"True. These old places don't usually have closets."
Henchard ran his hand over the back of the closet, which was lined with wood rather than plaster. One board was loose. As though in disgust, he pulled it off and dropped it to the floor. Turning to Signorina Pastora he said coldly, "My God, this place is in terrible shape. I'll take it for a week on trial."
"Only a week!" Signorina Pastora tried to seem shocked, but she only succeeded in looking tired. The apartment had been without a tenant for a year. If this Casanova wanted a grubby love nest for a week, why should she give a damn? She shrugged. "Well, all right. A week it is."
"The key, please."
She handed it over and said, "Ciao," and thumped down the stairs.
Henchard went to the window and watched her cross the bridge over the empty gulch of the Rio della Sensa. Then he went back into the closet. Bending down, he peered with intense curiosity through the gap in the wooden wall at what lay on the other side.
He had to see more. He tried to rip off another board, but the nails refused to give. He would have to go home for a crowbar.
It took him an hour to go home and come back. Part of the time was spent in explaining to his wife what the crowbar was for. "Rats," he said impulsively. "Doctor Bruno in the office next to mine has rats in the wainscoting. If Bruno has rats today, I'll have them tomorrow."
"Oh, Riccardo, wait," said Vittoria. She ran into the kitchen and came back with a small bottle of dark fluid. "Rat poison. Remember? This is how we took care of it before."
Henchard looked at the bottle with distaste, but he put it in his bag.
As it turned out, it came in handy. When he got back to the house on the Rio della Sensa, he was shocked to discover a real live rat on the premises.
The door to the cart-storage space was wide open. Henchard paused and looked in. He was astonished to see a young man, obviously one of the spazzini, standing up in a big steel cart, using it as a stepladder. His head was out of sight through a hole in the ceiling.
With horror, Henchard understood the geometry at once. The storage space for carretti was directly below the little hidden chamber in which he was so feverishly interested.
He walked into the storage room and said softly, "What the hell do you think you're doing?"
The legs of the spazzino jerked with surprise, and his head came down into view. His hair was white with plaster dust. He coughed and grinned hugely at Henchard. "Ceiling's cracked. A piece fell down." He gestured with a hammer, and said slyly, "I just helped it along a little." His eyes were bright with excitement. "My God, you should see the stuff up there. Gold! All kinds of gold. Hey, wait a minute, look at this!" He reached one arm through the hole, scrabbled around, coughed, and drew his hand out again, holding a large gold plate. He coughed again, and croaked, "Ecco!"
Henchard looked at the plate. Slowly he said, "The room upstairs is private property. It belongs to me."
"It does?" The young man's face fell, and he said, "Mi displace." Coughing, he pushed the plate back up through the hole and stepped down from the cart.
Henchard looked at him soberly. "You have a nasty cough."
"It's just the plaster dust. And you should see all the stuff up there, it's covered with dust." The spazzino produced another dry cough.
"Look here," said Henchard, sounding concerned, "I'm a doctor. That cough sounds really serious. It's far down in your lungs. You should take something for it."
"I should? " The young man began coughing in earnest.
If at that moment some wise man had been sitting in a corner of the storage room for carts, looking on with his chin in his hand, some worldly philosopher like the figure of a donor in the painting of a grisly martyrdom, he might have observed that a surgeon's power over life and death could sometimes be too easy.
No philosopher was watching as Henchard opened his bag and took something out. "It just happens that I've got some good stuff right here. You'll have to drink it out of the bottle. It tastes nasty, I'm afraid, but it will do the trick."
It did it very well. The spasms began almost immediately. Henchard laid the boy down on the floor, and said kindly, " I'll call the ambulanza."
The key to the cart-storage space was still in the lock. Henchard went outside, shut the door on the boy's groans, turned the key and put it in his pocket. Then he began walking quickly in the direction of the hospital. It wasn't far, and like every other Venetian citizen he was used to walking.
And it gave him time to think. There was a great deal to be done, at once, without delay.
The problem of disposal was one he could handle. After all, he was a surgeon. He knew precisely how to find the point of separation between the patella and the femur. But perhaps there was no point in making careful separations at the joints. He could just go straight across. Of course it would be a messy business, but by the time he came back with his equipment, the blood would not be so apt to spurt all over the place.