The Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists (14 page)

She was clearly fascinated, but a little disapproving. “My relationship with Francesca—it’s the first time for her. We have only a few friends we can be at ease around. Giovanna is one. She’s that way herself, though she doesn’t have anybody.”

“Francesca is a lovely girl,” I said noncommittally.

“Yes, but you know our families don’t like it. It’s hard for us. Sometimes we think of going somewhere else to live in Italy or the world, like Canada. It’s hard for us to imagine sharing an apartment here. Yet it’s terrible that we can’t be together.”

“You and your father have quarreled for a long time. Getting a flat couldn’t make it worse.”

“That’s true. And my brother thinks just the way my father does.”

“Andrew believes your brother is gay.”

“No! Well—it’s possible. He doesn’t have a girlfriend. He hasn’t had one in a long while, it’s strange. Maybe…but then why would he be so hard on me?”

“Frightened of losing your father perhaps.”

I was hoping we might lead into more of a discussion about Marco and their father, but Roberta suddenly looked at her watch again and said, “Now I must go!”

There was still no sign of Nicky. She may have decided to talk with Andrew, perhaps to consider him not so much a competitor as an ally. I might as well leave. I found myself walking toward Francesca’s shop. I wouldn’t bother her. I would just buy some ink. I’d just look at her. But halfway there, I turned back. No, my path was renunciation. I still had a hundred pages of
Lovers and Virgins
to get through, and I still hadn’t made up my mind whether it should be translated or not. I’d pick up a slice of pizza somewhere, go back to my hotel and spend the afternoon reading. Surely I’d done enough for one day. Perhaps later, if I felt like it, I’d try to look up Albert—to reassure myself he wasn’t really the type to break into Nicky’s house, if not to get to the bottom of his connection with the bassoon.

Back at the hotel I found two messages. One was from Anna: Was the book useful? By the way, the inspector may be paying you a visit after lunch.

The other was from Nicky. The clerk said she’d left it five minutes before:
Meet me at three at the Guggenheim Museum
.

I was tired of these peremptory messages from Nicky; and, besides, it was already two thirty and I’d been rushing around all day. Why couldn’t she have just waited for me at the conservatory? How did she get here before me? I wanted to rest. I wanted to read my book. I wanted to mull over last night’s events and decide whether I should accept an encore, should one be offered.

On the other hand, I did not particularly wish to speak to the Italian police.

Without going upstairs, I left the hotel and walked the few short blocks to the Peggy Guggenheim Collection.

I
ARRIVED AT THE MUSEUM
before Nicky and, after a quick cruise through the galleries hung with Klees and Kandinskys, returned to the sculpture garden. For just a moment I allowed myself to rest and breathe deeply. In the midst of Venice’s concentrated stone warrens, the garden was a splash of restful greenery. Trees, bushes, graves. Graves? I’d seated myself on a small bench in front of a plaque that read “Here Rests Peggy Guggenheim.” Next to it was another plaque, with a long, rather stupefying list of names under the mournful sentence: “Here Lie My Beloved Babies.”

Their average age at death was only about ten, though some had been as young as three or four when they died. But this was horribly sad! Or perhaps just horrible. Had one of the Guggenheims really been a serial killer? It just went to show how the rich considered themselves above the law.

“They were her Lhasas, Cassandra,” said Nicky, coming up to the bench. “Do you really think someone would name her children Cappuccino and Madame Butterfly?”

Nicky was still wearing her gray suit and brogues, but she’d added the most extraordinary pair of sunglasses, like something out of a Wonder Woman comic strip. She said she’d just bought them at the museum shop. They were a copy of Peggy’s, and they made a strong impression with the curls Nicky had unleashed from the severe knot of an hour or so earlier.

We repaired to the sleek, white café and selected tortas and espresso. The café was hung with black and white photographs of Peggy and friends. None of the pictures had captions. Jean Cocteau, I guessed. Man Ray. And there was Peggy herself, in the sunglasses.

“I waited for you for ages outside the conservatory,” I said. “What happened to you?”

“I had to escape a back way, Cassandra. It was a miracle Andrew didn’t see me in the closed section.”

“You weren’t supposed to be in the closed section. You were supposed to be in the loo.”

“I got lost, all right?” She patted her briefcase.

“What have you got in there, Nicky?”

“Just something I’d like to look at a little more closely.”

“You can’t just come to Italy and start appropriating things you take a fancy to, willy-nilly. Didn’t you learn your lesson with that goddamn bassoon? Do you want to end up in an Italian prison? You’re already on the run from the police. And you don’t have a passport. Because you’re certainly not using mine forever! I can’t keep helping you, and that’s final.”

“Don’t get your Jockeys in a twist, lass. Though if you’d really wanted to have been a help, you could have prevented me from buying this suit. It’s lovely and all that, but the next time I’ll wear it will be probably be at a funeral. It was absolutely the wrong thing to meet Giovanna in.”

I was so speechless I could barely open my mouth when my pear
torta
was placed ceremoniously in front of me.

Nicky tucked into something very chocolate. “Really, Cassandra, I don’t blame you, but I did have the impression I’d be dealing with a repressed old librarian and that it was essential to make a good impression and play the respectable Scotswoman. Then I see Giovanna is wearing a little pink dress like an ice cream cone…”

“That’s enough from you, Nicola Gibbons. I’ve gone far beyond the call of duty. Hanging about in dusty old libraries, making a pest of myself with snotty young desk clerks, allowing myself to be…flirted with by all and sundry.”

“All and sundry?” Nicky asked, savoring a large forkful of bitter-chocolate.

“Never mind,” I said. “I don’t want to talk about Giovanna or your other intrigues. I don’t even want to know what you’ve got in that briefcase. Let’s talk about your serious problem. I found that conductor’s biography in your old room at the
palazzo
and looked through it. Don’t you think there’s a possibility that Olivia’s son, Jakob, was not her husband’s child? The conductor seems to hint that he and Olivia had known each other—known each other well, that is—for a very long time.”

“I remembered something like that too. That’s why I asked you to bring the book. But then I realized it wouldn’t make any difference. No one disputes that Jakob was Olivia’s son, that he married a girl named Elizabeth and that Bitten had a mother called Elizabeth. I hate to admit it, but I really think she might be Olivia’s granddaughter. And I can’t bear it. I absolutely can’t bear it!”

Nicky put down her fork. It showed how awful she felt that she stopped eating.

“I know,” I said, “the money, the house, everything that Olivia left you. But surely, the courts…”

“It’s not the money, lass,” said Nicky fiercely. “It’s not even the house—as a house. It’s too bloody huge, anyway, for one woman and that ne’er-do-well translator who occasionally deigns to inhabit her attic. It’s the idea of losing the spirit of Olivia. Her music, my music—it’s bound into the molecules of the walls. I couldn’t bear to have that taken away. I don’t know if I could even keep playing music if I couldn’t play it there.”

Tears rolled from under the Guggenheim glasses, down Nicky’s full cheeks.

I said hesitantly, “You know, if you didn’t treat Bitten as an enemy, you really might be able to work something out. It’s a common human desire to know who you are and who your people are, where you come from. Why would Bitten want a house in London, anyway? She lives in Stockholm and seems well off. Maybe she’d like a few mementos. Even some sort of cash payment wouldn’t be too bad, would it, not if you could stay in the house. She’s not a monster, Nicky. And now she’s lost Gunther. Their affair might have been brief, but obviously she’s devastated.”

“I can’t cope with death,” she said. “Not with Gunther’s. It reminds me of Olivia’s, and that’s bad enough.”

I knew she’d been the one to find Olivia’s body. The old woman had fallen during a heart attack on her way to the bathroom late one night. Nicky had wakened immediately at the sound, but it was still too late.

“If you didn’t fight that feeling, Nicky, you could relate to Bitten. If you made some small gesture of sympathy…Just from a practical point of view, Bitten could help you with the whole manuscript research problem…”

Nicky thought it over. “No,” she said. “Gestures of sympathy are not my line. Every time I try to be sympathetic—to my mother or sisters, for instance—it backfires, and I end up in a worse position.”

Since I’d had so much the same experience with my family, it was hard to argue.

“Olivia was my only real family—besides you,” said Nicky. “She took me in, she loved me, she helped me. If I couldn’t hold on to the sense of who we were to each other, I don’t know what I’d do.”

“I understand,” I said. “You’re my…real family too.”

“Then why won’t you move downstairs?”

“Because I never had my own room when I was growing up. I had all those tedious sisters. I don’t want another sister!”

“You just said I was family to you.”

“Can’t you be my brother? Can’t we just continue the way we are?”

“Oh, let’s just drop it. Let’s eat some more cake!” She called over the waiter, ordered another round, and opened the briefcase. “Now, no judging, Cassandra. I don’t plan to keep this, just to look at it.”

It was the bound volume of music by Anna Maria, the
maestra
.

“Giovanna may get in terrible trouble if you hold on to that. She doesn’t know you took it, does she?”

“No, it was kind of a spur of the moment thing. I went to the loo and suddenly decided just to take another look in the special section. Then that bloody snoop Andrew appeared, and I panicked and grabbed it.”

“Luckily you’ll have a chance to see her tonight and return it,” I said. “Roberta is playing music tonight and invited us. She said perhaps we could meet up with Giovanna beforehand at my hotel and all go over together.”

Nicky was now deep into her second slice of chocolate torta. “Of course, I’d love to go. But it’s so tiresome, the thought that I have to go shopping again this afternoon. I can’t wear this suit, and everything else is at the Sandrettis’. Plus I need to keep
somewhat
in disguise. Maybe…a cloak? But I really don’t want to look like a big thundercloud. If only you would let me wear your beret. I think I could organize a look around that beret.”

I was about to tell her I couldn’t care less what she wore, but that she certainly was not making off with my beret, when I spotted two people I knew—whom we both knew—in the sculpture garden. They were coming toward the café.

“Keep down,” I said, no easy task for a woman close to two hundred pounds with hair even wilder than mine. I snatched the Peggy Guggenheim glasses off her nose. “I’ll keep them busy while you sneak out the exit by the gift shop. Throw down some money.”

“All right,” said Nicky, and yanked at my beret.

“Hey,” I yelled, but it was too late. I rushed toward Anna de Hoog and Marco before they could come up the terrace steps. “Darlings,” I said, “how absolutely divine to see you again.”

“Cassandra?” asked Marco. “You look…different.”

“Yes, it’s my new look. What do you think?”

“I like the glasses,” said Marco. “Your hair…I have only seen you wearing your beret.” He paused diplomatically. “It is…big.”

“Cassandra’s hair is wonderful,” said Anna. She had been looking over my shoulder in the direction I’d just come from, but now she gave me her full attention. I must admit, her full attention made me shiver. That and the fact she was finally out of that frumpy skirt and into some Levi’s and a crisp shirt with a sweater tied at her shoulders. “It’s very Leonore Fini.”

Marco was looking uneasy, but he was too polite to indicate that my being in Nicky’s room this morning might have anything to do with the way Anna was looking at me.

“What brings the two of you here?” I asked.

“Frigga is lying down,” said Anna. “So I thought I’d ask Marco to be my guide here for an hour or two. Just for a break. Being at the
palazzo
when Frigga is wandering around and weeping is a little like being in a Greek tragedy.”

“It is stressful,” Marco allowed. “She feels it very deeply, his death.”

“No further leads on what exactly happened to Gunther?”

“No,” said Anna. “No signs of struggle. He wasn’t drunk. He had some bruises on his head, but he probably got those when he fell. They’re still treating it as an accident. So none of us are suspects exactly, and yet we all are.”

Marco sighed. “I think, perhaps he was involved in drugs or something. That phone always ringing.”

“They would like to question you, Cassandra,” said Anna. “I don’t know if you saw the note I left for you at the hotel.”

“They will await you at the
palazzo
at four,” said Marco.

I wondered if Anna had seen the note from Nicky to me. I wondered if that was why she was here. I wondered what was the real reason she’d brought Marco with her.

“I guess I’ll go back to the
palazzo
then,” I said, resolving to do no such thing. “Of course, I have nothing to hide.”

“Of course not,” said Anna.

The Lista di Spagna, with its jumble of hotels, overpriced trattorias and souvenir kiosks, was hardly the area I’d expect Albert to be staying. But when I asked at a bar near the train station for a hotel that used to be a monastery, I was directed down a narrow street, and almost immediately the noise of the Lista di Spagna faded. No one was at the desk when I entered, so I wandered through a marble-floored grand hall to a garden. Fig trees and pines scented the air along with roses and orange trees. I heard birds for the first time since my arrival in Venice.