"He the wizard?" Matteo mumbled.
"Nostradamus is not a wizard," I protested quickly. "He's a wise man and a seer. He's very clever and he wants to catch the strangler. It would help if you could answer some questions."
He scowled at me. "The sbirri send you?"
"No."
He belched. "The Ten?"
"No." The buzz of talk had resumed in the magazzen now and I didn't think anyone could overhear our conversation, but I would have bet my liver that at least one person in that room would be reporting to the Ten before nightfall. "If you can tell us what you know about him, it would help Nostradamus to find the Strangler." Somehow the killer's description had become his name in my mind.
"Didn't get a good look at him." The giant pushed down on the table to straighten himself. Amazingly, he even seemed to sober up a little also. "He came early, 'bout sunset. Boy brought a note, see, and she sent back word that she would be ready then. And he came, but I didn't see his face much."
"What did you see of him? Was he big? Small?"
"All men are small," Matteo said deadpan. He had probably been making that same joke for forty years. It was a reflex. "Dressed like a friar. All I could see inside his hood was beard."
"Dressed like a friar?" Violetta said. "But you think he wasn't a friar?"
"Didn't smell like a friar."
That was not conclusive evidence. Vows of poverty do rule out spare linen and luxuries like soap, but many laymen in Venice cannot afford them either.
"Masked?" I asked.
"This's Carnival, isn' it?"
"But did you see anything of his face at all?"
"Beard. Gray beard."
"Did you see what he was wearing on his feet?" I asked, not expecting an answer.
"Bare feet. Saw them when he came down. Had bare feet."
I glanced at Violetta and saw my own doubts mirrored in her. It takes a lifetime to become accustomed to walking the streets with bare feet. Even genuine friars often wear sandals. Our murderer had taken his disguise very seriously.
It took a lot of questions and repetition, but gradually a picture emerged. The former hero had sunk to being a harlot's doorkeeper. He lived in a room at street level. Anyone entering from the calle faced a staircase going up, with Matteo's door at the bottom standing open during business hours. The big man let visitors in; more important, he would see them leave, so no one could get away without paying. There were two rooms upstairs. The other one was occupied by someone named Lena, who was out of town. He did not say that she had gone off to the mainland to have an abortion, because that would make him accessory to murder, but that was what I suspected.
Caterina's had been a grim life for a woman who was once the toast of the Republic and had sat for the great Titian. She had still been able to insist on appointments, apparently. Had she lived another five years or so she would have been sitting in the window, bare-breasted, trying to haul the drunks in off the street.
Matteo had seen the Strangler and told him to go up-"Door on the right."
Then he had heard some bumping-"Very fast worker, I thought."
After that nothing until the second customer of the evening had plied the door knocker.
Matteo had offered him a seat, planning to go up and tap on the bedroom door, but the friar was already coming down, silent on his bare feet. The friar had handed him the agreed fee of one lira and left. The second man had been directed to the door on the right, had gone up, and had run down again, screaming. By that time the friar had vanished into the dark and the fog.
Caterina had been lying on the floor, fully dressed, with a purple groove around her neck where the rope had dug into the flesh.
There had been no sex, no robbery, just death.
No, Caterina had not had an alarm bell like Violetta's. She had sometimes banged on the floor, and then Matteo would go up and thump the john a few times before throwing him out. Evidently the friar had overpowered her before she could signal properly and all Matteo had heard had been her death throes.
Violetta was Medea, eyes blazing green in the gloom, ready to go and inflict a few death throes herself the moment she knew the target.
"That leaves one big question," I said. "I'm sure the sbirri asked you already, but I must. Did you hear the man's name?" Matteo would not have read the note.
"No," the big man growled. "But I know the name he gave her. She laughed, see, and told me an old friend was coming to see her at sunset."
"Did you see the note?" I asked eagerly. "Did you give it to the sbirri?"
No, he mumbled. He'd looked but couldn't find it. The sbirri thought the friar must have found it and taken it.
"But she did tell you the name of this surprise caller?"
Matteo reached for the wine bottle, tilted it up, and drained it. If he had been drinking like this all week, it was amazing he hadn't killed himself yet.
"She did. Sbirri wouldn't believe me. You won't."
"Try me. Nostradamus has taught me to believe all kinds of unbelievable things."
"Gattamelata." Matteo's eyes burned with a challenge to call him a liar.
I would never be so stupid as to do that, but Gattamelata means "Honeycat." I looked at Violetta, whose mouth framed a perfect O of surprise.
So now we had a name for the Strangler, except that Gattamelata had been dead for a hundred and fifty years.
8
Giorgio was waiting for us when the noon bells rang. As we were rowed swiftly along the Grand Canal, Violetta and I chewed over the Honeycat problem. That nom de guerre was made famous by Erasmo of Narni, one of the greatest of the condottieri who ravaged Italy in the intercity wars of the quattrocento. Toward the end of his career Erasmo led the armies of Venice with some success, although he is mostly remembered for being honest, a rarity in his profession. After his death in Padua, the Republic commissioned an incredible equestrian statue of him by Donatello to stand in that city. Bronze statues do not go around strangling women.
"It must be a nickname," I declared profoundly.
Minerva gave me a pitying look. "Did you work that out all by yourself, darling, or did Matteo drop you a hint? But not just an idle pet name, I think. Caterina knew it at once and called him an old friend. That sounds as if it was generally used. Other people might have known him by that name also."
"You're jumping to conclusions," I protested. "The other victims may have had completely different names for him. You need to find someone else who knew him as Honeycat before you can make such assumptions."
"Me," she said, frowning in annoyance. "I remember stories about a man called Honeycat. He was reputed to be very generous and quite dashing. It was a long time ago, though, when I was just starting out, and I don't know his real name."
I was encouraged. "We can find out what it was, though! Lucia and Caterina were both, um, mature women. You have a long-ago memory. Now that could be a pattern!" And Battista had said that Giovanni Gradenigo had known Caterina Lotto "years ago."
Minerva nodded impatiently, as if she had seen that ages ago. "I'll ask Alessa."
Alessa is one of her business partners, part owner of Number 96. Alessa still supervises the brothel, but has retired from active male entertainment. She is a very shrewd woman, who had the sense to get out while she still had her health and money. I like her, and she would still be worth a serious cuddle.
I swung opened the door of the apartment for Violetta and followed her in. To my pleased surprise, the Maestro was halfway along the salone, just about to enter the dining room. He was leaning on his two canes, but at least he was mobile again. He waited for us, leering a welcome.
"Did you sign the contract, madonna?"
"I did. Send Alfeo around to collect the expense money."