by Donna Leon
‘That’s exactly what I’m trying to find out, Father,’ Brunetti said.
‘It’s still a strange question,’ Cavaletti said.
‘Do you maintain an account at the Lugano branch of the Union Bank of Switzerland?’
The priest moved his fingers to a new bead and said, ‘Yes, I do. Part of my family lives in the Ticino and I go to visit them two or three times a year. I find that it is more convenient to have the money there than to carry it back and forth with me.’
‘And how much do you keep in this account, Father?’
Cavaletti looked off into the distance, doing sums, and finally answered, ‘I’d guess about a thousand francs.’ Then, helpfully, he added, ‘That’s about a million lire.’
‘I know how to convert from lira to Swiss francs, Father. It’s one of the first things a policeman in this country has to learn.’ Then Brunetti smiled, showing the priest that this was a joke, but Cavaletti did not smile in return.
Brunetti asked his next question. ‘Are you a member of Opus Dei?’
Cavaletti dropped his rosary and raised his hands in front of him at this, palms toward Brunetti in an exaggerated gesture of appeal. ‘Oh, Commissario, what strange questions you ask. I wonder at the relationship that keeps them together in your head.’
‘I’m not sure if that’s a yes or a no, Father.’
After a long silence, Cavaletti said, ‘Yes.’
Brunetti got to his feet. ‘That will be all, Father. I thank you for your time.’
The priest, for the first time, could not hide his surprise and lost a few seconds staring up at Brunetti. But he scrambled to his feet and went with him to the door and held it open while Brunetti passed out of the room. As he walked down the corridor, Brunetti was conscious of two things: the eyes of the priest on his back and, as he approached the open door at the end, the rich scent of the lilacs, swirling in from the courtyard. Neither sensation gave him any pleasure.
* * * *
Chapter Nineteen
Though Brunetti didn’t believe there would be any danger to Maria Testa until the article had appeared in the Gazzettino — and he couldn’t be sure that there would be any danger even then — he still pushed himself away from Paola and out of bed a little after three and got dressed. It was not until he was buttoning his shirt that his head cleared enough for him to hear the rain driving against the windows of their bedroom. He muttered under his breath and went over to the window, opened the shutter, and then quickly shoved it closed against the wet gusts that pushed into the room. At the doorway, he put on his raincoat and picked up an umbrella, then remembered Vianello and picked up another.
In Maria Testa’s room, he found Vianello, groggy-eyed and bad-tempered, even though Brunetti arrived almost a half hour before he was expected. By mutual consent, neither of the men approached the sleeping woman, as if her complete helplessness served as a kind of burning sword to keep them at a distance. They greeted one another in hushed voices and then moved out into the corridor to speak.
‘Has anything happened?’ Brunetti asked, pulling his raincoat off and propping both umbrellas against the wall.
‘A nurse comes in every two hours or so,’ Vianello answered. ‘Doesn’t do anything, so far as I can tell. Just looks at her, takes her pulse, and writes something on the chart.’
‘Does she ever say anything?’
‘Who, the nurse?’ Vianello asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Not a word. I might as well be invisible.’ Vianello yawned. ‘Hard to stay awake.’
‘Why don’t you do some push-ups?’
Vianello gave Brunetti a steady look but said nothing.
‘Thanks for coming, Vianello,’ Brunetti offered by way of apology. ‘I brought you an umbrella. It’s pouring.’ When Vianello nodded his thanks, Brunetti asked, ‘Who’s coming in the morning?’
‘Gravini. And then Pucetti. I’ll relieve Pucetti when his shift’s over.’ Brunetti noted the delicacy with which Vianello avoided naming the time — midnight — when he would relieve the younger officer.
‘Thanks, Vianello. Go get some sleep.’
Vianello nodded and bit back an enormous yawn. He picked up the rolled umbrella.
As Brunetti opened the door to go back into the room, he turned and asked Vianello, ‘Was there any trouble about the staffing?’
‘Not yet,’ Vianello said, stopping in the hall and looking back.
‘How long?’ Brunetti asked, not knowing what to call the falsification of the staffing chart.
‘There’s never any telling, is there, but I’d guess it’ll be three or four days before Lieutenant Scarpa notices anything. Maybe a week. But no longer than that.’
‘Let’s hope they bite before that.’
‘If there’s anyone to bite,’ Vianello said, finally voicing his scepticism, and turned away Brunetti watched his broad back turn right at the first staircase and disappear, and then he let himself back into the room. He draped his raincoat over the back of the chair where Vianello had been sitting and propped the umbrella in a corner.
* * * *
A small light burned beside her bed, barely illuminating the space around her head and leaving the rest of the room in deep shadow. Brunetti doubted that the overhead light would disturb the woman in the bed — indeed, it would be a good sign if it did — but he still didn’t want to turn it on, and so he sat in the shadows and did not read, though he had brought along his copy of Marcus Aurelius, an author who had in the past provided great comfort in difficult times.
As the night wore on, Brunetti found himself running through the events that had taken place since Maria Testa had come into his office. Any one of them could be a coincidence: the cluster of deaths among the old people, the accident that had struck Maria from her bicycle, da Prè’s death. But their cumulative weight removed from Brunetti’s mind any possibility of accident or happenstance. And that possibility gone, then the three things were related, though he could not yet see how.
Messini dissuaded people from leaving money to him or to the nursing home, Padre Pio was named in none of the wills, and the sisters of the order could not own property. The Contessa was wealthy in her own right and had hardly needed her husband’s estate; da Prè wanted nothing more than little boxes to add to his collection; and Signorina Lerini appeared to have renounced worldly pomp. Cui bono? Cui bono? All that remained was to discover who stood to profit from the deaths, and the path would open before him, as if illuminated by torch-bearing seraphim, and lead him to the killer.
Brunetti knew he was a man of many weaknesses: pride, indolence, and wrath, to name those he thought most evident, but he also knew that greed was not among them, and so, when confronted with its many manifestations, Brunetti always felt himself in the presence of the alien. He knew it was a common, perhaps the most common, vice, and he could certainly apprehend it with his mind, but it always failed to move his heart, and it left his spirit cold.
He looked across the room at the woman in the bed, utterly motionless and silent. None of the doctors had any idea of the extent of the damage that had been done, apart from the damage done to her body. One said it was unlikely that she would emerge from the coma. Another said she would probably come out of it in a matter of days. Perhaps one of the sisters who worked here had responded with greatest wisdom when she told him, ‘Hope and pray, and trust in God’s mercy.’
As he looked at Maria and remembered the depths of charity that had radiated from the nun’s eyes as she spoke, another of the sisters came into the room. She walked over to the bed carrying a tray, set the tray on the table beside Maria’s bed, reached down and picked up her wrist. Glancing at her watch, she held Maria’s wrist for a few moments, then set it back on the covers and went to enter her findings on the chart that hung at the foot of the bed.
She picked up the tray and went toward the door. When she saw Brunetti, she nodded, but she did not smile.
Nothing except that happened for the rest
of the night. The same nurse came back at about six, and when she did, she found Brunetti standing against the wall in an attempt to keep himself awake.
At twenty to eight, Officer Gravini, wearing high rubber boots, a raincoat, and jeans came in. Even before saying good morning, he explained to Brunetti, ‘Sergeant Vianello told us not to wear our uniforms, sir.’
‘Yes, I know, Gravini. It’s fine, fine.’ The only window of the room faced a covered passageway, and so Brunetti had no idea of the weather. ‘How bad is it?’ he asked.
‘Pouring, sir. Supposed to keep on until Friday.’
Brunetti picked up his raincoat and put it on, regretting that he hadn’t worn his boots last night. He had hoped to be able to go back home and have a shower before going to the Questura, but it would be mad to walk to the other side of the city, not when he was so close to his office. Besides, a few coffees would be just as good.
That proved not to be the case, and by the time he got up to his office, he was cranky and ready for trouble. That came after only a few hours, when he received a call from the Vice-Questore, telling him to come down to his office.
Signorina Elettra was not at her desk, and so Brunetti went into Patta’s office without the forewarning she usually provided. This morning, sleepless, grainy-eyed, and with too much coffee in his stomach, he didn’t care in the least whether he had that warning or not.
‘I’ve had an alarming conversation with my lieutenant,’ Patta said without preamble. At any other time, Brunetti would have taken quiet, sardonic satisfaction in Patta’s accidental admission of what the entire Questura knew — Lieutenant Scarpa was Patta’s creature — but this morning he was dulled by sleeplessness and so barely noted the pronoun.
‘Did you hear me, Brunetti?’ Patta asked.
‘Yes, sir. But I find it difficult to imagine what sort of thing might alarm the lieutenant.’
Patta pushed himself back in his chair. ‘Your behaviour, for one thing,’ Patta shot back.
‘What particular part of my behaviour, sir?’
Brunetti noticed that the Vice-Questore was losing his tan. And his patience. ‘For this crusade you seem to be launching against Holy Mother Church, for one thing,’ Patta said and then stopped, as if capable himself of hearing the exaggeration in the claim.
‘Specifically, sir?’ Brunetti asked, rubbing his palm along the side of his jaw and discovering a spot he had missed when he shaved with the electric razor he kept in his desk.
‘With your persecution of men who wear the cloth. With the violence of your behaviour toward the Mother Superior of the Order of the Sacred Cross.’ Patta stopped here, as if waiting for the seriousness of these accusations to sink in.
‘And with my asking questions about Opus Dei? Is that on Lieutenant Scarpa’s list, as well?’
‘Who told you about that?’ Patta asked.
‘I assume that, if the Lieutenant is making a general list of my excesses, that would certainly be on it. Especially if, as I believe, the orders for him to do so come from Opus Dei.’
Patta slammed his hand down on his desk. ‘Lieutenant Scarpa takes his orders from me, Commissario.’
‘Am I to take it, then, that you too are a member?’
Patta pulled his chair closer to the desk and leaned over it, toward Brunetti. ‘Commissario, I’m not sure that this is a place where you are the one to ask questions.’
Brunetti shrugged.
‘Do I have your attention, Commissario Brunetti?’ Patta asked.
‘Yes, sir,’ Brunetti said in a voice which, to his surprise, he did not have to struggle to make level and calm. He didn’t care about any of this, suddenly felt himself free of Patta and Scarpa.
‘There have been complaints about you, complaints of a wide variety. The Prior of the Order of the Sacred Cross has called to object to your treatment of members of his order. Further, he says you are harbouring a member of the order.’
‘Harbouring?’
‘That she’s been taken to the hospital and is now conscious and no doubt beginning to spread slander about the order. Is this true?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you know where she is?’
‘You just said where she is, in the hospital.’
‘Where you visit her and permit no one else to do so?’
‘Where she is under police protection.’
‘Police protection?’ Patta repeated in a voice that could be heard, Brunetti feared, on the lower floors. ‘And who authorized this protection? Why has there been no mention of it on the duty rosters?’
‘Have you seen the rosters, sir?’
‘Don’t worry about who’s seen the rosters, Brunetti. Just tell me why there is no mention of her name on them.’
‘It was entered as “surveillance”.’
Again, Patta roared back an echo of Brunetti’s word.
‘For days, policemen have been sitting in the hospital, doing nothing, and you dare to put it down as “surveillance”?’
Brunetti stopped himself from asking Patta if he wanted him to change the wording and put it down as ‘guarding’ and chose the wiser course of silence.
‘And who’s there now?’ Patta demanded.
‘Gravini.’
‘Well, get him out of there. The police in this city have better things to do than sit outside the room of some runaway nun who’s gone and got herself into the hospital.’
‘I believe she’s in danger, sir.’
Patta waved a hand wildly in the air. ‘I don’t want to know about danger. I don’t care if she’s in danger. If she’s seen fit to leave the protection of Holy Mother Church, then she should be ready to take responsibility for herself in this world she’s so eager to enter.’ He saw Brunetti start to object and raised his voice. ‘Gravini is to be out of the hospital in ten minutes and back here in the squad room.’ Again, Brunetti started to explain, but Patta cut him off. ‘No policeman is to be there, outside that room. If they are, if anyone goes there, they will be relieved of their duties immediately.’ Patta leaned even farther over his desk and added ominously, ‘As will be the person who sent them there. Do you understand that, Commissario?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘And I want you to stay away from members of the Order of the Sacred Cross. The Prior does not expect an apology from you, though I think that’s extraordinary, after what I’ve heard about your behaviour.’
Brunetti knew Patta in this vein, though he had never seen him this unhinged. As Patta continued to talk, spiralling ever higher in pursuit of his own anger, Brunetti began to calculate the reason for the extremity of Patta’s response, and the only satisfactory explanation he came up with was fear. If Patta was a member of Opus Dei, his response would be nothing stronger than outrage; he had seen that in Patta enough times to know that what was now being manifested was something else entirely and something far stronger. Fear, then.
Patta’s voice called him back. ‘Do you understand that, Brunetti?’
‘Yes, sir,’ Brunetti said, getting to his feet. ‘I’ll call Gravini,’ he said and started toward the door.
‘If you send anyone there, Brunetti, you’re finished. Do you understand?’
‘Yes, sir, I do,’ he said. Patta had said nothing about anyone’s being their on his own time, not that it would have made any difference to Brunetti if he had.
He called the hospital from Signorina Elettra’s desk and asked to speak to Gravini. There followed a series of messages to and from the policeman, who refused to leave the room, even when Brunetti told the person at the hospital to tell him that it was an order from the Commissario. Finally, after more than five minutes, Gravini came to the phone. The first thing he said was, ‘There’s a doctor in the room with her. He won’t leave until I get back.’ Only then he asked if he was speaking to Brunetti.
‘Yes, it’s me, Gravini. You can come back here now.’
‘Is it over, sir?’ Gravini asked.
‘You can come back to the Questura
, Gravini,’ Brunetti repeated. ‘But go home and put your uniform on first.’
‘Yes, sir,’ the young man said and hung up, persuaded by Brunetti’s tone to ask no more questions.
Before going back to his office, Brunetti went into the officers’ room and picked up a copy of that morning’sGazzettino he saw lying on a desk. He turned to the Venezia section, but the article about Maria Testa appeared nowhere. He turned to the first section, but nothing was there either. He pulled out a chair and spread the paper open on the desk in front of him. Column by column, he went slowly through both sections of the paper. Nothing. No story had appeared, and yet someone with enough power to frighten Patta had learned of Brunetti’s interest in Maria Testa. Or, even more interesting, they had somehow come to learn that she had regained consciousness. As he climbed the stairs to his office, a brief smile flit for a second across Brunetti’s face.