“Grazie mille, Signore,” I told him, and returned to my position at the starboard railing.
The island’s western side was something of a duplicate of its other half: octagon, water, middle part with buildings, a second canal with a foot-bridge, then hedgerowed wilderness. However, the buildings were not as ruined as the eastern passage had suggested: there was a closed boat-house with a new door, and fresh tiles in the roof of the long building facing the octagon. At their back, a glimpse of bricks and wheelbarrow suggested active renovations, although I saw no one moving. I could feel my fellow passengers watching me, with a figure at my elbow in the colours of the vaporetto company’s uniform, but not until Poveglia was receding from view did I lower the glasses.
The passengers turned away; the uniformed man did not—clearly, the helmsman had told him of our change in route. “I was interested in the island,” I said—truthfully enough.
“è un luogo maledetto,” he growled.
“Perché?”
Either his vocabulary was insufficient or his emotion too great, because rather than explain why the place was malevolent, he grumbled for a while in the Venetian dialect, then stumped away.
However, a gentleman who had overheard the exchange volunteered some information. “Tens of thousands of souls died here, Signorina,” he explained. “Of the plague, primarily. They say the soil is made of bones and hair.”
I nodded. “My boatmen wouldn’t bring me here.”
“They may be wise. There are sounds at night here. I have heard them, over the noise of the motor. And…smells, smells that linger on the offender.”
“It looks as though people live there.”
“Two, three years past, a doctor came, with…followers?”
“You mean patients? A health resort?”
“No, Signorina. More like un culto.”
“A cult? Like, Naturists? Or Spiritualists?”
“Folle, tutti quanti.”
“Credulone? O pazzi?” Did he mean the man’s followers were foolish? Or insane?
“Both, I think, Signorina. But not friendly.”
“I see. Thank you.”
He nodded and faded back into the other passengers, rather than risk having to talk further about it.
Had it been a new lunatic asylum under construction, or even a health resort, I might have looked more closely, but I could not imagine Lady Vivian coming under the influence of a religious charlatan while she was in Bedlam. And although it could conceivably have been Nurse Trevisan’s doing, I could not fit the idea of that nurse’s calm and sensible demeanour into a community of religious dupes.
For the moment, I would file Poveglia under “Possible But Unlikely.”
Chapter Thirty-three
TO HOLMES’ IRRITATION, THERE WAS a marked lack of piano music and laughter coming from the windows of Ca’ Rezzonico as his traghetto plied across the Grand Canal. At the entrance, the servant who came to the door confirmed that, yes, Signor and Signora Porter had left for the day, gone to Murano with Signor and Signora Murphy and some other friends, or possibly Burano since the Signore and Signora had not decided and they wished to send both glass and lace home with the friends, and possibly they did not know the difference between the two islands—but in any case, mi dispiace molto but they are not here. What, the Signore wishes to come in and use the music room in the absence of Signor Porter?
But of course—this way, Signor Russell.
The maid’s attitude being, If this English fellow wants to steal the silver, well, those mad Americans can afford it.
When he left two hours later, Holmes carried away not silver, but something of greater interest: a copy of Linda’s guest list.
Chapter Thirty-four
BY THE TIME I REACHED the main Lido stop, it was well after noon. I paused in the Excelsior to change my clothing, and on the beach found some dedicated partygoers only now edging towards consciousness. Others had been out on their padded chaises for hours, either under the candy-striped awnings or baking their well-oiled skin in the open. Attendants scurried about with drinks and ices, a few children played in the surf (nowhere near as many as in the public areas), and people in swimming costumes danced to gramophone music out on the floating dock-island. Desultory talk flitted back and forth across the sand.
Need I say, it was the talk I was after, rather than ices and sun?
However, I did begin with a swim—walking all the way down to the water before I shed the garish pyjamas, diving rapidly in before anyone could focus on the scars visible around the edges of my costume.
I was a strong swimmer, well practiced with Holmes along the rugged shingle beach near our home in Sussex. This water, though open sea rather than lagoon, was calmer than ours, and warm. I swam past the dancing couples and turned to follow the line of the beach: half an hour down, then slightly more back again.
Pleasantly tired, I waded out and flung my towel around me—again, quickly, before curious eyes could focus—then walked back up the beach.
A voice from one of the shadowed huts called my name. I veered aside, greeting my friends from Tuesday night. “Hullo, Elsa. Good afternoon, Miss Fellowes-Gordon.”
Her companion—I had not yet been asked to call her Dickie, so I used her mouthful of a double-barrelled surname—gave me a languid nod, and Elsa patted a chair. “Honey, you must need a drink after all that exercise.”
“Sounds lovely, but first I need to rinse off the salt. You planning on being here for a while?”
“Nothing doing until dinner, so sure.”
I bestowed an absent-minded smile—the sort that indicates vague friendship without an exact recollection of names—on those gathered around her, and went to find a shower-bath. As I walked away, it occurred to me that Elsa was the exception to the beach’s class structure—that she and Dickie should have been located in a cabana nearer the water. Was this because she had more personal magnetism than money? Or was it by choice—that she wished to be nearer the cross-roads of action?
It was probably both.
When I was clean and cool, I returned to my good friend Elsa and settled onto the chaise she indicated. I told her pet attendant what I’d have to drink and eat, and exchanged greetings with her various actresses, politicians, aristocrats, and the simply wealthy. Then I faded into the scenery, listening to conversation. I picked up some titbits about Elsa’s past and her plans for the autumn. I paid attention to a brief exchange about the local Fascists, listening to whose voice held approval and whose doubt. I asked about interesting night-clubs in Venice, and noted the names—but the consensus was that Venice had none, and the Lido’s best was right here.
Someone mentioned Cole Porter. His name brought knowing chuckles and some affectionate remarks, although one of the girls did not much care for his wife, Linda. I murmured that I’d heard she and Porter both had their side-interests, hoping that the idea of Linda Porter as a lesbian might give me some direction to follow, but no one pounced on it. Two of the younger women, mutually anointing their skins with cocoanut oil, were speculating about the necessity of aiming the sides of their bodies towards the sun, or whether the sun reached down the curvature of the limb to do its work, because it would be dreadful to have a tan that was not uniform.
“Someone needs to invent a sort of human rotisserie,” I commented. “Slowly spinning a person around and around.”
This caught the imagination of about half the people there—those who weren’t asleep or reading a novel—and soon the suggested invention had been expanded to include an automatic misting of oil and the regular raising of drinks—attached to long straws, one of them suggested, so as not to disturb the continuity. But when this progressed to its logical conclusion—what did the rotisseried human do when the drinks caught up with the bladder?—the eruption of giggles and guffaws startled our fellow beach-goers.