The Remedy (49 page)
A truly unfortunate name
, he reflects,
this last.
Yet, I suppose she must let her clients know the nature of her business.
Take Florentine Orris 1 scruple; white Hellebore half a scruple; Oil of Nutmeg 1 drop, make a Powder.
Sternutatories purge and cleanse the Head, because they irritate the Spirits nidulating in, and irradiating those Nerves that are disseminated into the internal Membranes of the Nostrils. For the Spirits being provok’d into Spasms and tumultuary Transports, loosen the impacted viscous Humours, shake them out of their Places, and eliminate them through the Infundibulum and Pituitary Gland, out of the confines of the Brain into the Veins.
So Valentine Greatrakes goes searching in the high-class brothels of Venice, of which there are some several score, all now decked bridally in a covering of snow. It is not his intention to visit as a customer, and nor is this chore to his taste at the moment, but he obliges himself to tour the luxurious establishments in order to find this woman, this Signorina Jallowfiwhore, who will help with the Balsamick nostrum. There is also the chance that information is to be had there regarding the actress and his ward, and perhaps even the stranger who had gloated over Tom’s body in London. His mind is open to all possibilities.
He tells each madam that he looks not for a singular act of pleasure, but to find a courtesan with whom he might enjoy some pleasant conversation.
“In words, you know,” he adds, with a smile that works just as well in Venice as it does in London.
To this end, he explains to a now-captive audience that he wishes not even to sample the merchandise in the usual way, but
merely to talk a little to the girls who might be available for such a contract.
“I pay” he adds, with an inviting candor, “handsomely, because I know this request is out of the ordinary.”
The madams narrow their eyes and raise their hands to indicate that such an expensive line of work can barely be paid for by mortal agency. In response, Valentine pats high mountains of imaginary coins to show just how well he understands the difficulty.
“And of course,” he apologizes, “I need someone who speaks English.”
It is at this point that he asks casually, “Perhaps you have among your Goddesses a lady recently returned from some time in London?”
The answer to the last question is never the one he wishes for. However, the mercantile madams are charmed at this challenge, and he is presented with any number of girls who have a smattering of English among their charms. Each one is boasted of as “fully fluent in your tongue, my Lord, and a perfect companion for an English gentleman like yourself.”
Nearly all of the girls match the physical descriptions given by Dizzom of Dottore Velena’s assistant, which might also at a stretch describe Mimosina Dolcezza. This coincidence gives each visit a frisson of excitement that washes away any irritation at such a bizarre and exhausting mission. Among the Venetian courtesans the same qualities are valued both in the aristocratic marriage market and in the whorehouses: a petite frame, fair hair, regular features. The only difference is that the courtesans are expected to be barren and capable of intelligent conversation, and that the noble brides are required to be fecund and silent.
Valentine is numb about the lips from asking the questions, “Do you know a Signorina Jallowfiwhore? Has she perhaps been a colleague of yours? Do you know where she might dwell now?”
And at each interview he has also allowed himself to utter the names of Mimosina Dolcezza and of Catarina Venier with the same questions. To the first he receives only a feathering of giggles at the name, and to the latter the invariable response is a sucking
in of teeth and a widening of eyes.
“A Venier?
In a
whorehouse?
What kind of question is that?”
He had hoped for better gleaning. With every failure he weakens against the temptation to go to the Black Bat anyway never mind the mysteries, and claim Mimosina Dolcezza for his own. Every day at four in the afternoon, it becomes harder to sit at his table and watch Smerghetto depart for the apothecary. But every day he just manages to control himself. He sits firmly at the desk and plans his nightly itinerary of brothels.
He adds to his repertoire of questions for the whores, but no further clues emerge. He does better when he produces the portrait of the murderous man. Several girls in assorted establishments have nodded with minimal enthusiasm. Yes, indeed that man has visited. But half the time he wanted only
information.
He was not a good customer. And if he traded in their habitual commodity, he took his pleasure cruelly and paid poorly. They fall into charming faraway smiles and sit silent, allowing Valentine to follow their drift. He responds by tucking an extra coin into a bodice or sleeve, and making a prompt exit, so as not to parley wastefully with their time. No one is a greater enemy to the losing of time than Valentine Greatrakes, after all.
None of them can name the murderer, or even remember in credible detail the shape and style of the man, even those who got to see the whole man, as it were. There’s not a mole or a scar to identify him. It seems as if he makes a profession of his anonymity.
Impatiently, Valentine makes the rounds of all the
casini
, consuming his evenings in empty investigations, working his way down a list that Smerghetto has, of course, produced in immaculate order.
It is at the fourteenth
casino
that he finds something of interest.
This is a luxurious establishment, discreetly entered from the Galle Balloni just behind San Marco. Once inside, the style and purpose of the place are unmistakable. The first reception room boasts a large painting of a banana tree, of whose fruit pleasure-bent women are supposed to be extraordinarily fond. Beneath its shadow disport large numbers of ladies in a state of aggravated
undress, all contending for windfalls with open mouths, and litigating violently over custody of the fruits of the greatest lengths.
The comical painting, the ripe yellow velvet hangings, and an abundance of candlelight give the place a cheery air.
Nor does the madam stint in her hospitality. She tells him that all her girls have English, as her establishment is the one most in demand with the British quality visiting Venice. Unlike others, she does not ration him to one girl at a time for his parleys, but allows her entire domestic stock to enter the Banana Room, and he presents the drawing of the murderer to the assembled harlots, with the usual query.
Instantly, on seeing the portrait, one young girl gasps.
The madam nods and makes a subtle movement with her hand. The other girls file out, to be ready for more gainful employment. She looks significantly at Valentine and he lays a gold coin casually on one of the ornate desks. Eyeing it, she smiles, and leaves, closing the door behind her.
The girl has commenced to weep. In strongly accented English she tells him: “That is a very evil man, my lord! Take care if you have dealings with him!”
“You know who he is?”
“He’s called Mazziolini. He’s some kind of state agent. Two years ago, he came as a client. I thought he’d chosen me for the usual reasons”—she runs a distracted hand over her breasts—“but he was very desultory in that department. Afterwards he became much more alert, asked a lot of questions. I suspected nothing—boasted of my brother, who used to trade a little in, well, traded a little with the English wool merchants. The next day my brother was denounced by this Mazziolini, for consorting with foreigners, and was sent into exile. It was merely a business matter, not political. This Mazziolini knew, but he had scalps to take. And when my brother returned before his allotted time, for the funeral of our mother, he was murdered. Mazziolini had sworn it would be so, and it was so. And at his hand, there’s no doubt.”
The girl breaks down and sinks to her knees. She lays her head on his lap. He is embarrassed but strokes her hair abstractedly
and wipes her eyes with his handkerchief. It comes away stained with paint.
At last Valentine has a name and a proof of the murderous nature of the man he saw at the viewing of Tom’s body at Bankside. He feels a small sense of relief, a sense of light glowing through a fresh slit in the black blanket of ignorance that has been wrapped around his head since Tom’s death. He has more questions for the girl.
She doesn’t want to answer them. She has another chapter of her own story to tell.
Mazziolini, it seems, had the brazen face to return to this
casino
even after killing her brother. Naturally he asked for another girl, her own uses having expired.
“But she is my dearest friend. She’d die a thousand times for me. And when she saw who he was, she finished his visit with a little dose of Sternutatory Powder while he dozed. It was a risk, but he suspected nothing. He thought his waking spasms some natural affliction”—she grins at the memory—“even when he sneezed so much that the blood came pouring out of his nose.”
She giggles: “The madam made him pay extra for staining the sheets and she charged him a small fortune for the damask napkin he was still clutching to his nose when he left.
“That part I was sorry to see because we know that the right amount of Sternutatory can kill. If you rupture enough vessels the bleeding never stops, and the brain bursts! We wanted him to die. I wanted it with all my heart. It’s what he deserves.”
Her face is alight with hatred. She hisses, “If you’re looking to do him a damage, you’ll need all your wits, and more than them too. A foreigner like you has little hope of finding the likes of him. If you do, and aim to do him harm, then I wish you well. But be careful. It is a known thing that he hates Englishmen worse than arsenic.”
Valentine thinks of the words in Smerghetto’s report of Tom’s death, those words that have thrashed in his head for so many weeks.
He asks her urgently, “Is the man a sadist? Does he kill—in—special—ways? Did he disturb—ruin—the remains of your brother?”
Suddenly she looks afraid. Her face closes. Clearly she has been
Struck by the suspicion that she has made a fatal mistake, that this foreigner is perhaps another Mazziolini sent to exterminate her family. She will not be drawn any further. When he persists she suddenly lunges out and tugs on a silken cord. A bell rings somewhere below and two large men enter the room. Valentine smiles ingratiatingly and offers purses all round. It is to no avail. He is forced to leave, a strong arm on each elbow. He is effervescent, however, and cannot wait to set Smerghetto on the case.
At the depository he finds that Smerghetto is waiting for him with information that turns everything to dust.
“The woman you want: we know where she is,” Smerghetto whispers, in a grave voice. “It is not good news.”
Which woman I want?
Through a haze of disbelief, Valentine absorbs what Smerghetto evenly recounts. One of the women whom Smerghetto has been observing at the Black Bat failed to materialize that afternoon. This had alerted him to her particularity. He was already favoring her as the prime candidate, despite the fact that… here, he hesitates a moment and seems about to describe her condition in more detail, but clearly thinks better of it, or judges it immaterial to the main business in hand, or possibly calculated to drive his master out of his wits.
Her disappearance gave him occasion to make inquiries inside the Black Bat. Her daily visits there had not gone unmarked. The apothecary had news of the incident that had removed her from the scene, for indeed it is the kind of story relished by his customers, two of whom had happened to witness it, and had rushed back to tell him.
In a full crowd, in San Marco, she has been seized and taken into custody in one of the dim palazzi kept by agents of state for their prisons.
At this point a network of informants have filled in the rest of the picture for Smerghetto, who is all this time pouring a glass of wine, setting it in front of his stupefied master, and gently directing him toward a chair.
Valentine Greatrakes stares dumbly as Smerghetto explains that
this palazzo is the kind of place from which few prisoners are liberated. Her crime is unknown to Smerghetto’s informants, but it is surely serious. There is no way into her cell via bribery, no matter what the price.
Smerghetto’s face is telling him the truth, though it won’t spill from his mouth: that he wouldn’t take a lease on her life, if she’s locked up in there.
Valentine erupts in agony, “But
which
one of the women is it? Signorina Jallowfiwhore, Catarina Venier… or… Mimosina Dolcezza?”
His hand is on the lapels of Smerghetto’s jacket, his breath comes in short bursts. His eyes are staring and his hands prickle unbearably.
He reads the answer that he dreads in Smerghetto’s face.
Valentine sags on his feet. He has come so close to her, only to have her snatched away. All this time he has wasted looking for the Signorina Jallowfiwhore, while sitting on his pride, insisting on meeting on his own terms the one woman whom he really needs, the one woman he cannot do without.
Smerghetto tells him: “I think you must sit down. There is much to tell you.”
Then Smerghetto explains, slowly and clearly, that this dramatic evening a number of facts have supplied the missing pieces of the fractured picture that has eluded their mutual comprehension. He mentions that there has been no sign of the young English girl who was supposed to be with the woman.
But Valentine Greatrakes is keening, “The one woman, the one woman, haven’t I come back here again precisely and just for her?”
He thumps his hand on the table.
“One woman,” whimpers Valentine.
Smerghetto now tells him, slowly and in simple words, that he may in fact triple that number, and yet still come up with the same—singular—woman.