Georgina raised one of her beautifully arched eyebrows. 'Did you ever hear, er… if the party was a success?'
'It depends what you mean by a success,' Roger smiled. Both of them told me afterwards that they had found the other most interesting, but what form their interest in one another took it was not for me to enquire. However, the Princess is now revelling in her freedom, and she is very rich. Venice has only unpleasant associations for her, so she plans to leave it; and, as she liked England, it is possible that she may come here to live. If so, perhaps one day she may confide in you whether Boneparte is as irresistible as a lover as he is a general.'
'You imply that Malderini is dead.'
'He is. Boneparte gave him to me.' Roger's face suddenly became grim. 'I had him taken outside and seated on a stone bench in the garden. I took out the thin plaited rope of Clarissa's hair from under my shirt, and showed it to him. Then I went behind him and threw a loop of it round his neck. As I drew it tight, his cries were silenced. For a few minutes his feet mad a horrid drumming on the stone paving while I twisted the rope tighter and tighter, then held it fast. Afterwards I had his body thrown into the lagoon.'
For the space of a few heartbeats they were silent. Then, to distract Roger's thoughts from the awful duty he had fulfilled, Georgina said, 'Since poor Clarissa has been dead nine months, and you have kept your oath, maybe you now feel both free and inclined to savour again a woman's caresses?'
'Why, yes.' He turned to smile at her, then put an arm about her shoulders and drew her to him. 'And it's just as well that I went direct to Venice instead of returning first to England; for I vow the sight of your sweet lips and eyes would have sadly tempted me to break my oath.'
'Dear Roger. But wait one moment!' She threw up a hand as he bent his head to kiss her. 'There remains a point on which I wonder the Corsican did not call you to account. He stipulated that he'd have nought to do with the Princess should it mean that he could be accused afterwards of stealing her from her husband. Yet that is what happened. Malderini denounced him as a seducer before both his fellow Venetians and Junot's soldiers; I'd not have thought Boneparte a man to let that pass.' 'Nor did he; and that last fence could have queered my pitch when I as good as had the whole game in my hands. When I asked him to give me Malderini, he refused. Mark you; it was not that he has scruples about married women. His stipulation was only a precaution against being accused of misusing his power for such an end should anything have got out; and I had already convinced him that the production of the effigy would dispose of the rumours that he had left the mainland. But he snapped at me that, as it was I who had led him unwittingly to wrong Malderini, 1 should not benefit by his capture, and the he should suffer no worse punishment than his co-conspirators.' 'How, then, did you get over that?'
'I reminded him that when I had offered to arrange for him to sup tete-a-tete with the Princess, I had guaranteed that her doing so should give her husband no grounds for complaint.' 'But it had, and he did complain, most bitterly.' 'True'; Roger smiled. 'But he had no grounds for doing so. Can you not guess the answer to this riddle? I began to suspect it in India; Sirisha confirmed my suspicions when I got into the Malderini Palace as an Arab perfume seller. My reply to Boneparte was to step up to Malderini. Keeping my eyes lowered, 1 seized his coat and shirt, close up to the neck with both hands, and tore them apart with all my strength. He struggled wildly but the two soldiers who had brought him forward held his arms. Wrenching and tearing, in less than a minute I had him near naked to the waist, revealing two great ugly sagging witch's breasts. Of the two Malderini twins who had gone to India ten years before, it was the sister who had murderer her brother and taken his identity. The evil creature who had forced upon me this nightmare vendetta was a woman!'