“But that’s crazy!”
“Yes. It is. Perhaps that’s your answer. She loved those men, Amy, Scacchi in particular. In some way I don’t comprehend, I believe they saved each other and, as a result, felt some kind of pact between them.”
“And now he’s unconscious, Hugo says. He can’t even tell them what happened.”
“No.” He stared at the Campari sign across the water and thought of Scacchi in Piero’s boat, with Xerxes at the tiller, and the constant flow of laughter and spritz.
“What do you mean ‘No’? He’ll recover?”
Daniel sat down on the steps. She joined him, bemused.
“No. I mean he’s dead. They called me while you were playing. They found him at four o’clock this afternoon. His heart must have failed suddenly. They hadn’t expected anything to happen so soon. On Friday I must bury him on San Michele.”
“Christ,” Amy said softly, then folded her arms around his shoulders and pulled her warm face into his neck.
“I wanted to be there,” he said to himself. “That’s the worst part. If he was to die, I wanted to be with him at that moment. I feel cheated somehow.”
She pulled back and looked into his eyes. “Dan…”
“And I feel lied to. As if they all saw me for a fool.”
“A fool? Didn’t you hear what we were playing in there? No one can think you’re a fool.”
He could see Amy was taken aback by the sharpness of his expression. She withdrew her arms from him and wiped her damp face on the sleeve of her shirt.
“Tell me that before you leave,” he said. “Not now.”
“I don’t…”
“Please, Amy. Be patient with me.” He watched the familiar figure in white shirt and pale trousers approach along the promenade. “Or ask Hugo what I mean. I gather you’re close.”
“Meaning what, exactly?”
“You said it yourself,” he said coldly. “He seems interested.”
She stood up, deeply offended. “Enough! I don’t give a shit how big a deal you think you are, Dan. You act like a complete jerk sometimes.”
Massiter strode up the steps of La Pietà towards them. He bowed politely to Amy, then nodded to Daniel. “I heard the news. It is a great loss, Daniel. Scacchi was my friend.”
“Quite.”
Massiter’s grey eyes held no emotion. Daniel could not prevent a single fevered thought running through his mind: that the death of Scacchi and Paul stemmed, in some mysterious way, from the pact they had made with Massiter. That this could be some kind of cruel justice which had yet to reach its close.
“I would like to honour him, Daniel,” Massiter continued. “I would like to make the concert on Friday his memorial.”
Daniel shook his head in puzzlement. “I thought you planned to do that for the girl, Hugo. How many memorials do you want?”
“Yes. I hate to say it, but that bitch of a policewoman was right. Susanna Gianni is long dead and buried. Scacchi’s in our hearts now. We should mark that moment.”
“Why do you do this, Hugo?” He was no longer cowed by Massiter. Daniel wondered what had wrought that change in their relationship.
“What, precisely?”
“The school. The concert. The whole performance. What do you get from it?”
Massiter seemed intrigued by the question. “I can’t paint, Daniel. I can’t write. I can’t play a note of music. But don’t you see? In a sense, I own it all. Is it so hard to understand? I like my name on the things I admire. I like to see that little line of print that does me proud.” He ceased to smile. “And I like to know you’re all in my debt.”
Amy shuffled uncomfortably beside Massiter. They were close already, Daniel thought. The moment would arrive when she would become one of Massiter’s possessions, too, just as he had.
“I’ll make the concert in his memory, Daniel. You may have your name on the music, but I pay the players. I rent the hall. I have my rights.”
“Of course.” Daniel nodded.
“And it will be a revelation!”
“A revelation,” he agreed. “Quite.”
Then, without a further word, Daniel Forster walked down the steps of La Pietà and turned right, into the backstreets of the city and the narrow labyrinth of alleys which would, at some point and after many wrong turnings, deliver him to the empty shell of Ca’ Scacchi.
44
An interview with the Englishman
I entered by the tradesman’s door at the rear and found Gobbo in the kitchen, taunting one of the maids. He took one look at me and abandoned his pursuit.
“Good God, Scacchi. You look like you’ve spent the night on the tiles, and I know that’s not your style. What’s up?”
“I would like to see your master on a matter of some importance.”
“If it’s money, chum, forget it. Our Oliver’s quite sick of Venetians hanging round his purse. Some blackguard got away with the cash from that concert of his. There’s the city’s thanks, eh? Pat him on the back one moment, rob him blind the next. Couldn’t have come at a worse time, either. He put off getting funds from London because of that. Now the banks are getting sticky and we’ve all manner of locals asking to be paid.”
He stared at me with a chilly expression. “If that’s what you’ve come for, some debt he owes to Leo, you’re not going through that door. Friendship ends when the master starts throwing the pots around. I’m not getting my arse kicked just to see you present another bill upon the table.”
“It’s not for money, Gobbo. At least not demanding it. In fact, he might even turn a penny or two out of what I’ve got to tell him.”
“Really?” He was an ugly fellow, particularly sneering like this.
“Yes. Really. Now, get along there and tell him I need ten minutes of his time and not a penny of his money.”
With that he was off, through the door which led to the front of the mansion and the first-floor room that, with its view of the canal, served as its principal meeting place. I waited, enduring the maid’s childish smirks, and then was summoned through into the vast, mirrored space I had last seen on the day of our trip to Torcello. Its magnificence seemed to have waned somewhat over the weeks. The glass could use a clean. The furniture looked old and marked. Rented premises are never the same as property occupied by the owner, I imagine. With just the three of us in it, this hall seemed empty and cold. Only the noise of the canal beyond the windows added a little life to the scene.
Delapole looked at me cheerily. “Scacchi! Not seen you since the triumph, eh? What a performance! Shame some thieving local saw off with my gains. I could have used that. I’ve a house in Whitehall, an estate in Norfolk, and God knows how many lumps of sod in Ireland. But tell that to one of your oh-so-worldly bankers and I might as well be offering collateral on Lilliput. You read Swift out here, I imagine?”
“It takes a little while for the translation, sir. Though I have heard much of him.”
“Damned good stuff, not that I understand it all. One verse hits the mark, though.”
He waved an arm in front of him, like a gentleman taking a bow, then recited:
It was a humorous line and even brought a smile to my face.
“There,” he said, pleased that he had amused me. “That wasn’t hard, now, was it? Mind you, I think I’m not a flea, but the very dog — the original dog — upon which the first flea fed. At least I can find no blood to suck, try as I might. It’s bread and water till that envelope gets here from London.”