"I don't remember trivia," Jacopo said sulkily. "I'm not your precious Alfeo."
"No. I think you are getting very tangled. Try telling the truth for a little while."
"I did tell you the truth. I just tidied it up a little in order to be tactful. If you want the raw facts, I was helping Domenico when Bernardo received your letter and came to show it to him. They agreed that you were an interfering busybody charlatan, that you were probably hoping to blackmail us, and that your gutter-feeding barnabotto messenger boy was a disgrace to his ancestry and did not deserve an answer. And they ordered me to have nothing to do with him, either."
Nostradamus beamed. "Splendid! See how refreshing it is? Keep it up. So you went and told donna Alina?"
"Of course. She's been driven crazy by a lifetime in captivity. She told me to intercept him outside. It made her day."
"What changed in December?"
"December?"
"Why did donna Alina suddenly decide she needed a cavaliere servente two weeks before Christmas? She had lived eight years a widow without one?"
Jacopo shrugged his heavy shoulders. "Yes. I don't know. She took pity on me, maybe. I told you they were going to throw me out at the end of the month."
"You don't know? Her decision saved you at the very edge of the precipice and you didn't make it your business to find out why? You snoop and sneak and eavesdrop. You spy and pry and lie. What changed in December?"
"Nothing I know of except I got a job."
"Who killed Gentile?"
"Zorzi."
"Rubbish! He would never have used a family heirloom as a weapon. According to what you told Alfeo, it was you who informed the Ten that the khanjar dagger was missing-not the Ten directly, perhaps, but you blabbed it out in front of witnesses. What witnesses? Why were you present? Who put you up to it?"
"Oh, this is ridiculous!" Jacopo said. "I don't remember. I was twelve years old and had just lost my father. The family was being brutal because he was no longer around to protect me. The servants were sneering that I would be sent away. I'm told that I told someone, but I don't remember doing so. I was only a kid."
"You knew that someone in the family had killed your father with that dagger. Obviously it was his wife, because she was never allowed out and had to use the only weapon she could find. Zorzi fled into exile to protect her."
Silence.
"Why don't you answer?"
"You didn't ask a question. If she killed him, why has she hired you to prove that Zorzi didn't?"
"I can explain that, but I won't. First, do you know what an accomplice is, Jacopo? Or what a conspiracy is?"
"I'm not a lawyer."
"Nor am I. But someone in that house is showering you with money so you can bull your way around the flophouses of Venice, hunting for certain women. Their names come out of this book. Once you have found them, they die. Once might be coincidence. Four times means you are as guilty as the killer. You are an accomplice both before and after the fact. Your head will roll on the Piazzetta. Where were you last Saturday night?"
"In a flophouse. With two girls and Zaneto, our chief boatman. The bed was quite crowded at times."
I assumed that the truth had just changed again, but keeping up with the recording was taking too much of my attention to leave me time for analyzing.
"The women are kitchen maids by day, I suppose," Nostradamus said acidly. "You arranged an alibi for each one of the murders, I am sure. Don't waste your breath denying it. Possibly everyone in the family does, because the actual murders are committed by a hired killer. Do you know his name?"
Jacopo stood up. "You are pigheaded stupid, old man."
"Are they all in it, or just one of them?"
Silence.
"You see, Jacopo," the Maestro said, "nobody wants Zorzi back. Domenico and Bernardo would have to share the fraterna; their mother would get beheaded for murder, and you would be out of a job. That's why the women are dying-because Zorzi was with one of them that night and she can give him an alibi. Without that he dare not return."
This was very much what I had suggested the previous day and been mocked for. Jacopo was not the only one spinning yarns.
"You asked why donna Alina hired me to expose the real killer. Because to clear Zorzi's name, I must find the woman who can give him an alibi. Remember that Alina insisted that my contract be changed-you yourself wrote in the change. She wants to be the first one I inform of that woman's identity. Then the witness will be exterminated before the Ten's sbirri can get to her. Understand?"
Jacopo folded his arms, but he towered over the Maestro and Violetta in their chairs, and I dropped my pen, bracing myself to leap to their defense if necessary.
"This is sewage, pure sewage!" he said. "You are crazy. How can you possibly find a particular whore, not just on the morning after but eight years after?"
"I have found her. The last companion named in this book," the Maestro continued, "is 'Tonina Q.' Zorzi spent the night before the murder with Tonina, but she is mentioned many times before that, and I have established that he did, in fact, visit her the following night also. That fact was not recorded in the book, doubtless because of the tragic event that occurred then. Tonina was married and not a courtesan, but her first name really was Tonina, Tonina Civran."
"It's not as glamorous as 'Violetta Vitale,' " Violetta said.
I realized my jaw had fallen open, and closed it. Fortunately she was looking down at her hands, not at me. "I was very young and very poor, so I was married off to a man very old and very rich. Then I met Zorzi, who showed me what I lacked. We were so in love… I simply cannot describe the difference he made to my life. It was spring after winter, it was daybreak. After his father's murder, he insisted I must not come forward to testify, but I was terrified that he might be accused of the killing. I went to my husband and told him what had happened. I said that I would have to report this to the Ten. He ordered me out of his house-but by then Zorzi had already fled to the mainland. After that I needed to earn a living, and I knew only one way I could do it." She gave Jacopo a wistful smile.
He made a skeptical noise, which I was hard put not to echo. "And just how did Doctor Nostradamus find you?"
"I found him. I live next door in Number Ninety-six. Alfeo and I are friends. When my friend Lucia was murdered, I asked the doctor to hunt down the killer for me, and that murder turned out to be related to Gentile Michiel's. Venice is not so enormous that such things cannot happen." Smile again, sadder than before.
I did not believe a word. She had never been Tonina Civran. The Maestro had put her up to this; it was worse than merely using her as bait. It was human sacrifice.
"So she will clear your brother's name," the Maestro said. "Alfeo, when will you have the report ready for the Ten?"
"Not long, master," I said, not knowing what answer he wanted.
"Good. Go and tell your mistress, Jacopo, that I shall send Alfeo over with my report this evening. If she wants to catch the next traghetto across to Mestre first, that is her privilege, but I shall claim my fee."
Jacopo took a step closer, young and big and angry. I gathered my feet under me, ready to leap if he made a hostile move.
"You're a wrinkled old fraud," he told the Maestro. "That Basilica was swarming with priests and nuns. I have two other siblings who could have taken that dagger, and at least one of them was in the Basilica that night." He turned and strode over to the door.
"Wait! Jacopo, do you know the meaning of the word 'entailed'?"
He turned, glowering. "Tell me."
"It refers to property that can only change hands by inheritance. Donna Alina inherited her wealth when her brothers died in the plague. No matter what she may have promised you, those lands and buildings must pass to her own children when she dies. Any documents she may have given you regarding them are worthless."