The Thief of Venice by Jane Langton Read Free Book Online Page B

permanent appointment will of course be delayed. And I must say, Signor Bell, on reviewing her recent letter to you concerning various sacred relics, I think Signora Costanza's rash decision must be reconsidered."
    " Dottoressa Costanza," said Sam sharply, almost beside himself, "she is a dottoressa," and he slammed down the phone.
    It was a little while before he could recover himself enough to go out for a paper. And then when he stumbled down two flights of stairs to the entry hall, he saw out of the corner of his eye the imposing figure of a museum director from Hong Kong. The man was darting forward to cut him off.
    Sam grinned at him with all his teeth and made a clumsy dash tor the door. Outside in the arcade he almost collided with a gigantic African scholar in a green robe, gold sandals, and white socks. "Mi displace," cried Sam in apology, and hurried away around the corner.
    The Molo was thick with tourists. He moved against the tide, heading for the newsstand at the vaporetto stop, where one of the vaporetti was just pulling up, grinding against the floating dock. Tourists poured out and moved eagerly toward the Piazetta as Sam paid for two local papers and unfolded the first with nervous fingers.
    Oh, God, yes, there was the story on the front page of Il Gazzettino —
    PROCURATORE COSTANZA UN' 0M1C1DA?
    Below the brutal headline was a dim photograph of the murdered husband, Signor Lorenzo Costanza.
    Sam fumbled his way across the moving crowd of jolly tourists, jolly couples taking pictures of each other, jolly mamas pushing jolly baby buggies, and sat down on the stone wall at the edge of the water. Gondole, gondole , sang out a jolly gondolier in a striped shirt, drumming up trade. The gondolas lay rocking below the barrier, their brass fittings glinting joyfully in the sun.

    The writer of the article seemed to regard himself as un giornalista investigative . With obvious delight he listed the sordid elements of the story:
1.      The murdered husband
2.      The vanished wife, una donna eminente
3.      The discovery in the bushes of a handgun with the wife's fingerprints
4.      The apparent haste of her departure
5.      The previous removal of her entire savings from the Cassa di Risparmio di Venezia
    Sam understood at once the heavy implication of the word previous . The violent act must have been premeditated.
    The story was continued on page 3. Sam's fingers couldn't find page 3. They kept turning to page 5, with its forecast of extremely high water in Venice in November, or to the report on page 7 from Padua, where fifteen thousand turkeys had been asphyxiated overnight.
    At last his fingers trembled open the right page, and there at the bottom was another article, an interview with a woman who had been Lucia's neighbor in the sestiere of San Polo. It was headed LA VECCHIA STORIA . Sam read it with disgust.
    It was the old, old story (tearfully reported Signora Adelberti). SHE was ambitious, HE was a man with a poetic nature. The dottoressa was too busy with her important career to nurture him in his loneliness, to comfort him in his sad state of unemployment, and thus he was forced into the arms of others.
    With gravely careful fingers Sam refolded his Gazzettino and walked back to work. He did not examine the rest of the paper. He failed to see the item on page 16, a tiny paragraph with the modest heading Spazzino Smarrito .
    The fact that a young trash collector employed by the Nettezza Urbana had disappeared, as well as the distinguished woman who was a newly appointed procurator of San Marco, rang no bells in Sam's mind at all.
 
    *14*
    The confessional in the north aisle of the Basilica of San Marco was a magnificent piece of baroque woodcarving, but behind the rosy curtain the space was as dark and intimate as if it were an ordinary clumsy box in a country church. Father Urbano's comfortable bulk nearly filled it.
    Today he had his ear against the curtain, but still he could