The Alchemist's Code (aa-2) by Dave Duncan

Author:Dave Duncan [Duncan, Dave]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: sf_detective

17

W hen Luigi saw the body, he rushed upstairs as fast as he could totter, and thundered on the door of Angelo Marciana’s mezzanine apartment. More than just a fiendishly cunning bookkeeper, Angelo is a man of steady nerve and many sons. He told Nino, Renzo, and Ciro to follow him and the women to stay home with the children, then ran down to see for himself. At once he ordered Nino to fetch Doctor Nostradamus, Renzo to inform Father Farsetti, and Ciro to stand vigil over the body and make sure nobody looted it. Renzo probably ran right underneath me as I clung like moss to the side of the building. Meanwhile Luigi had informed the Jacopo Marcianas also, so several of them arrived. By the time the vizio appeared and saw that he had serious work to do, the loggia must have been as crowded as the Piazza in Carnival. He ordered whoever was the best boatman to go and fetch Missier Grande -no nonsense about informing the local sbirri when the Council of Ten was already involved, although I am sure he did not say that. He also ordered everyone else back upstairs, but by then whatever marks I had left on the floor had been scuffed out of existence.

Father Farsetti would have been in San Remo’s at that time on a Saturday. He is a young man and not too puffed up with ecclesiastic dignity to run in an emergency, but he found Danese well past the need for last rites. Giorgio arrived, accompanied by the twins-they being uninvited but irresistibly eager to view a real corpse-followed closely by the Maestro on Bruno’s back. He at once dispatched all three Angelis to the Ghetto Nuovo to fetch Isaia Modestus, whom he freely acknowledges to be the second-best doctor in the Republic.

The body could not be left where it lay and the Maestro wanted to inspect it, so Father Farsetti agreed that it should be moved upstairs and that was arranged. The vizio extracted the rapier and took charge of it. I can barely imagine the intensity of his joy when he read the inscription and saw whose it was. No doubt he fantasized juicy visions of watching my beheading between the columns on the Piazzetta.

Pessimists, on the other hand, are rarely disappointed.

A very few minutes later, when Vasco confronted me with it in the atelier, Father Farsetti shot me a horrified look. He is well aware of my full name. As my confessor he certainly knows of Violetta Vitale.

My head was spinning, but I believe I concealed my bewilderment fairly well. “I must have a talk with you soon, Father,” I said cheerfully, “but the problem is no more urgent than usual.” He nodded, looking relieved.

Vasco smiled happily. “You acknowledge that this is your rapier, messer?”

“It was until it was stolen,” I said, “and I know who took it.”

He scoffed.

“If not you,” I said, “then who? You were on watch in the salone all night, weren’t you?”

“What is this?” the Maestro screeched in the doorway.

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