Page 4 of The Venice Murders (Flora Steele Mystery #11)

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By the time she returned to the breakfast terrace, Jack was finishing his second cup of coffee.

‘Did the handkerchief go on holiday, too?’ he teased.

Refusing to rise to the bait, Flora sat down opposite. ‘I’ve something to tell you,’ she said quietly.

‘I thought you might have.’

‘Franco Massi had a room in the hotel, in a staff annexe, and I’ve been there.’

‘More breaking and entering?’

‘The door was open.’

‘Just trespass then. I wonder what the local cells are like?’

‘Stop it, Jack. This is important. Franco was engaged to be married and there’s a photograph of his fiancée on his desk. Guess who it is?’

‘I won’t – you know you’re longing to tell me.’

‘Bianca Benetti.’

When Jack looked blank, Flora gave the table an impatient tap. ‘You must remember her.’

‘Must I?’ He continued to look blank.

‘She worked at the Priory for about six months. As a chambermaid. Dominic Lister employed her and it made Sally angry.’

‘Oh, that girl. She’s here in Venice?’

‘This is her home city. Sally asked me to look her up if I had the time. She was a friend of Sally’s – I never really spoke to her much – but then I forgot about contacting her and left the phone number back at the cottage. But, just think! Bianca was Franco’s fiancée!’

‘I am thinking. Why does it matter?’ Jack remained unmoved. ‘He was engaged to a local girl who turns out to be Bianca. Not an impossibility. He could have met her in England, London probably, at some social club or another. There are plenty of Italian clubs in the capital. But poor girl?—’

‘ I think it matters.’

‘I can’t see how,’ he said cheerfully. ‘If you’ve left her number behind, you’ve no way of getting in touch with her and can’t pass on Sally’s good wishes. Except now it would be condolences. Just be glad you’ve been spared an uncomfortable conversation. Now…’ Scrunching up his napkin and discarding it on the table, he got to his feet. ‘We should go. We’ve a morning at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco – how’s that for a name? It has some wonderful Tintorettos and, I promise, you’re going to love them.’

Feeling deflated, Flora mumbled a reluctant assent. She’d thought this new discovery would light a flame and persuade Jack there was a mystery to pursue, but evidently his assurance to the count that ‘we’ll see what we can do’ was, in truth, as meaningless as it sounded. She couldn’t entirely blame him; this was their honeymoon and he’d waited a long time for it. They both had. But when things didn’t add up for Flora, she found it impossible to let go. A terrier digging for a bone was how Jack had once described her, and that still held true. For the moment, though, she would be the tourist he wanted.

Allowing herself to be piloted through the foyer and along the crazy paving to the lagoon, she found a shady spot beneath a magnolia tree where they could wait for the hotel launch which would ferry them to St Mark’s.

‘A line one vaporetto will take us up the Grand Canal to the San Tomà stop,’ Jack said, rescuing his straw hat from the bush where a stiff breeze had blown it. ‘The Scuola should be a five-minute walk from there.’

‘You’ve brought the map?’

It was as well to check. A five-minute walk could turn into several hours if you lost your way amid the narrow calli – as you were almost bound to.

‘I have, but don’t worry. There’ll be signs to the Scuola. It’s a tourist attraction.’

The thrum of an approaching boat had them on their feet, the hotel launch pulling into the landing stage a few minutes later. They stood back for its passengers to disembark, but there was only one. A familiar figure, as it happened. It was Sybil Carrington – Sybil Falconi, Flora corrected herself – who stepped out of the boat and was walking up the steps towards them.

‘Jack! Just the man I want to talk to!’ was her greeting, to a son she hadn’t seen for nearly two years and, as far as Flora knew, had made no attempt to contact since they’d said goodbye in a Provencal village.

But then Jack’s relationship with both his parents, now divorced, was hardly smooth, his early life filled with unnecessary drama. Once fully grown, he’d made sure he saw them as little as possible.

Sybil, carefully adjusting her dress, managed to avoid any suggestion of an embrace for Jack, and instead swept on to the girl standing by his side. ‘And…Flora, isn’t it?’

Faced with this elegant figure in mauve silk shift and matching wide-brimmed hat, Flora felt every inch a scrubby schoolgirl. Suddenly, the daisy-covered cotton skirt she’d earlier thought such fun now seemed horribly tawdry.

‘I’m glad you took my advice and finally married the girl,’ Sybil continued with a smug glance at her son. ‘I told you she’d be a good choice. I must say I take some credit for the way things have turned out.’

Jack’s lips clamped shut. Sybil was the last person from whom he’d accept advice, Flora knew. He’d simply been waiting for her to decide that she wanted the marriage, too.

‘It’s always good to see you,’ Jack said with heavy irony, ‘but we were just leaving for St Mark’s, to do some sightseeing, and we should get going – unless you’d care to come with us.’

‘Sightseeing? No, of course not. You can put it off for ten minutes, surely. I’ve travelled all the way from Elena to be here – you might, at least, offer me a drink.’

Flora felt slightly ashamed that they hadn’t, though she knew that Jack would be chafing to get away. ‘Of course we can wait a while,’ she said. ‘We can order tea in the garden.’

Her husband’s lips had become even more firmly compressed but, refusing to take notice of the signals he was sending, Flora waved a hand at the several comfortable chairs spread at intervals around the lawn. And by the time they were seated and had given their order, he’d recovered his temper sufficiently to say mildly, ‘It’s not difficult to guess why you’ve made the journey, Mum, but you do know the count has visited us already?’

‘I do, and he came back with nothing – some vague promise that you would do what you could. Meaningless.’

Flora had to agree.

‘I knew how it would be if he went alone,’ Sybil continued briskly, ‘so I’m here to plead for him. I’ve no idea how good a novelist you are, Jack, or how many books Flora sells each week, but I do know the pair of you are good at finding things out. You uncovered the plot against me when no one else would believe there was a problem, and you made certain that I’d suffer no further threat from Massimo’s family.’

‘How is his family?’ Jack asked. ‘He didn’t mention them.’

A diversionary tactic? Flora wondered. If it was, Sybil took the bait.

‘He won’t. It’s too painful. That whole dreadful business still haunts him – it’s not every day you realise you have a killer living beneath your roof. Wherever possible, Massimo loses himself in his work and I do my best to jolly him along – I know he’s glad we married. And glad to have that wretched daughter and his ex-wife tucked behind the doors of a convent where they can harm no one.’

‘Are you living in Italy permanently now?’ Flora asked.

‘We’re in the Veneto for most of the year – Massimo prefers Elena to the south of France. And so do I. The palazzo is magnificent and the count is very much the grand seigneur of the district.’

In other words, Sybil was enjoying her husband’s wealth and status enormously. She had become the queen bee she’d always dreamed of being.

‘You’re very welcome to visit the estate,’ the queen bee said, in what was clearly an afterthought. ‘But that’s not why I’m here,’ she added quickly. ‘The count needs help. Not a vague promise to do what you can, but a commitment. At least, to talk to Father Renzi. He speaks English and he speaks it well. He’s a decent man, a good priest, but the poor chap is quite distraught. He knows very well his housekeeper wouldn’t simply take off, but the police refuse to listen to him.’

Jack poured the tea the waiter had just brought and handed his mother a cup. ‘You do realise we’re on our honeymoon?’

‘Of course I do. You sent us an invitation to the wedding.’ An invitation for which Jack had received no reply, Flora remembered. ‘But what’s a honeymoon? Just a glorified holiday. You’ll spend plenty of time together – you’ve a lifetime ahead. This is more important.’

‘To you,’ he pointed out.

‘To the count and he’s my main concern.’ Her voice had softened and she seemed genuinely to care for her husband. Marriage had evidently mellowed Sybil a little. But only a little.

‘This business is bothering him hugely,’ she continued, ‘coming on top of the dreadful stuff in his own family. You know he has a heart condition? I worry about him. As the most influential person in the district, Massimo feels a responsibility; he was the only person of authority the priest could think to ask for help. But he has no idea what to do or where to start. You might, though. And you should.’

There was an awkward silence, Jack refusing to take up the challenge and Flora sensing the unwisdom of intervening between mother and son.

‘How much time would it take to go to Santa Margherita and talk to the priest?’ Sybil asked abruptly. ‘Don’t bother with the painting – I never could abide religious art and, in any case, the art theft chaps can deal with that matter – but a woman disappearing. An elderly woman, defenceless, alone. That’s too important to ignore.’

‘OK.’ Jack gave in. ‘We’ll talk to Father Renzi, but that’s all we’ll do. We’ve only days in Venice and we’re going to enjoy every one of them. I’m determined they won’t be spent sleuthing!’

‘Do what you can,’ she said, getting to her feet. ‘And come to Elena before you leave the city.’

‘Before you go…Sybil.’ Flora couldn’t bring herself to call her by anything closer. ‘Have you ever heard of Franco Massi?’

Sybil frowned. ‘Who is he?’

‘He was a receptionist here at the Cipriani.’

‘Oh, staff,’ she said indifferently. ‘No idea.’

‘Still the same mother,’ Jack murmured in Flora’s ear, as they escorted her to the launch waiting to ply its way back to St Mark’s.

‘What about you?’ his mother asked, pausing on the landing stage. ‘Weren’t you supposed to be sightseeing this morning?’

‘Don’t worry,’ he told her. ‘I’ve thought of something I should do first. We’ll take the boat later.’

Turning back to the hotel as the launch disappeared in a cloud of spray, Flora took his hand. ‘What have you thought of?’

‘Nothing, but I needed space to breathe. We’ll bag the boat when it returns.’

‘If you really mean to speak to the priest today, the Scuola visit won’t be possible. We’ll have to postpone,’ she said hopefully.

‘Not so!’ He shook his head in mock sadness, unable to suppress a smile. ‘You don’t escape that easily. The Scuola happens to be in San Polo and so does Santa Margherita. According to the count.’

‘We can do both?’

‘It seems we can, though what good it will do…but the Tintorettos, they’ll be a treat to enjoy!’