Deadly to the Sight (22 page)

“My neighbor Loretta does. I heard something about Barbara requesting prayers in church for the old woman, and about establishing a scholarship many years ago and trying to get the woman to return money. I am sure it is only gossip,” she added in a dismissive tone. “Barbara is a kind and generous soul, yes! She is like a sister I have never had. And what she means to you is very evident.”

“How well did you know the old lace maker?”

“I met her once, or maybe it was twice. She was very nice. I asked her about lace making. Oh, she had many stories to tell. The legend of lace, all about lost sailors and mermaids. You remember? It was the story I gave you all at my party. She told me about a Dogaressa's dress made of lace, and someone she kept calling the ‘Michelangelo of the bobbins,' and the difference between needle lace and bobbin lace. She described stitches and threads,
filo tirato
and
reticello
, and
punto in aria
and
controtagliato
. She was more intelligent than you might think from looking at her.”

“Your Italian pronunciation is excellent, and you must understand Italian very well to have learned all that from her. Did she ask you any questions?”

“Ha, ha! You know us writers, Urbino. We ask questions but we don't answer them if we can.”

She was now staring out into the arcade. She opened her slightly protruding eyes wider.

“Oh, look! Marie and Beatrix!”

She dashed out to fetch the two women, and was soon shepherding them into the room.

The tall Beatrix, with her regal bearing, wore a long, dark coat. A hat perched on top of Marie's round head. It was a whimsical fabrication of leather and fur, and resembled an acorn. Both women were flushed.

“Where are you going?” Frieda asked.

“The Querini-Stampalia Museum,” Beatrix responded. “To see the Gabriele Bella paintings about eighteenth century Venetian life! Regina Bella is related to him.”

“I want to go to the Fortuny Museum. Beatrix says she is not interested in a lot of old fabric. And I say that I am not interested in the eighteenth century!”

“There's more than just Fortuny's fabric designs at his museum,” Urbino said with a glance at Beatrix. “And the Gabriele Bella paintings at the Querini-Stampalia are interesting as well,” he added, not wanting to take either side in their dispute.

“More old paintings,” the plain-faced milliner said with a sniff.

“You never complained before,” said the younger woman.

“Because I never saw so many old paintings all at once before,” Marie shot back.

“You can go to the Fortuny Museum another day,” Frieda said.

“I want to go today.”

“So silly, my little one,” Beatrix said. “I promise that we will stay for only an hour. Then we will have our celebration meal.”

“What are you celebrating?” Urbino asked.

“Ten years of looking at old paintings!” Marie put in.

“There are worse things, my dear. Perhaps the two of you will join us? We are going to the Antico Martini.”

“That's kind of you,” Urbino said, “but I have plans. Perhaps some other time.”

“I must go to the Biblioteca Marciana,” Frieda said. “I may have left something there.”

“But it is only on the other side of the Piazza,” Beatrix pointed out. “You can still have lunch with us, after we go to the Querini-Stampalia.”

“If it isn't at the Marciana, then I must turn the city up and down to find it.”

Urbino remembered how pleased she had sounded yesterday evening when she first heard that he had something for her.

“It is very important then,” Marie observed.

Frieda gave Urbino an embarrassed glance.

“Yes. Please excuse me.”

She pulled on her coat and was gone before the topic might be pursued any further.

“We must be going as well,” Beatrix said. “Come, Marie. Only an hour for old paintings, I promise. Good day, Urbino. Please give our greetings to Habib.”

As Urbino finished his Campari soda, he mused over what it was that Frieda thought she had misplaced, and what it might have to do with him, given her look at him.

24

The other plans Urbino had mentioned involved Rebecca Mondador. There was something he hoped she could give him the answer to. She always had her midday meal at the same trattoria near her offices in San Polo. He passed through the archway under the Moors' Clock Tower. Above him the two brawny, dark-skinned bronze statues started to strike noon.

As he walked along the crowded street with its clothing stores and souvenir shops, he remarked to himself that everyone who spoke about Nina Crivelli, either to him or the Contessa, didn't have much good to say, except for Frieda. Could this be because she had barely known the woman, if that was indeed the case? Or did she have no better opinion of her than anyone else, but was holding herself back from saying so? Might not Nina have accosted her about the Contessa just as she had Urbino?

What also nagged at his mind about Frieda was that she was German, and that her Italian appeared to be quite good. Germany seemed to be where Salvatore's wife Evelina had run off to with their son. But what was he thinking? That Frieda might be Evelina returned after all these years? She was about the right age, just as Giorgio was the age that Gino would be now. But, for that matter, so was Beatrix.

Urbino could easily imagine the Contessa's ridicule if he confided these random thoughts to her.

First Giorgio, she'd say, and now Frieda and maybe even Beatrix?

It did sound as if he were conjuring up something like a Shakespearean masquerade. But he often needed to go off on tangents and consider extremes, and even contemplate what seemed to be the impossible. Eventually, it had been his good fortune to find a balance in this way, a balance that had him realizing with a sudden awareness and understanding what the truth was.

And, on one or two rare occasions, experience had shown that the extreme and the impossible were not that at all. They were instead something quite normal in different dress.

He stopped in the Church of San Zulian. A few tourists were examining Veronese's
Pietà
. Two elderly women in black were sitting in front of the simple altar.

As he looked up at the ceiling of carved and gilded wood with its paintings, his thoughts returned to Frieda. What might she have left at the Biblioteca Marciana? The most likely thing was something she had written. Could it be related to the case?

No matter how he turned around all these unanswered questions about Frieda, however, he couldn't come up with anything that might link her with Nina's murder. Living on Burano hadn't necessarily given her more contact with her than anyone else. All her guests that night had been in just as good a position, if not better, to do the ultimate harm to Nina. And the opportunity to murder Nina would have to take final place after motive and means. Both were, in this case, far less than straightforward.

As Urbino stepped out of the church, a friend hailed him. They hadn't seen each other since he had returned from Morocco. All the way to the Rialto, they caught up on things. Vittorio, a history professor at Ca' Foscari, suggested that they have lunch with some other friends who were waiting for him at Al Graspo de Ua.

But for the second time today, Urbino was obliged to decline lunch, and they parted in front of the restaurant.

When he reached the trattoria where Rebecca had her midday meal, her colleague, a small man in a black suit, was sitting at her customary table. He informed Urbino that Rebecca had been called unexpectedly to Rome on business and wouldn't be back for a week.

25

When he returned to the Palazzo Uccello an hour later, Natalia said that the Contessa had called several times and asked him to get back to her as soon as possible. He was reaching for the telephone when it rang.

“Urbino! Finally! I've been trying to get in touch with you ever since I heard.”

“Heard? About what?”

“Marino Polidoro. He's in the hospital. In a coma. It's not certain that he'll pull through.”

“What happened?”

“No one knows. His cleaning woman found him unconscious in his shop this morning. Things were all broken up around him. They don't know if he was hit on the head, or injured himself when he fell or was pushed.”

“How did you find out?”

“When I called my dressmaker for an appointment. Everyone is talking about it in Dorsoduro.”

Urbino told her how he had walked by Polidoro's building late last night and had seen the window in his apartment lit only to have it extinguished when he rang the bell.

“Why did you want to speak with him?”

“It was on the spur of the moment. I was on one of my walks and happened to be in his area.”

“Happened to be! On one of your walks! As if you take those walks for exercise! Well, keep it to yourself! Maybe I don't want to know if it's even half as bizarre as what you've been thinking about Giorgio. But whatever it is, you'll probably have to tell the police. Your good old friend Gemelli.”

Gemelli, the commissario at the Questura, considered Urbino a meddler, but he couldn't ignore that Urbino had been a help to him in the past. In fact, Gemelli had occasionally taken the credit for the successful resolution of some cases in which Urbino had played a crucial role.

“He needs to be approached at the right time and with a stronger theory than I can give him now.”

“But you do think what's happened to Marino is related to Nina Crivelli?”

“I need to think it through a little more.”

“Don't take too long! Who knows what could happen? You may be able to convince him that Nina didn't die from natural causes, or at least arouse his suspicions. We can only benefit from that.”

“That means you're no longer torturing yourself about your relationship to the whole affair. Not that I ever thought it's anything but an indirect one.”

“Not even considering your theory that Giorgio is Gino Crivelli returned from Germany to kill his grandmother?”

“What I mean is that I don't think now, nor ever did, that it had anything to do with the Conte.”

He chose his words carefully, wanting to keep Giorgio out of the picture for the moment.

“Even if it does, I have to face the truth. It's better to do it sooner than later.” She brought this off with an air of bravery that carried across the line with the residue of something directed more personally at Urbino. Like many of her insinuations since he had returned to Venice, it seemed to brush its wings up against his relationship with Habib. “I'm depending on you to make things as easy for me as possible. But if there's anything more I can do, let me know. I don't like to be put on the shelf.”

“You could never be put on any shelf! As a matter of fact, there is something you can do. It's about Regina Bella. Carolina Bruni suspects she's having a relationship with some man and wants to keep it a secret. Try to find out more about it. Being a woman, you would have an easier time of it.”

“Because we women are such meddlers and gossips that it wouldn't draw as much attention. I'll see what I can do.”

“There's another thing. Exactly how did you and Frieda meet at Gstaad?”

“Even poor Frieda comes under scrutiny after taking such good care of the Palazzo Uccello?”

“I sensed that you were a little suspicious of her yourself the night of her party.”

“Whatever do you mean?”

“When she mentioned Nina and said that she had a lot of imagination.”

“You're wrong. I was suspicious of Nina and what she might have said about me. But Frieda has never given any sign that she's heard any gossip. If I'm suspicious of anything about Frieda,
caro
, it's that she's a writer. God only knows what such people can be up to!”

She paused. Urbino could imagine her smiling at this gentle jab at him.

“You can strike her off your list with a very strong and black line,” she went on. “I was the one to approach her. I overheard her ask the concierge to make reservations for her in Venice. That night at dinner we were both sitting alone. I introduced myself and asked if I could join her. I told her I lived in Venice. It was only then that I learned who she was. I can't say that I had ever heard of her, but that doesn't mean anything, since her books aren't my cup of tea. We hit it off right away, though, and I never felt in the slightest way that she wasn't what she seemed. I'd never have given her the responsibility of the Palazzo Uccello or the Casa Verde if I had.”

26

When Urbino was about to sit down to what was now a rather late lunch, Natalia told him that Habib had also called two hours earlier. He had decided to go to Verona on a trip organized by the language school and wouldn't be back until after ten.

Despite the meal of
sarde in saor
with grilled polenta, which was one of Urbino's favorites, he didn't have much appetite.

He went to the library where he tried to work on
Women of Venice
, but once again, as had happened last night, he couldn't concentrate. His mind played over the various aspects of the Nina Crivelli case. He wrote names on a sheet of paper and then connected them, sometimes with firm lines, other times with dotted lines and question marks. The effort brought him nowhere. He crumpled up the sheet of paper.

He called the hospital. Marino Polidoro's condition was the same.

What had happened? Had someone broken in and attacked him? Or had a late-night rendezvous gone wrong? Was the attack related to his business or to Burano? Or possibly to both at the same time? Urbino speculated about how Polidoro's lifethreatening coma could be related to Nina Crivelli's murder. Last night he had assumed that the dealer himself, after seeing him in the street below, had extinguished the light in his window. It was completely possible that the figure behind the curtain hadn't been Polidoro, but the man—or woman—who had attacked him.