Page 51 of Vengeance in Venice
“Premarin topped it up.”
She turned her face up to his, her eyes wide. “So he did. And it was just after that I began to feel ill. Within a few minutes.”
“Would it have acted quite so quickly, though? Let’s try to follow your glass and work out when it could have happened without either of us or anyone else seeing it. Simons gave us each a glass from a tray. It must have been a random choice, for other people were taking glasses at the same time. In those firstminutes, there was only you and me and Simons. And then Mrs. Hargreaves.”
“What with her skirts and mine, we never got very close to each other.” Her brow twitched. “She said the police here weresecretpolice, spies of the kind that read letters and listen to conversations. Especially Lampl.”
“I’m sure some of them are. Austria has a vast and seething empire of discontent to keep together. What happened in 1848 gave the government a huge fright.”
“It’s hard to reconcile that the government of this charming city is the same one Dragan Tizsa fought against.”
Dragan Tizsa, the revolutionary Hungarian husband of a duke’s daughter. Both had attended Constance and Solomon’s wedding back in what seemed like another lifetime, and both were quite gifted amateur sleuths.
Solomon said, “It is definitely worth remembering.”
But Constance had moved on. “Are they trying to cover up the truth of Savelli’s murder?” she said, doubt in her voice. “Are we getting too close to a culprit they don’t want accused?”
“We don’t seem to be very close to anything at all,” Solomon said wryly. “And I very much doubt the police would go about poisoning prominent foreign citizens.”
“Bad for business,” Constance said.
“Precisely. Whom did you speak to after Mrs. Hargreaves? And did you put your glass down anywhere during this time?”
“No, I don’t think I did. I spoke to a few people—well, listened, mostly—but no one came too close. And then I bumped into Mrs. Hargreaves again. That was when she more or less told me Lampl was a secret policeman. And then I went up to Kellar…”
“Now there is an interesting man. Do you think he really does know your mother?”
He passed her the glass of water, and she sat with it in her hand for a moment, frowning, before she raised it to her lips.
“Do you mean he lied? Used it as an excuse to speak to me? But I approachedhim, and I could swear he was…taken aback. Unprepared. Almost alarmed. Ha! Maybe he does know her after all.” She took another sip of water, then added with some difficulty, “I wondered, you know, just for a moment, if he could be my father. And I really think he was wondering the same thing, because apparently I look very much like her as she was then. But it has been thirty years since he saw her.”
“I wonder,” Solomon said, distracted from his main concern, “if she was respectable then?”
“Juliet?”
“Think about it. Would he have been so interested in the daughter of a whore? Would he even have remembered her, let alone brought her into conversation in respectable Society? Your mother taught you to read and write. How many other girls did you meet in your early years who could do so?”
“None. I made money out of it.” She spoke absently, clearly still mulling over this different view of her outrageous parent that she had never considered before. Of course, children tended to accept their parents with all their peculiarities—criticizing, perhaps, but not questioning. “You mean, Juliet could be a fallen lady, like Elizabeth Maule?”
Discussing Elizabeth, whom Constance had saved from the streets and then from a murder charge, was too far removed from the urgency in Solomon’s mind.
“That is for later,” he said firmly. “When I saw you with Kellar, he was quite close to you, although whether or not he could have dropped something in your glass without your noticing—”
“He grasped it,” Constance interrupted, staring at him. “When he said,I knew your mother,I was so stunned that Ialmost dropped the glass, and he grabbed my hand to steady it. I was so distracted… If he was quick, he could have dropped something in then. I would never have seen. But why would he? He brought up the subject of Juliet, after all, not I…”
“A roving diplomat,” Solomon said thoughtfully. “Perhaps it does not suit the British government to have us asking questions about someone.”
“Nationalists. The British support the cause of Italian nationalism and unity.”
“But would they murder their own people to prevent a little scandal in the camp?”
“I am not dead,” Constance pointed out, and Solomon’s blood chilled all over again at how close she had come.
He had to force his mind onward. “Well, let us allow that Kellar had an opportunity. What happened then?”
“You joined us.” Her free hand plucked at the bedclothes. “And when I turned away from Kellar, I almost bumped into Giusti.”
“Or he bumped into you,” Solomon said slowly. “Deliberately? I couldn’t see your glass at the time, but when I stepped around you, your wine seemed in danger of spilling over the side. Could Giusti have done it?”
