by Donna Leon
Brunetti’s voice was non-committal when he said, ‘I imagine it’s not such a bad place,’ in a tone so cool it reminded the sergeant that Brunetti’s mother was in a similar place.
‘I didn’t mean that, sir,’ Vianello hastened to explain. ‘I meant any place like that.’ Hearing how little better that was, he continued, ‘I mean, and not go and visit her more than that, just leave her there by herself.’
‘There’s usually a large staff,’ was Brunetti’s reply as he started off again and turned left at Campo San Vio.
‘But they’re not family,’ Vianello insisted in the full belief that familial affection had a far greater therapeutic value than did any amount of service to be bought from the ‘caring’ professions. For all Brunetti knew, the sergeant could be right, but it was not a subject he wanted to pursue, not now, and not in the immediate future.
‘Who’s next?’ Vianello asked, agreeing by that question to change the subject and get them both away, at least temporarily, from subjects that led, if anywhere, to pain.
‘It’s up here, I think,’ Brunetti said, turning into a narrow calle that cut back from the canal they were walking along.
Had the heir of Conte Egidio Crivoni been standing at the door waiting for them, the voice that responded to their ring could have come no more swiftly. Just as quickly the massive door snapped open when Brunetti explained that he had come seeking information about the estate of Conte Crivoni. Up two flights of stairs and then two more they went; Brunetti was struck by the fact that there was only one door on each landing, this a suggestion that each apartment comprised an entire floor, and that in its turn a suggestion of the wealth of the tenants.
Just as Brunetti set his foot on the top landing, a black-suited major domo opened the single door in front of them. That is, from his sombre nod and the distant solemnity of his bearing, Brunetti assumed him to be a servant, a belief that was confirmed when he offered to take Brunetti’s overcoat and said that ‘La Contessa’ would see them in her study. The man disappeared behind a door for a moment but immediately reappeared, this time without Brunetti’s coat.
Brunetti had time to take in no more than soft brown eyes and a small gold cross on the left lapel of his jacket before the man turned and led them down the hall. Paintings, all portraits from different centuries and in different styles, lined the walls of both sides of the corridor. Though he knew it was the way of portraits, Brunetti was struck by how unhappy most of these people looked, unhappy and something more; restless, perhaps, as though they believed their time would be better spent conquering the savage or converting the heathen, not posing for some vain, earthly memorial. The women seemed convinced they could do it by the mere example of blameless lives; the men appeared to place greater faith in the power of the sword.
The man stopped in front of a door, knocked once, then opened it without waiting for a reply. He held it open and waited for Brunetti and Vianello to enter, then pulled the door silently closed behind them.
A verse from Dante leaped to Brunetti’s mind:
Oscura e profonda era e nebulosa
Tanto che, per ficcar lo viso a fondo
Io non vi discernea alcuna cosa.
So too was this room dark, as though by entering this place they, like Dante, had left behind the light of the world, the sun, and joy. Tall windows lined one wall of the room, all hidden behind velvet drapes of a particularly sober brown, something between sepia and dried blood. What light filtered in illuminated the leather backs of hundreds of very serious-looking volumes that lined the remaining walls from floor to ceiling. The floor was parquet, not thin strips of laminated wood laid down in sheets but the real thing, each cube carefully cut and positioned into place.
In one corner of the room, sitting behind a massive desk covered with books and papers, Brunetti saw the top half of a large woman dressed in black. The severity of her dress and expression rendered the rest of the room suddenly cheerful.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, Vianello’s uniform, apparently, enough to obviate the need to ask who they were.
From where he stood, Brunetti could get no clear idea of the woman’s age, though her voice – deep, resonant, and imperious – suggested maturity, if not advanced age itself. He took a few steps across the room until he was only a few metres from her desk. ‘Contessa?’ he began.
‘I asked you what you wanted,’ was her only response.
Brunetti smiled. ‘I’ll try to take as little of your time as possible, Contessa. I know how very busy you are. My mother-in-law often speaks of your dedication to good works and of the stamina with which you so generously aid Holy Mother Church.’ He tried to make his pronunciation of that last sound reverent, no easy feat.
‘Who is your mother-in-law?’ she demanded, speaking as if she expected it to be her seamstress.
Brunetti took careful aim and hit her right between her close-set eyes: ‘Contessa Falier.’
‘Donatella Falier?’ she asked, making a bad business of her attempt to hide her astonishment.
Brunetti pretended not to have noticed it. ‘Yes. It was just last week, I think, that she was talking about your latest project.’
‘You mean the campaign to ban the sale of contraceptives in pharmacies?’ she asked, supplying Brunetti with the information he needed.
‘Yes,’ he said, nodded as if in full approval, and smiled.
She rose from her chair and walked around the desk, her hand extended to him now that his humanity had been proven by his being related, if only by marriage, to one of the best-born women in the city. Standing, she revealed the full extent of the body that had been hidden by the desk. Taller than Brunetti, she outweighed him by twenty kilos. Her bulk, however, was not the heavy, compact flesh of the healthy fat person but the loose, jiggling suet of the perpetually immobile. Her chins rode one another down the front of her dress, itself little more than an immense tube of black wool that hung suspended from the immense buttress of her bosom. Brunetti did not sense that there had been much joy, nor even much pleasure, in the creation of all that flesh.
‘You’re Paola’s husband, then?’ she asked as she came up to him. As she drew closer, she pushed ahead of her the acrid scent of unwashed flesh.
‘Yes, Contessa. Guido Brunetti,’ he said, taking her offered hand. Holding it as he would a piece of the True Cross, he bowed over her hand and raised it to within a centimetre of his lips. Straightening himself, he said, ‘It’s an honour to meet you,’ managing to sound as though he meant it.
He turned to Vianello. ‘And this is Sergeant Vianello, my assistant.’ Vianello gave a smart bow, face as solemn as Brunetti’s, managing to look as though he had been struck to silence by the honour of the presentation, and he but a lowly policeman. The Contessa barely glanced at him.
‘Please sit down, Dottor Brunetti,’ she said, waving one fat hand toward a straight-backed chair that stood in front of her desk. Brunetti moved toward the chair then turned and waved Vianello to another one that stood nearer the door, where he would probably be safer from the refulgent glow of her nobility.
The Countess returned to her seat behind the desk and lowered herself slowly into her chair. She shifted some papers to her right and looked at Brunetti. ‘Did you tell Stefano there was some problem with my husband’s estate?’
‘No, Contessa, nothing as serious as that,’ Brunetti said with what he hoped was an easy smile. She nodded, waiting for his explanation.
Brunetti smiled again and began to explain, inventing as he went. ‘As you know, Contessa, there is an increasing tendency toward criminality in this country.’ She nodded. ‘It seems that nothing is any longer sacred, no one safe from those who will go to any lengths to extort and trick money from those who rightfully possess it.’ The Contessa nodded in sad agreement.
‘The latest form this sort of chicanery has taken is seen in those who prey upon the trust of older people, who try, and too often succeed, in deceiving them and swindling them.’
The Countess held up a thick-fingered hand. ‘Are you warning me that this is going to happen to me?’
‘No, Countess. You can rest assured of that. But what we want to be sure about is that your late husband’ – and here Brunetti permitted himself two slow shakes of his head, lamenting the fact that the virtuous are too soon taken from us – ‘that your late husband was not a victim of this sort of heartless duplicity.’
‘Are you telling me that you think Egidio was robbed? Deceived? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’ She leaned forward and her bosom came to rest on the top of the desk.
‘Then let me speak plainly, Contessa. We want to be sure that no one managed to persuade the Count, before his death, to make a bequest to them, that no one exerted undue influence on him in order to obtain part of his estate and to prevent its going to his rightful heirs.’
The Contessa considered this but said nothing.
‘Is it possible that something like this could have happened, Contessa?’
‘What has caused you to have these suspicions?’ she asked.
‘Your husband’s name came up almost accidentally, Contessa, as we were pursuing another investigation.’
‘About people who are cheated out of their estates?’ she asked.
‘No, Contessa, of something else. But before acting officially, I wanted to come to you personally – because of the high regard in which you are held – and, if I could, assure myself that there was nothing to investigate.’
‘And what do you need from me?’
‘Your assurances that there was nothing untoward about your late husband’s will.’
‘Untoward?’ she repeated.
‘A bequest to someone not a part of the family?’ Brunetti suggested.
She shook her head.
‘Someone who was not a close friend?’
Again, a shake so definite as to set her jowls swinging.
‘An institution to which he extended charity?’ Brunetti saw her eyes light up here.
‘What do you mean by an institution?’
‘Some of these swindlers deceive people into making contributions to what they present as worthy charities. We’ve had cases of people being persuaded to give money to children’s hospitals in Rumania or to what they were told was one of Mother Teresa’s hospices.’ Brunetti pumped his voice full of indignation as he added, ‘Terrible. Shocking.’
The Countess met his eye and expressed the same judgement with a nod. ‘There was nothing like that. My husband left his estate to his family, as a man should. There were no strange bequests. No one got anything who shouldn’t have.’
Because he was in the Countess’s line of vision, Vianello took the liberty of nodding in strong affirmation of the propriety of this.
Brunetti got to his feet. ‘You’ve relieved me greatly, Contessa. I was afraid that a man as generous as the Count was known to be might have become a victim of these people. But after speaking to you, I’m glad to learn that we can cancel his name from our investigation.’ He injected greater warmth into his voice and continued, ‘Speaking as a public official, I’m always glad when that happens, but I speak as a private citizen when I say that I am personally very pleased with this.’ He turned back toward Vianello and waved him to his feet.
When he turned around, the Contessa had come around her desk again and was heaving her mountainous girth toward him.
‘Can you tell me any more about this, Dottore?’
‘No, Contessa, so long as I know your husband had nothing to do with these people, I can tell my colleague—’
‘Your colleague?’ she interrupted.
‘Yes, one of the other commissari is handling the investigation into this ring of swindlers. I’ll send him a memo that your husband had nothing to do with them, thank God, and then I’ll get back to my own cases.’
‘If this isn’t your case, why did you come here?’ she asked bluntly.
Brunetti smiled before he answered. ‘I hoped that it would be less troubling for you if the questions were put to you by a person who, that is to say, by a person who is sensitive to your position in the community. I didn’t want you to be burdened with worry, however momentary I knew it would be.’
Rather than thanking Brunetti for this courtesy, the Contessa nodded in acceptance of what was no more than her due.
Brunetti extended his hand and, when she put hers out to meet his, he bent over it again, resisting the impulse to click his heels.
He backed toward the door, where Vianello awaited him. There, both men gave small bows and let themselves back into the hall. Stefano, if that was the name of the man with the cross on his lapel, was waiting for them there, not leaning against the wall but standing in the middle of the corridor, Brunetti’s overcoat in his arms. When he saw them emerge, he opened Brunetti’s coat and held it while he put it on. Without speaking, he led them to the end of the corridor and held the door for them while they left the apartment.
Chapter Five
Neither spoke as they went down the steps and out into the street, where the sudden spring night had fallen upon the city.
‘Well?’ Brunetti asked as he took the list from his pocket again. He checked the next address and set off toward it; Vianello fell into step beside him.
‘Is that what’s known as an important personage in the city?’ was Vianello’s attempt at an answer.
‘I think so.’
‘Poor Venice, then.’ So much for the magic effect of the patent of nobility upon Vianello. ‘She the one who paid Lucia’s ransom?’ the sergeant asked, referring to the famous case of kidnapping, more than a decade ago, when the bones of Santa Lucia were taken from her church and held for ransom. A never-disclosed sum was paid to the thieves, and the police were directed to some bones, presumably those of the blessed Lucia, lying in a field on the mainland. These bones were restored to the church with great solemnity and the case closed.
Brunetti nodded. ‘I heard a rumour that she did, but you never know, do you?’
‘Probably pig bones, anyway,’ Vianello offered, his tone suggesting that he hoped this had been the case.
Since Vianello seemed unwilling to answer an indirect question, Brunetti made it a direct one. ‘What’d you think of the Countess?’
‘She became interested when you suggested that something might have been given to an institution. Didn’t seem worried about people or relatives.’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti agreed, ‘those hospitals in Rumania.’
Vianello turned to Brunetti and gave him a long look. ‘Where’d all these people who are tricked into giving money to Mother Teresa come from?’
Brunetti smiled and shrugged away the question. ‘I had to tell her something. That sounded as good as anything.’
‘Doesn’t much matter, does it?’ Vianello asked.
‘What doesn’t much matter?’
‘Whether Mother Teresa gets the money or it goes to crooks.’
Surprised, Brunetti asked, ‘What do you mean?’
‘No one ever finds out where that money goes, do they? She’s won all those prizes, and someone’s always collecting money for her, but there never seems to be anything to show for it, does there?’
This was a depth of cynicism even Brunetti had never managed to reach, and so he said, ‘Well, at least they have a decent death, those people she takes in.’
Vianello’s answer was immediate. ‘They’d probably rather have a decent meal, if you ask me.’ Then, looking pointedly down at his watch and making no attempt to disguise his mounting scepticism at how Brunetti was using their time, he added, ‘Or a drink.’
Brunetti took the hint. Neither of the two people they’d spoken to, however unpleasant they’d been, had the look or feel of guilt about them. ‘One more,’ he said, glad it came out sounding like a suggestion and not a request.
Vianello’s nod was tired, his shrug a comment on how boring and repetitive was much of the work they did. ‘And then un’ ombra,’ he said, nei
ther suggestion nor request.
Brunetti nodded, glanced down again at the address, and turned into the calle on their right. They found themselves in a courtyard and paused, searching for some indication of a house number on the first door they came to.
‘What number are we looking for, sir?’
‘Three hundred and twelve,’ Brunetti answered, reading from the sheet of paper.
‘Must be that one over there,’ Vianello said, placing his hand on Brunetti’s arm and pointing across the courtyard.
As they crossed it, they noticed that narcissi and daffodils were popping up from the dark earth in the centre, the smaller flowers now closed against the approaching chill of the night.
On the other side, they found the number they sought, and Brunetti rang the bell.
After a moment, a voice came through the speakerphone, asking who it was.
‘I’ve come about Signor Lerini,’ Brunetti answered.
‘Signor Lerini is no longer of this world,’ the voice answered.
‘I know that, Signora. I’ve come to ask questions about his estate.’
‘His estate is in heaven,’ the voice answered. Brunetti and Vianello exchanged a glance.
‘I’ve come to discuss the one he left behind him here,’ Brunetti said, making no attempt to disguise his impatience.
‘Who are you?’ the voice demanded.
‘Police,’ he answered just as quickly.
The speakerphone clicked as the woman put it down sharply. Nothing happened for what seemed a long time, and then the door snapped open.
Again, they climbed stairs. Like the corridor in Contessa Crivoni’s home, these stairs too were lined with portraits, but they were all of the same person: Jesus, as he made his way through the increasingly bloody Stations of the Cross to his death on Calvary and the third-floor landing. Brunetti paused long enough to examine one of them, and saw that, instead of the cheap reproductions from a religious magazine that he had expected to find, these were carefully detailed drawings in coloured pencil, pencils which, though lingering lovingly upon the wounds, thorns, and nails, still managed to convey a saccharine sweetness to the face of the suffering Christ.