A Question of Belief cb-19

by Donna Leon

  When he arrived at the Questura the following morning, the officer on duty told Brunetti that Ispettore Vianello wanted to speak to him. In the squad room, Vianello stood talking to Zucchero, but the young officer moved away when he saw Brunetti come in.

  ‘What is it?’ Brunetti asked when he reached Vianello’s desk.

  ‘I’ve been calling the Fontanas in the phone book and one of them, Giorgio, said the dead man was his cousin. When I asked if we could go and talk to him, he said he’d rather come here.’

  ‘Did it sound like he had anything to tell us?’

  Vianello made an open-handed gesture of uncertainty. ‘That’s all he said, that he’d come in now and talk to us.’

  ‘What did you tell him?’

  ‘That you’d be here by nine.’

  ‘Good,’ Brunetti said. ‘Come up with me.’ Vianello’s phone rang, and at a nod from Brunetti, he answered it with his name. He listened a moment, then said, ‘Good. Would you show him the way up to Commissario Brunetti’s office, please.’

  He hung up and said, ‘He’s here.’

  Quickly, they went upstairs. Brunetti threw open the windows, but that made little difference; the room remained sultry with trapped heat and stale air. A few minutes later, Zucchero knocked on the door jamb and said, ‘There’s a visitor for you, Commissario: Signor Fontana.’ He saluted neatly and stepped back.

  Araldo Fontana had been described as a small, undistinguished man, as though he were a minor character in a dull novel. Brunetti had had a chance to see the real Fontana the day before, but cowardice — there is no better word for it — had kept him from asking Rizzardi to show him.

  The man who came into Brunetti’s office looked like a character who had tried, and failed, to free himself from the pages of the same novel. He was of medium height, medium build, and had hair that was neither light nor dark brown, nor was there much of it. He stopped inside the door, stepped away from it quickly when Zucchero closed it behind him, and asked, ‘Commissario Brunetti?’

  Brunetti walked over to shake his hand.

  ‘Giorgio Fontana,’ the man said. His grip was light and quickly gone. He looked at Vianello, then walked over and extended his hand to him. Vianello took it, saying, ‘We spoke before. I’m Vianello, the Commissario’s assistant.’

  Vianello pointed to the chair beside his, then waited until the other man was seated before taking his own chair. Brunetti returned to his place behind his desk.

  ‘I’m very glad you came to speak to us, Signor Fontana,’ Brunetti said. ‘We’d begun a search for your cousin’s relatives, and you’re the first we’ve managed to contact.’ Brunetti spoke as though to suggest the police had already found the names, which was not the case. He gave what he hoped was a smile both grateful and gracious and said, ‘You’ve saved us time by coming to talk to us.’

  Fontana moved his lips in something that might have been a smile. ‘I’m afraid I’m the only one,’ he said. Seeing their glances, he went on, ‘My father was Araldo’s father’s only brother, and I’m his only child. So I’m all the family you have to look for,’ he concluded with a very small smile.

  ‘I see,’ said Brunetti. ‘Thank you for telling us. We’re grateful for any help you can give us.’

  ‘What sort of help?’ Fontana asked, almost as if he feared they were going to ask him for money.

  ‘Telling us about your cousin, his life, his work, any friends of his. Anything you think it might be important for us to know.’

  Fontana gave his nervous smile again, looked back and forth between them, at his shoes, and then, eyes still lowered, asked, ‘Will this be in the papers?’

  Brunetti and Vianello exchanged a quick glance; Vianello’s lips tightened in the half-grimace one gives at the discovery of something that might prove interesting.

  ‘Everything you tell us, Signore,’ Brunetti said in his most official voice, the one he used when it served his purposes to assert something other than what he knew to be the truth, ‘will be kept in strictest confidence.’

  His reassurances caused no visible signs of relaxation in Fontana, and Brunetti began to suspect this was a man who did not know how to relax or, if he did, would not be capable of doing it in the presence of another person.

  Fontana cleared his throat but said nothing.

  ‘I’ve spoken to your aunt, but in this painful time, it seemed unkind to ask her to speak about her son.’ Effortlessly, he transformed those things he had neglected to do into reality and said, ‘This afternoon, we have appointments with some of his friends.’

  ‘Friends?’ Fontana asked, as if uncertain about the meaning of the word.

  ‘The people who worked with him,’ Brunetti clarified.

  ‘Oh,’ Fontana said, averting his eyes.

  ‘Do you think colleagues would be a more accurate word, Signore?’ Vianello interrupted to ask.

  ‘Perhaps,’ Fontana finally said.

  Brunetti asked, ‘Did he talk about the people he worked with?’ When Fontana did not answer the question, he said, ‘I’m afraid I have no idea how close you were to your cousin, Signor Fontana.’

  ‘Close enough,’ was the only response he got.

  ‘Did he talk about work with you, Signore?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘No, not much.’

  ‘Could I ask you,’ Brunetti began with an easy smile, ‘what you did talk about, then?’

  ‘Oh, things, family things,’ was his sparse reply.

  ‘His family or yours?’ Vianello asked in a soft voice.

  ‘They’re the same family,’ Fontana said with some asperity.

  Vianello leaned forward and smiled in Fontana’s direction. ‘Of course, of course. I meant did you talk about your side of the family or his?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Did he talk about your aunt, his mother?’ Brunetti asked, puzzled that they could have spent so much time talking about so small a family.

  ‘Seldom,’ Fontana said. His eyes moved back and forth between them, and he always looked at the person who asked him a question, attentive to him while he answered, as if he had been taught this as a child and it was the only way he knew how to behave.

  ‘Did he ever talk about himself?’ Brunetti asked in a voice he worked at keeping low and steady and warm with interest.

  Fontana looked at Brunetti for a long time, as if searching for the trap or the trick that was sure to come. ‘Sometimes,’ he finally answered.

  If they kept at it this way, Brunetti realized, they would still be here for the first snow, and Fontana would still be looking back and forth between them. ‘Were you close?’ he finally asked.

  ‘Close?’ he repeated, as if he had already forgotten being asked this question.

  ‘In the way of friendship,’ Brunetti explained with no end of patience. ‘Could you talk openly to one another?’

  At first Fontana stared at him, as if puzzled at this novel way for two men to interact. But after some thought he said, in a lower voice, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Did he talk about his private life with you?’ Brunetti asked, imitating the voice of the priest who had heard his first confession, decades ago. He thought he saw Fontana relax minimally and said, ‘Signor Fontana, we want to find who did this.’ Fontana nodded a few times, and Brunetti repeated, ‘Did he talk about his life?’

  Fontana looked from Brunetti to Vianello and then he looked at his knees. ‘Yes,’ he said in a voice that was barely audible.

  ‘Is that why you’ve come to talk to us, Signor Fontana?’ Brunetti asked, wishing he had thought to ask this earlier.

  Eyes still lowered, Fontana said, ‘Yes.’

  Brunetti had no idea which part of Fontana’s life, personal or professional, could have caused his death, but no trace of this uncertainty was audible in his voice when he said, ‘Good. I think the reason for his death might be there.’

  This was enough to encourage Fontana to remove his attention from his knees. He looked at Brunetti, who was struck by th
e sadness in his eyes. Fontana said, ‘So do I.’

  ‘Could you tell us about him, then, Signore?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘He was a good man,’ Fontana began, surprising Brunetti by using the same words as Signora Zinka. ‘My uncle was a good man, and he raised Araldo that way.’ If Brunetti found it strange that Fontana did not mention his cousin’s mother, he kept it to himself.

  ‘We were always close when we were kids, maybe less so as we got older, but I guess that’s normal.’ It was said as a statement, but Brunetti sensed that it was really a question. Fontana took a breath and went on. ‘But then I married and had children. And things changed.’ Brunetti smiled at this and did not glance in Vianello’s direction. ‘I had less time for Araldo then.’

  ‘Did you still see him?’

  ‘Oh, of course. He’s the godfather of both of my children, and he took it seriously.’ Fontana paused and looked away from them, out the window at the roof of the Casa di Cura across the canal. It seemed to Brunetti that the mention of his children had strengthened Fontana; it had certainly strengthened his voice. Brunetti made no attempt to call his attention back.

  They waited and, after some time, Fontana said, ‘He was homosexual, Araldo.’

  Brunetti nodded, a nod that both acknowledged the remark and declared that the police already knew this.

  Fontana reached into his pocket and brought out a cotton handkerchief. He wiped his face and put the handkerchief back. ‘He told me years ago, perhaps fifteen, perhaps more than that.’

  ‘Were you surprised?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I think I wasn’t,’ Fontana said. Absently, he glanced down at his lap and pinched the crease in his trousers, ran his fingers back and forth along it, though the gesture made no difference against the weight of humidity in the room, in the city. ‘No, I wasn’t. Not really,’ he corrected. ‘I’d thought for years that he was. Not that it mattered to me.’

  ‘Did it matter to his parents, do you think?’ Vianello asked. ‘Were they surprised?’

  ‘His father was dead when he told me.’

  ‘And his mother?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Fontana said. ‘She’s a great deal smarter than she lets on. She might have known. Or suspected.’

  ‘Would it have bothered her?’ Vianello asked.

  Fontana shrugged, started to say something, stopped, then went on, speaking quickly, ‘So long as no one knew about it and he paid the rent, she wouldn’t care, not really.’

  Brunetti interrupted to remark, ‘That’s an unusual thing to say about a man’s mother.’

  ‘She’s an unusual woman,’ Fontana said, giving him a sharp look.

  A silence fell. Interesting as a discussion of Signora Fontana might be, Brunetti thought it was of little use to them. It was time to get back to Fontana’s death, so he asked, ‘Did your cousin ever say anything about his private life?’

  ‘Do you mean sex?’ Fontana asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Fontana tried again to help the crease in his trousers, but again the humidity won. ‘He told me,’ he began and stopped to clear his throat a few times. ‘He told me once that he envied me.’ He stopped.

  ‘Envied you what, Signor Fontana?’ Brunetti was finally forced to ask him.

  ‘That I love my wife.’ He looked away from Brunetti after he said this.

  ‘And why was that?’ Brunetti asked.

  Again Fontana cleared his throat, gave a few coughs, and said, not looking at him, ‘Because — this is what he said — he never managed to make love with anyone he really loved.’

  25

  Brunetti nodded again, suggesting that he was already in possession of this information. In his most sympathetic voice he said, ‘That must have made his life very difficult.’

  Fontana gave the phantom of a shrug and said, ‘In a way, but not really.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t understand,’ Brunetti said, though, thinking of Fontana’s mother, perhaps he did.

  ‘That way, he could separate his emotional life from his sexual life. He loved me and his mother and his friend Renato, but we were already — what’s the right way to say this? — out of bounds sexually.’ He paused, as if considering what he had just heard himself say, then went on. ‘Well, Renato isn’t, I suppose. But I think Araldo couldn’t stand confusion of any sort in his life. So by separating them, those two things, then he didn’t have confusion. Or he thought he didn’t.’ Again, that shrug, and Fontana said, ‘I don’t know how to explain this, but it makes sense to me. Knowing him, I mean. How he is. Was.’

  ‘You said a moment ago, Signore, that you think this might have had something to do with his death,’ Brunetti said. ‘Could you explain that to us, please?’

  Fontana folded his hands primly on his lap and said, speaking to Brunetti, ‘By keeping things separate, he was free — if that’s the word — to have anonymous sex. When we were younger. . that sort of thing was all right, I suppose. And then I, well, I changed. But Araldo didn’t.’

  After the silence had grown long, Brunetti asked, ‘Did he tell you this?’

  Fontana tilted his head to one side. ‘Sort of.’

  ‘Excuse me,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’m not sure I understand.’ He probably did, but he wanted to hear from Fontana what the other man had in mind.

  ‘He’d tell me things, answer questions, sort of hint at things,’ Fontana said, abruptly getting to his feet. But all he did was pull his trousers away from the back of his thighs and take a few steps on the spot to let them fall free from his body. He sat down again and said, ‘I knew what he meant to say, even if he didn’t say it.’

  ‘Did he tell you where this took place?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Here and there. In other people’s homes.’

  ‘Not in his?’

  Fontana gave Brunetti a severe look and asked, ‘Have you met his mother?’

  ‘Of course,’ Brunetti said, glancing at the surface of his desk and then back at Fontana.

  As if as a form of apology for the sharpness of his last remark, Fontana offered this: ‘Once, when I went to visit them, the speaker phone and door latch were broken, so I had to call Araldo on my telefonino, and he came down to let me in. As we were crossing the courtyard, he stopped and looked around. Then he said something about it being his little love nest.’

  ‘What did you say?’ Vianello broke in to ask.

  ‘I was embarrassed, so I ignored him and pretended he hadn’t said anything.’ A moment passed and he said, ‘I didn’t know what to say. We’d been so close as kids, and then he’d say something like this. I didn’t understand.’

  ‘Maybe he was embarrassed, as well,’ Brunetti suggested. Then, more appositely, ‘Did he ever mention anyone by name or make a remark that would allow you to identify one of his. .‘ Brunetti struggled to find the right word: ‘lovers’ seemed wildly wrong, given what Fontana had been telling him. ‘. . partners?’

  Fontana shook his head. ‘No. Nothing. Araldo would have thought that was wrong.’ He waited for them to ask him about that, and when they did not, he continued. ‘It was all right for him to talk about his own life, but he never said anything about anyone else: no names, not even ages. Nothing.’

  ‘Just that he couldn’t love them?’ asked Vianello in a sad voice.

  Fontana nodded, then whispered, ‘Or shouldn’t.’

  After that, the information Fontana provided was routine: his cousin had never introduced him to anyone who was other than a friend from school or a colleague at work, nor had he ever spoken with particular affection of anyone except Renato Penzo, whom he had praised as a good friend. He had always gone on vacation with his mother and had once joked that it was more work than going to work.

  In recent months he had seemed nervous and preoccupied, and when Giorgio commented on this, his cousin had told him only that he was having trouble at work and at home.

  ‘Many of the people I’ve spoken to,’ Brunetti began, ‘have told me he was a
good man. And you used the term yourself. Could you tell me what you mean by it?’

  A look of real confusion spread across Fontana’s face. ‘But everyone knows what that means.’ He looked towards Vianello for confirmation, but the Inspector remained silent.

  Finally Brunetti allowed himself to say it. ‘There are many people who would not think he was good once they learned he was homosexual.’

  ‘But that’s ridiculous,’ Fontana snapped. ‘I told you: he was a good man. For the last year he’d been collecting clothing for that woman — that servant — what’s her name?’

  ‘Zinka?’ Brunetti suggested.

  ‘Yes. He’d been collecting clothing for her family in Romania and mailing it to them. And I know his friend Penzo is trying to get her a permesso di soggiorno. And he had the patience of a saint with his mother. He’d have done anything to keep her happy. And he really was incapable of dishonesty. Of any sort.’ Then, as the memory came back, he said, ‘Ah, I’d forgotten. He told me, about two months ago, that he was thinking about moving, but he couldn’t bear the thought of how much it would upset his mother.’

  ‘Did he say why?’

  Fontana shook his head. ‘Nothing I could understand. Something about work and its not being right that they lived in that palazzo. But he didn’t really explain it.’

  ‘Do you think he would have moved?’ Brunetti asked.

  Fontana closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows. When he opened his eyes, he met Brunetti’s gaze and said, ‘If it meant disturbing his mother. .’ before his voice trailed away.

  ‘You really think that apartment is so important to her?’ Brunetti asked with surprise he could not hide.

  ‘You’ve spoken to my aunt?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You saw her little red cheeks and her stylish hair?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Fontana leaned forward so quickly in his chair that Vianello moved aside hurriedly to get away from him. ‘My aunt is a harpy,’ Fontana said with a violence that astonished Brunetti and left Vianello with his mouth ajar. ‘If she doesn’t get what she wants, other people have to pay for it, and she wants that apartment. Like she has never wanted anything in her life.’