Page 35 of Vengeance in Venice (Murder in Moonlight #6)

“Prejudice,” Foscolo said cynically. “I don’t like him, so I was doubly careful.

Especially when he identified the murder weapon at once as Savelli’s own dagger.

And then he never mentioned the presence of Savelli’s dagger in the study and, in fact, removed my mention of it from my report that he passed up the chain of command.

I might never have known that if I hadn’t made it my business to read all of Lampl’s reports on the subject.

At first, I only really suspected him of trying to take credit for my work, probably to get me removed, but it was always more than that. ”

His face was bleak, and for a moment he seemed lost in unpleasant thought. Then he glanced up, his gaze bouncing from Solomon to Constance and back.

“You see, I am trusting you with the truth. You are at perfect liberty to go to Lampl and report everything I said. I hope you won’t, for your sakes as well as mine.

For the record, you won’t find his house as easy to break into as this one.

He doesn’t have a gullible caretaker but a very large and sour servant who shuts the door in your face while he delivers a message. ”

“Would we find the murder weapon in his house?” Constance asked.

“I don’t know. It could be anywhere by now.”

“Not if he is a true collector,” Solomon argued. They had come across several of those in London last year.

“I don’t think he is. He knew Savelli before the revolution.

He may have seen the dagger then, came across its twin during the war, and took it on impulse.

” Perhaps Foscolo saw something in their expressions, for he added almost defensively, “I am limited in what I can ask. I cannot be suspected of working against him or I will lose my job.”

“Then if he is guilty, how do you expect to catch him?” Solomon demanded.

“By leaving the Austrians some way of covering it up,” Foscolo said with genuine bitterness.

“Or getting privileged foreigners to make the accusation?” Constance suggested.

Foscolo smiled. “That’s the other reason I chose to trust you. Either way, the Austrians must be able to brush Lampl’s guilt under the carpet, because they will, whether or not he is punished, and he must be.”

There was silence for a few moments.

Solomon shook his head in annoyance. “It makes no sense. I can understand if someone chose that particular weapon, and made it look as if the killer stole it from Savelli himself. It widens the list of suspects from the only person with access to the keys—namely Elena.”

“Exactly,” Constance agreed. “What would be the point of killing her husband and then watching her be arrested for murder?”

Solomon rounded on her. “Then why didn’t he find some way to remove Savelli’s own dagger from his collection? By leaving it there, he sabotaged his own plan. Anyone could have seen it there! Foscolo did. It was pure luck that Elena herself didn’t notice it until today.”

Constance leaned back on the sofa. “That is a good point.”

They both gazed at Foscolo, who sighed.

“To be fair, I think he aimed to. He arrived that morning just after eight o’clock, and I heard him ask Signora Savelli for permission to use the study to conduct his initial investigation and interviews.

Unfortunately, he found me already ensconced there.

One of my men had wakened me, you see, almost as soon as the body was discovered, and I was at the Palazzo Savelli well before seven.

He kept trying to send me off on trivial tasks, which was quite amusing, because I immediately sent my own men and sat back down.

I was interviewing the staff—and yourself, Mr. Grey.

It was Lampl who was unnecessary, and he knew it.

But miraculously enough, no one noticed the dagger’s presence in its case—except me, and I have a spiteful policy of telling Lampl nothing he does not ask me directly.

I know he went back a couple of times, but Signora Savelli had herself better in hand by then.

I doubt she allowed him to run tame about her house.

And in any case, he had already got away with it, just by altering my report.

And now everyone thinks Lampl returned the valuable weapon to the widow. ”

“ She doesn’t,” Constance said.

Foscolo waved that aside. “A poor widow, shocked by grief and not remembering correctly.”

“But isn’t police evidence recorded?” Solomon asked.

“Signed in and out. I saw it shortly before I left the office. My name is beside the dagger’s return, but I never took it.”

“And the Austrians will not believe you over him,” Constance murmured.

Foscolo inclined his head. “You see my predicament. But for now, you must go. You were seen entering the building and I can guarantee I will have to answer Lampl’s questions on your visit tomorrow.

I will tell him that you are impatient at the progress of the investigation and that I think I calmed you down.

For your own sake, say nothing else to anyone.

I’ll find a way to talk to you tomorrow. ”

*

“I feel as if I’ve been hit over the head again,” Constance said as they walked back toward the boat. “He makes a bizarre kind of sense, but do you believe him?”

“Mostly. But he’s a subtle devil. He has had to be to survive.”

Constance nodded, holding Solomon’s arm closer to her side. “He didn’t give a reason for Lampl poisoning me, and I can’t think what either of us might have said to make us appear dangerous.”

“Neither can I. We don’t have quite all the pieces yet, but my feeling is we now have most of them.”

“Unless Foscolo made it all up. He was very vague on how Lampl is supposed to have acquired the twin dagger, and we have no proof of any of it. It’s Foscolo’s name on the evidence book. He could easily be the one who returned the murder weapon to its case.”

“Or failed to take the Savelli dagger away,” Solomon said consideringly, “because he couldn’t get hold of the case key from the safe. He was not an intimate of the Savellis, so he wouldn’t know how it worked. I still think it’s Lampl.”

“Actually, so do I. Foscolo might admire Elena, but he’s not a madman. He knows he stands no chance with her. Lampl, on the other hand, is an Austrian aristocrat. It would be a good match for her, in time. And he could take her away from Venice and gossip.”

“Something is still wrong, though,” Solomon said. “Why did he kill Savelli that particular night? Because, after the fight, Giusti could be blamed, thus removing another rival? Could he have known about it so soon?”

“Only Giusti has not been blamed,” Constance pointed out. “Or not yet.”

“Then there is your abduction. He could have heard about that too and decided I would make a good culprit.”

“Yet if anything, he seems to have protected you, or at least ruled you out.”

Solomon scowled. “Apart from poisoning you… And we still don’t know why that happened. Alvise—take us to the back door of the Palazzo Savelli.”

Although the light was beginning to fade, the palazzo was still clearly visible. The water rippled up the steps from the canal, leading straight to the stout, closed back door.

“Did the killer come by boat, like us?” Solomon murmured, looking up at the building. “Lampl, rowing himself, would surely have intrigued Savelli, and he would not have felt threatened. Did he see him from one of these windows?”

Constance followed his gaze. “Maybe. He certainly didn’t have to be in the study at the time if he didn’t take the dagger with him.

Earlier, Elena saw Giusti from one of them.

” She pointed upward. “That partially open window has the brightest curtains. I suspect that is Elena’s dressing room, where she stood when he rowed by.

The windows next to it are surely Savelli’s.

They are definitely close to that part of the building, for I looked out when Elena showed us his rooms. We can ask her to confirm it… if it’s important?”

“It’s another oddity,” Solomon said. “Was Lampl prepared to wait here, hour after hour, night after night, on the off chance that Savelli would look out of his window at the right time, see him, and come down to be murdered?”

“He would have been seen by someone,” Constance said, “considering all the people who skulked around here that night. It must have been prearranged.”

“Why would Savelli agree to anything so bizarre? Surely it would be unusual enough for him to alert the bodyguard.”

Constance shivered, throwing off her sudden memory of the men who had abducted her and scared her so badly. She tried to concentrate. “Unless they just didn’t turn up. And Savelli went out anyway.”

“I suppose they could have covered that up,” Solomon said doubtfully, “with the police and with the rest of the house—” He broke off. “The lowest window to the right of the door. The one without bars.”

She saw it at once, not only because it was placed higher up in the wall than the other bottom windows, giving the row a pleasingly asymmetrical appearance, but because there was movement behind it.

A face pressed up against it, grinning and sinister, and she couldn’t look away. It was Pellini, one of her abductors.

Solomon went on with growing excitement. “It’s almost directly below the window we think was Savelli’s dressing room.”

“It must be the bodyguards’ dormitory.” Somewhere, Constance could see that was important and tore her gaze from the terrible face at the window, which was surely more important, yet…

“Did one of them summon Savelli outside from that window?” Solomon continued.

“Throw something up at his window to get his attention, wake him, if necessary, without the rest of the household being aware? A trick any schoolboy knows… Constance?” Solomon finished in a suddenly high, frightened voice she had never heard before. “Are you ill?”

“No. No, let’s go home, I…”

She gazed at the back doorstep of the Savelli house where she had walked out of danger and into Solomon’s arms—some time after being dragged inside by the owner of that face at the window.

She hadn’t seen it at the time, of course, only when Savelli had removed her hood.

The face at the window had recognized her and still thought it was funny to frighten her…

Dragged away from Solomon while he was still in danger, blind and helpless and unable to call out… The rough, bruising hands of her captors and their alien voices babbling words she had not understood because she had been too afraid to think and hadn’t known enough Italian.

Days later, she knew quite a lot more. She had grown almost used to conversing in a mixture of English and Italian—with Elena and Rossi and the Palazzo Zulian servants, particularly Maria during her illness, and before that, with some people at the reception.

Perhaps more importantly, her ear was now more attuned to the rhythm and speed of the local accents.

She could recognize some Venetian words, but her abductors had not used any.

One of them—that one at the window, Pellini—was not Venetian, so they had spoken to each other in more universal Italian.

The memory of those sounds was in her head, repeating and repeating until they made sense.

Solomon was holding her hand, leaning forward to gaze anxiously into her face. She squeezed his fingers in instinctive comfort.

“…potremmo perdere i nostri comodi lavori per questo…”

…could lose our comfortable jobs over this…

“Starò bene. Potrei parlare con l’austriaco per te.”

I will be fine. I might speak to the Austrian for you.

She blinked, refocusing all her attention on Solomon. “The Austrian. It is Lampl. And that is how it was done and why he needed rid of me. Pellini is Lampl’s spy, his tool within the Savelli house.”