Deep and Silent Waters Read Free Page A

it. That, to Laura, was testament to his integrity: he had picked Melanie as the best agent for her, in spite of knowing Melanie didn’t think highly of him.
    Sighing, Laura said, ‘Mel, I really don’t want to go. It’ll be a nightmare – those occasions always are, noisy, overcrowded, flashbulbs going off all the time, hordes of people grabbing at you, … like going for a swim in a tank full of piranhas.’
    ‘You’re an actress, for heaven’s sake. How can you be afraid of an audience?’ Mel had never been shy or nervous in her life.
    ‘I’ve never been on a stage – you know that! Or had any training,’ Laura protested. ‘I’m not scared of cameras or film crews. They’re always too busy with their own job to have time to stare at me, and if I mess up or fluff a line I can always do it again. But on a stage it’s live. It can go wrong in front of hundreds of people. You can make a fool of yourself.’
    She had learnt her trade by working at it, had picked it up as she went along, by making friends with the camera men, sound men, lighting men. She listened to everything they said and related it to what she already knew, watched them work with such open fascination that they were happy to suggest how she should pitch her voice, how she should move, and to show her how little she needed to do to make an effect. A sideways flick of the eyes could show fear, suspicion, jealousy without a word being spoken.
    Melanie changed tack. ‘You won’t have to act, lovely, just stand there and smile, and say thank you if you win – and winning is a long shot, remember. But you’ll see Venice – and it’ll blow your mind. Sebastian was born there, wasn’t he? I read that somewhere. Born in Venice, but brought up in California, wasn’t it? They said he was born in a palazzo on the Grand Canal.’ She gave her cynical little grin. ‘I always said he was a fantasist, didn’t I?’
    Had it been fantasy? When Sebastian talked about his childhood Laura had believed him. It had seemed the perfect place for him to have been born: a Renaissance palazzo in the most beautiful city in the world. Only later, when death had entered the equation, did she begin to doubt him.
    During the months they were working together she would have refused point blank to believe Sebastian capable of murder – but after Rachel’s death she no longer knew what she believed. How much truth had he ever told her? she wondered and she kept thinking that once you have admitted one doubt you find more hidden inside you, which multiply like flies on summer evenings, becoming a buzzing, stinging multitude in your brain, driving you mad.
    ‘Venice is one of those experiences that change your life,’ Melanie said. ‘Once you see it, you’ll never be the same again.’
    That was what Laura was afraid of. She was uneasy about going to a place that had been so important in Sebastian’s life. She remembered everything he had said about his childhood in the golden palace on the Grand Canal, with its marble floors and walls, hung with ancient, fading tapestries that made the rooms whisper and echo as they stirred in the chill breeze. Sebastian had talked of long, dark corridors through which you had to find your way, like Theseus in the maze, from room to room, and out at last into the garden full of orange and lemon trees five foot high, in great terracotta pots padded with straw to keep the chill of winter at bay.
    It was based on a geometric pattern, he had said, narrow gravel paths between low box hedges within which stood paired statues of Roman gods: Jupiter and Juno, Mars and Venus. In the centre, standing on one winged foot, the other pointing backwards, stood Mercury, his staff angled at the window of one room from which over the centuries, family legend said, several members of the Angeli family had fallen to their deaths.
    ‘Murdered?’ she had whispered, ready to believe him if he said yes. Everyone knew about Renaissance princes who