Free 5 - Her Deadly Mischief by Beverle Graves Myers Page A

with the particulars of Zulietta’s murder, he wept and swooned like a woman. My men had to carry him to the boat.”
    We had walked the length of the dismal corridor and entered a small room. A warden considerably more alert than the desk sergeant awaited us with a bunch of keys. He sprang to open a door with a square grating, and we were admitted to yet another corridor lined with cells of the most wretched type. Most were empty, though I saw a few huddled shapes and easily perceived the stench of human sweat and filth. At least a modicum of fresh air and light was admitted through a few barred dormer windows. We stopped before the last cell but one.
    Despite the rumpled clothing, the torn stockings, the dirty face, Alessio Pino was a handsome boy. I could describe him in no other terms, though he was only several years younger than I was. Messer Grande had stated his age as six and twenty.
    I observed Alessio closely as he rose from the bare planks where he had been stretching out with his folded arms serving as a pillow. He was slender, with melting brown eyes, and a high forehead that perfectly balanced his squared-off, lightly beard-stubbled chin. His silver-threaded, blue brocade jacket was cut in the latest fashion, with absurdly padded shoulders and a trim waist. He smoothed the jacket’s wrinkles, straightened his powdered wig with a firm tweak, and plodded over to the iron bars with weary grace.
    Messer Grande bade him good afternoon in a cool voice.
    Alessio returned his greeting with a perfunctory bow. As his gaze slid to me, he straightened in astonishment. “What on earth are you doing here? Am I to have a serenade in this anteroom to Hell?”
    I’d been recognized, of course. Alessio must have seen me at the opera many times. Before my lips could part to reply, Messer Grande cut in, “My companion is none of your concern, Signor Pino. I came to see if you’re ready to tell me where you were before you arrived at the Teatro San Marco last night. No more stalling, if you please.”
    “But I’ve already told you—my boatman failed to show at the appointed hour. When I went in search of the fellow, I found him staggering away from a tavern, much the worse for drink. He wasn’t capable of rowing the length of the Canale Serenella, much less navigating the waves of the lagoon. I was forced to row myself across to Venice.”
    “Your father states that you left the house a good two hours before the curtain rose on the opera. The trip from the Pino factory should take a quarter of that.”
    “But you’re not accounting for the time I spent tromping around our corner of Murano. And I wasn’t rowing a gondola—I couldn’t manage that. I had to unhitch the cockle boat from a shallop that we use to transport sand and other materials. The tide was high and the wind contrary—it took me nearly three quarters of an hour to make the crossing.”
    Messer Grande regarded him skeptically. Alessio’s story did seem weak. Rowing a tiny boat alone, in dress clothes? Could the glassworks supply no other man to convey the owner’s son over to Venice?
    “I don’t know why you don’t believe me.” Alessio grasped the iron bars so tightly his hands shook. His expression wrinkled into a mask of aggrieved innocence. “If someone from the glassworks has not retrieved the boat, you’ll find it at a quay just west of the Piazzetta. It’s marked with our family name.”
    “I’ll send a man to look for it, Signore, but tell me this—before you went to meet Zulietta Giardino at the theater, you stopped by a nearby tavern. Who did you see and for what purpose?”
    Alessio dropped his hands. They looked very awkward, hanging about his flanks, twisting back and forth. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Once I’d secured the boat, I went straight to the theater.”
    A strained silence followed. I was itching to ask a few questions of my own, but Messer Grande had ordered me to be silent, and I didn’t fancy