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‘And what about the other sister?’
‘Papà thinks she went to live in Argentina, either right at the end of the war or soon after. He thinks she might have died there, but not until years later. Do you want to see if Papà can find out?’
‘No, Michele. She’s not important. What about Clemenza?’
‘She tried to make a comeback after the war, but the voice wasn’t the same. So she stopped singing. Papà said he thinks she lives here. Is that true?’
‘Yes. I’ve spoken to her. Did your father remember anything else?’
‘Only that he met Wellauer once, about fifteen years ago. Didn’t like him, but he couldn’t give any specific reason for it. Just didn’t like him.’
Brunetti heard the change in Michele’s voice that marked his passage from friend to journalist. ‘Does any of this help, Guido?’
‘I don’t know, Michele. I just wanted to get some idea of the sort of man he was, and I wanted to find out about Santina.’
‘Well, now you know.’ Michele’s voice was curt. He had sensed the policeman in the last answer.
‘Michele, listen, it might be something, but I don’t know yet.’
‘Fine, fine. If it is, then it is.’ He wouldn’t bring himself to ask for the favor.
‘If it does turn out to be anything, I’ll call you, Michele.’
‘Sure, sure; you do that, Guido. It’s late, and I’m sure you want to get back to sleep. Call me if you need anything else, all right?’
‘I promise. And thanks, Michele. Please thank your father for me.’
‘He’s the one who thanks you. This has made him feel important again. Good night, Guido.’
Before Brunetti could say anything, the line went dead. He switched off the light and slid down under the covers, aware now only of how cold it was in the room. In the dark, the only thing he could see was the photo in Clemenza Santina’s room, the carefully arranged V in which the three sisters posed. One of them had died because of Wellauer, and another had perhaps lost her career as a result of knowing him. Only the little one had escaped him, and she had had to go to Argentina to do it.
* * * *
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Early the next morning, Brunetti padded into the kitchen well before Paola was awake and, not fully conscious of his actions, started the coffee. He wandered back to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and toweled it dry, avoiding the eyes of the man in the mirror. Before coffee, he didn’t trust anyone.
He got back to the kitchen just as the coffeepot erupted. He didn’t even bother to curse, just grabbed the pot from the flame and slapped off the gas. Pouring coffee into a cup, he spooned in three sugars and took the cup and himself out onto the terrace, which faced west. He hoped the morning chill would succeed in waking him if the coffee failed.
Scraggy-bearded, rumpled, he stood on the terrace and stared off at the point on the horizon where the Dolomites began. It must have rained heavily in the night, for the mountains had manifested themselves, sneaking close in the night and now magically visible in the crisp air. They would pack up and disappear before nightfall, he was sure, forced out of sight by waves of smoke that rose up ever fresh and new from the factories on the mainland or by the waves of humidity that crept in from the laguna.
From the left, the bells of San Polo rang out for the six-thirty mass. Below him, in the house on the opposite side of the calk, the curtains snapped back and a naked man appeared at the window, utterly oblivious of Brunetti, who watched him from above. Suddenly the man sprouted another pair of hands, with red fingernails, which came reaching around him from behind. The man smiled, backed away from the window, and the curtains closed behind him.
The morning chill began to bite at Brunetti, driving him back into the kitchen, glad of its warmth and the presence of Paola, who now sat at the table and looked far more pleasant than anyone had a right to look before nine in the morning.
She gave him a cheery good morning; he returned a grunt. He set his empty coffee cup in the sink and picked up a second, this one topped with hot milk, which Paola had placed on the counter for him. The first had begun to prod him toward humanity; this one might finish the job.
‘Was that Michele who called last night?’
‘Um.’ He rubbed at his face; he drank more coffee. She pulled a magazine from the end of the table and paged through it, sipping at her own mug. Not yet seven, and she’s looking at Giorgio Armani jackets. She turned a page. He scratched his shoulder. Time passed.
‘Was that Michele who called last night?’
‘Yes.’ She was pleased to have gotten a real word from him and asked nothing more. ‘He told me about Wellauer and Santina.’
‘How long ago was all that?’
‘About forty years, after the war. No, just before it, so it was more like fifty years.’
‘What happened?’
‘He got the sister pregnant, and she died after an abortion.’
‘Did the old woman tell you any of this?’
‘Not a word.’
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll have to talk to her again.’
‘This morning?’
‘No; I’ve got to go to the Questura. This afternoon. Tomorrow.’ He realized how reluctant he was to return to that cold and misery.
‘If you do go, wear your brown shoes.’ They would help to protect him against the cold; nothing would protect him, or anyone, against the misery.
‘Yes, thanks,’ he said. ‘Do you want to take a shower first?’ he asked, remembering that she had an early class that morning.
‘No, go ahead. I’ll finish this and make some more coffee.’
As he walked by her, he bent to kiss her head, wondering how she managed to remain civil, even friendly, with the grumbling thing he was in the morning. He smelled the flowery scent of her shampoo and noticed that the hair just above her temple was faintly flecked with gray. He had never noticed it before, and he bent to kiss her there again, trembling at the fragility of this woman.
When he got to his office, he collected all the papers and reports that had accumulated concerning the conductor’s death and began to read through them all again, some for the third or fourth time. The translations of the German reports were maddening. In their exhaustive attention to detail—as in the list of items taken from Wellauer’s home during each of the two robberies—they were monuments to Germanic efficiency. In their almost total lack of information about the conductor’s activities, personal or professional, during the war years, they gave evidence to an equally Germanic ability to remove a truth by simply ignoring it. Given the current president of Austria, Brunetti had to admit it was a tactic that met with remarkable success.
Wellauer had discovered his second wife’s body. She had called a friend shortly before going down into the cellar to hang herself and had invited the woman to join her for a cup of coffee, a blending of the macabre and the mundane that upset Brunetti each time he read the report. Delayed, the woman had arrived only after Wellauer had found his wife’s body and phoned the police. That meant he could just as easily have found anything she might have left—a note, a letter—and destroyed it.
Paola had given him Padovani’s number that morning and told him that the journalist was planning to go back to Rome the following day. Knowing that the lunch could go on his expense account as ‘interviewing a witness,’ Brunetti called Padovani and invited him to lunch at Galleggiante, a restaurant Brunetti liked but could seldom afford. The other man agreed to meet him there at one.
He called down to the office where the translators worked and asked that the one who worked with German be sent up to him. When she arrived, a young woman he had often nodded to on the stairs or in the corridors of the building, he explained that he needed to put a call through to Berlin and might need her help if the person he spoke to didn’t speak either English or Italian.
He dialed the number Signora Wellauer had given him. The phone was picked u
p on the fourth ring, and a woman’s voice said crisply— Germans always sounded crisp to him— ‘Steinbrunner.’ He passed the phone to the translator and could understand enough of what she said to glean that the doctor was in his office, not in his home, which was the number he had been given. He signaled the translator to make the next call, listened while she explained who she was and what the call was about. She held up her hand in a waiting gesture and nodded. Then she handed the phone to him, and he thought that some miracle had occurred and Dr. Steinbrunner had answered his phone in Italian. Instead of a human voice, however, he heard mild-mannered, innocuous music coming across the Alps at the cost of the city of Venice. He handed the phone back to her and watched while she beat time in the air with her hand while they waited.
Suddenly she pulled the phone closer and said something in German. She spoke a few more sentences and then told Brunetti, ‘His receptionist is transferring the call. She said he speaks English. Do you want to handle it, then?’
He nodded, took the phone from her, but waved for her to stay there. ‘Wait and see if his English is as good as your German.’
Before he had finished this sentence, he heard a deep voice at the other end say, ‘This is Dr. Erich Steinbrunner. May I know to whom I’m speaking?’
Brunetti introduced himself and signaled to the translator that she could leave. Before doing so, she leaned across his desk and pushed a pad and pencil toward him.
‘Yes, Commissario, what can I do for you?’
‘I’m investigating Maestro Wellauer’s death, and I’ve learned from his widow that you were a close friend of his.’
‘Yes, I was. My wife and I were friends of his for many years. His death has hurt us both.’
‘I’m sure it has, Doctor.’
‘I wanted to go there for the funeral, but my wife is in very poor health and cannot travel, and I didn’t want to leave her.’
‘I’m sure Signora Wellauer understands,’ he said, surprised at the internationality of platitudes.
‘I’ve spoken to Elizabeth,’ said the doctor. ‘She seems to be bearing it well.’
Cued by something in his tone, Brunetti said, ‘She seemed somewhat . . . I’m not sure how to express this. She seemed somewhat reluctant that I call you, Doctor.’ When that got no answer, he added, ‘Perhaps it is too soon after his death for her to want to remember happier times.’
‘Yes, that’s possible,’ the doctor responded dryly, making it clear that he thought it wasn’t.
‘Doctor, might I ask you a few questions?’
‘Certainly.’
‘I’ve examined the Maestro’s datebook and saw that for the last few months of his life, he saw you and your wife frequently.’
‘Yes, we had dinner three or four times.’
‘But there were other times when your name alone was listed, Doctor, early in the morning. From the hour, I guessed that it might have been a professional visit—that is, that he was seeing you as a doctor and not as a friend.’ Rather belatedly, he asked, ‘Doctor, may I ask if you’re a . . .’ He stopped, not wanting to offend the man by asking if he was a general practitioner, and said, ‘I’m sorry I’ve forgotten the word in English. Could you tell me what your specialization is?’
‘Nose, ear, and throat. But particularly throat. That’s how I met Helmut, years ago. Years ago.’ The man’s voice grew warmer as he said this. ‘I’m known here in Germany as “the singers’ doctor.”‘ Did he sound surprised at actually having to explain this to anyone?
‘Is that why he was seeing you, because one of his singers was having trouble? Or was he having trouble with his voice?’
‘No, there was nothing wrong with his throat or his voice. The first time, he asked me to meet for breakfast, and it was to speak about one of his singers.’
‘And after that, Doctor, there were other morning dates listed in the book.’
‘Yes, I saw him twice. The first time, he came to the office and asked me to give him an exam. And then, a week later, I gave him the results.’
‘Would you tell me what those results were?’
‘Before I do, can you tell me why you think this is important?’
‘It seems that the Maestro was deeply preoccupied, worried about something. I’ve learned that from the people I’ve spoken to here. And so I am trying to find out what it might have been—anything that might have influenced his state of mind.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t see how this is pertinent,’ the doctor said.
‘Doctor, I’m trying to learn as much as I can about the state of his health. Remember, anything I learn might help me find the person responsible for his death and see that he is punished.’ Paola had often told him that the only way to appeal to a German was to invoke the law. The swiftness of the man’s response seemed to prove her right.
‘In that case, I’ll willingly help you.’
‘What kind of exam was it that you gave him?’
‘As I said, his voice and throat were fine. Eyesight perfect. There was a slight hearing loss, however, and it was this that made him ask for the exam.’
‘And what were the results, Doctor?’
‘As I said, a slight hearing loss. Minimal. The sort of thing that is to be expected in a man of his age.’ He immediately corrected himself: ‘Of our age.’
‘When did you give him the exam, Doctor? The dates I have are for October.’
‘Yes, it was sometime then. I’d have to check my records to give you the exact dates, but it was about that time.’
‘And do you remember the exact results?’
‘No, no, I don’t. But the loss was certainly less than ten percent, or I would have remembered.’
‘Is this a significant loss, Doctor?’
‘No, it’s not.’
‘Is it noticeable?’
‘Noticeable?’
‘Would it have interfered with his conducting?’
‘That’s exactly what Helmut wanted to know. I told him that it was nothing of that order, that the loss was barely measurable. He believed me. But that same morning, I had some other news to give him, and that news disturbed him.’
‘What was that?’
‘He had sent a young singer to me because she was having vocal problems. I discovered that she had nodes on her vocal cords that would have to be removed surgically. I told Helmut that it would be six months before she could sing again. He had been planning to have her sing with him in Munich this spring, but that was impossible.’
‘Is there anything else you remember?’
‘No, nothing in particular. He said he’d see me when they got back from Venice, but I took that to mean socially, the four of us together.’
Brunetti heard the slight hesitation in the man’s voice and asked, ‘Anything else, Doctor?’
‘He asked me if I knew anyone in Venice I could recommend. As a doctor. I told him not to be silly, that he was as healthy as a horse. If he got sick, the opera would find him the best doctor they could. But he was insistent, wanted to know if there was someone I could recommend.’
‘A specialist?’
‘Yes. I finally gave him the name of a doctor I’ve consulted with a few times. He teaches at the University of Padova.’
‘His name, Doctor?’
‘Valerio Treponti. He also has a private practice in the city, but I don’t have his number. Helmut didn’t ask for it, seemed content merely to have the name.’
‘Do you remember if he made a note of the name?’
‘No, he didn’t. In fact, at the time, I thought he was simply being obstinate. Besides, we were really there to talk about the singer.’
‘One last question, Doctor.’
‘Yes?’
‘During the last few times you saw him, did you notice any change in him, any sign that he might have been preoccupied or concerned about something?’
The doctor’s answer came after a long pause. ‘There might have been something, but I don’t know what it was.’
‘Did you ask him about it?’
‘One did not ask Helmut that sort of question.’
Brunetti restrained himself from saying that men who had been friends for more than forty years sometimes did. Instead he asked, ‘Have you any idea what it might have been?’
This pause was just as long as the first. ‘I thought it might have something to do with Elizabeth. That’s why I didn’t mention it to Helmut. He was always very sensitive about her, about the difference in their ages. But perhaps you could ask her, Commissario.’