“That means nothing. He could as easily be called Hercules or Solomon. I want you to name him for me. Now. His real name. If all you have is a suspicion, I will still hear it. If you refuse, I shall be forced to take you and your apprentice into custody. And cancel your bonus.”
I was holding my breath again. Gritti had the powers to issue any threat he liked and then carry it out.
Nostradamus knew that. Stubborn is stubborn, but this was ridiculous. He pouted. “Give me until tomorrow. Then I shall give you Algol, if not in person, at least his name and address and the evidence to hang him.”
Gritti sat back to consider the offer. “When?”
“About this time. But here at Ca’ Barbolano, if you please. I have done far too much traveling in the last few days, and my joints already feel as if I had spent all yesterday on your strappado. My staff please, Alfeo. Come and have prima colazione with us tomorrow, Your Excellency. I have an excellent cook, and I will serve up Algol to you for dessert.”
“Mmm? And in the meantime, you do what?”
“Collect the evidence I require to confirm my hypothesis.”
Gritti smiled angelically. “I am a patient man. As you wish. But that will be your last chance.” He laid his hands on the arms of his chair to rise. “Now I must go to Ca’ Sanudo and see what that end of the story reveals. I shall, as you suggested, look out for a puddle of blood. Vizio, last night my colleagues and I ordered you to defend Zeno, so I suppose you had better continue to do so.” He smiled a silver-framed, snaggle-toothed smile.
The old scoundrel was going to have Vasco dog my footsteps on whatever errands the Maestro had in mind for me. If I uncovered Algol, Vasco would be able to arrest him on the spot and claim the credit. He had not yet worked that out, though. All he could see was being my nursemaid for another day, and he looked disgusted at the prospect. “Certainly, Excellency. Do I defend him against the perils of foreign travel?”
“Meticulously.”
That was better-he was to be my jailer. “And what should I do with his sword?” The answer he would really like was obvious.
Gritti heaved himself to his feet. “Clean the blood off it and give it back to him. I hope you never seriously believed, Vizio, that Alfeo Zeno would murder a man and forget to take his own monogrammed rapier out of the corpse?”
19
I went ahead to get the door, but it was opened before I reached it by one of the fanti. Behind him stood sier Zuanbattista. Very few people would have been allowed to interrupt Ottone Gritti, but ducal counselors are not just anyone. The week since I had last seen Sanudo had taken a toll. He seemed grayer and not quite so erect as before, but it would be hard for a man of his eminence to endure the mirth of his peers behind his back. He had to be aware of it and yet there was nothing he could do, no way he could strike back or deny allegations that had not been made to his face. He and Gritti greeted each other with the usual deep bows, but omitted the embrace. They ignored the rest of us.
“We were on our way to the palace,” Sanudo explained. “We are already late, of course.” He meant late for the daily meeting of the full Collegio, which the doge and his counselors attend, and therefore should include both him and Girolamo. “I came around this way to ask the good doctor if he had seen any sign of Danese Dolfin, who disappeared from our house last night.” He stopped then and waited, but it was obvious that he had heard the news-possibly from the fanti or even the Marcianas downstairs-and his eyes kept flickering to the draped shape on the medical couch.
“He has been called to the Lord, clarissimo.” Gritti led him over to the corner and uncovered Danese’s face.
Zuanbattista’s reaction seemed convincing, neither too much nor too little. You cannot tell, though. A man who has killed another in near darkness may faint at the first daylight view of his corpse, but I have seen mass murderers display complete indifference.
“He was found this morning, downstairs,” the inquisitor explained. “He had been run through with a rapier. My wife will join me in extending our deepest sympathy to you and your family. Your poor daughter will be distraught.”
Zuanbattista flashed him a searching look, as if he suspected mockery, or was tempted to say that his stupid daughter was the cause of all this trouble. “Downstairs? Here?”
“In the loggia. He was not killed there, though.”
“And you have no idea who did this, or why?”
“Not yet. He may have been an innocent bystander caught up in the affair that Doctor Nostradamus has been investigating for us. That is the learned doctor’s belief, at any rate-that Dolfin was unfortunate enough to be handy when the person we seek wished to confound the doctor’s investigations by leaving a corpse on his doorstep. When did he leave Ca’ Sanudo?”
Only now did Zuanbattista turn around as if to inspect his audience-Vasco, the Maestro, and me. We all bowed. He did not respond, so perhaps he did not even see us. “According to my daughter, they spent a quiet evening together, just talking. They have had very little time alone to get to know each other.” Much too little, he meant. “About eight o’clock he informed her that he had a call to make. She was annoyed, of course, but he explained that he had promised to visit his mother in San Barnaba and would not be long. He assured Grazia that he had enough money to hire gondolas. About an hour later she retired and eventually went to sleep. Obviously, he had not returned by morning.”
“Your gondolier says…?”
“Nothing. Fabricio had already left to fetch my wife and me from a concert. Giro was also out.”
Gritti turned his milky blue eyes on me. “How long would it take you to get here from Ca’ Sanudo, youngster?”
The snag, of course was that Santa Maria Maddalena is in Cannaregio, north of the Grand Canal, and San Remo is south of it, in San Polo, so a pedestrian must go around by the Rialto bridge. “At night? No more than ten minutes if I managed to flag a gondola, Excellency. On foot, fifteen or twenty. If Danese was not armed, he might have taken longer to avoid the seedy areas.”
In other words, we could not tell exactly, but the timing was reasonable. San Remo was not on his shortest route to San Barnaba, but not far off it. He had arrived here about half past eight, according to Giorgio, and left before the curfew rang at nine, when Luigi was supposed to lock up. And he had died, by the Maestro’s estimate, before ten. At an unknown hour before the heavy rain started, his remains had been delivered like groceries back at the Ca’ Barbolano. Where he had died was now much more important than when. There had been time for him to walk to anywhere in the city.
“You are telling me,” Sanudo said, “that my son-in-law’s death was just one of those random killings that so grievously blight our city?”
Silence.
He was tall and doubtless still quite strong, but he was old. Despite his age, if messer Zuanbattista Sanudo were a trained fencer, I could imagine him besting Danese with a sword. Not at wrestling, though. If the fire vision had given me a true witness of events, Zuanbattista had not personally murdered his son-in-law, but he did have a potent motive and he certainly had enough money to hire bravos to do it for him. Such alley rats usually work in gangs, while pyromancy had shown only one assailant. How literally should I take those visions?
“That is one hypothesis,” Gritti conceded at last.
“But you do not believe it.” Despite his normal patrician stolidity, Zuanbattista’s craggy face flushed almost as red as his counselor’s robe. Street crime belongs to the Signori di Notte, not the Three. Gritti was investigating treason.
They stared hard at each other, those two old men, one red-robed and one black-, one tall and angular, one short and grandfatherly-at the very least they must have worked together for decades, on and off, on councils and boards and committees. For all I knew they had been friends since boyhood, yet now one must consider the possibility of arresting the other for treason. Zuanbattista had not said, Et tu, Brute? aloud, but he was looking it.
