by Donna Leon
Vianello smiled and said, ‘To say the least of it, Madre.’
She had the grace to return his smile and spoke to the Inspector as she continued. ‘Just because our ideas are different doesn’t mean we don’t have as great a respect for honesty as you do, Signori.’
Neither man spoke, curious to learn where this was going to lead. ‘But we are …’ she stopped and glanced from one face to the other. ‘How can I say this? We are more frugal with the truth than you are.’
Frankly curious, Brunetti asked, ‘And why is that, Madre?’
Again, to get a better look at them, she stepped back awkwardly. ‘Perhaps because it costs us more to be honest than it does you,’ she said. Her accent had become more pronounced. She went on, ‘So we’ve come to value reticence, as well.’
‘Are you talking about Signora Altavilla?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes. She believed that one should always tell the truth, regardless of the cost. And I assume, from some of the things she told me, that she taught this to her son.’
‘Do you think that’s an error?’ Brunetti asked with real curiosity.
‘No, gentlemen,’ she said and smiled again, a smaller smile. ‘It’s a luxury.’
She reached behind her and opened the door; she held it as they passed through, and they heard it close as they started down the steps.
9
As they emerged into the sunlight, Vianello said, ‘I never know what to do in situations like this.’
‘Situations like what?’ Brunetti asked, starting across the campo and back towards the Questura.
‘When someone pretends to know less than they do.’
Brunetti turned to the left and towards the church. ‘Hmmm,’ he muttered, letting Vianello know that he agreed.
‘All that talk about honesty,’ Vianello said. He stopped at the top of the bridge and rested his forearms on the parapet. He stared down at a boat moored to the side of the canal and continued, ‘It’s clear she knows – or suspects – more than she’s willing to let on. She’s a nun, so she probably believes it’s not right to raise unfounded suspicions or pass on gossip.’ Then, in a lower voice, he added, ‘Though I can’t imagine a convent where that doesn’t happen.’
Brunetti let that pass, waiting.
‘She’s a southerner,’ Vianello said. ‘And a nun.’ Brunetti grew alert to hear just what sort of generalization was coming. Vianello went on, ‘So that means she wanted us to know or suspect something but couldn’t bring herself to say it directly.’
Brunetti had to agree. Who knew what went on the mind of a nun, much less one from the South? They drank discretion with the first taste of mother’s milk and grew up with frequent examples of the consequences of indiscretion. He remembered the recent shock-video of a very ordinary, very casual, daytime murder in Naples: one shot, then the second to the back of the head, while people continued about their business. No one saw anything; no one noticed a thing.
It was hard-wired into them: to talk indiscreetly or say anything that might cause suspicion was to endanger not only yourself but everyone in your family. This was the Truth, no matter how many years a person had spent in a convent in Venice. Brunetti was as likely to sprout angel wings and fly off to Paradise as Madre Rosa was to speak openly to the police.
‘She made truth sound like a handicap, didn’t she?’ Vianello shoved himself away from the parapet. He raised his arms and let them fall to his sides in a gesture of complete confusion, but before Brunetti could speak, they were interrupted by the ringing of his phone.
‘Guido? It’s me,’ Rizzardi said.
‘Thanks for calling.’
Wasting no time, Rizzardi went on: ‘The mark on her throat,’ he said, but then stopped. When Brunetti said nothing, the pathologist continued, ‘It could be a thumbprint.’
Brunetti tried to imagine where the other fingers could have been when the thumbs were on her throat, but he permitted himself only, ‘Ah.’ And then, “Could be”?’
Rizzardi ignored the provocation and continued. ‘There are three faint marks that are probably bruises on the back of her left shoulder, and two on her right. And another one – barely visible – in front.’
Brunetti tilted his head to the side and trapped the phone against his shoulder. He raised his cupped hands in front of him, then he positioned his thumbs and bent his hands into claws. ‘Are the marks in the right places?’ he asked, not thinking it necessary, with Rizzardi, to say more than that.
‘Yes,’ the pathologist answered, then slipped back into his usual mode to continue, ‘They are not inconsistent with her having been grabbed from the front.’
‘“Not inconsistent”?’ Brunetti asked.
Ignoring this, Rizzardi asked, ‘You remember the cardigan she was wearing?’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered.
‘It would have cushioned a lot of the force: that could explain why the marks are so diffused.’
‘Could it be anything else?’ Brunetti asked, wondering if Rizzardi’s caution was like an accent, and he would never lose it.
‘In the mouth of a clever defence attorney, those marks on her back,’ Rizzardi began, his speculation about a possible court case sufficient to tell Brunetti how convinced he was that Signora Altavilla had been the victim of violence, regardless of how unwilling he was to say it directly, ‘could have happened when she fell against a radiator, or she had been trying to give herself a back massage and squeezed too hard, or she lost her balance and fell against the door when she was letting herself into the apartment—’
Brunetti cut him off. ‘Ettore, don’t tell me what it could be. Tell me what it is.’
Rizzardi behaved as if Brunetti had not spoken and went on, ‘I know lawyers and you know lawyers who would argue she fell against the door five times, Guido.’
Unable to bridle his anger, Brunetti snapped, ‘I can figure out for myself what could have happened. For God’s sake, just tell me what did happen.’ There followed a long pause, during which Brunetti considered that he might have gone too far. People did not talk to Rizzardi that way.
‘Someone grabbed her from the front, and it’s possible they shook her,’ Rizzardi said with a clarity that surprised Brunetti. No hesitation, no rhetorical self-protection, no compromise. When had the pathologist ever been this clear?
‘Why do you say that?’
‘There’s something else.’
‘What?’
‘There’s a very faint injury to her third and fourth vertebrae. And some haemorrhaging in the muscles and ligaments around them.’
Brunetti refused to ask, bent on forcing Rizzardi to say it.
‘So someone could have shaken her.’
‘Or?’
‘Or it could have happened when she fell. The blow to her head was very hard, and she hit the radiator. I saw that last night.’
‘Or she was pushed,’ Brunetti said.
‘I can’t say that,’ Rizzardi told him.
Brunetti felt as though Rizzardi had a ration of frankness, and now he had used it up.
Finally the doctor said firmly, ‘Nothing is going to change the fact that the cause of death was a heart attack.’ Again, a pause that Brunetti did not interrupt, and then Rizzardi said, ‘Her heart was in bad shape, and a shock of any sort could easily have sent her into fibrillation.’
Brunetti was aware of Vianello at his side, unable to disguise his curiosity.
‘Did your men find propafenone in her apartment?’ the doctor asked.
Brunetti had not seen a written report of the results of the search, so he avoided answering and asked, ‘What’s that?’
‘It’s used for fibrillation; which is what killed her. A shock would bring it on.’
If you burn down a house and don’t know there’s a person inside, are you guilty of murder? If you kidnap a diabetic and don’t give them insulin, are you responsible for their death? And if you frighten a person with a weak heart? Rizzardi was right, this was a defence law
yer’s playground.
‘I’ll check. They will have listed everything,’ Brunetti said, though that was never a sure thing. ‘Anything else?’
‘No. Aside from the heart, she was healthy for a woman in her mid-sixties.’ Rizzardi paused for a long time. ‘But it was a ticking bomb, so maybe it didn’t matter how healthy she was.’ Brunetti heard a click, and the doctor’s voice was gone.
Brunetti switched off his phone and put it in his pocket. Turning to Vianello, he said, ‘She died of a heart attack. But he found signs that someone might have shaken her. That might have caused it.’
Vianello gave him an appreciative look. ‘You got Rizzardi to say that?’
Ignoring him, Brunetti said, ‘So we take a closer look at her life.’
Sounding almost angry, Vianello said, ‘She sounds like a decent person, not the sort who’d get threatened or shaken. Or killed. Good people shouldn’t be killed like that.’
Brunetti thought about this for some time, and then said, ‘Would that that were true.’
10
When he got to his office, Brunetti found nothing. That is, he found nothing from the crime squad: no photos of Signora Altavilla, no photos of the apartment or list of the objects found in it. He sat at his desk and thought about some of those objects, trying to find a way to see them as reflective of her life.
The apartment and the things in it had given no clue to her financial status. There had been a time, decades ago, when a mere address might resolve any doubt. San Marco and the palazzi on the Canal Grande bespoke prosperity, while to live in Castello was to confess to poverty. But vast amounts of money had migrated to the city; thus any building and any address could now be the newly restored home of luxury and excess, while the former owners or tenants reversed the path of generations and moved to the mainland, leaving the city to those who could afford it.
Brunetti ran his memory through the rooms. The furniture had been of good quality, all of it from some epoch between the old and the antique. There had been few books, few decorative objects: he could not remember a single painting. The whole place spoke of simplicity and of a pared-down life. What lingered most strongly in his memory was the placement of the sofa and the table: what sort of person would turn away from the view of the church and the mountains? Not only for herself but for guests who came to the apartment? He knew not everyone was addicted to beauty, but to choose to look at that boring room instead of both man-made and natural beauty made no sense to Brunetti and made him uneasy about a person who would make such a choice.
What to make of the unopened packets of cheap underwear in the drawers of the spare bedroom? A woman who bought cashmere sweaters of the quality of the ones in her drawers, regardless of her age, would not wear cotton underwear like that, or else his ideas about women were more mistaken than Paola occasionally said they were.
And why the three different sizes? Niccolini’s daughter, should she visit her grandmother, could hardly be old enough to wear even the smallest size; besides, parents were usually careful to send along the proper clothes when their children spent the night away from home. It might be that friends came to visit or perhaps sent their daughters to stay for a time in Venice. And the unopened toiletries in the bathroom? A person did not prepare for unexpected visits with that kind of thoroughness. It was her home, after all, not a hotel or lodging house.
He left his desk and went downstairs. Over the course of the years, he had discussed many topics with Signorina Elettra, though female lingerie was not among them. She was standing at her window when he came in, arms folded, looking across the canal at the same view that greeted him from his own windows: the façade of San Lorenzo looked no less decrepit from one floor below.
She turned and smiled. ‘Can I be of help, Commissario?’
‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti said and walked over to her desk. He leaned back against it and crossed his legs. Light streamed through the window, not only from the sun but from its reflection on the water in the canal below. He saw her thus in profile and realized that the outline of her features was less sharp than he remembered its being. Her chin was less clear-cut, her skin on her cheekbone less tightly drawn. He noticed, too, the small wrinkles on the outer side of her eye. He looked away and studied the church.
‘Have you any idea what it means if the drawers in the guest room of an apartment hold unopened packages of women’s underwear, but in three different sizes?’ She looked at him, and he saw her brow contract in confusion. ‘And tights and sweaters, also in different sizes.’ Then, recalling who he was speaking to and knowing this detail would make a difference, he added, ‘All plain cotton, the sort of thing you’d buy at a supermarket.’
She unfolded her arms and raised her chin, glancing back at the church. Her attention on the façade, she asked, ‘Is this in a man’s apartment or is it in the apartment you went to last night?’
‘It’s what we found in Signora Altavilla’s apartment, yes,’ he answered. ‘Why do you ask?’
Attention still directed at the church, as if consulting with it to find an answer, she said, ‘Because in a man’s apartment, it would suggest one thing; in a woman’s, something entirely different.’
‘What would it suggest in a man’s?’ he asked, though he suspected he knew.
She turned to face him and answered, ‘In a man’s, it would suggest fresh underwear for a woman – or for the women – he brought home for the night,’ she said, pausing to consider the sound of this. Then she added, sounding less certain, ‘But then it probably wouldn’t be simple cotton, would it? And it wouldn’t be in another room. Not unless he was very strange indeed.’
Presumably, then, she considered it not at all strange for a man to keep women’s underwear in differing sizes in his home, so long as it was expensive and kept in his bedroom. For a moment, Brunetti wondered what other information had been closed off to him by the vows of matrimony. But he confined himself to asking, ‘And in a woman’s?’
‘There’s nothing to preclude the same explanation,’ she said, surprising him with how ordinary she managed to make it sound. But then she smiled and added, ‘But more likely it would suggest she brought the women home for some more prosaic reason.’
‘Such as?’ he asked.
‘Such as to protect them from the sort of men who would invite them home for one night,’ she said in a tone that suggested she might be serious.
‘That’s a puritanical vision of things.’
‘Not necessarily,’ she said levelly. Then, in a more accommodating voice, she went on, ‘It’s more likely she’s helping illegal refugee women, letting them stay with her – safely – while they look for work or find a place to live.’ She paused, and he watched her run through possibilities. ‘Or it could be that she wanted to protect them from other people.’
‘Such as?’
‘Any man who thought he had a right over them. A boyfriend. A pimp.’
He gave her a level look but did not say anything. Brunetti toyed with her idea and, after a while, found that he liked the feel of it. To test it, he said, ‘Do you think she could organize that on her own? After all, where would she find out about them or be put in touch with them?’
As a knight would first swing into the saddle of his horse before lifting his lance, Signorina Elettra returned to the chair behind her computer. She hit a few keys, studied the screen, and hit a few more. Brunetti pushed himself away from the desk and turned to watch. After some time she waved a hand to him and said, ‘Come and have a look.’
He moved behind her and looked at the screen. He saw the usual photomontage of a woman, her face turned away from the viewer, the menacing shadow of a man lurking behind her. A headline declared ‘Stop Illegal Immigration.’ Below it were a few sentences, offering support and help and providing an 800 telephone number. He did not read the full text, but he did take out his notebook and write down the number.
‘You remember what the President said last year?’ Signorina Elettra asked him.
‘About this?’ he asked, indicating the screen and what it held.
‘Yes. Do you remember the number he gave?’
‘Of victims?’
‘Yes.’
‘No, I don’t.’
‘I do,’ she said, and Brunetti could all but hear her adding that she remembered because she was a woman and he did not because he was a man. But she said nothing else, and Brunetti did not ask.
‘Would you like me to do anything, sir? Call them?’
‘No,’ he said too quickly; he saw that she was surprised by the answer as well as by the speed with which he gave it. ‘I’ll do it.’ He wanted to say something more to cover up the force of his response to her proposal, but that would be to draw attention to it.
‘Anything else, Commissario?’ he heard her asking.
‘No, thank you, Signorina. The number’s enough.’
‘As you will, Dottore,’ she said and bent her head over the screen.
Walking up the steps, Brunetti was assailed by uneasiness about his strong rebuff of Signorina Elettra’s offer; she was so obviously superior to most of the people who worked at the Questura that she deserved far better of him. Inventive and clever, she was also well versed in the law and would have been an ornament to any police department lucky enough to hire her as an officer. But she was not, and he should not permit her to present herself as a police officer when asking questions or requesting information on the phone. It was bad enough that he turned a blind eye to the various acts of cyber-piracy in which he knew she engaged; indeed, acts which he encouraged her to commit. There was a line somewhere between what she could and could not be permitted to do: Brunetti’s dilemma was that the line he drew was never straight and was never drawn in the same place twice.
On his desk, delivered there he had no idea how, Brunetti found the autopsy report as well as the one from the scene of crime team. He stacked the papers in the centre of the desk, pulled his reading glasses from their case in his pocket, slipped them on, and started to read.