NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
I happened to meet Bel Vionnet and Steve Strether walking Lambert, on Wicket Street. Lambert has been preoccupied with the scent on a twig in the ditch for some time and I catch up with them up while they wait. Steve bends down to pet him. Lambert looks up suddenly at Steve’s touch and moves on with us. It is nearly seventy degrees in the late morning sun, mid winter, and daffodils are showing among the snowdrops along the hillside above the roadside ditch. Daisy comes out of Derwent Sloot’s place as I join them. She waves at us with her bowler and as so often happens, something floats to the ground from her hatband. Lambert runs towards it on his expanding leash, with a low growl, as if he is muttering to himself. He sniffs it, where it lands on top of the ivy.
“Lambert, you leave that piece of paper alone honey.” Lambert pushes it with his nose and it slips out of sight among the ivy leaves. Lambert follows it burying his head among the tangled vines and foliage. Daisy steps in toward him and he looks up, fur covering his eyes with a white curtain, the paper in his mouth.
“He’s going deaf Daisy. It’s no good talking to him.”
Steve walks into the ivy too. Lambert’s short legs are hidden in leaves and he appears to be floating in the viney green deep. Lambert looks up at him with a dead oak leaf swinging from the fur under his jaw and some leaf fragments cling to the bushy white hair on his ears.
“When did that happen?”
“We first noticed it around his thirteenth birthday.”
“Oh, wasn’t that last month Bel?”
“That’s right”. Steve trades the paper for a treat, which Lambert then drops. “Daisy you need a more secure place for your money.”
“I know. It keeps falling out. I want to tighten the band. It’s come loose. Does Artie know yet Steve?”
“Know what, Daisy?”
“That Augustino Tassi is out?”
Lambert is nosing around trying to find his treat under the leaves while we all gather around to chat in Derwent’s front yard. Steve hands Daisy the ten pound note that had dropped from her hat band. “Yuk! he really soaked it. At least he didn’t chew it, Steve!”
Steve seems to have forgotten her question about Artie. “No I have never known him to eat money.”
“You mean he just savors it and spits it out?”
“That is the first time he had any sterling. He doesn’t even pick up dollar bills.”
“Who is Tassi Steve? I remember there was mention of him at Artie’s opening, but it was the wrong moment to explain anything.”
“Fred, he’s a painter and was close to Artie in Florence when she was studying there. We all knew him, Bel and I, and Frank Vasari who was teaching there at that time.”
“To answer your question Daisy, we don’t know if Artie has found out yet.”
“Bel, it has been several weeks. She must know, but I haven’t seen her since the opening. You know Tassi only served nine months and … ”
Lambert has run back on to the street and circles us following a scent trail, and also winding his expanding leash around us as we move on along Wicket street from Derwent’s. Daisy tries to step out of the loop but he pulls hard to move back the way we came, tightening the line. Bel reaches down and grabs Lambert’s collar to hold him still. The slackened line catches in the top of Daisy’s shoe and instead of stepping over it she pulls it taught again with her extended leg. Steve stands outside the loop laughing at Lambert’s maneuver. “Daisy just stand still and I’ll come around and unwind it.”
“Steve, I’m not moving.” Daisy throws her arms out trying to regain her balance holding back on the momentum of her broken stride. She stands awkwardly with legs wide apart. “I think Artie had a thing going with Tassi for a while.”
“I was never sure about that Daisy. I mean what kind of thing it was.”
“Well I wasn’t there Bel, but got the idea they were ‘an item’ from odd remarks Artie’s let drop.” Steve has got the line out of Daisy’s way. We are released to move on. He walks around us while Lambert protests under Bel’s restraint.
“They may have been an ‘item’ to each other but I don’t remember going out with them as a couple. It wasn’t something she put out.”
“No Steve, Artie was discreet about her personal life. Always has been.”
“True Bel, she was always talking about her latest discoveries. She seldom used a guidebook and liked roaming around the city talking to people. Remember San Miniato?”
“Yes, Minias, the old Roman Saint. I remember those endless steps up to the basilica and the heat. Bel, what were we doing, climbing up there in summer?”
“Steve, I remember you looking at the girls who suddenly drove up on Vespas after we got to the top.”
“I’ll never forget them Bel, all three of them, right out of Botticelli’s Primavera, with faces of Simonetta Vespucci, their blond hair blowing in wavy strands … oh and their jeans … “
“Alright Steve, its Venus’s hair that is spread out, but we get the picture.”
We are walking slowly west along Wicket Street as Steve reminisces. Slips Lane and Boundary Circle are ahead and around the corner, where the young chess players Rundstedt and Guderian live.
“Artie told us we had to see the view of Florence. There was supposed to be a cooling breeze up there too.”
“She also took us through to see the terracottas by della Robbia up in that vaulted ceiling.”
“Daisy I’ve never known her to talk about her love life and have never felt I could ask. You must be her confidante. Besides it is none of my business.”
“It isn’t our business Steve, but we were concerned about her. We are now. She was ragged that afternoon we met her in the street holding that apotropaic trinket in both hands.”
“Well I guess we were all closer back then…”
“ … and younger, Bel! but as close as we were, it was obvious something had happened.”
“What did you say she was holding Bel?”
“A trinket, some kind of statuette I think. Don’t really remember Daisy.”
“No I mean what is ‘apotra …’ what ever it was?
“Daisy that’s apotropaic, something that wards off evil.”
“Bel, do you mean her clothing was ragged?”
“No Daisie, her lip was swollen and she had bruises on her arms and hair all over the place. She had difficulty speaking. Like she was holding something back.” Lambert starts barking and pulling ahead towards the bend in the road. He walks along the middle where the camber is highest. Occasionally darting to one side, to sniff, and that sometimes takes him around a tree from which Steve has to unwind him.
“Didn’t she tell you what had happened Bel?”
“No, she came over the next day Fred. Steve left the room so we could talk, but she tried to make light of it, said something like ‘men are impossible. I’ll go with art’.
“But you knew she was talking about Augustino?”
“I asked her about him Daisy and she looked away and changed the subject.”
“So how did he ever come to trial?”
“It was Donna Tuzia. She had a friend on the police force and convinced her to see him that night.”
“She was rooming with Donna’s family you see Daisy. They got very close.” Lambert has stopped ahead at the full extent of his leash. His ears are up, his tail points straight back in line with his body and he is still barking down the empty road.
