The Pearl Crucible - A Dardana Fenek Mystery - AZZOPARDO - (part 1)

Chapter 5, part 1

This was not the approach I expected her to take.

I brushed an errant strand of hair aside while I decided how to respond.

She seemed amused at my reaction. “In your heart, you are asking why she incriminates herself?” She smiled. “Of course you are. Well, Miss Fenek, I expect it cannot remain a secret while Director Fortunato’s death is being investigated, so I will save you and the ensign-captain the trouble of seeking me out again.” She pursed her lips, idly fussing with her terminal keyboard.

“The Director—what sort of man do you suppose him to have been? Fair? Foul? Indifferent?”

“Miss Azzopardo, I met him alive only once. I never had a chance to decide.”

“Under what circumstances did you meet him, Miss Fenek?”

I felt she was questioning me, not the other way around. “It turns out I was investigating his murder, only it hadn’t happened yet. His character was only details to me.”

She laughed bitterly. “And you took his money without considering these … details.”

“I must make a living,” I said. “He had a case. He believed an attempt had been made on his life. I don’t turn away a client unless the case is corrupt or I’m being asked to injure an innocent party.”

“An injured innocent party! Well, so every woman felt, who came under his eye. What he must have thought of you, my dear.”

“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“Our mutual acquaintance, the late Mist’ Fortunato, thought as little of me as he would have of your girl over there—or of you.” She smiled grimly. “He had many virtues. He was a good public speaker. He was a patron of the current arts and an expert in the old ones. I hear he was a doting father, though I can’t say I’ve heard good things about his daughter’s character. He was an excellent art historian and conservator. He promoted those who had talent. He magnanimously allowed me to fill this position—which I deserved, and more!—entirely despite being a woman. But I paid for it when he used me like a whore.”

Barsina’s soft writing scritch behind my ear paused and began again.

“Miss Azzopardo.” I licked my lips.

She raised a hand. “I correct myself,” she said. “He used me like one of the meanest of his maids without so much as asking. A whore he would have paid the madam a few obols for, and a whore—or even his maid—would have expected it.” She looked at me, her jaw tight. “I did not. The first time.”

“This must have made you very angry,” I said cautiously.

“It would have made me very angry if it had happened only once. Or twice. Or three times. It happened more than that, Miss Fenek. Many more times than that.”

I listened closely. My physical relationships with men—when I used to have them—were … obligatory. But I felt they were important to engage in.

“Miss Azzopardo, is this a painful topic?”

“Very.”

“Are you willing to answer questions?”

“Will they be asked at a later time?”

“Quite likely.”

“Then I’d prefer to answer them now and spare myself questioning by a man.”

“I can’t completely promise that.”

“If a man’s involved, I’m sure you can’t.”

“You were not willing to … have sex with him?”

“I was not.”

“Was he violent?”

“He was physical. He made it plain that my role at the State Gallery could be improved by my willingness to please him and be silent afterward, or worsened by my lack of cooperation and loose tongue.”

“Is your position as Sub-Director a result?”

She looked angry. “I am competent to be the Director if I had never laid down with him.—But, your surmise is correct. The proximate cause of my promotion was a reward for my … patient endurance of his … abuse.”

“When he and I met at my office, I did not know your sex. I assumed you were a man, and I asked if you were a candidate for replacing him if he were murdered. He was contemptuous of the idea.”

Her lip curled. “Yes, I imagine he felt I could never have performed the role. He relied on me, but I was virtually indentured to him. If I wanted to continue to work with the art … ”

“Was it … worth it?”

“You ask why I endured it.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Girl!” she said to Barsina.

“Miss.” I felt her curtsey behind me, her sleeve brushing my cheek.

“If a man told you to serve him, would you?”

“If my Miss directed, yes.”

“Would you prefer him handsome or ugly?”

“If my Miss directed, it would not matter.”

“And if she sold your contract to him?”

“Then it would be proper to serve, Miss.”

“And if he offered to make you Sub-Director of the State Gallery?”

“Miss,” she said. “It would not happen.”

“But that is a kind of purchase as well, isn’t it, Miss Fenek? He had bought me.”

“You could walk away. An indentured is bound. She would be … pursued. Caught. And brought back.”

“I could have walked away,” said the Sub-Director. “And I would not have been brought back and had my feet beaten and been put back to work. I could have gone home to Tanais, picked up my paints, sat in my garden, and never seen the gallery again. And everything I had wanted in my life would have been lost—even as ruined and fouled as he made it.

“And my analogy extends even further, Miss Private Inspector,” she went on. “Tank-girls never run away, do they? Service is not what they want to do but what they must do. It’s the former citizens that run. But me, a citizen and an epistarch?” She snorted at herself. “To Mist’ Aristoi, I was only a tank-girl. To serve, for a chance to touch and see these things … I had to do it. I had to take it.”

“So you had, as you say, a good motive. The best of motives. But a devesseled girl would never murder her contract-owner.”

“And the analogy collapses,” she agreed. “And I would have gained nothing but possible murder charges: the Trustees of the Gallery will never appoint me to his role.”

“But the assaults would have stopped.”

She folded her arms. “I did not kill him.”

“Where were you last night around nineteen o’clock?”

“I was in the Gallery of Ancient Art preparing for the opening.”

“Do you have witnesses?”

“Some. The militia night guards might have, but they are unobservant. The cleaning staff.”

“Citizens or indentured?”

“Indentured.”

“Their testimony would be worthless, even put to the question. Are there cameras?”

“Of course.”

“I would see the video if I can.”

She stood. “I will take you. I will also,” she said, gesturing, “show you the exhibit. You can report that to your master, the ensign-captain.”

( … This way to Chapter 4, part 3 … ) ( … This way to Chapter 5, part 2 … )