3

So where do we start?" she asked as we descended the stairs. She no longer teetered on ten-inch soles. Paint and silks had gone, and she was enveloped in the neck-to-shoe brown dress of a domestic servant. Her magnificent hair was hidden under a shawl that hung to about where her calves must be. Even so, she would catch every male eye within eyeshot.

"With the puzzle, of course," I said.

"Which puzzle?"

"Why her body was not looted of valuables. Which were?"

"Pearl earrings, a gold ring, and a gold brooch with an amber pebble enclosing an insect. That's not to my taste, but worth a lot as a curiosity. Her gown was…" She shuddered and tightened her grip on my hand. "I suppose the sea will have ruined it. And she wore a string of pearls worth at least a hundred ducats."

"You are joking!"

"No, I am not! They once belonged to Dogaressa Zilia Dandolo, the wife of Doge Lorenzo Priuli."

I whistled. A murderer leaving such riches on a body made no sense at all.

"She wore all that to go dancing in the Piazza?"

"I wondered that," my love admitted. "I spoke with her maids and the nuns, and they agreed that she seemed quite excited. An old friend was coming for her, she said, but she didn't say who. I know the gown she wore, and it was one that was very special to her. Her client arrived at dusk in a gondola, and he stayed aboard, in the felze, so only one of the maids caught as much as a glimpse of him, and all she could say was that he was wearing a mask. Lucia boarded and off they went."

Never to be seen again. Everyone wears a mask at Carnival.

I said, "Perhaps she was murdered on a fondamenta somewhere and fell into the canal before the murderer could strip her finery. Where was she found, and where did the finder take her? Or did he just inform the sbirri somewhere to go and collect her?"

"The only answer I know is that the morticians were summoned to the sbirri office in Castello."

Castello is the eastern end of the city. It gets more than its fair share of floating bodies because they tend to be carried seaward by the tide and found by fishermen.

We found Giorgio sitting in the gondola trading barbs with a group of Marciana lads unloading a boat outside Ca' Barbolano. They were threatening to tell Mama that her husband was waiting for the brothel to open. He seemed to be holding his own quite well, but Giorgio has a prudish streak and would be happy to escape. We boarded and set off to Castello.

Our way led along the little Rio San Remo and then out into the Grand Canal, which was magnificent that fine afternoon, with just enough of a wind to ruffle the blue water. The trading fleets were due to leave soon, so many lighters were heading to the basin to load them, sweeping past us, borne onward by sails or many oars. The scene was lovely, but Violetta was lovelier. I rolled down the blinds on the felze so we could do a little preliminary cuddling. Regrettably, her mind was still elsewhere. I wanted Helen and she was hazel-eyed Niobe, the one who mourns.

"He was a good man," she said, "Gradenigo, I mean."

"Not a client?"

"You know I never discuss my patrons. Besides, he was before my time. It will be a huge funeral." Her finger idly drew patterns on my knee. "You didn't discover what he wanted to tell the Maestro?"

"No, but I can try to find out later. Good man how?"

"He gave much to charity. He was a member of the Scuola Grande di San Giovanni Evangelista, and he paid to rebuild one of the chapels in the Frari."

"I don't recall him ever holding office." No one can keep track of all the noblemen in the Great Council, but I try to stay up to date on the inner circle, the fifty or sixty old men who actually run the Republic, rotating the senior offices among themselves.

"He did," my love said sadly. "He was a senator-maybe even one of the Ten-but he withdrew from politics years ago. As I recall, he suffered some bad health and never returned to the broglio."

I had never seen her be so morose before, but having a close friend murdered will upset anyone. Like the Maestro, I found it hard to believe that Lucia had been murdered if her finery had not been stolen.

Investigating a mystery with Violetta was almost absurdly easy. Sbirri are mostly ignorant, rough men, and if they have ever heard of Nostradamus, they at once suspect black magic. They hassle apprentices on principle. Another reason I stay away from sbirri as much as I can is that their offices tend to be dark and smelly places, reeking of centuries of prisoners. Castello's was no different, but we strolled in and I presented my servant, the dead woman's niece, who was seeking more information about her aunt's sad end.

Violetta-Delilah was emphatically not a male apprentice. She was spring sunshine and very soon had the duty captain almost drooling, with his pupils dilated like water buckets. He was a hulking lunk who kept scratching; the vermin inhabiting jails may have any number of legs.

He insisted on taking down Violetta's name and address, although I noted that the paper went into a pocket in his cloak, which didn't matter because the information she had given did not refer to anyone in particular. He would be happy to tell madonna what he knew, he murmured, leering. He did not need to look up the records, he sighed. He had not been there himself, he whispered, but he had heard it from the other constables. Besides, how could anyone forget a murder victim being delivered by a senator?

Violetta clasped her hands to her mouth. "A senator?"

"Senator Marco Avonal. A fine nobleman, to trouble himself with a body."

"And what happened then? She was buried right away?"

He shrugged with an oily don't-trouble-your-pretty-head smile. "The Board of Health insists, madonna. If the body is not recognizable, then we note anything that might help it be identified and call in the morticians. She was laid to rest on the Isola before sunset, and may the Lord have mercy on her soul."

Isola di San Michele is the cemetery island. It would have taken me an hour and an extortionate bribe to have learned as much as Delilah had discovered already.

She stifled a sob. "Amen! So you kept her jewelry to identify her?"

The captain shook his head regretfully. "His Excellency took them and gave us a receipt. You will have to ask him for them."

"They have already been returned to the lady's estate," I said. "Could your comrades tell how she had died?"

He looked at me as if he had forgotten I was there, his pupils contracting sharply. In his opinion, I was exceedingly redundant. "It was very gruesome, because the crabs and the fish had been busy. But, just between us, Captain di Comin is a very clever man, and he noticed that the gristle of the dead woman's windpipe had been crushed. Some of the remaining flesh around her throat-"

Violetta cried out and faked a dizzy spell, so I could whisk her out into the fresh sea breeze. I had assumed she was pretending, but even out on the fondamenta she was unusually subdued. That was Niobe showing; as Medea she could have torn the captain apart with a smile on her face.

"You want to know any more?" I asked.

She shivered. "No. It's too horrible to think about. You?"

"No. Now we know how her jewels survived, and that's progress. Let's go and call on the noble gentleman."

"Where to?" Giorgio asked as we boarded.

"We need to locate a Senator Marco Avonal."

"Rio di San Nicolo," Violetta said. "I'll direct you when we get there."

Aha! When we had made ourselves comfortable in the felze, I said, "You are acquainted with His Excellency?"

She bit her lip and nodded.

If Avonal was rich enough to be a friend of Violetta's he might also have known an ex-courtesan who had been worth 1,470 ducats. I decided to wait a while before asking questions. We were passing through the Basino di San Marco, but I lowered the curtains, sacrificing the view of the fleet at anchor in the hope of a cuddle with Helen. Alas, my companion was currently Minerva.