CHAPTER V
Doubts and Possibilities
In passing through the hall of the Palazzo the lawyer, who was wellacquainted with every servant in the house, took an opportunity ofspeaking a few words to the Marchese's old valet, Nanni.
"The Marchese seems to have been a little overtired when he came backfrom the ball this morning, Nanni; and then this is a sad affair aboutthe Marchese Ludovico."
"Ahi, misericordia! To think that I should live to hear of a Castelmarearrested in Ravenna. The world is coming to an end, I think, SignorGiovacchino."
"Vexing enough; but not so bad as all that, I hope. No doubt SignorLudovico will be able to clear himself before long."
"Clear himself!" re-echoed the old servant, very indignantly; "that'sjust what they say when some poor devil of the popolaccio is at oddswith the police. The Marchese di Castelmare clear himself! Well, I'velived to see a many things, but I never thought to see the day that suchpeople should dare to meddle with a Castelmare."
"The Marchese Ludovico himself thought fit to go to them to giveexplanations."
"Ah! He'd have done better to take no notice of 'em, to my thinking,"said the old man, shaking his head. "But is it true, Signor Giovacchino,what people say, that--?"
"There is mostly very little truth in what people say, Nanni,"interrupted the lawyer. "But I'll tell you what: a good servant shouldhear all and repeat nothing. It's natural that such an old friend as youshould want to know all about it, and to you I shan't mind telling thewhole story as soon as I know the rights of it myself. But it vexes meto see the Marchese so put out about it; and then I don't think he hasbeen quite well latterly."
"Nothing like well, these days past, Signor Giovacchino. The Marchesehas not been like himself noways. I think he is far from well."
"Does he get his rest at night? That is a great thing at his time oflife. He seems to me like a man who has not had his natural sleep. Isuppose he went to bed when he came home from the ball?"
"Yes, directly. He seemed in a hurry like to get to bed. When he wasabout half undressed he said it was time I was in bed myself, and sentme away, and I heard him lock the door."
"Does he generally lock the door at night?" asked the lawyer.
"No; and I knew by that that he meant to have a good sleep, and not bedisturbed this morning. So I never went near him till I heard his bell,between ten and eleven o'clock; and when I went he was just getting outof bed, so that he had a matter of six hours' sleep."
"It don't seem to have done him much good any way," rejoined the lawyer,thinking to himself that the hours during which Nanni supposed hismaster to have been sleeping, had more probably been spent in restlessagitation, the result of bringing his mind to the determination which hehad definitely announced to the lawyer, when he had summoned him aboutan hour after he had risen from his sleepless bed. "I shall come and seehow he is to-morrow morning," the lawyer added; "and I hope I may bringsome good news about Signor Ludovico."
Behind the Palazzo Castelmare there was an extensive range of stablingand coach-houses, with a large stable-yard opening on to a back street,which was the nearest way to the house of the Signor ProfessoreTomosarchi, on whom Signor Fortini thought he would call, just to askwhether he had yet seen the body, or at what hour in the morning hethought of making his post-mortem examination. Crossing the stable-yardfor this purpose, the lawyer was accosted by Niccolo the groom, who wasengaged in doing his office on a handsome bay mare at the stable-door.
Niccolo was the oldest servant in the establishment, having filled thesame place he now held under the Marchese's father. He was an older manby several years than the Marchese Lamberto; and he it had been, who,when the present Marchese was a child of ten years old, had put him onhis first pony, and been his riding-master. Old Niccolo, like everyother old Italian servant of the old school, held, as the first and mostimportant article of his creed, the unquestioning belief that theCastelmare family was the most noble, the most ancient, and in everyrespect the grandest in the world, and the Marchese Lamberto thegreatest and most powerful man in it. He was a good sort of man in hisway, was old Niccolo; went to confession regularly; and did his duty inthat state of life to which it had pleased Providence to call himaccording to his lights; was honest in his dealings; knew in a roughsort of way that veracity was good, and unveracity bad, to such anextent as to understand that truth-telling should be the rule and lyingthe exception; and was faithful to the death to his employer.
Old Niccolo was also a very perfect specimen of the product of apeculiar way of thinking, which was a speciality of the rapidlydisappearing class to which he belonged. He did not imagine for amoment, that the laws and rules of morality and duty, by which he hadbeen taught, that he ought to regulate his own conduct, were at allapplicable to his master. Even if he had ever troubled his mind byplunging so far into the depths of speculation, as to consider, that intruth the various matters forbidden in the commandments were in thesight of God, or, what was more within his ken, in the sight of theChurch, equally forbidden to all men, still it would have been clear tohim that there was no reason why such great people as the Marchese diCastelmare, with Cardinals for his friends, and wealth enough to pay forany quantity of indulgences and masses he might require, should notindulge in peccadilloes and vices which poorer folks cannot afford.Probably, however, he had never reached any such profundity ofspeculation. He saw that the Church and its ministers treated hissuperiors very differently from their treatment of him, and expectedfrom him quite different conduct from that which they expected fromthem. And the result was an habitual and practical belief, that thegreat folks of the world, of whom he considered that his own master wasunquestionably the greatest, were far above the laws in every sort whichwere binding on himself and the like of him.
Nor of all the many acts which honest Niccolo would have scrupled to doon his own account, would he have hesitated a moment to become guilty atthe command, or on the behoof of, his master. As for his own soul'sweal, it probably was sufficiently safeguarded by the paramount natureof the duty which required him to do the will of his employer; or, inany case, what was his soul that any care for it should come intocompetition with the will of the Marchese Lamberto di Castelmare?Niccolo would have been profoundly ashamed at admitting to any one ofhis own class that the family he served were not so great and somasterful as to render it a matter of course that their will mustoverride all other considerations whatsoever.
To old Niccolo it was indeed as a symptom of the end of all things--as arising of the powers of darkness against the established order of God'sworld that a Marchese di Castelmare should be arrested. It wasincomprehensible to him. There was but one power great enough, as heunderstood matters, to accomplish so dread a catastrophe; and that wasthe power of the Marchese Lamberto himself. And he inclined accordinglyto the belief, that if indeed the Marchese Ludovico were in prison, thetruth was that for some inscrutable reason the Marchese Lamberto chosethat so it should be.
"Is it really true, Signor Giovacchino," whispered the old man, comingclose up to the lawyer, as the latter was crossing the stable-yard; "isit really true that the Marchese Ludovico has been put in prison?"
"Well, that much is true, I am afraid, Niccolo; but I hope it may not befor long," said Fortini, pausing in his walk, as though he were notunwilling to talk to the old man.
"Couldn't ye say a word to the Marchese, to take him out?" said the oldgroom coaxingly; "if so be as the woman is dead, what is the use of anymore ado about it?"
"Well, I hope there may not be much more ado about it. She was probablykilled, poor woman, by some strolling vagabonds. But I wish it had nothappened to vex the Marchese just now. He is not well, the Marchese. Hashe ridden much lately?"
"Hasn't backed a horse since the first week in Carnival," said the oldgroom emphatically.
"I hope he will take to his riding again, now Carnival is over. I thinkit helps to keep him in health," remarked the lawyer.
"I'm sure I wish he would, fo
r my part," returned the groom; "and Iwished it this morning, I can tell you. I was a-taking his own mare outthis morning--it's a week since she has been out of the stable--and shewas that fresh it was pretty well more than I could do to hold her. Ibrought her in all of a lather, and splashed with mud to hersaddle-girths. People; must ha' thought I had been riding a race,--thatis, if any of them had seen me when I came into the yard; but therewasn't a soul of 'em stirring. Catch any of the lot up at that time thefirst morning in Lent."
"He is getting old, too. It would have been a mighty hard horse to ridethat my friend Niccolo would not have been able to hold a year or twoago," thought the lawyer to himself, as he walked out of the stable-yardinto the little back street that runs behind the palazzo, and pursuedhis way thoughtfully towards the residence of the celebrated anatomist.
And again, as he walked, the lawyer turned his mind, with all theanalytical power of which he was master, to the question whether or nothere were any possibility of hope that the Marchese Ludovico wereinnocent of the crime imputed to him,--whether there were any othertheory possible by virtue of which any other person might be suspectedof the deed.
His anxiety to speak with Professor Tomosarchi indicated, indeed, thathe had not wholly abandoned, despite what he had said on that point bothto the Marchese Ludovico and his uncle, the hope that the death might bepronounced to have resulted from natural causes. Possibly, had thelawyer possessed more medical knowledge, this chance might have seemedto him a somewhat better one; but, to his thinking, it was altogetherincredible that a healthy girl of Bianca's age should lie down to sleep,and, without any such change of position as would disorder herattire--without any evidence of a death-struggle--should simply neverwake again. Again the lawyer's meditations told him that small hope wasto be found in this direction.
Were there any persons in the city who might be supposed to feel enmityor ill-will towards the singer? Many a one of the young nobles had,doubtless, been kept at arms' length by Bianca in a manner that mighteasily be supposed to breed hatred in a vain and ill-conditioned heart.But murder--and such a murder! It was difficult to suppose that such acause should be sufficient to produce such an effect; yet vanity is avery strong and a very evil-counselling passion.
Vanity? Ha! could it be? Surely there never was so absurdly, so grossly,vain a creature, as that Conte Leandro? And the poor murdered Diva hadquizzed, and snubbed, and mortified him again and again. The lawyer hadheard that much; and Leandro was aware of the fact that Bianca was to bein the Pineta at that time. So much was clear from what the Marchese hadsaid. But she was to be there with Ludovico--how could the poet expectto find her alone? Could it be that he had followed them merely for thesake of making mischief and rendering himself disagreeable, and hadchanced to come upon her asleep and alone? Could this be the clue?
But it would surely be easy to ascertain to a certainty whether theConte Leandro had left the city that morning or not. If only it could beshown that he had done so? The amount of probability that he had reallybeen the perpetrator of the crime, or the possibility of convicting himof it, would signify comparatively little. It would be sufficient ifonly a competing theory, based on a possibility, could be set up; ifonly such an alternative possibility could be presented to the minds ofthe judges as should justify them in feeling that the matter was toodoubtful to warrant a conviction.
Then, suddenly, as he thought on all the causes of hatred that Biancamight be supposed to have inspired, his mind reverted to those wordswhich Signor Pietro Logarini, the head of the police, had let drop whenspeaking of the Signorina Paolina Foscarelli:--"Women, who are fond of aman, don't like to see him with another woman, and a beautiful one,under the circumstances in which the Marchese might have been seen withBianca."
That was the sense of the remark to which the Commissary had partiallygiven utterance; and now the lawyer thought of it. He was tempted tobelieve that Logarini had been struck by the same idea that had beforeflashed into his mind almost with the force of a revelation.
Might it not have been the hand of the Venetian girl, maddened byjealousy, which had taken the life of her rival, while she slept?
Such a story would by no means be now told for the first time. Very farfrom it. Men had not now to learn furens quid foemina possit.
Paolina was known to have left the city at that suspiciously strangehour of the morning. She was known to have been, at all events, at novery great distance from the spot where the crime was committed.
And was it not possible that, on the theory of Ludovico's innocence, thetrue explanation of the exclamation, which had escaped from him at thecity gate, was to be found in supposing that he, too, had been struck bya similar thought? Might not that outcry on Paolina, uttered when thespeaker knew well that it was Bianca and not Paolina that lay deadbefore him, have been forced from him by the sudden thought that she haddone the deed then revealed to him?
For the first time the shrewd lawyer began to feel a real doubt as tothe author of the crime, It might be that the Marchesino was innocentafter all, that his account of the events of that morning, as far as hewas concerned, was simply true. As his mind dwelt on the matter the caseagainst Paolina seemed to acquire additional force. It could be provedthat this girl had been deeply and seriously attached to the MarcheseLudovico. It could be proved that she had seen her lover tete-a-tetewith so dangerous a rival as the singer in circumstances that she hadevery right to consider very suspicious. It could be proved that she hadbeen not far from the spot where the murder was committed much about thetime when the deed must have been done.
It is an essentially and curiously Italian characteristic that thelawyer's rapidly growing conviction that Paolina had indeed been thecriminal was strengthened and made easier of acceptance to his mind bythe fact that the suspected criminal was not; a townswoman but aVenetian. It would have seemed less possible to him that a young Ravennagirl should have done such a deed. But one of those terrible Venetianwomen of whom so many blood-stained tale of passion and crime were onrecord!
Signor Fortini really began to think that his mind had strayed into thetrue path towards the solution of the mystery at last. And he was verymuch inclined to think that the germ of such a notion had already beendeposited in the mind of the Police Commissioner.
In any case here was wherewithal to establish such a case of suspicionas should make it difficult for the tribunal to condemn the Marchesinoon such evidence as could be brought against him, supposing no newcircumstances to be brought to light.
Not for that reason, however, was the lawyer disposed to relinquish theidea which had occurred to him as to the possibility of incriminatingthe Conte Leandro. The more circumstances of doubt it was possible toaccumulate around the facts, so much the better.
Signor Fortini thought that he saw his way clearly enough to the meansto showing that it was very presumable that the Conte Leandro hadconceived a violent and bitter hatred of the murdered woman, It wasenough to base a case for suspicion on. The lawyer had no idea that thepoet had been the murderer. He did not dream of the possibility that heshould be convicted of the crime. He had, doubtless, been quietly in bedin Ravenna at the hour it had been committed. But he might find itdifficult to prove that he had not quitted the city on that Wednesdaymorning. And the suggestion of the possibility of his guilt would, atall events, be an element of doubt and difficulty the more.
With these thoughts in his mind Signor Fortini suddenly changed hisimmediate purpose of going to the Professore Tomosarchi; and determinedto walk as far as the Porta Nuova and make inquiry himself of the peopleat the gate as to the testimony they might be able to give respectingPaolina's exit from the city at a very early hour on that morning. Atthe same time, it might be possible to lead them into imagining thatthey had seen some other passenger, who might have been the ConteLeandro. It was very desirable that this inquiry should be made withoutdelay. For it was no part of the duty of the gate officers to make anywritten note of such a circumstance; and it would entirely depend onth
eir recollection to say whether such or such a person had passed thegate. At the same time, that such a person as this Paolina Foscarellishould pass out of the city at such an hour in the morning, wassufficiently out of the ordinary course of things to make it veryunlikely that it should not be remembered by the officials.
As the lawyer pursued his way towards the gate in deep thought he wascomforted as to the complexion of his client's case by the considerationof his own state of mind. He found it impossible to come to anydefinitive conclusion as to the balance of the probabilities. At onemoment his mind swung back to his original conviction that the MarcheseLudovico had yielded to the temptation of making himself safe from thedestitution that awaited him if his uncle's purpose were carried out.The persuasion that it was so seemed to come like a flash of light uponhim. Then, again, thinking of all the stories of what women have doneunder the influence of a maddening jealousy, he reverted to the superiorprobability of the other hypothesis.
Arrived at the gate the lawyer's success was greater than he hadventured to anticipate. Both the persons respecting whom he made inquiryhad been seen to pass out of the city at a very early hour that morning.
To his great surprise he heard that the Conte Leandro had passed thegate before it was daylight; and the officer had been struck by thestrangeness of the circumstance. He was much muffled up in a largecloak, with a broad-brimmed hat drawn down over his eyes and face. Buthis person was perfectly well known to the official; and he hadrecognized him without difficulty.
He also perfectly well remembered seeing the girl--a remarkably prettygirl--pass through about an hour or a little more afterwards. And,imagining that the one circumstance explained the other--that it was anaffair of some assignation outside the city in the interest of someamourette that was attended by difficulties within the walls--he hadthought no more about it.
But Signor Fortini knew enough to feel very sure, that the exceedinglysingular facts, as they seemed to him, of both these persons having goneout of the city in the direction of the Pineta at such an unusual hour,was not to be accounted for by any such explanation. But neither did itseem in any degree likely or credible, that these two facts, the passingout of the Conte Leandro, and the passing out of Paolina, should havehad any connection with each other in reference to the murder in thePineta.
It was strange, very strange!
It was so strange and unaccountable that Signor Fortini felt that,unless some fresh circumstances should be brought to light beyond thosewhich had as yet become known either to him, or to the police, it wassafe to predict that the tribunal would not have the means of coming toany conclusion concerning the author of the murder.
The lawyer turned away from the gate, and strolled through the streetswithout any intention as to the direction in which he walked, so deeplywas he pondering upon the possibilities that were brought within hismental vision by the extraordinary facts he had ascertained.
He would almost have preferred, he thought, as he pursued his wayprofoundly musing, that it should have been shown that one only, insteadof both the persons towards whom the possibilities he had imagined,pointed, had gone at that strange hour towards the locality of thecrime.
Nevertheless, as he said to himself, the more doubt, the more elementsof difficulty, the better. In truth the chance seemed to be a very goodone, that it might never be known who gave that wretched girl her death.