Yet it did not. Instead, the thugs succeeded. Newspapers critical of the cause were shut down. The Italian king decided that he feared the country’s Republicans and Socialists more than he did the Fascists, and refused to dismiss the Mussolini government.
And a few months later, in January of this year, Benito Mussolini stood before his nation to declare himself absolute ruler of his country, and to take proud responsibility for the violence that had put him there. As he put it, “Italy wants peace and quiet, work and calm. I will give it these things—with love if possible, with force if necessary.”
The trains would run on time.
As I vaguely remembered from the half-heard conversation in Mycroft’s flat, my brother-in-law had been saying that the April election did indeed show any number of irregularities, from Fascist intimidation to disappearing ballots, and that at the time of his death, Matteotti had in hand documents suggesting that Il Duce and his cronies had pocketed a great deal of money from a sale of their country’s oil rights. Mycroft had also heard, from his grey inside sources, that Mussolini himself had hesitated over making himself dictator, until his fellow Fascist leaders threatened to take over themselves if he did not.
Once the tail was wagging the dog, Italy was doomed.
Up until now, I had not really made any link between my soft, floating-world memories of Venice and the brutalities taking place in the rest of the country. But clearly Holmes had.
In centuries past, the Venice lagoon had been a moat that kept the world at bay. Would it still, in this harsh modern era?
Chapter Twenty
THE TRAIN CAME TO ITS end on Sunday, two days and four nations after we’d stepped out of our Sussex door.
The ideal approach to Venice is from the sea, standing at a ship’s rails as the faint traces of buildings take form through the mist. She resembles (and I must agree with tradition here: Venice is feminine) a queen seated on a throne in a wide, flat field. Solitary and regal, she waits in patience for those who would come to do homage.
Instead of that entry to La Serenissima, we puffed across two miles of water on hundreds of stone arches, waited while the customs men came to check our hand luggage, and climbed down into the cacophony of any railway station on the planet. The salty air churned with the sounds of shouting porters and crashing equipment, customs inspectors and street urchins, the hiss of venting steam and the slams of compartment doors, the cries of greeting and the occasional shriek of a traveller seeing her bags vanish into the crowd.
And yet, this was different. There was no stink of idling taxis, for one thing, no clop of hooves or rumble of motor lorries or whine of motor-cycles. We were in a port city, yet there was no sign of heavy-goods traffic. Groups of laughing foreigners suggested a resort town, yet bright holiday clothing was more than balanced by workaday garments. Uniforms of various kinds put the crowd into order, funnelling traffic from iron rails to waterborne craft.
I watched the familiar scene with pleasure, until my eye was drawn to an oddity: two black-clad figures created an eddy in the swarm, in a way that even the customs officials did not. Most of the people giving them wide berth seemed unaware that they were doing so, but even the laughing tourists subsided a touch as they approached the Blackshirts, and their laughter resumed only when they were out of earshot from the two Fascist representatives.
I shook off the creeping awareness of the outside world and turned my mind to our next moves.
The previous Friday, when Thomas Cook & Co. had proven a broken reed and failed to come up with adequate rooms, I had dredged the name of an hotel from the depths of memory and sent them a wire. We had left Sussex before any response could arrive, and since the tourist season was clearly well under way—despite heat, Fascists, mosquitoes, and the stench of summer canals—I only hoped that someone had recalled my mother’s name with enough affection to offer us a servant’s room under the sweltering eaves.
As I prepared to join the milling crowds heading towards the water and thus the Venetian equivalent of a taxi, I became aware of a person standing before me, very still and quite close. I adjusted my eyes, and found a trim young man in hotel livery, with a name in fancy stitching on his breast:
Hôtel Londres
&
Beau Rivage
“Signor and Signora Russell?”
“Yes,” Holmes said. Thanks to Mycroft, he even had a passport in the name of Sheldon Russell, an ebony-haired gent, pampered and well glossed from the tips of his shoes to the teeth behind his pencil-thin moustache. Thin disguise, but along with the change in his stance and the languid air he wore, even someone who knew him would hesitate, wondering, might this be a cousin…?
“The keys to your luggage, please? I shall see it through Customs. Come, your boat is just here.”
I followed his pointing finger, and saw a sleek steam launch with a man in the same uniform. I held out the keys and my valise, but told him, “We’ll walk, thanks. It’s been a long train ride. Oh—and tell the maid not to unpack the bags. We prefer to do so on our own.” And had, ever since the day one inexplicably thorough hotel maid had happened across a hidden compartment, dutifully removed the contents for cleaning, and sent a bullet whizzing through the next room.
The hotel man bowed, cheerfully acknowledging our English eccentricity, accepted my tip, and trotted to the hotel launch with our valises. While he explained to his colleague, hands gesturing, that these mad English guests wanted to walk to the hotel, the even sleeker launch beside it drew in its gangway and let out a belch of steam. This one bore the name Hotel Excelsior, and it turned away with an air of disdain, as if to show that its guests did not need to wait along with hoi polloi. The launch went serenely off, ignoring the gondolas, cargo transports, fishing boats with furled sails, many varieties of shallow-hulled canal boats, and one lone rowing skiff.
Holmes scowled at our own waiting launch. “Do you suppose we shall ever see our possessions again?” he asked me.
“It’s quite a good hotel, Holmes.”
“All the more reason for a thief to pick their jacket out of a laundry.”
Was I being naïve, gullible—touristic? I did not think so. “Venice has little serious crime, and a very clear sense of honour.”
“Amongst thieves,” he grumbled, so I slid my arm through his and urged my husband and partner towards the foot-bridge linking the modern world with the timeless city known as La Serenissima.
This most unlikely of cities grew out of the waters centuries ago, a refuge from chaos following the disintegration of the Roman Empire (another power that kept the trains running, metaphorically speaking). Its residents expanded their literal footholds in the lagoon by driving trees down into the mud and perching buildings on top. Before long, its ships ruled—and plundered—the known world.
In the process, Venice gave rise to an idiosyncratic, oddly democratic, and utterly ruthless system of government. The Doge and his Council were absolute rulers, and yet a constant and precarious balance of power ensured that no one man—or even family—could establish a permanent authority over the others. A Doge’s salary was small, forcing him to maintain his interest in healthy commerce. After a Doge died—and the number of Doges who failed to succumb to natural causes served as a cautionary tale to each successor—his estate was reviewed, and pillaged if any trace of misdoing was found.
This inborn system of stalemate proved popular with the Venetians themselves, since it allowed them to carry on the business of business while the government squabbled and bickered and compromised itself into stability. It also, incidentally, laid the groundwork for America’s three governmental branches, designed to frustrate each other into tiny increments of progress.
For eleven centuries, the Venetian system held—until Europe on the one hand took to the seas and cut out the Venetian middleman, while the Ottomans on the other side grew powerful en
ough to block the formerly bottomless stream of trade from the East. When Bonaparte passed through Venice in 1797 on his way to a more important enemy, he decided, like any lesser tourist, to ship home his pick of the city’s riches. “I shall be an Attila to the state of Venice,” he thundered. Since the Venetian Navy consisted of but a dozen galleys, its Doge abdicated, and a thousand years of Republic quietly ended.
Under the Bonaparte régime, La Serenissima lost her independence, her authority, her vast agricultural hinterland, and a great deal of her art. (Most of which, to be honest, had been stolen in the first place.) Stripped and powerless, she was thrown to Austria in the peace accord.
But her stones remained. Like many other cross-roads of trade—Jerusalem, Cairo, Tokyo—the wealth of the city lay indoors, hidden from passers-by behind inscrutable faces.
As inscrutable as the faces of the residents.
“Venetians seem to have a very clear sense of Us and Them,” I mused. “Or rather, Us and You. Anyone who isn’t Venetian is by definition a customer, brought for the express purpose of having money removed from their pockets. But like any people who spread out across the world, they’re not fussy about how people claim residency. If you eat at a restaurant three times, you’re part of the family. If you hire a gondolier for a season, you’re expected to hire him the next time you show up, or God help you.”
As we walked, as my reflections on Venetian history eventually brought me back to the idea of our luggage sailing off with a clever thief, I felt Holmes glance down at me in growing consternation. Finally, he dropped his arm.
“Russell, how are you so familiar with this place?”
It is very seldom that one can achieve superiority over Sherlock Holmes, but I concealed my gloating expression behind a serenity fitting of our locale.
“I’m sure I’ve told you that my mother adored Venice. She only brought us here twice, and I was a child, but we were here for some time, and she often talked about it—and, about this.”
This was an island like any other in this tight conglomeration of islands, an irregular shape composed of a nondescript campo, or open plaza, framed by a single row of buildings whose backs overlooked the surrounding canals. The London equivalent of the campo would be a square of lawn with a fountain, crossed by paths and flower beds, with streets separating it from the facing houses. Here, the lawn was paving stones, the fountain was a well, and its landscaping amounted to a few trees and one hanging basket of parched-looking geraniums. Children played, dashing in and out of the doors of houses that opened directly onto the campo.
And not only of houses.
“The word ‘ghetto’ was coined—quite literally—at this place. The word comes from the Venetian dialect for metal—Jews were given the right to run foundries and pawn shops. Odd combination, isn’t it, metal and old clothes? The Jewish quarter was shut every night, and patrolled to make sure its residents stayed in. And, one must admit, that Christian trouble-makers stayed out. Venice always regarded its Jews as a sort of business partnership, and even after Napoleon, they’ve continued to feel a sort of contractual obligation.” I looked up at the building before us. “This was the synagogue we attended.”
After a bit we left, over the bridges to the more polished and maintained districts.
Venice is small. A brisk and direct walk would have a recent arrival stepping off its far end in less than an hour. Not that one can walk directly—or even briskly, once one hits a tourist path.
But with a directional compass (internal or actual) and a pair of decent shoes, one quickly develops an instinct for which tiny cramped lane ends at a door, and which connects to another lane that goes through a campo to another passageway that debouches onto a minuscule campiello that…
Holmes and I made our way through the city labyrinth with darkness at our heels. When we stepped out into the relative vastness of the Riva degli Schiavoni, remnant of an ancient wharf-side marketplace and now the only open waterfront in this crowded city, it was momentarily dizzying. I blinked a few times, looking around to get my bearings, and was ridiculously pleased to find that I had overshot my target by only two bridges.
What’s more, when we were shown to our rooms—a prime suite (the manager assured me, clasping my hand and exclaiming over how perfetto it was to see me again) rather than a baking garret beneath a tile roof—there sat our possessions, demure as if they had never even considered running off with the man in the steam launch.
A quick inventory confirmed that no one had discovered the secret compartment in the valise. I re-fastened its clasp and wedged it into one of the wardrobe shelves, as indication that I did not want it taken to the hotel’s storage room.
The next order of business was a long soak in a great deal of hot water.
Chapter Twenty-one
WHEN I EMERGED FROM THE steamy chamber, the grime of travel scrubbed from my pores, I found Holmes on the dark veranda. He had clearly made use of the shower-bath in the suite’s other bath-room, and dressed for dinner.
I sank into the other chair and watched the lights sparkling off the water: the public gardens far down to our left, San Giorgio Maggiore directly across from us, the Giudecca and the Salute down to the right, and bustling back and forth at our feet, a hundred varieties of water-craft. Just visible through the evening vapours was the twinkling Lido, with its stretch of fun-palaces, sanitoriums, and Adriatic beaches. And just to the side, halfway across the water, another island—what was that one? Not the cemetery island, that was to the north. A hospital?
Holmes shifted forward to crush out his cigarette, moving into the light from the room behind us. As far as I could see, his white shirt had only the faintest hint of a wrinkle. My frock, even after hanging in steam for the better part of an hour, had a sharp crease across the middle. Well, it didn’t matter, I would soon be hidden by a table.
At the thought, my stomach gave a growl. Holmes set his hands on the arms of the chair. “Shall we go down?”
I beat him to the door.
* * *
—
We had asked the manager to reserve us a table, and when we walked in, we were instantly whisked away to a candle-lit alcove.
Holmes watched the maître d’hôtel’s eventual retreat, bemused. “Your mother must have made quite an impression, considering that she could not have been here more recently than 1912.”
I smoothed the linen napkin on my lap. “Ronnie and I may have added to that impression, a bit.”
“You and—ah. I did not know that you had come to Venice while you were at Oxford. This was after the War, surely?”
“Well after. And after Oxford. It was when Ronnie first learned she was pregnant. Miles was in Ireland, and she needed distraction. Since you were off in Baluchistan or Albania or somewhere, I thought, why not?”
“And you never mentioned it?”
“Well, did you think to mention Baluchistan?”
“It was Macedonia, and I did tell you.”
“As you walked out of the door.”
At the time, Holmes and I had been married for half a year, yet he had not hesitated to pack a bag without consulting me. If I’d happened to be away that morning, I’d have no doubt walked in to an empty house and a scribbled note. I was newly wed, and I’d found this cavalier attitude…irritating. When he returned, I took care to drive home the message that I was no longer his apprentice, but at the time, his blithe disregard had driven me to a secret of my own.
He protested, “Mycroft needed—”
“Of course. And when you got back, I told you I’d been off with Ronnie.”
“I believe you said that you’d gone to see her.”
“That’s more or less the same thing.”
“It is not at—”
“Yes, I would like a glass of wine, thanks.” I smiled up at the gentleman lingering behind Holmes’ should
er, by way of reassurance that we were not about to start flinging the crockery.
Sensibly, once we had chosen a wine (which took some time) and ordered dinner (which took considerably less), Holmes did not return to the topic of unexplained travel. Instead, after some tiny adjustments to his silver and an application of butter to bread roll, he asked if I had any further thoughts as to a plan of action.
We had debated just this question all the way across Europe, without coming up with a firm outline for action. Granted, Venice was a small city, in acres and in citizens. And granted, it had a clearly delineated population of foreigners. However, simply to wander the calli and canals looking for Vivian Beaconsfield did not seem an efficient use of our time. Might as well take up a table at Florian’s and wait for her to walk past.
So as I had done at various points along the train route here, I ticked off on my fingers the things we knew about Ronnie’s aunt. “She’s English. She’s blonde. She’s a lesbian. She’s artistic. And she’s more than a little unbalanced. Together, those make for a Venn diagram with a narrow point of overlap. Someone will have noticed her.”
“Perhaps,” Holmes mused, “I might take the ‘artistic’ sub-set, rather than the lesbian?”
“Agreed. Unless you brought along a woman’s wig and clothing?”
“I did not anticipate an invitation to a Carnevale party, no.”
“Pity.”
Once upon a time, Carnevale took over the streets in Venice building up to Lent, but that was one of the things dragged away by Napoleon’s conquest: forbidden by the humourless Austrians, forgotten under decades of economic malaise, and banned again during the Great War. Venice still held the occasional masked ball, but these were private affairs, beloved primarily by foreigners.
Perhaps, considering Lady Vivian’s fondness for masks, I should add a sixth area to our search: the knick-knack souvenir shops of San Marco?