Death of a Duchess Read Free

the moment, latent temper drew down his brows.
    ‘Has lord Ugo stolen his enemy’s daughter?’ He thrust the cup towards the page and walked off swiftly along a high-vaulted passage ornamented with Biblical frescoes. ‘I offer those two my own arbitration of their dispute and arrange its solution by the marriage of their children and they insult me .’
    ‘To the foolishness of man there is no end,’ Sigismondo answered.
    They came out on a long loggia above a great sloping courtyard where horses waited. Further down, near the gates, an ungainly bonfire was being constructed. The Duchess’s favourite, her Mistress of the Robes, a widow, was to marry today, and the Duchess had chosen to give the feast this evening — which probably accounted also for a thunderous argument for five voices going on somewhere indoors.
    The Duke leant over the balustrade and shouted, ‘Walk the horses. Walk them!’ upsetting the grooms out of a cosy chat. He wheeled to face Sigismondo. ‘Is Ugo Bandini to blame?’
    ‘Shall I tell your Grace what I found?’
    The Duke fixed Sigismondo with the blue stare, and waited.
    ‘The abductors entered, I am told, over a roof. The roof in question is well-made and without flaw. The houseleeks flourish on it unharmed. I was shown where the lady’s chamber shutters had been forced. The servants keep the lady’s loggia spotless. Her room was disordered, very much so. She, and her maid, were gone. Some of the servants sleep in the kitchen, some up under the roof. None of them heard a sound; they were not roused by the yard dogs. No one heard them bark. Nor did the lady’s lapdog bark.’
    The Duke’s face was intent.
    ‘A side door to the lane was found unbarred. The lady and her maid, a Circassian slave, had been taken down a staircase. They may have been unconscious, but at all events there was no damage to the painted walls, no marks of scratching or the kick of a shoe. On a nail near the unbarred door was found this.’
    He offered the particoloured rag to the Duke, who glanced and exclaimed, ‘So it was Bandini! I’ll have his head for it.’
    The cloth was offered closer. The ducal head bent to examine the stitching. Sigismondo pointed to buckled threads on the yellow piece where the nail had caught. The Duke fingered the frayed edges of the piece.
    ‘And this was torn from, one supposes, a sleeve, with force enough to rip it clean away — and without its owner knowing.’ The Duke’s gaze now had reached incandescence. ‘Jacopo di Torre has done it himself! He has spirited his daughter away with pretence of an abduction, and placed this rag to put the blame on Bandini — to avoid marrying the girl to Bandini’s son. To avoid reconciliation. To disparage my command .’
    The distant grooms turned their heads.
    ‘So far, the dumb witnesses say as much, your Grace.’
    ‘So far. Ah.’ He was at once quiet. ‘Go on.’
    ‘Outside in the alley, horses had waited, well-fed, country horses, my lord Duke, not mere dungcart pullers. These one supposes to be Jacopo’s men, with whom the docile daughter was to go, with her slave girl and her little dog. Then turn the corner into the road and we find four things: plaster fresh kicked from a wall; the wheel spokes of a dungcart that had stood in the road, kicked to raw wood; a trample of hoof marks, even close to the wall; and, beneath a splash of blood on the plaster, a dead lapdog.’
    The Duke was almost vibrant with attention.
    ‘During all this time, while I searched, the Lord Jacopo’s demeanour had been full of indignation, of fury against the Lord Ugo. When he saw the body of the dog, he cried out with great despair, My daughter has been abducted! and he had to be led into the house, stumbling.’
    The Duke’s head went back. Something not pleasant enough to be called a smile moved his lips. ‘The biter bit? The girl was stolen? Taken from Jacopo’s men in the street?’
    ‘Which suggests that Jacopo’s plan to hide his