I followed her trail through the mental forest. “And Procurator Orseolo might have been the craziest, you mean?” In public he had been a Grand Old Man and in private a tyrant; he had been enormously rich and reluctant to pay his tradesmen; but those things were true of many noblemen. “You really think anyone would commit murder just to stop another man outbidding him on a heap of dog-eared paper?”
“I think you should finish the job, my darling Alfeo. Go and ask Pasqual Tirali the same questions you have been asking the others. He’s taking me to Carnival tonight, so he should be at home now, getting ready. I have no idea whether the senator will be there or not.”
“Is Pasqual a suspect?” I asked incredulously. “You were with him. Could he have poisoned the old man without your seeing?”
Giorgio’s voice faded away in the ending of a verse. His oar creaked in the rowlock; other voices picked up the melody in the distance.
“I didn’t notice Pasqual doing anything in the least suspicious,” Aspasia said. “And I can’t imagine he would murder anyone for any reason at all. But I wasn’t watching his father. I don’t know the senator well. He is the most charming man you can ever hope to meet, yet he has the reputation of being ruthless. I know he is a fanatical bibliophile.”
“I shall certainly go by Ca’ Tirali,” I said, wondering if I had just been given a hint. I would try not to murder dear Pasqual in a fit of jealous fury.
The Tirali mansion is a close neighbor of Ca’ Barbolano, situated on the far side of the Rio San Remo, within sight but not hail. Having delivered Violetta safely to 96, I asked Giorgio to take me there and offered to walk home.
“Not on that leg, you won’t,” he said. “I’ll send one of the boys to wait for you. He can run and fetch me when you’re ready.”
Lounging in the gondola I had almost forgotten my wound, but it did hurt when I walked on it, so I agreed. There is much to be said for decadent self-pity. I disembarked and hammered the door knocker. I gave my name and the Maestro’s to the doorman, expecting him to leave me moldering in the entrance hall while he plodded upstairs and returned with orders to drop me in the canal. Then I would have to start dropping careful hints about murder and the Council of Ten.
Wrong. The flunky bowed very low. “You are expected, sier Alfeo. If you would be so good as to follow me?”
I was so good, but I was also scared prickly as a hedgehog. I had claimed no title when I gave my name. And expected? I do not like being surprised when there may be murderers loose. This reception was too reminiscent of that morning, when I had been expected at the church.
I had never spoken with any member of the Tirali family in my life, and would have been both astonished and hurt to hear that Violetta had ever mentioned me to Pasqual. I knew him by sight, though, and he was waiting for me at the top of the stairs.
He was young, rich, and dazzlingly handsome, clad in embroidered silk jerkin and knee britches and a sleeveless robe of blue velvet trimmed with miniver, for he would not wear his formal gown at home. He had been admitted to the Great Council the previous year and was expected to have a notable career in politics, following his father. He could afford the finest, most beautiful courtesan in the Republic and charm stars down from the sky to make her a bracelet. Just looking at him, I wondered why Violetta bothered to share the time of day with me, let alone her pillow.
He came forward smiling a welcome. “Sier Alfeo! I hoped that was you I heard. I am Pasqual Tirali. This is a great pleasure.”
“The honor is mine, clarissimo.” I went to bow and kiss his sleeve, but he caught me in the embrace with which nobles greet their equals.
“Come in and share a glass of wine,” he said. “My parents are as eager to meet you as I am.” He led me across the wide salone whose ceiling was of gilt and stucco, supported by jasper columns. The fireplace was of black marble, the chandeliers were flamboyant multicolored fantasias from the glassblowers of Murano, and the statues were original marbles or bronzes, not copies. I noted several Romans without noses and some antique Greek urns and kraters, no doubt items from the collection Violetta had mentioned. I did not see King Cheops around, but anyone who can afford to buy such ancient junk must have a serious excess of wealth. The rugs beneath our feet were worth kings’ ransoms and the paintings on the walls made me drool like the source of the Nile. I must have gaped at them as we went by; Pasqual noticed.
“You are a lover of art, sier Alfeo?”
“Is that by one of the Bellini family, sier Pasqual?”
He smiled. “It is indeed. Jacobo Bellini. Let me show you them while we still have some light…” Forgetting his parents waiting to meet me, he took me on a tour of the glorious, shining paintings, rattling off the artists and subjects, and several times commenting on the technique, pointing out Tintoretto’s influence showing up in Titian’s later work, and so on. I was impressed by his knowledge. I wanted to hate him and was charmed against my will.
Very rarely I had been flattered like this in the past, and always by people who wanted something I was determined not to give them-but Prejudgment is no judgment, as the Maestro often tells me.
Eventually Pasqual took me into a small but luxurious salotto and there presented me to the senator and his wife, madonna Eva. Giovanni Tirali was a robust man in his fifties, with bright, questing eyes and a winning smile. He looked neither ruthless nor fanatical, but Violetta had also called him charming, and there I could not disagree. He embraced me, bid me welcome, and flawlessly acted the role of a distinguished and gracious nobleman.
His wife was a silver-haired matron who still retained much of what must have been spectacular beauty. She was not of noble birth, but he had not been stricken from the Golden Book when he married her; his political career had survived and prospered. No doubt she had brought him a stupendous dowry. The Great Council can tolerate that sort of marriage.
I was assigned a seat with a view of the canal and asked what wine I preferred. A footman brought it. It was starlight on the tongue.
“We were reading some of Petrarch’s sonnets together,” the lady said, closing a book. “Are you a poetry lover, clarissimo?”
Oh, how sweet! “I love sonnets as I love the stars, madonna, and know as little about them.”
“But swords you know. We heard that you had a very narrow escape this morning.”
I shrugged modestly. “There were only six of them.”
The laughter was convincing.
“I noticed you limping,” Pasqual said.
“I think they nicked my calf, but I may have done it myself. I was flailing quite wildly.” Nicking with a rapier would be tricky.
“I expect you were,” the senator said, smiling in cherubic innocence. “You were lucky that they tried to take you out with knives. Such bravos usually wear swords and know how to use them. They did not expect to find you armed, obviously.”
Thanks again to the Maestro’s incredible clairvoyance! But how did Tirali know all this? “They probably thought that six unfamiliar swordsmen would be conspicuous and attract the locals’ attention,” I said.
“Very likely. You had a busy morning. You went to see a man in the Greek quarter.”
Alarm horns were blowing. What was going on here? How did he know that? “You are well informed, Your Excellency. You even knew I was coming to call on you.”
He laughed. “I have friends in high places. You came to ask if we noticed anything unusual at Ca’ Imer the other night?” He had a rich, sonorous voice, an orator’s voice that could speak out along the length of the Great Council’s hall and be audible to more than a thousand people.
Now I was more than a little nettled. “And did you notice anything?”