Page 16 of Vengeance in Venice (Murder in Moonlight #6)

D omenico Rossi was full of hope and excitement as he walked across the bridges and footpaths that led to the Palazzo Zulian.

His artistic senses tingled at the memory of the English couple’s beauty, but more than that by the pleasing nature of the light and dark side by side.

So close that they were almost one, and yet so different.

Two sides of the same coin, perhaps, with different aspects of character and strength.

Unique experience and pain gazed out of those two young faces, along with irrepressible curiosity and desire for life.

He felt drawn them more than to any subject in years.

It was a miracle they were letting him paint them.

Such a pity he had been quite so drunk. Perhaps Adriana had been right to try to keep them out and make them come back later, for while he could remember perfectly what they looked like and how he wanted to paint them, he couldn’t remember what they had talked about and what, if anything, they had agreed upon.

And the sketches he had made of their heads were terrible. He was ashamed.

This was not good.

Drinking was fun, necessary even, when he had nothing to paint and no desire to look. Melancholy was a curse but he’d begun to think that wine was not the answer. Not when he forgot things.

Something niggled at the edges of his mind. To do with forgetting, and the English couple, and the Savelli portrait. Was there a connection there? Savelli had died, stabbed through the heart, they said. Which Domenico didn’t like to think about. Not after his furious, drunken dream when he had…

He refused to think about the dream. And he certainly wasn’t about to tell anyone about waking up on his studio floor the following morning, with his clothes wet and dirty as if he’d swum in the canal and rolled about the street like a dog.

Adriana knew, of course. She’d washed his clothes and called him a drunken pig. But there was nothing to imply the drunken nightmare was more than there. There had been no blood on his clothes—or at least only from his own grazes.

Well, it was a warning, a sign from God, maybe. If He had not given up on him. Rossi would stop drinking, and he would paint the most exquisite portrait of the English couple that would become famous throughout Europe. He might even marry Adriana…

He approached the Palazzo Zulian, the most distinguished building on the canal. Straightening his back, he lifted the knocker.

*

It was after noon before they were able to leave the palazzo.

Rossi, full of inconsequential chatter and great roars of infectious laughter, was, nevertheless, quite a martinet in his own way.

Prone to barking out orders as though they were dogs or private soldiers under his command, he could be impatient and fussy one moment, and the next lapse into some funny story to make them laugh.

But his eyes were clear and keen, his hand steady as he sketched and sketched again. He was nowhere near ready for paint, he said. He needed to watch the light on the water for a bit, and make sure his subjects were posed for maximum impact.

“When it is right,” he said. “Then, I go fast.”

By tacit agreement, they did not ask him anything further about Savelli or the unfinished portrait. There would be other days, when he was more comfortable. And they might know more of the right questions to ask.

When he finally left, he announced that he would come back tomorrow afternoon. And as hostages, he left his paints and easel and two canvases.

“Early is best,” Constance murmured. “I wonder what state he’ll be in when he does come?”

Solomon had no answer to that, so they changed into more formal attire, summoned Alvise, and set off to call on Signor Premarin.

As it happened, they met the entire family almost in the doorway of their palazzo.

It was a pleasantly chaotic scene, with children playing and laughing and asking questions while their elders, dressed to go out, tried to make themselves heard, giving instructions to servants and to one of the older children.

The boy, however, was clearly more interested in the games of his siblings at whom he was grinning while he kept repeating, “ Si. Si. ”

Oddly, it was the inattentive boy who saw Constance and Solomon first. The liveried servant who opened the door to them was trying to explain in harassed tones that Signor Premarin was busy when the boy’s sweeping gaze lit on them as, no doubt, a useful distraction.

He interrupted his parents with a torrent of words, and suddenly the master of the house was gently pushing the servant aside.

“ Buongiorno, ” he murmured, whipping the visiting card from the servant’s hands.

He was a small, round man, his balding head thrown back in a proud posture that should have been laughable and yet was not.

Perhaps because his black eyes gleamed with interest and good nature.

Although he did not appear even to glance at the card he had appropriated, he greeted them by name, then added, “Forgive me. We were about to go out, to pay our last respects to the late Angelo Savelli.”

Solomon had not even known that the police had released the body. It added to his growing sense of working in the dark in an alien if beautiful place.

“I apologize for the poor timing,” he said carefully. “Perhaps we could make an appointment to call…”

“Of course, of course,” Premarin said genially.

“To be frank, I have been looking for an excuse to call on you, Mr. Grey. Your reputation is well known to me. Would you care to walk to San Marco with us? Oh, allow me to present my wife.” He beamed proudly, and Solomon bowed to the much younger lady who came obediently to her husband’s side.

Signora Premarin was the opposite of her husband in some ways—quite tall, slender, and shy, blushing as she greeted them in a small, almost mousey voice.

Solomon presumed she was Premarin’s second wife, for she could not have been much more than twenty, too young to be the mother of the oldest boy in the foyer.

Her eyes widened with hopeless admiration when Solomon introduced Constance.

Premarin’s eyes gleamed brighter as he reverently kissed Constance’s hand. There was nothing hopeless about his clear appreciation. He was a man who noticed women.

Somehow, the door was closed on the noise within the house and the friendly Premarin strolled at Solomon’s side, leaving the women to follow.

They conversed in a mixture of Italian and English that felt oddly comfortable, perhaps because it was something they were both used to doing in their business worlds.

“Were you acquainted with Angelo Savelli, Mr. Grey?” Premarin asked.

“We never met,” Solomon replied.

“He was a great friend of mine,” Premarin said. “So tragic to lose him, and in such a way. So difficult for his lovely wife. My heart goes out to her.”

“Indeed. I didn’t know he was being buried today.”

“After the service in the basilica. Do you join us?”

“I think it would be an unwelcome intrusion.”

Premarin looked at him with apparent surprise. “How so?”

“I daresay you have heard something. Through certain…misunderstandings, I had a grievance against Signor Savelli. As it happened, I had no chance to quarrel with him, but I know the police still suspect me.”

“Scandalous,” Premarin said, shaking his head. “A man of your importance! I shall use all my influence with the authorities to remove any such suspicion. Lampl is a reasonable man. Excellent old family, most influential.”

“We haven’t come to ask for your intervention,” Solomon said quickly. “In fact, we are trying to resolve the matter by finding out the truth.”

Premarin spread his arms in an expressive shrug. “But where does one begin?”

“You knew Savelli well. You were his friend as well as his rival in business.”

“We did compete sometimes, in the friendliest of ways. Sometimes, I win the lucrative contracts. Sometimes he does.”

“Who won the last one?” Solomon asked lightly.

“He did,” Premarin said without obvious resentment. “It was a good one, too—government business always is.”

“Austrian government?”

Premarin grimaced. “Is there any other kind? Odd sops thrown our way when it is something the Austrians themselves cannot or will not do for themselves. The cleverest of us work around the system and make the most of it. Savelli and I could do that.”

“But Giusti could not?”

Premarin sighed gustily. “Giusti had nothing after the war. If it had not been for his friends, he would be in exile like poor Manin. Or worse.”

“Friends like you?” Solomon asked.

Premarin smiled. “I am quite the diplomat.”

“Yet I understand you too were on the losing side of the quarrel with Austria.”

“The cleverest of us leave all doors open,” Premarin said vaguely.

“And rightly so. No one is always one hundred per cent correct. I understand Savelli’s position.

I understand Giusti and the young men of noble ideals.

One must deal with reality. In which I like to think I have been successful. As was poor Savelli.”

“He and Giusti were enemies, I understand.”

“Foolish young men…”

“You don’t think their quarrel was serious enough to lead to murder? Even in self-defense? An argument, a fight, even, that got out of hand?”

“The police found no evidence of a fight,” Premarin said. “Only unprovoked murder. That is not Giusti’s way.”

Solomon’s instincts were much the same, though there were unplumbed depths of emotion in Giusti. “Who would resort to such a way? Who would have a motive strong enough to commit murder? Or to send an assassin to do so?”

“No one,” Premarin said. “There has been enough death in Venice. And Savelli was good for the city.”

“And yet he is dead,” Solomon said deliberately. “Do you know why he hired his bodyguards?”

“To protect his wife.”

“From what?”

Premarin smiled, almost indulgently. “From his imaginary fears.”

“Have we come back to Giusti?”