Page 19 of Vengeance in Venice (Murder in Moonlight #6)

“It was apparently a misunderstanding by his servants. He released me almost immediately. By which time, my husband was already at his door.”

“Mr. Grey must have been extraordinarily angry.”

Oh, no, you will not pin your own crimes or anyone else’s on Solomon. “He was more concerned with my safety. By the time he called on Savelli to demand explanation, the man was already dead.”

“I was not accusing your husband,” Kellar said mildly. “On the contrary, Her Majesty’s government would take a very dim view of any such suspicion.”

Constance remembered her wine with sudden gratitude and sipped it, giving herself a moment to think. “Is that meant to comfort me?”

“I hope so. The local police regard it as a local matter. You really do remind me of someone most strongly. Might I know your maiden name?”

Fresh alarm bells rang in her mind. Had he attended her establishment in the past?

She remembered most faces that had passed through over the years, for safety reasons as well as business ones.

Guests liked to be remembered and greeted as old friends on return visits.

No, she was almost certain he had never been there.

He could still know her name, but then, there had never been any point in keeping that secret. She and Solomon had married openly.

She tilted her chin. “Silver,” she said, without dropping her gaze.

His wine rippled in its glass. Around his beard, his face seemed to whiten. Then he laughed softly, as though he couldn’t help it.

“Of course it is. I knew your mother.”

*

As they had agreed, Solomon was using the reception to learn what he could from the privileged and the knowledgeable. Savelli’s name was certainly mentioned several times in hushed tones, by both Venetians and foreigners, though few brought the subject up directly in conversation.

One who did was Mrs. Collins, the wife of a British wine merchant.

“I suppose you will have heard of this shocking murder,” she said almost as soon as they had been introduced.

She didn’t trouble to lower her voice. “One of their most prominent citizens, apparently. And to think someone assured me that Northern Italians were so much more civilized that their southern brethren! I told Mr. Collins that I simply refuse to go to Naples.”

Solomon blinked. His instinct was to give a biting rejoinder on the nature of British crime, prejudice, and rudeness. But he doubted either of them would learn anything from such a lecture.

“Were you acquainted with Signor Savelli?”

“He was pointed out to me once.” Her nostrils flared. “By his wife. Oh, we are not friends, of course. I doubt she has many of those, for she is a most proud and disagreeable person. Only the men cluster around her. One can only speculate as to why.”

Startled, Solomon missed his moment to defend the widow, for Mrs. Collins barely paused to draw breath.

“Oh, she is beautiful, I grant you, if you care for that heavy, dramatic look, but I could tell at once she was not the sort of female one ought to know. If you ask me, she did away with her own husband.”

Solomon fixed his gaze to the self-satisfied yet outraged woman beside him. “What makes you think so?”

“She ignored her husband, spent all her time talking to other men.”

Solomon had rarely found the business of investigation so distasteful. But he managed—he hoped—to keep all expression from his face, save polite interest. “Which other men?”

She flapped one dismissive hand, her gaze darting around the room.

“ Him , for a start.” She indicated the small, bustling figure of Premarin, who had just entered the room with Lampl.

“Both of them, in fact. Though they say she had been conducting an affair for years with someone called Justin or something, and with some common portrait painter.”

“Giusti?” Solomon murmured. “And Rossi? Really? One wonders where she found the time to fit those other gentlemen in.”

She blinked at him several times, as though she suspected him of mockery but could not find the proof. “Foreigners,” she pronounced finally, as though that sealed some argument.

“One finds them everywhere,” Solomon murmured. “Especially abroad.” From the corner of his eye, he saw Constance, talking to the Englishman who kept crossing their path. Kellar. He hoped she was learning something.

“Are you English?” Mrs. Collins asked suddenly.

Solomon brought his gaze back to find her peering at him quite closely. “On my father’s side.”

She sniffed, as though that were better than nothing. “Mark my words. The wife did it.”

*

“I knew your mother.”

The words seemed to crash over Constance with all the force of a wave at high tide. Abruptly, Kellar’s hand closed around hers on her wine glass, and she realized she had been about to drop it. She grasped it more firmly, keeping her eyes on his face, and after a moment, he released her hand.

“I startled you,” he said.

That was an understatement. No one admitted to knowing Juliet. Well, no one with any claims to respectability.

“It was many years ago,” he added, with a hint of anxiety. “I hope she is well?”

He was afraid she was dead… “Actually, she is very well, better than she has been for years.” Having given up whoring in favor of fencing stolen goods, Juliet had now given up both, and, with Solomon’s help, was running a rather charming shop of antiquities and curiosities in Covent Garden.

She had even—almost—given up the gin. Did Kellar know all this?

“Might I ask you a personal question?” he asked.

“Why not?” she said, just a little wildly.

“How old are you?”

This time, her fingers tightened on the glass. They were shaking as she raised it to her lips. “I am twenty-seven years old.”

Something changed in his face. She could not tell if it was relief or disappointment, but it was profound.

“It has been thirty years since I last saw your mother,” he said, his voice casual, although his eyes were not.

His eyes told her it mattered, and she knew why.

Ever since she could remember, she had wondered who her father was.

She had even tried to find out, tracing some of her mother’s old clients of the right time and place.

In fact, it was on one such foolish errand that she had got to know Solomon.

But that was irrelevant here. She hadn’t wanted her father to be some drunken ne’er-do-well, some vice-ridden brute who visited whores on a Saturday night and beat his wife on Sundays.

She had fantasized that her father was a gentleman, and not even because she had wanted a share of his money—she hadn’t.

She had wanted to belong to something, someone, who was not squalid or sordid.

Foolish. Gentlemen visited whores too. And beat their wives. Vice and corruption were not the preserve of the lower orders.

Somewhere in the last year, she had lost that secret dream. She belonged to Solomon and he to her. And Juliet, she had finally recognized, had always done her best for her. She had taught her to read and write and to survive. The rest didn’t matter. Everyone had frailties.

Yet now, when she didn’t care, here was a man she might have liked to be her father. Might . He spoke of Juliet without contempt, remembered her name and, whatever else, had been prepared to acknowledge Constance as his daughter.

Only she could not be.

She laughed. “Is that what scared you? That I might have been thirty-one years old?”

“It scared me that I might have behaved so badly in youth and was not even aware of the consequences. Did your mother ever speak of me?”

She stared at him. “No. She never spoke of men to me, except in warning.”

He closed his eyes, hiding.

And then someone touched her elbow. She did not have to look to know it was Solomon. Everything was suddenly bearable again.

“This is my husband, Solomon Grey. Solomon, meet Mr. Kellar, apparently a friend of my mother’s.”

If Solomon was surprised by the connection to Juliet—and he must have been—he gave no sign of it, merely shook hands with Kellar, who, apparently overcoming whatever emotion his past had aroused, was once more urbane and smiling.

“Mr. Grey. A pleasure to meet you at last. What do you think of Venice?”

They made small talk for a little, and then, as Constance had expected, Kellar excused himself.

Quite un expectedly, however, he caught her gaze. “I believe you are staying at the Palazzo Zulian in Cannaregio. Perhaps I may call on you there?”

“We would be delighted,” Constance said at once, although she wondered if it were true.

As Kellar smiled and moved away, she turned impulsively to Solomon, ready to pour everything out—whatever everything was.

But Solomon had changed his position, and instead she almost bumped into Giusti, who appeared to be in something of a rush.

He paused and smiled at them both, while Solomon rescued Constance’s again precarious wine glass and placed it on the table beside Kellar’s untouched plate.

“We meet again,” Giusti said amiably. “How go your inquiries?”

“In circles,” Solomon said. “Though everyone appears to have an opinion.”

“How many people told you it was me?”

“A few.”

Giusti sighed. “At least the British still invite me.”

“What is your connection to the consulate?” Constance asked.

“None. Except they occasionally throw me a bone—a little business to keep the wolf from the door. Or the tiles on the roof.” He lowered his voice and winked. “Everyone keeps in with the British, but they prefer my politics.”

“And Premarin’s?” Constance said lightly.

He sighed. “Mostly. He is here, too.”

“I saw that. We met him earlier today. He was on his way to the funeral service. With his wife.”

Giusti was silent for a moment. Then he said, “I thought about going, but decided in the end I should not be welcome. I thought of him. I’m sorry he is dead.”

“Tell me,” Constance said, looking casually about her to ensure she would not be overheard, “was there ever as much as a whisper about Savelli and Signora Premarin?”