The Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists (9 page)

“Is
that
the reason you wanted me to come help you?” I asked, indignant.

“I needed the cash too. I knew that a last-minute, first-class ticket would be expensive. But I knew I’d be less likely to be hassled in first class.”

“What about all the other stuff?”

“Moderately useful,” she said, but her eyes slid away again.

“Refresh my memory again,” I said. “The letter marked PRIVATE was…”

“Olivia’s will. The money I needed to get to Birmingham. The articles were just backup. The pamphlet had something about the instruments used by the Pietà girls.”

“There was also the biography of the conductor.”

“Just wanted to check a few facts. What I really need is access to records in Sweden. I suppose…” Her eyes fixed on me.

“Don’t look at me. I’m through helping you. I thought you needed the money for bribing the Italian officials about that stupid bassoon.”

“Oh, yes, the bassoon. Did it ever turn up?”

“A bassoon turned up, but Signore Sandretti said it wasn’t the right bassoon. Albert says it is, and I’m inclined to believe him. Of course, no one knows exactly where he is at the moment.” I told her about my chance meeting with Albert Egmont and his surprise appearance with a Baroque instrument. Then I went on, because I couldn’t help it, to tell her about Francesca and Roberta.

“Marvelous,” she said. “I need to meet Roberta immediately. She sounds like the perfect person to help me coordinate the CD-ROM series. I need so much more information about women musicians in Venice.”

“What about Bitten? What about the bassoon? What about Gunther? Are you going back to the
palazzo
to get your clothes and things and to tell everyone where you’ve been?”

“I’ll think about it,” she said evasively. “At the moment I prefer to lie low for a bit, at least until they’ve caught up with Frigga. I really can’t do much under house arrest, and I need to get started on my research for the CD-ROM. Work out the locations, decide on the music. I need a plot. I’m working on a plot.” She looked around for something more to eat, but all the dishes were empty. “Is the divine Bitten still in Venice?”

“Yes. Both she and Gunther had flights out this morning, but of course after his murder she was strongly encouraged not to leave.”

“I’ll watch out for her then,” Nicky said, getting up. “I don’t suppose I can borrow your Canadian Mounties’ beret? I quite like it.”

“Certainly not.” I got up too. “Are you at least going to tell me where you’re staying? So I can get in touch with you if necessary.”

From inside a deep pocket she pulled out a wallet and fished out money for the meal and a card from a small hotel in an alley near the Frari, not far from our bar. “I’m in room seven,” she said. “Knock twice.”

I hadn’t picked up my passport and Nicky took it back. “If you don’t mind, I’ll keep this awhile.”

“The idea that we’re anything alike!” I said.

I
T’S POSSIBLE TO WALK
more or less directly from the Campo Santa Margherita to the Rialto, but it’s far more pleasurable to stroll with the intention—and the time—to get lost. To deliberately turn aside from the signposts that reassure “To the Train Station” or “To the Rialto” in favor of narrow passages that open out into squares with a covered well in the center and laundry hanging from the balconies, where the stones are worn with the feet of centuries and sunlight stripes the ochre and russet walls.

When you’re not in a hurry, or in a panic, you have time to see Venetian details: a door knocker shaped like a lion, not the usual Lion of St. Mark, but one that looks more like a monstrous cat; the insignia of the old shoemakers’ guild, a little boot, carved into a stone lintel at the far end of the Campo San Tomà. Walking through Venice can be meditative, like walking the labyrinth or traversing a dream map. The folds and passages of Venice resemble those of an old engraving of the brain. A teacher I had once gave us to understand that the brain, uncoiled, unfurled, would take up quantities of space, a seductive and distressing thought to a sixteen-year-old. Venice had that cerebral quality; if all the history crammed and folded and layered into its lagoon-bounded streets and houses and churches were to spread out, it would be infinite.

When I finally arrived at the Rialto market, I was reminded that October is still harvest time in Italy. This afternoon the rain-heavy clouds had lifted, and a drier breeze sailed through the squares where the vendors were coming to the end of their day. The sun put a shine on a pear tomato, the final polish on a speckled zucchini. The fruit stalls displayed pumpkins, figs and grapes, purple, red and citrus-green. Blankets of cilantro, basil and parsley, softened by the warmth of the day, gave off a luxuriant odor that mingled with the faintly brackish water of the nearby canal. Although I wasn’t hungry, I lingered at the open door of the pasta shop with its pumpkin-stuffed raviolis and squid-black strands of pasta that looked like Halloween fright wigs. I hovered in front of a bakery where thick wicker baskets held six kinds of hand-formed breadsticks and where crackers were the size of placemats. My two books were in my satchel, but although I kept telling myself that any minute I’d find a café (it had to be the right café) and have an espresso and return to my Venezuelan girls, I put it off, block by block, stall by stall. I fought being pulled back into the tangled world of the troubled sisters.

People speak of being a morning person, or a night person; I’m an afternoon soul. I’m most content as the hour approaches four. I didn’t discover this until I was an adult and had lived in Spain a year, for afternoons in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I’d grown up, weren’t conducive to contemplation. Four o’clock was the end of the school day, the beginning of chores. But four o’clock in the south of Spain was the time when the sleeping streets began to wake again after the siesta. That languorous awakening (the sound of metal doors rolling back up over storefronts) has stayed with me, has made me love the hour or two of the day when little is expected and nothing can be accomplished.

The serious shoppers were long gone, and the fish market had closed before lunchtime. I bought a cardboard basket of fresh figs and ate them slowly as I walked, sucking at the honey pink flesh through the wrinkled brown skin. Suddenly I saw a back I recognized, a head set boxily on narrow shoulders, a freckled face under a straw boater and sunglasses. I didn’t think he was trying to disguise himself. If anything he was acting out a small role from
Death in Venice
or
The Wings of the Dove
.

I followed Andrew over the arch of the Rialto Bridge. At the
vaporetto
stop he noticed me just as the boat docked. We both joined the crush onboard, and the
vaporetto
lumbered off in the direction of Accademia. From the center of the crowd, I couldn’t see any of the exquisite palaces along the canal.

“Where are you off to?” Andrew asked the top of my head.

“Nowhere really. I thought I’d just head in the direction of the Lido, maybe get off and have a coffee. Once we get through the Grand Canal, I should be able to get a seat. Or at least get this man’s elbow out of my back.”

“I wish I could take a break too. I’ve been looking for a flat to rent, sussing out various leads, but it hasn’t been easy. With the symposium and everything…” He skipped over last night’s events with an unhappy flutter of one hand. “I may end up just renting a room somewhere—if I can even find that. I need to get settled in order to start researching my book. The city has become much more expensive.”

“You’ve been to Venice before?” I asked, resolving, since I was pressed against the length of his body, to take the opportunity to get to know Andrew a little better. Perhaps he could shed some light on what had happened to Gunther.

“I spent a month here as a graduate student. I had no money, I had no idea how to meet anybody, but I was happy digging around in the libraries for information on Vivaldi and the
ospedali
. Right from the beginning, I was fascinated by the notion of an orchestra formed of abandoned girls. It’s an extraordinary concept when you think about it. All through history children have been rejected and sold by their parents, but generally they ended up as slaves or prostitutes. Perhaps it’s because I was adopted myself,” he said, “that this subject really drew me.”

“Did you know you were adopted? Did they tell you?”

“They didn’t tell me, but I suspected,” Andrew sighed. “It was obvious that I didn’t look like my parents. They were both short and dark-haired, and I had these freckles and towered above them. I didn’t know for sure until I was sixteen, but I remember as a child I was fascinated by myths and fairy tales about lineage and family secrets.”

“The sort where the King, because of some prophecy, orders the child to be killed, and the Queen or her serving maid gives the baby to shepherds to be brought up, and all the child has is a gold ring, which eventually is recognized?”

“Exactly!” said Andrew. “I loved those fairy tales.”

“Me too. What happened when you were sixteen?”

“My parents found me in bed with a neighbor boy. Fortunately my grades were good enough to get me an early admission to university. I got a music scholarship and never looked back.”

“You don’t see them?”

“No. And you?”

“I keep in touch with one or two of my sisters. My father’s dead. I think about my mother sometimes. I want to see her, but I can’t imagine it would go well.”

“People like us are really the foundlings of the universe. That’s what I think. Abandoned by our birth parents, adopted by new kinship groups.”

People like us
. It had an old-fashioned feel, like Andrew himself. He was too cautious to say
queer
or
gay
.

Gradually we had been pushed into the covered sitting area and had squeezed ourselves onto a bench. We were still plastered together, but at least it was the sides of our bodies touching now, not the fronts. Through the fogged-up windows, stone and plaster palaces wavered in the light thrown up from the canal.

“Ah, Venice!” I said. “Art, music, wine, squid in its own ink, handsome people. Marco’s awfully good-looking, isn’t he? In that gorgeous, effortless Italian way.”

“There probably isn’t a single man I know who hasn’t dreamed of coming to Italy and finding someone like Marco,” Andrew said. “I’m so pleased that I’m going to have a year here with him.” It was a slightly more wistful than assured statement.

“But are you sure Marco is…”

“Of course he is,” said Andrew. “Or at least…enough. I mean, it obviously runs in the family—look at his sister.”

“And look how Sandretti and Marco treat Roberta. I wouldn’t call them exactly supportive.”

“Well, I know that Marco likes me, because…he kissed me,” Andrew blurted, turning bright red under his straw hat. He looked like raspberries and cream. But there was no need to blush; no one around us understood English, or else they didn’t care. I wondered if “kissing” was a euphemism, or if it had been really just a kiss, in which case it was rather sweet in these days of graphic grappling.

“Was that during the second interval, when you two were gone?” I put a nice touch of interested sympathy into my voice.

“Yes. I’d been in quite a huff—because of the awful playing and then, on top of that, Gunther’s damned cell phone and Bitten causing a giant commotion. You’d think the two of them weren’t performers themselves. Not that they interrupted anything very professional. But anyway, I followed Marco out, and we went for a short walk…”

“And you saw Gunther. Though not at that point face down in the canal.”

“Of course not. He was very much alive. He was with Bitten down by the Naval Museum, and they…” Andrew stopped. “Look, it’s not my intention to get anyone in trouble.”

“I understand.”

“I don’t think their quarrel was serious anyway. I think she really loved him. Obviously she did when you see how cut up she’s been since they found him.”

“Oh,” I said. “So you and Marco witnessed Bitten and Gunther arguing shortly before he died, is that it? And I suppose that neither of you mentioned this to the police?”

“I don’t for an instant believe that Bitten killed him!”

“Why not?”

“Because, well, she wouldn’t do that. Aside from obviously adoring him, she’s too clever. And it would put a crushing end to her career, wouldn’t it? She’s a fine Vivaldi scholar. No one has done so much to promote the Baroque bassoon as she has. Yes,
now
people like your friend Nicky are taking up the bassoon concertos, but Bitten has been playing Vivaldi’s concertos for years. She’s the best-known bassoonist in all of Scandinavia.”

“What do you know about Bitten’s personal life?” I asked. “Have you met before?”

“Only once, years ago, when I was still a student. She was playing in Toronto, and I went to see her, and there was a party afterwards. She had a husband then. I guess they’re divorced now. I remember her as very encouraging. Other than that, of course, she seemed very old to me. She’s probably ten years older than I am.”

More like twenty, I thought. “She was much older than Gunther as well. I’d guess she’s close to sixty.”

“Sixty!”

“Older women can be very attractive,” I said primly.

We were approaching the wooden arch of the Accademia Bridge. Perhaps because the
vaporetto
’s windows were so fogged up, the arch had a medieval look. The tourists crossing over could have been pilgrims on a religious procession, carrying not cameras, but reliquaries. But Accademia was the stop where Andrew was getting off. I had to find out a little more, and quickly.

“If Bitten didn’t kill him, who did?”

Andrew glanced at me. “Well, I must say it doesn’t look good for Nicky. I mean, her disappearing like that. I would say she’s the most suspicious character, even though I know you’re her friend…or…”

“Friend. And a good one. Because of that, I’m going to let you in on a secret, Andrew, or at least point you in the right direction. If anyone would care to contact the conductor of the Tempus Fugit Ensemble about a concert in Birmingham last night, I think they might get a very good notion of where Nicky was when Gunther met his end.”