“Your master said he sent you to pack the portmanteau. Did you or didn’t you pack it yourself?”
“It had never been unpacked. I just threw in a few loose clothes he had left lying around. Hosts shouldn’t rummage through their guests’ luggage.”
Gritti gave me the sort of silent stare that is intended to make a witness keep babbling. I took the chance to change the subject.
“I admit I misjudged sier Girolamo. I am impressed by a member of the Collegio cutting old folks’ toenails.”
He shrugged and allowed the diversion, although he had noticed it. “Be more impressed by a man who does the Lord’s work being elected to office. That was mostly a compliment to his father and I am sure that sier Girolamo will be glad to see his term end. Young Sanudo took a vow of celibacy when he was sixteen, you see. His father talked him out of entering a monastery, but I think there is a time limit on that promise.” The old rascal was flaunting the Ten’s intimate knowledge of the nobility’s secrets. “A few years later Zuanbattista married again to try for an heir, but madonna Eva has given him only one daughter and a stillborn son.”
No doubt Girolamo’s religious zeal explained his drab clothes and frigid self-control. I had never known Violetta to be so wrong about a man before, but he was not a potential patron and had only just come into the public eye, so her error could be excused. “He likes to keep pretty boys and girls around just to torture himself?” I asked.
“Or to test his resolve. For all I know he wears a hair shirt, too.” The inquisitor rearranged his jowls in a pout to indicate that the subject was closed.
But for me a new door had opened. “So madonna Eva’s hopes of one day being dogaressa were not so unreasonable after all! If Girolamo takes holy orders and turns his back on the world, and Grazia is married off to a wealthy Contarini, then the family fortune need not be saved for the next generation. The mainland estates can be cashed in to finance sier Zuanbattista’s continuing career?”
Gritti’s answer was a stony stare. I ignored it as I recalculated motives. I had not given enough thought to the matter of dowry, which in Grazia’s case could be several tens of thousands of ducats, enough to make the lapdog Danese into a very rich man by normal standards. Surely the murder on top of the elopement scandal would destroy whatever was left of Zuanbattista’s reputation? Would he banish Grazia to a convent now, or find her another husband? How much dowry would she bring the second time around? For that matter, how much had Danese been promised? Now my personal list of suspects had acquired some new names-the rejected suitor, Zaccaria Contarini, who had been cheated out of a large fortune in dowry, and even Danese’s sisters, who had all married commoners. If Danese had left a will…
“What’s squirming around inside your agile young brain now?” the inquisitor demanded.
I jumped. “I hadn’t realized, Excellency, that if the marriage contract was signed before last night”-which might explain why Danese had been allowed to move back in as Grazia’s acknowledged husband-“then he may have died a comparatively rich man.”
Gritti snorted. “And perhaps the young scoundrel had debts that had suddenly become worth collecting? Have you gotten that far, Alfeo Zeno?”
23
Z uanbattista ushered in his womenfolk. Madonna Eva was magnificent in full mourning, swathed in black lace and taffeta. She had experience of mortality and funerals, of course, and would keep a complete outfit ready in her closet. Black flattered her fair coloring. To Grazia a brush with death must be a new experience, and even to my untutored eye her gown looked as if it had been assembled in haste and fastened on her with pins. We visitors rose and bowed, remaining standing until the ladies were seated, side by side on a divan.
Eva lifted back her veil. After a moment’s hesitation Grazia copied her, revealing the red eyes and pink nose of recent weeping. Her mother had not wept, but any joy she felt at being rid of an unwanted son-in-law was well hidden behind maternal concern for her bereaved child. Even if the romance had been a flash in the pan or puppy love contrived by an experienced seducer, Grazia’s shock and loss must be genuine. I felt truly sorry for her, and perversely happy that at least one woman mourned Danese Dolfin.
“I realize that this is very painful for you,” Gritti said, “and I will be as quick as I can. When your husband announced that he had to go out last night, madonna, where did he say he was going?”
Grazia sniffled. “To visit his mother in San Barnaba.”
“He did not mention anyone else he might see on the way?”
Another sniffle, a head shake.
“She says he did not arrive, and we have reason to believe that he was killed on his way back here, not far from this house, about two hours after he left you. So what was he doing in the meantime?”
She whispered, “I do not know, Your Excellency.”
There was a long pause, while the inquisitor sat as if half-asleep. I wondered if he was about to spring some dramatic catch-them-napping question, as he had with the maids, but all he said was, “Alfeo, have you anything to ask?”
“No, Excellency.”
He smiled without looking at me. “Then why don’t you reveal to us the terrible curse that your master thinks has been laid upon this house?”
If I blurted out my suspicions without confirming them first, I would be dismissed as a lunatic. “We are still one short, Excellency. Madonna Fortunata Morosini is not here.”
Gritti frowned as if annoyed that he had forgotten her.
Still standing by the door, Giro said, “She is having one of her bad days,” as his father was saying, “She could not contribute anything, Your Excellency.”
Nothing could have aroused an inquisitor’s suspicions faster than those simultaneous refusals. Gritti ruffled up his feathers. “Nevertheless, if my precocious young friend wants to try interrogating her, let us humor him.”
He could have been more tactful. Zuanbattista glared at me as if he were about to choke, and Giro marched angrily out of the room, which was his version of a screaming tantrum.
The icy silence remained behind.
“That portrait of your honored brother, madonna,” I asked Eva. “When was it painted?”
Although she had no choice but to put up with the state inquisitor, she was no more in favor of the upstart, busybody apprentice than her husband was. The clefts framing her mouth deepened into canyons. “When they were married, of course.”
“And how long ago was that?”
“Fifteen years ago, just a month before Grazia was born.”
Assuming that the painter had not flattered his subjects too extremely, the woman ought to be in her thirties by now, if she still lived. I was about to ask her name when a cane tap-tap-tapped outside.
Giro entered, walking slowly and supporting Fortunata on his arm. The men rose while he guided her to a chair. Once she was settled, he presented the inquisitor, speaking loudly. She peered at us as if the room was filled with dense fog and perhaps it was, for her. I could imagine nothing in the world less likely than the decrepit Fortunata Morosini wrestling a rapier away from a ruthless young ne’er-do-well like Danese Dolfin. Nor did I expect her to be much help to the inquisitor in the investigation. But the Maestro had been right-her resemblance to the bride in the portrait was undeniable now that I knew to look for it. My scalp prickled.
“Ottone Gritti?” she muttered. “I knew a Marino Gritti.”
The inquisitor sat down again and stretched his legs as if his left hip hurt. “My son, madonna. You have heard of the sad death of sier Danese?”
“Eh?”
Louder: “You have heard of the sad death of sier Danese?”
“Not sad!” She bared a few yellow fangs. “Pretty-boy thief, that’s what he was. Good riddance.”
“Why do you call him thief, madonna? What did he steal?”
In the background Giro was shaking his head.