Wilful Behaviour - [Commissario Brunetti 11]

by Donna Leon

Though in complete agreement, Brunetti did not think it fitting to admit this, so he asked, instead, ‘What about Claudia’s phone calls to Filipetto?’

  ‘I haven’t printed them out yet, sir,’ she said, ‘but if you’ll have a look, you can see.’ She touched some keys and letters flicked across the screen of her computer. The screen rolled to black for an instant, then came back to life filled with short columns of numbers. Signorina Elettra tapped her finger against the heading of each and explained: ‘Number called, date, time, and length of call. Those are her calls to Filipetto,’ she said, then touched another key, and further columns inserted themselves below. ‘And these are the ones from his house to hers.’ She gave him a moment to study the numbers and then asked, ‘Strange, isn’t it, seven calls between people who didn’t know one another?’

  She punched more keys, and new numbers replaced the old ones.

  ‘What are those?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘The calls between her number and the Library. I haven’t had time to separate them yet, so they’re mixed in together in chronological order.’

  He studied the column of figures. The first three were from her number to the Library. Then one from the Library. One from her. Then, after a gap of three weeks, a series of calls from the Library began. They were repeated at four- or five-day intervals and went on for six weeks. At first, Brunetti assumed they must be calls from Claudia to her flatmate, but then he saw that some of the calls were made after nine at night, a strange time for anyone to be in the Library. He studied the final column, which gave the length of each call, and found that, although the later calls in the series had lasted for five or ten minutes, the last one was very short, less than a minute.

  Signorina Elettra had been studying the list along with him and said, ‘I’ve had it happen to me, so I recognize the pattern.’

  ‘Harassment?’ Brunetti asked, forced to use the English word and struck by its absence from Italian. Does that mean we lack the concept, as well as the word? he wondered.

  ‘I’d say so.’

  ‘Can you print me a copy of the first ones?’ he asked, and at her nod, he explained, ‘I think I’ll go and speak to Dottor Filipetto again. See if the list refreshes his memory.’

  * * * *

  The woman Filipetto called Eleonora let Brunetti in again and, without bothering to inquire as to the reason for his visit, led him into the study. Had Brunetti been asked, he would have sworn that the old man had not moved since they had spoken. As they had the last time, papers and magazines covered the surface in front of him.

  ‘Ah, Commissario,’ Filipetto said with every suggestion of pleasure, ‘you’ve come back.’ He waved Brunetti forward and held up a restraining hand to the woman, gesturing for her, however, not to leave the room. Brunetti was vaguely conscious of her presence behind him, somewhere near the door.

  ‘Yes, sir, I’ve come to ask you a few more questions about that girl,’ Brunetti said as he took the chair the old man indicated.

  ‘Girl?’ Filipetto asked, sounding befuddled; to Brunetti, it seemed intentionally so.

  ‘Yes, sir, Claudia Leonardo.’

  Filipetto stared up at Brunetti and blinked a few times. ‘Leonardo?’ he asked. ‘Is this someone I know?’

  ‘That’s what I’ve come to ask about, sir. I came here a few days ago and you said you’d never heard of her.’

  ‘That’s true,’ Filipetto said, a slight irritation audible in his voice. ‘I’ve never heard the name.’

  ‘Are you sure of that, sir?’ Brunetti asked blandly.

  ‘Of course I’m sure of that,’ Filipetto insisted. ‘Why do you question my word?’

  ‘I’m not questioning your word, sir; I’m merely questioning the accuracy of your memory.’

  ‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ the old man demanded.

  ‘Nothing at all, sir, just that we sometimes forget things, all of us.’

  ‘I’m an old man ... Filipetto began, but then stopped, and Brunetti watched as a transformation took place. Filipetto hunched down in his chair; his mouth fell open and one hand scrabbled over the surface of the desk to rest on the other one. ‘I don’t remember everything, you know,’ Filipetto said in a voice that was suddenly high pitched, the voice of a querulous old man.

  Brunetti felt like Odysseus’ dog, the only one able to penetrate his master’s deceit and disguise. Had he not watched Filipetto deliberately turn himself into a feeble old man, compassion would have prevented his asking further questions. Even so, guile stood upon his tongue and stopped him from mentioning the record of the calls to and from Claudia Leonardo.

  With a smile he worked hard to make appear as warm as it was credulous, Brunetti asked, ‘Then you might have known her, sir?’

  Filipetto raised his right hand and waved it weakly in the air. ‘Oh, perhaps, perhaps. I don’t remember much any more.’ He raised his head and called to the woman near the door, ‘Eleonora, did I know anyone called . . .’ He turned to Brunetti and asked, as if she had not been perfectly able to hear Claudia’s name, ‘What did you say her name was?’

  ‘Claudia Leonardo,’ Brunetti supplied neutrally.

  The woman’s response was a long time in coming. Finally she said, ‘Yes, I think the name is familiar, but I can’t remember why it is I know it.’ She said no more and didn’t ask Brunetti to tell her who Claudia was.

  Though it angered him to have been outmanoeuvred, Brunetti felt a grudging admiration for the way in which Filipetto had capitalized on his age and apparent infirmity. The phone records, now, could do no more than prompt his old man’s memory into recalling that, yes, yes, now that Brunetti mentioned it, perhaps he had spoken to some young girl, but he couldn’t remember what it was they’d talked about.

  Defeat would be no less decisive, Brunetti realized, if he were to stay to ask more questions. He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. Leaning across the desk, he shook Filipetto’s hand and said, ‘Thank you for your help, Notaio. I’m sorry to have bothered you with these questions.’ Filipetto’s grasp had actually grown weaker; his hand felt as insubstantial as a handful of dry spaghetti. The old man, speechless, could do no more than nod in Brunetti’s direction.

  Brunetti turned towards the door, and the woman stepped aside to let him pass. He stopped at the end of the hall, just at the door of the apartment. With no preparation, he said, ‘May I ask what your relationship to Dottor Filipetto is?’

  She gave him a long, steady look and answered, ‘I’m his daughter.’

  Brunetti thanked her, did not offer to shake her hand, and left.

  * * * *

  21

  Aware that any decision concerning what he thought of as Signora Jacobs’s murder must wait upon Rizzardi’s report, Brunetti found himself purposeless and without the will to do any specific thing. He did not want to go back to work, nor did he want to begin to question the people who lived near the old woman; least of all did he want to think about Claudia Leonardo and her death. He walked.

  He set off from Filipetto’s and cut back toward San Lorenzo, but when he reached the bridge in front of the Greek church his courage failed him and he ducked into the underpass rather than continue to the Questura. He passed through Campo Santa Maria Formosa and saw what looked like a tribe of Kurds camped in front of the abandonedpalazzo, their meagre possessions spread in front of them as they squatted and stooped on bright-coloured carpets. The men wore sober suits and black skullcaps, but the women’s long skirts and scarves flared out in orange, yellow, and red. Their uninterest in passers-by seemed total; all they lacked were campfires and donkeys; they could just as easily have been in the middle of the plains.

  He crossed Santi Apostoli, continued past Standa, then turned to the right and back toward the waters of the laguna. He passed the Misericordia and the stone relief of the turbaned merchant leading his camel, and then cut right again, walking by instinct until he came out at the vaporetto stop at Madonna dell’ Orto. A vaporetto was
just pulling off to the right, but when the pilot saw him he threw the motor into idle, then reverse, and backed up to the embarcadero, engine throbbing a command to step abroad. The sailor slid the metal bars back and Brunetti jumped on, although he had had no intention of taking a boat.

  As the vaporetto pulled into Fondamente Nuove he made a decision and switched to another one that was leaving for the cemetery. He got off there, the one man among a crowd of women, most of them old and all of them carrying flowers. As he had done since he started walking, he moved forward by instinct alone, as if his feet were entirely in charge of the rest of his body.

  He turned right through the cloister, then went up and down low flights of steps until he stood in front of the marble plaque behind which rested his father’s bones. He read the name and the dates. Brunetti was almost as old as his father had been when he died, and he had as many children. It had always been his mother’s custom to come out here to discuss things with her husband after his death, though he had not, even when living, been much help to her in deciding anything. Once Brunetti had asked her about it, and she said only that it helped her to feel close to someone again. Years passed before he accepted the bleak criticism of her remark, but by then his mother had slipped through the hands of love and concern and drifted into the waters of the senile and the mad, and so he had never been able to ask her pardon or make it up to her.

  The flowers resting in a small silver vase below the plaque were fresh, but Brunetti had no idea who might have left them: perhaps his brother or his sister-in-law? Most assuredly it had not been their children or his own: young people seemed to have no interest in the cult of the dead, and so the graves of his generation would probably be left flowerless and unvisited. Once Paola was gone, who would come to talk to him here? Had anyone questioned him or had Brunetti thought to question himself, he would have attributed his assumption that he would be the first to die to a wealth of statistics: men died first, and women lived on alone. But the real answer probably lay in some fundamental difference in their characters: Paola usually opted for light and the forward leap into life, while his spirit felt more comfortable one step back from the stage, where things were less well illuminated and he could study them and adjust his vision before deciding what to do.

  He placed his right hand on the letters of his father’s name. He stood for a moment, then glanced to his left, at the long row of tombs lined up in their orderly ranks, one on top of the other, each occupying the same amount of space. Soon enough, both Claudia Leonardo and Signora Jacobs would take their places here. In the neatly tended field behind him stood the marble tombs of the wealthy, enormous monuments in every shape and style. He thought of Ivan Ilych, advising his family to forgo, and he thought of Ozymandias, King of Kings, but he thought most of how little real emotion he felt standing here, at his father’s tomb. He left the cemetery and took the boat back to Fondamente Nuove.

  Brunetti had to search for a public phone with which to call Vianello and tell him he wouldn’t be back in the office that afternoon. As was usual in an age when everyone was encouraged to have a telefonino, it proved impossible to find a public phone, so Brunetti ended up going into a bar and ordering a coffee he didn’t want in order to justify using their phone. After he spoke to Vianello he called home, but there was no one there, just his own voice giving the phone number and asking him to leave a message.

  In a state of complete inattention, Brunetti passed through the city and towards his home, almost dizzy with the desire to be there. So glad was he to arrive that he actually leaned against the front door after he closed it, though the action made him feel like the heroine of some cheap melodrama, relieved at having escaped the menaces of the slavering suitor who still lurked beyond the door.

  Eyes closed, he said aloud, ‘God, I’ll be hiding under the bed next.’

  From his left, he heard Paola say, ‘If this is the first sign of madness, I’m not sure I’m ready for it.’ He turned and saw her standing at the door to her study, a book in her hand, smiling.

  ‘I doubt it’s the first sign you’ve seen,’ he said and pushed himself away from the door. ‘Why are you home this afternoon? It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?’

  ‘I put a note on my office door, saying I was sick,’ she explained.

  He studied her face: her eyes glistened with good humour, her skin with health. ‘Sick?’ he asked.

  ‘Of sitting in my office.’

  ‘But never of the books?’ he asked.

  ‘Never,’ she asserted, then asked, ‘Why are you home so early?’

  ‘As you heard me saying, I want to hide under the bed.’

  She turned back into her study, saying, ‘Come and tell me about it.’

  Twenty minutes later Brunetti had told her all there was to say about the death of Signora Jacobs and his belief that it had been neither natural nor accidental.

  ‘Who would want to kill them both?’ Paola asked, sharing his conclusion that the two deaths had to be related.

  ‘If I knew why, it would be easy enough to find out who,’ Brunetti answered.

  ‘The why has got to be the paintings,’ Paola pronounced, and Brunetti saw no reason to question her conclusion.

  ‘Then all we’ve got to do is wait until a will is found or a notary presents one for probate?’ he asked sceptically.

  ‘That seems a bit simplistic to me,’ Paola answered. She gazed at the wall of books opposite them for a long time and then said, ‘It’s all very much like The Spoils of Poynton.’

  ‘Tell me,’ he prodded, knowing that she would, even if he didn’t ask.

  ‘It’s one of the Master’s novellas. It’s all about possession of a house full of beautiful objects and reveals what people are really like by the way they respond to the objects.’

  ‘For example?’ Brunetti asked, always finding it easier to have Paola tell him about the books of Henry James than actually to read them.

  ‘Well, I think it would be easier if you read it yourself,’ she said.

  Brunetti said only, ‘Give me one example.’

  ‘The woman’s son - that is, the son of the woman who owns all of the beautiful things - has no appreciation of the beauty of her possessions, is deaf or blind to them, just as he’s blind and deaf to the young companion of his mother, who would be the ideal wife for him, instead of the young woman he gets engaged to. He can’t appreciate their obvious beauty, and he can’t appreciate her hidden beauty.’ She thought about what she’d said for a moment, then added, in quick apology to the Master, ‘The story tells this far better, but that’s pretty much what it’s about.’

  ‘All right, I’ll ask,’ Brunetti said when he realized she had finished. ‘How do you connect this with Signora Jacobs?’

  He sat and watched her trying to formulate an answer he would understand. Finally she said, ‘In the end, are things more important than people? Which do you pull from the burning building, the Rembrandt or the baby? And how, in this greedy age of ours, do you separate beauty from value?’

  ‘Now tell me without the rhetorical questions,’ he asked.

  She laughed at his answer, not at all offended, and went on. ‘I think it’s a sign of some sort of spiritual illumination to respond to beauty,’ she began, letting him know he was in for one of her convoluted explanations, though he did not doubt that it would lead somewhere interesting. ‘But I think our age has so transformed art into a form of investment or speculation that many people can no longer see the beauty of an object or care much about it if they do: they see only the value, the convertibility of the object into a particular sum of money,’

  ‘And is that bad?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so,’ she said, glancing at him and then smiling again as she added, ‘but you know what a terrible snob I am.’ When he did not take advantage of the pause she left him to deny this, she went on, ‘I think that once we convert beauty into financial value, we’re willing to go to different lengths to acquire it. That is, I don’t find it at
all strange that a person should kill to obtain a painting that they viewed only in terms of how much money it’s worth, but I can’t imagine that anyone would kill in order to obtain one painted by his favourite artist simply because he admired it.’ She laid her head back against the top of the sofa, closed her eyes, then opened them and went on. ‘Different goals drive people to different lengths. Or perhaps different people are driven by different goals. At any rate, I think people will do more if they are after something they view as a manifestation of money than if they view it as a manifestation of beauty.’

  ‘And in this case?’ he asked.

  ‘Murder’s pretty far,’ she said by way of an answer.

  ‘And the mad art collector who wants to own everything?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘There are probably some, but I suspect very few of them go about stabbing young girls or killing old women to get the things they want. Besides, no one knows yet where these pieces are going to end up, do they?’