But I was too late. If I’d jumped over and swum to shore in the other steamer’s wake, I would still have been too late.
It couldn’t have been he—merely a trick of waning light on a half-seen face, a silly consequence of my preoccupied mind. I apologised to my fellow passengers, settled my wrap, tugged at my lacy gloves. Impossible.
In any event, what would he be doing here—and of all things, dressed as a Blackshirt? It was a different man. A man who just happened to resemble Edward, Eighth Marquess of Selwick. Ronnie’s uncle, Vivian’s brother.
Must have been.
Chapter Twenty-six
SHERLOCK HOLMES, ONE SHOULDER HOLDING up the wall of the balcony, watched his young wife and the Venetian girl bustle away into the morning. Russell looked remarkably cheerful for a person who claimed to loathe shopping for clothing. He smiled, and took out his cigarette case.
To his surprise, he had become mildly interested in the situation—Mycroft’s situation, at any rate. He’d come here thinking that a report on Italian Fascism was a task any journalist could have done, but moving through Venice the day before, he’d begun to realise the delicacy of the matter. Who was the Fascist here? The Blackshirt, yes—but what about the Carabinieri? The polizia? The mayor, the gondolier, the waiter overhearing conversations, the greengrocer around the corner from Fascist headquarters?
If a Blackshirt felt free to beat up a clumsy passer-by, what act could six Blackshirts goad each other into? And what might they do to an inquisitive foreigner? In his thirties, Sherlock Holmes might have welcomed an opportunity to match physical skills with a bully, but he’d found himself less eager as the decades went by.
He wished he understood the world’s fascination with Venice. The city had long shed any position of import in the world’s affairs, becoming an ornate and empty picture-frame, a crumbling play-ground for the rich and romantically deluded. Were it not for the sure knowledge of what was to come—knowledge available to any student of history, or even of basic psychology—he might even have some sympathy for the Fascist desire to clean the place up.
He did agree with his brother, that there would be another War. And he was beginning to think that the Fascisti would be at the front of things—although it was difficult to predict whether Italy or Germany would set the first match to the tinder of post-war bitterness and economic loss. Perhaps in the next War, more of the bombs would come down away from the canals and lagoon, and free up a bit of real estate, as the Zeppelins had done for London.
In the meantime, he had promised his assistance to both members of his family, and he did not think either missing aristocrats or loose-tongued Fascists would pass beneath his balcony and save him from looking. He crushed out the half-smoked stub and checked his watch: that third pawn shop he’d been to the previous day would open in an hour. Plenty of time for a visit to the steam-baths near La Fenice, to indulge in a nice, close shave.
Two hours later, he was back in the room: clean, pounded, chin shaved, moustache trimmed, and the owner of a new violin.
It was not a particularly good instrument, and in a dryer climate might set his teeth on edge. Here, the warm damp air softened the wood enough to give the sound shape. And once he had replaced its worn steel strings with proper gut…
The result was surprisingly full. Satisfied, he settled in to reconstruct Mr Porter’s tunes—first, one he’d heard at the Winter Garden four years before, then the one that stood out in the New Oxford the following year.
Ghastly shows, of a sort he’d never have submitted to of his own will, but now he was just as glad that he’d been forced to follow a long-time (and now, long-behind-bars) quarry into those depths of human endeavour, the music halls.
Were Mr Cole Porter to raise himself up above that level of entertainment, the young man might have something to offer the world.
He put away the instrument when the sun had passed its zenith, and went to occupy his afternoon with Mycroft’s tasks. Once, coming out of an antiquarian bookseller (a man whose brother was in the Milizia Nazionale), he heard a familiar voice and looked down the zig-zag alleyway at his wife. Russell was laughing at something her diminutive companion had said. She did not spot him, although he followed for a few minutes until the two women stepped into a purveyor of silks, and he left them to it.
He returned to the Beau Rivage in early evening, to leave the books and fetch the violin. Before they’d boarded the train in London, he’d known that Russell’s chosen hotel would probably not serve his purposes—not even those that Mycroft had thrust upon him. Were this a British establishment, he’d have surreptitiously negotiated with the staff to come and go through a back door, but here, it was simpler to buy one’s invisibility outright. So yesterday, after he’d set the gondolieri to their necklace-hunt, he’d continued into the darker, less salubrious corners of the city. There he found a room costing precisely one-tenth the tariff of the Beau Rivage, with approximately a twentieth the square footage and no amenities whatsoever—except for the invaluable one of relative anonymity. Not that people here would not talk—but the tight neighbourhoods of Venice meant that talk would take longer to spread.
His trip through the pawn shops had furnished the room with an entire change of clothing, hat to shoes—perfectly acceptable clothing, but of a sort that would have caused the concierge of the Beau Rivage to direct him towards the kitchen entrance. The suit was a touch old-fashioned, the shoes a trifle worn, the clothes more suited to a commercial traveller than a touristic one. Or, perhaps, to an itinerant musician.
By dusk, he was entertaining the diners at a restaurant very near the Grand Canal, waiting for a signal that the Cole Porters were passing by.
Chapter Twenty-seven
THE STEAMER THREW ITS ROPES over the bollard on the Lido dock. My impulse was to turn immediately back, in hopes of catching some trace of the man who looked like the Marquess of Selwick, but that would be a fool’s errand. Instead, I let myself be swept ashore with the rest, again by-passing the trams in favour of walking an indirect route across the sand-bar island. As I went, I tried to force the dark preoccupation from my mind. It was a face like any other. The man would not have dropped everything and come here. It had not been him.
I gave my thoughts a hard shake and shoved them ruthlessly away. Time to don my mask for the gilded set.
I have spent most of my life an outsider, both by nature and through the circumstances of my history. Divided between England and America, Jew and Christian, wealthy and not—even before meeting Sherlock Holmes, I’d had a lot of experience with forging identities to fit a given situation.
Sometimes, the best approach was that of a social chameleon, echoing a group’s behaviour from vocabulary and accent to gestures and bodily stance. Intense and rapid research is key, and the higher the status of a group, the more precarious the act: one small class-related slip—a misplaced phrase, a moment’s uncertainty over a choice of fork—and the switch of disapproval is thrown, forevermore.
The other approach is that of coquette. Not that simple eyelash-fluttering and the tapping of a boy’s sleeve would suffice here: a crowd that included the wealthy and the politically dominant would be wary of, and amused by, any attempt at open seduction.
No, coquetry here would need to play on the weakness of this specific group. Namely, these people would not believe that any person might consider them inferior. Thus, they would be unable to resist someone who apparently did.
Because any woman who found the smart crowd dull must be fascinating indeed.
I directed my steps down along the backbone of the Lido, feeling the excitement build around me—and the closer to the great hotels, the more focussed the energies.
It had just gone ten o’clock. The guests were moving from dining room to Chez Vous, the Excelsior’s cabaret that opened into the gardens. As I found the day before—and as I counted on tonight—no on
e seeing my garb and attitude questioned my right to be there. However, when it came to paying for the drinks I intended to order, that might be another matter. Not drinking would be a mistake; cash payments would stand out; I required a…sponsor, shall we say. Albeit an unwitting one.
So as I passed through the noisy crowd, my little beaded bag happened to slip from my wrist. I stooped to retrieve it—and came away with the key I had seen protruding from a rotund gentleman’s pocket.
His attitude and that of his companions said they were in for a long stay. I found a seat at a tiny table, waved the key in front of the harried waiter to prove my room number, and we were off.
Three times over the next couple of hours I left my table to go admire the fountains or use the Ladies’; three times I came back to a new place, each one closer to my targeted group. I never looked bored, never looked lonely, never gave the least indication that I was uncomfortable with being by myself. I ordered drinks from the waiters, smiled into the flashes of hotel photographers, and nodded encouragingly at the band. I put on an attitude of contented self-sufficiency, as interested in my surroundings as any South-Seas anthropologist was in her tribe. Twice, I even took out a tiny note-book and wrote something down.
The most difficult part of the act was the young men who came buzzing like wasps around a lunch-tray. None of them knew me, since I had kept my face firmly tucked beneath my hat during the day, but all of them pretended to. Why do young men never believe that the world will go on nicely without them? A dozen times before midnight, a figure in a dinner jacket would appear in my field of vision, make clever conversation, and linger for a while. It was, in part, because I wore my wedding ring on my right hand, but even shifting it over did not dislodge the persistent. My second table-move and trip to the Ladies’ was the only way I could free myself of the attentions of one particularly drunk and disbelieving baronet.
However, when I wandered back into Chez Vous, a couple was rising from the very table I wanted, and my programme of patience and bland ruthlessness paid off: the table was mine before my rivals could claim it.
I moved the chair a few inches, enabling me to see the dance floor—and more important, giving my target a clear view of my profile. I asked for another glass of Prosecco (of which, truth to tell, my palate was growing a bit tired) and concentrated on the dance floor with an academic eye. The table behind me—tables, rather, since several of them had been pushed together as the numbers swelled—was raucous, but unlike most by this hour, the merriment they gave off was not merely drunken blare. Actual conversation was being made—or attempted, at any rate—and although none of what I managed to catch was particularly profound, nonetheless it sounded a considerable step up from the gossip and back-biting I had heard amongst the beach chairs.
I smiled to myself, at the thought that this was the table I might actually have chosen to join, were I left to myself.
Perhaps that smile was what did it. The Gioconda sensation on my face had scarcely faded when a chair scraped back and I saw a figure rise to his feet and move in my direction. Just before he reached me, I stretched out an arm for my little bag on the table. My fingers worked its ornate clasp, slipped inside, began to draw back—only to have a hand with a sleek gold cigarette lighter appear before my face. A flame snapped to attention. I looked at it, then let my eyes travel up the slim, beautifully tailored arm to the shoulder and face framed by dark curls with sun-burnt ends. I summoned the enigmatic smile.
“Terribly sorry, I don’t smoke.” So saying, I finished withdrawing my arm, and waved back and forth the little note-book with its delicate silver pencil clipped to the cover.
His face was priceless. He let the flame detumesce. The table behind me erupted in laughter, but before he could turn away with embarrassment, I laid a hand on his sleeve. “It was very kind of you to offer, though. Thank you.”
His flush faded, and after a moment, he gave a grudging chuckle. “Well, I can see you drink. Buy you one of those?”
“Thanks, but I’m married.”
“That’s all right.” The flush returned as he realised how that could be taken. “That is, I’m not—look, I was asked to see if you’d care to join us. If you’re tired of sitting by yourself, that is…”
I took pity on him. “Who is doing the asking?” I half-turned, to run a quick eye across the gathered strangers as if anticipating a known face among them. Thank heavens, there was not.
“Miss Maxwell.” When I did not respond with the proper awe, he ventured, “Miss Elsa Maxwell?”
“I don’t believe I know a Miss—wait. Elsa? Does she happen to be American? From San Francisco?”
“That’s her.” He beamed, pleased as punch to have hit the ball at last.
I swivelled again to survey the gathering. Every set of eyes was focussed on our little tableau, even those who had been facing the opposite direction. This time, I permitted my gaze to pause on the face of the unlikely woman at the centre of the group’s regard.
She stuck out like a bull in a herd of antelope: an unlovely woman in her forties with a large nose, three chins, untended hair, and a pair of huge and hideous diamanté earrings. She wore an exuberant sequined dress that made her bosom look vast, and a smear of carmine lipstick that might have been put on in the dark. But in that unfortunate face were a pair of dark eyes that saw every person and thing in the room. I felt her gaze eating up all the details of my life, seeing through the act, seeing beneath the assurance to the outsider—and caught myself: that gaze was a tool. The woman would know nothing about me that I did not wish to give her.
I turned to tuck away the note-book and pen, then permitted the young man to guide me around the conjoined tables. He proudly handed me over to his American hostess, who summoned a chair to her side and patted its seat. I perched on the cushion, and put out a hand. “You’re Miss Elsa Maxwell? Of San Francisco?”
She was clearly accustomed to being recognised, but was less prepared for the second half of my question. “Originally, maybe. Not any longer.”
“I believe our mothers worked together during the War, raising money to buy aeroplanes for the RAF.”
The sharp eyes took on a degree of warmth, and more than that, of humour. “If your mother managed to get some money out of mine, she musta been a powerful talker.”
“I think she may have been more interested in your mother’s energy than her cheque-book.”
Elsa Maxwell laughed—and that was all it took for Mary Russell to become one of the Lido set.
I was very glad that the mask I wore was so close to the face beneath: somewhat aloof, rather sardonic, impatient with idiots, and with a clear, academic interest in everything around me. I was also glad I hadn’t tried to suggest I was a lesbian: those Maxwell eyes would have seen through that in an instant, and rejected me out of hand. Because—as I was soon to learn—Miss Maxwell was amiable with the shallowness of those around her, and only mildly impatient with drunks, but when it came to fakery, her rejection was scathing and absolute.
I would also learn that once a person had made it into Elsa’s good graces, they were intimate friends for life.
The night passed in a blur of the powerful, the talented, and the simply beautiful. I danced, I drank, I even flirted (mildly, and a touch nervously: who knew when Holmes’ face might appear amongst the crowd?). To my surprise, I had fun. Near to dawn, the band packed away its instruments, yawning waiters began to trade the night’s linen for breakfast settings, and Elsa Maxwell’s dozens of intimate friends drifted away to their rest, separate or together.
I got to my feet, numb and dishevelled, yet more content than I would have believed possible at the end of an all-night affair. I squinted out over the still-dark ocean, and wondered how long I should have to wait until the vaporetti started crossing the laguna.
I adjusted my drooping bandeau and held out a well-mannered hand to the lady
in the sequins—who seized my arms instead and gave me a smack on the cheek with her garish smear of lipstick. “See you around?”
“Perhaps. Though I have to admit”—I checked for lurking waiters, then lowered my voice—“I’m not actually a guest here.” I pulled the stolen key out of my bag and laid it on the table, tucking some lira beneath it to cover the drinks I’d used it to purchase.
My new best friend Elsa thought that was the funniest thing she’d heard all that long and merry night. When she had her breath again, she gave my arm a shake.
“Honey, you come back tonight. Anyone who can bring the Honourable Terrence Shields-McClintock to heel like that has my vote.”
The Hon Terrence stood, grinning and tired, at her side. His father was the seventeenth-richest man in England, and Terry (as I had been instructed to call him) planned to stand for the next election. Elsa, chuckling, started to turn away, then paused. “Say, if you’re not staying here, do you have a way home?”
“The steamers will go—”
“Terry, run her home, that’s a darling. You’ll sleep better after anyway.”
His easy acquiescence made clear that when it came to an Elsa Maxwell command, one might as well argue with an avalanche.
Chapter Twenty-eight
OF COURSE, WHEN IT CAME to arguing with avalanches, I had far more experience than the Hon Terry. Had the man been inebriated, unwilling, or simply hard on the nerves, I’d have shed him the moment Elsa’s back was turned.
But he was amiable, and easy on the nerves (and frankly, eyes). He was even relatively sober. Of greater interest, however, was that he’d been a Lido regular longer than Elsa herself: I was not about to let this one go without picking his brain.
First, though, I was required to pay homage to his boat. It was, indeed, admirable, a long, sleek wooden vessel with two open cockpits, fore and aft, separated by a flat portion of what I took for decking until I realised that the engine lurked beneath it.