Deep and Silent Waters

Laura’s red hair split over Sebastian’s shoulder. He tenderly brushed it back so that he could see her face.

A shiver ran down his spine. Déjà vu. He had been here before, stood like this before on this spot. A ghost was walking over his grave. Instinctively he looked up, as he had that day thirty years ago.

He wasn’t surprised to see the Contessa’s face framed in the window, white and fixed, staring as if she, too, was looking at a ghost, as she had looked at him from that very same window thirty years ago.

He had been a child then watching his mother get into the waiting boat. Now he was a man coming out of a waiting boat, carrying a woman with wind-blown red hair, hair the identical shade and texture his mother’s had been; and behind them rolled the grey waters of the canal, veiled in snow which was just beginning to float down from the cloudy sky.

Why did life always make patterns? Echoes of past and future clanged in his ears, came between what his eyes saw, and what haunted his mind.

Another window was flung open with a crash that made him jump.

‘Sebastian!’ a voice screamed. ‘I’m going to jump, watch me!’

He seemed to see Clea looking down at him, climbing on to the sill.

‘No! Don’t!’ he yelled.

‘I love you!’ she called and jumped.

Laura was screaming in his arms, fighting to get down.

Valerie didn’t make another sound. She fell in silence like the soft white snow. Slow motion, he thought, although he knew it wasn’t. His camera eyes followed her, watched the tumble and twist of the body, his mouth open. He didn’t hear the sounds he made, didn’t hear the whine of the wind, the slap of water on the landing-stage.

She hit the stones with a sound he would never be able to forget. Her head split open as if it had been a watermelon. Blood spurted, the white seeds of brain spreading everywhere. Her eyes were open as if they still saw; had started out of the mess that had been her face, like the eyes of Laura’s doll.

She must have done that, too, have somehow stolen it from Laura’s bedroom at The Excelsior, smashed it and sent it to her. She must have written those notes, have tried to kill Laura the other day.

Sebastian had never suspected so much violence had been hidden behind her calm, neat face.

The film crew crowded out of the palazzo’s open door. Too shocked to make a sound as they stared in horror at the blood and brains on the stones.

The weight in his arms made Sebastian realise that Laura had fainted. He began to walk towards Ca’d’Angeli, skirting the broken body, not even aware that he was staggering as he walked until Sidney met him and tried to take Laura from him.

It brought him out of his shock. Arms tightening around her Sebastian muttered, ‘No. I’ll look after her. You deal with that.’ Without looking, he gestured with his head. ‘Don’t touch anything. Don’t let anyone go near it. Just call the police. I’ll put Laura to bed.’ He started to move again then stopped. ‘Sidney. She should see a doctor, would you ring for one?’

Chapter Fifteen

For two days after Valerie’s death Laura was sedated. She slept heavily, haunted by dreams from which she woke with horror, sometimes to find Sebastian sitting beside her, watching her with brooding eyes, or Niccolo in the chair by the bed, a pad on his knee, drawing her in charcoal, with quick, light strokes.

She stared drowsily at him. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Drawing you. Do you mind? You know, you’re just as lovely asleep, you have such great cheekbones. See?’ He held up the sketch. ‘But to bring you alive needs colour, that miracle of red in your hair, your peachy skin, your green eyes. Black and white doesn’t do you justice.’

Laura yawned, bored by talk of her looks, wishing she dared tell him her dreams: talking about them might drive them away, but her eyelids were too heavy and she fell back into sleep.

When she got up on the third day the doctor ordered her to stay in her room, sitting by a huge fire, in a Victorian wing armchair, overstuffed with horsehair, piled with cushions, the back of it towards the windows to keep away the draughts. The police came to interview her again, but kept it brief – they had plenty of evidence about Valerie’s suicide. All they wanted to hear from Laura was the truth about what had happened on the boat.

Captain Bertelli looked horrified when she said she had accused Valerie to her face. ‘You told her you believed it was her who attacked you?’

‘Yes. And she—’

He interrupted, ‘That was a dangerous thing to do, Signorina. She might have tried again.’

‘She did. She tried to strangle me, but I kicked her as hard as I could.’

The policeman stared incredulously at Laura’s delicate face, the frailness of her body, covered by a velvet dressing gown, sunk in the chair, which half swallowed her. His brows climbed almost to his hair.

‘You did?’