“You were engaged to Marzo?” I asked. Tessa was shaking. I poured a small glass of whisky from the decanter Colin kept in our room and pressed it into her hand. “Sip this. It will help calm you.”
She downed it in a single gulp. “My father is a shoemaker. He hired Marzo to make some repairs when our roof started to leak during a rainy spring.”
Lena had met him in similar circumstances, only her father had a leaky window rather than roof. Marzo’s work as a handyman certainly helped him make an impression on the girls. “How did you come to be engaged?”
“I was only ten years old then, so that didn’t happen for a long while. At the time, I thought him dangerously handsome. I greeted him at the door each day he came to work, and fetched him water when he was thirsty. When he was finished—he was with us for only a week or so—I did not see him again for eight years, but I clung to his memory. I compared every young man I met to him. He allowed me to adopt an impossible standard that no one else could ever meet. That should have kept me safe from a broken heart.”
“So you were eighteen when you renewed the acquaintance,” I said. “What happened?”
“I ran into him in the Piazza Santa Croce. Literally. I’d been doing errands for my mother and was carrying a load of parcels. I was more worried about keeping them balanced than watching where I was going. I smacked straight into him. The parcels went flying. He helped pick them up and carried them home for me. He hadn’t recognized me, but I knew him the moment I saw his face. I told him as much, and he was flattered that I remembered him. We started going for walks, my mother cooked for him, and before long everyone assumed we would get married. Me, especially.”
“And Marzo?” I asked.
“He never wanted to talk about the future,” she said. “We would take walks every week, going all the way to the Piazzale Michelangelo. There, with Florence below us, he would kiss me. It was frightfully romantic.”
“When did he propose?”
“He never did, not precisely, but we had an understanding. At least I thought we did. I wouldn’t carry on like that with a man unless I believed he was going to marry me.”
“Did his attentions, shall we say, go beyond kissing?”
“A bit,” she said, blushing furiously.
I would not press her further on the subject. “What brought the relationship to an end?”
“It was no one thing. Gradually, he called on me less frequently. We were both busy working, so at first I took it in stride, thinking he’d have more time at the end of his next job. I got very good at making excuses for him. Then he stopped coming around at all. I left messages at his mother’s house, but he never replied. When he got engaged to Lena, I heard it from neighborhood gossip. I suppose he found her more worthy than I.”
“Did you ever talk to Lena about Marzo?”
“No. We were never friends.”
“When was the last time you saw her?”
A flash of concern crossed her face. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m trying to piece together as much as I can about her final days,” I said. “The fuller a picture I have, the more likely I am to figure out who killed her.”
She nodded. “I saw her at Marzo’s funeral. She sat in the front with his mother. I stayed in the back, not sure if I had the right to have come at all. When the family processed out behind his coffin, she looked at me, but I don’t think she remembered who I was. We grew up in the same neighborhood, but our lives were very different. I’m not the sort of person she would befriend.”
“Did you speak to her afterward?”
“No. When I left the church, her father was helping her into a carriage. She was very upset, signora. Couldn’t stop crying. I guess she did love Marzo, more than I thought.”
I sighed. “You will forgive me, Tessa, if I struggle to accept everything you say at face value. You’ve lied to me so many times.”
“I know and I’m ashamed of it. I’m sorry.”
“Did you see the owner of the carriage?”
“There was a gentleman standing with her and her father, but he had his back to me. I never saw his face.”
“Can you recall anything about his appearance?”
“Not really. They were at quite a distance from me and I only saw him from the back. All I can tell you is that he had a scarf around his neck. Green. I remember because it made me wonder if such a bright color was appropriate for a funeral.”
“Were there any markings on the carriage?”
“No, it was plain black.” She fidgeted in her seat. “Can I bring you tea or something, signora? I feel so awful about everything. I want to make it up to you. I want to prove that I can be trusted.”
Bringing tea would not begin to put her on the road to regaining my trust, but I appreciated that she wanted to try. I accepted her offer, but told her to bring it to the Salle dei Pappagalli, where Cécile had planned to wait for me until I’d finished with my bath. There was no point interrogating Tessa more just now. Having heard her story, I was more inclined to believe it than not, but it had many gaping holes. It also gave her a strong motive for wanting Marzo dead. Jealously is a powerful emotion.
“Mon dieu, Kallista, you can’t think that wisp of a maid could have flung Marzo off a rooftop. How would she have got him up there?”
“With the assistance of an accomplice,” I said.
“I will never believe that someone who looks as if she stepped out of Botticelli’s Birth of Venus could commit a brutal murder.”
“Venus herself was hardly an innocent. I’m sure Vulcan had little good to say about her.”
“A cuckolded husband is unlikely to prove a source of reliable information,” Cécile said. “Regardless, what do we do now?”
“We have to tell Signore Bastieri what happened to his daughter.”
I hated delivering news of violent death. Right now, Lena’s father was probably in his shop, helping a customer or in the backroom, constructing another magnificent piece out of his perfectly tanned and beautifully decorated leather. He was no doubt worried about his daughter, but in vague terms, never suspecting something so brutal could have happened to her. His life would forever be changed after today.
I was wrong about him being in his shop. We saw him standing outside in front of it as we crossed the Piazza Santo Spirito. As we approached, his face crumpled. He knew without being told his daughter was dead. We took him inside through the shop and upstairs to his home, where I made him a cup of tea, the English panacea for all problems. Knowing Signore Bastieri would be unlikely to have any on hand, I’d brought a small packet from the palazzo.
“Where is she now?” he asked. “I want to see her.”
“The police will let you know when she’s ready,” I said. Enough time had passed that she’d likely already been moved to the morgue.
“They won’t keep me from her?”
“No, they’ll need you to formally identify her. I’m sorry.”
“Who did this to her?”
“I swear to you, Signore Bastieri, I will find that out,” I said.
“How can I help?”
“There’s no need for you to—”
“No, Lady Emily, it is necessary. I cannot sit here idle while the man who drained my beautiful daughter of her life walks around our city, free. I will find him and I will deal with him.”
Now was not the proper moment to discuss the moral ambiguity of vigilante justice. Better that I give him something else on which to focus. “There are many things you can do, starting with showing us her room. Something in it might provide a clue as to who attacked her.”
Aside from her wedding dress, hanging in a wardrobe never to be worn, Lena possessed very little that shed light on her life. She had no books, no letters, and no diary. I still had in my reticule the envelope she had left in the kitchen. I pulled it out and asked her father if he recognized the coat of arms on the wax seal.
He examined it closely before answering. “It is familiar, but I don’t know why. Is it one of the arms frescoed onto the battlements of the Palazzo Vecchio?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea,” I said. “What do they represent? Families who were involved in the city government?”
“No, they are all things significant to Florence: her citizens and their factions; the cross of John the Baptist, her patron; famous events in her history.”
“Let’s go see if we can find this one among the others,” I said. I doubted it would be there, but appreciated his need to feel like he was doing something. Purposeful activity might keep his mind from scratching itself raw.
The palazzo, built in the late thirteenth century, had served as the seat of Florence’s government for centuries, and was still the city’s town hall. It had been constructed on the site of the home of the Uberti family, which was razed after they were exiled for backing the Ghibellines rather than the Guelphs in a long-running struggle for control of the government. For decades, the rubble of their home had been left as a makeshift monument to the Guelphs’ triumph, cleared only to make way for the Palazzo Vecchio. Until 1873, Michelangelo’s David was displayed in front of the entrance, but it was now in the Accademia museum, safe from the elements after more than three centuries of exposure.
We stood in the piazza, staring up at the coats of arms that circled the battlements of the palazzo’s tower. The detail was easier to make out than I had expected, but that meant that it only took us a short while to determine that the arms for which we searched were not among them. I was struggling to think of something else I could ask Signore Bastieri to do to assist our investigation when he offered a suggestion of his own.
“There are arms on many buildings in Florence,” he said. “I will make a study of them until I find the one we seek.”
He was proposing a Herculean task, one I was not confident would ever produce a favorable result. But if it was what he wanted, I would neither stop nor frustrate him, but could only hope the activity would prove a balm to his sorrows.
“The poor man,” Colin said, after we’d retreated to our bedroom that evening. “He’s unlikely to uncover anything of use, but you are right that he needs to feel he is doing something productive.”
“There is a chance, slim though it may be, that he will find the arms,” I said. “I think it more likely that we can track down the possibly Russian gentleman who loaned his carriage so Lena did not have to walk home from the funeral.”
“I’ll start inquiries in the morning. The evidence that he’s Russian is flimsy, though.”
“I agree, but given that the gun used to kill Signore di Taro is Russian, wouldn’t it be prudent to see if we can get a list of Russians who live in Florence? Surely it’s not a large community.”
“The consulate might be able to assist. I’ll see what I can do.”
“Leave that to Cécile and me,” I said. “It’s just the sort of thing we’re good at.”
“Heaven help the consul.”
“Have you any thoughts as to who else might have killed Lena?”
“I know how upset her death has made you,” he said. “And that, no doubt, you have made sweeping—and well-intentioned—promises to her father about bringing her killer to justice.”
“Don’t try to convince me that he can’t ever know what really happened.”
“At the moment, I can’t make any sweeping promises of my own,” he said. “I will, however, do my best to bring him closure and peace.”
“What does that mean?”
“He will have a satisfactory explanation.”
“But not the truth?”
“That, Emily, remains to be seen.”
“Don’t expect me to be so easily satisfied,” I said.
He met my eyes. “I wouldn’t dream of it, and I shan’t stand in your way.”
“You won’t enlighten me, either.”
He was still holding my gaze. “I shan’t stand in your way.”
“I may resort to underhanded means in an effort to find out what you know.”
“I shan’t stand in your way.”
He took my hand and looked at the floor, conflict written on his handsome face. Never had I less envied him his work.