy with debt, he refused to talk to me. Would not give me even a few minutes.’

‘Did he say why?’

‘He said that he was too busy! A stupid excuse – that bad things were going on in Asolo and that first he must sort this out.’

‘So, instead …you went looking for him ?’ she pursued, staring at Bianca as though she would unearth every secret the girl possessed. The hazel of Flora’s eyes was almost black, Jack noticed, a danger signal if ever there was one.

Bianca made no response, her mouth clamped tightly shut.

‘And you found him, didn’t you, near the Accademia?’ Flora continued.

‘Why do you say that? What makes you think you know?’ Bianca’s slight body had stiffened alarmingly and Jack got to his feet. His instinct hadn’t lied.

‘I believe that when Franco wouldn’t come to you, you went looking for him and ran him to ground close to the restaurant where we ate dinner on our first evening in Venice. The restaurant he’d recommended to us a few hours earlier. He came to La Zucca that night to conduct his own confrontation – over the bad things that were going on in Asolo. Not so stupid, after all! We overheard the quarrel he had with the restaurant owner and then we saw him walk away. You were there watching, and that was when you must have followed and confronted him with what he’d done. With what you held him guilty of.’

‘So, what if I did?’

‘You killed him,’ Flora said without expression but with absolute certainty. ‘Silvio Fabbri wasn’t to blame. Neither was Matteo Pretelli. Nor even Luigi Tasca. It was you who killed him.’

Bianca’s figure seemed to collapse inwardly and she covered her face with her hands. ‘He wouldn’t speak to me,’ she gulped. ‘Not a word. Me! The girl he had asked to marry. The girl whose father had given every lire of his savings so we could begin a life together.’

‘And when he refused to talk to you?’

‘He turned his back on me. Walked away, as though I was a piece of rubbish in the street. To be ignored, to be kicked to one side.’

‘And you followed him again?’

‘I was angry. So angry that I ran after him.’

‘And pushed him?’

Jack moved closer, his heartbeat too rapid.

‘He fell into the canal,’ the girl confessed.

‘Hitting his head as he fell,’ Flora added.

Bianca turned abruptly, now face to face with her questioner. ‘I did not know. I promise, I did not. Franco could swim. I thought he would get wet, that he would look silly, nothing more.’

‘Instead, he was knocked unconscious and drowned before ever he could be rescued.’

‘I did not know,’ Bianca repeated forlornly.

The girl sounded genuinely sad, Jack thought. Remorseful even. He could relax.

‘When you heard the news that Franco Massi had drowned,’ Flora went on, ‘you didn’t go to the police and tell them what had happened. Why not?’

‘Why would I do that?’ The girl was suddenly belligerent.

‘The police were looking for a murderer. You could have explained that Franco’s death was accidental.’

‘But they would not believe me. They would blame me. Lock me up. Say I was guilty.’

‘But you were , Bianca. You were.’

It was as though a wash of cold air had blown through the stuffy kitchen – that was the only way Jack could describe it – a blast of air laden with ice that froze all three of them into immobility.

‘We will have to report the accident, you must know that.’ It was Flora, of course, who broke through the ice. ‘We really have no choice.’

‘No!’

The girl, suddenly freed from her torpor, enraged and larger than life, had whirled around and snatched at something Jack couldn’t see. Leaping across the intervening space, she grabbed at Flora, ripping through the polka dot dress to pull her into a brutal clasp. In the light streaming through a window high above, Jack caught the flash of a blade and sprang into action. Lunging at the girl’s legs, he brought her crashing to the floor. She kicked out at him, once, twice, the hard leather of her shoe hitting him squarely in the head. For a few seconds, he lost consciousness.

The knife had spun away to land beneath the table and Bianca, inching to her knees, began to crawl towards it. But Flora was there before her, snatching at the knife as she was pulled into a deadly embrace by her opponent.

A loud knocking at the door brought Jack back to consciousness. His head was vibrating with pain and he tried desperately to focus. The front door! That had been the front door. It must still be open, he thought dazedly. Unless the gorillas had closed it behind them. And that seemed unlikely.

A heavy tramp of feet and two officers dressed in the uniform of the Venice police were in the room, the first snatching the knife from Flora and the second whisking her hands behind her back, a pair of handcuffs at the ready.

‘You’ve got the wrong woman,’ Jack croaked, ‘ la donna sbagliata . Don’t let the other one go.’ His flailing hand pointed to Bianca, already making for the kitchen door.

The second officer was swift, grabbing the girl from behind before she could slip away, and holding her fast.

‘ Cosa è successo qui? ’

A third man had joined the group, demanding to know what exactly was going on. And well he might – the kitchen had become rather crowded. This one was in plain clothes, a detective, Jack surmised.

‘Signorina Benetti’ – Jack pointed to a furious Bianca struggling unsuccessfully to free herself from the policeman’s grip – ‘is responsible for the death of Franco Massi. She admitted as much before she attacked my wife. Massi’s was an accidental death,’ he added.

The detective’s head swivelled around, his eyes trained on Bianca. ‘This is so?’

The girl said nothing, refusing even to look at the speaker, but it was pointless her denying the charge. Only feet away were two witnesses to her guilt.

‘And you did not report this accident?’ the officer continued, shaking his head in sorrow. Again, Bianca refused to speak.

He gave an irritated shrug of his shoulders. ‘ Portala alla questura .’

The handcuffs went on and the younger of the police officers propelled a still struggling Bianca forward, out of the kitchen, out of the front door, and into a waiting car, the police station their destination.

The detective turned, taking his time to assess them, Jack realised. A smart man in dress and intelligence. But then you didn’t get to be an investigator without those qualities.

‘I think,’ the man said slowly, ‘that I may know you. You are the English people my colleagues from Rome found at La Zucca – after you had swum the canal to escape?’ He looked severe.

‘We are,’ Jack admitted, feeling stupidly guilty.

‘And now you are here,’ the man continued in perfect English, ‘with a woman who has killed and with a dangerous knife. How is this? Did you not come to Venice for a holiday?’

‘We did.’ He must sound even guiltier, he thought. Best not to mention the honeymoon.

‘Then I suggest that is what you do. You have the holiday. First, though, you must give your names and your English address to my officer here, but then you may go. It is possible we will contact you when you have returned to England.’

‘I understand,’ Jack murmured, hoping devoutly that Bianca would have the good sense to confess exactly what had happened on that wretched night, and that the Venice police would have no reason to speak to them ever again.

‘But for the rest of your stay in our beautiful city,’ the detective allowed himself a smile, ‘please – keep out of trouble.’

He strode to the door, signalling to the remaining police officer to record their details in his notebook. The interview was over.

‘Before you go…’ Flora said bravely.

‘Yes?’ The man stopped, his hand on the door.

‘How is it that you and your colleagues arrived here at just the right moment?’

‘ Serendipità, signora . We came to question Signorina Benetti and look what we found!’

‘Question her about Franco Massi?’

‘No, no, no. It was a small matter of a disturbance. In England, some time ago.’ He consulted his notebook. ‘At a hotel called the Old Ship in the town of Brighton. You may know it.’

‘We were aware that Bianca attacked someone there. A man who had promised her a job and refused to keep his promise.’

‘This I did not know. Only that the young woman is accused of injuring a man who now wishes to see that she is punished. We have been asked by his lawyers to discover everything we can.’ He beamed. ‘You see, signora, it was Fate that brought us here at the right moment.’

Just occasionally, Jack decided, Fate could work in one’s favour.