4 - The Iron Tongue of Midnight by Beverle Graves Myers Page B

touching the small crucifix that hung in the hollow of her throat. I noticed that her fingers slid down to caress the shadowy cleft between her breasts as she ducked her head to clear the lintel and pass into the night.
    Pia’s breadth and height had taken up a good deal of space, but somehow, after she’d gone, the ice house seemed even smaller.
    Gussie also seemed affected by the change in the atmosphere. He shook his head like a dog emerging from a stream. “What an amazing woman. I’d love to paint her.”
    “A portrait? Of a peasant woman?”
    “I’d seat her on a throne in a field of ripe wheat, as naked as the day she was born, with her black hair streaming over her shoulders. I’d crown her with a wreath of red and yellow grapes and call it… Harvest. No… The Bounty of the Harvest.”
    I chuckled. “Somehow I don’t think that’s what Vincenzo had in mind when he asked you to paint the estate.”
    “Nevertheless, think how impressive that could be. Something to make the Academy sit up and take notice.”
    My poor brother-in-law. Though Gussie’s talent was obvious and his pictures sold well, the Venetian painters’ guild had turned down his request for admittance for four years running. The tradition-bound Academy was not about to sully its register with the name of an Englishman, even one who had adopted Venice as his permanent home.
    I grasped his shoulder. “The Devil take the Academy. Let’s see what we can make of this corpse.”
    Our mysterious friend had been dead almost twenty-four hours. Long enough for his limbs to stiffen and his skin to mottle where it met the rug-covered shelf, but not long enough for the stench of corruption to take hold. Nevertheless, we made haste, mindful of the passing time and wanting to avoid any awkward questions our late arrival at supper would provoke. Gussie helped me undo the linen winding sheet, but the stranger’s pale, pitiful nakedness had no stories to tell. He was simply a well-cared for, virile male in his early middle years.
    We wrapped him back up, and I bent over his face. Very lightly, I ran my fingertips over his upper lip.
    “What are you looking for?” asked Gussie.
    “Does it seem that this patch of skin under his nose is lighter than the rest of his face?”
    “Yes, now that you mention it. But what does that signify?”
    “It tells me he’s a Russian, not just a man with a Russian pistol.” I elaborated after Gussie shot me a fish-eyed stare. “Carmela gave me an account of her adventures in St. Petersburg. She mentioned that the men of a certain class wear mustaches in honor of their late Czar.”
    “Yes, I saw a Russian delegation in London once, all bushy mustaches and tall sealskin hats. The only other man you might see with facial hair would be a Mohammedan of some sort, and our examination proves that our poor fellow doesn’t follow their tenets. But he doesn’t have…” Gussie shook his head, then broke into an eye-crinkling grin. “Oh, I see what you mean. He had a mustache and shaved it off. Quite recently.”
    I nodded. “His cheeks are lightly tanned and toughened like a man who spent at least a few hours a day in the open, but his upper lip is as pale and soft as an infant’s.”
    “You think he didn’t want to be recognized?”
    “Perhaps,” I answered, as I used both hands to part the hair over his shattered temple. “It’s also possible that he shaved because he didn’t want to stand out or call attention to himself. Hmm, this is odd…”
    “What is it, Tito?”
    I frowned. I’m not unduly squeamish, but probing a dead man’s skull isn’t high on my list of preferred activities. Above the Russian’s left ear, at the center of the concave depression that I expected to find, my forefinger encountered a deep, narrow well of flesh, bone, and a yielding substance that I didn’t even want to name. “ Dio mio ! He has a hole in his skull. The clock pendulum couldn’t have caused this.”
    “Are you