by Donna Leon
'We stopped in two of the bars and had a drink. Nadia said she used to live over there. She didn't, but a cousin of hers did, and she used to visit her when they were kids, so she knew some names and could talk about a few of the stores that have gone out of business, so people believed her.
'In fact, she didn't even have to ask about the murder: people were eager to tell her. Biggest thing that's happened over there since the floods in '66.' Reading Brunetti's expression, he became less discursive. 'There was general agreement that she was greedy, troublesome and stupid, but invariably someone would remind everyone that she was a widow whose only son had died, and people would pull themselves up short and say that she really wasn't that bad. Though I suspect she was. We talked about her in the bars and then with the waitress at the restaurant, who lives around the corner from her, and there wasn't one person who had a good word to say about her. In fact, enough time has passed for there even to be a little bit of sympathy for the Romanian woman: one woman said she was surprised it took so long for one of the women to kill her.' Vianello considered this, then added, 'It's almost as if the residual sympathy she earned for the death of her son, well, a small part of it, has passed to Signora Ghiorghiu.'
'And the son? What did they say about him?' Brunetti asked.
'No one had much of anything to say. He was quiet, lived with her, went to work, minded his own business, never caused anyone any trouble. It's almost as if he didn't have a real existence and was only a means to enable people to feel sorry for her. His dying, that is.'
'And the husband?'
'The usual stuff; "una brava persona"‘ But then Vianello warned, 'That might just be amnesia talking.'
'Did anyone say anything about the other women who worked for her in the past?'
'No, not much. They came and cleaned or bought her food and cooked, but the Romanian was the first one who lived there with her.' Vianello paused, then added, 'My guess is that the others didn't have papers and didn't want to become known in the neighbourhood for fear that someone would report them.'
'Did she have much contact with her neighbours? The old woman, that is’ Brunetti asked.
'Not for the last few years, especially since her son died. She could still get up and down the steps until about three years ago, when she had a fall and did something to her knee. After that, it looks like she didn't go out again. And by then any friends she'd had in the neighbourhood were gone, either died or moved away, and she'd caused so much trouble that no one wanted anything to do with her.'
'What sort of trouble?'
'Leaving bars without paying, complaining that the fruit wasn't good enough or fresh enough, buying something and using it and then trying to take it back to the store: all the things that make people refuse to serve you. I'm told there was a period when she threw her garbage out the window, but then someone called the police, and they went in and talked to her, and she stopped. But the main complaint was the television.'
'Did anyone say they'd ever met her lawyer?'
Vianello thought about this for a moment, then shook his head and said, 'No, no one ever met her, but a few people said that they'd written to her, especially about the television.'
'And?'
'No one ever received an answer.'
That didn't surprise Brunetti: until a case was brought against the old woman, the lawyer would not be legally involved in the private behaviour of her client. But her refusal to respond to these complaints seemed at odds with Awocatessa Marieschi's assertions of regard and concern for Signora Battestini. Then again, a lawyer did not write a letter and then not charge for doing it.
'And the day she was killed?'
'Nothing. One man thinks he remembers seeing the Romanian come out of the house, but he wouldn't swear to it.'
'What was he uncertain about, that it was the Romanian or that she was coming out of that house?'
‘I don't know. As soon as I showed any interest in what he was saying, he clammed up.' Throwing up his hands, Vianello admitted, ‘I know it's not a lot, but I don't think there's much else to be got by asking around.'
'That's nothing new, is it?' Brunetti asked, making no attempt to disguise his disappointment.
Vianello shrugged. 'You know what it's like. No one seems to remember much about the son; they all disliked her, and since the husband's been dead for a decade, all anyone can say is that he was una brava persona, how he liked to have a drink with his friends, and how they didn't understand how he could stay married to a woman like that.'
Would people say the same things about him after he died? Brunetti wondered.
'What about you?' Vianello asked.
Brunetti told him about his conversation with the lawyer, not omitting mention of the dog.
'Did you ask her about the bank accounts?' Vianello asked.
'No. She said that Signora Battestini had about five thousand Euros at the Uni Credit. I didn't want to ask about the other accounts until we know something more about them.'
As if the thought were mother to the deed, Signorina Elettra chose that moment to appear in the doorway. She wore a green skirt and a white blouse, and at her neck she had a necklace of large cylindrical amber beads. As she came towards them, the sun fell on the necklace, turning the beads a flaming red and in the process bedecking her in the colours of the flag, as if she were a walking personification of civic virtue. Coming closer, she passed out of the sunlight and turned again into herself. She held out a folder and put it on his desk.
Pointing to it, she said with appealing self-effacement, 'It turned out to be easier than I thought, sir.'
'And Deutsche Bank?' Vianello asked.
She shook her head in stern disapproval. 'It was so easy you could have done it, Ispettore,' she said by way of explanation and then added with even greater asperity, 'I think it's all this Europeanization: in the past, German banks were reliable; now it's as if they go home in the afternoon and leave the door open. I tremble at the thought of what will happen to the Swiss if they join Europe.'
Brunetti, unimpressed by her concern for the financial security of the continent, asked, 'And?'
'They were all opened the year before the husband died’ she explained, 'over a period of three days, each with an initial deposit of half a million lire. Ever since then, deposits of a hundred thousand lire were made every month into each account, except for the period right after the son died, when no deposits were made.' She smiled at their response to this and went on. 'But that was made up for when they began again after two months.' She left them to consider all this for a moment before adding, 'The last deposits - normal deposits, I suppose one could call them - were made at the beginning of July, bringing the total in the accounts, with interest, to almost thirty thousand Euros. But no deposits were made this month.'
All three of them considered the meaning of this, but it was Brunetti who gave voice to it. 'So the need for the payments died with her.'
'So it would seem’ agreed Signorina Elettra, and then added, 'But the strange thing is that the money was never touched: it sat there, just gathering interest.' She opened the file and, holding it so that both men could see the figures, said, 'Those are the totals in the accounts. They were all in her name.'
'What happened to them when she died?' Brunetti asked.
'She died on a Friday; on Monday all of it was transferred to the Channel Islands’ she said, and then added a suggestive, 'and . . .' that successfully captured the attention of both men before she continued, 'though no name is given for the person authorizing the transfers, all of the banks have powers of attorney on file in the names of both Roberta Marieschi and Graziella Simionato.'
‘I asked Marieschi this morning how much money Signora Battestini had left, but all she mentioned was an account at the Uni Credit with about ten million lire.'
'Taxes?' Vianello gave voice to the obvious. By moving the accounts instantly out of the country and then trusting to general bureaucratic incompetence, it was not unli
kely that the transfer would pass unobserved by the tax authorities, especially if they were in different banks.
'And the niece?' Brunetti asked.
'I've begun that’ was all she answered.
'It's more than sixty million’ Vianello said, like most people, still calculating in old lire.
'A nice sum to be in the hands of a widow who lived in three rooms’ Signorina Elettra commented, not that this needed to be said.
'And a nice sum to slip past the hands of the taxman’ Vianello added, not without audible admiration. Looking at Signorina Elettra, he asked, 'But can that be done?'
It was impossible for Brunetti to observe her tilted chin and expression of fierce concentration without wondering if there existed limits to her familiarity with the unlawful. Certainly years of employment in the national bank would be superb preparation^ J?ut he feared her craft had been raised to new heights by her years at the Questura.
Like Santa Caterina returning from contemplation of the Divine Presence, Signorina Elettra left the world of theoretical malfeasance behind and came back to Brunetti and Vianello. 'Yes’ she declared, 'if whoever did it counted on incompetence at the Finanza and played the odds that the transfer wouldn't be noticed, then it would be easy enough, I think.' Vianello and Brunetti began to calculate the odds of this until Signorina Elettra interrupted them by asking, 'But why would she leave the money there and never touch it?'
Brunetti, who had read Balzac's descriptions of the cunning and avidity of peasants, had no doubts about this. 'To watch it accumulate’ he said. Vianello's past did not include much in the way of French novels, but he had spent time in the countryside and instantly recognized the truth of this.
‘I was up in the attic, and I saw the things she kept’ Brunetti said, remembering a pair of felt slippers so worn that not even Caritas would have dared to offer them to the poor and tea towels with tattered edges and worn-in stains. 'She'd have enjoyed looking at the numbers and watching them grow, believe me.'
'But where are the original records?' Vianello asked.
'Who packed up the apartment?' countered Brunetti.
"The niece inherited, so it would have been her job’ Signorina Elettra supplied. 'But it would be easy enough for the dead woman's lawyer to go into the apartment before that and take them.' Then, as an afterthought, she added, 'Or her killer.'
'Or they could have been what the killer was looking for’ Vianello said. His face brightened and he suggested, 'But we have the computer records if we ever want proof.'
Like Lachesis and Atropos, turning their blind eyes to an errant Clotho, Brunetti and Signorina Elettra turned and stared at Vianello. "The government has seen to that, Ispettore’ Signorina Elettra said with a voice that stopped just short of reproach, as though he were responsible for the law that stipulated that only original bank records, not photocopies and not computer records, could be introduced as evidence.
Did Brunetti see the inspector blush? ‘I hadn't thought’ Vianello confessed, realizing instantly that the information would have legal weight only when and if bank officials produced the original records of accounts that had slept unobserved for more than a decade, until their mysterious flight to a tax haven so famous as surely to be known even to a lawyer in a sleepy provincial town such as Venice.
Brunetti moved them away from finance and asked, 'The husband? Did you find anything?'
'Nothing very interesting’ she said. 'He was born here, in 1925, and died at the Ospedale Civile in January of 1993. Lung cancer. For thirty-two years he worked in various city offices, lastly at the schools department -specifically, the personnel office, than which I can imagine no greater tedium. His son worked for the school board, too, until his death five years ago. They overlapped there for a few years.'
'Anything else?' Brunetti asked, amazed that a man could spend three decades and more working in the city bureaucracy and, at the end, have only these few facts to show for it.
'That's all I can find, sir. It's very difficult to find anything from more than ten years ago: they haven't got around to computerizing those records yet.'
'When will they?' Vianello asked.
Signorina Elettra's shrug was so strong that it caused the amber beads to click together as though they, too, wanted to tsk away the very idea.
12
Brunetti refused to see this as an impasse. Turning to Vianello, he said, 'There should still be people working in the office who would remember them. I'd like you to go over and see if there are and what they can remember.'
Vianello's expression showed how unlikely he thought this, but he voiced no objection.
Signorina Elettra said she still had work to do in her office and left the room with the inspector.
Brunetti, thinking it unfair to ask them to work on this while he sat at his desk, picked up the file and found the name of Signora Battestini's doctor. His call was transferred to the doctor's telefonino, and when he answered, the doctor told him that he could talk to Brunetti in his ambulatorio either before or after he saw his afternoon patients. Convinced that it would be wiser to speak to the doctor before he had spent two hours listening to and tending to his patients, Brunetti said that three-thirty would be fine, asked where the office was, and hung up. That done, he dialled the number of Signora Battestini's niece, but no one answered.
There was to be no weekly staff meeting that day, a fact explained by the weather. During summer months, the meetings, which Vice-Questore Patta had initiated some years ago, were often either suddenly cancelled or postponed and then eventually cancelled, depending upon the weather. Sun cancelled the meeting instantly, thus allowing the Vice-Questore to have a swim before lunch as well as in the late afternoon. On rainy days, the meetings were held, though a sudden improvement in the weather often led to their postponement, and one of the police launches would take the Vice-Questore across the Bacino to his undoubtedly well-earned relaxation. Thus the staff conference became another of the secrets of the Questura, like the door to a cabinet that had to be kicked at the bottom before it would open. Brunetti envisioned himself and his colleagues as not unlike augurs, whose impulse, before planning or accepting any engagement, was first to consult the heavens. Brunetti thought it much to their credit that they could so seamlessly adjust their schedules to the vagaries of the Vice-Questore's.
At home, where he took himself for lunch, he arrived just as the family was sitting down. Paola, he noticed, had the lean and hungry look she often had after a bad day at the university, though the children were far too concerned with sating their hunger to pay much attention.
There was, the setting of plates on the table suggested, to be no first course, but before he could protest at this omission, however mildly, Paola appeared, holding an immense bowl from which rose fumes so fragrant as to soothe his soul. Before his powers of prediction could name the dish, Chiara cried with undisguised glee, 'Oh, Mamma, you made the lamb stew.'
'Is there polenta?' Raffi asked, his voice poignant with hope.
When he saw the smile that spread over Paola's face at the sound of their avidity, Brunetti thought of baby birds and the way their chirping forced their parents to behave in genetically determined ways. Paola offered only token resistance to that instinct by saying, 'Just as there has been each of the six hundred times we've eaten this, Raffi, yes, there is polenta,' but Brunetti could hear that her heart was in the tone and not the words.
'Mamma’ Chiara offered, 'if there are fresh figs for dessert, I'll do the dishes.'
'You have the soul of a merchant,' Paola said, setting down the bowl and going back into the kitchen to get the polenta.
Indeed there were figs, and with them esse, the S-shaped biscuits that a friend of Paola's father still sent them from Burano. And after that, Brunetti had no choice but to repair to bed to sleep for an hour.
When he woke, dry-mouthed and sweating in the stifling heat, he was conscious of Paola beside him. Because she never slept in the afternoon, he knew befo
re he opened his eyes that she would be lying with her head on the pillow, reading. He turned his head and was proven right.
Recognizing the book, he asked, 'Are you still reading the catechism?'
'Yes’ she said, not removing her eyes from the page. 'I'm reading a chapter a day, though it's not called a catechism any more.'
Rather than inquire as to its new title, Brunetti asked, instead, 'And where are you now?'
'On the Sacraments.'
By rote, the words swam up from his youth: 'Baptism, communion, confirmation, marriage, ordination, confession . . .' and then his voice trailed off. 'There's seven of them, aren't there?' he asked.
'Yes.'
'What's the seventh? I can't remember. It's just gone.' As happened every time he failed to remember something simple and ordinary, he had a moment's panic that this was the same beginning no one had wanted to recognize in his mother.
'Extreme unction’ Paola said, glancing aside at him. 'Perhaps the most subtle of them all.'