The grip on my arm loosed, and I hurried forward.
The man was already on his feet, head down and shoulder propped against the wall. Blood poured from his nose, but he ignored me completely until I had summoned enough Italian to ask if he was hurt. He shook his head, though that had to be untrue. But when he turned aside before the contents of his stomach surged forth, and he did so without crying out in pain, we were reassured that no major damage had been done.
He remained standing—supported, but upright. Then at my use of the word polizia, he gave me a sickly smile and shook his head again, making an effort to step away from the wall. After a moment, he shambled away. We watched him go.
“He was lucky, Holmes.”
“Yes.”
“But we should tell the police.”
“Those were the police.”
I gaped at him. “What? Those…thugs?”
“Did you not notice, there was no gleam of white shirt beneath their jackets?”
“Blackshirts?”
“Yes.”
The dark alleyway seemed to crawl with threat and the sour stench of vomit.
“I believe I’ve had enough fresh air for tonight, Holmes.”
Chapter Twenty-two
BETWEEN THE HEAT AND THE disquiet, neither of us slept as firmly as I might have hoped. We were on our balcony at dawn, watching the city creep into existence.
Shapes emerged from the darkness, shy, deceptive. Across the San Marco Basin, the pale front of Palladio’s San Giorgio took on substance: a domed outline, the tower. Off to my left grew the hump and jumble of trees in the public gardens, their organic shapes foreign in a city where soft referred to marble and lead. The pale curve of the Riva degli Schiavoni described the water’s edge before its route veered towards the Arsenale, that centuries-old ship-yard that had been the base of Venice’s immense power. Venice was full of that kind of invisible pull, with patterns and shapes that only a knowledge of history would explain—and even then, mere explanation was rarely sufficient.
It was a city with a feminine face over masculine muscles. Where larch pillars sunk in mud held up palaces of Istrian stone—stone that itself was a product of the sea. A place where one’s main floor was above the ground, where a thousand years of work could be wiped out by a wave, where a city ruler could be felled by an anonymous note or a labourer’s family sleep beneath a Tiepolo fresco.
Venice begged for metaphor, and at the same time, defied any attempt at reducing it to words, notes, or pigment. For centuries, Venice had fascinated artists of the ineffable, keeping Tintoretto and Titian and Veronese busy with one attempt after another at capturing the essence beneath its surface beauty. The city was a poem one never truly understood, a piece of art that kept pulling the eye. This must be what music was to Holmes: a surface texture that suggested a deeper meaning.
The island across from me shimmered beneath the growing dawn. I could now see masts from the marina at San Giorgio’s base. Closer in, a gondolier plied his way towards the Grand Canal, and I became aware of his voice, greeting the rising sun with song: “O sole mio…”
And with cliché, the magic shattered and I laughed aloud.
Chapter Twenty-three
RUSSELL’S EAGER RUSH TO DEFEND a casual victim the previous night had troubled Holmes, and rode his mind as he sat on the hotel balcony waiting for the kitchen to awake and produce tea. It was still dark, but at least the majority of mosquitoes had retreated to their niches, leaving a stray few to be repelled by pipe smoke.
Holmes was realist enough to recognise that he himself had not perhaps given Mycroft’s warnings sufficient weight. But why would he? Mycroft’s own government supported Mussolini. The Chancellor of the Exchequer openly praised Il Duce’s strength—although one should not overlook Churchill’s history of party-changing and self-aggrandisement.
Keep your head down, Mycroft had urged. Perhaps now Russell might beware of the dangers.
The city coming into view off the terrace railings had always been a slippery place, as unsuited to straightforward investigations as it was to motorcars. No direct lines of sight, no firm foundation underfoot, not a simple Yes or No to be had. Fa?ade here was treated as reality. A casual conversation would take a turn that landed a foreigner into a mire up to his waist.
What irritated him most was how it made him feel like a blustering Englishman, harrumphing over the antics of the blasted foreigners.
Startled, he looked across at his young wife, who had just broken the dawn’s stillness with a full-throated laugh.
Chapter Twenty-four
HOLMES ASKED WHAT I WAS laughing at, but I just shook my head and asked him how he intended to pass the day.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. “Are we not here to find your friend’s aunt?”
“I mean—”
“Russell, how do you propose to divide up our search area? There are three districts north of the Grand Canal, and three to the south. Further afield lie the Giudecca and San Giorgio Maggiore, followed by the Lido and Murano and Burano and several dozen other islands scattered across the lagoon. I should prefer not to be here until Easter.”
Why did I feel as if this were a test—one in which I was not performing very well? “Unless Vivian has found herself a deserted island, she’ll want a place she can blend in. We could begin with the San Marco area and work out, on this side of the lagoon, and at the northern end of the Lido on the other.”
“Showing her photographs to gondolieri and pawn brokers.”
“Well, she has to get around somehow, and she might need to sell the necklace, so yes to both. But also I’d say places with night-life. She used to love parties, and if she’s re-visiting her youth, that may be part of Venice’s appeal.”
“If night-life is her joy, she should have gone to Paris.”
That was certainly true: by last night’s evidence, most of Venice still took to their beds well before midnight.
“The wealthier visitors, Americans especially, have taken to hiring palazzos expressly so they can hold parties into the wee hours. I could speak to an estate agent and see about holding a few of our own. Tempt her to come to us.”
He did not quite shudder. “Those parties must endear them to their Venetian neighbours.”
“Or we could sail up and down the Grand Canal at night, peering through windows?”
“I shall begin with San Marco, and keep an ear out for the sites of festive affairs.”
He was being remarkably amenable. Suspiciously so. “Holmes, you don’t generally volunteer for the tedious parts of an investigation.”
“To search here through winter would leave me crippled with rheumatism.”
“Fine, though do feel free to take in the odd matinee if you like. And I shall go and build sand-castles on the Lido.”
“Metaphorical ones, I trust?”
“Not necessarily.”
After breakfast, I went for a quick raid on a series of tourist shops near the Piazza—and, I will admit, some touristic sight-seeing. After lunch, I boarded a lagoon steamer for the Lido, donning my dark-tinted spectacles and holding my new wide-brimmed hat clapped down against the wind. The straw shopping basket on my shoulder held a book, a beach towel, and a packet of cigarettes that I hoped I wouldn’t have to smoke. Nothing that I wore or carried was the least bit frilly or girlish. On the other hand, it stopped well short of bluntly masculine. I was not trying to look like a lesbian. My attire was merely…practical.