the other end of the hall.
‘She used to bring you round here while she worked,’ Ada continues, leading the way upstairs. ‘And once she saw I didn’t mind, she’d leave you here while she went off to do other jobs. Of course you won’t remember, you were only a toddler.’
The man says nothing. Ada Zulian painfully attains the level expanse of the portego and waves him into the salon.
‘What brings you here, anyway? Your mother never calls any more, not that anyone else does either. Not since that trouble I had with Rosetta. Anyone would think it was catching!’
‘But I gather you’ve been having some more problems recently,’ the man remarks cautiously.
Ada Zulian looks at him.
‘Perhaps I have and perhaps I haven’t,’ she replies sharply. ‘What business is that of yours, Aurelio Battista?’
‘Well, since you informed the police…’
‘The police? What have you to do with the police?’
‘I work for them.’
Ada’s laughter startles the silence. The man looks taken aback.
‘What’s so funny?’ he demands.
‘The police? But you were such a timid little fellow! So serious, so anxious, so easily scared! That’s what gave me the idea in the first place.’
‘What idea?’
‘To dress you up as Rosetta! I still had all her dresses then, her little blouses and socks, everything. When I went to San Clemente, they took everything away and burnt it. But at that time I still thought she might come back one day. Really, I mean. Just walk in, as suddenly and inexplicably as she disappeared. I wanted to have everything ready for her, just in case. I wouldn’t have asked any questions, you know. I would have taken her back and carried on as though nothing had ever happened…’
She looks away suddenly, as though she had seen something move in the nether recesses. Only one of the windows is unshuttered, and the dim expanses of the salon are further multiplied and complicated by a profusion of mirrors of every shape and size, all framed in the same gilded wood as the furniture.
‘To tell you the truth,’ Ada goes on at last, ‘I think you helped keep her at bay. As long as you were there, running about in her dresses, Rosetta didn’t dare show her face.’
She sits down on a low, hard sofa covered with worn dark pink silk.
‘Either that, or it was the cause of the whole thing! Perhaps she resented the fact that I’d found someone to replace her, and decided to get her own back. It’s hard to say. But you did look sweet, Aurelio! If only I’d thought to take some photographs.’
The man has been standing looking at her with an air of deferential attention. Now he claps his hands loudly and starts striding about the room with quite unnecessary vigour.
‘Three weeks ago, contessa, you dialled the police emergency number and reported the presence of intruders in your house. A patrol boat was dispatched and the house searched from top to bottom. It proved to be empty. Subsequent investigations have failed to reveal a single fact to substantiate your allegations of trespass and persecution.’
He pauses impressively, looking down at the elderly woman perched on the antique settle.
‘Well, of course!’ she retorts. ‘Do you think they’re stupid?’
The man frowns.
‘The police?’
She laughs.
‘I know they’re stupid! No, I’m talking about my visitors. They’re far too sly to let themselves be caught by some flat-foot from Ferrara. Swamp-dwellers! They all have malaria, poor things. Runs in the family, rots their brains.’
‘When was the last occurrence of this kind?’ the man inquires in a decidedly supercilious tone.
‘Last night,’ Ada replies pertly. ‘It was almost dawn by the time they finally left me in peace.’
‘What happened?’
‘The same as usual. It’s the skeleton I’m most frightened of. It makes such sudden rushes at me.’
‘How many of them are there?’
Ada shrugs, as if considering the matter.
‘It’s hard to tell. They come and go. Often I’ve thought they’ve gone, then suddenly another one pops out from somewhere.’
‘Have they attacked you?’
She shakes her head.
‘They just try and scare me, keep me awake all night, never knowing what’s going to happen next.’
The man considers her for a long time.
‘How do they get in?’ he asks.
‘Don’t ask me! They just appear. In my bedroom it was last time. A light came on, I woke, and there they were.’
Despite herself, her voice shakes slightly as she remembers her terror.
‘Was the front door locked?’
‘Locked and bolted, as always. But nothing stops them.’
She pulls up the sleeve over her dress and displays a livid patch on her arm.
‘There! That’s what I got from bumping into one of them. There are others, too, not decent to be viewed. I showed the doctor, though.’
The man nods.
‘I’ve read the file on your case,’ he says. ‘The medical evidence is apparently inconclusive. The contusions could have resulted from a collision with some household object. A chair or table, for example.’
‘Do they think I go staggering about bumping into the furniture like some drunk?’ Ada protests. ‘Anyway, what about the mud?’
‘The report mentioned some marks on the floor. There was no sign of shoe tread or other distinguishing features.’
He sighs deeply.
‘You see the problem is, contessa, that after what happened before, people are disinclined to believe what you tell them.’
‘I can’t help that,’ returns Ada flatly.
‘On that occasion, you were convicted of causing a public nuisance by calling your deceased daughter Rosetta home every evening. You subsequently spent two years in a mental institution where you were diagnosed as suffering from persistent delusions. It is therefore only natural that without some concrete evidence that the phenomena you now describe have any reality outside your own imagination, it is going to be difficult if not impossible for me to take the matter further.’
‘I didn’t ask you to come,’ Ada retorts.
Her visitor takes a notebook from his pocket and writes something on a page which he tears out and hands to her.
‘That’s my number,’ he says. ‘I’m only just round the corner, in the old house. If this happens again, give me a call, whatever the time, day or night.’
Ada looks at the number, then at his eyes. She nods.
Leaving the palazzo, Aurelio Zen turned left into an alley so narrow he had to walk sideways, like a crab. It seemed to come to a dead end at a small canal, but at the last moment a portico was revealed, leading to a bridge. The tide was out and the water had shrivelled to a gutter a few centimetres deep between fat expanses of black slime where tethered boats lolled like capsized beetles. A little further along the canal, the elegant facade of Palazzo Zulian stood out from its neighbours.
The air, walled off from the prevailing breezes, was heavy with the stench of mud. An assortment of debris was visible at the bottom of the water: the wheel of a pram, a punctured bucket, a boot. A large rat slithered
