“Yes, please.”
The interior of the house looked even gloomier as the day was drawing to a close. But Zuliani had anticipated this and provided them with a lantern from the Dolfin palace. The wind was getting up, and the candle had almost blown out as they crossed the Grand Canal. Even now, inside his empty house, the yellow flame flickered, casting strange shadows on the walls. They ascended the perilous staircase in order to examine Tiepolo’s body once again before the light gave out altogether. It still lay where Zuliani had left it, and he crouched down, holding the lamp close to the gruesome sight. Tiepolo was nothing more than a blackened shell, his knees drawn up to his chest. Any facial features had been destroyed by the fire. His clothes had largely burned away, though Zuliani could see a belt-buckle adhering to the remains, at the point that would have been Tiepolo’s stomach. What was left of his hands were clenched like the talons of a falcon about to grasp its prey. Zuliani glanced at Katie, who was crouched at his side, holding her skirt in a bunch to keep it from the worst of the mess on the floor.
“What do you think?”
The girl grimaced.
“I think he died a bad death.”
“Whoever he was.”
Katie frowned at this statement from Zuliani.
“What do you mean? It’s Francesco Tiepolo — we saw him at the window.”
“Look at the body again. Then bring to mind what you know of Tiepolo, and what you saw when he was standing at the window waving his arms around.”
Katie pouted, but did as she was told. For a while she didn’t understand, then she smiled broadly.
“Move the lantern over here.” She pointed at the claw-shaped hands. “Closer.”
Zuliani held the lantern so that the candlelight shone where Katie had commanded. She clapped her hands again.
“There are no rings on this man’s hands, and yet when I saw Tiepolo waving his arms out of the window, there were rings on many of his fingers. I saw the light sparkling on them.” She liked this clever deduction, but she still had a doubt. “Might not the fire have melted the gold?”
Zuliani nodded.
“It might. But even if that were so, where are the gems? They would not have been destroyed. The other thing that worried me was when I saw the belt-buckle stuck to this man’s stomach. Despite him being burned to a crisp, there is no sign of Tiepolo’s fat belly. This was a slim man in life.”
Having made this deduction, Zuliani had crouched over the body for too long, and tried to stand. His knees protested, and he would have stumbled if Katie had not taken his arm and steadied him. Grouchily, he thanked her, not relishing showing his infirmities to a woman, even though she was his granddaughter. Katie made as if she was unaware of his annoyance, and eagerly pursued him concerning the riddle of Tiepolo’s demise. She pushed her errant locks from off her face, once again smearing soot on her brow.
“If this is not Tiepolo, then where is his body?” She glanced down at the dead man. “And who is this?”
“That’s what I would like to know — where Tiepolo is, I mean. As for this body, I would say it’s Girolamo Lando, Tiepolo’s lieutenant. He went missing at the same time as Tiepolo.”
“But then why didn’t Tiepolo say Lando was trapped by the blaze too? Why didn’t he call out ‘Save us’?”
Zuliani pointed a finger at Katie.
“Exactly.” He stepped towards the door. “Perhaps it had something to do with Lando being already dead before the fire took hold.”
Katie was stunned.
“How do you know that?”
Zuliani carelessly waved the lantern at the body, almost extinguishing the guttering candle.
“Because there is a crack in the man’s skull that was made by something heavy striking it, not the fire. So, either Tiepolo dragged a dead man into my house or he himself killed his lieutenant on this spot.”
Katie turned back to look at the head of the corpse to see what she had missed. But Zuliani had already left the room, plunging her and the dead man into darkness. She had a momentary sense that the body was moving towards her. Maybe it was only the movement of the shadows as Zuliani left with the lantern in his hand, but she didn’t want to wait and see. Shuddering, she rapidly followed her grandfather upstairs.
When she entered the upper room, she recalled those happier times when Zuliani had shown her the little treasures he had brought back from his travels. The window shutters where they had last seen Tiepolo standing were still wide open, but it was now dark outside and a wind whistled eerily through the opening. Zuliani was picking disconsolately through what remained of his collection. He groaned.
“Even the gold
Katie looked around.
“And Tiepolo’s body is not up here, either.” She took Zuliani’s hand, dragging him away from the horror of his loss. “Let’s go downstairs. The fire must have started down there in the first place. Perhaps Tiepolo managed to get down the stairs before he died.”
“Yes. Let us look there for him. I told him to try and get to the front door. Maybe he almost made it.”
But there was no hope of finding a body on the ground floor. It was a blackened, wet mess of burned wood. The fire had obviously started here, but Zuliani could not tell how. Katie looked around.
“What is all this?”
“Old furniture from when my parents lived here. I could not use it, but I couldn’t bear to part with it either. So I just piled it up here. What I don’t understand is how it could have caught fire. It was so damp from the closeness of the canal. What is sure is that we will not find Tiepolo in a hurry in this mess.”
Katie stood at the bottom of the staircase rubbing her hand on the cast-iron image of the lizard on the newel post which was all that had survived the holocaust. Thoughts of the salamander emerging from the flames came to her again. Nick might have told her that it was all a myth, but she liked the idea. He wiped the smudges from her face.
“Come. Let us go and see what your grandmother has discovered. When my manservant, Vettor, returns from visiting his family in Malomocco, I will set him to cleaning this up. Maybe he will find the body.”
At the end of Nick Zuliani’s first full day as a grandfather, he sat with his one-time lover, Caterina Dolfin now called Valier, and Katie, the offspring of his unknown son, Agostino. He pondered broaching the possibility of the girl changing her name to Zuliani, but decided first they had more pressing matters to discuss. He told Cat what they had found at his house — omitting the small matter of the body being still there. He made out to her that they had seen the ringless fingers earlier, but had not realized the importance of it until now. The corpse therefore was not Tiepolo’s. Cat was shocked about the identity of the body, and pointed out to Zuliani a matter he would have to deal with urgently.
“As the Tiepolos have already taken the body you say is that of his lieutenant, Lando, you must tell them before they bury it thinking it is one of their own.”
Zuliani and Katie exchanged glances, then he spoke up.
“I don’t think they have had time to do anything yet. It is too late. I will tell them tomorrow. First, tell us what you have learned.”
Cat shrugged her ivory-skinned, bare shoulders, causing a little flutter of Zuliani’s heart.
“I am not sure what I have found out is very helpful. It is mainly gossip. Apparently, Francesco Tiepolo was engaged on a colleganza which aimed to try and break the Pope’s interdict on trade.”
“What’s that, granny? A colleganza.”
Zuliani puffed out his cheeks in astonishment at Katie’s question.
“Call yourself a Venetian, and you don’t know what that is? It means Tiepolo had funded a trading enterprise along with others. He must have had a ship ready to sail just before the rebellion kicked off. In the situation we are in at the moment, that was a very risky thing to have done. He must have been pretty desperate.” He turned to Cat again. “Anything else of use?”
Cat paused for a moment, and then looked Zuliani in the eyes.
“There was something else, but it sounds foolish. Don’t laugh when I tell you.”
“Carry on. Anything, no matter how small or insignificant, could be important.”
Cat looked away, and took a deep breath.
