Free The Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists by Barbara Wilson Page B

hope!” Nicky finished off another bruschetta.
    “To tell the truth, Cassandra, at first I thought she might be putting the make on me, not necessarily because of my gorgeous physique, but because she’d heard of my CD-ROM project, and wanted to be involved. She drew me out, asked me increasingly personal questions about my life in London. You know I’m not the most discreet person in the world, Cassandra. It never occurred to me to hide my close relationship with Olivia. I told her all about our long friendship and how Olivia had left me the house and all her possessions and quite a bit of money—I’m afraid, Cassandra, I even exaggerated the amount of money. Vanity, vanity…” Nicky drank deeply from her glass.
    “But how could Bitten imagine she was related to Olivia? I thought Olivia’s son died in a concentration camp during the war.”
    “According to Bitten, Olivia’s son, Jakob Wulf, was married before the war to a girl called Elizabeth. At some point during the war Elizabeth Wulf, now widowed, made her way to Sweden with Bitten. There she married someone named Johansson, and Bitten grew up thinking he was her father.”
    “Why has it taken Bitten so long to figure this out? Why now?”
    “She says she only just put it together herself,” said Nicky. “But I find it impossible to believe that Bitten is any relation to Olivia. There must be some other explanation. Bitten—what kind of Jewish name is that?”
    “She’s certainly bigger,” I said, my imagination jumping back to the photographs in Nicky’s study. “But then, Olivia was quite a tall woman in her younger days, and they both have a rather regal tilt to their heads, and the eyes…You know, Nicky, I believe their eyes are very similar. Olivia had a very cold stare too.”
    “I really don’t think so,” Nicky snapped. “It’s a load of codswallop, is what it is.”
    “Is that what you told her?” I asked.
    “Yes. And then she got that very mean, haughty look—which you’ve seen , Cassandra—and said that after all I’d told her about her grandmother, there was good reason to believe the inheritance was really meant for her, and that I’d soon be hearing from her solicitors.”
    “Oh, no!”
    “I said, over my dead body was she getting anything that was rightfully mine, and she said, ‘We will see, Nicola Gibbons, we will see,’ and that, my dear, is more or less the last real conversation we’ve had.”
    Nicky called the waiter over and ordered lemon gelati for both of us, and espresso. I could see that she was shaken by all this, but hardly ready to give in.
    “This has been an eventful trip for Bitten then, hasn’t it?” I mused. “Didn’t her affair with Gunther begin just a few days ago too?”
    “The first day,” said Nicola. “They were barely introduced when they had their knickers off.”
    “Who do you think killed him?”
    “That Frigga woman, of course. The one he was always talking to on his cellular phone. He told her about his affair, and she came to Venice and pushed him in the canal. Jealousy, pure and simple. It’s the second oldest story in the history of humankind.”
    “What’s the first one?”
    “Falling in love in the first place.”
    “Nicky, are you being absolutely honest with me?”
    “More or less.” But her eyes didn’t meet mine.
    “Really, I need to know where you’ve been and what you’ve been up to. Because you understand that you’ve put yourself in a rather awkward spot by leaving Venice the day that Gunther was murdered.”
    “I have a cast-iron alibi.”
    “And that is?”
    “I was playing in a concert in Birmingham, of course. My name is in the program, my splendid notes were heard, my presence was validated by applause.”
    “The Italian police confiscated your passport! How did you get out of the country and back in again?”
    She coughed slightly and produced my Irish passport from a pocket, sliding it over the table toward me.
    “But you and I don’t