by Donna Leon
‘One of them came to her funeral,’ he went on. ‘Big man, fat. He came up to me after it and said how great a loss Augusta had been to the “community of Christians”.’ The sarcasm with which da Prè pronounced the words scalded the air around him. ‘Then he said something about how generous she had always been, what a good friend she had been to the order.’ Da Prè stopped talking here and his mind seemed to wander away in pleased recollection of the scene.
‘What did you say?’ Vianello finally asked.
‘I told him the generosity was going into the grave with her,’ da Prè said with another bleak smile.
Neither Vianello nor Brunetti said anything for a moment, and then Brunetti asked, ‘Did they take any legal action?’
‘Against me, do you mean?’ da Prè asked.
Brunetti nodded.
‘No. Nothing.’ Da Prè was silent for a moment and then added, ‘Just because they got their hands on her, that doesn’t mean they could get their hands on her money.’
‘Did she ever talk about this what you call “getting their hands on her”?’ Brunetti asked.
‘What do you mean?’
‘Did she tell you that they were after her to give them her money?’
‘Tell me?’
‘Yes, did she ever say anything, while she was at the casa di cura, about their trying to get her to leave her money to them.’
‘I don’t know,’ da Prè answered.
Brunetti didn’t know how to ask. He left it for da Prè to explain, which he did. ‘It was my duty to go and see her every month, which was all the time I could afford, but we had nothing to say to one another. I’d bring her any post that had accumulated, but it was always just religious things: magazines, requests for money. I’d ask her how she was. But there was nothing we could talk about, so I’d leave.’
‘I see.’ Brunetti saw, getting to his feet; she had been there three years and had left everything to this brother who had been too busy to visit her more than once a month, no doubt occupied with his little boxes.
‘What’s this all about?’ da Prè asked before Brunetti could move away from him. ‘Are they going to try to contest the will?’ Da Prè started to say something else but stopped himself, and Brunetti thought he saw him begin to smile, but then the little man covered his mouth with his hand, and the moment was gone.
‘Nothing, really, Signore. Actually, we’re interested in someone who worked there.’
‘I can’t help you there. I didn’t know any of the staff.’
Vianello got to his feet and came to stand by Brunetti, the warmth of his previous conversation with da Prè serving to mitigate the badly disguised indignation which emanated from his superior.
Da Prè asked no more questions. He got to his feet and led the two men out of the room and then down the corridor to the door of the apartment. There, Vianello took his upraised hand and shook it, thanking him for having shown him the lovely snuffboxes. Brunetti, too, shook the upraised hand, but he gave no thanks and was the first one through the door.
* * * *
Chapter Four
‘Horrible little man, horrible little man,’ Brunetti heard Vianello muttering as they walked down the steps.
Outside, it was cooler, as though da Prè had stolen the warmth from the day. ‘Disgusting little man,’ Vianello continued. ‘He thinks he owns those boxes. The fool.’
‘What, Sergeant?’ Brunetti asked, not having followed Vianello’s leap of thought.
‘He thinks he owns those things, those stupid little boxes.’
‘I thought you liked them.’
‘God, no; I think they’re disgusting. My uncle had scores of them, and every time we went there, he insisted on making me look at them. He was just the same, acquiring things, and things, and things, and believing he owned them.’
‘Didn’t he?’ Brunetti asked, pausing at a corner the better to hear what Vianello was saying.
‘Of course he owned them,’ Vianello said, stopping in front of Brunetti. ‘That is, he paid for them, had the receipts, could do with them whatever he wanted. But we never really own anything, do we?’ he asked, looking directly at Brunetti.
‘I’m not sure what you mean, Vianello.’
‘Think about it, sir. We buy things. We wear them or put them on our walls, or sit on them, but anyone who wants to can take them away from us. Or break them.’ Vianello shook his head, frustrated by the difficulty he had in explaining what he thought was a relatively simple idea. ‘Just think of da Prè. Long after he’s dead, someone else will own those stupid little boxes, and then someone after him, just as someone owned them before he did. But no one ever thinks of that: objects survive us and go on living. It’s stupid to believe we own them. And it’s sinful for them to be so important.’
Brunetti knew the sergeant to be as godless and irreverent as he was himself, knew that the only religion he had was family and the sanctity of the ties of blood, and so it was strange to hear him speak of sin or define things in terms of it.
‘And how could he leave his own sister in a place like that for three years and visit her once a month?’ Vianello asked, as if he actually believed the question could admit an answer.
Brunetti’s voice was non-committal when he said, ‘I imagine it’s not such a bad place,’ in a tone so cool it reminded the sergeant that Brunetti’s mother was in a similar place.
‘I didn’t mean that, sir,’ Vianello hastened to explain. ‘I meant any place like that.’ Hearing how little better that was, he continued, ‘I mean, and not go and visit her more than that, just leave her there by herself.’
‘There’s usually a large staff,’ was Brunetti’s reply as he started off again and turned left at Campo San Vio.
‘But they’re not family’ Vianello insisted in the full belief that familial affection had a far greater therapeutic value than did any amount of service to be bought from the ‘caring’ professions. For all Brunetti knew, the sergeant could be right, but it was not a subject he wanted to pursue, not now, and not in the immediate future.
‘Who’s next?’ Vianello asked, agreeing by that question to change the subject and get them both away, at least temporarily, from subjects that led, if anywhere, to pain.
‘It’s up here, I think,’ Brunetti said, turning into a narrow calle that cut back from the canal they were walking along.
Had the heir of Conte Egidio Crivoni been standing at the door waiting for them, the voice that responded to their ring could have come no more swiftly Just as quickly the massive door snapped open when Brunetti explained that he had come seeking information about the estate of Conte Crivoni. Up two flights of stairs and then two more they went; Brunetti was struck by the fact that there was only one door on each landing, this a suggestion that each apartment comprised an entire floor, and that in its turn a suggestion of the wealth of the tenants.
Just as Brunetti set his foot on the top landing, a black-suited major domo opened the single door in front of them. That is, from his sombre nod and the distant solemnity of his bearing, Brunetti assumed him to be a servant, a belief that was confirmed when he offered to take Brunetti’s overcoat and said that ‘La Contessa’ would see them in her study The man disappeared behind a door for a moment but immediately reappeared, this time without Brunetti’s coat.
Brunetti had time to take in no more than soft brown eyes and a small gold cross on the left lapel of his jacket before the man turned and led them down the hall. Paintings, all portraits from different centuries and in different styles, lined the walls of both sides of the corridor. Though he knew it was the way of portraits, Brunetti was struck by how unhappy most of these people looked, unhappy and something more; restless, perhaps, as though they believed their time would be better spent conquering the savage or converting the heathen, not posing for some vain, earthly memorial. The women seemed convinced they could do it by the mere example of blameless lives; the men appeared to place greater faith in the power of the sword.
> The man stopped in front of a door, knocked once, then opened it without waiting for a reply. He held it open and waited for Brunetti and Vianello to enter, then pulled the door silently closed behind them.
A verse from Dante leaped to Brunetti’s mind:
Oscura e profonda era e nebulosa
Tanto che, per ficcar lo viso a fondo
Io noti vi discernea alcuna cosa.
So too was this room dark, as though by entering this place they, like Dante, had left behind the light of the world, the sun, and joy. Tall windows lined one wall of the room, all hidden behind velvet drapes of a particularly sober brown, something between sepia and dried blood. What light filtered in illuminated the leather backs of hundreds of very serious-looking volumes that lined the remaining walls from floor to ceiling. The floor was parquet, not thin strips of laminated wood laid down in sheets but the real thing, each cube carefully cut and positioned into place.
In one corner of the room, sitting behind a massive desk covered with books and papers, Brunetti saw the top half of a large woman dressed in black. The severity of her dress and expression rendered the rest of the room suddenly cheerful.
‘What do you want?’ she asked, Vianello’s uniform, apparently, enough to obviate the need to ask who they were.
From where he stood, Brunetti could get no clear idea of the woman’s age, though her voice —deep, resonant, and imperious — suggested maturity, if not advanced age itself. He took a few steps across the room until he was only a few metres from her desk. ‘Contessa?’ he began.
‘I asked you what you wanted,’ was her only response.
Brunetti smiled. ‘I’ll try to take as little of your time as possible, Contessa. I know how very busy you are. My mother-in-law often speaks of your dedication to good works and of the stamina with which you so generously aid Holy Mother Church.’ He tried to make his pronunciation of that last sound reverent, no easy feat.
‘Who is your mother-in-law?’ she demanded, speaking as if she expected it to be her seamstress.
Brunetti took careful aim and hit her right between her close-set eyes: ‘Contessa Falier.’
‘Donatella Falier?’ she asked, making a bad business of her attempt to hide her astonishment.
Brunetti pretended not to have noticed it. ‘Yes. It was just last week, I think, that she was talking about your latest project.’
‘You mean the campaign to ban the sale of contraceptives in pharmacies?’ she asked, supplying Brunetti with the information he needed.
‘Yes,’ he said, nodded as if in full approval, and smiled.
She rose from her chair and walked around the desk, her hand extended to him now that his humanity had been proven by his being related, if only by marriage, to one of the best-born women in the city. Standing, she revealed the full extent of the body that had been hidden by the desk. Taller than Brunetti, she outweighed him by twenty kilos. Her bulk, however, was not the heavy, compact flesh of the healthy fat person but the loose, jiggling suet of the perpetually immobile. Her chins rode one another down the front of her dress, itself little more than an immense tube of black wool that hung suspended from the immense buttress of her bosom. Brunetti did not sense that there had been much joy, nor even much pleasure, in the creation of all that flesh.
‘You’re Paola’s husband, then?’ she asked as she came up to him. As she drew closer, she pushed ahead of her the acrid scent of unwashed flesh.
‘Yes, Contessa. Guido Brunetti,’ he said, taking her offered hand. Holding it as he would a piece of the True Cross, he bowed over her hand and raised it to within a centimetre of his lips. Straightening himself, he said, ‘It’s an honour to meet you,’ managing to sound as though he meant it.
He turned to Vianello. ‘And this is Sergeant Vianello, my assistant.’ Vianello gave a smart bow, face as solemn as Brunetti’s, managing to look as though he had been struck to silence by the honour of the presentation, and he but a lowly policeman. The Contessa barely glanced at him.
‘Please sit down, Dottor Brunetti,’ she said, waving one fat hand toward a straight-backed chair that stood in front of her desk. Brunetti moved toward the chair then turned and waved Vianello to another one that stood nearer the door, where he would probably be safer from the refulgent glow of her nobility.
The Countess returned to her seat behind the desk and lowered herself slowly into her chair. She shifted some papers to her right and looked at Brunetti. ‘Did you tell Stefano there was some problem with my husband’s estate?’
‘No, Contessa, nothing as serious as that,’ Brunetti said with what he hoped was an easy smile. She nodded, waiting for his explanation.
Brunetti smiled again and began to explain, inventing as he went. ‘As you know, Contessa, there is an increasing tendency toward criminality in this country.’ She nodded. ‘It seems that nothing is any longer sacred, no one safe from those who will go to any lengths to extort and trick money from those who rightfully possess it.’ The Contessa nodded in sad agreement.
‘The latest form this sort of chicanery has taken is seen in those who prey upon the trust of older people, who try, and too often succeed, in deceiving them and swindling them.’
The Countess held up a thick-fingered hand. ‘Are you warning me that this is going to happen to me?’
‘No, Countess. You can rest assured of that. But what we want to be sure about is that your late husband’ — and here Brunetti permitted himself two slow shakes of his head, lamenting the fact that the virtuous are too soon taken from us — ‘that your late husband was not a victim of this sort of heartless duplicity.’
‘Are you telling me that you think Egidio was robbed? Deceived? I don’t understand what you’re talking about.’ She leaned forward and her bosom came to rest on the top of the desk.
‘Then let me speak plainly, Contessa. We want to be sure that no one managed to persuade the Count, before his death, to make a bequest to them, that no one exerted undue influence on him in order to obtain part of his estate and to prevent its going to his rightful heirs.’
The Contessa considered this but said nothing.
‘Is it possible that something like this could have happened, Contessa?’
‘What has caused you to have these suspicions?’ she asked.
‘Your husband’s name came up almost accidentally, Contessa, as we were pursuing another investigation.’
‘About people who are cheated out of their estates?’ she asked.
‘No, Contessa, of something else. But before acting officially, I wanted to come to you personally— because of the high regard in which you are held— and, if I could, assure myself that there was nothing to investigate.’
‘And what do you need from me?’
‘Your assurances that there was nothing untoward about your late husband’s will.’
‘Untoward?’ she repeated.
‘A bequest to someone not a part of the family?’ Brunetti suggested.
She shook her head.
‘Someone who was not a close friend?’
Again, a shake so definite as to set her jowls swinging.
‘An institution to which he extended charity?’ Brunetti saw her eyes light up here.
‘What do you mean by an institution?’
‘Some of these swindlers deceive people into making contributions to what they present as worthy charities. We’ve had cases of people being persuaded to give money to children’s hospitals in Rumania or to what they were told was one of Mother Teresa’s hospices.’ Brunetti pumped his voice full of indignation as he added, ‘Terrible. Shocking.’
The Countess met his eye and expressed the same judgement with a nod. ‘There was nothing like that. My husband left his estate to his family, as a man should. There were no strange bequests. No one got anything who shouldn’t have.’
Because he was in the Countess’s line of vision, Vianello took the liberty of nodding in strong affirmation of the propriety of this.
Brunetti got to hi
s feet. ‘You’ve relieved me greatly, Contessa. I was afraid that a man as generous as the Count was known to be might have become a victim of these people. But after speaking to you, I’m glad to learn that we can cancel his name from our investigation.’ He injected greater warmth into his voice and continued, ‘Speaking as a public official, I’m always glad when that happens, but I speak as a private citizen when I say that I am personally very pleased with this.’ He turned back toward Vianello and waved him to his feet.
When he turned around, the Contessa had come around her desk again and was heaving her mountainous girth toward him.