Page 27 of Vengeance in Venice (Murder in Moonlight #6)

U nder normal circumstances, Solomon would have gone straight to Giusti, but he had already been away from Constance too long in her current condition.

On top of which, the stupid feeling that she could not be safe without his presence never quite left him, which was ridiculous considering she had been poisoned right under his nose.

Still, he willed Alvise to row faster.

Entering the Palazzo Zulian, he went straight upstairs without questioning the servants and strode through the private sitting room to their bedroom.

It gave him a small shock to see Elena Savelli there in the chair by the bed.

But his attention was all on his wife, who looked considerably brighter.

She was still terribly pale and the great shadows around her eyes would take time to fade, but her eyes sparked once more in the way that told him she had much to discuss.

“Solomon,” she said, holding out her hand at once.

He went to her, sitting on the bed to take her hand and kiss it. “Have you eaten more?”

“Yes.”

“She ate almost an entire bowl of soup,” Elena said, rising to her feet, “and should be congratulated. I must go.”

“Will you come back tomorrow?” Constance said.

“If you wish.”

A friendship had begun to form between the two women, and that made him uneasy.

Because Elena was still a suspect in her husband’s murder, if not the attack on Constance.

And because of what Bianca Premarin had said about Giusti.

It was Constance’s instinct to befriend and defend other women, which had proved dangerous on at least one other occasion.

Of course, Solomon bowed to Elena and thanked her for coming. But he was glad to be alone with his wife.

“How are you? Are you tired?”

“No, I am doing nothing but sleeping and eating and talking. I’ve had a most interesting hour with Elena.”

“I’ve had quite an interesting time with Bianca Premarin.”

“Have you indeed?” As he settled beside her again, she leaned against him, her arm across his waist. “Elena says she lies.”

“She probably would say that. Bianca says she saw Giusti on his way back from the Savelli Palace on the night of the murder.”

Constance’s eyes widened. “Is that what she’s not telling me?”

“Who?” Solomon asked, confused.

“Elena. She sleeps poorly, and I’m sure she saw something, someone, that night that she doesn’t want to admit. We thought that before, but now I’m sure. If what you’re saying is true, then she saw Giusti. Old loyalties are keeping her silent. It makes sense.”

“Or she could be lying because it was her husband she saw when she stabbed him.”

Constance shook her head. “Or Bianca could be lying. From what Elena said, Bianca talks sometimes as though her fantasies are real.”

“As though she’s lying to herself,” Solomon said.

“ That is probably true. She began by trying to make me believe she was some sophisticated temptress, that she had indulged in some affair with Savelli, going to his house every night. But from what she said later, she only ever stood outside the front of the house, watching pathetically for a glimpse of him. She never even spoke to him. But she says she was there on the night he died.”

“Can we believe her?” Constance said doubtfully.

“Not without corroboration. The other thing to consider is…the girl is unstable. What she told me could easily be another fantasy to hide the fact that she went by boat to the back of the house and killed Savelli for ignoring her, or rejecting her, or for some other reason the rest of us will never understand.”

“Do you think she is mad?” Constance asked uneasily.

“I would say she’s on the verge of it. Would Premarin protect her?”

“That’s the other thing,” Constance said. “Premarin proposed to Elena first, but she chose Savelli.” She sat up straighter. “Bianca could have told her husband any old story that might have made him jealous enough and angry enough to kill.”

“But did she? Why would Constance protect Premarin or Bianca?”

“It has to be Giusti,” Constance said unhappily. “I really don’t believe she would have killed her husband. She thought both too much of him and too little.”

Solomon raised one eyebrow. “What does that mean?”

“That she loved him in a quiet way, not a way that is all-consuming, angry, or jealous.”

Distracted, he found himself saying, “How do you love me?”

She smiled. “All ways.”

He had to kiss her for that, but, very aware of her health, he kept it gentle if not quite chaste.

Then, unaided, she rose from the bed, donned her dressing gown, and walked into the sitting room, where she sat on the sofa with an air of triumph that warmed him and made him smile.

Could he allow himself to believe she was on the mend?

She believed it, clearly, and he grasped that with painful gratitude.

“This is not quite the trip we planned, is it?” she said ruefully.

“I’m not sure I care for the unexpected anymore.”

“Not this unexpected. I have never felt so dreadful in my life.” She tried to keep her voice light, but there was a catch in it that brought him quickly down beside her.

He put his arm around her, burying his lips in her hair.

She gave a little gasp. “This is different. We’ve been hit and hurt before and I never truly cared because it was done in a moment of fear or anger, but this… It is deliberate, personal, hateful …”

He tightened his arm around her. “Shall we leave?”

She shook her head. Was ever a woman so stubborn? So maddening and brave and wonderful…

“We can’t,” she said. “I refuse to let such a person go on. They stabbed a man—a good man, by all we have learned—with his own weapon, and poisoned me just when you and I…”

“Hush,” he whispered, kissing her temples, her cheeks. “Hush. I know. I am angry and afraid as I have never been. I don’t understand these people. I don’t understand the crime. It’s like blundering through a blinding fog in an unknown place.”

She gave a watery laugh. “No, it isn’t.” She sat up, wiping her eye. “People are just people, the world over. They are poisoned in England, too. I know I’m taking this too personally, probably because I like whoever did it. That hurts.”

“It hurts,” he repeated. “There is a lot of hurt in this city. What if Savelli was not killed for revenge or greed or politics, but simply from unbearable hurt?”

“Then we come back, surely, to Giusti and Elena.”

“Or the Premarins, although that theory still feels ridiculous and far-fetched.” He rose and strode over to the cabinet where he had tidied away their notes before going out.

“The whole of Venice hurts from the recent revolution and war. But the greatest personal pain in this case is all between Giusti and Savelli and Elena…”

Hastily, he spread their notes around, rearranging as he spoke.

“The murder weapon—the only physical evidence that exists, although we have never even seen it—is from Savelli’s own house.

His bodyguards, who obey Elena as far as we know.

Giusti, Savelli’s enemy but one-time friend and Elena’s jilted betrothed.

Premarin, who also proposed to Elena. Premarin’s wife, who hates Elena because she was foolishly obsessed with Savelli.

Rossi, according to the awful Mrs. Collins at the consulate, could have been Elena’s lover.

Was that the real reason Savelli dismissed him? ”

He stood back with the papers arranged and sank back down beside Constance, who was gazing at them. They looked like a bizarre kind of star, with everyone and everything emanating from a central point—Elena.

“It doesn’t make her the murderer,” Constance said slowly. “But you are right that everything seems to connect to her, stem from her. In fact, rather than being the perpetrator, she has to be the motive. Someone killed Savelli for Elena.”

“With or without her knowledge,” Solomon said.

He frowned, dragging his fingers through his short hair, then bent and picked up the abandoned paper with their notes on Sebastian Kellar.

“Except for him. He knew Savelli and his wife but was not involved with them. If he hadn’t talked to you, been so close to your wine, we wouldn’t even have considered him. ”

“Then we can rule him out?”

“If the murder was about Elena and hurt.”

“And he is not a political assassin,” Constance pointed out.

“There is no evidence of that, just the speculation of our fevered imaginations, which seem to have taken us back to the days of the Borgias.”

Constance said, “Elena spoke of Giusti as in the past. I really don’t think they were having an affair. In which case, why would Giusti kill Savelli now?”

“Because of the street attack? Because he had had enough? Remember, they used to be friends. There is the hurt of betrayal between them. And if we can believe Bianca, Giusti was rowing from the back of Palazzo Savelli that night.”

Constance shifted impatiently, bumping her hip against Solomon’s.

“If this is right, if Elena is at the center of this maelstrom of feeling… I don’t think she’s aware of it.

I don’t believe she has affairs with anyone, not Giusti and certainly not Premarin or Rossi.

It gets us no further forward. At least until we talk to Giusti again. ”

Solomon glanced at the window. There was plenty of daylight left, although the sky was clouding over. “I could go and see him now.” He didn’t want to leave Constance again. And besides… “But it might be better if we could both be there. We work better together.”

She snuggled against him. “We do, don’t we?” she said complacently. “We could send him a note, invite him to call.”

Solomon regarded her, taking in the bruised eyes and the obvious exhaustion of her body, weighing her condition against the urgency of finding and arresting the murderer. “In the morning,” he said reluctantly. “When we are fresher and you, hopefully, will be even stronger.”

“I might be able to eat solid food tomorrow,” she said hopefully, and his lips tightened in fresh fury.