Read Online Death in a Serene City by Edward Sklepowich - Free Book Online Page B

and to start the movie over again. Before he did, however, he went across the hall to the library and took down one of Quinton’s books, A Knot of Clowns . He would read it as soon as he finished the George Sand novel about Venice that he had just begun.
    After making a note to order flowers from Tommaso Soli for the funeral the day after tomorrow, he settled himself in front of Camille again with an almost easy conscience.

12
    AS Urbino sat next to the Contessa and the Bellorinis in the English Church of St. George, so unlike the nearby Salute and the other baroque, Gothic, and Byzantine churches throughout the city, he was struck with how suited the simple building was to the impression he had of the woman. He wondered, however, if Voyd, dressed in the same impeccable black of the Contessa’s party and looking appropriately somber, might not have preferred more grandiose surroundings for his eulogy. His manner seemed to cry out for something more Latinate.
    The Contessa was muffled in dark furs and a matching hat that concealed her face except when she lifted it to look up at Voyd. Her expression was almost completely blank, which probably meant there was a great deal of emotion behind it.
    Several pews in front of them was Margaret Quintan’s niece, Adele Carstairs, her bowed head covered with a black lace shawl. Beside her was the nurse who had come up with Margaret Quinton two months ago from Rome. The American consul and his wife, looking alternately bored and impatient, were across the aisle from the two women. Next to them was Sister Veronica, who kept glancing at her watch. This was the time that she usually began her tours with guests from the Santa Crispina hospice.
    The dead woman had kept to herself and had made few close friends despite the entree given her by the Contessa. Other than the chaplain and the organist there was only one other person in the Church of St. George: Maria Galuppi. Whether it was shyness or unease at being in a church not of her own faith for perhaps the first time in her long life, she kept to the shadows to one side of the entrance where she stood in her long woolen coat, her gloved hands clasped loosely in front of her. When Urbino turned around at one point, she was staring at their pew with a grim expression. Perhaps she couldn’t bring herself to look up at Voyd in the pulpit as he spoke about mortality.
    Voyd’s sonorous tones washed over the small group along with the steady sound of the rain outside.
    â€œTo die in Venice,” he was saying, “is to be in good company. Wagner, Browning, Diaghilev, Pound, and so many noble others, the unknown as well as the famous, those of modest talents as well as those of great genius. Our Margaret loved this city dearly and she was giving honor and praise to it in the way that meant the most to her and would certainly have meant a great deal to us. With all of her fine discrimination she was making it the setting for one of her incomparable fictions. But that, alas, is among the things that shall never be. There is much sad obscurity surrounding her last moments at the Casa Silviano—of this let us speak freely and openly as she always tried to do in her work—but we must not let their darkness hide for us the light and gentleness and talent that were Margaret Quinton. She was a woman we were all privileged to know but a woman who never once would have considered it such.
    â€œI will leave you not with my own feeble words but with the shining ones of Quinton herself, something I marvelously chanced upon last night as I was glancing through some of her writings which it is now my dolorous duty to oversee. It is written in that fine spidery hand that seems to come from another age and that any of us who has ever seen it will never soon forget.”
    He slowly took out his glasses from his vest pocket, unfolded a sheet of paper, and after clearing his throat, read even more sonorously than