7

If the Contessa’s personal maid gave Urbino one more evasive answer, he was afraid he was going to say, like some superintendent in a nineteenth-century novel, “Now, young woman, listen to me—and mind you speak the truth!”

Instead he asked in an even tone, “Exactly what do you mean when you say that things haven’t been the same around the house lately?”

“Did I say that, Signor Urbino?”

Urbino gave an inward sigh. “Excuse me, Silvia. Sometimes my Italian isn’t as good as it needs to be. You see,” he went on, realizing at last the tack that he should take with her, “I’ve noticed that the Contessa hasn’t been herself. I wonder what your impression has been. You seem to be a perceptive girl.”

The girl perked up at this and gave him a bright smile. “Thank you, signore. Since you speak about the Contessa in that way, I confess I can agree with you. I’m worried about her these days.”

“We both want to help her however we can. Why are you worried?”

“I did say that I was worried, yes,” she reaffirmed to Urbino’s relief. “She’s very nervous. I’m with her early in the morning and late at night, and many hours in between. The Contessa is like an actress. Oh, I mean it in the best sense. She always tries to be good and brave when she’s in company, not that you are company, signore, but you understand what I mean.”

Urbino nodded at what sounded like a maid’s version of the saying that a mistress was never a heroine to her maid.

“As I was saying, the Contessa is a nervous type, and I mean it only in the best sense. She’s sensitive, too sensitive. And it’s been doing her harm. She wakes up with a sad expression on her face and goes to sleep the same way. And she becomes upset when she can’t find something. I haven’t known her long, not like you and my cousin Lucia, but I can see the difference, yes.”

Silvia was relatively new in the Contessa’s employ, having replaced Lucia when Urbino was in Morocco. Vitale, the majordomo, and Pasquale, the boatman, had also joined the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini household recently.

“The Contessa tells me that she’s been missing items of her clothing and a piece of jewelry, the necklace with the silver ovals. You know the one I mean, don’t you? It’s not valuable at all, but it’s quite lovely.”

Silvia stiffened and stared back at him.

“Of course no one believes that you’re in any way responsible for what’s missing,” Urbino added.

This was less than the truth, however, and Urbino hoped that such a simple explanation could be found. It was conceivable that an envious and malicious maid would take her employer’s personal items, but his instincts told him that this wasn’t what had happened at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini.

“I hope not, signore,” Silvia said curtly.

“What do you think has happened to these things?”

“We’ve been looking everywhere. The Contessa is the kind of person who would turn the house upside down to search for a pin. I mean it only in the best sense, of course. These days she’s always asking where did I put this, where did I put that. I put everything in its correct place, I tell her, just as she wants. But I don’t think she believes me.”

“But some things have gone missing. Do you think someone could be playing a trick on the Contessa?”

“A trick, signore?” Silvia seemed genuinely perplexed.

“Taking her things and hiding them, making her think they’re gone, and then putting them all back again sometime later?”

Silvia looked at him with surprise. “Why would someone do that to our Contessa?”

“As a little game. So that everyone would laugh afterward, including the Contessa.”

“You know the Contessa very well, Signor Urbino. She wouldn’t find it amusing. She’s almost sick with worry. It would be very cruel. No, perhaps the Contessa gave her things to some charity or a friend, and she doesn’t remember. I mean it only in the best sense, for her kind acts are too many for her to remember every one. And her memory isn’t the sharpest these days. She forgot her dressmaker’s appointment last month, and she’s never done that. Today I reminded her that she had another one, but she didn’t seem pleased. She remembered quite well for herself, she said.”