Page 72 of Vengeance in Venice
“Then why is it here?” Elena snapped.
“It must have been a different dagger.”
She stared at him. “I saw it sticking out of my husband’s chest. Do you think that is something I could forget or mistake?”
“No,” Constance said, taking her hand and leading her away. “Of course he thinks no such thing. We have to work out how it got back here.”
“Foscolo.” Pulling free, Elena hurried to the door and called for her servant before hurling English words over her shoulder at Constance and Solomon. “He must have returned it on his way out of the house. He probably came with that purpose and struggled for the right moment, and then you came and—”
Elena broke off, turning on the servant instead. “Did you show Signor Foscolo straight to the front door? Did he go anywhere else in the house? In here?”
“No, signora,” said the mystified servant. “I brought him straight up to you without asking, since he is the police, and I showed him straight out.”
“Was he carrying anything when he arrived?” Solomon asked.
“No. Nor when he left.”
“What of Signor Lampl?” Solomon said. “Has he ever been here without disturbing the signora?”
“Oh, no,” the servant said, apparently shocked. “Well, not after that first day when they were both in this room—Signor Foscolo and Signor Lampl.”
That was certainly true. Solomon had been interviewed by them both here.
“Did they pay much attention to these weapons on display?” Constance asked the servant.
“I was not in the room for most of the time.”
“Of course not,” Elena interrupted sharply. “But I’m sure you know which cases were breathed on and which had fingermarks all over them when they had left.”
He flushed and bowed his head. “Actually, none of them, signora. The police seemed more interested in the master’s papers.”
“You may go,” Elena said, and turned slowly back to Solomon. “What are you thinking?”
He wasn’t sure that he wanted to tell her that yet, so instead, he said the next thing that came into his head. “That dagger you recognize is a conspicuously beautiful and valuable weapon. Why would your husband have stuck it in his belt when he went outside without his coat at five o’clock in the morning?”
Elena blinked several times, then sank onto the nearest chair. “I don’t know. I suppose… I assumed he was polishing it when he was distracted. He often dusted and polished his collection at the oddest times.”
“When he was distracted by whoever enticed him outside, you mean?” Solomon said, and Constance, suddenly catching on, hurried to each of the windows to confirm what he already suspected.
“Yes,” Elena said helplessly.
“But this room looks onto the side of the house only,” Constance said. “You cannot see the back door or the canal running past it from here. Nor can you see the front.”
Elena frowned, beginning to look baffled. “Did hehearsomething, then? Even if he did… Surely he would have laid the dagger back in its case, not put it in his belt.”
“Unless he was afraid for his life,” Constance said.
“Then why go out at all? Why not summon the bodyguard he insisted on hiring?”
“Pride?” Constance suggested.
“But to take thatparticulardagger? When I saw it, when I sawhim, it never struck me how odd it was, but he would never have taken that out of the house so carelessly. It would be an invitation to be robbed. For protection—” Elena got up suddenly and strode past Constance to the desk, pulling open the second drawer down. From it, she took a plain, clean, much shorter blade and set it carefully down on the surface of the desk. “Thisis what he took to protect himself, ever since he returned to Venice with the Austrians. He cannot have been in such a hurry that he chosethat”—she pointed toward the case—“overthis.”
“Then we have two more mysteries,” Solomon said. “How was he stabbed withthatdagger? And how the devil did it get back to its case?”
For a while, the three of them stood there, staring at each other in consternation.
Elena finally said, “Either someone put it back, or it never left this case. And it cannot be the latter, because I saw it in his chest.”
