by Donna Leon
The bank of which Signor Fulgoni was the director, it turned out, had granted a loan to Signor Puntera at very favourable rates, and Signor Marsano was a lawyer in a firm that had once represented a client in a case brought, unsuccessfully, against Signor Puntera. Signor Puntera’s tax return listed the rent he received from each of their apartments, as well as that occupied by the Fontanas, at four hundred and fifty Euros a month or about 20 per cent of the rent they might be expected to pay.
The priest circled the coffin, dipping his aspergillum repeatedly into the holy water and sprinkling it across the surface. Brunetti saw how perfectly the rituals of pre-Christian Rome – priests mumbling incantations that put evil spirits to flight, searching for the future in the organs of sacrificed animals – blended with those of the new Italy – evil spirits kept at bay by magic tisana, the future revealed in the turn of a card. We pass through centuries, and we learn nothing.
Puntera, too, had adapted to the new order: nothing he had done was in any way unusual in these modern times, and it was unlikely that anything could be proven against Judge Coltellini for her various accommodations in his favour. With bitter cynicism, Brunetti had to admit they had been in no danger from any revelations Fontana might have chosen to make. There was the risk of temporary embarrassment for Puntera and Coltellini, but if embarrassment were a bar to advancement, then there would be no government and no Church.
The return of the organ’s rumbling put an end to Brunetti’s reflections and signalled the end of the Mass; Brunetti and Vianello got to their feet and turned to face the aisle.
The four men wheeled the coffin slowly towards the door of the church; first behind it came Signora Fontana, her head covered by a black veil that blended into the long-sleeved black dress she wore. A man Brunetti did not recognize walked close beside her, supporting her by her right arm. Two steps behind them walked her nephew, who nodded to Brunetti as he passed. Brunetti recognized a few faces, people who worked at the Tribunale; he was surprised to see Judge Coltellini among them. The people filing out kept their eyes straight ahead or on the pavement in front of them.
A youngish couple walked arm in arm, and close behind them came Signora Zinka, bulky and overheated in a black dress that was too long and too tight. Her face was damp and swollen, not because of the heat, Brunetti thought. An arm’s length to her right walked Penzo, looking as though he were somewhere else, or wanted to be.
Seeing the next couple, Brunetti realized he had been wrong in believing the habitual frequenters of funerals had been deterred by the heat. Maresciallo Derutti and his wife were well known in the city, omnipresent at funerals, to which he insisted on wearing the dress uniform of the Carabinieri, whose ranks he had left more than two decades before. Seeing the Maresciallo walk by, Brunetti decided the funeral was over and stepped into the aisle, Vianello close behind.
Slowed by the solemnity of motion the situation imposed, it took them some time to reach the door of the church. From inside the church, Brunetti saw the coffin being wheeled, untolled, towards a boat moored by the riva. He and Vianello stepped outside; the marble pavement caught the light and hurled it back into Brunetti’s eyes, momentarily blinding him. He turned towards the church and, protected by his own shadow, fumbled in his pocket for his sunglasses. He felt them in his right pocket, but they were caught in his handkerchief; he pulled, but they would not come free. He opened his eyes to narrow slits to see what was wrong, but before he could look down, he noticed Signora Fulgoni emerging from the church into the dazzling light on the arm of another woman, one even taller, though not as slender, as she. Both wore wide-shouldered trouser suits, and both of them paused to put on their sunglasses.
He gave another tug and pulled the glasses free from his pocket. He slipped them on and looked back at Signora Fulgoni, only to see that the person holding her arm was actually a man who wore identical sunglasses to the woman; taller, though with the same feminine look and carefully cut short hair. Together, they descended the steps of the church and followed the other people to the water.
‘And the scales fell from his eyes,’ Brunetti whispered, wondering even as he spoke at his need, always, to be such a clever boots.
‘What?’ Vianello turned to ask him.
‘Patta joked that the murderer always comes to the funeral,’ Brunetti answered.
Confused, Vianello, eyes safe behind his own sunglasses, looked across the open space in front of the church, towards the people clustered around the boat that would take Fontana’s coffin to San Michele. He saw what Brunetti saw: the mother of the deceased, climbing now into the boat that would take her son away from her, Penzo’s rigid form next to the squat cylinder that was Zinka, the Maresciallo, arm raised in a long-held salute, and two tall people standing to his left.
Seeing the Inspector’s perplexity, Brunetti said only, ‘Wait until those two turn around.’
Brunetti and Vianello waited, both suddenly unaware of the sun or the heat. The man who had accompanied Signora Fontana handed her on to the boat and then followed her on board and down into the cabin. Someone on shore cast off the mooring rope, and the boat started to move slowly away from the riva. The people on the embankment remained motionless as the sound of the motor diminished until it was gone, leaving only silence behind. Then, as if they had all heard the same command at the same time, the people standing in front of the church turned to right or left and began to take themselves away from the place of grief.
Penzo, Brunetti noticed, went in the opposite direction from Signora Zinka, who joined the two young people. They started towards the Misericordia, and Zinka fell into step behind them.
Signora Fulgoni appeared to be keeping an eye on the other couple, for she stood still, clinging to the arm of the person with her, until the others had climbed the bridge and disappeared down the calle on the other side. She raised her head and spoke to her companion. They turned and started to walk in the same direction as the other two; Signora Fulgoni’s companion was nearest to them and thus was visible in profile.
It was a man walking beside Signora Fulgoni. Nothing strange in that. She said something to him, and he stopped and turned to her. They exchanged words, apparently not kind words, and then the man pulled his arm free of hers and waved a hand at her, as if to chase her away. Was it the way his wrist moved, finishing in a sharp angle, fingers pointing at the pavement, that made Vianello see? Was it the sudden twist of his head, a motion that was unconscious of itself as a violent parody of anger?
‘ “My husband is a bank director,” ’ said Vianello.
The sun blasted down on them from its highest point, nailing them to the pavement, and they were again aware of its weight. Brunetti looked at his watch just as the sound of the bells of some other church rolled across the city and over them. Amazed, he looked up at the bell tower of La Madonna dell’Orto and saw the bells hanging there, lifeless. ‘The bells aren’t ringing,’ he said, marvelling.
29
As Brunetti had both known and feared, Patta proved resistant to the idea of questioning Signor and Signora Fulgoni – separately – about their movements on the night of Fontana’s death. Patta also pointed out that there was no way to constrain a person to submit a DNA sample for ‘purposes of elimination’. Nor, indeed, for any reason.
Brunetti still winced at the memory of his superior’s response to his explanation of why he wanted to question the Fulgonis. ‘You want me to jeopardize my position because you think he might be gay?’ Even though the Vice-Questore was no friend of homosexuals, the force of his anger had pulled him up from his chair and halfway across his desk. ‘The man is a bank director. Have you any idea of the trouble this would cause?’
Thus the workings of Patta’s mind. Those of the mechanism controlling the bells of Madonna dell’Orto were no less strange, they having ceased to work two weeks before. The parocco, when Brunetti spoke to him, explained that it was impossible, during the long holiday, to find anyone who would come to fix them, and so
they tolled neither the passing hours nor the passing of life.
Prompted by his curiosity about why one of the Fulgonis should lie, Brunetti began to wonder about the other. Banks must be like any other business, he reflected, different only because their product was money, not pencils or garden forks. This similarity dictated that employees would gossip and that the reputations of the people in power would be coloured – if not entirely fashioned – by that gossip. It was common knowledge at the Questura that Signorina Elettra – for reasons that she had never fully explained and that no one had ever fathomed – had left her job at the Banca d’Italia to come and work at the Questura, so Brunetti asked her to check among her friends who still worked in that sector to see what rumours existed about bank director Lucio Fulgoni.
Signorina Elettra came up to his office on the afternoon of the day he had made his request. He waved her to a chair. ‘I take it you’ve discovered something, Signorina?’
‘Not much, and nothing definite, I’m afraid,’ she said, sitting opposite him.
‘What does that mean?’ he asked.
‘That there is a certain amount of talk about him.’
He did not interrupt to ask what sort of talk: even if the man was a bank director, gossip would most likely centre on his sexual life.
‘What speculation exists – at least this is what two people have told me – concerns his sexual preference.’ Before Brunetti could comment, she added, ‘Both of these people told me they’d heard others say they thought he was gay, but no one seems able to provide any evidence of this.’ She shrugged, as if to suggest how common this situation was.
‘Then why is there talk?’ Brunetti asked.
‘There’s always talk,’ she answered immediately. ‘All a man has to do is behave a certain way, make a particular remark, and someone will start to talk about him. And once it starts, it can only get worse.’ She looked across at him. ‘The fact that there are no children is used as evidence.’
Brunetti closed his eyes for a moment, then asked, ‘Has he ever approached anyone at the bank?’
‘No. Never, at least not that my friends have heard about.’ She thought for a moment and then added, ‘If anything had actually happened, everyone would know about it. You have no idea how conservative bankers are.’
Brunetti steepled his fingers and pressed his lips against them. ‘The wife?’ he asked.
‘Rich, socially ambitious, and generally disliked.’
Brunetti decided to keep to himself the observation that this would describe the wives of many of the men he dealt with.
‘One gets the sense, listening to people,’ she permitted herself to say, ‘that the third would be true of her, even without the first two.’
‘Have you met her?’ he asked.
She shook the question away and said, ‘But you have.’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘I can see why people might not like her.’
Signorina Elettra did not bother to ask for an explanation.
‘Maybe we’re asking the wrong people for information about him,’ Brunetti finally said, giving in to the temptation that had nagged at him since his conversation with Patta.
‘And we should be asking rent boys, instead of bankers?’
‘No. We should be asking the Fulgonis directly.’ He realized, as he said it, that his soul was tired of backstairs gossip, tired of listening from the eaves and consorting with informers. Ask them directly and have done with it.
Brunetti, as a kind of anticipatory punishment for going against Patta’s direct warning not to persecute the Fulgonis, submitted himself to the flagellation of the sun as he walked to their apartment. As he passed the wall relief of the Moor leading his camel, Brunetti was tempted to consult with him on how best to treat the Fulgonis, but all the Moor had wanted to do for centuries was to lead his pack-laden beast off that palazzo wall in Venice and back to his home in the East, so Brunetti resisted the impulse.
He announced himself to Signora Fulgoni, who buzzed him into the courtyard without question or protest. Before starting towards the stairs, Brunetti made a half-circle of the courtyard; the chalked outline of Fontana’s body had long since been washed away, leaving behind only a wispy grey trail that ran off into the small drain holes in the middle of the courtyard. The scene of crime tape had disappeared, but the heavy chains still sealed closed the storerooms.
As she had the last time, Signora Fulgoni awaited him at the door to the apartment, and again she made no attempt to take his outstretched hand. Seeing her, hair perfectly brushed into place, looking even more like a caryatid with pink lipstick, Brunetti wondered if she had perhaps found a way to keep herself vacuum packed for days at a time. He followed her down the corridor and into the same room, which conveyed the same impression of being for display rather than for use.
‘Signora,’ he said, when they were seated opposite one another, ‘I’d like to ask you a few further questions about the evening of Signor Fontana’s death. I’m not sure we’ve understood everything you told us.’ He did not waste a smile after saying this.
She looked surprised, almost offended. How could a policeman have misunderstood what she said? And how could anyone, regardless of his rank, think of questioning the accuracy of her statements? But she would not ask: she would wait him out.
‘You said that, just as you and your husband turned off Strada Nuova, while you were taking a walk to escape the heat of the evening, you heard the bells of La Madonna dell’Orto ringing midnight. Are you sure it was midnight, Signora, and not, perhaps, the half-hour or perhaps even as much as an hour later?’ Brunetti’s smile was even blander than the question.
As the mistress of the dacha would gaze at the serf who questioned her word about the proper spoons to use for tea, Signora Fulgoni stared at Brunetti for long seconds. ‘Those bells have been ringing for generations,’ she said with indignation she was too polite to make fully manifest. ‘Are you suggesting I would not recognize them or that I would not understand the time they were ringing?’
‘Certainly not, Signora,’ he said with a self-effacing smile. ‘Perhaps you mistook the bells of some other church that are less accurate?’
She allowed small cracks to appear in the wall of her patience. ‘I am a member of this parish, Commissario. Please permit me to recognize the bells of my own church.’
‘Of course, of course,’ Brunetti said neutrally, surprising her, perhaps, by the fact that her last words had not caused him to fall off his chair and crawl towards the door. ‘You said, Signora, that you and your husband had no familiarity with the dead man.’
‘That is correct,’ she said primly, folding her hands on her knees to enforce the words.
‘Then how can it be,’ he began, deciding to take a stab, ‘that traces of both Signor Fontana and your husband were found in the same place in the courtyard?’
Had he really stabbed her, Brunetti could have caused no greater shock. Her mouth opened, and she raised a hand to cover it. She stared at him as if seeing him for the first time and not liking what she saw. But in an instant she had gained control and wiped away all sign of surprise.
‘I’ve no idea how that could be possible, Commissario.’ She devoted some moments to this mystery and then volunteered, ‘Of course, my husband might have met Signor Fontana in the courtyard and not thought it important enough to mention it to me. Helped him move something, perhaps.’
It was not in Brunetti’s experience that bank directors aided with the moving of heavy objects, but he let her remark pass with a pleasant nod suggestive of belief.
‘And your husband didn’t leave the apartment without you that evening, Signora? Perhaps to get some fresh air? Or to get some wine from your storeroom?’
She sat up straighter and said, voice tight, ‘Are you suggesting that my husband had something to do with that man’s death?’
‘Of course not, Signora,’ Brunetti – who was suggesting exactly that – said calmly. ‘But he might have seen so
mething unusual or something out of place, and mentioned it to you and then perhaps forgot about it himself: memory is a very strange thing.’ He watched this idea work its way into her mind.
She looked at one of the paintings on the far wall, studied it long enough to memorize its strict horizontality, and then looked back at him. She pressed her lips together and looked down, then up at him with a look of embarrassed surprise, ‘There was one thing . . .’
‘Yes, Signora?’
‘The sweater,’ she said, as though she expected Brunetti to understand what she was talking about.
‘Which sweater, Signora?’ he asked.
‘Ah,’ she said, as if suddenly coming back to the room and recalling the circumstances of the conversation. ‘Of course. The light green sweater. It was a Jaeger he bought years ago, a V-neck. He bought it when we were in London on vacation. And he had the habit of putting it over his shoulders whenever we went out for a walk.’ Then, before Brunetti could ask, ‘Yes, even in this heat.’ Her voice grown suddenly softer, she went on, ‘It had become a sort of talisman for him, well, for both of us when we went out in the evening.’
‘And what happened with the sweater, Signora?’
‘When we got back here that night, my husband realized it wasn’t over his shoulders.’ She crossed her arms and put her hands on her own shoulders and found no sweater there. ‘So he went downstairs immediately to look for it. There hadn’t been many people on the street, so if it had fallen off, he thought it might still be wherever he dropped it.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘Did he find it?’
