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  ‘Yes, Doctor. I plan to do that.’

  ‘Good. Is there anything else? If not, I really must get back to my patients.’

  ‘No, nothing else. It was very kind of you to talk to me. You’ve been very helpful.’

  ‘I hope so. I hope you find whoever did this and punish him.’

  ‘I’ll certainly do whatever I can, Doctor,’ Brunetti said politely, failing to add that his only interest was in the first and he didn’t care at all about the second. But perhaps Germans thought about such things differently.

  As soon as the line was clear, he dialed information and asked for the number of Dr. Valerio Treponti in Padova. When he reached the doctor’s office, he was told that Treponti was busy with a patient and could not come to the phone. Brunetti explained who he was, said the call was urgent, and told the receptionist he would hold on.

  While he waited, Brunetti leafed through the morning papers. Wellauer’s death had disappeared from the major national newspapers; it was present in the Gazzettino, on the second page of the second section, because a music scholarship in his name was being established at the conservatory.

  The line clicked, and a deep, resonant voice said, ‘Treponti.’

  ‘Doctor, this is Commissario Brunetti of the Venice police.’

  ‘So I was told. What do you want?’

  ‘I’d like to know if, during the last month, you’ve had as a patient a tall, elderly man who spoke Italian, very good Italian, but with a German accent.’

  ‘How old?’

  ‘About seventy.’

  ‘You mean the Austrian. What was his name? Doerr? That’s it, yes, Hilmar Doerr. But he wasn’t German; he was Austrian. Same thing, really. What do you want to know about him?’

  ‘Could you describe him to me, Doctor?’

  ‘Are you sure this is important? I’ve got six patients in my waiting room, and I have to be at the hospital in an hour.’

  ‘Could you describe him to me, Doctor?’

  ‘Haven’t I done that? Tall, blue eyes, middle sixties.’

  ‘When did you see him?’

  In the background at the other end of the line, Brunetti heard another voice say something. Then all sound disappeared as the doctor covered the mouthpiece of the phone. A minute passed, and then he was back, sounding even more hurried and impatient. ‘Commissario, I can’t speak to you now. I have important things to do.’

  Brunetti let that pass and asked, ‘Could you see me today, Doctor, if I came to your office?’

  ‘At five this afternoon. I can give you twenty minutes. Here.’ He hung up before Brunetti could ask him the address. Patiently, forcing himself to remain calm, he redialed the number and asked the woman who answered if she would give him the address of the doctor’s office. When she did so, Brunetti thanked her with deliberate politeness and hung up.

  He sat and thought about the easiest way to get to Padova. Patta, he knew, would order a car, a driver, and perhaps a pair of motorcycle escorts, should the traffic in terrorists be especially heavy on the autostrada that day. Brunetti’s rank entitled him to a car, but his desire to save time led him to call the station and ask when the afternoon trains to Padova left. The express to Milan would get him there in plenty of time to reach the doctor’s office by five. He would have to go to the train station directly after lunch with Padovani.

  * * * *

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Padovani was waiting inside the restaurant when Brunetti got there. The journalist stood between the bar and the glass case filled with various antipasti: periwinkles, cuttlefish, shrimp. They shook hands briefly and were shown to their table by Signora Antonia, the Junoesque waitress who reigned supreme here. Once seated, they delayed the discussion of crime and gossip while they consulted with Signora Antonia about lunch. Though a written menu did exist, few regular clients ever bothered with it; most had never seen it. The day’s selections and specialties were listed in Antonia’s head. She quickly ran through the list, though Brunetti knew that this was the merest of formalities. She quickly decided that what they wanted to eat was the antipasto di mare, the risotto with shrimp, and the grilled branzino, which she assured them had come fresh that morning from the fish market. Padovani asked if he might possibly, if the signora advised it, have a green salad as well. She gave his request the attention it deserved, assented, and said they wanted a bottle of the house white wine, which she went to get.

  When the wine was on the table and the first glass poured, Brunetti asked Padovani how much work he had to do before he left Venice. The critic explained that he had two gallery openings to review, one in Treviso and one in Milan, but he’d probably do them by phone.

  ‘Call the reviews down to the newspaper in Rome?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Oh, no,’ Padovani replied, snapping a bread stick in two and eating half. ‘I do the reviews by phone.’

  ‘Art reviews?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Of paintings?’

  ‘Certainly,’ Padovani answered. ‘You don’t expect me to waste my time going to see that crap, do you?’ When he saw Brunetti’s confusion, he explained. ‘I know both of the painters’ work, which is worthless. Both of them have hired the galleries, and both of them will send friends along to buy the paintings. One of them is the wife of a lawyer in Milan, and the other is the son of a neurosurgeon in Treviso, who runs the most expensive private clinic in the province. Both of them have too much time and nothing to do, so they have decided to become artists.’ He said the last word with undisguised contempt.

  Padovani interrupted himself long enough to sit back and smile broadly as Signora Antonia placed the oblong plates of antipasto in front of them.

  ‘What sort of reviews do you write?’

  ‘Oh, that depends,’ Padovani said, spearing a chunk of octopus with his fork. ‘For the doctor’s son, I say he shows “complete ignorance of color and line.” But the lawyer is a friend of one of the directors of the newspaper, so his wife “displays a mastery of composition and draftsmanship,” when, in fact, she couldn’t draw a square without making it look like a triangle.’

  ‘Does it bother you?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Does what bother me—writing what I don’t believe?’ Padovani asked, breaking another bread stick in half.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘In the beginning. I suppose it did. But then I realized it was the only way I could be free to write the reviews I really care about.’ He saw Brunetti’s look and smiled. ‘Come now, Guido, don’t tell me you’ve never ignored a piece of evidence or written a report in a way to suggest something other than what that evidence suggested.’

  Before he could answer this, Antonia was back. Padovani finished the last shrimp on his plate and smiled up at her. ‘Delicious, Signora.’ She took his plate, then Brunetti’s.

  Immediately she was back with the risotto, steaming and rich. When she saw Padovani reach out for the salt on the table, she said, ‘There’s enough salt already.’ He pulled his hand back as though it had been burned and picked up his fork.

  ‘But come, Guido, you didn’t invite me here—at the city’s expense, I hope—to chat about the progress of my career, nor to examine my conscience. You said that you wanted more information.’

  ‘I’d like to know what else you learned about Signora Santina.’

  Delicately, Padovani extracted a small piece of shrimp shell from his mouth, placed it on the side of his plate, and said, ‘I’m afraid, then, that I’ll have to pay for my own lunch.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because I can’t give you any more information about her. Narciso was just on his way out when I called him, and all he had time to do was give me the address. So all I know is what I told you that night. I’m sorry.’

  Brunetti thought it artless of him to make the remark about paying for his lunch. ‘Well, then, perhaps you could tell me about some of the other people instead.’

  ‘I’ll confess, Guido, that I’ve been busy. I’ve called a number of my friends here, and in Mila
n and Rome, and you have but to speak their names and I shall become a very fountain of information.’

  ‘Flavia Petrelli?’

  ‘Ah, the divine Flavia.’ He placed a forkful of risotto in his mouth and pronounced it excellent. ‘You would no doubt also like to know about the equally divine Miss Lynch, I suppose?’

  ‘I’d like to know whatever you know about either one of them.’

  Padovani ate some more of his risotto and pushed it aside. ‘Do you want to ask me specific questions, or do you want me simply to chatter on?’

  ‘The chatter would probably be best.’

  ‘Yes. No doubt. So I’ve often been told.’ He sipped at his wine and began. ‘I forget where Flavia studied. Possibly Rome. In any case, the unexpected happened, as it always does, and she was asked to step in at the last minute and replace the ever ailing Caballé. She did, the critics went wild, and she was famous overnight.’ He leaned forward to touch the back of Brunetti’s hand with one finger. ‘I thought I might, for dramatic purposes, divide the story into two parts: professional and personal.’ Brunetti nodded.

  ‘That, pretty much, was the professional. She was famous, and she remained that way. Remains that way.’ He sipped at his wine again, poured some more into his glass.

  ‘So now for the personal. Enter the husband. She was singing in the Liceo in Barcelona, about two or three years after her success in Rome. He was something important in Spain. Plastics, factories, I think; in any case, something very dull but very profitable. In any case, lots of money, lots of friends with big houses and important names. Fairy-tale romance, garlands of flowers, truckloads of the things wherever she happened to be singing, jewels, all the usual temptations, and La Petrelli—who is, between parentheses, just a simple little country girl from some small town near Trento—went and fell in love and married him. And his factories, and his plastics, and his important friends.’

  Antonia arrived and carried away their plates, clearly disapproving of the fact that Padovani’s was still half full.

  ‘She continued to sing; she continued to grow more famous. And he seemed to like traveling with her, liked being the Latin husband of the famous diva, meeting more famous people, seeing his picture in the papers—all the sort of thing that people of his class need. Then came the children, but she continued to sing, and she continued to become more famous. But it soon became evident that things were no longer as honeymoonish as they had been. She canceled a performance, then another. Soon after that, she stopped singing for a year, went back to Spain with him. And didn’t sing.’

  Antonia approached the table with a long metal tray upon which lay their branzino. She placed it on a small serving table next to them and very efficiently cut two portions of tender white fish from it. She placed the portions in front of them. T hope you like this.’ The men exchanged a glance in silent acceptance of the threat.

  ‘Thank you, Signora,’ Padovani said. ‘Might I trouble you for the green salad.’

  ‘When you finish the fish,’ she said, and went back toward the kitchen. This, Brunetti reminded himself, is one of the best restaurants in the city.

  Padovani took a few bites of the fish. ‘And then she was back, as suddenly as she had disappeared, and the voice, during the year when she hadn’t sung in public, had grown bigger, become more that immense, clearvoice she has now. But now the husband was no longer in sight, and then there was a quiet separation, and an even more quiet divorce, which she got here, and then, when it became possible, in Spain.’

  ‘What were the grounds for the divorce?’ Brunetti asked.

  Padovani held up an admonitory hand. ‘All in good time. I want this to have the sound and pace of a nineteenth-century novel. So she began to sing again, our Flavia, and as I said, she was more magnificent than ever. But we never saw her. Not at dinners, not at parties, not at the performances of other singers. She had become something of a recluse, lived quietly with her children in Milan, where she was singing regularly.’ He leaned across the table. ‘Is the suspense growing?’

  ‘Agonizingly so,’ said Brunetti, and took another mouthful of fish. ‘And the divorce?’

  Padovani laughed. ‘Paola warned me about this, said you were a ferret. All right, all right, you shall have the truth. But unfortunately, the truth, as it so often has a habit of being, is quite pedestrian. It turns out that he beat her, quite regularly and quite severely. I suppose it was his idea of how a real man treats his wife.’ He shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘But she left?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Not until he put her in the hospital. Even in Spain, some people are willing to draw the line at this. She went to the Italian embassy with her children. With no money and no passports. Our ambassador at the time, like all of them, was a lick-spittle and tried to send her back to her husband. But his wife, a Sicilian—and let not a word be said against them—stormed down to the consular section and stood there while three passports were made out, and then she drove Flavia and her children to the airport, where she charged three first-class tickets to Milan to the embassy account and waited with them until the plane took off. It appears that she had seen Flavia sing Odabella three years before and felt she owed her at least that much.’

  Brunetti found himself wondering just how much of this could be important to Wellauer’s death and, made suspicious by Padovani’s ironical manner, wondering how much of it was true.

  As if reading his mind, Padovani leaned forward and said, ‘It’s true. Believe me.’

  ‘How did you learn all this?’

  ‘Guido, you’ve been a policeman long enough to have learned that as soon as a person reaches a certain level of notoriety, there are no more secrets.’ Brunetti smiled in agreement, and Padovani continued. ‘Now we have the interesting part, the return of our heroine to life. And the cause, as always in stories like this, is love. Well, at any rate,’ he added after a reflective pause, ‘lust.’

  Brunetti, aware of the man’s obvious enjoyment of the story he was telling, was tempted to take his revenge by telling Antonia that Padovani hadn’t eaten all his fish but had hidden it in his napkin.

  ‘Her period of seclusion lasted almost three years. And then there was a series of, well, involvements. The first was a tenor she happened to be singing with. A very bad tenor but, luckily for her, a very nice man. Unluckily for her, he had an equally nice wife, to whom he very quickly returned. Then there were, in quick succession’—he began to tick them off on his fingers as he named them—’a baritone, another tenor, a dancer, or perhaps that was the director, a doctor who seems to have slipped in unnoticed, and finally, wonder of wonders, a countertenor. And then, as quickly as all this had begun, it stopped.’ So did Padovani, while Antonia set his salad down in front of him. He prepared it, adding far too much vinegar for Brunetti’s taste. ‘She was seen with no one for about a year. And suddenly l’americana was on the scene and seemed to have conquered the divine Flavia.’ Sensing Brunetti’s interest, he asked, ‘Do you know her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  And what do you think of her?’

  ‘I like her.’

  ‘So do I,’ agreed Padovani. ‘This thing between her and Flavia makes no sense at all.’

  Brunetti felt uncomfortable about showing any interest in this, so he didn’t ask Padovani to expand on the subject.

  Asking him to do so was hardly necessary. ‘They met about three years ago, during that China exhibition. They were seen a few times after that, having lunch together, going to the theater, but then l’americana had to go back to China.’

  All the coy archness dropped out of Padovani’s voice. ‘I’ve read her books on Chinese art, the two that have been translated into Italian and the short one in English. If she’s not the most important archaeologist working in the field today, she soon will be. I don’t understand what she sees in Flavia, for Flavia, though she might be a genius, is really something of a bitch.’

  ‘But what about love?’ Brunetti asked, then amen
ded the question as Padovani had. ‘Or lust?’

  ‘That’s all right for the likes of Flavia; it doesn’t take her away from her work. But the other one has in her hands one of the most important archaeological discoveries of our time, and I think she has the judgment and the skill to—’ Padovani stopped suddenly, picked up his wine, and emptied his glass. ‘Excuse me. I seldom get carried away like this. It must be the influence of the stately Antonia.’

  Even though he knew it had nothing to do with the investigation, Brunetti couldn’t stop himself from asking, ‘Is she the first, ah, woman lover Petrelli had?’

  ‘I don’t think so, but the others have been passing affairs.’

  ‘And this? Is it different?’

  ‘For which one?’

  ‘Both.’

  ‘Since it’s gone on for three years, I’d say yes, it’s serious. For both of them.’ Padovani picked the last green leaf from the bottom of his salad bowl and said, ‘Perhaps I’m being unfair to Flavia. It costs her a lot, this affair.’