* * *
—
Late the following morning, Holmes returned with prints of the photographs. Within minutes of the previous night’s fracas, all four photographers had had cameras ripped from their hands and smashed to the floor by the Capitano’s Blackshirts; however, since all four of those cameras were the cheap replacements Holmes had carried in, no real harm was done—to our plan or to their livelihood.
When the Blackshirts had retreated, it was a moment’s work to retrieve the devices from beneath their concealing tablecloths. Four rolls of film were retrieved, four cameras returned to their owners, four photographers paid off and told that they should go home, now.
Each of their pictures was crisp and clear and perfectly timed. The first appeared to show the Marquess of Selwick in the embrace of a woman in a shiny dress—albeit a woman with rather hairy arms. The second, however, was clearly the Marquess kissing a man. In the third, Cole Porter’s ecstatic face and tousled hair revealed just the right amount of the Marquess: enough to identify him, but not to show his expression—although that on Cole Porter’s homely features was interesting. Something personal there, more profound than mere exultation at a successful prank.
The fourth, taken by the photographer closest to the door, showed laughing onlookers and the Marquess pushing back in disgust—but that one could be discarded, along with the ambiguous first one.
Yes: the second and third photographs, put side by side, would be quite enough for our purposes.
I hoped not too many people suffered from the after-effects of the previous night. Things had, in the Hon Terry’s phrase, got a bit out of hand after the Blackshirts’ brutal destruction of cameras sent a ripple of protest through the inebriated crowd—many of them Americans who’d shouted for a photo to send to the folks back home. The dissent was good-natured at first, but when the Capitano’s men smashed the third camera, revolt became more open.
Then the Milizia made the mistake of shutting down the band. As the wrangling continued, the romantic appeal of black costumes began to turn, along with the mood of the room.
No one saw where the first flying orange-slice came from, but in an instant, bits of alcohol-soaked fruit and booze-sodden olives filled the air, soon joined by bar-snacks of devilled eggs and rolled salami. At the slap of the first thrown oyster against his forehead, the Capitano turned and fled, with the Marquess on his heels. Having only five men—and having enough sense not to draw his weapon on the Excelsior’s guests—he retreated to call for reinforcements. By the time those arrived, the party had broken up.
In the confusion, Holmes and I rescued the precious cameras and slipped their rolls of un-wound film into the dark pouch of his beaded handbag.
Yes: his—for I see I have neglected to mention the details of my Monday conversation with Miss Elsa Maxwell.
I’d been told how the lady liked to hold themed parties—scavenger hunts, come-as-you-are balls. It was also common knowledge that she depended on the kindness of others when it came to paying the bills. So when I offered to under-write the bar tab for a party with a specific theme, she was all in favour. The theme? Come as Your Opposite.
Girls were to dress as boys, and boys as girls—but to further stir the pot, women who preferred trousers were instructed to find themselves a feminine dress, while boys whose preferences were…of a lavender tint, were invited to come as he-men.
Holmes, believe it or not, had walked into Chez Vous wearing a pair of my neon-toned beach pyjamas.
I wore his evening suit with its cuffs turned up.
Linda Porter also wore an evening suit, although it had been tailored for her sleek figure, and there was no mistaking her for a man.
And Cole Porter? He was dressed in Vivian’s golden costume.
The Marquess had seen his sister wearing it, outside Ca’ Rezzonico on Saturday night. Because it had a loose fit, and because Porter was not much taller than Vivian, we had only to scour the city for a blond wig and a pair of gold shoes.
Vivian herself kept well clear of the Lido—because over the past few days, the Milizia Nazionale had received a dozen letters and a score of tips from gondoliers and shop-keepers: a small, blonde Englishwoman was sure to be at the Excelsior cabaret on Wednesday night.
I realised that both Holmes and I were studying the third photograph, the one showing Cole Porter’s full face.
“He looks like a man who’s just won a hard-fought game of tennis,” I remarked.
“A hard-fought battle in a war, more like.”
It was true: Porter did not look as if he’d been playing a game. Or if a game, it was an important one. “I’m glad we could make it worth his while. Although I hope there aren’t too many repercussions—from the Italian government, I mean. Did you have much trouble talking him into wearing the dress, Holmes?”
“Porter, no. His wife took longer to convince. She’s extremely protective. On the other hand, she likes to make him happy, and she could see how badly he wanted this. Men such as Porter put up with a lifetime of snubs and insults. He’s learned to take his revenge indirectly—through a third party, say, or by means of clever and convoluted jokes hidden inside his songs. Not many people notice the sharp edge behind the fluff. In any event, Linda let herself be convinced that playing along would make her a ‘good sport’—because it also meant the two of them could extract a revenge on the Capitano, through his all-important British guest, for the open contempt he’d shown them both.”
I picked up the fourth picture again, the one that showed mostly the table and the crowd of dancers pausing, mid-flail, to watch. Porter’s face was blurred, little more than grinning teeth, but the camera had caught a slice of Linda’s face. This was a woman who’d married a homosexual—knowing what he was—and who had just watched him give a man a hard kiss on the mouth. Yet there was no anger there, no hurt. What I saw there was distinctly pleasure—not arousal, but…yes: pride.
I imagined that Mrs Porter, too, experienced few victories in her married life. The insulation of riches could go only so far.
As for the Marquess, there was no mistaking him, either: dressed as a Fascist, in the full and affectionate embrace of a transvestite man. The Italian Fascists’ disapproval of homosexuals was in fact relatively low-key, and Cole Porter himself could certainly laugh the picture off as a bit of fun at a fancy-dress party—but the Marquess? For Edward, Lord Selwick, evidence that the pictures had survived would come as a shock—and a threat. Proclaim his innocence as he might, these photos would end his political dreams. The British establishment might overlook homosexual behaviour—might even practice it—but it could never forgive a man who’d permitted himself to be made a laughing-stock in the papers, caught in flagrante by the light of a photographer’s flash.
As we’d left Chez Vous, film in hand, we had heard the two men arguing. The Marquess was insisting that, yes, it truly had been his sister that night outside of Ca’ Rezzonico—after all, it could not have been Porter, now, could it? But the outraged Capitano was not open to argument. The outraged Capitano was barely open to English, swearing in a furious mix of languages that his new “friend”—the word was accompanied by the exact Pah! spitting gesture my two gondoliers used—had thrown him into a position of ridicule, public ridicule! That he’d be lucky not to be demoted to patrolling the Alps! Imagine, starting a brawl—in the Excelsior, of all places! Filled with Americans and English and French and— (The words that followed were unintelligible and probably Venetian.) Now the foreigners would all be writing home to say they’d been threatened—by the Milizia! What if they all decided to pack their bags and stay away, go to the Riviera next year instead? What would Il Duce say about that, eh? Venice was his showcase, and did the Marquess know how much the Excelsior alone brought in every year? As far as the Capitano was concerned, the Marquess could board the first train out, and take his disruption home with him. (Pah!) Italia w
as very fine without the help of England, thank you very much.
I smiled, there in my suite in the Beau Rivage, as I picked up the two photographs. One look at these, and the Capitano would be chasing after the Marquess’ train with a rifle.
“You know, Holmes,” I said as I slid the two prints into an envelope, “I never realised how satisfying blackmail could be.”
Chapter Forty-nine
SHERLOCK HOLMES WATCHED THE TWO crisp images disappear into the envelope, but he was thinking about the conundrum of Mr Cole Porter.
Holmes had gone to Poveglia himself on Monday morning, in a boat he’d had to buy outright from its enterprising owner. He’d brought away a parcel: the golden dress and bandeau Lady Vivian wore to the Lido. That afternoon, it had sat on the littered pietra dura table while Cole chatted and played, with Linda, the Murphys, several cats, and various friends coming in and out. But when Linda went off to check on lunch and the various friends went to see about a drink, Holmes had laid the parcel, and his proposition, before the composer.
First he described the situation—or as much of it as he cared to disclose: a desperate woman choosing freedom; her brother wishing to control her money, her sexual preferences, and her person; the brother’s vulnerabilities, both here and at home.
What they required was a short man willing to wear women’s clothing to a dress-up party. A golden costume, extreme and feminine. It had to convince—
“Sure,” Porter said, reaching out to pick up the feathered bandeau. “Unless we can’t get the dress to fit me.”
“I’m told it is relatively voluminous.”
“Fine, then.” He dropped the bandeau and traded it for his cigarettes. “That’s assuming I won’t be the only guy in a dress. Linda won’t like it if I am.”
“As I understand it, the night is to be something of a free-for-all. Men in dresses, women in suits, women who prefer trousers donning frills, men who, well…”
“Lavender boys dressing butch?”
“As it were. The basic idea being, anything goes.”
“Fine with me.” Porter returned to the keyboard, his clever hands bouncing through the chords he’d been improvising earlier. It was a jaunty tune, the sort of thing a man would hum walking down the street. “Looking for some words for this one,” he said. “Maybe your mixed-up costume party will give me an idea.”
“One never knows,” Holmes agreed. In this new world, wasn’t anything possible? A curmudgeonly old detective could marry a girl half his age; a man could speak his painful truths from beneath a mask of light-hearted jokes; an island of madwomen could hide in plain sight.
Anything goes.
Author’s Notes
1925 proved too early for the rise of Fascism in Britain. It was not ushered in until Oswald Mosley rose in the thirties. However, the impulse was already building, as witnessed by the founding of a proto-Fascist organization by Rotha Beryl Lintorn-Orman (described by Mycroft Holmes herein).
Women in 1925 Italy were regarded as being primarily a means of building the population of the state. Women were forbidden various kinds of jobs, including teaching history, Italian literature, and Greek or Latin in the high schools.
Ida Dalser, who claimed to have been married to Benito Mussolini in 1914, bore him a son in 1915. She persisted in demanding her rights, although any paperwork disappeared after the Fascist government took hold, and she was put into the San Clemente asylum in 1925. Their young son was told she was dead, although she lived until 1937. When the boy later asserted that his father was Benito Mussolini, he, too, was committed to an asylum, near Milan. He was murdered there at the age of twenty-six, in 1942.
“Moral management” of the insane came to the fore in Bethlem Royal Hospital and other facilities during the nineteenth century, following a long history when the mad were simply locked out of the way. In 1925, the predominant approach combined talk therapy, physical treatments, and comforting routine, but as the century went on, anti-psychotic drugs and shock therapy came to the fore. Ironically, society’s way of dealing with the unbalanced has come full circle, with all but the most violent turned out of any asylum and put back onto the streets.
The Porters hired Ca’ Rezzonico, now a magnificently restored eighteenth-century museum, for several summers (though Duff Cooper’s 1925 diary mentions them in the Palazzo Papadopoli, further up the Grand Canal). Two years after this, the Milizia raided a too-riotous party involving drugs and cross-dressing, and Porter was invited to leave the city.
1925 found Cole Porter frustrated by his musical failures. Not until Paris in 1928 did he begin to make a name for himself. Porter’s songs that find a place in his conversations with Holmes include “Babes in the Wood” (which may in fact have been written in 1924—a shocking instance in which Mary Russell’s Memoirs may be mistaken); “Let’s Misbehave”; “The Land of Going to Be”; “Don’t Look at Me That Way”; “Let’s Do It (Let’s Fall in Love)”; “Wake Up and Dream”; and a number of others—including “Anything Goes.” His songs are eternal because they are not, as Holmes notes, merely fluff entertainments. As one story has it, Porter was once badly beaten by a truck driver—and his response? The song “I Get a Kick Out of You.”
The island of Poveglia stands in the Venice lagoon, and its pre–World War I history is much as given in this book—plague, mass burials, and all. In 1922, a mental institution did open there, under a doctor reputed to perform crude lobotomies, who is said to have hurled himself from the tower after being driven mad by ghosts. The asylum, which became a home for elderly indigents, closed in 1968. Sensational television shows and websites adore Poveglia, and it remains to be seen whether the island’s recent sale will see development into yet another Venetian luxury resort—complete with skulls.
To Mary Alice Kier,
Fellow devotée of La Serenissima
Acknowledgments
A city like Venice has many professional guides, but few who so instantly grasp what a visitor needs as the two who helped guide this book. The Hôtel Londres (formerly Beau Rivage, and as welcoming today as when Russell and Holmes stayed there) put me in touch with Daniela Zamperetti, who took time out from her “Tribal Fusion” dancing to show me around the excellent San Servolo museum and explain much about the workings of the city and its people, then later coax my flawed Italian into something recognizable. And guide Christina Gregorin (found at www.slow-venice.com) swept me from one end of the city to the other, talking politics and history. Not that this book is about politics: no, not at all.
The fabulous ladies of CineLit, Mary Alice Kier and Anna Cottle, have been a constant source of support, ideas, and enthusiasm for years now, and no time more than in 2017. A writer could ask for no better travel partners, whether the path leads to Venice or the wilds of Hollywood. Mary Alice and Anna, I raise a glass of Campari to our many future projects.
Bethlem Royal Hospital is still an active and vibrant mental health community, now in the southern reaches of London. Archivist Colin Gale was very helpful and patient with my questions and research, and I highly recommend a visit to their museum or their archives, for a look at the transformation of mental health care from priory hospital to “moral treatment.” Their excellent website is at www.museumofthemind.org.uk.
San Servolo in the Venice lagoon, in addition to being Venice International University, houses an excellent museum (Museo del Manicomio), which one may visit in both actual and virtual senses. I dream of holding a writing conference in the San Servolo facilities…
And to my friend and walking Sherlock Holmes Reference Library, Leslie S. Klinger, I promise: next time I’ll look it up in your New Annotated first.
Naturally, all of these generous individuals and organizations gave more than any writer could use, and all of them now suffer from seeing the inevitable corruption of their expertise by a mere storyteller. If I got things wrong here, it’s really not their fault. Th
ey tried their best.
As always, my friends at Bantam Books (Penguin Random House) make my books possible. If this is in front of your eyes, it’s thanks to them.
Or if this is in your ears, you can thank the great folk at Recorded Books.
As for me, I thank you all, collaborators and readers alike.
BY LAURIE R. KING
MARY RUSSELL
The Beekeeper’s Apprentice
A Monstrous Regiment of Women
A Letter of Mary
The Moor
O Jerusalem
Justice Hall
The Game
Locked Rooms
The Language of Bees
The God of the Hive
Beekeeping for Beginners: A Short Story
Pirate King
Garment of Shadows
Dreaming Spies
The Marriage of Mary Russell: A Short Story
The Murder of Mary Russell
Mary Russell’s War
Island of the Mad
STUYVESANT & GREY
Touchstone
The Bones of Paris
KATE MARTINELLI
A Grave Talent
To Play the Fool
With Child
Night Work
The Art of Detection
AND
A Darker Place
Folly
Keeping Watch
Califia’s Daughters (as Leigh Richards)
Lockdown
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
LAURIE R. KING is the award-winning, bestselling author of fifteen Mary Russell mysteries, five contemporary novels featuring Kate Martinelli, and many acclaimed stand-alone novels such as Folly, Touchstone, The Bones of Paris, and Lockdown. She lives on California’s Central Coast, where she is at work on her next Mary Russell mystery.