Jones interrupted this rather gloomy train of thought. “Penny for ’em,” he said.
Mazzare looked around and saw that he and Jones were the last to leave, apart from the gravediggers, who were settled into a steady rhythm as they buried poor Buckley in Venice’s soggy silt.
“Poor value for money,” he grunted.
“Stuck for ideas?” Jones said. “Me too.”
They began to walk away from the grave, toward the gate, threading through the ornate monuments under which the Venetians buried their dead. “The Venetians say it’s the French or the Spaniards,” Mazzare said, “and Sanchez denies it. The Spanish part.”
“You believe him?” Jones asked, pulling his coat tighter about him against the chill breeze of early spring.
“I’d like to.”
“Larry, don’t get all gloomy on me again. Last time I turned out for one of your funerals, you went all serious on me. Did everything but start another Reformation.”
Mazzare, suddenly reminded of old Mrs. Flannery’s funeral, bit off the smart answer he’d been assembling practically from the moment Jones had opened his mouth. Irene Flannery, retired schoolteacher, dragon and stalwart of St. Mary’s back in Grantville, had died in a cavalry raid on the town, too stubborn to leave her home for the safety of the downtown buildings where Grantville’s heavily armed population had ambushed and defeated a horde of Wallenstein’s raiders.
It had been four days before she’d been brought in for burial, and that sodden, rain-lashed graveside attended by not a single genuine mourner had been the place where Mazzare had suddenly decided to stand up under the weight of his vocation. To finally heed what God had been telling him for over a year since the Ring of Fire.
He sighed. “No, Simon, it’s not that. It’s just that poor Joe’s been murdered and I don’t know what more we can do.”
“Find out who did it,” Jones said, simply, as they came to the graveyard gate.
Mazzare said nothing. He hoped Jones’s irrepressible sense of humor wasn’t taking a turn for the morbid.
“I’m being serious, Larry,” Jones said. “Even if we can’t take it to a trial and the hanging someone richly deserves, we need to know who’s out to get us.”
“Everyone.” Mazzare gave a single bark of laughter. “We’re not paranoid, Simon, everyone really is out to get us.”
Jones chuckled. “We could at least try to identify which of them is prepared to murder us in our beds.”
“True.”
“Of course, this isn’t a cliché yet,” Jones added.
“What?” Mazzare looked askance. Jones was being even more oblique than usual.
“Oh, you know. Father Whazzisname investigates.” Jones held out his hands in the shape of a frame, to see how Mazzare would look on screen, or possibly in something by Chesterton.
“Knock it off, Simon.” Mazzare waved to call for a boat back to the embassy. They were busy a few moments getting in and negotiating with the gondolier.
“Seriously, Larry,” Jones continued as the boat pulled away, “we need to look into this.”
“Finding the time will be a trick. And how do we do it anyway? I can just see me going to Count d’Avaux and asking him where he was on the night in question.”
Jones looked at him sharply. “Why’d you think it’s the French?”
Mazzare gave back his best Poirot impersonation. “I zuzpect evreewahn, and I zuzpect nowhan.” Then he shrugged. “No, the count was just the first example to spring to mind. Although if I had to draw up a short list of suspects, most of the names on it are French ones.”
“Figures. Anyway, since you seem to be in the right frame of mind, who are our suspects?”
Mazzare counted on his fingers. “First, all the countries we’re at war with. France, Spain, England, in that order.”
“You think Sanchez was lying?”
“No, it’s that he almost certainly doesn’t know everything. There are really two Spains, these days. He’s with the one we might be able to do business with some day.”
“Flanders,” Jones said.
“Quite. Except it’s a lot bigger than Flanders, nowadays. Bedmar’s definitely on that side, I think, if he’s on any side bar his own. We can probably rule him out.”