Page 29 of Vengeance in Venice
“Didn’t he like your painting?” Constance asked, with just the right shade of incredulity.
“Of course he liked it,” Rossi scoffed. “Who wouldn’t? Already it was a great portrait. It wasmehe didn’t like.” He sighed. “That too is understandable. I drink too much; I speak my mind. And suddenly I am persona non grata.”
“What particular part of your mind did you speak?” Solomon asked.
Rossi sighed. “The part should remain quiet. I gave him advice on the conduct of his marriage. He should have listened. But there, which of us listens to advice about women?”
Constance kept her gaze carefully on the artist. “What did you say?”
“I told him she didn’t want jewels—she wanted love, attention. A woman wants your soul, not your house and yourmoney. Although,” he added judiciously, “house and money can’t hurt, eh?”
“I always insist upon them myself,” Constance said. “So you don’t think their marriage was a happy one?”
“She should have taken Giusti. There’s a fun boy for you. Savelli, not so much. But there, I must have hurt his feelings.”
Constance seemed to be waiting for more, but when it didn’t come, she said, “You don’t actually care about his feelings, because he hurt yours by dismissing you.”
Rossi tried to laugh, but he couldn’t quite hide the surge of fury in his eyes before he covered his face behind the large coffee cup and both hands. He drank it all down in one go, and when he set down the cup, Constance moved to refill it while he absently reached for another savory.
He pretended to have forgotten Constance’s accusations, turning instead to Solomon. “Where I paint you? Here? Where you stay? Hotel?”
“In the Palazzo Zulian.”
He perked up. “By the canal! Perfect. You want the view behind you, and yet it will be you two who dominate even that beauty. When can I begin?”
Stuffing the rest of the bread into his mouth, he scrambled around for paper and charcoal and began to draw on the back of some other sketch, his fingers flying, his eyes darting between Constance and Solomon and very occasionally the paper.
“Tomorrow morning?” Constance suggested. “I believe early is best.”
Rossi emitted a crack of laughter. “So it is. Damn her. Don’t worry, I’ll be good.”
It was only as they rose to leave that Solomon said, “What happened to your Savelli painting? Is it here?”
“No.” The artist’s eyes kindled again. “He kept it so I could not even finish it.”
“Just as a matter of interest,” Solomon said, “when did he dismiss you?”
Rossi drew in his breath. “The day before he died.”
Chapter Seven
“Thathastobe significant,” Constance said eagerly as they walked up the passage toward Alvise and the boat. The rain had gone off, so there was no need to rush. “Rossi blunders drunkenly into insulting Savelli’s marriage and blabbing about jewels, and suddenly Savelli sends his men after Giusti to steal his wife’s jewels back. And yet I don’t see him as a man of such temper.”
“Thedismissalis the direct result of Rossi’s verbal blunders,” Solomon said. “But the attack? That makes little sense to me however I look at it. Except as jealousy. You are sure Savelli loved his wife, even in some repressed, excessively formal way. But that did not kill him. On the other hand, Rossi might have.”
“Because he was dismissed with only half the portrait painted?” Constance said doubtfully. “He even got paid—some of his fee, at least. It doesn’t seem much of a motive for murder.”
“It might when you’re drunk enough.”
Constance thought about that. Drunkenness and violence went together all too often, as she had cause to know. Although there was something rather appealing about Domenico Rossi, even drunk as a wheelbarrow. She would need much more information before she would let him near her girls—always a useful guide. And once she accepted that…
“Savelli knew him,” she said slowly. “If he was awake that night and saw Rossi arrive at his back door, he might well have nipped down to speak to him—to ask him what the devil he wasdoing, or even ask him to finish the painting after all. Only Rossi was too drunk and angry and stabbed him. Probably with more luck than science.”
“Artists tend to know the human body very well. I wonder if he has a boat?”
“We can ask him tomorrow morning,” Constance said. “If he turns up.”
“The girl will make him. Though actually, I don’t think she’ll need to. He seemed quite keen. And he’s good, isn’t he?”
