“I am forced to abstemiousness in food and drink.” Gesturing down at my short trunk. “Dwarves, I fear, are prone to fat. Such is the effect of a grown man’s appetite in a stunted body. But I confess I did try a few of those tourtes. The tiny blood-orange things with the honey glaze. Bitter to go with the sweet.”

Like you, I almost said. Signorina Cuoca was all dark angles and lean corners in both face and body; nothing like the soft curves of figure and fair tints of skin that the world deemed beautiful. But she had a tang that prettier women lacked, a tang as tart and refreshing as a dash of lemon water on a hot day, and I wondered if her skin tasted like lemon on the tongue. But she grimaced before I could think of anything charming to say, and I cocked my head instead. “What is it?”

“Those blood-orange tourtes you liked?” Carmelina said. “The woman at market who sells me fruit every week; well, I bought six whole crates of blood oranges off her to make those. And I just heard a few days ago from the scullions that she’s dead. Found with her throat slashed, and staked down right through the hands too.” Carmelina crossed herself. “Spread out and left to die right in her own fruit stall, Santa Marta save her soul.”

“Staked,” I said. “Through the hands?”

“She was so pleased to sell me all those oranges. I was looking forward to telling her how well the pastries turned out . . .” Carmelina sighed. “Good night, Messer Leonello.”

I stood looking out over the piazza, long after she had disappeared.

One woman dead of a slashed throat, staked to a table. Now . . . two?

It means nothing, I told myself. Women died every night in Rome, their throats cut by jealous husbands or thieving footpads or angry debtors. Many women. In the great scheme of this violent city, it meant nothing.

And even if two died in what might be called a similar fashion—well, so what? One could draw similarities between any two deaths, if one tried hard enough. Two deaths; it was merely a coincidence. You would need at least three to call it a pattern.

But I couldn’t help thinking of my third man, the man I’d never found. A man wearing a mask.

It wouldn’t do any harm, I supposed, to ask a few questions about this woman Carmelina had known. The unfortunate orange seller.

I kicked one of Carmelina’s flattened tourtes away into the shadows, not liking myself very much. Because a woman was dead, and yet the news made me feel suddenly, oddly cheerful. Refreshed, almost. Not bored at all.