by Donna Leon
'Do you want me to continue to repeat things people said or try to tell you what I made of it all?' she asked.
‘I think the second would be more helpful,' he said.
'And quicker,' she offered.
'No, no, Signora. I'm in no hurry at all; please don't think that. Everything you have to say interests me.'
From another man, these words might have sounded deliberately ambiguous, their flirtatiousness disguised by their apparent sincerity, but from him she took only their literal meaning.
She sat back in her chair, relaxed in a way she could not have been with the other policeman, as she knew she could never be with him or with men like him. 'I told you I've been in that apartment only four years. But I work at home, and so I'm usually willing to listen to people when they talk to me because I spend most of my time alone, working.' She considered, then added ruefully, 'That is, when the noise lets me.'
He nodded, having learned over the years that most people need to talk and how easy it was, with either the reality or the semblance of concerned curiosity, to get them to talk about anything at all.
With a wry smile she said, 'And you see, people in the neighbourhood have told me other things about her. No matter how much their stories showed how much they hated her, they always finished by saying she was a poor widow who had lost her only child, and it was necessary to feel sorry for her.'
Sensing her desire to be prodded into gossip, he asked, 'What other things did they tell you, Signora?'
'About her meanness, for one thing. I told you she never tipped the postman, but many people have told me she would always buy the cheapest thing on offer. She'd walk halfway across the city to save fifty lire on the price of a packet of pasta: things like that. And my shoemaker said he got tired of her always saying she'd pay him next time and then saying, when she came in again, that she already had, until he wouldn't let her into the shop any more.' She saw his expression and added, 'I don't know what's true in all of this. You know how it is: once a person gets a reputation for being one way or another, then stories begin to be told, and it no longer much matters whether the thing ever happened or not’
Brunetti had long been familiar with this phenomenon. He'd known people who had been killed because of it, and he'd known people to take their own lives because of it.
Signora Gismondi went on. 'Sometimes I'd hear her screaming at the women who worked for her, hear it from across the campo. She'd shout terrible things: accuse them of lying or stealing. Or she'd complain about the food they made for her or the way they'd made the bed. I could hear it all, at least during the summer if I didn't use the Discman. Sometimes I'd see them at the window and I'd wave or smile at them, the way you do. Then if I saw one of them on the street I'd say hello or nod.' She looked to one side as if she'd never previously bothered to consider why she had done this. ‘I suppose I wanted them to know that not all people were like her, or that not all Venetians were’
Brunetti nodded again, acknowledging the legitimacy of this desire.
'One of them, she was from Moldavia, asked me one day if I had any work for her. I had to tell her I already had a cleaning woman, who had worked for me for years. But she looked so desperate that I asked around and found a friend whose cleaning woman had left, so she took her and she liked her, said she was honest and hard working.' She smiled and shook her head at her own garrulousness. 'Anyway, Jana told her that all she was being paid was seven thousand lire - that was before the Euro - an hour’ Failing to keep the indignation from her voice, she said, 'That's less than four Euros an hour, for God's sake. No one can live on that.'
Admiring her for her anger, Brunetti asked, 'Do you think this is what she was paying Signora Ghiorghiu?'
'I've no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised.'
'What was her response when you gave her all that money?' he asked.
Embarrassed, she said, 'Oh, she was pleased, I think.'
'I'm sure she was’ Brunetti said. 'How did she react?'
Signora Gismondi looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap, and said, 'She started to cry.' She paused, then added, 'And she tried to kiss my hand. But I couldn't have that, not there on the street.'
'Certainly not’ Brunetti agreed, trying not to smile. 'Can you remember anything else about Signora Battestini?'
'She used to be a secretary, I think, in one of the schools, I'm not sure which one, elementary, I think. But she must have retired more than twenty years ago. Maybe even more than that, when it was so easy to retire.' Brunetti wasn't sure, but he thought there was more reproach than regret as she said this.
'And her family? You said you spoke to a niece, Signora.'
'Yes, and she didn't want to have anything to do with her. There was a sister in Dolo, presumably the mother of the niece, but the last time I called, I got the niece, and she told me her mother had died’ She considered all of this and added, 'I got the feeling she didn't want to hear anything about her aunt until she was dead, too, and she could inherit the house’
'You said you spoke to a lawyer, didn't you, Signora?'
'Yes, Dottoressa Marieschi. She has an office, at least it's listed in the phone book, down in Castello somewhere. I've never met her, just spoken to her on the phone.'
'How did you locate all these people, Signora?' he asked.
Detecting only curiosity in his tone, she answered, 'I asked around and I looked them up in the phone book.'
'How did you learn the name of the lawyer?'
She considered this for a long time before saying, ‘I called her once, Signora Battestini, and I said I was from the electric company and had to talk to her about a bill that hadn't been paid. She gave me the name of the lawyer and told me to call her, even gave me the number.'
Brunetti gave her an admiring smile but stopped himself from praising her for what was no doubt a crime of some sort. 'Do you know if this lawyer handles all of her affairs?'
'She made it sound like that when I spoke to her,' she answered.
'Signora Battestini or the lawyer herself?'
'Oh, I'm sorry. Signora Battestini. The lawyer was, well, she was the way lawyers always are: she gave very little information and made it sound as though she had very little control over her client.'
That sounded as good a description of the ways of lawyers as Brunetti had ever heard. Instead of complimenting her on her sagacity, however, he asked, 'In all you've learned, is there anything you think might be important?'
Smiling, she said, I'm afraid I have no idea of what might be important or not, Commissario. All the neighbours really said was that she was terrible, and if any of them mentioned the husband, it was to say he was an ordinary man, nothing special at all, and that they were not happy together.' He waited for her to comment on the unlikelihood of anyone's finding happiness with Signora Battestini, but she did not.
'I'm sorry I haven't been very helpful,' she said, signalling her desire to end the conversation.
'On the contrary, Signora, I'd say you've been immensely helpful. You've stopped us from closing a case before we had investigated it sufficiently, and you've given us good reason to suspect that our original conclusions were wrong.' He left it to her to understand that he at least believed there was no need to corroborate her story before accepting it.
He got to his feet and stepped back from his chair. He extended his hand, saying, 'I'd like to thank you for coming to talk to us. Not many people would have done as much.'
Taking this as an apology for Lieutenant Scarpa's behaviour, she shook his hand, and left his office.
6
After the woman had gone, Brunetti went back to his desk, considering what he had just heard, not only from Signora Gismondi, but from Lieutenant Scarpa. What the first had told him seemed an entirely plausible story: people left the city and events continued in their absence. Often enough, people chose to have no contact with home, perhaps the better to savour the sense of being away or, as she had told Scarpa, to immerse themselves
totally in a foreign language or culture. He tried to think of a reason why a woman as apparently sensible and honest as Signora Gismondi should invent such a story and hold to it in the face of what he was sure must have been Scarpa's opposition. He came up with no convincing explanation.
It was far easier to speculate about Scarpa's motives. To accept her story was to accept that the police had acted with unwonted haste in accepting a convenient solution to the crime. It was also to require an explanation of the whereabouts of the money that had disappeared while in police custody. Both matters had been in the hands of Lieutenant Scarpa. More importantly, to accept her story would demand a re-examination of the case, or rather, it would demand that, more than three weeks after the murder, the case finally be examined for the first time.
Brunetti had been on vacation when Signora Battestini's body was discovered and had returned to Venice only after the case had been set aside, when he had continued with the investigation of the baggage handlers at the airport. Since the accused had been repeatedly filmed rifling through and stealing from passengers' luggage and since some of them were willing to testify against the others in the hope of receiving lighter sentences, there was very little for Brunetti to do save to keep the papers and files straight and interview those who had not yet confessed but who might perhaps be persuaded to do so. He had read about the murder while he had been away and, foolishly lulled into believing what he read in the papers, had been convinced that the Romanian woman was guilty. Why else should she try to leave the country? Why else that panicked attempt to flee from the police?
Signora Gismondi had just provided him with alternative answers to these questions: Florinda Ghiorghiu left the country because her job was gone, and she tried to escape the police because she was a citizen of a country where the police were believed to be as corrupt as they were violent and where the thought of falling into their hands was enough to drive a person to flee in maddened panic.
When Brunetti had seen Scarpa in Signorina Elettra's office an hour before, the lieutenant was stiff with anger at what he insisted were a witness's lies. Sensing his rage, Signorina Elettra suggested to the lieutenant, 'Perhaps someone else could get the truth out of her.'
Brunetti was astonished by Signorina Elettra's civility to the lieutenant and by her apparent willingness to believe him. Her craft became evident only when she turned to him and said, 'Commissario, it seems the lieutenant has laid the groundwork by seeing through this woman's story. Maybe someone else could try to find out what's motivating her.' Turning back to the lieutenant and raising her hands in a gesture rich with deferential uncertainty, she added, 'If you think that might help, Lieutenant, of course.' He noticed that she was wearing a simple white cotton blouse: perhaps it was the tightly buttoned collar that made her seem so innocent.
Atavistic suspicion of Signorina Elettra flashed across Scarpa's face, but before he could speak, Brunetti interrupted, saying to Signorina Elettra, 'Don't look at me. I've got the airport to worry about, so I don't have time to be bothered with something like this.' He turned to leave.
Brunetti's reluctance prompted Scarpa into saying, 'She's just going to keep telling me the same story. I'm sure of that.'
It was a statement, not a request, and Brunetti held firm. 'I've got the airport case.' He continued towards the door.
That was enough to provoke Scarpa. 'If this woman's lying about a murder, it's more important than petty theft at the airport,' he said.
Brunetti stopped just short of the door. He turned towards Signorina Elettra, who said, with resignation, 'I think the lieutenant's right, sir.'
Brunetti, a man of sorrows and afflicted with grief, said, with perhaps too much resignation, 'All right, but I don't want to get involved. Where is she?'
Thus it was that he had spoken to Signora Gismondi, and everything she said led him to believe that he had indeed done as Signorina Elettra suggested and got the truth out of her.
Now he went downstairs to Signorina Elettra's office and found her talking on the phone. She raised a hand and held up two fingers to signal that it would take but a moment to finish the call, bent and took a few notes, then said thank you and hung up.
'How did that happen?' he asked, nodding with his chin to the point where Lieutenant Scarpa had stood.
'Know thy enemy’ she answered.
'Meaning?' he asked.
'He hates you, but he's only deeply suspicious of me, so all I had to do was offer him the chance to force you to do something you didn't want to do, and the desire to do that was enough to overcome his distrust of me.'
'You make it sound so easy’ he said, 'like something in a textbook.'
'The carrot and the stick’ she said, smiling. 'I offered him the carrot, which he thought he could turn into a stick he could use to beat you.' Then, suddenly serious, she asked, 'What did the woman say?'
'That she took the Romanian woman to the train station, bought her a ticket to Bucharest, and left her there.'
'How long before the train left?' she asked instantly.
He was pleased that she too could see the weakest link in Signora Gismondi's story. 'About an hour before the train left.'
'The newspapers said it happened over by the Palazzo del Cammello.'
'Yes.'
'There would have been more than enough time, then, wouldn't there?' 'Yes.' 'And?'
'Why bother?' he asked. "This woman, Assunta Gismondi, says she gave the Romanian woman about seven hundred Euros’ he began, and when he saw Signorina Elettra raise her eyebrows he continued, 'and I believe she did.' Cutting off her question, he said, 'She's impulsive, the Gismondi woman, and I think generous.' Indeed, he was convinced that these were two of the qualities that had brought her to the Questura this morning, those and honesty.
Signorina Elettra pushed her chair back from her desk and crossed her legs, revealing a short red skirt and a pair of shoes with heels so high they would have raised her above even the worst acqua alta.
'If you will permit me a seemingly impertinent question, Commissario’ she began, and at his nod she continued, 'is this your head or your heart speaking?'
He considered for a moment, then answered, 'Both.'
'Then’ she said, getting to her feet, a process which raised her almost to his height, 'I think I'd better go down to Scarpa's office and make a copy of the file.'
'Isn't it in there?' he asked, waving a hand towards her computer.
'No. The lieutenant prefers to type up his reports and keep them in his office.'
'Will he give them to you?'
She smiled. 'Of course not.'
Feeling not a bit foolish, he asked, 'Then how will you get it?'
She bent down and opened a drawer. From it she took a thin leather case, and when she opened it he saw a set of picks and tools frighteningly similar to the ones he sometimes used. ‘I'll steal it, Commissario. And make a copy. Then put it back where I found it. And, as the lieutenant is a suspicious man, I shall be especially careful when I replace the half-toothpick which he leaves between the seventh and eighth pages of files he thinks are important and which he fears other people will try to see.'
Her smile broadened. Tf you'd like to wait for me in your office, Commissario, I'll bring the copy up as soon as I've made it.'
He had to know. 'But where is he?' What he really wanted to ask was how she knew that Scarpa was not in his office.
'On one of the launches, on his way to Fondamenta Nuove.'
Brunetti was put in mind of the stand-off scenes he'd seen in so many of the westerns he'd watched while growing up, where the good guy and the bad guy stood face to face, each trying to stare the other down. Here, however, there was no question of good guy and bad guy; unless, of course, one were to take the narrow-minded view that breaking into a room at the Questura to make an unauthorized copy of state documents was in any way reprehensible. Brunetti's vision of the law was far too lofty to accept such a view, so he went to hold the door open for her. As she pas
sed in front of him, she said, smiling, ‘I won't be long.'
How did she do it? he found himself asking as he walked back to his office. He wasn't curious about the means at Signorina Elettra's command, the computer and the friends at the other end of the phone, always willing to do a favour and break a rule, or a law. Nor did he particularly care about the techniques she used to learn as much as she did about the life and weaknesses of her superiors. What puzzled him was how she found the courage to oppose them so consistently and so openly and to make no attempt to disguise where her loyalties lay. She had once explained to him how it was that she had given up a career in banking and accepted what must be, in the eyes of her family and her friends, a vastly inferior job with the police. She had acted on principle in leaving the bank, and he supposed she was acting on principle now, but he had never had the courage to ask her just what those principles were.
Back at his desk, he made a list of the information he needed: the extent of Signora Battestini's estate; to what degree Avvocatessa Marieschi was involved in Signora Battestini's affairs and what those affairs were; whether the dead woman's name had ever appeared in police files; same with her husband; what the people in the neighbourhood knew of bad feelings between her and anyone else; and, unlikely after three weeks, whether anyone remembered having seen someone other than the Romanian woman entering or leaving her apartment that day and would be willing to tell the police about it. He would also need to speak to the woman's doctor.
