Black Bridge (15 page)

“Helen Creel was English but her husband was an American colonel from the base near Vicenza. They had a son about twelve or thirteen. He came to the spa with Helen, just the two of them. Very quiet, a nice-looking boy. Helen was crazy about him but not about her husband. Patients sometimes talk a lot, especially with me. Helen was a real talker. She told me her husband was insanely jealous, always suspicious, following her around, asking her to account for every minute of her time. I don't know if she gave him any reason to be like that. I never saw any evidence of it but some men don't trust the best of women, believe me.

“She was going on the same way on that August afternoon. I had just finished applying the mud.” She nodded down at the postcard, on which her younger, smiling self held a bucket of mud. “Helen seemed nervous. She kept looking at the door.”

Rossi was becoming more disturbed. She shook her head slowly, a strangely blank look in her eyes.

“Suddenly the door burst opened. A man stood there, looking at her. Helen started to sit up. Then everything happened so fast. The man raised his hand and there was an explosion. Helen fell back on the bed. There was another explosion and her head twisted. She was looking straight at me and there was blood—and bone—and—and other stuff. Oh, it was terrible! My face was all spattered. There was another explosion and after that one, Helen just—just sank back on the bed and sighed. Her husband—that's who it was, of course—stood there for a few more seconds, looking at her coldly. Then he ran down the corridor. He went up to her room and shot himself right in front of their son.”

The Contessa had become increasingly aghast during Stella Rossi's account and now she said accusingly to Urbino in English: “What a horrid tale you've subjected us to! Even to suggest that it might have something to do with Bobo is pure insanity and—and a betrayal of every trust I've ever placed in you!”

Urbino ignored the Contessa's outburst and asked Rossi in as unemphatic a voice as he could muster if she had ever seen Signor Creel before he came to the therapy room.

“Never,” she said with an apprehensive glance at the Contessa. “He wasn't staying at the hotel. I don't know how he knew how to find Helen.”

Urbino reached into his jacket pocket and took out the photograph of Bobo that Harriet had given him the night of the Contessa's reception—the photograph he had shown to the guard at the Doges' Palace. The Contessa paled.

“Signora Rossi, have you ever seen this man before?”

She looked down at the photograph and nodded her head.

“Yes. He's very handsome. I haven't really
met
him but I've seen his photograph before.”

“In the newspaper?” the Contessa asked, breaking her short silence with what was almost a shout.

“Oh no. A young Englishman showed it to me. Not the same photograph, but it was him. More than a year ago. He came here with his girlfriend. French, she was.”

Urbino and the Contessa exchanged a quick glance.

“I never saw either of them before. They weren't here for any treatments. Just for the day. The man showed me the photograph and asked if I knew who it was. I told him no. He was disappointed, but his girlfriend seemed happy, as if I had said what she hoped I would. He didn't tell me who the man was or why he was interested in him.”

“Did either of them mention the murder of Helen Creel?”

“No.”

Urbino thought for a few moments, then said: “Has anyone else been here recently who was interested in the story of Helen Creel?”

“Yes, Signor, two weeks ago. An Italian gentleman here for treatments. An asthmatic. We have a new therapy for asthmatics—exercise and mud on the chest and back. It does wonders.” She seemed about to become sidetracked into a professional testimonial, but pulled herself back: “He asked me what I knew about Helen Creel. I never heard of her, I said. He was very persistent, but what could he do when I kept denying it? I warned my colleagues. He asked some of them questions but they didn't tell him anything. After all, it's
my
story,” she said with a sudden, perverse burst of proprietorship and pride. “I hope that nothing I've said is going to make any problems for me or the center?”

“Not at all, Signora Rossi,” Urbino assured her. “Just be sure to tell the Venice police what you've told us. You've been a great help.”

The look on the Contessa's face, however, showed that she was nowhere close to agreeing with him.

19

A far from companionable silence dominated their return to Venice. The Contessa hoped the silence, mainly of her own making, would be more uncomfortable for Urbino than it actually was, but he was too lost in thought to feel it keenly. He was going over what they had learned from Stella Rossi, and what it meant to the murders of Moss and Quimper.

Only when the
motoscafo
was pulling into the Ca' da Capo-Zendrini landing did the Contessa break the silence.

“This has nothing to do with Bobo. It's an elaborate web you were supposed to unweave,
not
get caught in!” She added, not able to resist in her passion gilding the lily, “And
not
add your own strands to, thank you very much!”

The Contessa refused Urbino's help and alighted from the boat. She made further, almost comical demonstrations of independence as she bustled ahead without a glance back at Urbino, who felt like a disgraced footman.

He was several paces behind her and had a good view of the firm set to her shoulders and the upward tilt of her head. He caught up with her at the door of the
salotto blu
where she stood looking at the scene within. Bobo was on one knee in front of Festa, her face strewn with tears. He held one of Festa's plump hands in his and was rubbing it. Peppino was yapping at his ankles as if he were assaulting his mistress. Festa was the first to recover from what seemed to be the shock of the Con-tessa's arrival. At any rate, she spoke—or rather shouted—first.

“Orlando is dead! Just like Rosa—and on the same day!”

Bobo relinquished Festa's hand and stood up, managing, with a deft but firm maneuver, to kick aside the still-yapping Peppino. He brushed off his pants.

“The same day?” He seemed genuinely puzzled and disturbed. “Is it really, Livia?”

The Contessa, finally deigning to turn her head in Urbino's direction, said: “
Now
see what's happened!”

Then she swept into the room with the air of leaving Urbino to contemplate his own culpability.

20

“There he was! Lying in the bed, his eyes wide open! Grasping a page of crumpled newspaper. It was terrible!”

“How did you come to find him?” asked the Contessa, dropping onto the sofa next to Festa.

“I have a key to his room. He insisted the desk give me one after he collapsed at your reception. I looked in on him every morning.”

“What time did you find him?” Urbino asked.

“Really, Urbino!” the Contessa said with a touch of exasperation. “Must you be so persistently
yourself
? Give us all a chance to adjust to this new blow.”

“I—I didn't know anything about that,” Festa said. “So you see, when he didn't answer, I became very concerned. Poor Orlando. He might have fallen or had an attack, I thought. I went right to his room and let myself in with the key. I called his name but he didn't answer. I found him just as I've described and went down to the desk.” She contemplated her clasped hands. “It was such a shock to me. You can imagine.”

“Especially since he seemed fine last night about ten,” Bobo said, “but these attacks can come on suddenly.”

Urbino noted the precision with which both of them gave the time.

“He had his inhaler,” he said, remembering it within easy reach next to the photographs of Gava's dead relatives. “Did you see it, Livia?”

“It must have been there somewhere.”

The Contessa's mouth was set in annoyance as she glared at Urbino. Nonetheless, he risked another question.

“Exactly when did Rosa die, Bobo?”

“Rosa has nothing to do with
any
of this.”

Bobo's face was closed, as if guarding a secret.

PART THREE

Desire and Pursuit

1

The next morning at the Questura, after Urbino told Gemelli what he had learned at Abano, Gemelli said: “And now the man who seems to have been nosing around there is dead.”

Gava had died of complete respiratory failure sometime between midnight and six in the morning. His inhaler was found in the garden beneath his open window. Only his fingerprints, and those of the hotel employee who found the inhaler, were on it.

“Gava could have made those threats against Casarotto-Re and planted the evidence in the couple's room,” Gemelli said.

“But Gava didn't kill them! If anything, he was killed because he knew who the murderer is or maybe he was killed to lead us down the wrong path.”

“Perhaps.” Gemelli lit a cigarette and inhaled deeply. “Something has surfaced. Your Contessa withdrew a large sum from the Banca Commerciale Italiana the other day.”

A chill fell over Urbino.

“Don't forget that she's assuming almost all expenses for the bridge of boats.”

“It was a
cash
withdrawal.”

“What you're implying is that the Contessa has turned over this money to the Barone.”

“We'll just wait to see if the money turns up in the
right
hands. But you could find out more quickly. You're her friend.”

“The Contessa is far more likely to accept an intrusion by the police than by a close friend!”

“True enough, but you're in a better position for damage control. And however closely attached she is to Casarotto-Re, she'll cut the strings immediately if she believes she's being used for his own shady ends.”

“You don't know the Contessa at all,” Urbino said, wondering how much he himself could claim to know her these days. “She's a faithful friend.”

“A ‘faithful friend,' yes, but what about a ‘woman scorned,' even a ‘lover betrayed'?”

The Commissario's smile leered at Urbino through a thick cloud of cigarette smoke.

“Livia Festa said that she has a key to Gava's suite,” Urbino said, hoping to move things away from the Contessa. “But he didn't seem to like her and didn't want her poking around in his affairs.”

“
Had
a key. We have it now. She says Gava got an extra one from the hotel but no one supports her story. We're making the rounds of the likely places it could have been copied. Festa claims she didn't touch anything in the room. Clear thinking under the circumstances. But why aren't her fingerprints on the doorknob? Because she wore gloves! At eight-thirty in the morning to step down the hall? A maid saw her come out of Gava's door. White as a sheet, she said, and carrying a large pocketbook. She didn't say anything to the maid about Gava being dead. The maid went to make up the room next to Gava's. Doesn't know if Festa returned to her own room or not. We never would have heard about that key if the maid hadn't seen her. The maid knows her work schedule precisely. Says Festa came out of Gava's room about twenty minutes after eight. She didn't show up at the desk until eight-forty. Claims she came directly down. I doubt it.”

So did Urbino. Festa had made too much a point of saying she had found Gava's body at exactly eight-thirty.

“You think Festa murdered Gava?”

“Possible, but maybe she was just checking to see if the deed had been done. Tidying up, so to speak.”

Scattering ashes over the pile of papers on his desk, Gemelli fished out one sheet and handed it to Urbino.

“A list of Gava's possessions.”

Urbino ran through the items. Near the top were the photographs Gava had called his “portable graveyard.” Gava had said they would probably be thrown away once he died, a day that he had said wasn't too far away. A premonition? Or could he have had reason to fear for his life?

“The lab is running tests on the medications. One bottle was completely empty. Thrown into the wastebasket in the bathroom. The bottle had the name of a drug that retards attacks.”

Urbino continued to stare at the list, puzzled but not knowing exactly why.

“It seems he had only one inhaler.”

“Found in the garden two hours before Festa discovered his body.”

“But why throw it out the window?”

“To make it look as if Gava died because he didn't have access to it after it had ‘accidentally' fallen, I suppose.”

“He seems to have died on the same day his sister did—and in the same way. He was depressed about the anniversary of her death coming up, maybe even afraid. And another thing. Moss knew who Gava's sister was. And now Gava is dead as well as Moss and Quimper.”

“
Cherchez la femme
! Or
les femmes:
Gava's sister, Helen Creel, and Festa! And what man is in the middle of them all? Casarotto-Re, who's now bestowing his favors on your Contessa! Maybe she'd be interested to know that a waiter at Harry's says Casarotto-Re and Festa were holding hands the night Moss and Quimper were murdered.”

“They considered marrying once. Maybe that explains their closeness.”

“Depends on how you look at it. The waiter also says they were arguing furiously at points. About what he doesn't know.”

2

On his walk from the Questura, Urbino suddenly realized how nervous he felt—nervous about what Gava's death meant.

It wasn't just that he now had to reconsider the direction he had been moving in, perhaps retrace his steps to some crucial earlier point to prevent himself from becoming completely—disastrously—lost.

Gava's death, following so closely after Moss's and Quimper's murders, couldn't be a mere coincidence. It had to be related to the bloody scene at the Rialto. Surely he couldn't now be faced with two different murderers.