Page 8 of The Venice Murders (Flora Steele Mystery #11)

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‘If Sally is staying with Bianca while she’s in Venice, it could prove useful.’ Flora was trying for optimism, but her words produced only a groan.

‘That’s exactly what I mean.’ Jack paused on the stairs on their way back to the room, a challenge in his eyes. ‘If it isn’t Abbeymead taking our time, it’s some mad investigation you’re desperate to pursue.’

‘You’re just as desperate – normally. Don’t pretend otherwise!’

‘But not this time. Not on what should be a very special holiday.’

‘We’ve promised Massimo and Father Renzi that we’d do what we could to discover what’s been going on – maybe we shouldn’t have promised, but we did.’

‘OK,’ he said, taking her hand, ‘but what does Bianca have to do with any of it? Nothing, as far as I can see.’

‘Asolo,’ Flora said, with certainty. ‘Asolo is where the priest’s difficulties began and where there’s still a family who hates him. It’s too much of a coincidence that Father Renzi was driven from the town and now faces a dreadful situation in Venice. This latest trouble has its roots in the past, I’m convinced.’

‘But Bianca – I still don’t see why it’s important to talk to her. Apart from the fact that she’s no wish to talk to us. She made that pretty clear.’

‘She was at work. It was difficult. And we weren’t given the time to speak to her properly. I think we should try again. Persuade her, if we can, to forget how angry she feels about Franco – for a short while at least – and cast her mind back to conversations she had with him. Conversations when he might have told her something – not daily worries, she was quite scathing about that – but suspicions he might have over what was happening in his home town. He would know Luigi Tasca. He would know Matteo Pretelli. And he returned home regularly. On one of those visits perhaps he discovered something about the priest or about the Tascas.’

‘That isn’t just a long shot, Flora, it’s out of sight. When is Franco supposed to have passed on this vital information? The man dipped out of his engagement weeks ago and now he’s dead.’

She gave a small hunch of her shoulders. ‘I know it’s unlikely that Bianca will be any help, but we have to follow the few leads we have. If they go nowhere, we can say honestly to the priest and your fath— and the count…that we tried but weren’t successful.’

He unlocked their door and walked through into the bedroom, crossing to the long windows and flinging them wide. ‘We could say that anyway and forget the whole business.’

‘But that would be a lie.’

‘It would, but would it matter?’ He turned to her. ‘What’s most important – finding out who stole Father Renzi’s painting, or our honeymoon?’

Flora plumped herself down on the bed. ‘It’s not just a painting, though, is it? There’s the safety of an elderly woman at stake – and justice for a man who could have been killed for simply knowing too much.’

A deep ridge appeared between Jack’s eyes. ‘If it wasn’t for the housekeeper, I’d give up the questioning right now.’

‘But you won’t?’

He gave a shake of his head. ‘I won’t, not until she turns up, hopefully unharmed. But Franco Massi’s death is another matter. That could well have been an accident, and why should it have any connection to what happened at Santa Margarita? Apart from the fact that Franco and the priest come from the same town, there’s no obvious connection.’

‘I’ve a hunch.’

Jack joined her on the bed, smoothing the strands of copper hair from her face. ‘Oh, one of those!’

Flora’s hunches had become the stuff of teasing between them.

‘Yes, one of those. I think we should eat at La Zucca again. Tomorrow, perhaps?’

There was bewilderment on his face. ‘But why? Why go back there?’

‘It’s another avenue. Another path to explore. If Bianca knows nothing when we speak to her again, perhaps someone at the restaurant will. Franco was furious on the night he died and his quarrel was with the owner of La Zucca.’

‘If Franco was concerned the restaurant owner was involved in something shady, which is what you’re suggesting, why would he have recommended the place to us a few hours earlier?’

‘Something happened in the hours between?’

‘Like what?’

‘Franco was very, very angry,’ she said stubbornly. ‘There has to have been a reason for that.’

‘No doubt, but it could be something totally unconnected to Asolo, to the Tascas, to the priest. In fact, it’s almost impossible to think it would be connected. Perhaps the restaurant gave a Cipriani guest a poor meal and Franco came to protest.’

‘It was more than a protest, but you’re right,’ she said calmly. ‘There could have been any number of reasons for the quarrel. But if it was personal…if the restaurant owner has links to Asolo…’

‘And how do we find that out?’

‘We ask him.’

It sounded simple. It always did with Flora, and usually turned out to be anything but, while the question of their honeymoon and how they should spend it remained unresolved. For months, they’d been planning their trip to Venice: reading books, deciding where they’d visit, anticipating everything about this glorious holiday – the flights, the hotel, the city. It mattered hugely and yet, since arriving, they’d been faced with a possible murder, a stolen painting, a missing woman and now, apparently, the imminent arrival of a friend from home. Every day should have been one of pure enjoyment, so how had they landed themselves in this mess?

It wasn’t all Flora’s fault. She hadn’t asked Count Falconi to call on them. Hadn’t asked for his mother’s visit either, Jack thought darkly, and she hadn’t encouraged Sally to make the trip. All she’d really done was raise the suspicion that Franco Massi had been deliberately killed and linked it, as only she could, with the troubles suffered by Father Renzi. It had been sufficient, though, to plunge them into a new adventure which, knowing Flora, wouldn’t end until she got to the truth.

He had no wish to make a second visit to La Zucca. As far as he could see, it would help little and could stir up even more trouble. Yet there was no obvious objection he could raise to eating there again. Their previous meal had been well-cooked, delicious even, and tomorrow should be an evening to look forward to. Except for the fact that his wife intended to interrogate its owner, and the owner was unlikely to respond happily. If Jack refused point-blank to go there, he knew Flora well enough to realise she would find a way to go by herself. And that was something he most definitely didn’t want.

A faint hope during the night that La Zucca might be closed on a Monday, since many of the restaurants in Venice took a break that day, had disappeared by morning when one of the receptionists on duty assured him that, on the contrary, La Zucca was so popular that it now opened six days a week.

It seemed that Jack must think again. He needed a plan, he told himself. Any plan. Perhaps if he kept Flora busy today, exceptionally busy, she might be too tired by the evening to travel back to the city and would be willing to settle for a meal on the island. It was even possible that by then she might have had second thoughts over confronting the restaurant owner in his den. Or she’d thought of other avenues to explore – with Flora, you never knew.

With this idea in mind, sketchy as it was, he suggested that after breakfast they take the hotel boat to St Mark’s and saunter first along the Riva degli Schiavoni and from there into Castello, a quarter of Venice they hadn’t yet explored.

‘We could make for the Arsenale first, but call at the Giardini on the way. We never did get to the café.’ He hoped he sounded suitably casual.

The happy smile she gave in response made him feel a tad guilty, but Jack was on a mission – to deflect her. It was for her own good, he argued silently, and that’s what was most important.

‘I’d love to do the walk,’ she said, her enthusiasm increasing his guilt. ‘Let’s go early. Venice in the cool of the morning will be bliss and, once it’s too hot, there are masses of cafés or bars we can shelter in.’

Within an hour of their breakfast coffee, they were turning in through the iron gates of the Giardini and following the gravel pathway to where Jack was sure they would find the café.

Flora stopped to survey the gardens on either side. ‘The grass is already quite burnt. Almost brown. Not at all like Sussex.’

‘And getting more unlike by the day. It will be a whole lot browner by the end of the summer. Literally, dying for rain. I guess that’s when the floods arrive, the dreaded acqua alta .’

‘High water?’ she ventured. ‘See, I shall soon be fluent!’

‘High water,’ he agreed, laughing . ‘When the tide rises and the lagoon sweeps in . But not until autumn – so we should be safe!’

They had turned a corner in the path and come to a small, red-roofed building standing to one side, its shutters down and surrounded by a general air of desertion.

‘The café is closed. How disappointing.’

‘We’ll eat there one day,’ she promised. ‘And, in any case, it’s far too early for lunch. Even for you.’

At least it meant they would keep walking, Jack thought. Out on to the Riva again, the sun now higher in the sky as they strolled towards the Arsenale, crossing over the bridge into its main square. Despite the increasing warmth, Flora’s energy, he noted gloomily, seemed undiminished.

He glanced around the open square. ‘This place looks as though it’s crumbling. How sad. Years of disuse and neglect, I guess. It deserves better.’

‘Was it once an army barracks, do you know?’

‘Something close, but it was the Venice navy who were here – their shipyards and armouries. This was their base when the Republic controlled a huge part of the Mediterranean.’

‘There’s not much sign of that now.’ Flora turned in a circle. ‘Except for those lions. The lions are pretty impressive.’ The two marble beasts, one lying, one sitting, flanked an enormous arch, its iron gate firmly closed against them.

‘Not much to see, though. Come on, let’s move. The sea air is giving me an appetite. Shall we go back over the bridge and look for a café?’

‘I’d like to walk on, if that’s OK with you. For a while, at least. I’m enjoying exploring.’ Jack’s spirits sank lower. The trip to La Zucca hadn’t gone away.

‘What’s that island?’ she asked sometime later, stopping to point across the lagoon.

They had passed the Giovanni and Paolo hospital and Flora was looking across at an expanse of green.

‘It’s San Michele, the cemetery. Nicely situated directly opposite the hospital,’ he said wryly.

She lifted a hand to shield her eyes. ‘I think I can make out a mausoleum and some small domes and maybe a few avenging angels. It looks an interesting place. I’d love to take a boat trip there.’

‘This afternoon?’ he asked eagerly.

‘Maybe another day. Today, I think, we should keep walking – it’s hot but nowhere near as hot as it has been.’

Jack stifled a sigh. It had been a ropey plan to start with and now was clearly not working at all. At this rate, he’d be the one too tired to take the boat back to St Mark’s this evening. Perhaps he could plead that as an excuse – extreme fatigue or maybe a bad back, or a blister on his foot. Anything to keep them away from that restaurant. He couldn’t lose the very bad feeling he had about La Zucca, though why he had it, he wasn’t sure – other than a natural dislike of what would almost certainly be a confrontation.

Another mile or two further, or so it seemed, his spirits lifted slightly when, by chance, he spotted a small trattoria situated on one of the shaded alleyways running down to the lagoon, its tables spilling across the pavement. Brightly checked tablecloths flapped in a breeze that had recently begun to blow, and the café’s window of salami and round cheeses looked inviting.

He snatched a surreptitious look at his watch. ‘Twelve o’clock already,’ he said brightly. ‘Why don’t we eat here? We can make it a snack and there’s an empty table waiting for us.’

It proved a good choice. The light lunch, when it came, was exactly right: a bowl of minestrone, a caprese salad, followed by a plate of grilled calamari. Despite her supposed lack of appetite, Flora ate her way through the several dishes, talking animatedly of the gardens, the Arsenale, the view from where they sat. Everything, Jack thought, except this evening’s crucial visit.

Was it worth carrying on with his flawed plan? But he could think of nothing else, so after paying the bill, he turned to ask, ‘More walking?’ Over his shoulder, he looked longingly at a water taxi that was powering by.

‘Why not? We have to reach home somehow,’ she said.

And reach home they did, walking through what seemed to Jack most of Castello, the northernmost sestiere of Venice and one of its largest. One that few tourists bothered to visit, making a stroll through its streets an attractive prospect – if only his feet would stop hurting. He was sure now that he really did have a blister.

By the time they reached the Cipriani kiosk to phone for a ferry back to the Giudecca, Jack had consigned his plan to the devil.