by Donna Leon
‘It was almost as my wife told you, except that it was her sweater that was dropped. A red cotton sweater. I said I’d go out and look for it. It wasn’t as far as Santa Caterina, but just on the other side of the first bridge. When I went out, I saw that the door to Fontana’s mailbox was open: that was the signal we used. If I saw it when my wife and I came home together, I’d make some excuse about going out for a walk, and I’d come downstairs and ring his doorbell from out in the calle, so he’d have an excuse to go out. And when he came down, we would retreat to our bower of love.’
‘Is that what happened?’
‘Yes. I put the sweater on the railing of the staircase, where it would be safe. And then Araldo came down. It never took long. Araldo didn’t want to waste time on talk or anything like that. When we were finished, he always went out first: we were careful about that.’
‘But not always?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Signor Marsano, you mean?’
‘Yes.’
Fulgoni shook his head at the memory. ‘We were in the courtyard one time when he opened the door. It’s not that we were doing anything, but it must have been obvious to him.’ Fulgoni shrugged. ‘It was another reason we were careful. After that, I mean.’
‘And that night?’
‘Araldo left first and was crossing the courtyard, when I heard her voice. The light was out in here, so I thought if I just stayed quiet maybe everything would be all right. And then I’d stop. I always wanted to stop,’ he said, voice wistful. ‘But I knew I wouldn’t.’
Fulgoni wiped his face again, and Brunetti was about to suggest they go out into the courtyard when the other man continued. ‘So I stayed in here, trapped, and listened to them argue. I’d never heard her talk like that before, never heard her lose control.’ Fulgoni turned and started to nudge the birdcages into line. As they fell or slipped into place, dust rose from them and he started coughing again.
When the coughing stopped, he went on. ‘Then I heard a noise. Not a voice, but a noise, and then more noises and then a voice, but very short, and then more noises. And then I didn’t hear anything more.’
Fulgoni pointed to the sofa. ‘I was there, lying there with my pants down around my ankles, so it took me time to go and see what had happened.’ Then, in a voice he forced to be stronger, he said, ‘No, that’s not the reason. I was afraid of what I would find.
‘I heard footsteps going up the staircase, but I still waited. When I finally got to the door . . . there,’ he said, pointing to the door that still closed them off from the courtyard, ‘the light was on and I saw him on the ground. But the light’s on a timer and it went out. So I had to walk back to the switch and turn it on again, walking through the dark, knowing he was there, on the ground.’ He stopped for what seemed a long time.
‘When I came back, I saw what she had done. She must have seen the sweater on the railing when she came down, so she knew I was here. And then she saw him coming out, and it was . . .’
‘And the sweater?’
‘It was lying beside him. She must have had it in her hands when she . . .’ For a moment, Fulgoni looked as though he would be sick, but that passed and he went on. ‘I took out my handkerchief. I’d realized how things would look or could look. I didn’t want anything to happen to her.’ Then, like a man discovering honesty, or courage, he added, ‘or to me.’
He took two deep breaths after saying that, then said, ‘So I wrapped my hand in my handkerchief and brought the sweater back in here and put it in the cage. I moved it around to flatten it out a little.’
‘What did you do then, Signore?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I locked up this room and went back upstairs and went to bed.’
30
Paola, who did not have the legitimacy conferred by the possession of a driver’s licence but who did have the security conferred by a husband who was a commissario of police, drove down to the railway station in Malles to pick Brunetti up, risking not only her own life to do so, but that of their children, as well. They went directly to La Posta in Glorenza, where the children gave evidence of having spent most of the day walking in the mountains by devouring a platter of Speck the size of an inner tube, tagliatelle with fresh finferli, and apricot strudel with vanilla cream.
Both Raffi and Chiara were comatose by the time they drove up to the farmhouse and had to be prodded out of the car and into the house, where they disappeared into their rooms, though Chiara did drape her arms around him and mumble something about being happy to see her father.
Later, stretched in front of the open fire, Brunetti sipped at a whisper of Marillen schnapps while Paola disappeared to get them sweaters. When she came back, she put it over his shoulders, but he insisted on standing to pull it on.
‘Tell me,’ she said, sitting down beside him.
He did. His glass remained untouched as he described the events of that morning, the funeral of Signora Montini, attended by himself, Vianello and Doctor Rizzardi, as well as two or three people who had worked with her in the lab.
Paola asked no questions, hoping the momentum of his story would carry him along.
‘They held it at San Polo, though she went to church at the Frari. The pastor there didn’t want to say Mass over her.’ He turned and leaned against the arm of the sofa, the better to see her. ‘It was miserable. We sent flowers, but the rest of the church was bare. The priest looked at his watch twice during the Mass, and he spoke a bit faster after he did.’ And Brunetti, sitting in the church, hot and exhausted from a sleepless night, could not keep his thoughts from returning to the scene, less than two weeks before, when he stood in the campo not far from the church, waiting for Vianello’s aunt to emerge from this woman’s house.
He saw the plain coffin, the three wreaths, smelled the incense. ‘But at least it was short,’ he told Paola. ‘Then they took her to San Michele.’
‘And you came up here?’ she asked.
Brunetti hesitated for some time and then said, ‘I did a favour for Vianello first.’
‘What?’
‘I talked to his aunt.’
Paola could not hide her surprise. ‘But I thought she was away for two weeks with her son.’
Brunetti got up and tossed a log on to the fire, poked it into place with the end of another one, and went back to the sofa. ‘Why do we love fires so much?’ he asked.
‘Atavistic. We can’t help it. Caves. Mammoths. Tell me about Vianello’s aunt,’ Paola said, drink forgotten in her hand.
‘His cousin called him the night before and told him she’d gone back to Venice, so we went by to see her after the funeral.’
‘As if the funeral weren’t enough, eh?’ she asked, patting his knee.
Brunetti said, ‘It was better, really. Lorenzo’s talked about me, so she had an idea of who I am. And I think she trusted me. No matter how angry she was with her son or with him, she still listened to me.’
‘What did you tell her?’
‘Everything we learned about Gorini,’ Brunetti said. ‘I took along the police reports.’
‘Thus violating the law on privacy?’ she inquired.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Good. What did she say?’
‘She read them all. She asked me about some of them; what the different branches of the police did and whether the documents were believable.’
‘You told her?’
‘Yes.’
‘Where was Vianello during all of this?’
‘Sitting on a chair, pretending to be invisible.’
‘And? Did she believe you?’
‘In the end, she really had no choice,’ Brunetti said. The vigorous woman he had so recently followed down Via Garibaldi had sat between him and Vianello, face tear-stained, silent and tense; one wrinkled hand clutching at the papers, as if she could somehow squeeze the truth from them.
‘What happened?’
‘It took her some time, and then she told us,’ Brunetti said, not describing the way the old woman had let the
papers fall to the ground as she searched for a handkerchief to wipe her face and eyes, ‘that she’d been buying special tisane for her husband after his lab results said he had the beginnings of diabetes.’ He uncorked the bottle and added some schnapps to his glass, then slapped the cork back in with his palm.
‘Then she told Vianello she’d been a fool,’ he said, his voice lightening with the word, ‘and wanted to call her son and apologize.’
‘What did Vianello do?’
‘He told her not to be a fool herself and that he’d take her back to her family to finish her vacation.’
‘And you?’ she asked.
‘I got on the train to come up here,’ he said, not mentioning his irritation with what he suspected were histrionics on the part of Vianello’s aunt. During his career, Brunetti had seen and heard so many timely tears that it was difficult for him to be easily convinced of their sincerity.
‘What about Gorini?’ Paola asked.
He shrugged. ‘Who knows? He’s gone. We went to Montini’s home after she was dead, but there was no sign of him. Nothing.’ He swirled the liqueur in his glass but drank none.
‘What will happen?’ Paola asked.
‘To him? Nothing, probably. He’ll move somewhere else and find some other gullible woman, and then he’ll find more gullible people.’
‘Like Vianello’s aunt?’
‘I suppose so,’ he said. ‘Or people like her.’
Abandoning Vianello’s aunt and people like her to their beliefs, Paola asked, ‘And the Fulgonis?’
Brunetti made a puffing noise and took a small sip of the schnapps. ‘She says she came down and found Fontana on the ground and pulled off her sweater to try to stop the bleeding. Then her husband came out of the storeroom, and she understood what had been going on and what had happened. She says she ran back upstairs but couldn’t bring herself to call the police.’
‘And her story about hearing the church bells? Why would she tell that unless she wanted it to sound as if he was murdered later that night?’
‘She said it was her husband’s idea to tell me, so that it would seem as though Fontana had been murdered after they went upstairs. If there was no body when they came in, and it was already after midnight, then the obvious conclusion would be that Fontana was killed after they went upstairs.’
‘Then why did she tell you about the sweater in the first place?’
Brunetti had thought about that during the long train ride from Venice. ‘Who knows? Maybe she thought someone had seen her husband outside, and she thought it would be best to tell the police he had gone out. That way, we might believe the rest.’
‘Was she trying to protect him, do you think?’ she asked.
‘Maybe. At the beginning,’ Brunetti said.
‘Then why lie and say it was his sweater?’
Brunetti shrugged. ‘Surprise? Or she instinctively wanted to distance herself from the crime, or she wanted suspicion to fall on him. Or maybe she’s just a bad liar.’
‘How will it end?’ she asked.
Brunetti leaned forward and set his empty glass on the table, then sat back and sank even deeper into the sofa. ‘Until one of them confesses, it will all lead to nothing.’
‘And if neither one does?’
‘Then the case will churn on for ever, and the lawyers will pick their bones clean,’ Brunetti explained.
‘Isn’t there enough to convict either one of them?’ Paola asked, confusion and irritation fighting for dominance in her voice.
Brunetti, if only to keep himself from sinking into sleep, pushed himself up and went over to the fire again, but only to feel its warmth. How strange, yet how delicious, the feel of heat on his legs. He looked out of the window that gave to the north and pointed towards a slant of white that glistened in the light of the moon. He could form no clear idea of the distance: it was far away, yet it seemed very close. ‘Is that the Ortler?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
He moved away from the heat but returned to her question. ‘There’s enough evidence to convict either one of them, but the real problem is that there’s enough evidence to convict both of them.’ He thought with disgust of the media spectacle that was sure to ensue: blood and death and illicit sex among the birdcages. It had everything, and more, that an avid public could devour. ‘But that’s not likely.’
‘Do you believe him?’ Paola asked.
After some time, Brunetti said, ‘I’d like to.’ Then, after a longer pause, he added, ‘I’m afraid of that.’
Paola waited until she was sure he was finished, and said, ‘Let’s go to bed.’
Later, Brunetti lay awake, looking off at the Ortler, visible from their bed: gleaming bright, beaming in the absence of men.
‘My talisman,’ Brunetti said, took his wife in his arms, and slept.