Angelico Vespucci b. 1510 – not known where he died. Last heard of February, 1556. His list of victims is open to debate, but there are records in the chapel of the Mazzerotti church. (The priest was so difficult, I had to donate to the renovations before he would even talk to me and then he was evasive. No one wants to talk about Angelico Vespucci. They pretend he never existed, until you come along with proof or asking questions. He’s like Venice’s dirty little secret.) Anyway, their records list the deaths of Larissa Vespucci, Claudia Moroni …
Nino paused. Claudia Moroni. He knew about her. The woman who had once lived in the house where Seraphina had owned an apartment and lost her baby. Claudia Moroni, the second of The Skin’s Hunter’s victims … He scribbled down a note of his own, and continued to read.
The Moroni family were respectable, long established in Venice.* They were merchants, notable for the quality of their silks. Claudia Moroni came from a wealthy family and had one – or two, the accounts differ – sons, neither of whom survived infancy. Apparently her brother came to live in the household soon after she was married.
Weirdly, when I visited the Moroni house I knew I’d been there before. It turned out to be Seraphina’s first flat after she married Tom Morgan.
Nino scanned down the page to a note at the bottom.
*N.B. There is a painting of Claudia Moroni and her husband in the house.
Johnny Ravenscourt had pinned a photocopy of a portrait on to the page and Nino studied the couple depicted. The man was vulgarly handsome, the woman blonde, diffident, rather unremarkable except for the richness of her clothes. She certainly bore no resemblance to Seraphina, he thought, turning back to the notes.
I wanted to find out about the victims, but after spending two months searching for clues in 2008, I hit a brick wall. So I changed emphasis and looked at Angelico Vespucci himself.
Nino turned the page to find the familiar face looking up at him, in a variety of depictions of The Skin Hunter. As well as a copy of Titian’s portrait, there were several reproductions of engravings and a sepia sketch. Curious, Nino studied it. The sketch was high quality, even he could see that. Vespucci was turned towards the artist, his expression extraordinary. He had the same unreadable, heavy-lidded eyes, but there was a tremor about the mouth, a look of unease which bordered on instability. The sketch seemed to catch the man in an unguarded moment, when his features could not fully contain his character.
It was chilling.
Vespucci’s origins are unclear, Johnny’s notes continued. He seemed to come to Venice out of the ether. But he came with a great fortune around 1539, and was living on the Grand Canal by 1541, in a magnificent palazzo. Throwing extravagant parties, with the finest wines and foods imported, he became a popular figure. Generous and affable, he was well liked, but apparently he had a servant flogged publicly for serving bad oysters. Vespucci was very generous to the Church and worshipped at the San Salvatore, marrying Larissa Fiorsetti in 1546. (This much is in the records. After that it gets more difficult.) Nothing else is heard of him until 1549, when his daughter was born. His wife Larissa was, by all accounts, a great beauty. (See photos of contemporary paintings.)
Nino paused, picking up the images of the glorious Larissa Vespucci. She had been an opulent beauty, full-fleshed, redhaired, her mouth tilting up at the corners. He could see at once why Angelico Vespucci would have fallen in love with her. And why he might well have been possessive. How could he not have been? She would have drawn attention anywhere. How difficult would that have been for a unprepossessing man like Vespucci to endure?
Stretching his arms above his head, Nino yawned, then finished his coffee. Outside it was now fully dark and he drew the curtains, locking the doors front and back before returning to the notes.
The next mention of Vespucci is in 1555, when he is referred to by Pietro Aretino. Known as ‘The Scourge of Kings’, this heavyweight had considerable influence in Venice, his friendship with Titian alone making him a powerful figure in the city. What Titian liked about Aretino is anyone’s guess; he was a crude man, but he was very productive in the promotion of the artist’s work. He travelled abroad, spoke to kings and courtiers, and generally acted as Titian’s agent. So it’s not surprising when Aretino mentions that he has arranged for Titian to paint Angelico Vespucci’s portrait.
Vespucci was respectable at this time. Larissa was still alive. (I had some difficulty accessing the records. There is mention of a boy dying and a girl surviving. All my efforts to trace any living descendants of Vespucci have come to nothing. Either there are none, or they changed their name to avoid scandal.) It was in October 1555 that the contract for the portrait was drawn up, the sittings to be commenced in November. See notebook 2.
Sighing, Nino reached for the second volume. The writing picked up immediately from where the first had left off, only this time the notes were different – short, without the conversational tone. It was as though Johnny Ravenscourt was trying to distance himself in his writing.
4th November 1555 – Larissa Vespucci found murdered and skinned.
Suspicion fell on Vespucci, but his protectors rallied round him. Larissa had been unfaithful.
Aretino stands up for Vespucci.
Titian continues painting the portrait.
November 26th 1555 – Claudia Moroni found murdered and skinned.
Venice in the worst winter for over a century. Fogs constant, temperatures below zero. The legend of The Skin Hunter begins.
Thoughtful, Nino put the portraits of Claudia Moroni and Larissa Vespucci side by side. There were no physical similarities between the two women, the unremarkable Claudia looking more like a housewife than an adulteress. Stretching across the table, Nino then placed the images of Seraphina and Sally Egan above the two murdered Venetian women. Again, no similarities, not obvious ones anyway. Disappointed, he frowned. Perhaps there wasn’t a connection between a killer in the sixteenth century and another in the twenty-first century. Perhaps it was just coincidence.
And then again, perhaps it wasn’t.
Taking a deep breath, Nino read on. Outside, it grew dark. In its shrine, the figure of Christ bent His head to the traffic, and as the lights changed on Kensington High Street a plane came in to land at Heathrow Airport. It carried one hundred and seventy-five passengers.
And one of them was a killer.
20
Six o’clock and the tide was in, nuzzling the Thames Embankment, as Triumph Jones sat on one of the benches overlooking the river. He had felt compelled to come to London, his guilt forcing his hand. Such vanity, he thought – how could he have had such vanity? His eyes closed momentarily, then opened again, stinging in the December wind. His ego had overridden his sense, his morals, and now the plan he had set in motion had spun out of control.
Leaning forward, he watched the river, remembering how, days earlier, he had taken a taxi and asked to be dropped off at Grosvenor Bridge. There he had paused, looking around and waiting. Finally he spotted a woman a little way off, and ducked behind one of the struts of the bridge to avoid being seen. He waited, certain that she was coming closer, then threw the portrait of Angelico Vespucci over the railings and into the ebbing tide. It hit the water with a hefty splash, the woman turning as Triumph watched.
He knew it had still been something of a gamble. What if there had been some alteration in the flow? Or some boat causing a wake that spun the Titian away from the bank? Or worse, what if it had remained in the water and been irrevocably damaged?
Still hiding, Triumph had seen the woman react. Surprised, she looked into the water, the Titian following a sudden push of tide and washing up on to the shingle. Relieved, Triumph had then seen the slight figure scramble down the grit towards it. Once she nearly lost her balance on the wet silt, but she recovered and, after looking carefully at the package, had picked it up.