The Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists (19 page)

As I passed a doorway, someone pulled me in to the recess, not by my arm, but by my neck.

I
T’S NOT PLEASANT
to be strangled, even by something as innocuous as a necktie. Especially in the driving rain at night. No one could see me in the doorway, no one could help me but myself. I flung out my arms and tried to get a grip on the person behind me; I tried to kick; I tried to make some sound, any sound.

Not even a whisper came out. I could feel my eyes bulge, my hair spring into even denser curls. The black velvet cape grew heavier. My knees buckled and I thought I was losing consciousness, but it was that the strangler’s hands had been forcibly detached from my neck by even more forcible hands. When my assailant let go, there was nothing to hold me up.

There was no fighting of the fists or knives variety, only grunts and scrabbling. My would-be murderer dashed off into the black downpour, and I turned to face Anna de Hoog who held a necktie in her hands.

For a few seconds I couldn’t speak to thank her. Then I managed to croak, “It’s a good thing you’d changed out of that skirt into jeans.”

“Oh, I can do equally well in a skirt,” she said imperturbably. “I have a black belt in karate. Did you see who it was?”

“No. He or she came up behind me.”

“It was a he, I believe, by his smell and his necktie. Not terribly tall. Young. Wiry. He had a mask on, not a Venetian one, I might add. A ski mask.”

“Marco?” I said. “But he should be with Frigga.”

“We mustn’t assume it was anyone we know. It could have been an impersonal robbery attempt.”

I felt my neck. “It didn’t seem very impersonal.”

“Do you know why anyone would have been trying to hurt you? Do you think he might have believed you were someone else, like Nicola?”

“I don’t know.” I could hardly hear myself think for the thunder above and the rattle of rain on the stones. It hissed into the canal like tiny, hot glass pebbles. The barge, empty now and retied to the dock, bobbed with the misery of abandonment; the audience had scattered. Nicky and the others were nowhere in sight. The plates and wine glasses left on the quayside tables were as ghostly as the remains of an underwater banquet.

“Shall we find a quieter place to talk?” Anna asked. She resourcefully whipped out a small packet, unfurled a clear plastic poncho and placed it carefully over my head. That gave her fingers a quick chance to assess the state of my neck. Satisfied, she unfolded her own poncho and led me in the direction of the train station to a small bar. In the midst of the tourist trade, it seemed to have few pretensions. We took our drinks, me a Jameson’s and Anna a Belgian beer, to one of two tables in the back.

The whisky helped my throat but didn’t make the recent events seem any clearer. Anna sipped thoughtfully at her beer. She wasn’t a beauty, but I wasn’t sure why I’d ever thought her drab. Her eyes were intelligent, her mouth decisive and sensual.

“Anna,” I said. “Just who are you? Who are you working for?”

She must have realized I would not accept the same old story about being an oboe player. “I’m afraid it’s rather complicated,” she said.

“Try me.”

“Not yet, Cassandra.”

“Don’t you trust me?”

“In my line of work, trust is not a word we often use. I
like
you, Cassandra. Very much. But I suspected from the beginning you would be a complicating factor.”

“Is that why you called me in London and told me there was no reason to come to Venice?”

She just smiled.

“But if it weren’t for me and Albert, the bassoon wouldn’t have been found.”

“Then Albert still has it?” she murmured.

“In a manner of speaking.” I pressed my lips together. Anna had been lightly stroking my arm. No, it would take more than that to make me crack.

I added, “I still don’t know who stole it in the first place.”

Anna took another small sip of her beer. “I think I can tell you that,” she said. “I don’t think there’s any harm if I tell you that. It was Bitten.”

“So it wasn’t an insurance scam by Sandretti,” I said. “How did you get the truth out of Bitten?”

“I decided to take Bitten and Andrew to an unfamiliar setting,” she said. “To break them. I mean, to break their alibis, as you say.”

She had increased her pressure on my arm. I was all too familiar with her breaking techniques. They gave me a tingle even now.

“I persuaded them to make an excursion with me to the cemetery island to see the graves of Stravinsky and Wagner. Then I got Andrew off alone for a bit to discuss woodwind technique.”

“Andrew must have forgiven you your oboe playing,” I observed.

“Praise, especially if sincere, is often a useful thing. I admitted very frankly to Andrew that I was out of my depth among such a distinguished group of musicians. That I particularly wished to single him out as he was the best bassoonist of them all. That I had much to learn from him musically and that I was fascinated by his scholarship.”

“And he believed every word you said.”

“Why shouldn’t he? It agreed with what he believes—what he would like to believe—about himself.”

“Then, let me guess, at some point you slipped the conversation around to the evening of Gunther’s death, and you got him to tell you what he overheard of Bitten’s and Gunther’s quarrel.”

“You do not lack a logical mind, Cassandra Reilly.”

“Well? What were Gunther and Bitten fighting about?”

“The bassoon, of course. Gunther had deduced that it was Bitten who had taken it, and he was urging her to acknowledge that she had, and that she’d recognized it in Albert’s possession. When Andrew and Marco came up to Gunther and Bitten, they were standing near the naval museum. Bitten was saying, ‘I am not going to say I took it. I didn’t mean to. It was just that she made me so angry. I didn’t think it would turn out like this.’

“But instead of being sympathetic, Gunther was upset and disappointed, and when he saw Marco and Andrew, he simply turned and walked away. Then Bitten rushed past them, in the direction of the Pietà.”

“She must have gone to the Danieli, to try to get the bassoon at the left luggage,” I said. “Marco turned up there a while later. As you did yourself. All of you inquiring about the bassoon.”

“And you know this, how?”

“From he who placed the bassoon there in the first place with instructions to be told who asked about it.”

“Your friend Albert is a clever fellow,” Anna said, but she looked a little annoyed. “Nor did I realize that Marco had asked about it.”

“Well, it makes sense, doesn’t it? Marco and Andrew went for a drink at the Danieli. Marco was worried about the bassoon. He thought, from what Albert had said, that the bassoon was in the left luggage.”

“Andrew told me that he and Marco were at the Danieli bar,” said Anna. “But I did not realize that either of them was at any point alone.”

“If you can call it being alone in a big hotel like that with snobbish receptionists watching your every move,” I said, still smarting from my encounter with the desk clerk. “Anyway, are you going to tell me why Bitten took the bassoon and what she did with it?”

“Are you going to tell me where the bassoon is now?” she countered.

“Are you going to tell me what your role in all this is?”

“No,” she smiled. She looked up, and I thought she was going to suggest another drink, something I felt, frankly, I could enjoy. “The rain seems to be less. I will tell you about my conversation with Bitten on the way back to the
palazzo
.”

“You want to go back out into that weather? It’s not less. I mean, it’s still raining quite hard.”

“Yes, I’m sorry, but I’m a bit tired, Cassandra.”

She didn’t seem tired; she seemed impatient, as if she’d remembered someone or something at the
palazzo
she needed to see.

A little grumpily, I followed her to the nearest
vaporetto
stop, and we found seats in the covered part of the boat. Through the steamy windows, the palaces along the canal were a blur of light. Her face reflected the particular wet melancholy of Venice. Melancholy, but romantic. I thought of the two books lying together at the bottom of a murky canal. Would they ever find each other, or were they just too different?

I thought she was going to whisper, “Let’s drop this whole thing and spend the night wandering the streets and waterways. I want to hear your life story, Cassandra, and what brought you to this city on the edge of the Adriatic. I want to share myself with you.”

Instead she said, “I promised to tell you about Bitten.”

“Umm.”

“After we found Stravinsky’s grave, I walked alone with her a short while. She refused to discuss what had happened to Gunther, but she seemed very sad, of course, being in the cemetery. I took advantage of this, I’m afraid, and kept leading the conversation back to how this whole situation began. It was in this way that I heard of her belief that she is the granddaughter of Olivia Wulf. I heard of her conflict with Nicola. I heard of her dislike of Nicola. It was a short step from that to suggest, sympathetically of course, that perhaps she had taken the bassoon in order to punish Miss Gibbons. At first she denied it, but when we were joined by Andrew, she had to confess. He said to Bitten, ‘Look, I’ve told Anna what I overheard of your quarrel with Gunther. You admitted to him you took the bassoon. Now’s your chance to make it all right.’ Canadians are so very honest, don’t you think?”

“Perhaps,” I said.

“At any rate, Bitten finally admitted she’d been so annoyed at Nicola that she simply let herself into the room while Nicola was napping that afternoon and took the bassoon. Bitten says the room was not locked; Nicky says it was. That is something we can’t prove, and it’s of little importance.”

“What did Bitten do with the bassoon then? They had a concert that evening, and she knew Nicky would discover the theft very quickly.”

“Bitten hadn’t quite thought that out. First she went to the train station to hide it in a locker, but the bassoon did not fit. To hand such an oddly shaped parcel to the men at the left luggage department would have given them a chance to identify her later. She was already starting to feel uncomfortably conspicuous. She was afraid someone might think the bassoon was a gun. She did not think of selling it, nor did she want to destroy it. She wanted only to get Nicola in a spot of trouble. Bitten told me she even fantasized she might come to the ‘rescue’ of Nicola and that Nicola would be grateful to Bitten instead of so hostile.”

“Fat chance,” I said. “But I get the picture. Bitten was panicking. She didn’t have much time.”

“That’s correct. She wanted to be back before Nicky discovered that the bassoon was gone. Finally she became desperate. She found a gondola that was unattended and placed the parcel under the seat. She imagined that when the gondolier returned and found the package, it would be turned over to some sort of Lost and Found Department. In Sweden it would have been.”

“But, in fact,” I said, as the
vaporetto
approached Accademia, “the gondolier found it and gave it to his brother, who ran an antique store, and that was how Albert’s friend Graciela was able to track it down for him. But why did Sandretti say he didn’t recognize it? Why did Marco and Bitten go along with him?”

Anna was through sharing confidences. “The important thing,” she said, “is to get the bassoon back. You have the address of this woman, Graciela? I must speak to her.”

“Not so fast, Miss de Hoog,” I said. “My primary aim is to make sure Nicky gets out of this without a stain on her reputation.”

As the
vaporetto
tied up at the dock, Anna jumped out. She seemed more than impatient now, anxious even. I followed more slowly. “I have been meaning to ask you,” she said, rather brusquely, “Are you crippled?”

“No. I had a close encounter recently with some turtle eggs in the South Pacific.”

“I suggest we part here,” she said abruptly. “Your hotel is this way, and the
palazzo
is this way.” She gave me a quick buffeting that I couldn’t interpret and dashed off.

No, I wasn’t going back to my hotel, not yet. Something must be happening at the Sandrettis’. But what and how would Anna know? Or did she just not want someone—who?—to see us together?

When I arrived at the
palazzo
five minutes after Anna, I had to wait almost as long for someone to answer the door bell. Finally Bitten came to the door. She was wearing a white terry-cloth robe that had “Hotel Danieli” stitched over one breast, and her feet were bare.

“What’s happened?” I said.

She motioned up the stairs. “There’s been a break-in tonight. In Sandretti’s library.”

G
RAY IS NOT A COLOR
one immediately associates with opulence. When the library door was open briefly a few days before, I had been puzzled by an impression of something leaden about the grandeur within. Now I followed Bitten up the stairs into the room and discovered the reason. The ceiling and wall decorations were done entirely in
grisaille
, a technique of painting in tints of gray to suggest the bas-reliefs of classical sculpture, and this soft grayness enfolded the room like fur, lending a smoky cast to all that was not painted. Vast bookshelves covered much of two walls. On a third wall a Baroque marble fireplace and mantle carved with nymphs was flanked by tall windows, draped in silvery-blue velvet. Tiers of ancient musical instruments arrayed the fourth wall. In the center of the room was a huge globe so darkened by time that the continents swam in shadow. Heavy, cracked-leather chairs with clawed feet sat next to the fireplace. On one of these chairs, Andrew reclined, looking, in his pajamas, like a sleepy little boy.

There were touches of gaiety. The mural over the mantle showed Venetian ladies in frothy petticoats attended by aroused satyrs, and the decorations were full of pretty girls and cupids, but all was gray, as if in a dream without color. The carpet underfoot was like a layer of blue-gray dust, but on top of its lightness squatted heavy bookshelves and furniture. Nothing could be heavier than the massive carved desk around which Sandretti, Marco and Anna stood, in a curious sort of intimacy.