Venetian Vespers

Evelyn Dolman, a self-described man of letters of middling literary reputation in 1890s London, writes from an unspecified later period to set down the truth of events that left him publicly disgraced. For months he has been plagued by a recurring dream: a deserted room at dusk, a scrap of black silk on a marble table, and darkening waters beyond a window. He warns the reader that a woman died during the events he is about to recount, and that he was blamed, though he insists it was not his fault.

Dolman married Laura Rensselaer, daughter of the fabulously wealthy American railroad and oil magnate T. Willard Rensselaer. He suspects Laura engineered the match rather than the other way around. A mysterious falling-out had occurred between Laura and her father, the cause of which she refused to reveal. Rensselaer commissioned Dolman to write his authorized biography, then died in a riding accident at his English estate while riding with Laura, who witnessed the fatal fall. His will disinherited Laura, leaving the bulk of his fortune to her older, unmarried sister, Thomasina Rensselaer, who immediately canceled the biography commission. The marriage conceals another secret: On the night Dolman proposed, he discovered Laura was sexually experienced and intuited her previous lover caused the rift with her father. After that single encounter, their physical relationship ceased entirely.

On New Year's Eve 1899, Dolman and Laura depart London for Venice on a trip Laura arranged. They arrive on a misty, freezing evening and travel by vaporetto, a Venetian steam launch, to the Palazzo Dioscuri, a crumbling palace on the Grand Canal owned by Count Michelangelo Barbarigo. Beppo, the palazzo's surly major-domo, greets them with thinly veiled contempt. As they approach through a narrow alley, Dolman glimpses what appears to be a woman's face behind the glass of a high window, a figure connected to his recurring dream. The Count, a suave aristocrat, welcomes them at dinner, where the meal is served by Rosalia, a pretty, barefoot servant girl of about 16 or 17. Laura receives even the Count's most indecent stories with surprising ease, becoming someone Dolman hardly recognizes.

That first night, Dolman goes to Caffè Florian on St. Mark's Square, where a man named Frederick FitzHerbert accosts him, claiming they attended the same school. Dolman cannot recall him but pretends to remember. FitzHerbert, whom Dolman identifies as a likely remittance man, an expatriate living on funds sent from home, leads him to meet his twin sister, Francesca, who uses the married name Ransome. Cesca is strikingly beautiful, and Dolman is overwhelmed by instant infatuation. At a rough tavern called Il Pappagallo, Freddie plies Dolman with grappa, a potent Italian spirit, while Dolman notices FitzHerbert in earnest conversation with a small, dark-complexioned man at a far table. When Cesca walks Dolman home, she sucks a splinter from his thumb in an intimately charged moment before disappearing into the night.

Dolman returns drunk and finds Laura standing in the dressing-room. Her calm, remote manner enrages him. In a state of cold fury, he seizes her, tears her nightdress from her body, and forces her onto the bed. Laura whispers repeatedly for him to stop, maintaining an eerie calm. He wakes the next morning to find Laura gone, her torn nightdress on the floor with dried bloodstains. Despite his guilt, he goes out seeking not Laura but Cesca.

He finds Cesca at Florian's and learns she and Freddie must leave Venice because their aunt is reclaiming her house on the Giudecca, a nearby island. Desperate not to lose Cesca, Dolman invites them to lodge at the palazzo. The Count agrees without hesitation, and Dolman watches uneasily as Cesca and the Count depart together on a vaporetto, conversing with easy familiarity. While wandering the city, Dolman is accosted inside St. Mark's basilica by a cloaked young woman who attempts to seduce him on a dark staircase. He pushes her away and flees, bursting outside as a choir launches into Monteverdi's Vespers of the Blessed Virgin.

That night, Dolman finds Cesca standing at a window in an upstairs room. She leads him back to his bed, where he confesses Laura is gone. Cesca agrees to stay the night on the condition that he kiss her, and Laura's lavender-scented cushion, supposedly lost during the journey, turns up between the pillows. A pattern develops over the following days: Cesca allows Dolman kisses and caresses but never permits consummation. Instead, Rosalia begins visiting Dolman's bed at night with Cesca's implicit arrangement, sometimes with Cesca observing. Dolman's infected thumb worsens, producing a constant fever.

Commissario Amadeo, the dark-complexioned man from Il Pappagallo, approaches Dolman, identifies himself as a police detective, and reveals he already knows Laura is missing. Over several encounters, Amadeo questions Dolman with relentless persistence, takes Laura's photograph for public posters, and orders the canals near the palazzo searched. During one visit, Freddie greets the detective with easy familiarity and remarks that Laura in the photograph looks remarkably like Cesca.

Dolman's sister-in-law Thomasina arrives at a Venetian hotel, called by a telegram ostensibly from Laura. When she sees FitzHerbert outside the palazzo, she recoils in alarm, calling him a malignancy. At Florian's, Thomasina reveals the truth: A year earlier, Laura met FitzHerbert in Venice and fell under his spell. He proposed, but Rensselaer refused the match and paid FitzHerbert off, requiring him and his sister to leave England. Dolman realizes Laura arranged the trip to Venice to reunite with FitzHerbert, directing Dolman to Florian's that first night knowing FitzHerbert would be waiting. Dolman had been selected by Rensselaer as a safe, biddable replacement husband.

Dolman falls seriously ill with fever. When he recovers, Laura's remaining clothes have vanished from the palazzo except for a single black silk stocking. A Vice-Consul from the British Consulate arrives with grave news: Thomasina has been found drowned in the canal beside the palazzo. Laura, it turns out, has been alive and hiding in the palazzo's unused rooms the entire time. She came to the Consulate seeking refuge and told officials a story of sustained abuse by Dolman, supported by evidence: the torn, bloodstained nightdress and scratches on Dolman's face observed by Cesca. Dolman was the last person seen with Thomasina before her death.

The Vice-Consul informs Dolman that the Consulate and Venetian police have agreed he must leave Venice immediately, with no charges filed. Before departing, Dolman climbs to the empty room the FitzHerberts occupied and tosses Laura's black silk stocking onto a marble table beneath the window. As he boards the train, the Vice-Consul reveals his name: Ransome, Cesca's husband. His parting smile confirms his complicity.

Back in London, Dolman finds the locks at Rakes Manor, the Chiswick house that was always in Laura's name, changed. Laura has applied for an annulment, presumably to marry FitzHerbert, and with Thomasina dead she inherits the entire Rensselaer fortune. Dolman is left with unanswered questions: Who pushed Thomasina into the canal? What roles did the Count, Beppo, and the others play? What really happened the day Laura and her father went riding and only Laura came back? In the novel's final lines, Dolman recalls turning at the threshold of the empty room and seeing the scene from his prophetic dream made real: dusk, a deserted room, a scrap of black silk on a marble table, and a darkening sea beyond.