Chapter 8

A fter another ten minutes, they had a small pile of books: Pride and Prejudice , Bleak House , and Vanity Fair. Melody knew all three books well enough to be able to follow the story in Italian if she had her new dictionary at hand.

Putting the books on the rickety desk that Signor Graziano had sat at previously, Luisa called out, "Signor Graziano, Antonio, sono io, Luisa Casati." There was no answer. She waited for a few seconds, then called out again, "Antonio, va tutto bene?" Melody's Italian was good enough that she knew that Luisa was calling out to the old man to see if he was alright. Still, there was no answer.

"This is not like Antonio," Luisa said in a worried voice.

"Might he have stepped out briefly?" Melody wondered.

"And leave the store unlocked? Never," Luisa asserted. "Something must have happened. He may have fallen in the back. Let us go and make the investigation."

With Luisa leading the way, the two women wound their way through the shop to the back, where a dark blue curtain was drawn to separate the shop front from its back. Luisa pulled back the curtain and walked through the doorway, continuing to call out. There was no answer. They found themselves in a small stockroom that was even more overstuffed than the front of the shop. Piles of books lay on every surface and stacked up on the floor. If Signor Graziano had a system of organisation, it was a very unusual one that was likely impenetrable to anyone else.

Luisa expressed a fear that the bookshop owner might have hit his head during a fall and be unable to call out. They looked in every corner of the stockroom, though even with the books lying everywhere, it quickly became clear to Melody that there was no one there. There was a door leading off the stockroom, which Melody assumed led to an office. Luisa made her way over to there, opened the door and screamed. Melody was behind Luisa, whose tall frame blocked the doorway, cutting off the view into the room.

"Antonio! Oh, mio Dio!"

Following Luisa into the room, Melody was confronted with the gruesome sight of the elderly bookseller slumped over his desk. The distinctive smell of a gunshot was still evident in the air, even though the lack of smoke in the poorly ventilated room indicated the use of smokeless powder.

"Oh my!" Melody exclaimed. Her first impulse was to ask if the man might be still alive, but a second look at the body negated the need for such a question. Signor Graziano's face was turned towards them, and his glassy eyes indicated that his soul had left his body. Melody wasn't sure what propelled her forwards, but she moved towards the body and lightly touched the hand that was stretched out across the desk; it was warm to the touch.

Melody also considered the still-lingering smell of the gunpowder. "He has not been dead long," she informed her new friend. Luisa didn't ask how Melody might know that and instead looked around the room rather melodramatically as if the killer might be hiding there in a corner and about to jump out at them.

The office had a window that, while not large, was certainly large enough for a medium-sized man to get through. Had the murderer heard them in the shop and escaped out this way? Melody got chills just thinking about it; while she was busy debating whether she wanted to read Jane Austen or George Elliot, poor Signor Graziano was being brutally murdered.

Moving over to the window, she saw that not only was it open, but there was a small piece of fabric caught on the metal of the frame. Plucking the material, she inspected it. Melody didn't know much about men's tailoring, but she believed that it was a piece of grey gaberdine of the kind that expensive suits were often made from. She considered the material. It was soft and of a tight weave, not the sort of material she expected working-class men to be able to afford. She wasn't sure what to make of such a deduction except that it perhaps implied that whoever had escaped out of this window was a man of some means. Why would such a man murder an elderly bookseller?

Melody strained to lean out of the window and saw that it led to a narrow calle. "How would I get onto this street?" she asked Luisa. While it had briefly occurred to her to follow the killer out through the window, she knew that if he had struggled to get through it in trousers, she would never manage it in a dress.

Luisa seemed quite undone by their discovery and was standing next to the body, her hands over her mouth in shock. Now, looking at Melody, the older woman asked the young girl, "What should we do?"

Melody had grown up in a household where murder investigations were routine. When Melody was younger, even Granny had been an active member of Tabby Cat and Wolfie's investigative team. Over the past few years, the dowager had reluctantly reduced her participation to that of a wise advisor, as she liked to describe her role. However, Tabitha and Wolf, with Bear's help, still took on cases, even if not as frequently as they once had.

While Tabitha had insisted that Melody not be drawn into their investigations in any way, the young woman had been on the peripheries many times and had listened to enough murder-related dinner conversations to have a good sense of how to proceed. "How might one summon the police in Venice?" she asked, noticing that there was no telephone in the office.

"Sì, sì. La polizia." Luisa was not from Venice and had lived there only a little more than a year. She had no more idea how to summon the authorities than Melody. "I will go out and ask my gondolier, Giuseppe. He will know what to do. Antonio, he did not believe in the telephono. "

"Tell him that there is a dead body and that we suspect foul play. If Italy is anything like London, the police will need to bring a medical examiner with them."

Luisa looked at the young English girl in surprise, but she didn't question why Melody was able to assert this with such cool confidence. Instead, she said, "If you go out of the front, turn right towards the canal and then walk along the fondamenta away from where we left the gondola, then make the first right, you will come onto the calle you can see from that window." With that, she turned and left to request that her gondolier summon the police.

Melody decided to use the time it took Luisa to call for help to examine the crime scene more closely. The desk was situated to the left of the door to the small office and the window straight ahead. The door had been closed when they entered. Would a murderer, surprising his victim, have bothered to close the door behind him before shooting? He certainly wouldn't have taken the time to close it after shooting, but before escaping through the window. Considering this and the fact that Antonio was seated when he was shot, Melody wondered if the murderer didn't surprise the old man but had, in fact, been expected, or at least was known to him.

Looking again at Antonio's slumped form, she considered whether he might have been standing when the killer entered the room and then fallen into this position when he was shot. No, that wasn't likely. If he had stood, he would have pushed the chair back more than it was, and if he had then fallen back, it wouldn't have been into a seated position; in fact, it was far more likely that they would have found the body lying on the floor. There seemed little doubt that the victim had been seated and probably not surprised by his murderer bursting through the door.

Looking at the chair sitting in front of the desk, Melody noticed an ashtray on the desk that was closer to that chair than Antonio's. Was it possible that the murderer had sat before his victim, casually smoking a cigarette before pulling a gun and shooting him?

Melody went and sat in the chair and looked across the desk at the dead body. Assuming that the killer had heard them come into the shop and fled out the window, then was Antonio shot while they were perusing the bookshelves? That was a chilling thought. But if that had been the case, why hadn't they heard the gunshot? Melody thought about the layout of the bookshop and the enormous number of shelves stacked high with books; would they have muffled the sound? Perhaps they would have.

Then, Melody thought back on the timeline since they first entered the bookshop: they had come in, not found Signor Graziano, but Luisa, not finding it unusual, hadn't called out. Assuming the killer had entered through the front of the shop, then he must have already been with Antonio in the office. Melody tried to remember if she had noticed anyone entering as they disembarked from the gondola, but she hadn't been paying attention to anything save trying to exit the boat.

Luisa hadn't called out to the bookseller until they had been in the shop for about twenty minutes. The murderer must have heard them; why else not leave the store through the front entrance and instead escape out of the window? So, if he had entered before they had and not escaped until Luisa had called out, then he must have been with Antonio for more than twenty minutes. This and the fact that he seemed to have sat and smoked a cigarette indicated that his sole purpose hadn't been to kill the elderly man. Instead, Melody deduced, he had come to talk. Was the murder a last resort because he hadn't received the answers he'd wanted? What had the old man become mixed up in?

Melody considered whether it was worth seeing where the calle outside of the window led to. She was sure the murderer was long gone. Someone might have seen him, but she wasn't sure her Italian was up to having such a conversation. Surely, this was something that the police would pursue. Instead, she decided to wait for them to arrive. No sooner had she made this decision than Luisa returned .

"La polizia will be here soon," she assured Melody. "Poor Antonio. Who could have done this to him, and why?"

Melody considered sharing her deductions with Luisa, but the woman still seemed very flustered. It appeared that the marchesa's love of the dramatic did not extend to finding dead bodies. Instead, Melody asked, "How well did you know Signor Graziano? You spoke about his sons, but is there anything else you can tell me?"

Luisa considered the question. "Well, he was from the ghetto."

"The ghetto?" Melody asked in a horrified voice. Her knowledge of the usage of the word was limited, but in England, it was often used by the more sensational newspaper reporters to refer to some of the grittier, overpopulated urban areas.

"Sì. The ghetto in the Cannaregio sestieri is where many of il Ebrei, you say Jews, of Venezia still live, even though they are no longer compelled to," Luisa explained. "Antonio once told me that when he was a child, his mother would use stories of the life she had led during her childhood, before most of the restrictions were lifted, to try to make him appreciate the freedoms he had." Luisa paused, then added thoughtfully, "Though, perhaps the feeling of being free is relative; I know that when Antonio was a young man and Venezia, she was under Austrian control, the Jews of Italy still were not considered equal under the law."

Melody considered the other woman's words. Throughout her life, living at Chesterton House, her family had maintained relationships, even friendships, with an unusual variety of people in London. Not the least of these unconventional friendships were with some of the Jews in London's poverty-stricken East End and amongst some of Britain's more prominent Jewish members. She had not considered these friendships particularly noteworthy until she had come out into society and had observed for herself the prejudices rampant in aristocratic circles.

Was Antonio Graziano's murder somehow related to his Judaism? She couldn't imagine many reasons why a kindly old bookseller would be killed. It occurred to Melody that perhaps this was a robbery gone wrong. That didn't really sit comfortably with the well-outfitted killer sitting and smoking a leisurely cigarette with his victim, but it was possible. Looking around the office, she saw a small safe in the corner of the room. It seemed to be closed. Perhaps the killer had come upon Antonio in his office, forced him at gunpoint to open the safe and remove any money in there. Then, out of habit, Antonio had closed the safe before handing the money over.

Melody considered this scenario: If this were the case, why would Antonio then sit back at the desk, and why would the killer not just immediately leave the scene of the crime? Why bother to stay and chat? No, this narrative made no sense. She was sure that if the safe were to be opened, they would find its contents intact.