by Donna Leon
‘Would you?’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said and walked towards the door. ‘Call me when you’re done, all right?’
Back downstairs, Brunetti found Vianello in the kitchen, sitting opposite Signora Gallante, a white porcelain teapot and a jar of honey between them. Each had a cup of yellow tea. Signora Gallante started to get to her feet when she saw Brunetti, but Vianello leaned across the table and put a hand on her arm. ‘Stay there, Signora. I’ll get the Commissario a cup.’
He got up and with the sort of ease that usually comes with long familiarity, opened a cabinet and pulled down a cup and saucer. He sat them in front of the now-seated Brunetti and turned back to open a drawer and get him a spoon. Silently, he poured out a cup of linden tea and took his place again across from the Signora.
Vianello said, ‘The Signora’s just been telling me a bit about Signorina Leonardo, sir.’ Signora Gallante nodded. ‘She said she was a good girl, very considerate and thoughtful.’
‘Oh, yes, sir,’ the old woman interrupted. ‘She used to come down here for tea once in a while, and she always asked me about my grandchildren, even asked to see pictures of them. They never made any noise, she and Lucia: study, study, study; it seems that’s all they ever did.’
‘Didn’t friends ever visit them?’ Vianello asked when Brunetti made no move to do so.
‘No. Once in a while I’d see a young person on the steps, a boy or a girl, but they never caused any trouble. You know how students like to study together. My sons always did that when they were in school, but they made a lot more noise, I’m afraid.’ She started to smile, but then remembering just what had brought these two men to her table, her smile faded and she picked up her teacup.
‘You said you met Lucia’s mother, Signora,’ Brunetti began. ‘Did you ever meet Signor and Signora Leonardo?’
‘No, that’s impossible. They’re both gone, you know.’ When she saw Brunetti’s confusion, she tried to explain. ‘That’ is, her father’s dead. She told me he died when she was just a little girl.’
When Signora Gallante said nothing else, Brunetti asked, ‘And the mother?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Claudia never spoke about her, but I always had the sense that she was gone.’
‘Do you mean dead, Signora?’
‘No, no, not exactly. Oh, I don’t know what I mean. It’s just that Claudia never said she was dead; she just made it sound like she was gone, as if she was somewhere else and was never coming back.’ She thought for a moment, as if trying to recall conversations with the girl. ‘It was all very strange, now that I think about it. She usually used the past tense when she spoke about her mother, but once she spoke of her as though she were still alive.’
‘Do you remember what she said?’ Vianello asked.
‘No, no, I can’t. I’m very sorry, gentlemen, but I just can’t. It was something about liking something, a colour or a food or something like that. Not a specific thing like a book or a movie or an actor, just something general; now that I think about it, it might have been a colour, and she said something like, “My mother likes ...” and then she said the name of the colour, whatever it was, perhaps blue. I really don’t remember, but I know I thought at the time how strange it was that she spoke of her as though she were still alive.’
‘Did you ask her about it?’
‘Oh, no. Claudia wasn’t the sort of girl you could ask. If she wanted you to know something, she’d tell you. Otherwise, she spoke of other things or just ignored the question.’
‘Did that offend you?’ Vianello asked.
‘Perhaps at first, but then I realized what she was like and that there was nothing I could do about it. Besides, I liked her so much it didn’t matter, didn’t matter at all.’ Signora Gallante picked up her cup and held it to her mouth, lowering her face as if to drink from it, but then the tears got the better of her and she had to put the cup down and reach for a handkerchief. ‘I don’t think I want to talk about this any more, gentlemen.’
‘Of course, Signora,’ Brunetti said, finishing his tea, which had grown cold while they talked. ‘I’ll just see if the doctor’s finished and have a word with Lucia if that’s possible.’
Signora Gallante clearly disapproved of this, but she said nothing and busied herself with wiping away her tears.
Brunetti went to the door of the bedroom and knocked, then knocked again. After a time, the door was opened by the doctor, who put his head out and asked, ‘Yes?’
‘I’d like to speak to Signorina Mazzotti, Dottore, if that’s possible.’
‘I’ll ask her,’ the doctor said and closed the door in Brunetti’s face. After a few minutes he pulled the door open and his head appeared again. ‘She doesn’t want to talk to anyone.’
‘Dottore, would you explain to her that what we want to do is find the person who killed her friend. I know Signorina Mazzotti’s parents are on their way from Milano to take her home, and as soon as that happens it will be very difficult to speak to her.’ Brunetti didn’t mention the fact that he had the legal right to forbid her to leave the city. Instead, he added, ‘We’d be very grateful if she’d agree to talk to us now. It would help us a great deal.’
The doctor nodded his understanding and, Brunetti thought, his sympathy and closed the door again.
When, at least five minutes later, the doctor opened the door again, Lucia Mazzotti stood behind him. She was taller and thinner than he’d thought and now, seeing her full face, he saw just how pretty she was. The doctor held the door for her and she stepped out into the corridor. Brunetti led her into the sitting room and waited while she took a seat on a straight-backed chair. ‘Would you like the doctor to stay here while we talk, Signorina?’ he asked.
She nodded, then said yes in a very soft voice.
The doctor sat on the edge of a sofa. He set his bag on the floor at his feet and leaned back, silent and still.
Brunetti took another straight-backed chair and placed it about a metre from Lucia’s chair, careful to arrange it so that she remained in shadow and his face in the light that came in from the window behind her. He wanted to create as much of an atmosphere of openness as he could between them to relax her into speaking easily. He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way. She had the green eyes so common to redheads, red-rimmed now from crying.
‘I want to tell you how very sorry I am about this, Signorina,’ he began. ‘Signora Gallante has been telling us what a sweet girl Claudia was. I’m sure it’s very painful for you to lose such a good friend.’
Lucia bowed her head and nodded.
‘Could you tell me a little bit about your friendship? How long have you shared the apartment?’
The girl’s voice was soft, almost inaudible, but Brunetti, by leaning forward, managed to hear. ‘I moved in about a year ago. Claudia and I were enrolled in the same faculty, so we took some classes together, and so when her other flatmate decided to leave school, she asked me if I wanted to take over her room.’
‘How long had Claudia been here?’
‘I don’t know. A year or two before I came.’
‘From Milano, is that correct?’
The girl was still looking at the floor, but she nodded in assent.
‘Do you know where Claudia came from?’
‘I think from here.’
At first Brunetti wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. ‘Venice?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir. But she was in school in Rome before she came here.’
‘But she was renting her own apartment, not living with her parents?’
‘I don’t think she had any parents,’ Lucia said but then, as if aware of how strange that must sound, she looked directly at Brunetti for the first time and added, ‘I mean, I think they’re dead.’
‘Both of them?’
‘Her father, yes. I know that because she told me.’
‘And her mother?’
Lucia had to consider this. ‘I’m not sure about her mother. I always as
sumed she was dead, too, but Claudia never said.’
‘Did it ever strike you as strange that people as young as her parents probably were could both be dead?’
Lucia shook her head.
‘Did Claudia have many friends?’
‘Friends?’
‘Classmates, people who came here to study or perhaps to have a meal or just talk.’
‘Some kids from our faculty would come over to study sometimes, but there was no one special.’
‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
‘You mean a fidanzato?’ Lucia asked in a tone that made it clear she had not.
‘That, or just a boyfriend she went out with occasionally.’
Again, a negative motion of her head.
‘Is there anyone at all you can think of that she was close to?’
Lucia gave this some thought before she answered, ‘The only person I ever heard her talk about, or talk to on the phone, was a woman she called her grandmother, but who wasn’t.’
‘Is this the woman called Hedi?’ Brunetti asked, wondering what Lucia’s response would be to learning that the police already knew about this woman.
Obviously, Lucia found it not at all strange that the police should know, for she answered, ‘Yes, I think she was German, or Austrian. That’s what they spoke when they talked on the phone.’
‘Do you speak German, Lucia?’ he asked, using her name for the first time and hoping that his familiarity would sooth her into answering more easily.
‘No, sir. I never knew what they were talking about.’
‘Were you curious?’
She seemed surprised at the question: whatever could be interesting in conversation between her flatmate and an old foreign woman?
‘Did you ever see this woman?’
‘No. Claudia went to see her, though. Sometimes she’d bring home cookies or a kind of cake with almonds in it. I never asked about it, just assumed she’d brought it from her.’
‘Why did you think that, Lucia?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because no one I know bakes things like that. With cinnamon and nuts.’
Brunetti nodded.
‘Can you remember anything Claudia might ever have said about her?’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘About how it was that she was her, well, her adoptive grandmother? Or where she lived?’
‘I think she must live in the city.’
‘Why, Lucia?’
‘Because the times she brought back the things to eat, she was never gone for a long time. I mean, not time to get to somewhere else and come back.’ She considered this for a while and then said, ‘It couldn’t even have been the Lido. I mean, it could have been, because you can get to the Lido and back in a short time, but I remember Claudia once said - I forget what we were talking about - that she hadn’t been to the Lido for years.’
Brunetti started to ask another question, but suddenly Lucia turned to the doctor and asked, ‘Doctor, do I have to answer any more questions?’
Without consulting Brunetti for an answer, the young man said, ‘Not unless you want to, Signorina.’
‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘That’s all I want to say.’ She looked at the doctor when she spoke, ignoring Brunetti entirely.
Resigning himself to the fact that any further questioning would have to be done in Milano or by phone, Brunetti got to his feet and said, ‘I’m very grateful for your help.’ Then turning to the doctor, ‘For yours, too, Dottore.’
To both of them together, he said, ‘Signora Gallante has made tea, and I’m sure she’d be very happy to give you some.’ He walked towards the door of the apartment, turned back briefly as if about to say something, but changed his mind and left.
* * * *
10
Vianello joined him on the stairway. ‘Shall we go back to the apartment, sir?’ he asked.
By way of an answer, Brunetti started back upstairs. The uniformed officer was still at the door when they arrived and said, when they reached the top of the steps, ‘They’ve taken her away, sir.’
‘You can go back to the Questura, then,’ Brunetti told him and went inside. The rug was still there in the centre of the room, the discoloured fringe lying smooth now, as though someone had combed it. Brunetti took the gloves from the pocket of his jacket and slipped them on again. The grey puffs of powder that covered the surfaces of the furniture offered silent evidence that the technical squad had been through the apartment and had dusted for prints.
No matter how many times Brunetti had gone through the artefacts that no longer belonged to the dead, he could never free himself of the uneasiness with which it filled him. He poked and prodded, fingered, plucked and pried into the material secrets left behind by those taken off by sudden death, and no matter how much he willed himself to remain dispassionate about what he did, he never managed to avoid the rush of excitement that came with the discovery of what he sought: is this what a voyeur feels? he wondered.
Vianello disappeared in the direction of the bedrooms, and Brunetti remained in the living room, conscious of how reluctantly he turned his back on the place where she had lain. Just where it should have been, he found a small book of telephone numbers placed neatly on top of the city phone book and to the left of the telephone. He opened it and began to read. It was not until he got to the Js that he found what might be what he was looking for: ‘Jacobs’. He paged through the rest of the book but, aside from listings for ‘plumber’ and ‘computers’, ‘Jacobs’ was the only listing that was not a surname ending in a vowel. Further, the number began with 52 and had no out-of-city prefix written in front of it, as had some of the other numbers. He toyed for a moment with the idea of calling the number, but if Claudia had been dear to this woman, then the telephone was not the way to do it.
Instead, he flipped open the phone book and found the few listings under that letter. There it was, ‘Jacobs, H.’, with an address in Santa Croce. After that, his instinct that he had already found what was most important prevented him from taking much interest in the rest of his search of the apartment. Vianello, emerging from his search of Lucia’s room, said only, ‘Signorina Lucia seems to divide her time between histories of the Byzantine Empire and Harmony Romances.’
Brunetti, who had told Vianello about Claudia’s visit to his office and her strange request for information, said, ‘I think I’ve found the missing grandmother.’
Reaching into the pocket of his jacket for his telefonino, the Inspector asked, ‘Would you like to call her first and tell her you’re coming?’
Brunetti waved away the offer and resisted the temptation to point out to Vianello that they were standing just beside a telephone and that his phone was unnecessary. ‘No. She’d worry if I told her it was the police, and then I’d have to tell her, anyway. Better to go and talk to her directly.’
‘Would you like me to come with you?’ Vianello asked.
‘No, that’s all right. Go and have lunch. Besides, it might be better for her if there’s only one of us. Before you go, see what you can find out from other people in the building what they know about the girls and if they saw or heard anything last night. Tomorrow we can begin asking questions at the university: my wife might be able to tell me something about the girl, who her friends were, her other professors. When you get back to the Questura, ask Signorina Elettra what she can find out about Claudia Leonardo or this woman, Hedi - I suppose that’s Hedwig - Jacobs. She might as well see if there’s anything about Luca Guzzardi.’
‘She’ll be glad of the work, I think,’ Vianello said in a tone that failed to be neutral.
‘Good. Then tell her I want anything at all she can find, even if it goes back to the war.’
Vianello started to say something else, perhaps about Signorina Elettra, but he stopped and instead said only, ‘I’ll tell her.’
Brunetti knew that the address in Santa Croce had to be somewhere near San Giacomo dell’Orio, so he walked to the Accad
emia and took the Number One to San Stae. From there, instinct took over and he soon entered Campo San Boldo. In the campo he saw that the numbers were close to the one he was looking for, so he stopped in atabacchaio and asked for directions. When the man said he wasn’t sure, Brunetti explained he was looking for an old Austrian woman. The shopkeeper smiled and answered, ‘Keeps me in business, Signora Hedi, and keeps me hopping, taking them up to her. Smokes like a Turk. You’ve walked past her place. Go out, turn right, and hers is the third door’
He did as he was told and saw, beside the second door on the left, the name ‘Jacobs’. As he raised his hand to ring the bell, Brunetti felt a wave of momentary exhaustion sweep over him. He had done this too many times, brought so much terrible news, and he felt an overwhelming reluctance to do it again. How easy it would be if victims never had relatives, were always people who were solitary and unloved and whose death would not radiate out, swamping the small boats around them, washing up more victims on the shoals of life.