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‘Do you still have those letters?’
She bowed her head and said softly, ‘Yes. I still have everything he ever gave me, all the letters he sent me.’
‘I still don’t understand how you could do it,’ he said, not shocked or outraged; simply puzzled.
‘I don’t know anymore, either. I’ve thought about it so much that I’ve probably invented new reasons for it, new justifications. To punish him? Or maybe I wanted to weaken him so much that he’d be absolutely, completely dependent on me. Or maybe I knew that it would force him to do what he did. I simply don’t know anymore, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand why.’ He thought she had finished, but she added, voice icy, ‘But I’m glad I did it, and I’d do it again.’
He looked away from her then. Because Brunetti was not a lawyer, he had no idea of the nature of the crime. Assault? Theft? If you steal a man’s hearing, what do you steal from him? And is the crime worse if the victim’s hearing is more important to him than other people’s hearing is to them?
‘Signora, do you believe he invited you backstage to make it look as if you had killed him?’
‘I don’t know, but he might have. He believed in justice. But if he wanted that, he could have arranged things to look far worse for me. I’ve thought about this, since that night. Maybe he left it like this so that I wouldn’t ever be sure what he intended. And this way, he wouldn’t be responsible for whatever happened to me because of it.’ She gave a small smile. ‘He was a very complex man.’
Brunetti leaned toward her and placed his hand on her arm. ‘Signora, listen very carefully to what happened during this interview,’ he said, deciding, thinking of Chiara and deciding. ‘We talked about the way your husband had confided in you his fears about his growing deafness.’
Startled, she began to protest. ‘But—’
He cut her off before she could say anything else. ‘How he told you of his deafness, how he feared it. That he had gone to his friend Erich in Germany and then to another doctor, in Padova, and that both of them had told him that he was growing deaf. That this explains his behavior here, his obvious depression. And that you told me you were afraid that he had killed himself when he realized that his career was over, that he had no future as a musician.’ His voice sounded as tired as he felt.
When she started to protest, he said only, ‘Signora, the only person who would suffer because of the truth is the only innocent one.’
She was silenced by the truth of this. ‘How do I do all this?’
He had no idea how to advise her, never before having helped a criminal invent an alibi or deny the evidence of a crime. ‘The important thing is that you told me about his deafness. From that, everything will follow.’ She looked at him, still puzzled, and he spoke to her as he would to a dull child who refused to understand a lesson. ‘You told me this the second time I spoke to you, the morning I came to visit you here. You told me that he had been having serious trouble with his hearing and had spoken to his friend Erich.’ She began to protest, and he could have shaken her for her dullness. ‘He also told you he had been to another doctor. All of this will be in the report of our meeting.’
‘Why are you doing this?’ she finally asked.
He dismissed the question with a gesture.
‘Why are you doing this?’ she repeated.
‘Because you didn’t kill him.’
‘And the rest? What I did do to him?’
‘There’s no way you can be made to suffer for that without making your daughter suffer even more.’
She winced away from this truth. ‘What else do I have to do?’ she asked, obedient now.
‘I’m not sure yet. Just remember that we-talked about this the first morning I came here to see you.’
She started to speak and then stopped.
‘What?’ he asked.
‘Nothing, nothing.’
He got suddenly to his feet. It made him uncomfortable, sitting here and plotting. ‘That’s all, then. I imagine you’ll have to testify at the inquest, when it happens.’
‘Will you be there?’
‘Yes. I’ll have filed my report by then and given my opinion.’
‘And what will that be?’
‘It will be the truth, Signora.’
Her voice was level. ‘I don’t know what the truth is anymore.’
‘I will tell the procuratore that my investigation revealed that your husband committed suicide when he realized that he was going deaf. Just as it was.’
‘Yes,’ she echoed. ‘Just as it was.’
He left her sitting in the room where she had given her husband the last injection.
* * * *
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
At eight the next morning, just as ordered, Brunetti placed his report on Vice-Questore Patta’s desk, where it sat until his superior officer arrived at his office, just past eleven. When, after returning three personal phone calls and reading through the financial newspaper, the vice-questore brought himself to read the report, he found it both interesting and illuminating:
The results of my investigation lead me to conclude that Maestro Helmut Wellauer took his own life as a result of his growing deafness.
1. During the last months, his hearing had deteriorated to the point where he had less than 40 percent of normal hearing. (See attached interviews with Drs. Steinmbrunner and Treport; and attached medical records.)
2. This loss of hearing resulted in increasing inability to function as a conductor. (See attached interviews with Prof. Rezzonico and Signore Traverse)
3. The Maestro was in a depressed state of mind. (See attached interviews with Signora Wellauer and Signorina Breddes.)
4. He had access to the poison used. (See attached interviews with Signora Wellauer and Dr. Steinbrunner.)
5. He was known to favor the idea of suicide, should he arrive at a point in which he could no longer function as a musician (See attached telephone interview with Dr. Steinbrunner. Personal correspondence to follow from Germany.)
Given the overwhelming weight of this information, plus the logical exclusion of suspects who might have had either motive or opportunity to commit a crime, I can conclude only that the Maestro accepted suicide as an alternative to deafness.
Respectfully submitted,
Guido Brunetti
Commissario of Police
‘I suspected this from the beginning, of course,’ Patta said to Brunetti, who had answered his superior’s request that he come to his office to discuss the case. ‘But I didn’t want to say anything at the beginning and thus prejudice your investigation.’
‘That was very generous of you, sir,’ Brunetti said. ‘And very intelligent.’ He studied the facade of the church of San Lorenzo, partof which was visible beyond his superior’s shoulder.
‘It was unthinkable that anyone who loved music could have done such a thing.’ It was evident that Patta included himself among that number. ‘His wife says here . . .,’ he began, looking down at the report. Brunetti studied, this time, the small diamond tie tack in the form of a rose that Patta wore in his red tie. ‘. . . that he was “visibly disturbed.”‘ This reference convinced Brunetti that Patta had indeed read the report, an event of surpassing rarity. ‘Revolting as the behavior of those two women is,’ Patta continued, making a small moue of disgust at something that did not appear in the report, ‘it is unlikely that either of them would have the psychological profile of a murderer.’ Whatever that meant.
‘And the widow—impossible, even if she is a foreigner.’ Then, even though Brunetti had not asked for clarification of the remark, Patta gave it. ‘No woman who is a mother could have done something as cold-blooded as this. There’s an instinct in them that prevents such things.’ He smiled at the brilliance of his perception, and Brunetti, too, smiled, delighted to hear it.
‘I’m having lunch with the mayor today,’ Patta said, with a studied casualness which relegated that fact to the events of daily life, ‘and I’ll e
xplain the results of our investigation to him.’ Hearing that plural, Brunetti was in no doubt that by lunchtime, the investigation would have slipped back into the singular, but it would not be in the third person.
‘Will that be all, sir?’ he asked politely.
Patta glanced up from the report, which he appeared to be committing to memory. ‘Yes, yes. That will be all.’
‘And the procuratore? Will you inform him too?’ Brunetti asked, hoping that Patta would insist upon this as well, adding the weight of his office to any recommendation for nonprosecution that would be passed to the chief magistrate.
‘Yes, I’ll see to that.’ Brunetti watched as Patta considered the possibility of inviting the chief magistrate to lunch with the mayor, saw him reject it. ‘I’ll take care of that when I get back from lunch with His Honor.’ That, Brunetti reflected, would give him two scenes to play.
Brunetti got to his feet. ‘I’ll get back to my office, then, sir.’
‘Yes, yes,’ Patta muttered absently, still reading the page in front of him.
‘And, Commissario,’ Patta said from behind him.
‘Yes, sir,’ Brunetti said, turning and smiling as he set up the conditions of today’s bet.
‘Thanks for your help.’
‘It was nothing, sir,’ he said, thinking that a dozen red roses would do.
* * * *
Seven months later, a letter arrived, addressed to Brunetti at the Questura. His attention was caught by the stamps, two lilac rectangles with a delicate tracery of calligraphy flowing down their sides. Below each was printed, ‘People’s Republic of China.’ He knew no one there.
There was no return address on the envelope. He tore it open and from it slid a Polaroid photo of a jeweled crown. A sense of scale was missing, but if it had been designed for a human to wear, then the stones that encircled the central jewel must have been the size of pigeons’ eggs. Rubies? No other stone he could think of so resembled blood. The central stone, massive and square-cut, could only have been a diamond.
He flipped the photo over to the back and read: ‘Here is a part of the beauty I have returned to.’ It was signed, ‘B. Lynch.’ There was no other message. Nothing else was in the envelope.