Death in the Palazzo by Edward Sklepowich Read Free Book Online Page A

catastrophe.
    It had all happened because she had been too eager to play the chatelaine. She had gone through the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini from the pianoterreno with its water entrance and lumber rooms to the wooden altana , or terrace, perched on the roof. The building was in need of repair, severely damaged as it was by the recent war and industrial pollution from the mainland. It had only been in the family for the past seventy years, the Da Capo-Zendrini family having moved from a smaller palazzo in the San Polo quarter.
    She was confronted by that most intriguing and disquieting of situations. At the far end of one of the two wings devoted to the bedrooms was a locked room, the only one in the palazzo. It was on the side where the broad loggia overlooked the Grand Canal. When she went out onto the loggia and examined the louvered doors of this particular bedroom, she found that they too were locked.
    â€œYou will have to ask the Conte for the key,” the housekeeper said when the Contessa had asked her about the locked room. “I don’t have it.”
    â€œWhat’s in the room, Vittoria?”
    â€œIt’s just another bedroom, Contessa.” She paused, then went on nervously: “It hasn’t been used in twenty years. Excuse me. I must see to something.”
    That evening the Conte refused to answer anything about the room and forbade Barbara to ask him or other members of the family any more questions.
    â€œAnd don’t ask the staff either. If I learn that you have, I’ll be very upset. It might lead to my giving them immediate notice. The room is no concern of yours!” When he saw the tears in her eyes, he added more softly: “My father made me promise on his deathbed to keep it locked as long as I live and to exact the same promise of my children. All you need to know is that it’s not a happy room. Someday it will all be explained.”
    â€œBut what do you mean by an ‘unhappy’ room, Alvise?” Predictably, the story of Bluebeard and his wife had flashed through her mind. “You frighten me.”
    â€œThat is exactly what I do not want to do, my dear. It is for your own good to forget the room exists. It cannot harm you if you do.”
    The Contessa, whose understanding of psychology was more advanced than her husband’s, was well aware of the harm that can be done when we try to bury our fears or unhappinesses. But she sensed that her husband, reasonable so far in all his behavior and expectations, would brook no opposition on the locked room. She never broached the topic again, telling herself that it was just another idiosyncrasy of the Italian family she had married into. As the years of their marriage went by, she didn’t so much forget the room as accommodate herself to living with yet one more mystery and to meeting one more obligation.
    When her husband died almost twenty years ago, the Contessa found a large, thick envelope among his private papers. Written on it in his hand in Italian was:
    For my beloved wife, Barbara
    To be opened after my death
    With fear and curiosity, the same emotions that she associated with the locked room, she opened the envelope. Inside were many sheets of paper. The top sheet bore the cramped handwriting that had become the Conte’s near the end of his life.
    My dear Barbara,
    I hope I have not caused you much sorrow in our life together, for you have been the light of my life, my beloved English rose, as I call you. But I know that there was one time, when our marriage was very young, when I did, and I fear it has been a continuing sorrow. I hope you have forgiven me long before this. If you haven’t, perhaps you will be able to do it once you’ve read this.
    It’s about the locked room on the second floor. It’s been called the Caravaggio Room since the nineteen twenties when I was just a boy. I told you that I promised my father never to open it in my lifetime. I would have