Death in the Palazzo by Edward Sklepowich Read Free Book Online

me or anyone on your side”—she looked sharply at the twins—“why, then, we’re just fools looking for pain and grief. And I assure you, my dear, I am nobody’s fool.”
    When Lucia entered the room a few moments later, the Contessa continued to show how determined she was by asking that the Caravaggio Room be made ready immediately.
    â€œYes, Lucia, the Caravaggio Room! Will you please see to it? Oh, the key. Very well, then. Let’s go together.”
    The Contessa went out with Lucia, much with the manner of someone escaping to less odious duties—even if they might be the turning of a mattress or the beating of a rug—than those she would find if she stayed behind in the salotto .
    Gemma, her face set and ashen, quit the room a few moments later without a glance at its three remaining occupants.

11
    Urbino looked at the twins and said, “Of course I understand. You want to know—”
    â€œI need to know,” Viola corrected. “The Caravaggio Room is close to mine.”
    â€œHow do you know that?”
    A flush came into her face.
    â€œDespite your and Barbara’s attempts to mystify Sebastian and me, it wasn’t difficult to figure out. A locked room. The room diagonally across from mine next to Robert’s is locked. Every other bedroom is occupied. Ergo—or should I say demonstratum est ?—it’s the Caravaggio Room.”
    â€œAnd how did you know it was locked?”
    â€œBecause I tried the knob. I wanted to see what everyone else’s accommodations were like. The door to that room was the only one locked.”
    â€œCuriosity killed the cat!” Sebastian said. “Maybe that’s what happened to Bambina’s pussy.”
    He burst into laughter, which earned him a withering look from his sister.
    â€œMen are so adolescent! Don’t you ever grow up?”
    She directed this rhetorical question not at her brother but Urbino. Urbino gave Sebastian a quick smile before answering.
    â€œProust said men don’t develop emotionally after the age of sixteen.”
    â€œWell, there you are then!” Viola said, a spark of pique in her eyes.
    Sebastian, with a self-satisfied expression on his good-looking face, brought things back to the matter at hand: “I think it’s pretty rum of Barbara never telling us she had a haunted room in this place.”
    â€œIt isn’t haunted.” Urbino quickly added: “There’s no such thing as haunted rooms or houses.”
    â€œYes, Daddy, and now would you look under the bed? But, seriously, tell me this: Why is Gemma so bent out of shape about the room and so afraid of Molly staying in it, and why won’t this Oriana woman sleep in it? Though you said you would.”
    â€œAnd Gemma didn’t make any objection to your staying in it the way she did about Molly,” Viola pointed out. “Strange.”
    â€œMaybe it wouldn’t be quite so strange if Urbino finally filled us in on this room’s dark history.”
    â€œWould you like some drinks?”
    â€œSo it’s going to be one of those kinds of stories!” Sebastian said. “All right, then. I’ll take Molly’s kind of poison, and if I know Viola, she’ll have a glass of very dry sherry.”
    When they were seated with their drinks, Urbino read them the story of the Caravaggio Room. He had gone over it so many times before in his own mind and with the Contessa and their closest friends that he had memorized it like some bard of old.
    It was a disturbing tale and most of the actors in it were gathered together at the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini on this stormy night.

PART TWO
    The Caravaggio Room

1
    The Contessa had been married only a week and was already in tears. If she had known that they would be among the few tears she would shed in her marriage because of the Conte, they might have been far less bitter. At the time, however, they seemed a