by Donna Leon
Calmly, as though he had not noticed her reaction, he went on, ‘It means that someone might have …’ and here he paused and gave every appearance of pausing to assess her trustworthiness before he went on, ‘frightened her or threatened her.’
More calmly, she asked, ‘Is this an official investigation?’
He lapsed into the truth. ‘No, not really. Perhaps it’s for my peace of mind, or her son’s. But I’d like to exclude the possibility that she was … that she was forced or frightened into death. I want to know if someone menaced her in any way, and I thought you might know something.’
‘Does it make a difference?’ she asked instantly.
‘To what?’
‘Legally,’ she said.
Without telling her about those small marks on Signora Altavilla’s neck and shoulders, Brunetti had no answer to give her.
She got up and went over to the front window that looked into the campo and at the thrusting church. Back still to them, she said, ‘From down on the ground, when I go out the door, I see the church, and it looks one way: heavy, locked into the ground. But from up here, it looks almost as if it had wings.’ She paused for a long time; Brunetti and Vianello exchanged a glance.
‘Same church. Different angle,’ she said and again lapsed into silence.
‘Like Costanza,’ she said after a long pause, and Brunetti and Vianello exchanged a quicker glance. ‘When I first saw the women on the stairs, I had no idea who they were. I knew they weren’t cleaning women because we use the same one, Luba. But I couldn’t ask Costanza. Because she was such a private person. But they’d be there, and I’d see the same ones a few times. In the beginning, as I said, I really didn’t notice them. And then I did, but they never caused any trouble, were always very polite, so I just sort of got used to them.’
‘Until?’ Brunetti asked, sensing that he was meant to ask and that she needed help to tell this story.
‘Until I found one of them on the steps, well, on the landing in front of Costanza’s door: I was coming up the steps, and there she was. Costanza wasn’t home – I rang her bell – and this girl was lying there. At first I thought she might be drunk or something. I don’t know why I thought that; they’d always been very quiet.’ She looked away, and Brunetti could see her thinking about what she had just said. ‘Maybe it’s because they’d all looked poor, and it was my bourgeois prejudice coming out.’ They watched her shoulders rise in an unconscious shrug. ‘I don’t know.
‘I couldn’t just leave her there, so I tried to help her get up. She was moaning, so I knew she wasn’t unconscious. That’s when I saw her face. Her nose was pushed to one side, and there was a lot of blood down the front of her coat. At first I didn’t notice it because the coat was black and I hadn’t really seen her face until I got her to sit up.’
Signora Giusti turned around and folded her arms across her chest. ‘I asked her what had happened, and she said she had fallen on the street. So I said I was going to call an ambulance and take her to the hospital.’
‘Was she Italian?’ Vianello asked.
‘No, I don’t know where she was from. The East somewhere, I’d say, but I’m not sure.’
‘Did she speak Italian?’
‘Enough to understand what I said and to tell me about falling. “Cadere. Pavimento.” That sort of thing. And enough to understand “ospedale”.’
‘What did she do?’
‘When she heard me say that, she panicked. She grabbed my hand and said “Prego, prego,” again and again. “No ospedale.” Things like that.’
‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I heard – we both heard – the door open. The front door downstairs.’ She closed her eyes, remembering the scene. ‘The woman – she was really still a girl. Couldn’t have been much more than a teenager, really – she panicked. I’ve never seen anyone do this, just read about it. She crawled over to the corner and pushed herself into it. She pulled her coat up over her head as if she thought that would hide her or make her invisible. But she kept moaning, so anyone would know she was there.’
‘And then?’
‘And then Costanza came up. She didn’t say anything, just stopped at the top of the steps. The girl was moaning again by then, like an animal. I started to say something, but she held up a hand and said the girl’s name, Alessandra or Alexandra, I don’t remember which, and then she said that everything was all right and there was nothing to be afraid of, the same sort of thing you’d say to children when they wake up in the night.’
‘And the girl?’ Vianello asked.
‘She stopped moaning, and Costanza went over and knelt down beside her.’ She looked at them, surprised to be remembering something now. ‘But she didn’t touch her. She just said her name a few more times and told her everything was fine and not to worry.’
‘Then what?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I stood up and Costanza said, “Thank you,” as though I’d just given her a cup of tea or something. But it was clear that she was telling me to leave, so I did. I went back up to my apartment.’
‘Did you ever see the girl again?’
‘No. Never. Then, after a few months, there was another one, but I never spoke to any of them again – there might have been two or three more that I knew about.’
‘Did Signora Altavilla ever refer to it or say anything to you about it?’
‘No. Nothing. It was as though it had never happened, and after a time it felt that way, too. I’d say hello to her – Costanza – on the steps, or she’d ask me in for a cup of tea, or she’d come up here if I suggested it. But neither of us ever said anything about it.’ She looked back and forth between them, as if asking them to understand. ‘You know how it is. After a time, something that’s happened, even if it isn’t very nice, if you just don’t talk about it, it sort of goes away. Not that you forget about it, not really, but it isn’t there any more.’
Brunetti recognized the familiarity of this, and Vianello said, ‘It’s the only way life can go on, really, if you think about it.’
At this, Brunetti glanced at Signora Giusti and their eyes met. She nodded, and Brunetti found himself nodding in return. Yes, it was the only way life could go on.
12
‘Did you ever find out what she was doing?’ Brunetti finally asked.
‘It doesn’t take much to understand, does it?’
‘What do you mean?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I think she was using her apartment as some sort of safe house for … well, for women at risk.’ Then, before he could ask, she explained, ‘From their boyfriends or their husbands, or in the case of these women from the East, for all I know, from the men who own them.’
‘Own?’ Vianello asked.
‘You’re a policeman. You should be able to figure it out,’ she said, surprising them both with the blunt challenge. Then she went on in a calmer voice, ‘What else could they be, if not prostitutes? That woman, Alessandra or Alexandra, she wasn’t Italian, she barely spoke the language. I doubt she was anyone’s wife. But I know she was frightened, terrified that whoever broke her nose would come back and finish the job. That’s probably why she disappeared.’
‘Can you remember,’ Brunetti began, ‘anything that your neighbour said in all this time – since you noticed the women coming into the house – that would suggest she felt in danger?’
In a voice that strove for patience, she said, ‘I told you, Commissario, Costanza was a very private person. She wouldn’t say anything like that. It wasn’t her way, her style.’
‘Even as a joke?’ Vianello interrupted to ask.
‘People don’t joke about things like this,’ she said sharply.
Brunetti was of a different mind entirely, having had plenty of evidence of the human capacity to joke at anything, no matter how terrible. It seemed to him an entirely legitimate defence against the looming horror that could afflict us. In this, he was a great admirer of the British; well, of the British who were, with th
eir wry humour in the face of death, their gallows humour – they even had a word for it – defiant to the point of madness.
‘Signora,’ Brunetti said in a voice meant to restore tranquillity, ‘did you draw conclusions on your own?’ Before she could ask, he said, ‘Here I’m asking for your general feeling or impression of what might have been going on.’
For some reason, his question calmed her visibly. Her shoulders grew less stiff. ‘She was doing what she thought was right and trying to help these poor women.’ She raised a hand, then turned and left the room and was quickly back, carrying a small piece of paper, the familiar receipt for a bill paid in the post office. She handed it to Brunetti and sat again in her place on the sofa.
‘Alba Libera,’ he read, wondering what Free Dawn she was involved with.
‘Yes,’ she said, raising a hand as if to wave away the banality of the title. ‘They probably wanted to have a title that would not call attention to itself.’
‘And who are they?’ Brunetti enquired: it was not the organization Signorina Elettra had found.
‘It’s a society for women. You can see it’s a non-profit,’ she said, pointing to the letters that followed its name.
Brunetti restrained his impulse to say that those letters were no guarantee of fiscal probity and, instead, asked, ‘What do they do?’
‘What Costanza did. Help women who run away, or who try to run away. They have a helpline, and they take it in turn to answer. And if they think there’s real danger, then they find a place for them to stay.’
‘And then what?’ asked the ever-practical Vianello.
Signora Giusti failed to control the coolness of the glance with which she greeted his question. ‘Taking them in’s a start, wouldn’t you say?’ she asked. Then she added, ‘They try to find them a place to live in a different city. And a job.’ She started to say something, stopped, then continued, ‘And sometimes they help them change their names. Legally.’
Brunetti nodded. ‘How do people give them money?’ he asked. ‘That is, how did you learn about them?’
She lowered her head and looked attentively at her hands. ‘I opened a piece of Costanza’s mail,’ she said in a low voice. ‘It was a mistake. Over the years, we’ve fallen into the habit of collecting the post from the box downstairs. There’s only one for all four apartments. She and I take one another’s so it doesn’t get confused with the mail for the people on the other floors. Or picked up by their kids. That’s happened a few times. So whichever of us comes in first,’ she explained, and Brunetti noted how easily she had fallen back into the present tense, ‘collects the mail. I put hers on the mat in front of her door, and she puts mine on the table beside her door. But one time – it must have been a year or two ago – I brought one of her envelopes up here by mistake and opened it while I was opening my own. There was a leaflet inside, and I read it through. Pretty terrible stuff. At the end there was one of these payment slips,’ she said, leaning over and touching the receipt. ‘And when I looked at it, I saw that her name was on it.’ She stopped and looked down at her hands, the very picture of a guilty schoolgirl. ‘And then I saw that her name was on the envelope.’
‘What did you do?’ Vianello asked.
‘I waited for her to come in, and when I heard her, I went downstairs and gave her the envelope and explained what had happened. She gave me a strange look: I’m not sure she believed me, not really. But she pulled the leaflet out of the envelope – I’d put it back in so it looked as if I hadn’t read it – and said I might like to have a look at it.’
She looked back and forth at their faces. ‘So I took it, and then I sent them some money, and now I do it every six months or so. They need it, God knows.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said. Suddenly his stomach growled. As happens in that situation, everyone pretended they had not heard it. He leaned forward and took out his wallet. He removed one of his visiting cards and wrote his telefonino number on the back. ‘Signora,’ he said, ‘this is my own number. If you remember anything or anything happens that you think I should know, please call me.’
Without glancing at the card, she set it on the arm of the sofa and got to her feet. She led them to the door and shook hands with them, wished them good day and closed the door as soon as they were outside the apartment.
‘Well?’ Vianello asked, as they started down the steps.
‘More proof that people don’t trust us,’ Brunetti said.
‘You and me or the police in general?’ Vianello asked as they reached the last flight.
‘The police,’ Brunetti answered and pulled open the door of the building, letting them out into the light of the day. ‘I think she did trust you and me. Or else she wouldn’t have told us about this Alba Libera thing.’ Then, after a pause, Brunetti asked, ‘Silly name, isn’t it?’
Vianello shrugged. ‘You mean because it’s boastful?’
Brunetti nodded, adding, ‘No more so than Opus Dei, I suppose.’
Vianello laughed and ran both hands through his hair, as if ridding himself of the events of the morning. ‘I’ll take the 51,’ the Inspector said. ‘It’s faster.’
For a moment, Brunetti was confused, but then he understood: Vianello simply was not opting to accompany him back the way they had come, towards Rialto, where the Inspector could get the One to take him towards Castello. Like Brunetti, he was eager to get home for lunch, and the boat that went back behind the island and down to the Celestia stop was the faster way to do it.
‘Later, then,’ Brunetti said and turned towards home. As his feet took care of navigation, Brunetti turned his imagination to what they had just heard. Calle Bernardo took him out into Campo San Polo, but he was blind to everything and everyone he passed, trying to picture the young woman with the bloody face crouched on the landing he had just crossed. He tried not only to picture her there but to imagine what had put her there or where she might have gone after Signora Giusti found her.
The existence of the man who had beaten the girl – Brunetti entertained no doubt as to the aggressor’s sex – was the first evidence that Signora Altavilla’s desire to help the unfortunate might have led to something other than sweetness and harmony. At this thought and his recognition of the cynicism with which he phrased it, Brunetti gave an involuntary grunt, something he did when he was surprised by his own worst thoughts.
If her son had known about the arrival and departure of these girls and women, it might explain his nervousness. He might have cautioned his mother against sheltering the women in her own home: Brunetti found it hard to think of a son who would not so warn his mother. But he lived in Lerino, she in Venice, and so he could exercise little real control over what she did or did not do, whom she did or did not receive in her own home.
He found himself in front of his own house, stopped there in the manner of a wind-up toy that had run into a wall but kept trying to move forward, still preoccupied with Signora Giusti’s story about the women going into and out of the apartment and with the memory of Dottor Niccolini standing outside the door of the mortuary. And, like tinnitus, he felt the low rumble of Patta’s need to do as little as possible to upset the public.
Someone came up behind him and said good afternoon. Brunetti turned and said hello to Signor Vordoni, who put his key into the lock and pushed open the door, waiting for Brunetti to precede him. Brunetti muttered his thanks and went in, then held the door for the older man, closed it quietly after him, and made a business of checking their mailbox to delay having to go up the stairs with him.
As he knew it would be, the box was empty, but by the time he had flipped it closed and turned his key in the lock, Signor Vordoni had disappeared. Brunetti started up the steps, all but heedless of the smells of lunch that greeted him on every landing.
He opened his own door, and at the scent of what must be something concerning pumpkin and something else that involved chicken, he rediscovered his interest in aromas and the food that produced them.
In
the kitchen he found Paola at the table, intent on a magazine: one of the habits she had developed over the years was to read soft-covered material only in the kitchen, books in her study and in bed. ‘The university on strike?’ he asked as he bent down to kiss her. She turned as he spoke, so he ended up kissing her right ear instead of the top of her head. Neither minded.
‘No,’ she answered. ‘Only one of my students showed up, so I cancelled the class and came home.’ She let the magazine slip on to the table, where it fell open at the article she was reading. Brunetti glanced down and saw what looked like an agitated white cloud covering the top half of the left page. ‘What’s that?’ he asked, picking it up and holding it at the distance his eyesight now dictated. She passed her reading glasses to him; he closed one earpiece and held the lenses up to his eyes. ‘Chickens?’ he asked. He took a closer look. Chickens.
He dropped the magazine on the table and handed her back her glasses. ‘What’s it about?’
‘It’s one of the usual horror articles, the sort of thing you wish you hadn’t started reading but then can’t stop once you begin. About what’s done to them.’
‘Chickens? Horror chickens?’ he enquired, listening to the sound of crackling from the oven, a sure portent of what was roasting inside.
‘It’s something Chiara brought home and told me to read.’ Paola rested her head on her hand and asked, ‘Do you think that’s another sign that they’ve grown beyond your control?’
‘What?’
‘When they stop asking you to read things and start telling you to read them?’
‘It could be,’ he said and went over to the refrigerator in search of something that would dull the horror of the chicken. Lying in one of the drawers at the bottom he saw a few bottles of Moët. ‘Where’d the champagne come from?’ he asked.
‘One of my students,’ she answered.
‘Students?’
‘Yes. He passed his final exam a few days ago, and he sent me a few bottles.’