The Mammoth Book of Historical Crime Fic - By Mike Ashley Page 0,102

rings on many of his fingers. I saw the light sparkling on them.” She liked this clever deduction, but she still had a doubt. “Might not the fire have melted the gold?”

Zuliani nodded.

“It might. But even if that were so, where are the gems? They would not have been destroyed. The other thing that worried me was when I saw the belt-buckle stuck to this man’s stomach. Despite him being burned to a crisp, there is no sign of Tiepolo’s fat belly. This was a slim man in life.”

Having made this deduction, Zuliani had crouched over the body for too long, and tried to stand. His knees protested, and he would have stumbled if Katie had not taken his arm and steadied him. Grouchily, he thanked her, not relishing showing his infirmities to a woman, even though she was his granddaughter. Katie made as if she was unaware of his annoyance, and eagerly pursued him concerning the riddle of Tiepolo’s demise. She pushed her errant locks from off her face, once again smearing soot on her brow.

“If this is not Tiepolo, then where is his body?” She glanced down at the dead man. “And who is this?”

“That’s what I would like to know – where Tiepolo is, I mean. As for this body, I would say it’s Girolamo Lando, Tiepolo’s lieutenant. He went missing at the same time as Tiepolo.”

“But then why didn’t Tiepolo say Lando was trapped by the blaze too? Why didn’t he call out ‘Save us’?”

Zuliani pointed a finger at Katie.

“Exactly.” He stepped towards the door. “Perhaps it had something to do with Lando being already dead before the fire took hold.”

Katie was stunned.

“How do you know that?”

Zuliani carelessly waved the lantern at the body, almost extinguishing the guttering candle.

“Because there is a crack in the man’s skull that was made by something heavy striking it, not the fire. So, either Tiepolo dragged a dead man into my house or he himself killed his lieutenant on this spot.”

Katie turned back to look at the head of the corpse to see what she had missed. But Zuliani had already left the room, plunging her and the dead man into darkness. She had a momentary sense that the body was moving towards her. Maybe it was only the movement of the shadows as Zuliani left with the lantern in his hand, but she didn’t want to wait and see. Shuddering, she rapidly followed her grandfather upstairs.

When she entered the upper room, she recalled those happier times when Zuliani had shown her the little treasures he had brought back from his travels. The window shutters where they had last seen Tiepolo standing were still wide open, but it was now dark outside and a wind whistled eerily through the opening. Zuliani was picking disconsolately through what remained of his collection. He groaned.

“Even the gold paizah has gone. Melted away in the heat, I suppose.”

Katie looked around.

“And Tiepolo’s body is not up here, either.” She took Zuliani’s hand, dragging him away from the horror of his loss. “Let’s go downstairs. The fire must have started down there in the first place. Perhaps Tiepolo managed to get down the stairs before he died.”

“Yes. Let us look there for him. I told him to try and get to the front door. Maybe he almost made it.”

But there was no hope of finding a body on the ground floor. It was a blackened, wet mess of burned wood. The fire had obviously started here, but Zuliani could not tell how. Katie looked around.

“What is all this?”

“Old furniture from when my parents lived here. I could not use it, but I couldn’t bear to part with it either. So I just piled it up here. What I don’t understand is how it could have caught fire. It was so damp from the closeness of the canal. What is sure is that we will not find Tiepolo in a hurry in this mess.”

Katie stood at the bottom of the staircase rubbing her hand on the cast-iron image of the lizard on the newel post which was all that had survived the holocaust. Thoughts of the salamander emerging from the flames came to her again. Nick might have told her that it was all a myth, but she liked the idea. He wiped the smudges from her face.

“Come. Let us go and see what your grandmother has discovered. When my manservant, Vettor, returns from visiting his family in Malomocco, I will set him to cleaning this up.