by Donna Leon
‘What have you told them, sir?’
‘That the circumstances of her death are already under examination and we expect a report from the medico legale some time today or tomorrow.’
Brunetti nodded in approval. ‘Then I’ll see about getting in touch with the son, sir. The woman upstairs will surely know how to find him.’ Then, before Patta could ask, Brunetti said, ‘She was in no condition to answer questions last night, sir.’ When Patta did not answer, Brunetti said, ‘I’ll go and speak to her.’
‘About what?’
‘About her life, about the son, about anything she can think of that might provide us with reason for concern.’ He mentioned nothing about Palermo, nor did he say Vianello was going to speak to the neighbours below, fearing that Patta would jump to the conclusion that Signora Giusti was involved in her neighbour’s death.
‘“Concern”, Brunetti? I think it might be wiser to get the results of the autopsy before you begin to use words like “concern”, don’t you?’ Brunetti found himself almost comforted by the return of the Patta he knew, the master of evasion who so ably managed to deflect all attention that was not entirely positive or laudatory. ‘If the woman died a natural death, then it doesn’t concern us, and so I think we ought not to use that word.’
Instantly, as if he feared the press would somehow get hold of this remark and pounce upon its callousness, Patta amended it for those silent listeners, ‘Professionally, I mean, of course. At the human level, her death is, as is anyone’s, terrible.’ Then, as if prodded by his son’s voice, he added, ‘And doubly so, given the circumstances.’
‘Indeed,’ Brunetti affirmed, resisting the impulse to bow his head respectfully at the sibylline opacity of his superior’s words, and allowing a moment to pass in silence. ‘I believe there’s nothing we can say to the press at the moment, sir, certainly not until Rizzardi has told us what he found.’
Patta fell upon Brunetti’s uncertainty hungrily. ‘Then you think it was a natural death?’
‘I don’t know, sir,’ Brunetti answered, keeping to himself the mark near the woman’s collarbone. If the physical evidence did point to a crime, it would fall to Patta to reveal this news, thus reaffirming his role as chief protector of the safety of the city.
‘When we have the results, you should be the one to speak to the press, sir. They’ll certainly pay more attention to anything that comes from you.’ Brunetti wrapped the fingers of his right hand into a fist. Not even a beta dog had to continue lying on its back for so long, he told himself, suddenly tiring of his role.
‘Right,’ Patta said, restored to his good humour. ‘Let me know what Rizzardi tells you as soon as you see him.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘And find her son. His name is Claudio Niccolini.’
Brunetti wished the Vice-Questore good morning and went to the outer office to speak to Signorina Elettra, certain that she would easily find a veterinarian of the name Claudio Niccolini somewhere in the Veneto.
6
It proved far easier than he had imagined: all Signorina Elettra did was enter ‘Veterinarian’ and search the Yellow Pages for both cities, and she quickly found the number of the office of Dott. Claudio Niccolini in Vicenza.
Brunetti went back to his office to make the call, only to learn that the doctor was not in the office that day. When he gave his name and rank and explained that he had to speak to the doctor about the death of his mother, the woman with whom he was speaking said that Dr Niccolini had already been informed and was on his way to Venice, in fact was probably already there. The reproach in her voice was unmistakable. Brunetti offered no explanation for the delay in his call and, instead, asked for the doctor’s telefonino number. The woman gave it to him and hung up without further comment.
Brunetti dialled the number; a man answered on the fourth ring. ‘Sì?’
‘Dottor Niccolini?’
‘Sì. Chi parla?’
‘This is Commissario Guido Brunetti, Dottore. First, I want to offer my condolences for your loss,’ Brunetti said, paused, and then added, ‘I’d like to speak to you about your mother, if I might.’ Brunetti had no idea what his authority was, since he had gone to the woman’s home almost by default, and he had certainly not been given any formal assignment to look into the circumstances of her death.
The other man took a very long time to answer, and when he did he blurted out, ‘Why …’ and then stopped. After yet another seemingly interminable pause, he said, fighting to control his uneasiness, ‘I didn’t know the police were involved.’
If that’s what he thought, Brunetti decided it was best to let him go on believing it. ‘Only because the first call came to us, Dottore,’ Brunetti said in his blandest bureaucratic voice. Then, switching registers to that of the beleaguered official, much put upon by the incompetence of others, he added, ‘Usually the hospital would send a team, but because the person who reported the death called us, instead, we were obliged to go.’
‘Ah, I see,’ Niccolini said in a calmer voice.
Brunetti then asked, ‘May I ask where you are, Dottore?’
‘I’m at the hospital, waiting to speak to the pathologist.’
‘I’m already on my way there,’ Brunetti lied effortlessly, then added, ‘There are some formalities; this way I can attend to them and also speak to you.’ Without bothering to wait for Niccolini’s reply, Brunetti said, ‘I’ll be there in ten minutes,’ and snapped his phone closed.
He didn’t bother to check if Vianello was in the officers’ squad room but left the Questura quickly and started towards the hospital. As he walked, he mulled over Niccolini’s tone as much as his words. Fear of involvement with the police was a normal response in any citizen, he realized, so perhaps the nervousness he had heard in the man’s voice was to be expected. Added to this, Dottor Niccolini was speaking from the hospital, where the body of his dead mother lay.
The beauty of the day interrupted his reflections. All it needed was the tang of burning leaves to recreate in his memory those lost days of late-autumn freedom when he and his brother, as children, had roamed at will on the islands of the laguna, sometimes helping the farmers with the last harvests of the year and wildly proud to be able to take home bags filled with the fruit or vegetables with which they had been paid.
He crossed Campo SS. Giovanni e Paolo, conscious of how perfect the light would be today for the stained-glass windows of the basilica. He went into the Ospedale. The vast entrance hall devoured most of the light, and though he passed through courtyards and open spaces on the way to the obitorio, the enclosing walls destroyed the sense that he was in the open air.
A man stood in the waiting room outside the morgue. He was tall and heavy-boned, with the body of a wrestler at the end of his career, muscle already beginning to lose its tone but not yet turned to fat. He looked up when Brunetti came in, saw but failed to acknowledge the arrival of another person.
‘Dottor Niccolini?’ Brunetti asked and extended his hand.
The doctor was slow in registering Brunetti, as if he had first to clear his mind of other thoughts before he could accept the presence of another person. ‘Yes,’ he finally said. ‘Are you the policeman? I’m sorry, but I don’t remember your name.’
‘Brunetti,’ he said.
The other man took Brunetti’s hand more from habit than desire. His grip was firm but definitely fleeting. Brunetti noticed that his left eye was minimally smaller than the other, or set at a different angle. Both were deep brown, as was his hair, already greying at the temples. His nose and mouth were surprisingly delicate in a man of his stature, as though designed for a smaller face.
‘I’m sorry to meet you in these circumstances,’ Brunetti said. ‘It must be very difficult for you.’ There should be some formulaic language for this, Brunetti thought, some way to overcome awkwardness.
Niccolini nodded, tightened his lips and closed his eyes, then turned quickly away from Brunetti, as if he had heard something from the door to the morgue.
Brunetti stood, his hands behind him, one hand holding the other wrist. He became aware of the smell of the room, one he had smelled too many times: something chemical and sharp that tried, and failed, to obliterate another, this one feral and warm and fluid. Across from him, on the wall, he saw one of those horror posters that hospitals cannot resist displaying: this one held grossly enlarged pictures of what he thought were the ticks that carried encephalitis and borreliosis.
Speaking to the man’s back, Brunetti could think of nothing but banalities. ‘I’d like to express my sympathies, Dottore,’ he said before he remembered that he had already done so.
The doctor did not immediately answer him, nor did he turn. Finally, in a quiet, tortured voice, he said, ‘I’ve done autopsies, you know.’
Brunetti remained silent. The other man pulled a handkerchief from the pocket of his trousers, wiped his face and blew his nose. When he turned, his face looked for a moment like the face of a different man, older somehow. ‘They won’t tell me anything – not how she died or why they’re doing an autopsy. So all I can do is stand here and think about what’s happening.’ His mouth tightened into a grimace, and for a moment Brunetti feared the doctor was going to start to cry.
There being no suitable rejoinder, Brunetti allowed some time to pass and then went over and, without asking, took Niccolini’s arm. The man stiffened, as though Brunetti’s touch was the prelude to a blow. His head whipped around and he stared at Brunetti with the eyes of a frightened animal. ‘Come, Dottore,’ Brunetti said in his most soothing voice. ‘Perhaps you should sit down a moment.’ The other man’s resistance disappeared, and Brunetti led him over to the row of plastic chairs, released his arm slowly and waited while the doctor sat down. Then Brunetti angled another chair to half face him and sat.
‘Your mother’s upstairs neighbour called us last night,’ he began.
It appeared to take Niccolini some time to register what Brunetti was saying, and then he said only, ‘She called me this morning. That’s why I’m here.’
‘What did she tell you?’ Brunetti asked.
Niccolini’s hands, almost against his will, began to pull at one another. The sound, rough and dry, was strangely loud. ‘That she’d gone down to tell Mamma she was home and to get her post. And when she went in, she found … her.’
He cleared his throat and suddenly pulled his hands apart and stuffed them under his thighs, like a schoolboy during a difficult exam. ‘On the floor. She said she knew when she looked at her that she was dead.’
The doctor took a deep breath, looked off to Brunetti’s right, and then went on. ‘She said that when it was all over and they’d taken her away – my mother – she decided to wait to call me. Then she did. This morning, that is.’
‘I see.’
The doctor shook his head, as if Brunetti had asked a question. ‘She said that I should call you – the police. And when I did, they – I mean you – I mean the person I spoke to at the Questura – he said that I had to call the hospital to find out anything.’ He pulled out his hands and folded them in his lap, where they remained motionless. He studied them, then said, ‘So I called here. But they wouldn’t tell me anything about it. All they did was tell me to come here.’ Then he added, ‘That’s why I was surprised when you called me.’
Brunetti nodded, as if to suggest that the police were not involved, all the while considering how very intent Niccolini was on distancing the police from his mother’s death. But what citizen would not do the same? Brunetti tried to free his head of suspicion and of a bureaucracy capable of inviting this man to this place at this time, and said, ‘I apologize for the confusion, Dottore. In these circumstances, it must be doubly painful.’
Silence fell between them. Niccolini returned his attention to his hands, and Brunetti decided it would be wiser to say nothing. The circumstances, the location, the awfulness in course in the other room – all of these things oppressed them and weakened their desire to speak.
It was not too long, though Brunetti had no idea of how much time elapsed, before Rizzardi, having changed from his lab jacket into his usual suit and tie, appeared at the door. ‘Ah, Guido,’ he said when he saw Brunetti. ‘I wanted to …’ he began, but then noticed the other man, and Brunetti watched him realize that this had to be a relative of the woman whose autopsy he had just finished. Seamlessly, he turned his attention to him and said, ‘I’m Ettore Rizzardi, medico legale.’ He went over and extended his hand. ‘I’m sorry to see you here, Signore.’ Brunetti had seen him do it countless times, but each time it was new, as though the doctor had only this moment discovered human grief and wanted to do his best to comfort it.
Niccolini got to his feet and clung to Rizzardi’s hand. Brunetti saw Rizzardi’s lips tighten at the force of the other man’s grip. In response, the pathologist moved closer and put his left hand on the man’s shoulder. Niccolini relaxed a bit, then gasped for air, tightened his lips and bent his head back. He took a few deep breaths through his nose, then slowly released Rizzardi’s hand. ‘What was it?’ he asked, almost begged.
Rizzardi seemed not at all disturbed by Niccolini’s tone. ‘Perhaps it would be better if we went to my office,’ the pathologist said calmly.
Brunetti followed them towards Rizzardi’s office, at the end of the corridor on the left. Halfway there, Niccolini stopped and Brunetti heard the veterinarian say, ‘I think I have to go outside. I don’t want to be in here.’ It was obvious to Brunetti that Niccolini was having trouble breathing, so he moved past Rizzardi and led the other two men through the various halls and courtyards, back to the main entrance and out into the campo, where he discovered that the beauty of the day lay in wait for them.
Returned to the sun and to the live world, Brunetti was overcome by a craving for coffee, or maybe it was sugar he wanted. As the three of them descended the low steps of the hospital and started across the campo, Niccolini put his head back again and let the sun wash over his face in a gesture Brunetti found almost ritualistic. They stopped near the statue of Colleoni, Brunetti eyeing with longing the row of cafés on the other side of the campo. Without asking, Rizzardi broke away from them and headed towards Rosa Salva, then turned and waved them both into motion.
Inside, Rizzardi ordered a coffee, and when the others joined him, they nodded to the barman for the same. People stood around, eating pastry, some already eating tramezzini, or drinking coffee, others having a late-morning spritz. How wonderful, and yet how terrible, to emerge from there and enter here, amidst the hiss of the coffee machine and the click of cups on saucers, and come face to face with this reminder of what we all know and feel uncomfortable knowing: that life plugs along, no matter what happens to any of us. It puts one foot in front of the other, whistling a tune that is dreary or merry by turn, but it always puts one foot in front of the other and moves on.
When the three coffees were on the bar in front of them, Rizzardi and Brunetti ripped open envelopes of sugar and stirred them into their cups. Niccolini stood looking at the cup as though uncertain just what it was. It was not until he was nudged by a man reaching past to replace his cup and saucer on the counter that he took a packet of sugar and poured it into his coffee.
When they were finished, Rizzardi put money on the counter, and the three men went back into the campo. A little boy, seeming no higher than Brunetti’s knee, whizzed past on a scooter, pushing with one foot, screaming with the wild thrill of it. A moment later, his father pounded past, out of breath and shouting, ‘Marco, Marco, fermati.’
Rizzardi walked to the railing surrounding the base of the statue of Colleoni and leaned back against it, looking down Barbaria delle Tole, the basilica on his left. Brunetti and Niccolini arranged themselves on either side of him. ‘Your mother died of a heart attack, Dottore,’ Rizzardi said with no introduction, eyes looking straight ahead of him. ‘It would have been very fast. I don’t know how painful it was, but I can assure you that it was very quick.’
Behind them
they could hear Marco’s continued shouts and his delight at the day and the discovery of speed.
Niccolini took a deep breath in which Brunetti heard the relief anyone would feel at the doctor’s words. The three men listened to the voice of the child and the antiphon of the father’s caution.
Niccolini cleared his throat and said, his voice hesitant, raw, ‘Signorina Giusti – my mother’s neighbour – said she saw blood.’ That said, he stopped, and when Rizzardi did not answer, he asked, ‘Is that true, Dottore?’ Brunetti looked at Niccolini’s hands and saw that they were drawn into fists that shook with tension.
The little boy screamed as he whizzed past them, and when he reached the other end of the campo, Rizzardi turned to Brunetti, as if asking him to contribute in some way, but Brunetti offered no help, curious to know how the pathologist would answer Niccolini.
Rizzardi reached back to grab the top of the railing and propped his weight against it. ‘Yes, there was some physical indication to explain that, but nothing inconsistent with a heart attack,’ Rizzardi said. The doctor’s lapse into medical jargon, Brunetti noticed, made no mention of the faint mark he had seen on Signora Altavilla. He excluded the possibility that the pathologist thought it meaningless: had that been the case, Rizzardi would surely have mentioned it, only to dismiss it.
Brunetti turned to see how Niccolini would respond to this non-answer, but he merely nodded to acknowledge that he had heard. Rizzardi continued, ‘If you like, I could try to explain to you exactly what happened. In the medical sense, that is.’ Seeing Rizzardi’s affable smile, Brunetti realized the pathologist had no idea of Niccolini’s profession, nor of the medical training that would have prepared him for it, and so could have no idea of the effect his condescension might provoke.
Niccolini asked in a very soft voice, ‘Could you be more specific about this “physical indication”?’
His tone, not his words, caught Rizzardi’s attention. The pathologist said, ‘There were signs of trauma.’ Ah, Brunetti found himself thinking: now we come to the mark on her throat.