Now things should become more interesting. If anyone in Ca’ Sanudo had wrestled Danese for possession of my rapier and won, it must have been either young Pignate or the gondolier, who could probably have done it with one hand. Moreover, only he could have delivered the corpse to the watergate at Ca’ Barbolano. Rowing a gondola-with a single oar, standing upright on a narrow boat-is no job for an amateur. It takes long practice and many involuntary cold baths to acquire that skill. Fabricio was odds-on suspect for the accomplice paid to dispose of the body.
Giro had been conferring at the door. I detected Pignate’s voice and he followed Giro in.
“Our valet, Pignate Calabro, clarissimo.”
The boy was even more nervous than before. He tucked his hands behind him so we wouldn’t see them shake, but he managed to hold his head up and meet the inquisitor’s eye, although his chin quavered. If the torturers were going to be involved, they would start with the servants.
Gritti chuckled. “I am not going to eat you, Pignate! I just want to find out when sier Danese went out last night, and why. How long have you been in service here?”
Just two months, was the answer, since the Sanudos returned from Celeseo and moved in. He was seventeen. Yes, he could read and write. Told to describe his actions the previous evening, he answered clearly and without hesitation. He had polished shoes, starched ruffs, sorted laundry. He had taken charge of the door while Fabricio was ferrying the master and mistress to their engagement, and later when the gondolier went to fetch them home. He had let Danese out and locked up behind him. There had been no visitors, and no notes handed in for Danese or anyone else. He was eager to help, and when Gritti doubled back or fired unexpected questions, he did not hesitate or contradict himself. In only one respect was his testimony lacking-he had no idea of time as measured by a clock. His life was run by waking and sleeping, by meals and the city bells, but he could not measure a day into twenty-four hours. After all, why should he?
“You are a very good witness, Pignate,” the inquisitor said. “I wish there were more like you.” Without turning his head, he added, “Alfeo, have you any questions?”
To be treated as a colleague by an inquisitor was a scary experience. Why should he so flatter me? Was he just putting me at ease, planning to catch me off guard later?
“Just one, if I may, Excellency. Yesterday I brought back the dead man’s portmanteau. Did you unpack it for him?”
The boy glanced uneasily at Giro. “No, er, sier Alfeo. I was not told…I have not attended sier Danese in the past.” A cavaliere servente might be better rewarded for his services than a valet, but he was still only a servant to the other servants.
“I just wondered,” I said. “That is all. Thank you.”
Pignate was dismissed.
Giro closed the door behind him and turned to the inquisitor. “I am embarrassed to report, clarissimo, that Fabricio Muranese, our gondolier, appears to-”
“Does he have any money?” said Gritti, that patient, understanding grandfather.
“He probably has some,” Giro admitted, face frozen into inscrutability. “He has been in my employ for six or seven years.”
The inquisitor nodded. “And did he tell you anything before he left?”
That was a leading question, but Giro ignored the implications. “He repeated what he told us earlier, when we learned that Dolfin was missing. He brought my parents home, carried in his oar and the cushions from the gondola, bolted the front door, checked the rear door, went to bed. About two hours after curfew, roughly, I came home and he let me in. The men sleep at the front, so they can hear the knocker, and I have a special knock-I am often late.” He glanced at me and showed a rare trace of a smile. “I tip whoever comes, so they almost fight over the honor.”
By now Fabricio would be on the Mestre ferry, or even already on the mainland. As a suspect, he was too obvious. Whether or not the Sanudos had suggested it to him, his flight was a sign of prudence more than of guilt; better exile than interrogation. If the real culprit could not be found, Fabricio could be labeled a murderer and the case closed.
At that moment Vasco slipped in, nodded meaningfully to Gritti, and sat on the chair he had chosen earlier. The nod meant that he had found blood.
Gritti did not criticize Girolamo for letting the gondolier flee. “Before we meet with the ladies, sier Alfeo has a question to ask you.”
Giro turned an inquiring gaze on me. Again my hair follicles twitched in alarm. More and more the inquisitor was making me think of cats and mice, with me in the supporting role. I swallowed hard.
“ Clarissimo, since you mention that you were late coming home, may I inquire where you went last night?”
The navy minister stared at me in silence for a long moment, letting me stew in my impertinence, before saying, “It is no secret. I spend most afternoons and evenings helping out at the scuola. Last night I was cutting elderly toenails.”
Charity work. If true, that would be a better alibi than just about anything. I evicted Girolamo Sanudo from my mental parade of suspects.
“And who hired the servants here?”
“I did. While my father was closing the house at Celeseo, I was opening this one. You approve of my taste?” Giro’s cold stare said that he could guess what I was thinking and nothing in the world mattered less than my opinion.
“So none of them has been in your service more than a couple of months?”
“Fabricio. And Danese, but he was no longer a servant at the time of his death.” Giro did not express any hypocritical regrets. “I hired him about five years ago. Before my duties for the Republic interfered, I provided legal advice for the poor at nominal fees, and he came to me with a problem. I was able to help him with that and he revealed that he was in the service-unwillingly, he assured me-of a man of high standing who is also a notorious pervert. I offered the lad a job as a clerk, which he accepted eagerly, and eventually he graduated to being my mother’s companion.”
But he had not won his way back into his own mother’s favor. Had he even tried? Giro waited to see what else I wanted, but I understood that I had been thoroughly put down and just thanked him politely.
“If the ladies are ready for a few questions?” Gritti prompted. Girolamo nodded and went to see.
The inquisitor said, “Vizio?”
Vasco drew a deep breath. “Excellency, I have the honor to report that I found no bloodstains in the yard here, but a large amount of blood had been spilled in the calle three houses east of here, near the watersteps. Fante Bolognetti was there, calming a trio of sbirri, who were supervising a worker cleaning it up. Much of it had already been washed away by the rain, but traces ran all the way to the watersteps.” Vasco looked smug at having completed so difficult a mission successfully. “We informed the sbirri that Their Excellencies know who died there and I took their names in case they are needed as witnesses.”
So Danese had left Ca’ Sanudo, gone south to Ca’ Barbolano to get his sword, returned north to Ca’ Sanudo to die, and then been transported back to Ca’ Barbolano again. In the names of all the martyrs, why? He had probably never gone near his mother in San Barnaba.
Gritti nodded. “Very good.” The shrewd old eyes stabbed at me. “Why did you ask the page about Dolfin’s portmanteau, Alfeo?”
Prevarication time. I wanted to locate Danese’s gold and find out where it had come from, but if I mentioned the gold itself, I might have to reveal that he had been ferrying sequins from Ca’ Sanudo to Ca’ Barbolano, and out would come the Maestro’s extortionate fee. I must find an alternative explanation. The Maestro insists I cannot tell lies with a straight face, but I can. I did.
“I wondered after I brought it here whether I should have gone through it to check for migrating silverware. You noticed that sier Girolamo admitted Danese had been in some sort of trouble when-”