may be boiling up to another war. What you got this morning was not a warning, it was a cry for help!”
I stared down at my list, although I was seeing nothing. I did not want to see old Nasone either murdered or deposed, but all doges have political enemies. “Did everyone see him there?”
“Probably not,” the Maestro conceded. “He came in, looked at the books quite briefly, and spoke with Orseolo. Then an argument broke out with the foreigners. I think he left then. He was not at the supper table later.”
“What sort of argument?”
“The foreigners had not been invited. Imer told them to leave. Probably the doge had not been invited either. Faugh! Moro has always been impulsive. He champs under all the restraints of his office, the eternal committee meetings. Read me the list.”
Present and not suspected:
Dr. Nostradamus; Procurator Orseolo; madonna Violetta; Nasone
Possible suspects:
Attorney Imer; Karagounis; Senator Tirali; two foreigners; a woman; two footmen;
Pasqual Tirali
“You assume too much. Move your friend to the list of suspects.”
I protested, “Did you see her tipping poison into the victim’s wine glass?”
“Bah! Of course I didn’t. I didn’t see anyone doing that. I very much doubt if anyone did. It would be too obvious.”
That had already occurred to me. “You said Orseolo had a crippled hand and used a cane. He must have laid his glass down when he wanted to handle one of the books? The others would too, perhaps, but he must have done so more often?”
My master nodded. I could see that he had been hoping to point that out himself.
“So,” I said, “the murderer unobtrusively poisoned his own drink and then switched it for the victim’s. Did you see that happen?”
“No,” he admitted sourly, “but I was constantly being distracted by stupid questions. It is likely that somebody did. Tell Angeli you need him shortly.”
I went over to the door and stuck my head out to tell one of Giorgio’s brood to warn him. When I returned, the Maestro was staring fixedly at the window and tugging his beard. I know better than to interrupt him when he is thinking on that scale. I took up my knife to sharpen my pen.
Eventually he sighed and looked at me as if wondering where I had been. “A letter.”
I took a sheet of rag from the drawer and dipped the quill.
“About ten lines,” he said, so I would know how to place it on the sheet.
“Italic, roman, or gothic?”
“Italic, of course. ‘To the exalted chiefs of the noble Council of Ten. Usual bootlicking…It is with deep sorrow that I most humbly bring to Your Excellencies’ attention certain evidence pertaining to the despicable murder of…’”
4
G iorgio was ready in his standard gondolier costume of red and black, so we trotted downstairs and embarked. He is a wiry man and not tall. Standing in the stern of the gondola he looks far too slight to move a thirty-foot boat at all, but he is as proficient with his oar as he is at making babies. We skimmed off along the Rio San Remo, sliding between the traffic. The sun was shining with as much enthusiasm as it ever musters in February; bridges and buildings had a well-washed look. Women on balconies were hanging out washing, peeling vegetables, shouting conversations across and along the canal, lowering baskets to vendors in boats or on footpaths below them. Often they were singing. So were the cage birds, which had been brought out to enjoy the morning and tantalize the cats. Seagulls flapped clumsily or just stared. Almost all the boatmen were singing, too, when not fluting the odd cries they use to warn on which side they intend to pass. They say we have ten thousand gondolas in Venice.
“Is it true the Maestro was at the supper where the procurator died, Alfeo?”
Mama does the talking in the Angeli family. Most of the time Giorgio says little, although his silences have an uncanny knack of prompting other people to tell him secrets. He would not question me unless he were seriously worried.
I said, “He was taken ill at the supper. The Maestro went to help, as you would expect. The procurator died yesterday, at home, tended by his own doctor.”
“Oh.” Apart from returning hails from other gondoliers going by, Giorgio wielded his oar in silence for a while.
“The Maestro didn’t poison him.”
“Alfeo! I never said that he did! That’s a terrible-”
“That’s the rumor. It’s a lie. Last night I was called in to the palace for a consultation. I was not arrested, not questioned. My arms are no longer now than they were before. Don’t worry about it.”
A man who has to support a two-digit family must worry about his employer’s fate. Giorgio slid the gondola through a minuscule gap beside a farmer’s boat already on its way home for the day. He ducked as we shot under a bridge. Then he had time to speak again.
“You are not nearly as good a liar as the master, Alfeo. You are worried, so I am.”
“Then I confess! I’m on my way to tell the Council of Ten I did it.”
The whole boat shuddered. “Don’t make jokes like that, Alfeo!”
It was less of a joke than he thought, although I had no intention of posting the incriminating letter I carried. “How was the wedding?”
Family is one topic on which Giorgio will talk, and talk at length. His children are outnumbered only by his brothers and sisters; Mama has even more; add in aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces and the wedding party must have outnumbered the Turkish army on campaign. Giovanni from Padua and Aldo from Vicenza and Jacopo and Giovanni from Murano…He was still reciting the guest list when we arrived at our destination.
Ottone Imer shared chambers with several other attorneys in the maze of alleys in San Zulian, just north of the Basilica of San Marco. That the house included living quarters and premises grand enough to entertain thirty guests I took on trust from the Maestro’s account. It is an expensive part of town, so either Imer had family money behind him or he was successful professionally. So why was he dabbling in the used book trade?
The black-clad clerk who peered disapprovingly at me over his glasses looked somewhat dusty and dog- eared himself, as if he needed to be taken down off his shelf more often. He conceded that the learned attorney was in, but that was all he would concede. If I wanted to get any closer to his employer, he suggested, I must state my business in some detail. The learned attorney was not, he implied, about to stop doing whatever he was doing to oblige a mere apprentice, even if, he hinted, the apprentice’s master was a well-known charlatan dabbling in shady arts. I could make an appointment for next week, or Lent, or next summer, he intimated.
Attorneys do not usually turn down business sight unseen, but attorneys rarely have important nobles collapse at their supper tables in a hiss of dangerous whispers. Was Imer hiding from everyone or just from anyone connected with that unfortunate event?
I shrugged. “Then I must take the matter higher up.”
The watchdog’s manner grew even chillier. “Take it as high as you wish.”
I produced my letter and held it where he could read the inscription. “Is this high enough?”
He had seemed pale before. He turned ashen and stumbled to his feet.
“Run,” I said sweetly, and he very nearly did.
In moments I was ushered into the private office of Attorney Imer, which was dim, cramped, and untidy. The owner stood beside a desk heaped with ribbon-tied bundles of paper. Briefs seldom are. He was tall, severe, fortyish, and had an unfortunate tick at the left corner of his mouth. I wondered if it appeared when he addressed the bench, or if only mention of the Ten set it off.
I bowed. “At the lustrissimo ’s service.”
