Page 31 of Vengeance in Venice (Murder in Moonlight #6)

C hallenging an aggressive drunk is rarely wise.

In the old days, Constance would have found a way to distract him.

Perhaps she had grown lazy in recent years, because in her establishment, on the rare occasions a man misbehaved, she had merely to snap her fingers and two burly young footmen would have the transgressor out of the front door before he or anyone else noticed.

They never made a fuss in the street. After all, who wanted to be discovered by friends, neighbors, or the police shouting outside a brothel?

This was an entirely different situation. She was alone in a secluded garden with a man who might have killed already and arranged the poisoning that still seemed such a terrible, personal attack.

And Rossi was undoubtedly angry. His eyes had seemed to flare into fury as soon as she mentioned fighting, but there was more there.

Fear? Desperation? Although not a particularly large man, he was big enough and unpredictable enough to be a threat.

And he was poised, his very stillness unnatural and unnerving.

“I do not fight,” he stated with a sudden softness that chilled her. “I am an artist.”

“And a very fine one.” Flattery was an old and successful weapon, but she was still afraid to release his gaze. “But you are still human. Anyone would resent being dismissed as you were by Signor Savelli. And the signora…such a beautiful lady.”

His eyes softened in reminiscence. “Fire and ice and strength,” he said, and then his gaze refocused. “I wanted to paint her very badly.”

“Did you love her?”

A moment longer, he stared at her and her healing stomach lurched with fresh fear. She clasped it and her pile of papers and tensed for the blow, whatever it would be.

Then he threw back his head and roared with laughter.

Constance breathed again, but the man was too unpredictable for her to relax entirely. Though he seemed about to disprove one of their theories.

“Her face obsessed me,” he said suddenly. “So does yours. I cannot love all my obsessions. I have reality.”

“Adriana.”

A smile flickered across his lips. “I should marry her.” He sighed. “And I should drink less to make her marry me.”

“Why don’t you?”

“That,” said the artist, “is a very good question. I like to drink. And when I don’t paint, when my own lack of talent scares me… I drink and it doesn’t matter. Until I wake up.”

“Do you tell Adriana this?”

He plucked at his coat as though suddenly too warm. “No. But I think she knows. She knows everything.”

“Even that you don’t always remember?”

It was a risk to bring up that subject again, but he only shrugged. “Probably.”

Questions tried to force themselves from her lips, but she knew better than to hurry him at this moment. They almost understood each other, and she couldn’t take the chance of ruining that.

His gaze swept suddenly back to hers. “You want to know, don’t you?

If I went back to the palazzo to fight with Savelli?

I might have. I might not. When he sent me away that day, I got vilely, stupidly drunk.

Adriana shut her door on me, and who can blame her?

I woke up in my studio the next morning, as if I hadn’t moved.

But I had. My clothes were filthy and wet, as if I’d fallen in a canal or a puddle and rolled about the streets.

I had bruises, but whether someone punched me or I fell over and hurt myself, I don’t know.

“Dreams from that night came back to me, full of my anger against Savelli. There was blood. It didn’t feel real, but I don’t know if it was or not. Other people were in the dream too. Premarin, trailing after his plain young wife. I knew it was her even though she was veiled and hooded.”

“How did you know?” Constance asked.

“The way she moved.”

“Where were they when you saw them?”

“Somewhere beside the Grand Canal. On foot.” His eyes widened. “Close to the Palazzo Savelli…”

It seemed to Constance that there had been so many people close to the Palazzo Savelli that night, it was a miracle they hadn’t fallen over each other. Giusti, Premarin, Bianca Premarin, Rossi. To say nothing of Savelli’s wife and the household who had seen and heard nothing.

A few steps forward and then snapped back to the beginning.

And Rossi didn’t even know whether or not he was guilty.

“In your dream,” she said suddenly, “when you attacked Savelli and there was all that blood, did you have a weapon? How were you hurting him?”

He grimaced but didn’t need to think about it. “With my old palette knife. Is it not symbolic?”

At last . Constance smiled at him, and he looked momentarily dazzled.

“Symbolic of your innocence. I think we have both been afraid your dream was not a dream but a drunken memory of drunken rage. But it can’t have been a true memory because you used a palette knife.

That isn’t what killed him. Your dream was only a dream.

You didn’t actually kill Savelli. It is quite a distinction, since the evidence seems to rule out no one else in Venice. ”

*

“He could be lying,” Solomon said judiciously.

He had come home in something of a panic, shortly after Rossi’s departure, and Constance, back indoors in the drawing room and sipping weak tea, had immediately poured out her encounter with the artist.

“I don’t believe he is,” she said.

“You are usually right,” he allowed. “And we don’t believe either Elena or Giusti were lying either. We just have to bear in mind that we like these people and don’t want them to be guilty.”

She had not told him of her sudden sense of threat in Rossi’s company. It no longer seemed important, since it had vanished like a summer rain shower. “What of Premarin?”

“Oh, he was there, following his wife, whose oddities he appears to be well aware of. He might even be taking responsibility for some of them. He claims to be jealous no longer, merely ashamed, and both he and Bianca seem to have been heading homeward when they and Rossi saw each other.”

“He could have taken a few minutes away from watching his wife in order to entice Savelli outside,” Constance said.

“He would need to have gone through the house, without his wife seeing Savelli letting him in. And even if that were possible, why would Savelli show him out the back way, where he has no means of transport?”

“Savelli’s own boats were there.” She sighed. “You’re right, though, it doesn’t make any sense. Have we finally reduced our suspects to none?”

“It would seem so.”

They were silent for a little while, gazing out of the window at the breathtaking view. Not as magnificent as the Grand Canal, but with its own quieter, more real beauty.

“The weapon,” Constance said suddenly. “That’s what I was trying to think about when Rossi distracted me. We have not seen it. Do you suppose the police gave it back to Elena?”

“We can ask her. Though I don’t see what we can learn from it at this stage. It was Savelli’s own weapon and left in his body.”

She reached out and took his hand. “Is this our first failure, Solomon? On our first case since our marriage?”

His thumb caressed her wrist. “Perhaps one should not go investigating on one’s honeymoon. There are too many other distractions.”

“I have so loved those distractions,” she said, carrying his hand to her cheek.

“So have I,” he said, just a little huskily. “God, so have I.”

“I am very much better,” she said.

He smiled, sliding his hand from her cheek to her nape and making her shiver. “Temptress.”

They stayed like that as the afternoon wore on, and though she waited with her heart skittering, she knew he would not take her to bed. Not yet.

In present circumstances, his abstinence only emphasized his care of her. And in any case, just being with him like this as the afternoon drew to a close, and an unsolved and apparently insoluble mystery hung over them, was strangely sweet, and more, much more, than enough.

*

In the morning, Constance woke up feeling much more like herself.

She was frustrated that Solomon insisted she drink a cup of coffee before she rose and then insisted on helping her dress.

But the anxiety in his eyes—how long had it taken her to recognize all those expressions she had once found so veiled and difficult?

—lightened to approval as she ate her egg and bread for breakfast.

“I shall come with you to call on Elena,” she said firmly, and he merely nodded. If anything, he seemed amused by the challenge in her manner.

Alvise grinned as he helped her into the boat, and he sang all the way to the Palazzo Savelli.

Although the servant let them into the foyer at once, he left them there while he carried their names to his mistress. Pellini, one of the bodyguards who had abducted Constance, lounged near the front door, watching them in a surly manner, as though he expected them to steal the silver.

“If he didn’t kill Savelli himself,” Constance murmured, observing him in return, “he probably still thinks you did.”

“I’m a possibility to him, no doubt, but so is Giusti, whom his fellows were busy beating to a pulp when we first saw them. Unless, as you say, he did it himself. The bodyguards are about the only suspects we have left.”

The servant came back and conducted them solemnly to the drawing room, where Elena sat not in splendid isolation but in the company of the Venetian policeman Foscolo, who scowled at the very sight of Solomon and Constance.

Elena, on the other hand, was openly delighted to see them, coming forward at once with her hand outstretched. “Signora, should you be out so soon?”

“It’s an experiment,” Constant said lightly. “I feel I will go mad trapped indoors.”

“I know the feeling. You have met Signor Foscolo, of course.”

Foscolo nodded curtly. He looked undecided as to whether to vacate the premises in disgust or stay where he was in the hope of discovering the point of their visit.

“Wine?” Elena asked. “Or is it too early for your English sensibilities?”

Constance shuddered. “Certainly for this English stomach.”

“Sit, my dear. Every time I see you, you look better.”

Foscolo, clearly tired of the small talk, said abruptly, “What brings you here?”

“Actually,” Solomon said, with a quick, apologetic glance at Elena, “we wanted to know if the police had returned Signor Savelli’s dagger, and if so, if we could see it.”

A spark of anger lit Foscolo’s face. “I could have told you that without the need to distress the signora. The weapon is still in our possession, and no, you may not see it, because it is none of your concern.”

“Then how fares your inquiry into my wife’s poisoning?” Solomon asked steadily. “I presume there is one?”

Pinkness seeped into the policeman’s face. “Naturally. I will keep you informed.” He nodded stiffly to Elena, all but clicking his heels as wishing them all good day, and stalked out.

Constance, who had always preferred him to his Austrian superior, was taken aback by this apparent hostility. “Does he suspect us again?” she wondered aloud.

“Oh, no, Lampl is probably hampering the natural course of his inquiries,” Elena replied. “It must be like working with one’s hands tied.”

“But your husband was a friend to the Austrian government,” Solomon said. “Surely Lampl wants the culprit brought to justice?”

“Of course.”

But did Foscolo? Had Foscolo found the truth and it was somehow unpalatable to him? Or to Lampl and the government of Venice?

“Why did he come?” Constance asked, a new idea struggling into her mind.

“A courtesy, I think. He told me he had found no evidence against the bodyguards Angelo hired, but still he advised me to pay them off.”

“Why haven’t you?” Solomon asked.

Elena sighed. “I suppose I was wary of them vanishing somewhere we couldn’t find them before we discovered they were the culprits.”

“That is brave,” Solomon said, “and risky. I thought you didn’t suspect them?”

“I don’t, really. It makes no sense. But nothing does, now.” Elena spoke flatly, without pathos, and yet it struck Constance as poignant.

There was nothing she could say that would ease the loss, the pain.

Solomon said, “Your husband was a collector of antique weapons, was he not? Perhaps you could show us his collection?”

Constance blinked at him in surprise. It seemed unusually insensitive of him, especially when he had already asked about the murder weapon.

Elena’s brows lifted, though she did not seem to be particularly disturbed. She led the way across the fine gallery to the study she had shown them on their first visit.

Comfortable, functional, and decorative, it looked exactly the same as before, dominated at one end by the large desk and throne-like chair. At the other side of the enormous fireplace were the glass display cabinets, to which Elena led them without obvious emotion.

To Constance’s untrained eye, Savelli’s collection looked like a fine historical armory—swords and daggers of all shapes and lengths, both simple and ornate in style, ancient-looking pistols and a musket, a pair of fine, silver-mounted dueling pistols, and, on the wall, a medieval shield with a coat of arms painted upon its curved surface.

As she gazed around with a mixture of awe and distaste, Constance became only slowly aware that Elena was staring fixedly at an object in the second case.

Alarmed, Constance went to join her there.

There was only one object on display there—a long dagger with a dazzling jeweled hilt and shining blade.

“What is it?” Solomon asked.

Elena stepped back, one hand flying to her mouth, and then falling to her side.

“That is it,” she gasped. “That is the dagger that killed him.”