Unto Us a Son Is Given

by Donna Leon

  ‘What makes you think I knew her?’ the voice finally asked.

  ‘The fact that you’re the son of her best friend,’ Brunetti explained. Then he decided to risk it, thinking that Torrebardo might well have spoken to her after Gonzalo’s death: ‘And the fact that you’re one of the people who spoke to her recently.’ He tossed it off, as though he were reading the man’s name from a printed list of the calls registered on Signora Dodson’s phone.

  There was a short silence before the man said, ‘I’m sure many people have spoken to her recently.’ It was the voice of a cultured person, light and clear, each syllable distinct from the next. Polite but not affable, as though the latter would be reserved for friends, certainly not wasted on police officers. Or officials.

  Years of experience and scores – perhaps hundreds – of conversations with people even distantly involved with a crime raised a tumultuous babble in Brunetti’s memory. Why did they always begin the same way, with the attempt to deflect the possibility that they were involved – even in the most minimal way – with what had happened? Innocent, guilty, it mattered not at all: most people reacted the same way, like a patient whose doctor asks if they eat a lot of sweets.

  ‘Of course, of course, but we’ve decided to call everyone on the list to see if they can remember anything that might be apposite to what happened to Signora Dodson,’ Brunetti said blandly.

  ‘Apposite?’ Torrebardo asked instantly, as though driven by instinct to reprove a servant he caught wearing one of his shirts.

  ‘It means having something to do with something else,’ Brunetti answered neutrally, hoping to bait him with his inability to be embarrassed by the other man’s sarcasm.

  ‘Ah,’ Torrebardo whispered, and to Brunetti it sounded very much like the noise an outboard motor made when it was suddenly switched into reverse. ‘Of course. I must not have heard you correctly.’

  ‘It’s nothing, sir. Bad line,’ Brunetti said affably and decided to strike while his opponent was down. ‘I wonder if you’d have time to come and see me, perhaps some time today?’

  Brunetti listened to the silence on the line, resisting the impulse to say something to make it disappear. Instead, he sat quietly, receiver turned away so that the other man might not hear his breathing.

  ‘What time would be convenient, Commissario?’ He could not have sounded more cooperative.

  ‘After lunch, perhaps,’ Brunetti said lightly. ‘I’ve a few people to see this morning. Perhaps at three?’

  ‘Certainly, Commissario. And your name again?’

  ‘Brunetti.’

  ‘Until three, then.’

  After he hung up, Brunetti thought of something his mother’s father had often said: ‘You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.’ He’d known a thing or two, his grandfather had, Brunetti thought. Even without knowing Latin, he’d known about captatio benevolentiae. He was a fisherman, but he was also the man people in Castello went to see when they received any official communication. Not only could he read them; he could sometimes make sense of them.

  Torrebardo understood the importance of the trick, although it had taken him some time to switch registers and use his honeyed voice when speaking to Brunetti. Too much time, Brunetti thought. The arrogance had flared up at the first mention of Signora Dodson but had begun to change at the suggestion that the police knew he had spoken to her. Torrebardo had not confirmed this, but Brunetti had gone ahead as though he had.

  As he stared out the window and mused upon il Marchese, whom he now had to consider Gonzalo’s son, his thoughts turned to Rullo’s son and his own failure to do anything about Patta’s problem with his neighbours. Was the boy nothing more than selfish, wilful, and badly behaved, or was something wrong with him that was not going to change as he grew older? For the child’s sake and for that of his parents, Brunetti wished it to be the first. Patta’s desire for peace at home paled in comparison to the other possibility.

  He went down to Signorina Elettra’s office and found her at the window, looking at the wisteria on the other side of the canal. It had not been trimmed in living memory, and now it hung down the wall, almost making contact with the water of the canal.

  When she saw who it was, she asked, ‘Aren’t plants supposed to grow upwards?’

  ‘I think so. Phototropism, I think it’s called,’ Brunetti said. ‘They search out the light.’

  ‘Then why is that one growing downward?’ she asked, pointing an accusing finger at the plant.

  ‘No idea. Maybe it’s simply perverse.’ Then, to prod her without having to ask, he added, ‘Like the son of the people who live below the Vice-Questore.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ she asked, visibly confused.

  ‘The little boy who hit Dottor Patta’s wife,’ he supplied.

  ‘Ah, of course,’ she said, surprised and making no attempt to disguise it. ‘I forgot,’ she said and blushed. ‘I forgot to tell you.’ Then, to save face, perhaps, ‘I did inform Dottor Patta.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘About Rullo. The boy’s father.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘It’s a common enough story, Commissario. He’s a violent man: his wife has gone to speak to the Carabinieri about him twice during the last two years.’ That, Brunetti knew, meant that it had become so bad that she had finally gone to the authorities, though not to the local police. If she was Venetian, she probably didn’t want to go to a place where people might know her or her family.

  ‘She’d never filed a formal complaint, but last week he put her in the hospital with a broken cheekbone.’ She closed her eyes after saying this.

  When she opened them to go on, Brunetti nodded, puzzled that there had been no report, at least none he’d noticed.

  ‘While she was in the hospital, she called Aurelio Fontana,’ Signorina Elettra continued, naming a lawyer in Padova whose fame as ‘Dottor Payout’ had spread through the entire North-East.

  ‘Oh my,’ Brunetti said. He knew that to hire a lawyer was to cross the Rubicon of divorce. To hire Fontana was to cross the Mississippi. ‘Don’t tell me she’s going to spend her husband’s money to hire Fontana.’

  ‘No. She’s the daughter of Barato,’ Signorina Elettra explained, naming the owner of one of the largest chains of supermarkets in the Veneto.

  Brunetti turned his hands palms up and began to rub his fingers against them.

  ‘What’s the matter, sir?’ she asked.

  ‘I feel money in the air,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Falling from the heavens, leaking from the ceiling, seeping out of the walls.’ Still holding his hands out and still wiggling his fingers, he turned full circle. ‘And all falling into the pockets of Aurelio Fontana.’

  Signorina Elettra smiled at this gesture of lèse-majesté. So far, she told him, Fontana had secured a writ that banned Rullo from his home, ownership of which was in his wife’s name. Rullo had also lost his position as director of one of the Barato supermarkets. Apparently Rullo had underestimated his wife’s – as well as his wife’s father’s – wrath.

  Signorina Elettra had called a friend who worked in Fontana’s offices and learned that a quiet divorce was already being planned, as discreet as the wedding of a pregnant woman had once been, and Signor Rullo was going to be issued with another writ, this one forbidding him to contact his wife or to come within 250 metres of her, his son, or their home. In return, no charges for assault would be made against him, and the divorce would go ahead unopposed on his part. The amount of his monthly payment to his wife was being discussed.

  ‘And the boy?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘It’s anyone’s guess,’ she answered. ‘He might quieten down because his father’s not there, or he might get worse because his father’s not there.’ She paused, then added, ‘There’s nothing in his school records that suggests he’s a problem. In fact, two of the teachers have remarked on what a sweet boy he is.’

  Brunetti didn’t bother to comment on her access to this information. Ente
ring the files of the Ministry of Education could probably be done with a nail file and a paper clip or their cyber equivalents.

  ‘Thank you for telling me, Signorina,’ he said, adding, ‘And the files on Signora Dodson and Signor Rodríguez de Tejeda?’

  He saw her lips tighten. ‘I’ve written again to try to encourage the people in Chile to send me their information about her, but they say that, because of the political unrest at the time …’ Brunetti nodded. So that’s what it’s called now.

  Signorina Elettra continued. ‘It’s the third time they’ve given that explanation, Commissario.’ She disguised her exasperation badly. ‘I’ll try the Spaniards now. She went there directly from Chile. She worked as a translator for years, but then she more or less dropped out of their system after she married the Englishman.’

  Her voice changed at the mere mention of her marriage. ‘The story is quite remarkable: she met Signor Dodson about twenty years ago, in Cairo. He was an official in the British Embassy there, and she was a tourist staying at a hotel where he was having dinner. And six weeks later they were married in the Coptic church in Cairo.’ She looked up and smiled, as at the end of a happy film. ‘In Cairo. She simply stayed there, then stayed on with him another four months until he retired and they went back to England.’

  ‘Sounds like something you’d read in a novel,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Only bad ones tell stories like that, I fear.’

  Brunetti thought it best to let that remark pass uncommented.

  ‘Let me print out the English information,’ Signorina Elettra said, ‘and I’ll put it on your desk. There’s a lot of society stuff: photos of her with famous people, and quite a few photos of her with your friend Gonzalo. Handsome man, wasn’t he?’ she said.

  ‘He’d have been happy to hear you say that, Signorina,’ Brunetti said, smiling at the memory of how proud Gonzalo had always been of his appearance.

  ‘Let me know if the Spaniards ever answer,’ he said and decided it was time to go home for lunch.

  Before three, he was back in his office, reading through the folder on Alberta Dodson that Signorina Elettra had left on his desk.

  He read the more complete account with some interest, for she had had a life far more varied and active than his own. Truth to tell, more active than that of most people. She’d left Chile a year after the coup that had brought the quietly monstrous Pinochet to power: the report made no attempt to connect these two events. She’d gone to Spain and was very soon a citizen, working as a translator from both French and English into Spanish. The fairy tale began in the late Nineties, when she met an Englishman in Cairo and fell in love. After that, she’d lived, it seemed, happily – not ever after, but until she was murdered in a hotel room in Venice.

  She had, as did many wealthy English ladies, done charity work, though hers seemed more genuine than most. She founded, and apparently supported, three hospices in Chile for abused women and children. Until three years before, she went often to Santiago to work at the hospices for weeks at a time. She also went to costume balls, apparently rode to hounds until no one could any more, and was often photographed in the company of persons who had titles, as did her husband.

  Her husband had two children by his former wife, who had died at least a decade before he met Alberta. He and Alberta had no children, although she was often photographed with his sons in poses that suggested easy familiarity and affection.

  Although married to an English nobleman, Alberta had never become a British citizen, saying once in an interview, when asked why she chose to retain her Spanish citizenship, ‘This passport and the person who helped me acquire it saved my life. I could never abandon either one.’

  Brunetti was reading these words when there was a knock at his door, and Alvise entered, saluted, and said, ‘Il Marchese di Torrebardo to see you, Dottore.’ Alvise moved parallel to the open door and held his salute as il Marchese came into the room. Resisting the temptation to follow the Marchese across the room to pull out his chair for him, Alvise substituted this with a click of his heels, after which he did a quick turn to the right and left the room, closing the door silently behind him.

  Neither man commented on Alvise’s behaviour, Brunetti because he thought it embarrassing, the other man, perhaps, because he thought it only correct.

  The younger man started to walk across the room. Brunetti got to his feet and came around the desk. He noted that Torrebardo seemed smaller than he had the other evening. His head came to just above Brunetti’s shoulders, and the rest of his body was in proportion to his height. He extended his hand, and Brunetti took it, only to be surprised by the force of Torrebardo’s grasp.

  ‘Thank you for coming to see me,’ Brunetti said and released the hand without entering into a contest of strength. He retreated around his desk and resumed his seat.

  He waved Torrebardo to the seat opposite him and studied his face: dark eyes and hair, fine nose, skin smooth and clear with good health. His was the sort of masculine face often seen in television ads for breakfast cereal, a symmetrical face that inspired trust.

  ‘It’s my duty, isn’t it?’ Torrebardo asked in the same precise voice he had used on the phone.

  ‘If more citizens thought like that, sir, my job would be a great deal easier,’ Brunetti said in his most friendly manner, then added, as though the idea came to him that instant, ‘Speaking of duty, Signor Marchese, it’s mine, as the officer assigned this case, to keep a record of whatever information I obtain, however irrelevant it might be.’ He saw, and ignored, the sharpening of Torrebardo’s attention. ‘So I inform you that I’m obliged to record any conversation I might have about the death of Signora Dubson,’ he added, intentionally mispronouncing her name.

  Torrebardo nodded but said nothing, so Brunetti reached to the side of his desk and clicked on the microphones placed under the top.

  ‘How is it that you knew her, if I might ask?’ Then, as if himself uncomfortable with the idea of speaking for a recording, Brunetti said, pronouncing clearly, ‘Alberta Du … Dodson.’

  Torrebardo pulled at the left leg of his trousers to smooth out a wrinkle. ‘She was my father’s best friend and had been for ever. He often spoke of her.’

  ‘Do you know where they met?’

  ‘In Chile. That’s what he told me. My father worked there for some years, until Pinochet.’

  ‘He was farming there, wasn’t he?’ Brunetti asked, avoiding the word ‘farmer’ and its suggestion of toil.

  ‘Yes. He had a cattle ranch. But he chose to sell up and leave,’ il Marchese said. ‘I suppose he sensed what was coming.’

  ‘Yes. Terrible, terrible,’ Brunetti said in his most solemn, and equally noncommittal, voice.

  When he said nothing further, Torrebardo continued. ‘He seldom talked about those times. He said terrible things happened, and he never knew whether he was safe or not.’ Listening to the other man talk about Gonzalo, Brunetti asked himself if he would be able to refer to his friend as this man’s ‘father’ or whether he would continue to avoid saying it.

  ‘Is that why he left?’

  Torrebardo was visibly relaxing. He’d put one arm over the back of his chair and had ceased to draw his mouth closed and chew at his bottom lip.

  ‘He told me once he had to leave to save someone else, but it wasn’t anything he ever explained to me,’ he said, then added, ‘Getting out was certainly the right decision at the time.’ There was that word, ‘save’, again. Hadn’t Berta said that Gonzalo had saved her life? On the boat, coming into the city. Then Rudy had interrupted, and she had changed the subject without explaining.

  ‘So they met there …’ Brunetti said, hoping to prod an explanation.

  ‘As I told you, he never talked much about those times,’ the younger man answered. ‘After all, it was a long time ago.’

  Brunetti nodded as though he understood the need to abandon the past and concentrate on the present.

  ‘Did you ever meet her?’
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  Torrebardo might have been expecting the question, so prompt was his answer. ‘We met in London, about two years ago. My father and I were there for a weekend, and we met her for tea.’ He’s going to tell me where they had tea, Brunetti thought, and as if the idea had brushed the words off the edge of Torrebardo’s tongue, he added, ‘At Claridge’s.’

  ‘Ah,’ Brunetti let fall, as if he dared not repeat the name. ‘I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Quite nice,’ il Marchese conceded.

  ‘Since you’d already met her, did she by any chance contact you to tell you she was coming to Venice?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No,’ the younger man answered instantly and then, as if startled by what he had just said, flashed a glance at Brunetti. ‘That is,’ Torrebardo continued, as though there had been only a comma after his last word, ‘she didn’t call me to tell me that she was coming. She called me when she was here.’

  ‘When was that?’ Brunetti asked amiably.

  ‘The afternoon she got here. It sounded as though she was calling me from the taxi.’ This, Brunetti reflected, was what Paola called ‘verisimilitude’, a technique used by writers of fiction: the small detail, seemingly meaningless, tossed into the story to make it more resemble the truth.

  ‘Ah, from the airport, you mean?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes, it must have been.’

  ‘What did she say?’

  ‘That she’d arrived in the city and wanted to tell me she was here, although she had no time to see me. She didn’t want me to find out from someone else that she had been here and not called.’

  ‘That was gracious of her,’ Brunetti said in a soft voice.

  ‘Yes,’ Torrebardo said with an even softer smile. ‘She was very kind.’

  ‘Did she say anything else?’

  ‘She told me she was planning a memorial service and would call me when she was sure of when it would be, and where, so that I could come.’