by Donna Leon
Brunetti crossed the room, bent down, and picked up the shoes. Holding the socks in one hand, he turned the shoes over and looked at the soles. The black rubber of the heels and soles was shiny and bright, as is often the case with shoes that are worn only inside the house. The only sign of wear were two grey scuff marks on the outer edges of the heels. He set the shoes down and replaced the tiny socks back across them.
‘I’ve never seen anyone die this way,’ Rizzardi said.
‘Wasn’t there a movie or something, years ago, about someone with that disease that makes you look like an elephant? Didn’t he die like that?’
Rizzardi shook his head. ‘I never saw it. I’ve read about things like this, at least about the danger of a fall for people like this. But usually all they do is break their vertebrae.’ Rizzardi stopped and glanced away, and Brunetti waited, assuming that he was casting his memory back through the medical literature. After a few moments, Rizzardi said, ‘No, I’m wrong. It has happened. Not often, but it’s happened.’
‘Well, maybe you’ve got something here different enough to get your name into the medical textbooks,’ Brunetti said evenly
‘Perhaps,’ Rizzardi answered, moving off toward his black doctor’s bag that stood on a table by the door. He tossed the rubber gloves in and snapped it shut. ‘I’ll get to him first thing in the morning, Guido, but I’m not going to be able to tell you anything I don’t know right now. His neck was broken when his head tilted back in the fall.’
‘Would death be instant?’
‘It would have to have been. The break is clean. He would have felt the shock of the fall on his back, but even before he could have felt any pain, he would have been dead.’
Brunetti nodded. ‘Thanks, Ettore. I’ll call you. Just in case you find anything else.’
‘After eleven,’ the doctor said and extended his hand again.
Brunetti shook it and the doctor left the room. Brunetti heard low voices as Rizzardi said something to Miotti, and then he heard the front door of the apartment close. Miotti came into the bedroom, and behind him came Foscolo and Pavese, the men from the lab.
Brunetti exchanged nods with them and said, ‘I want all the prints you can get, especially in the bathroom, and especially around the tub. And photos from every angle.’ He stepped aside so the men could see past him to what lay inside.
Pavese moved across the room and set his camera case down in a dry corner, pulled out the pieces of his tripod, and began to assemble it.
Brunetti knelt down, entirely careless now of the water. He braced his weight on both hands and leaned forward, tilting his head to one side to afford himself a traverse view of the floor just outside the bathroom door. ‘If you can find a hair dryer,’ he said to Foscolo, ‘maybe you can dry up this water — don’t wipe it — and then get some shots of the surface here.’ He waved his hand in a broad circle that encompassed the entire area.
‘What for, sir?’ asked the photographer.
‘I want to see if there are any scuff marks, any sign that he might have been dragged into the bathroom.’
‘Like that, is it, sir?’ Pavese asked as he turned the screws that held his camera to the head of the tripod.
Instead of answering, Brunetti pointed to some faint marks barely visible under the thin coating of water. ‘Here. And here.’
‘I’ll get them, sir. Don’t worry.’
‘Thanks,’ Brunetti said and pushed himself to his feet and turned to Miotti. ‘Have you got a pair of gloves? I forgot to bring any.’
Miotti reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a package of plastic-wrapped gloves. He ripped it open and handed them to Brunetti. As he pulled them on, Miotti pulled out a second pair and did the same. ‘If you’ll tell me what we’re looking for, sir . . .’
‘I don’t know. Anything that might look like someone did this to him or that they might have had reason to.’ Brunetti liked the fact that Miotti did not remark that the explanation didn’t go a great way to answering his question.
Brunetti went out into the living room and looked carefully at the room in which he had spoken to da Prè. The little boxes still covered every surface. He went to the sideboard and opened the top drawer between the two doors. It held more of the boxes, some of them wrapped in individual pieces of cotton wool, like square eggs in albino nests. The second held more of them, as did the third. The bottom drawer held papers. On top, there was one neat manila file containing papers arranged in almost military neatness, but beneath it lay more piles of papers, all tossed higgledy-piggledy, with none of them separated into files; some lay face down, some face up, some folded into quarters, some in half. Brunetti pulled the file and the loose papers out with both hands but then discovered that there was no clear surface on which to set them: the little boxes lay everywhere.
He finally settled on taking them into the kitchen and spreading them on the wooden table he found there. Not at all to Brunetti’s surprise, the manila file contained copies of letters da Prè had sent to antique dealers and private owners, enquiring about the age, provenance, and price of snuff boxes. Below these were the bills of sale for what seemed like hundreds of the tiny boxes, sometimes purchased in lots of twenty or more.
He lay the file aside and went through the other papers, but if he hoped to find among them some hint of the reason for da Prè’s death, Brunetti was disappointed. There were electric bills, a letter from da Prè’s former landlord, a hand-out flyer from a furniture store in Vicenza, a newspaper article about the effects of long-term use of aspirin, and package information that listed the side effects of different types of pain killers.
Over the sounds of the lab technicians in the other rooms and to the accompaniment of the intermittent flashes of light as they photographed the body, Brunetti turned his attention to the bedroom and kitchen, where he found nothing at all that might indicate anything more sinister than a careless accident. Miotti, who had found a box of discarded magazines and newspapers, had much the same success.
A bit after one, the orderlies from the hospital were allowed to remove the body, and by two the crime team had finished. Brunetti tried to replace all of the papers and objects that had been moved as he and Miotti had made their careful way through the apartment, but he had no idea where to put the countless little snuff boxes that had been dusted, moved aside, pushed to the rear, set down on the floor. He finally gave up and stripped off his gloves, telling Miotti to do the same.
When the crime crew saw that Brunetti was ready to leave, they gathered up their bags, cameras, cases, and brushes, glad to finish and get away from the dreadful little boxes that had caused them so many hours of work.
Brunetti paused long enough to tell Miotti not to bother to get to the Questura until ten, though he knew the young man would be there at eight, if not before.
Outside, the fog hit him in the face, this the deadest, dampest hour of the night. Wrapping his scarf around his neck, he walked back toward the Accademia stop, but when he got there, he saw that he had missed a boat by ten minutes and so there would be forty minutes before the next one. He chose to walk, winding his way back through Campo San Barnaba, past the sealed gates of the University, and up past the house of Goldoni, it too barred against the night. He saw no one until he got to Campo San Polo, where a green-clad guard was making his late rounds, a docile German Shepherd walking at his side. The two men nodded as they passed; the dog ignored Brunetti, pulling his master toward home and warmth. As he approached the underpass that led out of the campo, he heard a faint plopping sound. At the bridge, he looked down into the water and saw a long-tailed rat swimming slowly away from him. Brunetti made a sudden hissing sound, but the rat, like the dog, ignored him and made its slow way toward home and warmth.
* * * *
Chapter Fourteen
Before he went to the Questura the next morning, Brunetti stopped at da Prè’s building and spoke to Luigi Venturi, the neighbour who had found da Prè’s body. From him, Brunetti le
arned nothing that could not have been learned in a phone call: da Prè had few friends; very seldom did he have visitors, and Venturi had no idea who they were; and the only relative da Prè had ever spoken of was the daughter of a cousin, who lived somewhere near Verona. The previous night, Venturi had heard or seen nothing at all out of the ordinary, not until water had begun to soak through the ceiling of his kitchen. No, da Prè had never spoken of any enemies who might want to do him an injury. Venturi gave Brunetti a strange look when he asked this question, and Brunetti hastened to assure him that the police were merely excluding this unlikely possibility. No, neither man was in the habit of opening the door without first finding out who was there. Further questioning revealed that Signor Venturi had been watching a soccer game on television for much of the evening, and the only time he had given any thought to da Prè or what might be happening in his apartment was when he went into his kitchen to make himself a cup of Orzoro before going to bed, saw the water seeping down his wall, and went up to see what was wrong.
No, the two men could not be said to be friends. Signor Venturi was a widower; da Prè had never married. But the fact that they lived in the same house had been enough for each to have entrusted the other with a set of keys, though neither of them had ever, until the previous night, had call to use them. Not only did Brunetti learn nothing more from Venturi; he was certain that there was nothing more to be learned.
Among the papers stuffed into the drawer in da Prè’s house, there had been several letters from a lawyer with an office address in Dorsoduro, and Brunetti called him soon after he arrived at his own office. The lawyer had heard, in the way people in Venice always seemed to, of da Prè’s death and had already tried to notify his cousin’s daughter. She, however, was in Toronto for a week with her husband, a gynaecologist, who had gone there for an international conference. The lawyer said that he would continue to try to contact her, but he was by no means certain that this news would cause her to return to Italy.
Asked, the lawyer could give Brunetti almost no information about da Prè. He had been his lawyer for years, but they had never been more than attorney and client. He knew virtually nothing about da Prè’s life, though when asked, he ventured that the value of the estate, beyond the apartment, would not be great at all: almost everything da Prè had was invested in the snuff boxes, and he had left those to the Museo Correr.
He called Rizzardi’s office and, even before he could ask, the pathologist said, ‘Yes, there was a small bruise on the left side of his chin as well as the one along his spine. Both are consistent with a fall. His neck snapped back when he fell, just as I told you last night. He died instantly.’
‘But he could have been hit or pushed?’
‘It’s possible, Guido. But you’re not going to get me to say that, at least not officially.’
Brunetti knew better than to argue, so he thanked the doctor and hung up.
The photographer, when Brunetti called, suggested he come down to the lab and have a look. When he did, Brunetti saw four large blow-ups, two in colour and two in black and white, pinned to the corkboard on the back wall of the lab.
Brunetti crossed the room until he stood in front of the photos. He stared at them, moving his head to bring himself nearer and nearer. When he was so close that his nose almost touched them, he saw two faint parallel lines in the bottom left quadrant of one of the photographs. He put his finger on the lines and turned to Pavese. ‘These?’
‘Yes,’ said the photographer, coming up to stand beside him. Gently, he pushed Brunetti’s finger aside with the erasered end of a pencil and traced the two faint lines.
‘Scuff marks?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Could be. But they could be a lot of things.’
‘You check the shoes?’
‘Foscolo did. The backs of the heels are scuffed, but in lots of places.’
‘Any hope of matching the marks on the shoes with these?’ Brunetti asked.
Pavese shook his head. ‘Not so that it would convince anyone.’
‘But he could have been dragged into the bathroom?’
‘Yes,’ Pavese said, but just as quickly added, ‘but so could a lot of things. A suitcase. A chair. A vacuum cleaner.’
‘What do you think it is, Pavese?’
Before he answered, Pavese tapped the end of the pencil against the photo. ‘All I know is what’s in the photo, sir. Two parallel marks on the floor. Could be anything.’
Brunetti knew he was going to get nothing better than that from the photographer, so he thanked him and went back up to his office.
When he went in, he saw two notes in Signorina Elettra’s handwriting. The first told him that someone called Stefania had asked him to call her. The second said that Signorina Elettra had some information about ‘the matter of that priest’. Nothing more.
Brunetti dialled Stefania’s number and, again, got the cheery greeting that suggested things were dead in the real estate market.
‘It’s Guido. You sell that place in Canareggio yet?’
Stefania’s voice warmed. ‘They’re signing the papers tomorrow afternoon.’
‘And are you lighting candles against acqua alta?’
‘Guido, if I thought it would keep the waters at bay until those papers are signed, I’d crawl to Lourdes.’
‘Business that bad?’
‘You don’t want to know.’
‘You selling it to the Germans?’ he asked.
‘Sehr gut,’ Brunetti answered. ‘You find out anything about those apartments?’
‘Yes, but nothing very interesting. All three have been on the market for months, but everything’s complicated by the fact that the owner is in Kenya.’
‘Kenya? I thought he was in Torino. That’s the address in the will.’
‘That might well be true, but he’s been in Kenya for the last seven years, so he doesn’t have residence in Venice any more. It’s all become a tax nightmare, and no one wants to handle the apartments, especially in this market. You don’t even want to know what a mess it is.’
No, Brunetti reflected, he didn’t; it was enough to learn that the heir had been in Kenya for seven years.
Stefania asked, ‘Is that enough for—’ but her voice was cut off by the sound of a phone ringing in her office. ‘It’s the other line. I’ve got to go, Guido. Pray it’s business.’
‘I will. And thanks, Steffi.Auf Wiedersehen.’
She laughed and was gone.
He left his office and went down the stairs to Signorina Elettra’s office. She looked up when he came in and gave him a small smile. Brunetti noticed that today she was wearing a severe, high-collared black suit. At the top, rather in the way a clerical collar peeps out from a priests lapels, Brunetti saw a thin band of white cotton that had been bleached to blinding whiteness. ‘Is that your idea of monastic simplicity?’ Brunetti asked when he saw that the suit was made of raw silk.
‘Ah, this,’ she said, as if she were just waiting for the next charity drive to be able to get rid of it. ‘Any resemblance to the clergy is entirely accidental, I assure you, Commissario.’ She reached down to her desk, picked up a few sheets of paper, and offered them to him. ‘After you read this, I’m sure you’ll understand my desire that it be accidental.’
He took the papers and read the first two lines. ‘Padre Luciano?’ he asked.
‘The very same. A much-travelled man, as you will see.’ She turned back to her computer, leaving Brunetti to read through the papers.
The first page contained a brief history of Luciano Benevento, born in Pordenone forty-seven years ago. His schooling was listed, as was the fact that he entered the seminary when he was seventeen. There was a gap here, presumably while he received his priestly education, but the school report attached to the back of the papers did not suggest that he would have been an outstanding student.
While still a student in the seminary, Luciano Benevento came to the attention of the authorities for having been involved in some s
ort of disturbance on a train, a disturbance involving a child whose mother had left her with the seminary student while she went to another carriage to get them some sandwiches. What had happened while she was away was never clear, and whatever confusion had ensued was attributed to the little girl’s imagination.
After his ordination twenty-three years ago, Padre Luciano was posted to a small village in the Tirol, where he remained for three years, transferred when the father of a catechism student, a girl of twelve, began telling the villagers strange stories of Padre Luciano and the questions he asked his daughter in the confessional.