Over the next half-hour, I managed to exchange a few words with all of the main players, and the only ones that sounded reasonably unaffected were Greg Gupta and, unexpectedly, Lucy O’Connell. Of all of us, Gupta was the one who managed to pull off the Renaissance look most successfully. His predominantly grey and black striped costume gave him a rakish air, and he had the best legs of all of us – the men at least. Lucy O’Connell in her wimple that covered her whole head apart from her face – and that was concealed beneath a full face mask – cast a somewhat forlorn figure, and it occurred to me that the choice of costume neatly encapsulated her present condition. Whether she was still on drugs was impossible to tell, but, from what I’d seen of her at lunchtime, she was in need of some serious rehab to return her to her former beautiful self.
The three of us chatted for a couple of minutes, and I was pleasantly surprised to hear Lucy O’Connell sounding unexpectedly animated. Hopefully, this excitement had been broughtabout by the prospect of the murder mystery rather than by pharmaceutical means. Both of them told me they had received cards from Alice, but neither spoke of their contents, so they were either quite literally keeping their cards close to their chests, or there hadn’t been anything as contentious on their cards as on those given to some of the other guests.
We were joined a few minutes later by Carlos Rodriguez. Even with his mask on, I could almost feel the indignation emanating from the famous director, and I couldn’t help wondering what his card had said. Did he have a guilty secret and, if so, what might it be?
At that moment, we were invited to sit down for dinner and I joined the three of them at a table under the vine-covered pergola. At the next table, Alice and Mary were accompanied by the actor playing the part of the Doge and nobody else. Clearly, the comments on the cards hadn’t endeared the hostess to the majority of her guests.
‘Would you mind if I join you?’ The strong Yorkshire accent was unmissable, and I looked up to see the impressive figure of the actor playing the part of Admiral Diodato. We waved him into a spare seat and he immediately launched into the murder mystery plot.
‘The word on the street – or should I say in the canal? – is that there’s going to be an attempt on the life of the Doge this evening.’ He glanced in my direction. ‘Don Daniele, have your spies been telling you the same thing?’
I played along with him. ‘From what I’ve heard, Admiral, there’s a very real threat to somebody here on this island and, of course, you know what that means, don’t you? That means that the would-be killer is almost certainly sitting at one of these tables right now, maybe even at this very table.’
The Admiral nodded in agreement. ‘Exactly. Nobody is freefrom suspicion. Why, Don Daniele, the murderer might even be you.’
‘Indeed, and the same applies to you. My spies have told me that there’s no love lost between you and the Doge, or his lady wife. Are you carrying a weapon?’
He shook his head. ‘No, your men confiscated our knives when we arrived on the island. If there’s going to be a murder, the killer will have to use one of these.’ He picked up a pointed steak knife from the table in front of him and held it up threateningly. ‘Somebody here tonight might well use this to commit a murder. It’s a sobering thought.’
On that note, he grabbed his glass and swallowed the last of his champagne before turning towards me again and dropping the ‘Renaissance man’ act for a moment. ‘How did you manage to get yourself a beer? I’m gasping for one.’
I stayed in character. ‘In my business, Admiral, it pays to know people.’ I imagined he could hear the humour in my voice even through my mask and I added sotto voce, ‘If you like, I can have a word with Diego on your behalf.’
A moment or two later, I saw Diego’s daughter emerge from the kitchen carrying a large wooden tray with three steaming silver dishes on it. She came over to our table and explained what was on offer. ‘The cook has prepared three different pasta dishes and she suggests that you might like to try all three.’ She set the tray down on the table and pointed to the dishes one after the other. ‘Bigoli ai frutti di mare, tagliatelle al ragùandlasagne al forno.’ She started with the Admiral. ‘Admiral Diodato, would you like to try them all?’
He raised his mask and gave Gabriella a broad smile before answering her in perfect Italian, interestingly without even a hint of his Yorkshire accent. ‘Do you need to ask? Yes, please, it smells divine.’ His smile broadened even further when I managed toattract Diego’s attention and a tankard of beer was presented to the Admiral.
Gabriella went around the table serving the pasta, which did indeed smell absolutely amazing, and I was pleased to see Lucy O’Connell accept a reasonable-sized plateful. She was pitifully thin, and I felt sure what she needed was good food, rest and the chance to recover. Her arms were bare and I couldn’t miss faint bruising on the inside of her elbow and forearm, although it looked as though she had tried to conceal it. I felt genuinely sorry for her. This might mean that she hadn’t kicked the habit yet, and I wondered idly how she had dared to smuggle class A drugs through Customs. For a celebrity, it would have been a high-risk strategy unless she had somehow arranged to pick them up here in Venice. I remembered what Virgilio’s inspector friend had told me. There was no shortage of drugs to be found in Venice.
15
SATURDAY NIGHT
In the course of the next hour, we all changed places three or four times, and I found myself speaking to most of the guests and to all of the actors. I didn’t get the chance to speak to Alice, but I was pleased to see at least some of the guests interacting with her as the meal progressed. Darkness fell and Valentina set candles on the tables under the pergola, giving the night a romantic air.
Any trace of romance disappeared at just after nine-thirty, when there was a sudden crash. Oscar jumped to his feet and my eyes followed the direction of his pointing nose. At the next table but one, a lone figure was slumped forward, face down, with a wine bottle lying smashed on the floor alongside. Even from this distance, the blonde hair, the golden mask and the cream gown were unmistakable. Alice, AKA Donna Alicia, the Doge’s wife, had been murdered.
It was time for the Magistrate to get to work.
I got to my feet and walked across, taking charge of the situation. I moved everybody away from the table, just as if it were a real murder, leaving Alice slumped with her head on her hands, apparently dead. I toyed with the idea of letting my hand pressagainst the carotid artery in her neck as I had done numerous times in my career as a detective, but I decided that, as this was only a game, the audience would just have to take my word for it that she was dead. I turned towards the assembled guests. There was an expectant silence, broken only by the distant sound of an aircraft coming in to land at Marco Polo airport.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, I have grave news.’ I did my best to act the part. ‘Donna Alicia, the wife of our beloved Doge, has been murdered, and the killer has to be here among us now.’ I took off my mask and let my eyes run across the terrace as I addressed them all. ‘Fortunately, I know that you will all now do your best to solve this case for me. Has anybody any theories about who might have committed this foul deed?’
The actor playing the part of the Doge stood up and pointed an accusing finger at his half-brother’s wife. ‘I know it was you, Donna Eleonora. You killed my beloved wife.’ He looked over in my direction. ‘Magistrate, how was she killed?’
I had been wondering about this. Had this been a real murder, I would have ordered a forensic team to come and establish the facts, but as this was a game, I did a bit of invention. ‘It looks to me, Your Excellency, as if she has been poisoned.’
The Doge nodded slowly. ‘I wonder if the poison was intended for her or for me. If it was poison, then I could just as easily have eaten or drunk whatever it was that has killed her. I was sitting alongside her only a few minutes ago.’ He spun around once more and pointed his finger in the direction of his half-brother’s wife again. ‘It was you. I know it was you.’
I thanked him for his intervention and threw it open to the guests.
Greg Gupta was the next to stand up. He appeared to have no doubt about the identity of the culprit, but it wasn’t Donna Eleonora. He walked over to the table where Mary was sittingand laid his hand upon her shoulder. ‘The last person I saw sitting with the Doge and his wife was this young lady, his personal secretary. She was best placed to poison the food on the table, so it must have been her.’
I looked around at the other guests. ‘A murder needs a motive. What motive might this young woman have had for killing her employer?’
Mary jumped to her feet and did a convincing job of denying any involvement in the murder. This was followed by a variety of accusations and rebuttals from a number of guests, although at least half of them didn’t bother even to hazard a guess. I assumed that they were still furious with Alice and had no intention of playing by her rules. Jack Sloane was still sitting at a table by himself – as far as I could tell, he hadn’t moved an inch all evening – with no fewer than three wine bottles in front of him – two of them empty – and on the other side of the terrace, Lucy O’Connell had also chosen a table on her own. Neither of them took any part in solving the mystery and appeared lost in their own little worlds – in Sloane’s case, a highly alcoholic one. Oscar must have worked out that Lucy O’Connell wasn’t doing too well as he had wandered over to position himself alongside her and I saw her fondling his ears with her hand. Hopefully, he would be able to bring some cheer into her life.
I gave the guests ten minutes or so of accusations and counteraccusations before I decided the time had come to wrap things up. I genuinely had no idea whatsoever who had committed the murder and I was reaching for the sealed envelope in the pocket of my tunic for the solution when something suddenly struck me. Alice had told me that the murder mystery would have a twist in the tail. In other words, she had planned things so that everybody would be surprised, and it occurred to me that I might know what she had had in mind. It was Oscar that gave it away.
