Page 73 of The Venice Murders

‘Why do you say that? What makes you think you know?’ Bianca’s slight body had stiffened alarmingly and Jack got to his feet. His instinct hadn’t lied.

‘I believe that when Franco wouldn’t come to you, you went looking for him and ran him to ground close to the restaurant where we ate dinner on our first evening in Venice. The restaurant he’d recommended to us a few hours earlier. He came to La Zucca that night to conduct his own confrontation – over the bad things that were going on in Asolo. Not so stupid, after all! We overheard the quarrel he had with the restaurant owner and then we saw him walk away. You were there watching, and that was when you must have followed and confronted him with what he’d done. With what you held him guilty of.’

‘So, what if I did?’

‘You killed him,’ Flora said without expression but with absolute certainty. ‘Silvio Fabbri wasn’t to blame. Neither was Matteo Pretelli. Nor even Luigi Tasca. It was you who killed him.’

Bianca’s figure seemed to collapse inwardly and she covered her face with her hands. ‘He wouldn’t speak to me,’ she gulped. ‘Not a word. Me! The girl he had asked to marry. The girl whose father had given every lire of his savings so we could begin a life together.’

‘And when he refused to talk to you?’

‘He turned his back on me. Walked away, as though I was a piece of rubbish in the street. To be ignored, to be kicked to one side.’

‘And you followed him again?’

‘I was angry. So angry that I ran after him.’

‘And pushed him?’

Jack moved closer, his heartbeat too rapid.

‘He fell into the canal,’ the girl confessed.

‘Hitting his head as he fell,’ Flora added.

Bianca turned abruptly, now face to face with her questioner. ‘I did not know. I promise, I did not. Franco could swim. I thought he would get wet, that he would look silly, nothing more.’

‘Instead, he was knocked unconscious and drowned before ever he could be rescued.’

‘I did not know,’ Bianca repeated forlornly.

The girl sounded genuinely sad, Jack thought. Remorseful even. He could relax.

‘When you heard the news that Franco Massi had drowned,’ Flora went on, ‘you didn’t go to the police and tell them what had happened. Why not?’

‘Why would I do that?’ The girl was suddenly belligerent.

‘The police were looking for a murderer. You could have explained that Franco’s death was accidental.’

‘But they would not believe me. They would blame me. Lock me up. Say I was guilty.’

‘But youwere, Bianca. You were.’

It was as though a wash of cold air had blown through the stuffy kitchen – that was the only way Jack could describe it – a blast of air laden with ice that froze all three of them into immobility.

‘We will have to report the accident, you must know that.’ It was Flora, of course, who broke through the ice. ‘We really have no choice.’

‘No!’

The girl, suddenly freed from her torpor, enraged and larger than life, had whirled around and snatched at something Jack couldn’t see. Leaping across the intervening space, she grabbed at Flora, ripping through the polka dot dress to pull her into a brutal clasp. In the light streaming through a window high above, Jack caught the flash of a blade and sprang into action. Lunging at the girl’s legs, he brought her crashing to the floor. She kicked out at him, once, twice, the hard leather of her shoe hitting him squarely in the head. For a few seconds, he lost consciousness.

The knife had spun away to land beneath the table and Bianca, inching to her knees, began to crawl towards it. But Flora was there before her, snatching at the knife as she was pulled into a deadly embrace by her opponent.

A loud knocking at the door brought Jack back to consciousness. His head was vibrating with pain and he tried desperately to focus. The front door! That had been the front door. It must still be open, he thought dazedly. Unless the gorillas had closed it behind them. And that seemed unlikely.

A heavy tramp of feet and two officers dressed in the uniform of the Venice police were in the room, the first snatching the knife from Flora and the second whisking her hands behind her back, a pair of handcuffs at the ready.

‘You’ve got the wrong woman,’ Jack croaked, ‘la donna sbagliata. Don’t let the other one go.’ His flailing hand pointed to Bianca, already making for the kitchen door.

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