by Donna Leon
‘How can that be?’
‘I’m not at liberty to tell you that, sir, but I assure you that I have every right to inquire about her will.’
‘We’ll see about that,’ Sanpaolo said and wheeled away, heading back to the counter. He said something to one of the women and went through a door that stood to the left of the one to his office. The woman opened a large black address book, checked a number, and then dialled the phone. She listened for a moment, said a few words, pushed a button on the phone, then set it back in the receiver. At no time in any of this did either secretary glance in Brunetti’s direction. Very casually, looking as bored and impatient as he could, Brunetti glanced at his watch and made a note of the time: it would make it that much easier when he asked Signorina Elettra to check Sanpaolo’s outgoing phone calls.
A few minutes later the door to Sanpaolo’s office opened slowly and a man stuck his head out, saying that the Notary could come back into his office now. The secretary who had made the call said the Notary had just received a call from South America and would be with him in a minute. The man went back into the office and closed the door.
Minutes passed, then a few more. The man in the office opened the door again and asked what was going on; the secretary asked if she could bring them something to drink. Saying nothing to her offer, the man went back into the office and closed the door, this time loudly.
Finally, after more than ten minutes, Sanpaolo came out of the second office, looking less tall than when he went inside. The secretary said something, but he waved at her with the back of his hand, as at a bothersome insect.
He approached Brunetti. ‘I went to her home on the day the will was signed. I took the will and my two secretaries with me, and they witnessed her signature.’ He spoke loud enough for the women to hear him, and both of them, looking first at Sanpaolo and then at Brunetti, nodded.
‘And how was it that you were asked to go to her home?’ Brunetti asked.
‘She called and asked me,’ Sanpaolo said, his face flushing as he answered.
‘Had you worked for Signora Jacobs before?’ Brunetti asked, and at that moment the door to Sanpaolo’s office opened again, and this time a different man put his head out.
‘Well?’ he demanded of Sanpaolo.
‘Two minutes, Carlo,’ Sanpaolo said with a broad smile that didn’t reach his eyes.
This time the door slammed.
Sanpaolo turned back to Brunetti, who calmly repeated the question, quite as if there had been no interruption, ‘Had you worked for Signora Jacobs before?’
The answer was a long time in coming. Brunetti watched the Notary consider the possibility of falsifying notes or entries in an appointment book, then abandon the idea. ‘No.’
‘Then how was it that she selected you of all of the notaries in the city, Dottor Sanpaolo?’
‘I don’t know.’
‘Could it have been that someone recommended you?’
‘Perhaps.’
‘Your grandfather?’
Sanpaolo’s eyes closed. ‘Perhaps.’
‘Perhaps or yes, Dottore?’ Brunetti demanded.
‘Yes.’
Brunetti fought down the contempt he felt for Sanpaolo for so easily having given in. Nothing, he realized, could be more perverse than to wish for better opponents. This was not a game, some sort of male competition for territory, but an attempt to find out who had driven that knife into Claudia Leonardo’s chest and left her to bleed to death.
‘You said you took the will with you.’
Sanpaolo nodded.
‘Whose words are used in it?’
‘I don’t understand what you mean,’ he said and Brunetti believed him, suspected the man was so terrified of the consequence of his original evasions that he could no longer accurately process what he heard.
‘Who gave you the words to use in the will?’
Again, he watched Sanpaolo chase through the maze of consequences, should he lie. The Notary slid a sideways glance at the two women, both of them now conspicuously busy at their computers, and Brunetti watched him weigh how much he could trust them to cover him should he lie and what they’d have to do in order to do so. And Brunetti watched him abandon the idea.
‘My grandfather.’
‘How?’
‘He called me the day before and told me when she’d be expecting me, and then he dictated it to Cinzia on the phone, and she prepared a copy. That’s what I took when I went to see her.’
‘Did you know anything about this before your grandfather called you?’
‘No.’
‘Did she sign it of her free will?’ Brunetti asked .
Sanpaolo was indignant that his original behaviour could have suggested to Brunetti that he would violate the rules of his profession. ‘Of course,’ he insisted. He turned and indicated the two women, both of them still busy with heads bowed over their computers. ‘You can ask them.’
Brunetti did, surprising them both and surprising Sanpaolo, perhaps because his word had never been so obviously called into question. ‘Is that true, ladies?’ Brunetti called across the room.
They looked up from their keyboards, one of them pretending to be shocked.
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Brunetti turned his attention back to Sanpaolo. ‘Did your grandfather give you any explanation of this?’
Sanpaolo shook his head. ‘No, he just called and dictated the will and told me to take it to her the next day, have it witnessed, and enter it in my register.’
‘No explanation at all?’
Again Sanpaolo shook his head.
‘Didn’t you ask for one?’
This time Sanpaolo couldn’t disguise his surprise. ‘No one questions my grandfather,’ he said, as though this were catechism class and he called upon to recite one of the Commandments. The childlike simplicity of his next words turned any remaining contempt Brunetti might have had for him into pity. ‘We’re not allowed to question Nonno.’
Brunetti left him then and started back to the Questura, leaving it to his feet to navigate for him as he mused on Filipetto’s guile and legendary rapacity. He would hardly risk having his grandson name himself as heir in a will he prepared, but why the Biblioteca della Patria? As he approached San Marco, he found his thoughts flailing about for the point where the lines converged. Too many of the lines crossed: Claudia and Signora Jacobs; Filipetto and Signora Jacobs; the politics that Claudia loathed and her grandfather loved. And then there was the line that was hacked off with a knife.
Standing in front of the guards at the offices of the Justice of Peace, Brunetti pulled out his telefonino and dialled Signorina Elettra’s direct number. When she answered, he said, ‘I’m interested in anything you can find about Filipetto, professional or personal, and about La Biblioteca della Patria.’
‘Officially?’
‘Yes, but also what people say.’
‘When will you be here, sir?’
‘Twenty minutes at the most.’
‘I’ll make some calls now, sir,’ she said and broke the connection.
He didn’t hasten his steps but strolled along the bacino, taking the opportunity offered by a day cast in silver to look across to San Giorgio, then turned completely around and looked at the cupolas of the churches that lined the water on the other side of the canal. The Madonna had once saved the city from plague, and now there was a church. The Americans had saved the country from the Germans, and now there was McDonald’s.
When he got to the Questura, Brunetti went directly to her office. ‘Any luck?’ he asked when he went in.
‘Yes. I called around a little.’ He was curious to discover what this might mean.
‘And?’
‘A couple of years ago, his younger daughter married a foreigner who was working here in the city,’ she said, holding up a page from her notepad. ‘She has a considerable fortune from her mother, and she used it to create a job for him, a very well-pai
d job. He’s much younger than she and is said not to allow his marriage vows to interfere with his personal life. In fact, someone told me that they were asked to leave a restaurant a few months ago.’
Though he wasn’t particularly interested in any of this, Brunetti still asked, ‘Why?’
‘The person who told me about it said that the Filipetto woman didn’t like the way her husband was looking at a girl at the next table. Apparently she became quite abusive.’
‘To her husband?’ Brunetti asked, surprised that Eleonora Filipetto would be capable of any emotion at all.
‘No, to the girl.’
‘What happened?’
‘The owners had to ask them to leave.’
‘But what about Filipetto, and the Biblioteca?’ he asked, suddenly irritated at her very Venetian interest in gossip.
He heard her sigh. ‘It might be more useful if you pursued the last subject, sir,’ she said.
‘What subject?’
‘Her husband.’
Suddenly angry with games, he snapped, ‘I don’t care about gossip. I want to know about Filipetto.’
She made no attempt to disguise how much his response offended her. Instead of answering, she handed him the sheet of paper. ‘You might be interested in this, sir,’ she said with painful courtesy and turned to her computer.
He stepped forward, took the paper, but before he looked at it he said, ‘I’m sorry, Elettra. I shouldn’t speak to you like that.’
Her smile mingled relief and childlike eagerness. ‘Look at her name,’ she said, pointing to the paper.
He did. ‘Gesu Bambino,’ he exclaimed, though that was not the name written on the paper. ‘She married Maxwell Ford.’ He said it aloud and listened to the racket in his mind as various pieces began to slide, then fall, then thunder into place.
‘What was he doing when they got married?’
‘He was a stringer for one of the English papers. The Biblioteca was set up soon after they married.’
‘With the father’s approval?’
‘Dottor Filipetto is not known to be an approving sort of man, and this removed from his home the woman who had taken care of him since his wife died twenty-five years ago.’
‘But she’s still there.’
‘Only two afternoons a week, when the usual woman is out.’
‘Why doesn’t he get someone else to come in on those days?’
‘I’ve no idea, sir, but the Filipettos have never been known for spending money easily. And this way, he can keep an eye on her and see she doesn’t slip entirely out from his control.’
‘What does she do the rest of the time?’
‘She works in the Biblioteca.’
It suddenly occurred to Brunetti and he asked, ‘How do you know all this?’
‘I asked around,’ she said evasively.
‘Who?’
‘My Aunt Ippolita, for one. The woman who works for Filipetto goes in to iron for her two afternoons every week.’
‘And who else?’ Brunetti asked, familiar with her delaying tactics.
‘Your father-in-law,’ she said neutrally.
Brunetti stared at her. ‘You asked him?’
‘Well, I know he’s a patient of my sister’s, and I know he knows I work here, and my father once told me that they had been together in the Resistance. So I took the liberty of calling him and explaining what you’d asked me to do.’ She paused to allow him time, perhaps to snap at her again, but when he made no comment she went on, ‘He seemed very happy to tell me what he knew. 1 don’t think he has any great affection for the Filipettos.’
‘What sort of things did he tell you?’
‘She was engaged about twenty years ago, the daughter, but the man changed his mind or left Venice. The Count wasn’t sure, but he thought the father had something to do with it, perhaps paid him to leave or to leave her alone.’
‘I thought you said they don’t like to spend money.’
‘This was probably a special case because it interfered with his power and his convenience. If she’d married he would have had to hire a servant, and some of them have been known to talk back to their employers, you know, and insist on being paid.’
‘But why would she finally disobey him?’ he asked, thinking of Sanpaolo’s abject submissiveness.
‘Love, Commissario. Love.’ She said this in a tone that suggested she might be speaking not only about Eleonora Filipetto.
Brunetti chose not to inquire further about this and said, ‘He told me his wife is the other director of the Library.’
‘Which is where Claudia worked,’ she said, leaving both the sentence and the thought open to speculation.
‘Those phone calls,’ he said. ‘Let me look at them again.’
She busied herself over her computer and less than a minute later the list of all of Claudia’s calls was there. Responding to Brunetti’s unspoken request, she pressed a few keys and the information about all of the calls other than those between Claudia Leonardo and La Biblioteca della Patria disappeared. Together they read it, the early short calls, then the longer and longer ones, and then the thunderbolt of that final call, twenty-two seconds long.
‘You think she’s capable of it?’ Signorina Elettra asked.
‘I think I’ll go and ask her husband if she is,’ Brunetti said.
* * * *
25
Signorina Elettra printed out a copy of the phone details, and when he had them he went downstairs and asked Vianello to come with him. On the way to the Biblioteca, Brunetti explained about Eleonora Filipetto’s marriage and about the timing and duration of the phone calls, and then the conclusions he had drawn from them.
‘There could be some other explanation, I suppose,’ Vianello asked.
‘Of course,’ Brunetti conceded, not believing it, either.
‘And you say Filipetto’s daughter is one of the directors of this Biblioteca?’ Vianello asked.
‘That’s what her husband said, yes. Why?’
Vianello slowed his pace and glanced aside at Brunetti, waiting to see if he’d drawn the same conclusions. When Brunetti failed to speak, Vianello asked, ‘Don’t you see?’
‘No. What?’
‘A name like that - “Biblioteca della Patria” - means they’ll get money from both sides. No matter who these old men fought for in the war, they’ll give their contributions to the Biblioteca, sure that it represents their ideals.’ The inspector went silent and Brunetti could sense him following his idea to its various conclusions. Finally Vianello said, ‘And they’re probably listed as a charity, so no one will ask questions about where the money goes.’ He made a spitting sound.
‘You can’t be sure of that,’ Brunetti said.
‘Of course I can. She’s a Filipetto.’
Lapsing into silence after that, Vianello matched his steps to Brunetti’s as they walked along the narrow canals of Castello, back toward San Pietro di Castello and the Biblioteca. When they got there, Brunetti saw what he had not noticed the last time, a plaque to the side of the door that gave the opening hours. He rang the bell and a few seconds later the portone snapped open and they went in.
The door at the top of the stairs was not locked and they let themselves into the library. There was no sign of Ford, and the door to his office was closed. An old man, bent and looking faintly musty, sat at one of the long tables, a book open in the pool of light from the lamp. Another old man stood by the display cabinet, looking at the notebooks it held. Even at a distance of some metres Brunetti caught the characteristic odour of old men: dry, sour clothing and skin that had gone too long without washing. It was impossible to tell from which one of them the smell came, perhaps from both.
Neither man looked at them when they came in. Brunetti walked over to the man standing in front of the display case. The man looked up then. Careful to speak in Veneziano, Brunetti said, with no introduction, ‘It’s good to see that someone has respect for the old things,’ and waved a hand abo
ve them at what looked like a regimental flag.
The old man smiled and nodded but said nothing.
‘My father went to Africa and Russia,’ Brunetti offered.
‘Did he come back?’ the old man asked. His dialect was purest Castello, and what he said would probably have been incomprehensible to a non-Venetian.
‘Yes.’
‘Good. My brother didn’t. Betrayed by the Allies. All of us. They tricked the King into surrendering. If he hadn’t, if we’d fought on, we would have won.’ Then looking round, he added, ‘At least they know that here.’