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

There was no exchange of glances between the policemen this time. Although Lampl answered, both men watched Solomon without blinking.

“He was found at the back doorstep of this house, his body half in the canal. He had been stabbed to death.”

Solomon caught his breath. “When was this? When did he die?”

“He was found early this morning, around six of the clock. We are not yet sure exactly when he died.” Foscolo did not smile. “You might well have been one of the last people to see him alive.”

*

Constance was given little time to worry about Solomon’s meeting with Savelli, for less than half an hour after he left her, she had a visitor.

Duly announced by the well-trained servant who had been hired with the house, Ludovico Giusti walked into her drawing room with a quick, urgent step. Despite his bruised face and worried aspect, he managed to smile and bow with a flourish.

“Signora! Forgive my intrusion. I was looking for your husband, but they tell me he has gone out.”

“He has, but he claimed he would not be long. Might I help you instead?”

Giusti blinked in surprise, and then, as she resumed her seat, he sat down quite suddenly opposite her and leaned forward. There was a particularly colorful bruise around his eye. “Perhaps you can. I suppose you do not know?”

“Know what?”

“About Savelli.”

“Only what I learned last night and what you told my husband.”

Giusti waved that away as if it were of no account. “No, no, I mean today. Savelli is dead. Murdered.”

Her lips parted in shock. At least there was no triumph or rejoicing in Giusti’s eyes. In fact, just for an instant, between the cuts and bruises, she was almost sure she saw grief.

“Solomon has gone to see him,” she said slowly.

“I was afraid of it. I came to warn him not to, because the palazzo will be full of policemen. Hopefully, they will send him away as a foreigner of no account.”

“Why do you hope that?” Constance asked, bewildered and distracted. Savelli had been a strange man, and she had been furiously angry with him, but somewhat to her own surprise, she had not disliked him. And now he was dead, his life wiped out by…

By his sworn enemy?

Giusti seemed unaware of her sudden suspicion. “I told the police about my…disturbance last night, but I did not mention you or your husband. I merely said Savelli’s men were frightened off when other people threatened to join in.”

“Why?”

Giusti sighed. “I thought I was doing both of you a good turn. I did not want you drawn into whatever…circus is made of this murder. You know, of course, that I am their prime suspect?”

“Being Signor Savelli’s sworn enemy?”

“I am not the only one. His support of the Austrian government is not popular in certain circles. But, especially with the fight last night, I do seem to have an added motive for violence.”

The knowledge seeped in slowly. “And so does Solomon, because of me. That was why you did not mention us to the police.”

“It would have been poor recompense for his good deed.”

“Except that Solomon will tell them the truth. He is not the kind of man to be brushed away as of no account.”

Giusti sighed. “I was afraid of that. I am sorry to bring this upon you.”

Constance regarded him. There was something—a great deal, no doubt—that he was not telling her. She guessed him to be a man of quick passions and not entirely averse to violence. “How did Signor Savelli die?”

“Stabbed through the chest and left to die on the steps at his palazzo’s back door.”

Exactly where she had stood when she saw Solomon had come for her.

“I did not kill him,” Giusti said, almost conversationally. “When you stepped into our boat and I saw his shadow behind you, I found I was no longer angry. I felt this foolishness had to stop.”

“Solomon and I thought that, too. We even talked about trying to reconcile you.”

“And now it will never be.” His voice was bleak. “We were friends once, you know. I am sorry he is dead.”

She thought he was. More than that, she believed he had not killed Savelli. Or perhaps she just hoped. There was something instantly likeable about him. “Who were his other enemies?”

Giusti sat straighter, blinking in clear surprise.

“At home,” Constance said, “Solomon and I have a business of private inquiries. We have been quite successful.”

“That is what you do?” Giusti asked incredulously.

“It is a small but important part of what we do. If neither you nor Solomon nor I killed Signor Savelli, perhaps it behoves us to find out who did. How competent are your police?”

“In matters such as this…I have no idea,” Giusti said frankly.

“And yet Savelli felt free to attack you in the street, to steal from you? Was he so confident that the police would not intervene?”

“Our…disagreement is well known. Neither of us would have complained to the police. But this is different. They will not ignore this, especially not since Savelli was a supporter of the Austrian government.”

“Could his politics be the reason for his murder?”

“I would be surprised,” Giusti said. “The revolution is over. There is ill feeling, of course, but no one wants to go back to those days of violence. If he was not assassinated in ’49, why now? Why kill him at all?”

Again, she was sure she glimpsed genuine grief, or perhaps just anger, in his expression. He threw his arm out as he spoke, as though gesturing to where the murder had happened.

“He associated with some unpleasant men,” Constance pointed out. “Like those who attacked you and abducted me. Could one or more of them have turned on him?”

Giusti shrugged. “Unlikely. Some of those men may have been servants, not hired bravos. Servants rarely attack their masters. As for the others—why bite the hand that feeds them?”

“Then a random attempt at robbery? Or a planned one?”

Giusti sighed. “I suppose that is what the police will investigate. But…why was he at the back door? He has servants to take deliveries.”

“Perhaps he was meeting someone who did not want to be seen? Or—” She broke off as another thought struck her. “ When did he die? He was at the back door when you and I last saw him.”

*

The same man who had let Solomon into the Palazzo Savelli was delegated to show him out.

As the door of the room was closed behind him, the silence of the rest of the house felt oppressive.

As though even the sound of walking was disrespectful to the dead.

In London, sometimes, houses of mourning put sawdust down in the street to deaden the noise of horses’ hooves and wheeled vehicles.

Here, he could almost imagine there was no one else in the house.

Until a lady swept across the landing to the stairs and paused as she caught sight of their approach.

She was young and pale and dressed all in black.

Her hat was covered by a heavy-looking veil that had not been drawn down over her face.

She was not conventionally beautiful. She did not dazzle as Constance did.

But there was something about her that caught and held the attention, without any effort on her part.

“How odd,” she said in Italian. “I have no idea anymore who is in my house. Are you another policeman or a friend of my late husband’s?”

Solomon bowed. “I can claim to be neither. My name is Grey. I merely called to see your husband and was interviewed by policemen instead. I offer you sincere condolences, signora.”

“You are English?” she asked in that language. A spark of interest showed in her otherwise glazed eyes. He wondered how much she knew about Constance’s abduction.

He inclined his head. “I am.”

Her chin tilted slightly. “About what did you wish to see my husband?” she asked with conscious boldness.

“Nothing that is relevant anymore.”

“Many things no longer matter,” she said, an odd catch in her voice. She began to descend the stairs, and Solomon walked beside her. “A house of death always feels wrong. As if it is no longer real. Like a bad dream.”

“Are you going to stay with family?” Solomon asked.

“Oh no. I shall stay here, of course.” She drew the veil over her face. “Once I have walked. Goodbye, Mr. Grey.”

At the foot of the stairs, she increased her speed, all but striding across the foyer to the front door, where a manservant stood to open it for her.

He continued to hold it for Solomon, who watched the widow’s straight, tragic figure vanish to the left.

By the time he climbed into his waiting boat, he could no longer see her.

*

On reaching the Palazzo Zulian, Solomon heard that Constance was entertaining. Although glad she had company, he was somehow not best pleased to discover that her visitor was Ludovico Giusti.

The sight of him sitting in a chair close to Constance, a glass of wine in his bruised hand, deep in serious conversation, made Solomon pause in the drawing room doorway.

Whether the reaction was due to jealousy or distrust, he hid it, as both pairs of eyes turned eagerly toward him. And both jumped to their feet.

Constance hurried toward him. “Oh, Solomon, you’re back! Did you go to the Savelli house? Signor Giusti says he has been murdered!”

Her eyes were anxious, relieved, excited, all at once, and her hand slipping through his arm comforted whatever misgivings the sight of Giusti had caused.

“That is what the police told me when I called,” he said calmly.

“I came to warn you not to go there,” Giusti said, “but clearly, I was too late. In my defense, the police kept me back with questions, so I came as soon as I could. I am so sorry to have brought this trouble to you.”

Constance flitted away to pour another glass of wine, which she brought to Solomon before all but pulling him down onto the elegant sofa beside her. “What happened? What did they ask you? What did you learn?”

Quite suddenly, the situation became familiar, almost comfortable. Silver and Grey exchanging facts and ideas of a crime. They had done this so many times before. He just hadn’t really expected to be doing it on their honeymoon.

A half-smile tugged at his lips. “I was invited into the palazzo and interviewed by a Venetian called Foscolo and an Austrian by the name of Lampl, who seems to be his superior in some way.”

Giusti snorted. “Foscolo does the work and Lampl carries it to his government. As if they cared. It is unnecessary oversight.”

Solomon inclined his head politely. “Savelli seems to have been killed during the night or very early this morning. But whenever it happened, it seems that we three were among the last to see him alive. And we all have considerable motive.”

“I should go,” Giusti said uneasily. “We do not want to be accused of conspiracy. Foscolo is suspicious enough.”

“They will want to interview you, too,” Solomon said to Constance. “And the servants.”

“Signor Giusti did not tell them about your part in the fight or my abduction,” Constance said. “I presume you did?”

“I saw no point in trying to keep it quiet. It was bound to come out. They did not appear to be terribly surprised about the fight, although your abduction did seem to throw them. They asked after you, so they might believe me. Just to be clear, Giusti, what did you do when you left us last night?”

Giusti did not take obvious offense. “I had a bath and went to bed, where I slept like the dead until I was wakened at some ungodly hour by policemen battering at my front door. What did you do?”

“Much the same,” Solomon replied. “With a gentler awakening. Then you were not tempted to go out again and remonstrate with Savelli? Did you not feel that your little feud had got out of hand?”

His deliberate disparagement of the quarrel as “a little feud” did not appear to provoke Giusti.

“Of course I feel that. But it was not something I could resolve that night, with anger and no doubt shame running so high.”

“What exactly was your quarrel with Savelli?” Constance asked.

“I told Mr. Grey. Jewels and women and politics.”

Solomon kept his gaze on the Venetian’s bruised face. “I spoke to Signora Savelli.”

Giusti tore his gaze free. Some sort of internal struggle clearly went on. In the end, the words seemed to be dragged out of him as though he couldn’t help them. “How is she?”

So, Savelli’s wife was the woman in question, not some mistress or actress as Solomon had half suspected.

“Dazed, I think. Definitely shocked. She went out alone. Does she have no family to be with her?”

“They disowned her when she married Savelli.”

“So now she is entirely alone,” Constance said quietly.

Giusti’s gaze flew to her face, then fell back to his wine glass. He took a drink, almost blindly. “Yes. I think so.”

“How long have they been married?” Solomon asked.

“For four years.” Abruptly, Giusti set the glass on the table beside him and rose. “I will go. I’m sorry. This mess is poor recompense for being the Good Samaritan you were to me. We must hope the police solve the murder quickly and to everyone’s satisfaction. Signora.” He bowed. “Goodbye!”