Page 26 of Vengeance in Venice (Murder in Moonlight #6)

“I hated Giusti like myself, for what we had done. We were bad for each other, and I was no longer some innocent, melted by a dashing smile and a few passionate kisses. There is nothing important in those things. So I chose Angelo.”

“Were you happy?”

She considered. “Individually, neither of us was happy. Together we survived, and Angelo’s business thrived.

I entertained his friends and his rivals, kept his house.

The city’s scars began to heal. Was it love?

I don’t know. I don’t think I ever understood him any more than he understood me.

” She gave a small, hard laugh. “A sad tale, is it not?”

“Yes,” Constance said with pity. “I think…I think you did your best, which is all any of us can do, whatever the situation. And I think you loved them both—in different ways, perhaps—as they loved you.”

Elena met her gaze. “I might have thought so, except that I have seen you with him . Your husband. No one has ever looked at me as he watched you, so devastated by your illness, such stark, raw emotion. That is love. And I have never known it. I doubt I am capable of feeling it or inspiring it.”

Constance felt her face warm. In return for the other woman’s confession, she said, “I do love him. I always did, though I didn’t always recognize it. Nor could I believe he would ever feel the same for me.”

“Why not? You are one of the most beautiful creatures I have ever seen. You have warmth and wit and intelligence. I think men must find you fascinating.”

Constance smiled. “I worked at that. Let us just say that I have a past.”

“And he forgave you?” Elena asked with sudden intensity.

“Not so much forgave as… It ceased to matter very quickly. There is a bond between us. I think it was there from the first time we met, when we never even spoke. The feeling terrified me.”

Absently, Constance ate her soup, aware of the other woman’s curious gaze.

“Who do you think killed my husband?” Elena asked.

“I was going to ask you the same question.”

Elena sighed, and Constance laid her spoon in the bowl. She seemed to have eaten almost all the soup, which surprised her. She hoped her stomach would not mind.

“To be honest,” she said, “I like nearly everyone we have found with a motive and even the vaguest opportunity. The most likely suspects are surely the men your husband hired to protect you.”

“To watch me,” Elena said bitterly. “I think he imagined Giusti would kidnap me—after four years—or perhaps that I would run away with him. And that was why Giusti kept the jewels—to keep me .”

“Jealousy comes with love. I am not immune. Nor is Solomon.”

“Excess, obsession, was not something I ever suspected of Angelo. Giusti, yes. But not him .”

“Are you not afraid to live in the same house as those men?”

“I pay them, so no. Besides, I want them where they can be found, even kicking their heels with boredom.”

“And if your husband refused to pay them for something?” Constance persisted. “It is the most easily explained solution.”

“Except that whoever killed Angelo probably poisoned you too, and our men have no access to the British consulate. And in any case, no one saw any of them leave the house the night Angelo died, let alone skulk at the back door.”

Constance shifted restlessly. “But then, no one saw or heard anything or anyone.”

Elena’s eyes fell, as though involuntarily, and Constance stared at her.

“You don’t sleep well,” she said slowly. “Even before your husband’s death, you didn’t sleep well. Elena, did you see someone outside the house?”

“No. I saw no one.”

You are lying again . It seemed the unexpected confidences were over.

But Constance could not allow that. If she was in danger still—if Solomon was—this mystery could not be allowed to drift on unsolved.

She needed to press Elena, make her tell the truth.

Yet she knew instinctively that this was not the kind of woman who responded to bullying or nagging.

Her trust, this apparently greater trust, had to be won more subtly.

Forcing herself, she changed the subject.

“Tell me about the Premarins. I believe they are friends of yours. You dined in each other’s homes. Did this friendship survive the government contract that your husband won against Premarin?”

Elena’s brow twitched. “Oh, that. It had only just been signed, but I can’t imagine Nicolo Premarin bearing a grudge. He is the most pragmatic of men, and I doubt he needed the money. I certainly can’t imagine it driving him to murder Angelo in the middle of the night.”

“But his wife is a curious lady, is she not?”

“Bianca?” Elena said in disbelief. “She must be the least curious person I have ever met.”

“Then she is not a friend of yours?”

“She was often around. Like a shawl you don’t much like, but it serves its basic purpose.”

Definitely not a friend . “She does not like you either,” Constance remarked.

Elena shrugged. “She wouldn’t. She knows Nicolo proposed to me.”

“ Did he, now?” Constance leaned forward eagerly. “When did he do that?”

“Oh, around the time the Austrians retook the city. He wanted a mother for his children, I think. I turned him down.”

“And subsequently became engaged to Angelo…” There were possibilities there they had not considered. Personal jealousy added much to annoyance over a contract. Surely together they did constitute a serious motive?

“I suppose Bianca cannot forgive me. She liked Angelo, though.”

“I had that impression,” Constance said carefully.

Elena, who was not slow, widened her eyes. “Seriously? She had a tendre for Angelo?”

“He never mentioned it?”

“I doubt he noticed. I certainly didn’t, though now you mention it, she was always more animated around him, and she did gaze at him as though he were some kind of oracle. Or god. I thought she looked at all men like that.”

“Perhaps she does. But would it be possible that she somehow inveigled Angelo into an affair with her?”

Elena opened her mouth, surely to annihilate the preposterous idea.

But then she only stared blindly at Constance, clearly considering it.

“A woman who was no threat to his pride or his sanity,” she said slowly.

“He need not even consider it betrayal in his mind… Which would be wrong, so wrong, to both of us, and to Nicolo. No, I cannot imagine it. You do know that she tells lies? Fantasies, probably.”

*

Bianca Premarin’s words flabbergasted Solomon. He could only stare at her.

“I went to his house. At night.”

“Which night?” he managed at last.

“Lots of nights.”

His heart had begun to beat with slightly horrified excitement. “Including the night he died?”

She nodded.

Careful to sound neither shocked nor urgent, Solomon asked casually, “What did you do there?”

“I watched for him. Sometimes I saw him.”

“Did you speak to him?”

“Not yet,” she said dreamily, as though she had forgotten that he was dead.

Tears started in her eyes. The pretense of the coquette, the sophisticated woman of love affairs, crumbled so quickly and so hopelessly that Solomon felt both appalled and desperately sorry for her.

He moved hastily on. “Did you see him the night he died?”

She shook her head. “I did not even see him at the window.”

“Did you see my wife or me?” he asked curiously.

She stared at him. “No.”

“What time was this, signora? When you were watching? Was it after midnight? It is important to me.”

She smiled. “Then yes. I must have been there around three in the morning.”

“Three? How did you get there?”

She lifted her eyebrows. “I walked. It is easy enough. The house—this house—is quiet then. The children are asleep, and the servants are abed. I have all the keys.”

Solomon felt a pang of disappointment. “You walked. Then you watched the Palazzo Savelli at the front of the house.”

“No one ever saw me,” she said anxiously. “I wore a veil and the hood of my cloak, and in the dark I could blend in with the tree at the side of the canal. I hoped he alone would see me there and come to me. But he never did.”

“Did you hear anything that might have come from the back of the house? Voices? The splashing of oars, perhaps? A fight?”

“No,” she said with a vagueness that told him she wouldn’t have noticed a major battle taking place out of her immediate line of vision.

“So, you went home again without seeing anyone?”

Her gaze refocused on him with a spark of triumph. “Oh, I saw someone. As I was going home, someone passed me in a boat, turning out of the canal that runs along the back of the Palazzo Savelli.”

“Did you see his face?” Solomon asked without much hope.

“Oh yes, it was Ludovico Giusti, and he could only have been coming from his lover. Elena.”