Read The Last Gondola for Free Online Page A

signore. At least, most of the time. I have a set of keys to use, as I require. So does Vitale. But I haven’t seen anything that could be of help.” He paused. “Unless—but no, that was nothing.”
    â€œWhat were you going to say?”
    â€œI suppose it was out of the ordinary, as you said before. Three or four months ago I brought the Contessa back from the Palazzo Uccello. It was almost midnight. A rowboat had become unmoored from the water steps of our calle . It had drifted near the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini. I made sure it was properly tied up for the night and went to bed.”
    â€œWas that the first time it happened?”
    â€œTo my knowledge. It’s always tied up in the same place, from what I’ve seen. It’s just an old rowboat, signore. I suppose whoever owns it doesn’t think anyone would want to take it.”
    Before Urbino left the Ca’ da Capo-Zendrini, he sought out the androne of the building. This was the entrance hall from the water, which in the old days used to be the main entrance of the building. It was flanked by rooms, which, in previous centuries had been warehouses, but today were storage rooms and Pasquale’s apartment. A formal staircase led up to the piano nobile . The androne was decorated in a sea motif with portraits of sea captains and a frieze of a Venetian ship with the Da Capo-Zendrini coat of arms.
    Urbino opened one panel of a double door ornamented with gilded sea horses. Immediately beyond were the waters of the Grand Canal and the blue-and-white-striped pali of the Contessa’s boat landing, where the Contessa’s sleek motorboat was moored to the broad steps.
    The Contessa used this entrance whenever she went out in the motorboat. On the occasion of her parties, it was the point of entry into the palazzo for those of her guests who arrived by boat.
    Urbino closed the door. A massive armoire carved with dolphins and seashells caught his attention. He went over to it. Inside were umbrellas, boots, and a waterproof. If so inclined, he could easily have climbed inside and, though slightly cramped, closed the door behind him.

10
    Urbino hurried back to the Palazzo Uccello to keep his promise to Natalia, but as he walked over the bridge in front of the building, he saw that he was too late. The locksmith had already arrived and he was bent over the front door lock, surrounded by his tools and kit.
    Demetrio Emo was an obese, baldheaded man in his early sixties with unusually pale skin and small features lost in the vast expanse of his face. But it was not his grotesque appearance that disturbed Natalia. It was his reputation. Emo had once been a priest attached to the nearby parish of San Gabriele until scandal had hounded him. Ten years ago, affairs with two women parishioners had led to censure from the bishop. Emo had left the priesthood rather than allow himself to be sent to Sicily as the bishop had ordered. Rumors had circulated for a while after he left. Some claimed he would marry one of the women, others that he still said mass in his apartment for a small group of devotees. But Emo had remained a bachelor, if not a celibate one; and whether he was conducting rites, no one had ever been able to verify.
    Urbino wasn’t judgmental about Emo. The locksmith was better out of the priesthood and leading the kind of life he was more suited for, although Urbino often wondered if he was proving to be as successful with women now, denuded as he was of his vestments and the allure of forbidden fruit. Urbino gave him his commerce for Emo’s sake as well as for Gildo’s, his nephew, who had fallen under his care since the death of both parents shortly after Emo had left San Gabriele. From what Urbino had seen, he had done a good job with Gildo, and the young man spoke well of him. Gildo bore no scars of an immoral influence.
    But devout Natalia had never become reconciled to the man. She referred to him as a devil and