She stared at him, astonished, and, it seemed to Tosi, more than a little worried too. “You did nothing to clean away the foam?” she asked.
“Not a thing. Why should we?”
Teresa Lupo was gazing at him with an expression of frank amazement. Alberto Tosi felt lost, unable to offer any comment that would make a difference.
“Then Uriel was murdered,” she said softly, almost to herself. “And I know how,” she added, then excused herself and began to stride towards the house, pushing through the crowd, punching her phone as she went.
HUGO MASSITER STOOD IN FRONT OF THE OCCHIO, the bulging glass eye, surveying the expanse of the lagoon. The three remaining Arcangeli sat in silence at the old family table, surrounded on both sides by lawyers. His. Theirs. Not that the difference mattered. Massiter knew the legal profession better than any fading Murano dynasty. There were, in his view, two kinds of lawyers. Those seeking agreement. And those seeking delay. In his time he’d used both. But only the former had been brought into the negotiations over the island, for him and, with a quiet, subtle stealth, for the Arcangeli too. In truth, a satisfactory conclusion—by which he meant a conclusion satisfactory to him—had never been in doubt.
He cast a cynical glance at the crowd below. Suits and evening dresses, caparisoned cattle come for the free food and drink and the chance to touch the new emperor’s robe. It seemed an age now since the evening of the carnival gala and the death in the palazzo next door. People like these had short memories. As long as the Massiter name was on the way up, they’d be happy clinging to his coattails, hurrahing all the way. Nothing mattered but money and success. With those, a man could act as he liked. As his nature told him.
Then he caught a commotion in the crowd by the door, saw Emily Deacon fighting to push her way through, a fixed, anxious look on her attractive face, and recalled, briefly, the night before, trying to isolate what feelings he had from the practical issues uppermost in his mind. It had been a night of disappointment, if he were honest with himself. He enjoyed only two kinds of women: the averse and the enthusiastic. Either way you got a little fight, which was necessary to his pleasure. Emily fulfilled neither requirement. She was a woman of duty, and duty always bored him.
Nevertheless, he’d hear her out. There’d be some interest there.
Beaming, he turned away from the shining window and its glorious view, turned his smile on the room, even the miserable, mute Michele, with his dead eye and frozen cheek, and boomed, “Oh my! Such long faces! Why? You all have your snouts deep in the Massiter trough now. You’re rich. Millions, Michele. And . . .” He walked round, behind the man, briefly placed a patronising, magisterial hand on his shoulder, keeping it firmly there even as Michele flinched. “ . . . that little lockup in the city, a shop to sell your trinkets to the hoi polloi. What more could a Murano man ask?”
“Don’t push me,” Michele muttered.
Massiter strode to the head of the table—the master’s position—then sat in the high-backed chair there, surveying them, judging them. Miserable Michele. Lost Gabriele. And the woman, Raffaella, who seemed willing to go along with whatever humiliating solution Massiter could extract, provided the family survived, an intact bundle of visible misery.
“I’m only pushing you towards wealth,” Massiter said with half a yawn. “Which hereabouts equates with happiness, naturally. Just a small thank-you wouldn’t be out of place. And here’s one more piece of generosity . . .”
He nodded at the huge portrait over the fireplace. Angelo Arcangelo, the dead patriarch, glowering at them all, his old, incisive eyes full of some harsh and bitter judgment.
“You can take that with you when you go,” the Englishman added. “Bad art offends me. I don’t want those hideous features staring down at my guests.”
There was a silence, broken only by the cough of one of Massiter’s lawyers.
“Guests?” Raffaella asked finally.
“Guests.”
It was good to tell them now.
“Not that it’s any business of yours anymore. In a year I’ll have a hotel here, and a restaurant that will put the Cipriani to shame. In two years, a gallery to steal the glory from the Guggenheim. A modest, refined shopping mall for immodest, unrefined shoppers. Suites. Apartments. Facilities. That’s what the modern world’s about, Michele. A flash of transient joy for the masses before you move them on their way. Not . . .” He scowled, couldn’t help it. He hated to see lost opportunities, even those missed by men he could exploit. “ . . . trying to squeeze a grubby living out of glass just because that’s how it always was.”
Michele Arcangelo stared at his reflection in the old polished table, for the last time.
“Gloating is an unattractive trait, Signor Massiter,” Raffaella Arcangelo said with a quiet, firm certainty.
“I’m an unattractive man,” Massiter replied immediately. “More people might notice if they weren’t so blinded by their own avarice.”
There was a noise at the door.
“Visitors,” he said. “Open the door, Gabriele. There’s a good chap.”
The brother didn’t demur for a moment, didn’t notice Michele’s vile, muttered curse. He let in Emily Deacon, by her side the young policeman, the one she’d pretended she’d abandoned, an act that never fooled Massiter for a moment. Both looked uncertain of themselves. A little afraid, perhaps.
Massiter was on his feet in an instant, striding over to Emily, kissing her quickly on the cheek, pumping the man’s hand for a second.
“This won’t be unpleasant, will it?” he asked meekly. “Please don’t spoil my day.”
“Why should it be unpleasant?” she replied.
He shrugged, looking at the little cop. “I’m sorry this brief interlude between Emily and myself turned into a personal matter, Agente Costa. It was regrettable. And . . .” He smiled to ensure they understood. “Pointless too. Those items she took from my yacht this morning . . .”
Massiter recalled the details the men had beaten out of the servant before throwing her out onto the street. It seemed a decidedly amateurish effort on Emily’s part. She had disappointed him there too.
“They’re of no use to you,” he went on. “Even in Italy there are such things as rules of evidence. You can’t try to obtain incriminating detail on a man by asking a pretty young woman to hunt for it in his bed.”
He watched the pain flicker on Costa’s face, relishing the sight. “Ah. I’m sorry. You didn’t know. Or rather, you knew, but preferred not to acknowledge the fact. Self-delusion is a habit to avoid. Particularly in a police officer.”
He glanced at his watch, then back towards the party outside. The music had begun. Massiter had chosen the piece himself. It was the very concerto that had nearly put him in jail five years before, when he’d paid for its first production on the pretext that Daniel Forster was its composer. Massiter had no great fondness for the work, or any other music for that matter. There was no money in music, no fame either, not of the kind he needed. His choice had been designed simply to make a point. That, if he wished, he could now do anything he liked.
“This is a social occasion,” he continued, noticing a new individual had now entered the room, one unknown to him, a senior-looking figure in a dark suit. “Kindly have done with it. Why are you here?”
“We’ve brought you a gift, Hugo,” Emily said, eyes glittering. “Something you’ve wanted for years.”