by Donna Leon
Brunetti smiled in return, and she asked him to take a seat. As he
did, she wheeled her chair around until it was facing him. She might
have been in her late twenties, though the flecking of grey in her hair
made her seem older, as did the vertical lines between her eyebrows.
Her eyes were a light amber, her nose a bit too large for the rest of
her face, her mouth so soft and relaxed that it seemed out of place on
a face so marked with what Brunetti thought was a history of pain.
"You said you were interested in Signora Moro?" she prompted.
"Yes, I'd like to speak to her. I've been phoning but she's never
home. The last time I spoke to her, she ..."
The woman cut him off. "When was that?"
"Some days ago. She didn't say anything about leaving the city."
"No, she wouldn't. Say anything, I mean."
Brunetti registered the remark and said, The didn't get the feeling
that .. ." He paused, not certain how to express it. "I didn't have
the feeling that she had anywhere to go."
Signora or Signorina Delia Vedova looked at him with fresh interest.
"Why do you say that?"
"I don't know. I just had a very strong feeling that the city was
where she belonged and that she had no interest in going anywhere. Or
desire."
When it seemed that Brunetti had no more to say, she replied, "She
didn't. Have anywhere to go, that is."
"Do you know her well?"
"No, not really. She's been here for less than two years."
"Since the accident?" Brunetti asked.
She looked at Brunetti, and all pleasantness disappeared from her face.
This," she said, flipping the fingers of her right hand across her lap
to indicate the legs that rested uselessly below it, 'was an accident.
What happened to Federica was not."
Brunetti stifled any response he might have made to this and asked,
calmly, "Are you so sure of that?"
"Of course not," she said, her voice calm again. "I wasn't there and I
didn't see what happened. But Federica, the two times she spoke to me
about it, said, "When they shot me..." People who are in accidents
don't talk about it that way."
Brunetti had no doubt that this woman knew full well how people who
were in accidents speak. "She said this twice?"
"Yes, so far as I can remember. But simply by way of description, not
complaint. I never asked her what happened, didn't want to pry. I've
had enough of that myself. And I figured she'd tell me what she wanted
to when she was ready."
"And has she?"
She shook her head. "No, only those two references."
"Have you seen her often?"
"Perhaps every week or so. She stops in and has a coffee or simply
comes down and talks for a while."
"Did you know her before she moved into this apartment?"
"No. I knew about her husband, of course. But I suppose everyone
does. Because of his report, I mean." Brunetti nodded. "I met her
because of Gastone she said.
"Gastone?"
The cat. She found him outside the front door one day and when she
opened the door, he came in. When he came up and
stood outside my door, she knocked and asked me if he were mine. He
gets out of here sometimes and then lurks out in the calle until
someone opens the door, or rings my bell and asks me to open the street
door so they can let him in. People who know he's mine, that is." Her
face warmed in a smile. "Good thing they do. It's not as if it's easy
for me to go down and let him in." She said this simply, and Brunetti
did not hear in it an unspoken prompting to strangers to ask questions,
nor did he hear an unconscious appeal for pity.
"When did you see her last?"
She had to think about this. The day before yesterday, and I didn't
really see her, just heard her on the stairs. I'm sure of that. I'd
read about the boy's death, and then, when she came in, I recognized
her steps outside. I went over to the door, and I was going to open
it, but then I didn't know what I could say to her, so I didn't. I
just sat here and listened to her go up the stairs. Then, about an
hour later, I heard her come down again."
"And since then?"
"Nothing." Before he could speak, she added, "But I sleep in the back
of the apartment, and I sleep very deeply because of the pills I take,
so she could have come in or gone out and I wouldn't have heard her."
"Has she called you?"
"No."
"Is it like her to be away for two days?"
Her answer was immediate, "No, not at all. In fact, she's almost
always here, but I haven't heard her on the steps and I haven't heard
her moving around in her apartment." She said this last with a gesture
towards the ceiling.
"Do you have any idea where she might have gone?"
"No. None. We didn't talk to one another like that." When he looked
puzzled, she tried to clarify things. "I mean, we weren't friends,
just lonely women who talked to one another once in a while."
There was no hidden message in that, either, so far as Brunetti could
tell: merely the truth, and the truth told clear. "And she lived
alone?"
"Yes, so far as I know."
"No one ever visited her?"
"Not that I know of, no."
"You never heard a child?"
"Do you mean her son?"
"No, her daughter."
"Daughter?" she asked, her surprise answering the question for him.
She shook her head.
"Never?"
Again she shook her head, as though the idea of a mother never
mentioning one of her children was something too shocking to bear
comment.
"Did she ever mention her husband?"
"Seldom."
"And how? That is, how did she speak about him? With rancour?
Anger?"
She thought for a moment and then answered, "No, she mentioned him in a
normal way."
"Affectionately?"
She gave him a quick glance, rich in unspoken curiosity, then answered,
"No, I couldn't say that. She simply mentioned him, quite
neutrally."
"Could you give me an example?" Brunetti asked, wanting to get a feel
of it.
"Once, we were talking about the hospital." She stopped here, then
sighed, and continued. "We were talking about the mistakes they make,
and she said that her husband's report had put an end to that, but only
for a short time."
He waited for her to clarify, but it seemed that she had said enough.
Brunetti could think of nothing else to ask her. He got to his feet.
"Thank you, Signora/ he said, leaning down to shake her hand.
She smiled in response and turned her wheelchair towards the door.
Brunetti got there first and was reaching for the handle when she
called out, "Wait." Thinking she had remembered something that might
be important, Brunetti turned, then looked down when he felt a sudden
pressure against his left calf. It was Gastone, serpentining his way
back and forth, suddenly friendly with this person who had the power to
open the door. Brunetti picked him up, amazed at the sheer mass of
&nbs
p; him. Smiling, he placed him in the woman's lap, said goodbye, and let
himself out of the apartment, though he did not pull the door closed
until he made sure that there was no sign of Gastone between the door
and the jamb.
As he had known he would do ever since Signora Delia Vedova told him
that there had been no sign of Signora Moro for two days, Brunetti went
up the stairs to her apartment. The door was a simple one: whoever
owned the apartment had no concern that his tenants should be safe from
burglars. Brunetti took out his wallet and slid out a thin plastic
card. Some years ago, Vianello had taken it from a burglar so
successful he had become careless. Vianello had used it on more than
one occasion, always in flagrant violation of the law, and upon his
promotion from Sergeant to Inspector, he had given it to Brunetti in
token of his realization that the promotion was due primarily to
Brunetti's insistence and support. At the time, Brunetti had
entertained the possibility that Vianello was merely freeing himself of
an occasion of sin, but the card had since then proven so useful that
Brunetti had come to appreciate it as the gift it was.
He slipped it between the door and the jamb, just at the height of the
lock, and the door swung open at a turn of the handle. Long habit made
him stop just inside the door and sniff the air, hunting for the scent
of death. He smelled dust and old cigarette smoke and the memory of
some sharp
cleaning agent, but there was no scent of rotting flesh. Relieved, he
closed the door behind him and walked into the sitting room. He found
it exactly as he had left it: the furniture in the same position, the
single book that had been lying face down on the arm of a sofa still
there, still at the same page, for all he knew.
The kitchen was in order: no dishes in the sink, and when he pried the
door open with the toe of his shoe, he found no perishable food in the
refrigerator. He took a pen from the inner pocket of his jacket and
opened all of the cabinets: the only thing he found was an open tin of
coffee.
In the bathroom, he opened the medicine cabinet with the back of a
knuckle and found nothing more than a bottle of aspirin, a used shower
cap, an unopened bottle of shampoo, and a package of emery boards. The
towels on the rack were dry.
The only room left was the bedroom, and Brunetti entered it uneasily:
he disliked this part of his job as much as anything about it. On the
nightstand beside the bed a thin rectangle of clear space stood
outlined in the dust: she had removed a photo from there. Two more had
been taken from the dresser. Drawers and closet, however, seemed full
as far as he could tell, and two suitcases lay under the bed.
Shameless now, he pulled back the covers on the side of the bed closest
to the door and lifted the pillow. Under it, neatly folded, lay a
man's white dress shirt. Brunetti pulled it out and let it fall open.
It would have fitted Brunetti, but the shoulders would have fallen from
Signora Moro's, and the sleeves would have come far down over her
hands. Just over the heart of the man who would wear the shirt he saw
the initials "FM' embroidered in thread so fine it could only have been
silk.
He folded the shirt and replaced it under the pillow, then pulled the
covers up and tucked them neatly in place. He went back through the
living room and let himself out of the
apartment. As he passed the door to the Delia Vedova apartment, he
wondered if she was sitting inside, holding her cat, listening for the
footsteps that carried life back and forth outside her door.
i8
It was not until after the kids had gone to bed that night, when he and
Paola sat alone in the living room, she reading Persuasion for the
hundred and twenty-seventh time, and he contemplating Anna Comnena's
admonition that, "Whenever one assumes the role of historian,
friendship and enmities have to be forgotten', that Brunetti returned
to his visit to Signora Moro's apartment, though he did so indirectly.
"Paola," he began. She peered at him over the top of her book, eyes
vague and inattentive. "What would you do if I asked you for a
separation?"
Her eyes had drifted back to the page before he spoke, but they shot
back to his face now, and Anne Elliot was left to her own romantic
problems. "If you what?"
"Asked for a separation."
Voice level, she inquired, "Before I go into the kitchen to get the
bread knife, could you tell me if this is a theoretical question?"
"Absolutely/ he said, embarrassed by how happy her threat of violence
had made him. "What would you do?"
She placed the book by her side, face down. "Why do you want to
know?"
Till tell you that as soon as you answer my question. What would you
do?"
Her look was discomfiting. "Well?" he prodded.
"If it were a real separation, I'd throw you out of the house and after
you I'd throw everything you own."
His smile was positively beatific. "Everything?"
"Yes. Everything. Even the things I like."
"Would you use one of my shirts to sleep in?"
"Are you out of your mind?"
"And if it were a fake separation?"
"Fake?"
"Done so that it would look as if we were separated when in reality we
weren't but just needed to look as if we were."
"I'd still throw you out, but I'd keep all the things I like."
"And the shirt? Would you sleep in it?"
She gave him a long look. "Do you want a serious answer or more
foolishness?"
"I think I want a real answer he confessed.
Then yes, I'd sleep in your shirt or I'd put it on my pillow so that I
could have at least the smell of you with me."
Brunetti believed in the solidity of his marriage with the same faith
he invested in the periodic table of the elements, indeed, rather more;
nevertheless, occasional reinforcement did no harm. He found himself
equally assured of the solidity of the Moros' marriage, though he had
no idea what that meant.
"Signora Moro," he began, 'is living apart from her husband." Paola
nodded, acknowledging that he had already told her this. "But one of
his dress shirts is under the pillow of the bed in which she is
sleeping alone."
Paola looked off to the left, to where an occasional light could still
be seen burning in the top floor window of the apartment opposite.
After a long time, she said, "Ah."
*55
"Yes/ he agreed," "Ah," indeed
"Why do they have to look as if they're separated?"
"So whoever shot her won't come back and do a better job of it, I'd
guess."
"Yes, that makes sense." She thought about this, then asked, "And who
could they be?"
"If I knew that, I'd probably understand everything."
Automatically, not really thinking about what she said but asserting
truth by habit, she said, "We never know everything."
"Then at least I'd know more than I know now. And I'd probably know
who killed the boy
"You won't let that go, will you?" she asked entirely without
reproof.
"No/
"Probably wise not to she agreed.
"So you think he was murdered, too?"
"I always did
"Why?"
"Because I trust your feelings and because your feeling about it was so
strong
"And if I'm wrong?"
Then we're wrong together she said. She picked up her book, slipped a
bookmark between the pages, and closed it. Setting it down, she said,
"I can't read any more
The neither he said, setting Anna Comnena on the table in front of
him.
She looked across at him and asked, "Is it all right if I don't wear
one of your shirts?"
He laughed out loud and they went to bed.
The first thing he did the next morning was to go see Signorina
Elettra, whom he found in her office. Her desk was covered with at
least six bouquets of flowers, each wrapped separately in a cone of