Unto Us a Son Is Given

by Donna Leon

  ‘Did you touch her? Go near her?’

  ‘No, sir.’ He sounded almost offended by Brunetti’s question and explained in a serious voice, ‘I watch a lot of television, sir, and I know you’re not supposed to go near to dead people until the police have seen them.’ He spoke as if in reproof of a careless Brunetti.

  ‘That was very wise of you, Signore,’ Brunetti said, making it sound like real praise. The man nodded as at a compliment, and Brunetti asked, ‘How long was it before our men got here?’

  ‘It must have been twenty minutes.’

  ‘And did you stay there?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I did. First I called Franca and asked her to stay there. I told her the police would be coming.’

  ‘And what did you do until they got here?’

  ‘I stayed in the room with Mr Adler.’

  ‘What did he do?’

  ‘At one point, sir, he sat down on the floor, sort of slid down the wall before I got to him. I asked if I should call a doctor, but he told me no, that he just had to sit down.’

  ‘Did he say anything else?’

  ‘No, sir. He sat there and I stood by the door until your men arrived.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘When they arrived, one of them – he was young but he seemed to be in charge – thanked me for calling and asked me to tell him what happened. After I did, he said he’d take care of everything and I could go back to the desk.’

  ‘And then?’

  The man seemed confused by the question.

  ‘Then what did you do?’ Brunetti repeated.

  ‘I came back down here and told Franca she could go back to the kitchen,’ Rezzante said and then remained silent for some time. ‘It’s always strange when there’s a death in a hotel, sir. None of us likes it.’ When Brunetti did not comment or ask a question, he added, ‘It’s because they’re often alone when they die, sir. And that shouldn’t happen to anyone.’

  Brunetti thanked him, asked for the home address and phone number of the dead woman, and when he had it, went over to the staircase.

  20

  At the top of the stairs, Brunetti turned to the right, towards the two rooms. He saw the officers: Alvise standing stiff in front of the door at the end of the hallway, Pucetti in front of the one before it. Alvise snapped out a salute, and Pucetti raised his hand towards his forehead, then let it drop.

  Brunetti looked at his watch: it was just after 1 a.m. He approached Pucetti. ‘Are they here yet?’

  ‘Sì, Signore,’ Pucetti answered. ‘Bocchese is with them.’

  ‘How many?’

  ‘Bocchese and two technicians.’

  Brunetti turned to Alvise, not wanting him to be offended. ‘Good evening, Alvise,’ he said.

  Alvise saluted again but said nothing.

  Brunetti saw that the door behind Pucetti was ajar and nudged it with his foot. Across the room, Bocchese, white-suited, gloved, booted, stood at the door leading to the other room, his nose only a few centimetres from the handle as he dusted it and the surrounding wood. Without turning, the chief technician said, ‘Good evening, Guido.’

  Brunetti was distracted from answering by the presence of two other white-suited men standing over something on the floor, their legs partially blocking his sight of it. One of them stepped back a bit, the better to photograph an angle of what lay there, and Brunetti saw the short grey hair he’d noted that afternoon, though this time he saw only the back of her head, for she lay facing away from him.

  ‘Can I come in, Bocchese?’ he asked.

  ‘Of course,’ the technician answered, still busy with his brush.

  Brunetti walked to a place in the room from which he could see the dead woman. Stripped of vitality, stripped of energy, she looked smaller, and he saw her thinness and fragility.

  ‘I had a look,’ Bocchese said. He turned towards the woman, as if she deserved the respect of his attention as he spoke about her. ‘I’d say she was strangled.’

  ‘By hand or with something else?’ Brunetti asked, aware of how strange that sounded. Things were made by hand, built by hand, not meant to be killed by hand.

  ‘Oh,’ Bocchese said. ‘I don’t know. I didn’t want to look closely. That’s for Rizzardi.’ He shook his head, perhaps as a sign of pity for the woman who lay on the floor. ‘Her fingernails are blue.’

  Brunetti nodded. He’d seen it before.

  ‘Good evening, gentlemen,’ a man’s voice said from the doorway. Brunetti turned and saw Ettore Rizzardi, the chief medico legale of the city and a man he considered a friend. He wore a sober blue suit. A light camel overcoat was draped over one arm. He held a black leather bag.

  ‘Tomasini said you’d be here,’ Rizzardi added.

  ‘I knew the victim.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Rizzardi said, then asked, ‘Can you tell me anything?’

  ‘I met her for the first time this afternoon,’ Brunetti said. ‘She’s an old friend of a friend of mine. She was here to plan a memorial service for him. The man at the desk wasn’t sure of her movements this evening, only that her friend, whose room this is, came in just before midnight and found her.’ He thought of anything else he should add. He didn’t mention Bocchese’s remark about her fingernails: Rizzardi was the pathologist, after all.

  Rizzardi moved towards a chair but stopped and gave a questioning glance to one of the technicians. At his nod, the doctor draped his coat over the back of a chair and walked over to the dead woman.

  He went down on one knee and leaned over her body. Bracing one palm on the floor, he leaned farther over her and brought his face closer to her neck. He pushed himself to his feet and moved to the other side of her body, then knelt again. He reached back to his bag, opened it, and pulled out a packet of disposable plastic gloves. After handing another package to Brunetti, he stripped his open and removed the gloves, stuffed the empty package in his bag, and put the gloves on.

  Leaning over the woman again, he stuck one finger inside the collar of her dress, to give himself a better view of her neck, then let it fall back into place. He looked up at the technicians. ‘You finished with the photos?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes, Doctor,’ one of them said.

  ‘Guido?’ Rizzardi asked, and Brunetti was left with no choice but to kneel down on the other side of the body and help Rizzardi shift her onto her back. He saw the bruising then, straight across her throat. He looked at that, not at her face, and saw that there was no sign of the stronger pressure points caused by fingers, and then he looked away.

  Rizzardi got to his feet and pulled off the gloves, dropped them into his bag. Looking down at the woman, he said, ‘She’s been strangled, probably with some sort of cloth.’ He glanced at his watch to make sure of the time so as to enter it on his report.

  He turned to Brunetti to ask, ‘Was she wearing a scarf when you saw her this afternoon?’

  Brunetti remembered seeing her get off the plane, walk ahead of him to the exit, arm in arm with Rudy. Then on the boat, then here at the hotel. ‘I don’t think so,’ he said.

  ‘There might be something under her fingernails,’ Rizzardi said and turned to the technicians. The men nodded without a word.

  Rizzardi picked up his bag and coat. ‘I’ll do it tomorrow morning, but I don’t think there’ll be much to find. Only if she managed to scratch his hands or his clothing.’

  Brunetti felt no surprise at Rizzardi’s use of ‘his’. Women didn’t often strangle, and when they did, it was not other women, but too often their own children. What a horrible piece of information to have floating in his mind, he realized.

  Rizzardi moved towards the door, and Brunetti took the opportunity to follow him. He stopped to ask Bocchese, ‘Will you see to having the rooms sealed?’

  ‘The hotel won’t like it,’ the chief technician answered without bothering to look up from his work.

  ‘That’s too bad,’ Brunetti said flatly.

  Outside the room, Alvise saluted; Pucetti turned to face h
im but said nothing. ‘I’d like you two to stay here until they’re finished and then see that the seals are put on the doors. After the technicians leave, no one is to go into either room until the magistrate who’s put in charge of this says so.’ Pucetti nodded and Alvise saluted: neither spoke.

  Rizzardi chose to take the stairs; Brunetti caught up with him. ‘Would you like a drink?’ the doctor asked. ‘They’ll still serve us in the bar, I suppose.’

  ‘I have to talk to the man who found her.’

  ‘Ah,’ Rizzardi said with something that sounded like a sigh. ‘I don’t envy you that.’

  ‘He’s a friend.’

  ‘Even worse.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Know anything about her?’ Rizzardi asked as they turned into the final flight of steps.

  ‘Not really. I met her only today. She came with my friend – the one I have to talk to – to arrange a memorial service for another friend of hers who died recently.’ Though Rizzardi was looking forward and could not see him, Brunetti shrugged at the strange symmetry of these two things.

  ‘Friend of yours, as well?’

  ‘Yes. He was walking on the street with his sister, and he fell down dead.’

  Rizzardi stopped on the last step and turned to Brunetti. ‘My God: things I’ve seen, I’d wish that for everyone.’

  ‘Me, as well.’

  ‘I hope you get some sleep,’ Rizzardi said, then walked to the entrance and left the hotel without saying anything further.

  Rezzante was still behind the desk. ‘It’s the room on the right at the end of the corridor, Commissario,’ he said. Holding up the key card, he added, ‘We’ve put him in 203 and left toiletries and fresh pyjamas for him.’

  Brunetti took the plastic card, thanked him, and went towards the lounge to talk to Rudy. He told Tomasini he could go home.

  Rudy was sitting in an armchair in front of a gas fire, the sort with fake logs and a controlled open-gas flame that were now the only fires allowed in the city. Brunetti, who remembered the stove in his parents’ home, had always found these fires disappointing. It was impossible to cook on them, to heat water, or to dispose of papers and packaging.

  Rudy turned at the sound of Brunetti’s footsteps and spread his palms on the arms of his chair to push himself to his feet. ‘Don’t get up, Rudy,’ Brunetti said, then went over to his chair, patted his shoulder a few times, and sat on the sofa opposite him. He set the plastic card on the table between them and said, ‘They’ve put you in another room: 203.’

  Rudy looked at him but paid no attention to the card. Brunetti wondered if he had heard what he had said to him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Rudy, sorry for your loss.’

  Rudy tried to smile, but all he succeeded in doing was to make the wrinkles around his mouth and eyes contract. ‘She was my best friend, too, Guido.’ Though the shock of having found her was gone, mention of her made the tears start to slide from his eyes. He wiped at them with the back of his hands, then took the handkerchief from his breast pocket and blew his nose. He crumpled the handkerchief in his right hand and closed his eyes for a moment. When he opened them, he said, ‘Well? What do you need to know, Guido?’

  ‘I’d like you to tell me anything she said to you about what she was going to do today. We all came to the hotel together, and I remember her saying she was meeting someone in the afternoon and would be having dinner with British friends.’

  Rudy nodded and said, ‘There was a message waiting for her when we checked in. Lady Alison was not feeling well and asked Berta if they could cancel the dinner.’ He smiled and said, ‘I love the British and their “not feeling well”. It could be cholera or it could be a better offer, but they are always not feeling well and beg you to excuse them.’

  ‘And the other appointment?’

  ‘She didn’t say anything about it.’

  ‘Do you know who it was?’

  ‘No. She never said, but I knew it was important to her.’

  ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I sensed it from the way she spoke about it, but she was very cryptic.’

  ‘Tell me,’ Brunetti said.

  Rudy rested his head against the back of his chair and closed his eyes.

  ‘Tell me, Rudy,’ Brunetti repeated.

  ‘She sounded excited but not particularly eager.’

  ‘Tell me what she said, Rudy.’

  The tone opened Rudy’s eyes; Brunetti’s expression opened his mouth. ‘She said she wanted to talk to someone who was supposed to love Gonzalo and see if she could find out whether the love was real.’

  That was certainly cryptic enough. ‘Who?’

  ‘I have no idea. I don’t even know if it was a man or a woman. She spoke about a “person”.’

  ‘Are you telling me exactly what she said?’ Brunetti asked, doing his best to sound calm.

  ‘That’s what I remember,’ the other man answered, close to exhaustion.

  ‘Did she ever say anything about Campo Santa Margherita?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Did she know the city well?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Why do you ask that?’

  ‘I wondered if she knew it well enough to walk there or whether she’d take a taxi.’

  Rudy smiled involuntarily at the question. ‘Ah, you’ve got the wrong idea of Berta. All right, her husband is endlessly rich, but she’s a Chilean whose father was a member of Allende’s Cabinet.’

  Brunetti failed to see what relationship her father’s politics had with taxis. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘The family was socialist, fervently so, and so was she. Her father disappeared soon after Allende died, and Berta had to go into hiding until she found a way to get out of the country.’

  ‘I still don’t understand,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘She’d walk to Milano if she couldn’t find some form of public transport to take her there,’ Rudy said with soft insistence. ‘Her husband could easily charter a plane to bring her here,’ he began, his face suddenly filled with a boyish wistfulness. ‘We came on easyJet.’ His voice broke as he said the name, and he gave a nervous giggle.

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said and did not ask why her principles didn’t have them staying in the youth hostel. ‘Did she say anything else that you remember?’

  Rudy sat forward in his chair and crossed his hands primly on his lap. His eyes closed. Brunetti wondered if the day’s events had caught up with him and he had fallen asleep. He let some time pass, and then some more. Tiredness, until then kept at bay by action, found the opportunity to approach him. He sat back in the sofa and crossed his legs.

  Rudy opened his eyes and looked across at Brunetti. ‘Only that she had something to do for Gonzalo,’ he said and reached forward to take the key to his new room.

  Brunetti could think of nothing else to ask him and so got to his feet and asked Rudy if he’d like him to take him to his room.

  Rudy surprised him by saying that he would and held out a hand to Brunetti, who helped him to his feet. They took the elevator to the second floor, and Brunetti walked with the other man down the corridor arm in arm, looking for the room. In front of it, Rudy handed him the key. As if he were a bellhop, Brunetti pushed open the door and went around the room, switching on lights.

  A pair of pyjamas in a plastic wrapper lay on the bed, and in the bathroom there was everything a person would need as well as two bottles of mineral water, one natural and one sparkling.

  Rudy lingered on the threshold and seemed confused about where he was. He watched Brunetti move about the room. When Brunetti stepped back out of the bathroom after his quick examination, he found Rudy standing near the bed, looking down at the packaged pyjamas.

  ‘I’ll go to bed now,’ he said. ‘Thank you.’

  Together they walked to the door, which Rudy had forgotten to close. Brunetti stepped into the corridor and turned to the other man. Rudy put his hand on the side of Brunetti’s face and said, ‘Gonzalo was right. You’re a kin
d man. Goodnight, Guido.’

  Before Brunetti could speak, Rudy quietly closed the door.

  21

  Brunetti stopped at the desk to tell Rezzante that his two men would be spending the night outside the sealed rooms and asked that chairs be taken up to them and that they be offered coffee during the night as well as anything they wanted to eat. He took out his wallet and extracted his credit card.

  When he offered it to Rezzante, the man whipped his hands behind his back, as though Brunetti were offering him a burning branch. ‘No, please, Commissario. You are all our guests. I’ll send someone up with the chairs, and we’ll take care of your men during the night.’

  Brunetti hesitated a moment but decided to accept. He put his card back, saying, ‘Thank you and thank the hotel. I believe the technician has called the hospital and asked them to send an ambulance.’

  ‘They’ll be discreet, won’t they?’ Rezzante asked.

  ‘I’ll call them when I’m outside and tell them,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’ll also call tomorrow morning to let you know when the rooms can be opened again.’

  ‘Thank you, sir.’ Rezzante looked as though he were going to say something else but stopped.

  ‘What is it?’ Brunetti asked, stepping closer to the desk.

  ‘It’s a terrible thing for us when a person dies here.’ Before Brunetti could say anything, Rezzante went on. ‘I don’t mean here, this time, but always. A hotel – any hotel – isn’t the same for days, even longer. It’s strange because that’s what the person is, a stranger to us, and yet we all feel their death. Maybe it’s the absence of any real involvement with the person that lets us feel the mystery of death.’ He stopped, shrugged, and added, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘We’ll try to cause as little confusion as possible,’ Brunetti promised.

  ‘I hope you can …’ Rezzante began but substituted a wave of his hand for the ending of the sentence.

  ‘Thank you,’ Brunetti said. He realized that the barber they had in common was irrelevant: he felt sympathy with Rezzante because he could speak of the ‘mystery of death’. ‘And thanks again for your generosity to my men.’