Dave Duncan - The Alchemist's Code

“But you will answer mine.” The patrician stepped forward. Andrea Zancani was serving a term as one of the Lords of the Night Watch, the Signori di Notte, and thus was Sergeant Torre’s current boss. That is a starter position for the nobility, and I would have put him around the tender age of thirty. He is a resident of San Remo, so I often see him in church.

I bowed to him. “Alas, clarissimo, I was about to explain that this is a matter of state, in which I can answer only to the noble Council of Ten.”

Vasco did not make a sound, but was obviously enjoying himself hugely.

Zancani pouted and turned to Missier Grande. “You are taking this man into custody, lustrissimo?”

“I have no instructions regarding sier Alfeo,” Quazza said. “I should point out, though, that he is in fact of noble birth, sier Alfeo Zeno. Consequently he can only be tried by the Council of Ten itself.”

Zancani pulled a face. “He doesn’t look it. But let us make sure we know where he is when Their Excellencies want him. Sergeant, arrest sier Alfeo.”

“Bah! That is absurd!” the Maestro said. “Missier Grande, you know what work I am engaged in, or at least for whom I am working. You know why your vizio was sent here last night-to protect Alfeo. Now you will let him be dragged off to share a lockup with drunks and thugs? Who defends him there?”

Missier Grande looked thoughtfully at Vasco, who flinched. Yes, truly, his happiness was quite cast down. If he were sent to the local dungeon with me in order to continue guarding me, he would be in considerable danger from the other inhabitants.

“I should welcome his company,” I said, “but Sergeant Torre may resent the damage to the reputation of his establishment.”

“I shall put Zeno under house arrest,” Missier Grande said, “and leave-”

“Absurd!” the Maestro repeated furiously. “Enough of this nonsense.” He grabbed his staff from me and elbowed me aside. “Come and sit down, clarissimo, and you also, Father. Alfeo, bring a chair for Missier Grande, and you, Sergeant, kindly send one of your men to fetch Giorgio, my gondolier.”

The invitation to be seated obviously excluded Vasco and Torre, so I brought one more chair to the fireplace and then stationed myself behind the Maestro. Zancani, Quazza, and the priest sat opposite us, seeming wary, inscrutable, and mildly amused respectively.

“Now, Alfeo,” the Maestro said without trying to look around at me. “Why were you talking such rubbish just now?”

“Rubbish, master?” Mainly I had been trying to muddy the waters and pin Vasco down so he could not change his evidence to suit the case he wanted to make.

“You know what I mean! What did you really learn from looking at the body?”

“I may have been a little hasty in jumping to conclusions,” I admitted. “Now I realize that I see no gory footsteps on our floor here, so the watergate loggia is not drenched in a mixture of rain and blood, as it would be if Danese bled to death there. So he could not have been murdered downstairs. He died somewhere else and was brought here later. In fact, he was almost certainly dead before the vizio claims he arrived at Ca’ Barbolano.”

“With your rapier in him?” Vasco demanded.

“That is a curious detail, isn’t it?” In fact that detail was almost driving me crazy. Fortunately I do know something about ghouls, so I could blame Algol, even if I had no hope of convincing a court. “Dolfin died facedown, but he could not have been run through from behind and fallen forward, as one would expect of a man stabbed in the upper back. Does the point of that sword show damage, Filiberto?”

Vasco looked and said, “It’s blunted,” with a poor grace.

“A good lunge with a rapier will go right through a skull,” I continued. “A lung would offer almost no resistance, nor would a rib, and yet the sword did not break, so Danese did not fall with it sticking out of his chest. Yet it must have protruded from his breast because that was where his ruptured aorta hemorrhaged most. The wound in his right leg also came from behind, and we must explain the separate bloodstains on the back of his neck, where the ruff has been crushed. There is no mud on his dorsal side, as there is on the ventral.”

“And your conclusion?” the Maestro asked impatiently.

My conclusion was what I had seen in the fire and had described to him at the time. “Danese was in a fight, master. The murderer wrestled his sword away from him and stabbed him with it.”

“You base that assumption on the fact that his right thumb is broken?”

I had missed that. “Of course, and his wrist shows damage also. These things may have happened when he fell, but more likely when the killer wrenched the sword out of his grip. The leg wound must have come next, when he was trying to run away. He would have fallen. Having disabled him, his assailant then callously stabbed him in the back as he was trying to rise. Danese probably still tried to get up, and the murderer put a bloody shoe on the back of his neck to hold him down while he bled to death.”

Even Missier Grande winced at that image. Father Farsetti covered his face with his hands. My sympathy was quite genuine. It had been a fairly quick death, but not a pleasant one, if there can ever be such a thing.

“After he died,” I said, “the rapier was pushed all the way through him, perhaps just to make him easier to move. The killer brought him here. Thanks to the vizio ’s acute observation we know now that the point did hit something hard, so we must look for a place with hard footing-brick or stone-and extensive bloodstains.”

“Thank you,” the Maestro said. “Now you are making sense.” He looked around to where our gondolier was waiting. “Ah, Giorgio. Last night, what time was it when Alfeo told you that he and I were not to be disturbed?”

Giorgio looked thunderous at having been fetched by a sbirro -such a thing never happened to respectable citizens-but he took a moment to think, “It must have been a little after eight o’clock, Doctor. We were putting the children to bed.”

“And what happened then?”

“ Sier Danese Dolfin came and asked to see sier Alfeo.”

For a moment we were all silent, as we digested this information. Vasco scowled.

The Maestro nodded, as if he had expected something like that. “When?”

“About half past eight, roughly.”

“Go on.”

“I explained that you and he were not to be disturbed. He said the matter was urgent and he would wait.”

“How did he seem?”

“He seemed distressed, Doctor, agitated.” Giorgio himself was starting to look distressed, and also apologetic. “He did not say why he was worried, or what he wanted. But he was very jumpy. He had stayed here as-”

“As a guest, yes. So you let him wait in the salone unattended?”

Giorgio nodded glumly. “I was helping Mama…I heard the front door close. He had gone. I ran to the stair and saw him going down. I did watch him leave the building.”

“Did you get a good look at him?” the Maestro persisted.

Giorgio shook his head. “Mostly just his shadow, lustrissimo.”

There are times when one has to throw in one’s cards and hope that the next deal will work better. “I apologize, Vizio. You were not the only one who could have stolen my sword last night.”

The Maestro was ahead of me, of course. “Where is it?” he asked.

Danese had come to reclaim his own sword, which I had forgotten to return to him with his portmanteau. Either he had snooped around Ca’ Barbolano at some time during his stay here or-more likely-he had taken the risk of searching my room for it while Giorgio was bedding his brood. The top of a wardrobe is not an unlikely place to keep weapons when there are small children around. He had found mine and taken it. Had he also taken the matching dagger? Probably not, because he had been disarmed in a hand-to-hand tussle; with a dagger he could have stabbed his opponent when they closed. Men who sport swords should know how to use them, and he had not. In a real fight, as opposed to a formal duel, a rapier needs a parrying partner, either a dagger or another rapier.