by Donna Leon
Brunetti accepted the grappa the Count offered him, nodded in appreciation of its quality, settled himself on one of the sofas, and asked directly, ‘Filipetto?’
‘What do you want to know about him?’
‘His phone number was listed in the address book of the young woman who was murdered last week. I’m sure you’ve read about it.’
The Count nodded. ‘But surely you don’t suspect Notaio Filipetto of having murdered her,’ he said with a small smile.
‘Hardly. I doubt that he’s able to leave his apartment. I spoke to him earlier this evening and told him about the number, but he denied knowing her.’ When the Count made no response, Brunetti added, ‘My instinct is that he did know her.’
‘That’s very like the Filipettos,’ the Count said. ‘They lie by impulse and inclination, all of them, the whole family, and always have.’
‘That’s a sweeping condemnation, to say the least,’ Brunetti commented.
‘But none the less true.’
‘How long have you known them?’ Brunetti asked, interested in fact as well as opinion.
‘All my life, probably, at least by reputation. I don’t think I had anything to do with them directly until I was back here after the war, when they served as notary, occasionally, when my family bought property.’
‘Working for you?’
‘No.’ The Count was emphatic. ‘For the sellers.’
‘Did they ever work for you?’
‘Once,’ the Count said tersely. ‘At the very beginning.’
‘What happened?’
The Count waited a long time before answering, sipped at his grappa, savoured it, and went on. ‘You’ll understand if I don’t explain in detail,’ he said, a genuflection to their mutual belief that only the most minimal explanation of any financial dealing should ever be given to anyone. Brunetti thought of Lele’s refusal to discuss anything of importance on the phone and wondered if suspicion were now a genetic trait peculiar to Italians. ‘Our purchase of a particular property was based on Filipetto’s examination of the records of ownership, and he assured us that it belonged to one of the heirs. My father went ahead and paid a certain amount to the heir.’ The Count paused here, allowing Brunetti time to conclude that the payment had been in cash, not recorded, most probably illegal, and hence the reason for his refusal to discuss the matter on the phone. ‘And then, when the case had to be decided in court, it turned out that, not only did this person have no legal right to the property, but Filipetto was fully aware of that fact and had probably always been. I never learned whose idea the payment was, his or the heir’s, but I’m certain it was divided equally between them.’ Brunetti was surprised at how calm the Count’s voice and expression remained. Perhaps after a lifetime spent swimming in the shoals of business, a shark was just another sort of fish. ‘Since that time,’ the Count went on, ‘I have had no dealings with him.’
Brunetti glanced at his watch and saw that it was after ten. ‘What time do you have to leave tomorrow?’ he asked.
‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t need much sleep any more. That need, like so many desires, seems to decrease with age.’
The Count’s reference to age sent Brunetti’s thoughts to Signora Jacobs. ‘There’s an old Austrian woman mixed up in this somehow,’ he said. ‘Hedwig Jacobs. Do you know her?’
‘The name’s familiar,’ the Count said, ‘but I can’t remember how it is I might have known her. How is she involved?’
‘She was Guzzardi’s lover.’
‘Poor woman, even if she is an Austrian.’
‘Austrian or not, she remained loyal to him,’ Brunetti said, surprised at his speed in leaping to the old woman’s defence. When the Count didn’t respond, Brunetti added, ‘It was fifty years ago.’
The Count considered that for some time and then sighed and said, ‘Yes.’ He got up, went to the drinks cabinet and came back with the bottle of grappa. He poured them both another glass, set the bottle on the table between them and returned to his seat. ‘Fifty years,’ the Count repeated, and Brunetti was struck by the sadness with which he spoke.
Perhaps it was the hour, the strange intimacy of their sitting together in the silent palazzo, perhaps it was nothing more than the grappa, but Brunetti felt himself filled almost to overflowing with affection for this man he had known for decades, yet never really known.
‘Are you proud of what you did during the war?’ Brunetti asked impulsively, as surprised at the question as was the Count.
If he thought his father-in-law would have to consider before he answered, Brunetti was mistaken, for the answer came instantly. ‘No, I’m not proud. I was at the beginning, I suppose. But I was young, little more than a boy. When the war finished I wasn’t even eighteen yet, but I’d been living and acting like a man, or like I thought a man was supposed to act, for more than two years. But I had the moral age,’ the Count began, paused for a moment and gave Brunetti a smile that seemed strangely sweet, ‘of a boy, or the ethical age of a boy, if you will.’
He looked down and studied the carpet at his feet and flicked one errant strand of the fringe back into place; Brunetti was reminded of Claudia Leonardo and the circumstances of her death. The Count’s voice summoned him back. ‘No one should ever be proud of killing a man, especially men like the ones we killed toward the end.’ He looked up at Brunetti, willing him to understand. ‘I suppose everyone has an image of the typical German soldier: a blond giant with the death’s head insignia of the SS on his shoulder, wiping the blood from his bayonet after putting it through the throat of, oh, I don’t know, a nun or someone’s mother. The men I was with said they saw some of those at the beginning, but at the end, they were just terrified boys dressed in mismatched jackets and trousers and calling them a uniform, and carrying guns and hoping they were a real army because they did.
‘But they were just boys, frightened out of their wits at the thought of death, just like we were.’ He sipped at his grappa, then cradled the glass between his hands. ‘I remember one of the last ones we killed.’ His voice was calm, dispassionate, as if far removed from the events he was describing. ‘He might have been sixteen at the most. We had a trial, or what we called a trial. But it was just like what they say in American movies: “Give him a fair trial and then hang him.” Only we shot him. Oh, we thought we were important, such heroes, playing at being lawyers and judges. He was a kid, absolutely helpless, and there was no reason we couldn’t have kept him as a prisoner. They surrendered a week later. But by then he was dead.’
The Count turned away and glanced toward the window. Lights were visible on the other side of the Canal, and he looked at them while he continued. ‘I wasn’t part of the squad that shot him, but I had to lead him up to the wall and give him the handkerchief to tie around his eyes. I’m sure someone had read about that in some book or seen it in a movie. It always seemed to me, even then, that it would be better to let them see the men who were going to kill them. They deserved that much. Or that little. But maybe that’s why we did it, so that they couldn’t see us.’
He paused for a long time, perhaps considering the explanation he’d just given, then went on. ‘He was terrified. Just as I reached up to cover his eyes, he wet his pants. I felt no pity for him then; I suppose I even felt good about it, that we had so reduced this German to such shameful terror. It would have been kinder to ignore it, but there was no kindness in me then, nor in any of us. I looked down at the stain on his pants and he saw me looking. Then he started to cry, and I understood enough German to understand what he said. “I want my mother. I want my mother,” and then he couldn’t stop sobbing. His chin was down on his chest, and I couldn’t tie the handkerchief around his eyes, so I moved away from him, and they shot him. I suppose I could have used the handkerchief to wipe away his tears but, as I said, I was a young man then, and there was no pity in me.’
The Count turned away from the lights and back towards Brunetti. ‘I looked down at him after they shot him,
and I saw his face covered with snot, and his chest with blood, and the war ended for me then, in that instant. I didn’t think about it, not in big terms, I suppose not in anything I could call ethical terms, but I knew that what we had done was wrong and that we’d murdered him, just as much as if we’d found him sleeping in his bed, in his mother’s house, and cut his throat. There was no glory in what we were doing, and no purpose whatsoever was served by it. The next day, we shot three more. With the first one I was party to it and I still thought it was right, but after that, even when I realized what we were doing, I still didn’t have the courage to try to stop the others from doing it because I was afraid of what would happen to me if I did. So, to answer your question again, no, I’m not proud of what I did in the war.’
The Count emptied his glass and set it on a table. He stood. ‘I don’t think there’s anything more I want to say about this.’
Brunetti stood and, compelled by an impulse that surprised him, walked over to the Count and embraced him, held him in his arms for a long moment, then turned and left the study.
* * * *
17
Paola was asleep when he got home, and though she swam up long enough to ask him how it had gone with her father, she was so dull that Brunetti simply said that they’d talked. He kissed her and went to see if the kids were home and in bed. He opened Raffi’s door after knocking lightly and found his son lying face down, sprawled in a giant X, one arm and one foot hanging off the edge of the bed. Brunetti thought of the boy’s heritage: one grandfather come back from Russia with only four toes and half a spirit, the other willing executioner of unarmed boys. He closed the door and checked on Chiara, who was neatly asleep under unwrinkled covers. In bed he lay for some time thinking about his family, and then he slept deeply.
The next day he went first to Signorina Elettra’s office, where he found her besieged by regiments of paper advancing across her desk.
‘Am I meant to find all of that promising?’ he asked as he came in.
‘What was it Harold Carter said when he could finally see into the tomb, “I see things, marvellous things”?’
‘Presumably you don’t see golden masks and mummies, Signorina,’ Brunetti responded.
Like a croupier raking in cards, she swept up some of the papers on her right and tapped them into a pile. ‘Here, take a look: I’ve printed out the files in her computer.’
‘And the bank records?’ he asked, pulling a chair up to her desk and sitting beside her.
She waved disdainfully at a pile of papers on the far side of her desk. ‘Oh, it was as I suspected,’ she said with the lack of interest with which one mentions the obvious. ‘The bank never called the attention of the Finanza to the deposits, and it seems they never troubled to ask the bank.’
‘Which means what?’ he asked, though he had a fair idea.
‘The most likely possibility is that the Finanza simply never bothered to cross-check her statements with the reports on money transfers arriving in the country.’
‘And that means?’ he asked.
‘Negligence or bribery, I’d say.’
‘Is that possible?’
‘As I have told you upon more than one occasion, sir, when you are dealing with banks, anything at all is possible.’
Brunetti deferred to her greater wisdom and asked, ‘Was this difficult for you to get?’
‘Considering the laudable reticence of the Swiss banks and the instinctive mendacity of our own, I suppose it was more difficult than usual.’
Brunetti knew the extent of her friendships, and so let it go at that, always uneasy at the thought of the information she might some day be asked to provide in return, and whether she would.
‘These are her letters,’ Signorina Elettra said, handing him the pile of papers. ‘The dates and the sums mentioned correspond to bank transfers made from her account.’
He read the first, to the orphanage in India, saying that she hoped her contribution would help the children have better lives, and then one to a home for battered women in Pavia, saying much the same thing. Each letter explained that the money was being given in memory of her grandfather, though it did not give his name nor, for that matter, her own.
‘Are they all like this?’ he asked, looking up from the page.
‘Yes, pretty much. She never gives her name or his, and in each case she expresses the hope that the enclosed cheque will help people have a better life.’
Brunetti hefted the pile of papers. ‘How many are there?’
‘More than forty. All the same.’
‘Is the amount always the same?’
‘No, they vary, though she seemed to like ten million lire. The total is close to the amount that went into her account.’
He considered what a fortune one of these transfers would be to an Indian orphanage or for a shelter for battered women.
‘Are there any repeated donations?’
‘To the orphanage in Kerala and the AIDS hospice. Those seemed to be her favourites but, so far as I can see, all of the others are different.’
‘What else?’ he asked.
She pointed to the closest pile. ‘There are the papers she wrote for her literature classes. I haven’t had time to read through all of them, though I must say her dislike of Gilbert Osmond is quite ferocious.’
It was a name he’d heard Paola use; she shared Claudia’s dislike. ‘What else?’ he asked.
Indicating a thick pile to the left of her computer. Signorina Elettra said, ‘Personal correspondence, none of it very interesting.’
‘And that?’ he asked, pointing to the single remaining sheet.
‘It would cause a stone to weep,’ she said, handing it to him.
‘I, Claudia Leonardo,’ he read, ‘declare that all of the worldly goods of which I am in possession should, at my death, be sold and the profits distributed to the charities listed below. This is hardly enough to make up for a life of rapacious acquisition, but it is, if nothing else, an attempt to do so.’ Below were listed the names and addresses of sixteen charities, among them the Indian orphanages and the women’s home in Pavia.
‘“Rapacious acquisition”?’ he asked.
‘She had three million, six hundred thousand lire in the bank when she died,’ was Signorina Elettra’s only reply.
Brunetti read through the will again, pausing at ‘rapacious acquisition’. ‘She means her grandfather,’ he said, finally perceiving the obvious.
Signorina Elettra, who had heard from Vianello some of the history of Claudia’s family, agreed instantly.
He noticed that there was no signature on the paper. ‘Is this your print-out?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’ Before he could ask, she said, ‘There was no copy among her papers.’
‘That makes sense. People that young don’t think they’re going to die.’
‘And they usually don’t,’ Signorina Elettra added.
Brunetti put the will down on the desk. ‘What was in the personal correspondence?’
‘Letters to friends and former classmates, letters to an aunt in England. These were in English, and she usually talked about what she was doing, her studies, and asked about her aunt’s children and the animals on her farm. I really don’t think there’s anything in them, but you can take a look if you want.’
‘No, no, that’s all right. I trust you. Any other correspondence?’
‘Just the usual business things: the university, the rough draft of what looks like a letter of application for a job, but there’s no address on it.’
‘A job?’ Brunetti interrupted. ‘She was being sent more than a hundred million lire a year: why would she want a job?’
‘Money isn’t the only reason people work, sir,’ Signorina Elettra reminded him with sudden force.
‘She was a university student,’ Brunetti said.
‘What does that mean?’
‘She wouldn’t have had time to work, at least not during the academic year.’
&n
bsp; ‘Perhaps,’ Signorina Elettra conceded with a scepticism suggesting a certain measure of familiarity with the academic demands made by the university. ‘Certainly there was no change in her finances that would indicate she had another source of income,’ she said, pushing some of the papers aside until she found Claudia Leonardo’s bank account. ‘Look, she was still drawing out the same amounts every month when she died. So she didn’t have any other income.’
‘Of course she might have been working for nothing, as a volunteer or an apprentice,’ Brunetti said. ‘It’s a possibility.’
‘You just said she was a university student, sir, and wouldn’t have had the time.’
‘It could have been part time,’ Brunetti insisted. ‘Do you remember anything in the letters that suggests she might have been working?’