by Donna Leon
He pulled himself from these reflections and called the Questura, asking to speak to Vianello: he explained what had happened and asked him to organize a crew to come to the apartment.
When Vianello hung up, Brunetti clasped his hands behind his back, embarrassed at having got this idea from a television crime show, and began to walk through the apartment. He moved towards the back and found that, aside from the room in which she had received him, there was only a bedroom, plus a kitchen and a bath. Both of these surprised him by being spotless, a fact which spoke of the existence of someone who came to clean.
The bedroom walls held what looked like celestial maps, scores of them of all sizes, framed in black and looking as if they came from the same collection or the hand of the same framer. Some were coloured in pastels, some in the original black and white. He flicked on the light to study them better. From knee height to a metre below the very tall ceiling, they hung in disorderly rows. He recognized what had to be a Cellarius, counted the ones above and below it and realized there were two complete sets. Only an expert could put a price on them, but Brunetti knew they would be worth hundreds of millions. There was a single, monk-like bed, a tallarmadio against the wall, and a nightstand beside the bed that held a reading lamp, a few bottles of pills and a glass of water on a tray and, when Brunetti moved close enough to read the title, a German bible. A threadbare silk carpet stood beside the bed, a pair of slippers neatly tucked under the hem of the bedspread. There was no sign or scent that she smoked in this room. The wardrobe held only two long skirts and another woollen shawl.
Back in the living room he used a credit card to slide open the bottom drawer of the desk. Then, working up from the bottom, he slid them all open and looked at, but did not touch, the contents. One drawer held neat piles of bills, another what looked like photograph albums, stacked on one another in diminishing order of size; the top one held more bills and a few newspaper clippings.
Brunetti, staring around the room, didn’t know whether to call it spartan or monastic.
He went back into the kitchen and opened the refrigerator. A litre of milk, a piece of butter inside a covered glass dish, the heel of a loaf of bread. The cabinets held just as little: a jar of honey, some salt, butter, tea bags and a tin of ground coffee. Either the woman didn’t eat or her meals were brought to her in the same way as were her cigarettes.
In the bathroom there was a plastic container for false teeth, a flannel nightgown hanging on the back of the door, some toiletries, and four bottles of pills in the cabinet. Returning to the living room, he chose not to look at the dead woman, knowing he would have too much of that once the scene of crime team arrived.
He moved to the window and stood with his back against it and tried to make some sense out of what he saw. The room contained, he was sure, billions of lire in art works: the Cezanne that stood to the left of the door opposite him might be worth that just by itself. He studied the walls, looking for a paler rectangle that would speak of a newly empty space. No thief, no matter how ignorant a thief, could fail to see the value of the things in this room; yet there was no sign that anything had been removed, nor was there any indication that Signora Jacobs had died of anything other than a heart attack.
He knew, from long experience, the danger of imposing preconceived notions on to an investigation; it was one of the first things he warned new inspectors to guard against. Yet here he was, prepared to reject any evidence, no matter how persuasive, that suggested accidental or natural death. His bones, his radar, his very soul suspected that Signora Jacobs had been murdered, and though there was no sign of violence, he had little doubt that the killer was the same person who had murdered her adoptive granddaughter. He remembered Galileo and his response to the threats marshalled against him. ‘Eppur si muove,’ he whispered and went to the door to meet Vianello and the other officers.
Logic dictates that a task should become easier, and its execution faster, the more often it is performed. Thus the examination of the locus of death should be performed with greater speed each time it is necessary, especially in a case such as this, where an old woman lies dead beside her easy chair, with no sign of violence and no sign of forced entry. Or perhaps, Brunetti reflected, the passing of time is a completely subjective experience, and the photographers and fingerprint technicians were moving with great alacrity. Certainly, as he asked them to photograph and dust, he was aware of their unspoken scepticism at his treating this as a crime scene. What could be easier and more self-explanatory: an old woman, sprawled on the floor, a bottle of pills rolled halfway across the room from her?
Rizzardi, when he showed up, appeared puzzled that he, and not the woman’s doctor, had been called, but he was too good a friend of Brunetti’s to question this. Instead, he pronounced her dead, examined her superficially, said it looked as though she had died the night before, and gave no further sign that he found Brunetti’s request for an autopsy strange.
‘If I’m asked to justify it?’ the doctor asked, getting to his feet.
‘I’ll get a magistrate to order it, don’t worry,’ Brunetti answered.
‘I’ll let you know,’ the doctor said, bending to brush ash off the knees of his trousers.
‘Thanks,’ Brunetti replied, glad to be spared even the doctor’s passive curiosity. He knew he could not find the words with which to describe what he felt about Signora Jacobs’s death, and he realized how weak any attempt to explain would be.
It could have been hours later that Brunetti found himself alone in the apartment with Vianello, but the light that came in from the windows was still late morning light. He looked at his watch, astonished to see that it was not yet one o’clock and that all of this interior time had passed, and all of these things had happened.
‘Do you want to go for lunch?’ Brunetti asked, conscious as he addressed Vianello in the more familiar ‘tu’ of how comfortable it felt. There were few people on the force with whom he would more like to make this grammatical declaration of equality.
‘Well, we’re not going to eat what’s in the kitchen, are we?’ Vianello asked with a smile then added, serious, ‘Let’s have a look around here first, if you like.’
Brunetti grunted his agreement but stayed where he was, studying the room and thinking.
‘What are we looking for?’ Vianello asked him.
‘I’ve no idea. Something about the paintings and the other things,’ he said, with a broad wave that took in all the objects in the room. ‘A copy of her will or an indication of where it might be. Name of a notary or a receipt from one.’
‘Papers, then?’ Vianello asked, switching on the light in the corridor and placing himself with his back to one of the shelves of books. At Brunetti’s muttered agreement, Vianello reached up to the first book on the top shelf and pulled it down. Holding it in his right hand, he flipped it open with the left and leafed through all of the pages from the back to the front, then switched it to the other hand and leafed through it the other way. Satisfied that nothing lurked between its pages, he stooped and placed it on the floor to the right of the bookcase and pulled down the next book.
Brunetti took the papers from the top drawer of the desk through to the kitchen and set them on the table. He pulled out a chair, sat, and drew the stack of papers towards him.
Some time later - Brunetti didn’t even bother to look at his watch to see how long it had been - Vianello came into the kitchen, went to the sink and washed a film of dust from his hands, then ran the water until it was cold and drank two glasses.
Neither man spoke. Later, Brunetti heard Vianello go into the bathroom and use the toilet. Mechanically, he read through every receipt and piece of paper, placing them to one side after he had done so. When he was finished, he went back to the desk and took the papers from the bottom drawer and sat down to read. Arranged in precise chronological order, they told the story of the occasional sale of one of the apartments owned by Signora Jacobs, the first more than forty years ago. Every t
welve years or so, she sold an apartment. There was no bank book, so Brunetti could assume only that payment had been made in cash and kept in the apartment. He took a letter from the gas company and turned it over. Assuming that the declared price of a house, as was usual, was something approximating half of the real price, Brunetti quickly calculated that the money from the sale of each house should have lasted from eight to ten years, given what he could see of her bills for utilities and rent. He found it strange that a woman who had once owned several apartments would live in a rented one, but he had the rent receipts to prove it.
He came upon a small stack of receipts, all from the Patmos Gallery in Lausanne, all initialled ‘EL’, and all written for the sale of what was described as ‘objects of value’.
He got to his feet then and went back to the corridor, where he found Vianello almost finished with the second bookshelf. Hillocks of books drifted up the walls to both sides of each bookcase; in one place, an avalanche had fallen across the corridor.
Vianello saw him when he came in. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not even a used vaporetto ticket or a matchbook cover.’
‘I’ve found the source of Claudia’s Leonardo’s allowance,’ Brunetti said.
Vianello’s glance was sharp, curious.
‘Receipts from the Patmos Gallery for “objects of value”,’ he explained.
‘Are you sure?’ Vianello asked, already familiar with the name of the gallery.
‘The first receipt is dated one month before the first deposit in the girl’s account.’
Vianello gave a nod of approval.
‘Here, let me help,’ Brunetti said, clambering over a low mound of books and reaching down to the bottom shelf. Side by side, they flicked through the remaining books until the bookcase was empty, but they found nothing in the books other than what had been placed there by the authors.
Brunetti closed the last one and set it down on its side on the shelf at his elbow. ‘That’s enough. Let’s get something to eat.’
Vianello was not at all inclined to disagree. They left the apartment, Brunetti using the tobacconist’s key to lock the door behind them.
* * * *
20
After a disappointing lunch, the two men walked back to the Questura, occasionally suggesting to one another some connection that had yet to be explored or some question that remained unanswered. No matter how conscientiously Rizzardi might seek evidence that Signor Jacobs had been the victim of violence, in the absence of concrete evidence, no judge would authorize an investigation of her death; much less would Patta, who was reluctant to authorize anything unless the last words of the dying victim had been the name of the killer.
They separated when they entered the Questura, and Brunetti went up to Signorina Elettra’s office. As he walked in, she looked up and said, ‘I heard.’
‘Rizzardi said it might have been a heart attack.’
‘I don’t believe it, either,’ she said, not even bothering to ask his opinion. ‘What now?’
‘We wait to see the results of the autopsy, and then we wait to see who inherits the things in her apartment.’
‘Are they really that wonderful?’ she asked, having heard him talk of them.
‘Not to be believed. If they’re real, then it was one of the best collections in the city.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense, does it? To live like that, in the midst of all that wealth.’
‘The place was clean, and someone brought her cigarettes and food,’ Brunetti answered. ‘It’s not as if she was living in a pit.’
‘No, I suppose not. But we tend to think that, well, we tend to think that people will live differently if they have the money.’
‘Maybe that’s how she wanted to live,’ Brunetti said.
‘Possibly,’ Signorina Elettra conceded reluctantly.
‘Perhaps it was enough for her to be able to look at those things,’ he suggested.
‘Would it be? For you?’ she asked.
‘I’m not eighty-three,’ Brunetti said, then, changing the subject, he asked, ‘What about London?’
She handed him a single sheet of paper. ‘As I said, the British are much better at these things.’
Reading quickly, Brunetti learned that Benito Guzzardi, born in Venice in 1942, had died of lung cancer in Manchester in 1995. Claudia’s birth had been registered in London twenty-one years ago, but only her mother’s name, Petra Leonhard, was listed. There was no listing for her mother’s marriage or death. ‘That explains the last name, doesn’t it?’ he asked.
Signorina Elettra handed him a copy of Claudia’s application to the university. ‘It was easy enough. She simply presented documents with the name Leonhard and wrote it down as Leonardo.’
Before Brunetti could inquire, Signorina Elettra said, ‘The name of her aunt was listed on her passport as the person to contact in case of accident.’
‘The one in England?’
‘Yes. I called her. She hadn’t been notified of Claudia’s death. No one here had thought to do it.’
‘How did she take it?’
‘Very badly. She said Claudia had spent summers with her since she was a little girl.’
‘Is she the mother’s sister or the father’s?’
‘No,’ she said with a confused shake of her head at such things, ‘it’s like the grandmother. She’s not really an aunt at all, but Claudia always called her that. She was the mother’s best friend.’
‘Was? Is she dead?’
‘No. She’s disappeared.’ Before Brunetti could ask, she explained, ‘But not in the sense we’d usually use. Nothing bad’s happened to her. The woman said she’s just one of those free spirits who come and go through life as they please.’ She stopped there and then added her own editorial comment, ‘Leaving other people to pick up behind them.’ When Brunetti remained silent, she continued. ‘The last this woman heard from her was a few months after the father’s death, a postcard from Bhutan, asking her to keep an eye on Claudia.’
Suddenly protective of the dead girl and outraged that her mother could have discarded her like this, Brunetti demanded, ‘Keep an eye on her? How old was she - fifteen, sixteen? What was she supposed to do while her mother was off finding inner harmony or whatever it is people do in Bhutan?’
As this is the sort of question to which there is no answer, Elettra waited for his anger to pass away a bit and then said, ‘The aunt told me Claudia lived with her parents until her father’s death but then chose to come back to Italy, to a private school in Rome. That’s when she got in touch with Signora Jacobs, I think. In the summers she went back to England and lived with the aunt.’
Listening to her explain Claudia’s story calmed him somewhat, and after a time he said, ‘Claudia told me her parents never married but that the father accepted parentage.’
Signorina Elettra nodded. ‘That’s what the woman told me.’
‘So Claudia was Guzzardi’s heir,’ Brunetti said.
‘Heir to very little, it would seem,’ Signorina Elettra said. Head tilted to one side, she looked up at him and added, ‘Unless...’
‘I don’t know what the law is regarding someone who dies in possession of objects the ownership of which is unclear,’ Brunetti said, reading her mind. ‘Then again, it’s not normal to question the ownership of the things that are in a person’s home when they die.’
‘Not normally, no,’ Signorina Elettra agreed. ‘But in this case . . .’ She allowed her voice to trail off in an invocation of possibility.
‘There was nothing in her papers, no bills of sale for any of it.’ Brunetti said.
She followed the current of his thoughts. ‘Her notary or lawyer might have them.’
Brunetti shook his head: there had been nothing from either a lawyer or a notary among her papers, and the search through the pages of the books had proven entirely fruitless. It was Signorina Elettra who gave voice to the consequence of this thought. ‘If there’s no will, then it goes to her family.’
‘If she has a family.’
And in their absence, both realized, everything would go to the state. They were Italian and thus believed that nothing worse could happen to a person: everything they possessed, doomed to fall into the hands of faceless bureaucrats and plundered before being sent for storage, cataloguing and shifting, until what little survived the winnowing was eventually sold or forgotten in the cellar of some museum.
‘Might as well just put it all out on to the street,’ Signorina Elettra said.
