“We were on our way to the palace,” Sanudo explained. “We are already late, of course.” He meant late for the daily meeting of the full Collegio, which the doge and his counselors attend, and therefore should include both him and Girolamo. “I came around this way to ask the good doctor if he had seen any sign of Danese Dolfin, who disappeared from our house last night.” He stopped then and waited, but it was obvious that he had heard the news-possibly from the fanti or even the Marcianas downstairs-and his eyes kept flickering to the draped shape on the medical couch.
“He has been called to the Lord, clarissimo.” Gritti led him over to the corner and uncovered Danese’s face.
Zuanbattista’s reaction seemed convincing, neither too much nor too little. You cannot tell, though. A man who has killed another in near darkness may faint at the first daylight view of his corpse, but I have seen mass murderers display complete indifference.
“He was found this morning, downstairs,” the inquisitor explained. “He had been run through with a rapier. My wife will join me in extending our deepest sympathy to you and your family. Your poor daughter will be distraught.”
Zuanbattista flashed him a searching look, as if he suspected mockery, or was tempted to say that his stupid daughter was the cause of all this trouble. “Downstairs? Here?”
“In the loggia. He was not killed there, though.”
“And you have no idea who did this, or why?”
“Not yet. He may have been an innocent bystander caught up in the affair that Doctor Nostradamus has been investigating for us. That is the learned doctor’s belief, at any rate-that Dolfin was unfortunate enough to be handy when the person we seek wished to confound the doctor’s investigations by leaving a corpse on his doorstep. When did he leave Ca’ Sanudo?”
Only now did Zuanbattista turn around as if to inspect his audience-Vasco, the Maestro, and me. We all bowed. He did not respond, so perhaps he did not even see us. “According to my daughter, they spent a quiet evening together, just talking. They have had very little time alone to get to know each other.” Much too little, he meant. “About eight o’clock he informed her that he had a call to make. She was annoyed, of course, but he explained that he had promised to visit his mother in San Barnaba and would not be long. He assured Grazia that he had enough money to hire gondolas. About an hour later she retired and eventually went to sleep. Obviously, he had not returned by morning.”
“Your gondolier says…?”
“Nothing. Fabricio had already left to fetch my wife and me from a concert. Giro was also out.”
Gritti turned his milky blue eyes on me. “How long would it take you to get here from Ca’ Sanudo, youngster?”
The snag, of course was that Santa Maria Maddalena is in Cannaregio, north of the Grand Canal, and San Remo is south of it, in San Polo, so a pedestrian must go around by the Rialto bridge. “At night? No more than ten minutes if I managed to flag a gondola, Excellency. On foot, fifteen or twenty. If Danese was not armed, he might have taken longer to avoid the seedy areas.”
In other words, we could not tell exactly, but the timing was reasonable. San Remo was not on his shortest route to San Barnaba, but not far off it. He had arrived here about half past eight, according to Giorgio, and left before the curfew rang at nine, when Luigi was supposed to lock up. And he had died, by the Maestro’s estimate, before ten. At an unknown hour before the heavy rain started, his remains had been delivered like groceries back at the Ca’ Barbolano. Where he had died was now much more important than when. There had been time for him to walk to anywhere in the city.
“You are telling me,” Sanudo said, “that my son-in-law’s death was just one of those random killings that so grievously blight our city?”
Silence.
He was tall and doubtless still quite strong, but he was old. Despite his age, if messer Zuanbattista Sanudo were a trained fencer, I could imagine him besting Danese with a sword. Not at wrestling, though. If the fire vision had given me a true witness of events, Zuanbattista had not personally murdered his son-in-law, but he did have a potent motive and he certainly had enough money to hire bravos to do it for him. Such alley rats usually work in gangs, while pyromancy had shown only one assailant. How literally should I take those visions?
“That is one hypothesis,” Gritti conceded at last.
“But you do not believe it.” Despite his normal patrician stolidity, Zuanbattista’s craggy face flushed almost as red as his counselor’s robe. Street crime belongs to the Signori di Notte, not the Three. Gritti was investigating treason.
They stared hard at each other, those two old men, one red-robed and one black-, one tall and angular, one short and grandfatherly-at the very least they must have worked together for decades, on and off, on councils and boards and committees. For all I knew they had been friends since boyhood, yet now one must consider the possibility of arresting the other for treason. Zuanbattista had not said, Et tu, Brute? aloud, but he was looking it.
Gritti sighed. “I did not mean that. I could believe that the choice of victim was happenstance had he been found floating in a canal, but the location where the corpse was left was certainly chosen for some reason. I am honor bound to distrust the coincidence, as Nostradamus does, of a murder complicating his sensitive work for the Ten.”
Zuanbattista seemed remarkably unimpressed by that. “You will forgive me if I suggest that the choice of victim might equally be intended as a distraction to turn suspicion on my house and away from the real quarry?”
“That is another valid hypothesis, clarissimo,” Gritti agreed. “Why did you come here, though? Did you not inquire first whether he ever arrived at his mother’s house?”
The pause grew into a silence before Sanudo said, “Grazia seems to have made a mistake when she took note of madonna Agnese Correr’s address. It is somewhere in San Barnaba, but when Giro and I inquired where she told us, the lady was not known there.”
Other residents of the parish would know where she lived, but would not willingly disclose that information to strangers, especially two senior members of the government.
Gritti glanced at me. “If memory serves…?”
I sighed. “The lady’s name is Agnese Corner, not Correr.”
“A handwriting slip,” the inquisitor said soothingly. “It is not the first time those two noble patrician names have been confused. You have not met the lady?”
Zuanbattista was not deceived by the politeness. “No. The day we learned of the marriage we sent Danese off with an invitation to meet us, but she declined, pleading infirmity. Danese told us that in fact she was ashamed of her poverty and asked us to be patient while he found her some clothes worthy of his future station. And now she must be informed of her son’s death, and asked her wishes about the funeral.”
“The priest will know where she lives,” Gritti said smoothly. The Ten’s informers would know, too. “I will send word, so he can go and comfort her. It will be best if I come and make some inquiries of your household right away, lustrissimo, and get it over with. You will be returning home now, I imagine, to break the tragic news to your daughter?”
And the welcome news to your wife? Did he mean that also? Was he hinting that he could carry the entire Sanudo establishment off to the palace for interrogation? That would be how lesser folk would be treated.
Sanudo’s shoulders sagged. “Yes, we must. Can you spare a man to carry a message to His Serenity, explaining our absence?”