by Donna Leon
‘I see him three or four times a year.’
‘That’s all?’
‘Why should I see more of him?’ she asked.
‘The way he spoke at dinner made it seem as though you did.’
‘That was flattery. I hear it all the time,’ she said, as though speaking of the weather report. ‘We’re in the process of deciding who should get the contract to restore eight new apartments.’ She broke off as Claudia and Manuela came back into the room.
‘Nonna,’ Manuela said, ‘Gala told me you gave her the recipe for the cake with strawberries.’ All her anxiety had been smoothed away, or forgotten, while they were in the kitchen.
The Contessa smiled and held out her hand to Manuela, who came dutifully to her and took it. ‘That’s an exaggeration, cara. A friend served it for dessert, and so I asked her to write down the recipe because I thought you’d like it. I’m happy you do.’ When Manuela said nothing, the Contessa tried a direct question. ‘Do you like it?’
‘Yes, it was very good, Nonna. Claudia thinks so, too,’ she added, glancing across at her friend, ‘don’t you, Claudia?’
‘Yes, it’s wonderful.’
‘But you didn’t want a second piece,’ Manuela said, sounding confused by this.
‘I’m invited to dinner tonight, so I have to save a little room,’ Griffoni explained, apparently to Manuela’s satisfaction. Then, glancing at her watch, she said, ‘Come on, Manuela; it’s stopped raining and it’s time to go home.’
Brunetti got to his feet, leaving half his whisky in the glass, folded the sweater over the arm of his chair, and put on his jacket. As though summoned by telepathy, Gala appeared at the door with their damp coats over her arm. There were kisses and handshakes, and soon they were walking back towards Campo Santa Maria Mater Domini. The rain had stopped, yet the day seemed colder, although that might have been the result of their damp clothing.
Manuela broke free of Griffoni’s arm and hurried from side to side in the calli, looking into windows or avoiding puddles, always only a few steps ahead of them.
‘Did she say anything about what happened?’ Brunetti asked in a low voice.
Griffoni shook her head. ‘By the time we got to the Contessa’s, she’d quietened down. She was happy – you saw her – when we had cake, and she was perfectly natural in the kitchen with Gala.’ Manuela came back and took Griffoni’s arm for a few steps, and then detached herself and walked ahead again.
‘You think he was the man who attacked her?’ Griffoni asked.
Brunetti raised his eyebrows in an expression that could have meant just about anything. ‘I think he worked at the stables, perhaps when she was there. There’s a picture on the wall in the office of a man who looks like him. When I first met him, he had a beard, so I didn’t recognise him from the photograph. But now he’s shaved off his beard I’m sure it’s he.’ Brunetti slowed his steps and turned to face her when he added, ‘You’ve seen him.’
Griffoni stopped walking. ‘What? When?’
‘He was in one of those programmes we watched on television, talking about a project he’s working on, something about plaques on buildings, historic things.’
When he saw that she understood, he added, ‘Cavanis had only one channel working on his television; that’s the channel he appeared on.’
Before he could say anything further, Griffoni cut him short. ‘That’s the Belle Arti.’ She grabbed his arm for emphasis. ‘They’d be in charge of anything like that.’
‘Belle Arti,’ Brunetti whispered, thinking of the phone number on the scrap of paper in Cavanis’ apartment and that he’d told Griffoni about it.
‘What’s his name?’ she asked in a voice she struggled to keep calm.
‘Alessandro Vittori-Ricciardi.’
She shook her head to show she did not recognize it. Then the two of them stood silent, working it out. Manuela came back, and on seeing them still as statues, thought it was a game, and so raised one arm in the air and put the other hand on her hip. She stood motionless like that for a moment until she tired of it and went back to look in another shop window.
‘Cavanis recognized him,’ Brunetti said slowly, his mind already far ahead of his words.
‘And tried to call them because he was drunk and didn’t know what time it was,’ Griffoni added, a Christe to his Kyrie.
‘And then finally did call him,’ Brunetti said, closing the litany.
Griffoni’s voice suddenly changed and grew sombre. ‘It’s all circumstantial, Guido. A good defence attorney would hang us out to dry in fifteen minutes.’
‘That was his umbrella I picked up,’ Brunetti said. ‘Bocchese’s got it now.’
She said nothing. Manuela hurried back to ask if they were close to home and seemed pleased to be told they were. When she was off again, Griffoni asked, ‘Until he’s done with it and has or doesn’t have a match, what are you going to do?’
Brunetti took out his phone and said, ‘Call Enrichetta degli Specchi and see if she has a list of the people who worked at the stables fifteen years ago.’
26
Sandro Vittori, yet to become Vittori-Ricciardi, had indeed worked at the stables during the time Manuela had kept her horse there. His job had been to clean the stables and hold the bridles of the horses ridden by the youngest students as they circled the ring. Enrichetta degli Specchi managed to find his letter of application and the records of his salary for the six months he was there. Then she called Brunetti back to tell him she had also found a copy of a letter her late husband had sent to Vittori, firing him and forbidding him to return to the stables. At Brunetti’s request, she promised to fax it to the Questura but read him a few phrases over the phone. ‘ “ . . . will not have a student of mine treated in such a disrespectful manner . . . young girls placed in my trust . . . actions not to be tolerated”.’
After reading this to Brunetti, she said, ‘My husband was a . . . a private person. That is, he was very good at keeping secrets. If he knew which girl this man was bothering, he wouldn’t have told anyone.’
‘Thank you, Signora,’ Brunetti said and asked her to fax the letter.
It had arrived by the time they got back to the Questura. It was dated two weeks before Manuela fell into the canal, a description that Brunetti was tired of using. Though the phrases read to him were strong, they left open the exact nature of Vittori’s actions. ‘Disrespectful manner’, ‘actions not to be tolerated’. They could mean almost anything, from suggestive speech to attempted rape.
Gottardi, the magistrate, when Brunetti insisted on speaking to him, was both sceptical about and interested in Brunetti’s description of Manuela’s panicked response when they’d met Vittori on the street, but he insisted that they could do nothing unless the fingerprints or DNA matched.
Brunetti used the skills taught to him by Signorina Elettra – perfectly legal skills – and checked to see if Vittori or Vittori-Ricciardi had a criminal record. Neither name appeared in any city, provincial, or national list of convicted criminals, information he gave to Gottardi.
‘This delay gives Vittori time to think of excuses, construct an alibi if he has to,’ Brunetti told the magistrate in a last effort to persuade him to action.
‘It gives us time to acquire physical evidence,’ Gottardi countered, and that was the end of their conversation. After it, Brunetti paused only long enough to call Griffoni and tell her of Gottardi’s decision before he took his dejected and still-damp self home.
The next day, to keep himself busy while waiting for news from Bocchese, he decided to occupy himself with his Chinese prostitutes, only to discover that they seemed to have disappeared, as if swept from the Veneto by some force of nature. It turned out that the women, none of whom had produced identification when arrested, had been released and told to return the following day with their documents. None had do
ne so, and when the police eventually got around to checking the addresses, no one at those addresses – one of which was a vegetable stand, another a tobacco shop – knew what the police were talking about.
The Italian owners of the apartments where the women had been installed were duly shocked to learn that the Chinese gentleman who had rented all three apartments had provided false information and could not be traced. By this time, all of the women and the man who had signed the rental contracts had vanished.
His reflections were interrupted by a call from Bocchese, who said directly, ‘Everything – prints, DNA – was compromised by the rain, and there are traces of at least three different people there. I could try to argue that they match the traces on the knife, but a good defence attorney would make a fool of me.’
‘Thanks,’ Brunetti said, unable to think of anything else to say. More ambiguity. More inconclusive evidence.
He’d lost track of time while reading the files and now saw that the daylight had faded while he was reading, though it was still too early to think of going home.
Perhaps a conversation with Signor Vittori of the added surname might resolve the ambiguity of some of the information they had. He removed the phone directory from his bottom drawer, thinking how such a simple, common action as consulting its pages had become an archaic ritual.
He found the Vs and then, with no trouble at all, an Alessandro Vittori-Ricciardi – there could not be two in the city – at an address in San Marco. He dialled the number and heard a recorded voice asking the caller to leave a message or try calling a second number, which the voice provided.
He dialled that and was answered by, ‘Vittori-Ricciardi.’
‘Ah, Signore,’ Brunetti said at his most pleasant. ‘This is Commissario Guido Brunetti. We met yesterday.’
‘I beg your pardon,’ the man said.
‘We met in the rain, in Calle del Tintor. You were with your friend, Signor Bembo. Surely you remember.’
‘Ah, of course,’ he said in a far more cordial voice. ‘In what way can I be useful to you, Commissario?’
‘By finding time to have a word with me,’ Brunetti said with mirrored cordiality. ‘There are a few things I’d like to clarify.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ Vittori-Ricciardi said.
Brunetti forged ahead, as if the other man had not spoken. ‘It’s only a formality, Signore, but I’d like to discuss the reaction of that woman when she saw you.’
‘You know there’s something wrong with her,’ Vittori-Ricciardi said heatedly. ‘Certainly you can’t treat seriously anything she says.’
‘You know her, then?’ Brunetti asked mildly.
It took Vittori-Ricciardi a few moments to respond, but when he did, he came back strongly. ‘Of course I know her. She’s my employer’s granddaughter.’
‘Ah,’ Brunetti sighed, and then, as though he’d forgotten, ‘Of course.’ He waited to see if the other man would say anything more.
‘That is, I know about her,’ Vittori-Ricciardi corrected himself.
‘And recognized her?’ Brunetti asked innocently.
There followed another pause, this one longer than the last. ‘She’s been pointed out to me in the past.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said calmly. ‘Would it be convenient for you to come and have a few words with me, Signor Vittori?’ he asked.
‘Where?’
‘At the Questura. It’s where I work,’ Brunetti said in his mildest tone.
‘When?’
‘Perhaps tomorrow morning,’ Brunetti suggested amiably.
‘What time?’
‘Any time that’s convenient for you,’ Brunetti replied.
‘Er,’ he began and Brunetti realized he was dealing with a man who, however clever he might be, was not very brave: he could easily have refused Brunetti’s request but did not. ‘Eleven?’
‘Perfect, I’ll expect you then,’ Brunetti said in his friendliest voice and replaced the phone.
Immediately he called Griffoni, whom he thought should be present at the interview. ‘Vittori-Ricciardi’s coming in tomorrow morning at eleven,’ he said in place of a greeting. ‘I’d like you to be here when I talk to him.’
‘In what capacity?’ she asked, forcing Brunetti to laugh.
‘As the attractive woman he can try to impress with his charm and grace.’
‘A woman not as intelligent as he is, who will have eyes only for him and think everything he says is wonderful?’ she asked.
‘Exactly.’
‘And whose interest in him will keep him distracted from what he’s saying when you question him because he’ll be so busy trying to impress this woman?’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said.
‘And should this woman dress in a particular way?’ she asked.
‘I leave that entirely to you, Claudia,’ he said and told her he’d see her the next morning.
27
Brunetti went to Griffoni’s office shortly after ten the next morning and could not suppress a smile when he saw her. Her hair was a mass of golden ringlets pulled back by a black ribbon so undisciplined as to allow several curls to escape its care. Her sweater was beige, just tight enough to entice the connoisseur’s eye to discern the lace on the top of her brassiere. Her skirt, dark brown wool and just short enough, fell above her knees, allowing those perfect calves to show to great advantage.
Her makeup was restrained: pale pink lipstick and only a touch of eyeliner. She might well have been a serious police officer, but there was a strong suggestion of the possibility of something else.
‘Complimenti,’ Brunetti said with open admiration.
‘Thank you, Commissario,’ she said and batted her eyelids at him. ‘It’s so encouraging to a woman to know she has male approval.’
‘That’s enough now, Claudia,’ he said and took his place on the simple wooden chair that guests used in her tiny office.
‘He recognized Manuela,’ he continued, ‘and told me I couldn’t believe anything she said because there was something wrong with her.’
All expression fled Griffoni’s face when she heard this. After a moment, she asked, ‘Did he say anything else?’
‘No, not really. He said he’d never met her, only that she’d been “pointed out” to him. I asked him to come in to talk to me, and he agreed.’
‘Is he that stupid?’ Griffoni asked.
‘If he shows up without a lawyer, then yes, he is.’
‘Why is he coming?’ she asked.
‘I think it’s because it hasn’t occurred to him that we might have made a connection to Cavanis,’ Brunetti explained.
Griffoni considered this and said, ‘You’re probably right. We saw him entirely by chance; you’d naturally be interested in a reaction that strong, regardless of the woman it came from. But there’s no reason we should connect him to Cavanis.’
Brunetti tried to put himself into the mind of the younger man, cocky and sure of himself. ‘Clever devil: he must know she couldn’t testify.’
‘Because of the way she is?’ Griffoni asked.
‘That, yes,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘And because no decent person would ask her to.’
This time Griffoni nodded. She stared at the wall above his head so intently that he dared not interrupt her. Finally she said, ‘None of this makes sense unless he raped her, does it?’
‘No. If Cavanis did remember what he saw and told him that he did, then Vittori would have had to commit another crime to cover up the first.’ Brunetti balked at hearing himself say ‘would have had to’ until he thought of the Macbeth he and Paola had once seen in London. Macbeth too had convinced himself he’d had no choice.
With a glance at her watch, she asked, ‘Should I delay my arrival a few minutes? That would allow me to be surprised and cha
rmed at the same time, wouldn’t it?’
‘You sound pretty familiar with the scenario,’ Brunetti said.
‘Customs linger longer in Napoli, Guido. These ideas are still around.’
He got up from the chair and eased himself around it and to the door. ‘I’ll tell them downstairs to let you know when he arrives.’
‘I’ll count the minutes.’
Brunetti had thought to aid the scene with props and so had gone down to Signorina Elettra’s office earlier and asked for all of the files that he still had to read. He took them back to his office and set four or five to his right, with the rest of them in a pile just in front of him. He opened the first one; it stated the new regulations for the use of official automobiles for work-related travel and ran to five pages. He closed it and set it down, wondering why such a thing had been sent to the police in Venice.
There was a knock at his door. He opened the next file, called out, ‘Avanti ,’ and looked back at the first page. He counted three long seconds and looked up, noticed Vittori standing in the doorway. He was alone, had actually come without a lawyer: Brunetti could hardly believe it. He smiled.
‘Ah, Signor Vittori,’ Brunetti said, continuing to drop the second surname. ‘Thank you for coming to see me.’ He stood but stayed behind his desk, a conscious manifestation of territorial supremacy he was careful to use with visitors who might register it as such, however unconsciously. ‘Please,’ he said, waving to the two chairs in front of his desk.
Vittori, who was wearing a dark grey suit with a yellow and red striped tie, kept his chin up and his eyes on Brunetti’s, but his feet moved reluctantly, and it took him some time to cross the room. The beard had camouflaged the plumpness of his face and covered his double chin: now that it was gone, Brunetti observed, he looked not only younger, but stouter. His mouth, in contrast, seemed thinner than it had been.
Vittori extended his hand across the desk, and Brunetti shook it quickly. His handshake was strong but tentatively so, as if he wanted to see if Brunetti would try to win – whatever that meant. Brunetti responded with a firm clasp that he quickly released.