by Donna Leon
From behind, in a small, frightened voice, Maria said, ‘Please, Sister, may he stay here with me until you come back?’
The nun glanced at her, at Brunetti, but she said nothing. She left the room and closed the door.
‘It was a black car,’ Maria said with no preamble. ‘I don’t know the difference between them, but it was very big, and it came right at me. It wasn’t an accident.’
Stupid with surprise, Brunetti asked, ‘You remember?’
He started to approach the bed, but she held a warning hand toward him. ‘Stay over there. I don’t want her to know we talked.’
‘Why?’
This time it was Maria’s lips that tightened in irritation. ‘She’s one of them. If they know I remember, they’ll kill me.’
He looked across the room and almost staggered at the contagious energy that radiated out from her. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.
‘Survive,’ she spat, and then the door opened and the nun was back, the uncovered bedpan carried in front of her. She swept past Brunetti without speaking and went toward the bed.
He said nothing, didn’t risk turning back to take a last look at Maria, but left them there, together in the room.
As Brunetti walked down the corridor toward the psychiatric ward, he suddenly felt the pavement grow uncertain under his feet. Part of him knew it was nothing more than exhaustion, but that didn’t stop him from searching the faces of the people who passed him to see if he could catch panic or fear in their eyes and thus comfort himself with the knowledge that it really was an earthquake. Suddenly frightened by the realization that he was seeking comfort in that possibility, he went into the bar on the ground floor and ordered a panino but left it untouched when it arrived. Not liking the taste but knowing it was what he needed, he drank a glass of apricot nectar, then asked for a glass of water and took two more painkillers. Looking around at the other people in the bar, with their bandages, splints, and casts, he felt at home for the first time that day.
When he set off again toward the psychiatric ward, he felt better, though he did not feel good. He crossed the open courtyard, cut past the radiology department, and pushed open the double glass doors of the psychiatric ward. And as he did so, from the other end of the corridor he saw a white-skirted figure coming toward him and, again, Brunetti wondered if he had taken leave of his senses or if he was trapped in some sort of psychological earthquake. But no, it was nothing more, and nothing less, than Padre Pio advancing toward him, his tall form enveloped in a dark woollen cape that was fastened at the neck, Brunetti saw with almost hallucinatory clarity, by a clasp made of an eighteenth-century Austrian Maria Teresa Thaler.
It was difficult to judge which of them was the more surprised, but it was the priest who recovered sooner and who said, ‘Good morning, Commissario. Would it be rash of me to assume we’re here to see the same person?’
It took Brunetti a moment to speak, and when he did he said no more than her name, ‘Signorina Lerini?’
‘Yes.’
‘You can’t see her,’ Brunetti said, no longer bothering to keep the antagonism from his voice.
Padre Pio’s face blossomed into the same sweet smile with which he had greeted Brunetti during their first meeting at the chapter house of the Order of the Sacred Cross. ‘But surely, Commissario, you have no right to keep a sick person, someone in need of spiritual consolation, from seeing her confessor.’
Her confessor. Of course. Brunetti should have thought of that. But before he could say anything, the priest continued, ‘In any case, it’s too late for you to be giving orders, Commissario. I’ve already spoken to her and heard her confession.’
‘And given her spiritual consolation?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Thou hast said it,’ Padre Pio answered with a smile that had never known sweetness.
A sickening taste rose in Brunetti’s throat, but it had nothing to do with the apricot nectar he had just drunk. Like a sudden spasm, rage and disgust erupted in him, he as helpless to control them as the pills were to stop the pain in his arm. Hurling aside the experience of a generation, Brunetti reached out and grabbed a handful of the priest’s cloak, glad to feel the fine cloth wrinkle under the pressure of his fingers. He pulled, not gently, and the priest, suddenly caught off balance, fell forward until only a handsbreadth separated them. ‘We know about you,’ Brunetti spat.
The priest threw up an angry hand that easily broke Brunetti’s grip. He backed away, turned, and started toward the door. But then just as suddenly he stopped and came back toward Brunetti, his head shifting from side to side, snakelike. ‘And we know about you,’ he whispered, and was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Out in Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo, Brunetti stood in front of the entrance to the hospital for a few minutes, incapable of deciding whether to force himself to go to the Questura or to return home and get some sleep. He looked at the scaffolding that covered the front of the basilica and saw that the shadows had crawled half-way up the façade. He looked at his watch and could barely believe that it was already the middle of the afternoon. He didn’t know where he had lost those hours: maybe he had fallen asleep in the bar, head resting against the wall at the back of his chair. At any rate, they were gone, those hours, flown away in the same way that years of Maria Testa’s life had been stolen from her.
Deciding that it would be easier to go to the Questura, if only because it was closer, he crossed the campo and set out in that direction. Burdened by thirst and returning pain, he stopped in a bar on the way and had a glass of mineral water and took another of the pills. When he got to the Questura, he found the lobby curiously silent, and it wasn’t until he realized it was Wednesday, the day the Ufficio Stranieri was closed to the public, that he understood the reason for this unwonted peace.
Reluctant to attempt the four flights of stairs to his office, he decided to have done with it by speaking to Patta immediately and started toward the staircase that led to his office. As he made his way up the first flight, he was struck by how easy the upward motion really was and wondered, but couldn’t remember, why he had been reluctant to go to his own office. He found himself thinking how pleasant it would be if he could simply fly up the steps, how much time it would save him every day, but then he found himself in Signorina Elettra’s office, and he forgot about flying.
She glanced up from her computer when he came in, and when she saw his arm and the condition he was in, she got to her feet and came around her desk toward him. ‘Commissario, what’s the matter? What’s happened?’ The sincerity of her alarm was as visible as it was audible, so much so that Brunetti found himself strangely moved by it. How lucky women were that they could permit themselves to display emotion openly, he thought, and how sweet were those signs of their affection or concern.
‘Thank you, Signorina,’ he said, resisting the desire to place his hand on her shoulder as he thanked her for what she had no idea she was displaying. ‘Is the Vice-Questore in?’
‘Yes, he is. Are you sure you want to see him?’
‘Oh, yes. Now’s the perfect time.’
‘Can I get you a coffee, Dottore?’ she asked, helping him with his raincoat.
Brunetti shook his head. ‘No, that’s all right, Signorina. Thank you for asking, but I’ll just have a word with the Vice-Questore.’
Habit and habit alone caused Brunetti to knock on Patta’s door. When he went in, Patta greeted him with the same sort of surprise Signorina Elettra had shown at seeing him, but where Signorina Elettra’s surprise had been rich with concern, Patta’s spoke only of disapproval.
‘What’s wrong with you, Brunetti?’
‘Someone tried to kill me,’ he answered, tossing the line away.
‘They didn’t try very hard, if that’s all they managed.’
‘Do you mind if I sit down, sir?’ Brunetti asked.
Seeing this as little more than a ploy on Brunetti’s part to call attention to his injury, Patta nodded with ba
d grace and pointed to a chair. ‘What’s been going on?’ Patta demanded.
‘Last night in the hospital—’ Brunetti began, but Patta cut him off.
‘I know all about what happened in the hospital. That woman went to kill the nun because she had the crazy idea she had killed her father,’ Patta said, paused for a long moment, and then added, ‘It’s a good thing you were there to stop her.’ Had he tried, Patta could not possibly have managed to sound more grudging.
Brunetti listened, surprised only by the speed with which Patta had been convinced. He knew that some such story would have to be given to explain Signorina Lerini’s behaviour, but he hadn’t thought it would be as barefaced as this.
‘Could there be another explanation, sir?’
‘Such as?’ Patta asked with his wonted suspicion.
‘That she knew something Signorina Lerini wanted kept secret?’
‘What sort of a secret could a woman like that possibly have?’
‘A woman like what, if I might ask?’
‘A zealot,’ Patta answered immediately. ‘One of those women who think about nothing except religion and the Church.’ Patta’s tone gave no indication of whether he approved of this sort of behaviour in women or not. ‘Well?’ he prompted when Brunetti said nothing.
‘Her father had no history of heart trouble,’ Brunetti said.
Patta waited for Brunetti to say something more, and when he didn’t, Patta demanded, ‘What is that supposed to mean?’ Still Brunetti didn’t answer. ‘Does that mean you think this woman killed her father?’ He pushed himself back from his desk in an attempt to give visible form to his disbelief. ‘Are you out of your mind, Brunetti? Women who go to daily mass don’t kill their fathers.’
‘How do you know she goes to daily mass?’ Brunetti asked, surprised at his own ability to keep calm and rise above this discussion, as though he had been carried up to the same place where the answers to all those secrets were being kept hidden.
‘Because I’ve had calls from both her doctor and her spiritual advisor.’
‘What have they told you?’
‘The doctor told me that it seems to be a breakdown, brought on by delayed grief at her father’s death.’
‘And her “spiritual advisor”, as you call him?’
‘What would you call him, Brunetti, something else? Or is he part of this sinister scenario you seem to be inventing?’
‘What did he say?’ Brunetti repeated.
‘He said that he agreed with the doctor’s analysis. And then he told me that he wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it was this delusion about the nun that had led to the attack in the hospital.’
‘And I suppose, when you asked why he said this, he said he wasn’t at liberty to tell you how he came by that information?’ Brunetti asked, feeling himself move even farther and farther away from the conversation and the two men who were having it.
‘How do you know that?’ Patta asked.
‘Ah, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said, getting to his feet and waving an admonishing finger at Patta. ‘You wouldn’t expect me to break the vow of the confessional, would you?’ He didn’t wait to hear if Patta had anything to say to that but drifted over to the door and let himself out of the office.
Signorina Elettra was moving very quickly away from the door when he opened it, and he waved the same admonishing finger at her. But then he smiled and asked, ‘Would you help me with my coat, Signorina?’
‘Of course, Dottore,’ she said, picking up the coat from the chair where it lay and holding it out for him.
When it was draped over his shoulders, he thanked her and started for the steps. There in the doorway stood Vianello, who had appeared there with angelic suddenness.
‘Montisi’s got the launch, sir,’ he said.
Later, Brunetti remembered starting down the steps beside Vianello, who took his good arm. And he remembered asking Vianello if he, too, ever thought about how easy it would be if they could fly up and down the steps in order to get to their offices, but then his memory of the day fled and went to take its rest with all the lost hours of Suor’ Immacolata’s life.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The infection in Brunetti’s arm was later attributed to the threads of Harris tweed that had been carried into his wound and left there by careless medical procedure. Of course, it was not the Civil Hospital which said this, for the surgeon there insisted that the infection was caused by a common strain of staph and to be expected in the wake of a wound that serious. But his friend Giovanni Grimani later told him that heads had rolled all over the emergency room as a result, and a surgical orderly had been transferred to the kitchens. Grimani did not say, at least not openly, that the surgeon had been at fault because he had hurried through the operation, though his tone led Brunetti and Paola to that belief. But none of this was known until long after the infection had grown so serious and Brunetti’s behaviour so strange that he was taken back to the hospital.
Because of his father-in-law’s generosity to that institution, the delirious Brunetti was taken to the Giustiniani Hospital, where he was put in a private room and where the entire staff, once they learned to whom he was related, proved attentive and polite. During the first days, as he lapsed in and out of consciousness and the doctors sought to find the proper antibiotic to defeat his infection, Brunetti was told nothing about the cause of his infection, and when that drug was finally found and the infection under control, and then gone, he displayed no interest in knowing who was at fault. ‘What difference does it make?’ Brunetti asked Grimani, thus destroying a good deal of the satisfaction the doctor felt in having displayed greater loyalty to friendship than to his profession.
During his stay, at least during his periods of lucidity, Brunetti had insisted that it was absurd to keep him in the hospital, and on the day that the tube was removed from his arm and the wound was judged to be healing cleanly, he insisted on being released. Paola helped him dress, telling him that it was so warm outside that he wouldn’t need a sweater, though she had brought a jacket to drape over his shoulders.
When a weakened Brunetti and a glowing Paola emerged into the corridor, they found Vianello waiting. ‘Good morning, Signora,’ he said to Paola.
‘Good morning, Vianello. How nice of you to come,’ she said with manufactured surprise. Brunetti smiled at her vain attempt to appear casual, certain as he was that she had arranged with Vianello that he be there, just as he was sure that Montisi would have the police launch at the side entrance, motor running.
‘You’re looking very well, sir,’ Vianello said by way of greeting.
When he dressed, Brunetti had been surprised to notice how loose his trousers felt. Apparently the fever had burned away a good deal of the weight he had put on that winter, and his lack of appetite had seen to even more of it. ‘Thanks, Vianello,’ he said, leaving it at that. Paola started down the corridor, and Brunetti turned to the sergeant and asked, ‘Where are they?’ not needing to explain.
‘Gone. Both of them.’
‘Where?’
‘Signorina Lerini was taken to a private clinic.’
‘Where?’
‘Rome. At least that’s what we were told.’
‘Did you check?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Signorina Elettra confirmed it.’ And even before Brunetti could ask, he explained, ‘It’s run by the Order of the Sacred Cross.’
Brunetti didn’t know which name to use. ‘And Maria Testa?’ he finally asked, voting with that name for the decision he hoped she had made.
‘She’s disappeared.’
‘What do you mean, disappeared?’
‘Guido,’ Paola said, coming back to them, ‘can’t this wait?’ She turned away from them and started down the corridor, toward the side exit of the hospital and the waiting police launch.
Brunetti followed her, Vianello falling into step beside him.
‘Tell me,’ Brunetti said.
‘We kept the guard there for t
he first few days after you came in here.’
Brunetti interrupted him. ‘Did anyone try to see her?’
‘That priest, but I said there were orders that she wasn’t allowed any visitors. He went to Patta.’
‘And?’
‘Patta stalled for a day, then he said that we should ask her if she wanted to see him.’
‘And what did she say?’
‘I never asked her. But I told Patta that she said she didn’t want to see him.’
‘Then what happened?’ Brunetti asked. But then they arrived at the door of the hospital. Paola stood just outside, holding it open for him, and as he stepped outside, she said, ‘Welcome to springtime, Guido.’
And so it was. During the ten days he had been inside, spring had advanced magically and conquered the city. The air smelled of softness and growth, the mating calls of small birds filled the air above their heads, and a spray of forsythia thrust its way out of a metal grating in the brick wall across the canal. As Brunetti had known he would, Montisi stood at the helm of the police launch that was drawn up to the steps leading down to the canal. He greeted them with a nod and with what Brunetti suspected was a smile.
Muttering, ‘Buon giorno,’ the pilot helped Paola aboard, then assisted Brunetti, who almost stumbled, so blinded was he by the explosion of sunlight. Vianello flipped the mooring rope free and stepped aboard, and Montisi took them out into the Canal of the Giudecca.
‘And then what?’ Brunetti asked.
‘And then one of the nurses told her that the priest wanted to see her but that we’d kept him out. I spoke to the nurse later, and she said that she – the Testa woman, that is – seemed troubled that he wanted to see her. And the nurse said she seemed glad that we hadn’t let him in.’ A speedboat cut quickly past them on the right side, splashing water up toward them. Vianello jumped aside, but the water splashed harmlessly against the side of the launch.
‘And then?’ Brunetti asked.