by Donna Leon
Brunetti had never heard a more polite enjoinder to discretion. 'Of course,' he agreed. 'But what was it you called about?'
'That religious person’ she said. 'Leonardo Mutti?'
Yes’ she answered, then surprised him by adding, 'And the other one, Antonin Scallon.'
Brunetti thought back to his original conversation with the Contessa: he was sure he had not used Antonin's name, had referred to him only as an old friend of his brother. If he had used any name, it was Brother Leonardo's.
'Yes?' Brunetti enquired. 'And what have you heard?' He decided to leave for later the question of how the Contessa might have come to learn about his interest in Padre Antonin.
'It seems that a friend of mine has also become attracted to Brother Leonardo's teachings,' she began, then added, 'or, as one might say, fallen under his spell.' Again, Brunetti chose not to comment.
'And it also seems,' the Countess continued, 'that this Padre Antonin learned about her ... shall we say, about her enthusiasm for Brother Leonardo.' Before Brunetti could ask, the Countess explained, 'He's a friend of her family, this Antonin; while he was in Africa he sent them those dreadful circular letters every Christmas, and I suppose they sent him money, though I don't know that for sure. At any rate, when I asked her about Brother Leonardo, she told me how surprised she had been when Padre Antonin spoke to her about him.'
'Saying what?'
'Nothing, really,' the Countess answered. 'But from what she told me, it sounded as if he were trying to suggest she be cautious about becoming too involved with him, but being very careful not to seem as if he was doing that.'
'Will she listen to him?' Brunetti asked.
'Of course not, Guido. You should know by now that, once people reach my age, it makes no sense to try to persuade them to abandon their - well - their enthusiasms.'
He had to smile at this, thinking how charitable it was of her to limit this wilfulness to people of her age. 'Do you know if he said anything specific about Brother Leonardo?' Brunetti asked.
She laughed again. 'Nothing that exceeded the limits of clerical solidarity and good taste. Or overstepped Orazio's admonition never to speak badly of a colleague.'
In a more serious voice, she went on, 'So that you can stop worrying about how I knew you were interested in Padre Antonin, Guido, I should explain that Paola told me that he was at your mother's funeral and that he went to see you.'
'Thank you,' Brunetti said simply and then asked, 'What did your friend say about Brother Leonardo?'
The Contessa took some time to answer. 'She lost a grandson two years ago and needs whatever comfort she can find. So if what this Brother Leonardo says can lessen her grief, then I think it's all to the good.'
'Has the subject of money been raised?' Brunetti asked.
'You mean by Brother Leonardo? With my friend?'
'Yes.'
'She didn't say, and it's certainly not anything I could ask.'
Hearing both the reproach and the warning in her voice, Brunetti said only, 'If you hear anything else ...'
'Of course,' she said, cutting him off before he could finish the question. 'Please give my love to Paola and the children, will you?'
'Yes, of course,' he said, and then she was gone.
* * *
Just when he had thought himself free of all solicitation, Brunetti found himself reminded of Antonin and his request. Long experience had rendered Brunetti suspicious of protestations of disinterested goodwill, especially when those protestations were linked in any way to money. The only money he knew to be involved here was that given to Brother Leonardo by Patrizia's son. Brunetti went to the window and stared at the facade of San Lorenzo for some time: he found it difficult to attribute to Antonin a sincere concern for the well-being of this young man, and then came the thought that he found it difficult to attribute to Antonin a sincere concern for the well-being of anyone save himself.
The Contessa's words came back to him then, that it was difficult to persuade people her age away from their - what had she called them? - enthusiasms? He changed the word to 'prejudices', applied it to himself, and saw how apt her remark remained.
Brunetti, recalling his failure to find a Christian among his friends in the city, went downstairs to ask Signorina Elettra if she might have one among hers.
'A Christian?' she asked, surprised. She had made no reference to the newspaper accounts of the little girl's death, and Brunetti was glad enough to avoid discussion of it with her.
'Yes. That is, someone who believes and attends Mass.'
She glanced at the vase of flowers on the windowsill, perhaps to gather her thoughts, then returned her gaze to him and asked, 'May I ask what this is in aid of, sir?'
‘I want to find out about a member of the clergy.' When she remained silent for some time, he added, 'Private things.'
'Ah’ she answered.
'Which means?' he asked, smiling.
She answered the smile, and then the question. 'It means that I'm not sure it's believers who should be asked about the clergy. Not, that is, if you want to hear the truth.'
'Do you have someone in mind?' Brunetti asked.
She rested her chin in her palm for a moment. Her lips disappeared, evidence of thought. She looked up and her mouth sweetened into a smile. ‘I can think of two’ she said. 'One has what might be called unsympathetic opinions of the clergy.' Before he could comment, she added, 'The other has a milder view. No doubt because he has less exhaustive information.'
'May I ask who these people are?'
'One is a priest, and one used to be.'
'Which one holds which opinion?' he asked.
She sat up straight, as if trying to view this question from his perspective, and then said, ‘I suppose the less interesting configuration would be for the former priest to be antagonistic, wouldn't it?'
'It's certainly more predictable’ Brunetti said.
She nodded and said, 'But that's not the way it is: it's the one who is still a priest who ... well, who has a more adversarial stance towards his colleagues.' Absently, she pulled the cuff of her jacket forward and covered the face of her watch with it, then said, 'Yes, I think he might have more useful information.'
'What sort of information would that be?'
'He has access to the files kept by the Curia, both here and in Rome. I suppose they correspond to the personnel files we have, though we're less concerned with the private lives of our employees than they seem to be.' She clarified this by adding, 'At least from what he tells me. I've never actually seen the files’
'But he's told you what's in them?'
'Some of it. But never using names’ Her smile became impish as she added, 'Only the titles, both of who is reported on and who is doing the reporting: Cardinal, Bishop, Monsignor, altar boy.'
It proved too much for him. 'May I ask why you're interested in them, Signorina?' Brunetti was never certain of the depth or breadth of her curiosity, nor of its purpose.
'It's like the files of the Stasi’ she surprised him by answering. 'Since the fall of the Wall, we've read about private citizens who went in and read their files and found out who had been keeping an eye on them or reporting on them. And occasionally the name of one of the people who was spying was made public, or at least was made public when people still cared about such things.'
She looked up at him as if this were sufficient, but he shook his head and she continued. 'That's why I like to learn what's in the files on the private lives of the clergy: not for what they're doing, poor devils, but for who's giving the information about them. I find that far more interesting.'
'I'm sure it must be’ Brunetti agreed, thinking of some of the things he knew to be buried in those files and who might have put the information there.
However tempting it might have been to continue this discussion, Brunetti forced himself away from it. 'I'm curious about two men’ he said. 'One of them is called Leonardo Mutti, said to be from Umbria. He is also said to
be a member of the clergy, but I don't know if that's true. He lives here and directs some sort of religious organization known as the Children of Jesus Christ’
Her lips pursed at the name, but she wrote it down.
'The second is Antonin Scallon, Venetian, who is a chaplain at the Ospedale and lives with the Dominicans in SS. Giovanni e Paolo. He was a missionary in the Congo for about twenty years’
'Do you want to know anything specific about either one?' she asked, looking up at him.
'No’ Brunetti admitted. 'Just anything that might be interesting.'
‘I see’ she responded. 'If one's a priest, then there will be a file.'
'And the other? If he's not a priest?'
'If he's running something with a name like that’ she began, tapping one incarnadined nail on her notes, 'he should be easy to find’
'Would you be willing to ask your friend to have a look?'
'I'd be delighted’ she answered.
Questions crowded into Brunetti's mind, but he tried to flail them away. He would not ask her who this person was. He would not ask her what she might have discovered about other priests in the city. And most importantly, he would not ask her what she had given in return for this information. To stop himself, he asked, instead, 'Does he have files on all of them - priests, bishops, archbishops?'
She paused before she answered that. 'They're supposed to have a higher level of access to get a look at the prelates.'
'"Supposed to"?' he asked.
'Indeed.'
Brunetti put temptation behind him and said only, 'You'll ask him?'
'Nothing easier,' she answered, swinging around in her chair and tapping a few keys on her keyboard.
'What are you doing?' Brunetti asked.
'Sending him an email,' she said, not bothering to hide her surprise at his question.
'Isn't that risky?'
For a moment she didn't understand, but then he saw her get it. 'Oh, you mean for security?' she asked. 'Yes.'
'We always assume that our emails are recorded somewhere,' she said calmly, tapping a few more keys. 'So what are you asking him?' 'To meet me.' 'Just like that?'
'Of course,' she answered with a smile.
'And no one's suspicious? You send an email to a priest and ask him to meet you, and whoever is supposedly recording your messages won't be suspicious about this? About an email coming from the Questura?'
'Of course not, Cornmissario,' she said firmly. 'Besides, I'm using one of my private accounts.' Her growing smile told him she had not finished. 'And, you see, I have every reason to want to see him. He's my confessor.'
15
The amusement Brunetti would usually have felt at Signorina Elettra's relationship with the clergy was crushed by the lingering weight of the memory of the still unidentified child. In recent years, Brunetti had begun to see the death of the young as the theft of years, decades, generations. Each time he learned of the willed, unnecessary destruction of a young person, whether it was the result of crime or of one of the many futile wars that snuffed out their lives, he counted out the years until they would have been seventy and added up the plundered years of life. His own government had stolen centuries; other governments had stolen millennia, had stamped out the joy these kids might and should have had. Even if life had brought them misery or pain, it would still have brought them life, not the void that Brunetti saw looming after death.
He returned to his office and, to pass the time while he waited for some word of the autopsy, read more carefully through the three newspapers he had brought with him. When he looked up from the last page of the third, all he could remember were the sixty years of life that had been stolen from the girl Vianello had pulled from the water.
Brunetti looked at the surface of his desk, folded the last newspaper and moved it aside, placing it on top of the others. With the tip of one finger, he slid some specks of dust to the edge of the desk and let them drop invisibly to the floor. Maybe she tripped and fell and, unable to swim, drowned in the canal. Even so, as Paola insisted, one did not misplace a child. This was not drawing-room comedy with an infant in a leather handbag, left unclaimed in the cloakroom of Victoria station. This was a young girl, missing, but unmissed.
The phone rang.
‘I thought I'd call,’ he heard Rizzardi say when he answered. 'I'll send a written report, but I thought you'd want to know.'
'Thank you,' Brunetti said, then, unable to stop himself, added, 'I can't shake loose of her.'
The pathologist limited himself to a noise of assent-there was no knowing if he felt the same way.
Brunetti grabbed a sheet of paper and pulled it towards him.
'I'd say she was ten or eleven,' the pathologist began, then paused and cleared his throat. 'The cause of death was drowning. It looks like she was in the water about eight hours.' That, Brunetti calculated, meant she had gone into the water around midnight.
'It could have been longer,' Rizzardi said. 'The water's not the same temperature as the air, and that would change the rate of rigor mortis. I sent one of my men over there to measure the temperature of the water, and perhaps when I calculate it I can get closer to the time’ A pause and then, 'You don't want to know about that sort of thing, do you, Guido?' 'No, not really’
'Close to midnight, then,' Rizzardi said. 'Or if you prefer, you could say an hour on either side of midnight. I can't get closer than that.'
'All right,' Brunetti said, curious now about the reluctance that seeped from every word Rizzardi spoke. He knew he should ask or somehow prod the pathologist, but he was unwilling to do it: he sensed it would be better to let Rizzardi find his own way to whatever it was he did not want to say.
'There's evidence,' the pathologist began and then paused to clear his throat again. 'There's evidence of sexual activity’
This meant nothing to Brunetti. That is, it meant something, but he had no idea what it meant, not in a real sense. He did not know how to ask or what to ask.
'No, not rape, at least not recently. But, er, activity. I don't know what to call it. The child has had sex, though not in the near past, not any time close to when she died. Not hours, that is, probably not even days.'
Brunetti's mind leaped to the first safe place it could find. 'Could she be older?'
'Perhaps, but not by much more than a year, I'd say’
'Ah,' Brunetti said and waited for the pathologist to continue. When he did not, Brunetti asked, 'What else?'
'The scratches on her palms. There were fragments of a reddish material in them. And under her nails. Two were broken off, one of them almost torn away. And the undersides of the toes of her left foot are badly scraped’
'What about her knees?' Brunetti asked. He tried to remember the small body recalled only one knee, the other under the clinging fabric of the skirt.
'One's got scratches. Same thing, a reddish, grainy material; some larger fragments.'
'The other?'
'It must have been covered by her skirt. There's a place on the front of her skirt where the fabric is worn away’
'Anything else?' Brunetti asked.
'Yes,' the pathologist said, cleared his throat, and went on. 'She had a watch, in a pocket sewn into her knickers’ Brunetti had heard of this: at the time, he had not thought to look for anything under those clinging skirts. After some time, the pathologist added, 'And there was a ring in her vagina’
Brunetti had heard this rumour, as well, but had always chosen to dismiss it.
'It looks like a wedding ring’ the pathologist said in a neutral voice. Brunetti said nothing, and Rizzardi added, 'The watch is a pocket watch. Gold’
A long silence stretched out as Brunetti quickly revised everything he had concluded about the girl because of her blonde hair and her light eyes. They had blinded him to the long skirt and to the fact that the skin covered by the strap of her sandal had still been fairly dark.
'Gypsy?' he asked the doctor.
'We call them Ro
m now, Guido’ Rizzardi answered.
Brunetti felt a flash of belligerence: no matter what we call them, no one can toss them into the water, for Christ's sake. 'Tell me about the ring and the watch’ he asked with forced calm.
'The wedding ring has initials and a date, and the watch looks antique. It's the kind that you have to open to see the face.'
'Is there anything on the inside of the cover?'
‘I didn't open it. I took it out of her pocket and put it in a plastic bag with the ring. Those are the rules, Guido.'
‘I know, I know. Sorry Ettore.' Brunetti allowed the anger to leak out of him and then asked, 'What do you think caused the marks on her hands?'
'That's not what I'm supposed to do. You know that.'
'What do you think caused the marks on her hands?' Brunetti repeated.
If Rizzardi had been waiting for the question, he could have answered it no more quickly. 'The evidence suggests she slid some distance, probably on a terracotta surface. The fabric is worn away down the front of the cardigan, and two buttons are missing. And, as I told you, there's the worn spot on the front of her skirt.'
'So she slid on her stomach?'
'It would seem so. As she went down the roof, she'd try to grab on to the tiles to stop herself: it's natural. That's what cut up her palms and ripped the nails.'
Again, Brunetti waited. Part of him wanted to keep Rizzardi talking about the details in which might be traced the girl's actions as she slid down a roof or from an altana or a terrace. He did not want to have to go back to the other things.
'And what could have happened?' Brunetti asked.
'That's another thing I'm not supposed to do, Guido,' Rizzardi protested.
‘I know. But tell me.'
For some time Brunetti feared he had gone too far and that Rizzardi would hang up, but then the doctor said,
'It could be - but this is only my guess - that she was surprised wherever she was: someone came in, saw her there. She'd try to get away, but if it was a man, he'd be too big and could stop her from getting to the door, if that's how she got in. So the first thing she'd do is try a window, or the door to an altana or a terrace.'
