GB_23: By Its Cover: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti waited until he heard the sound of water running, followed by the clash of metal on metal. He had seen that look of parched desolation on the faces of victims of crime or people who had been involved in accidents. Get sugar and water into them; something to eat if you could. Keep them warm. It was then he realized how cold the room was, the humidity complicit in making it worse.

  He walked to the door and opened it without bothering to knock. The smell hit him, the fetid, dank stink of an animal’s cage or the home of an old person who had given up on life and ceased to bathe or eat with any regularity. The fact that the room was warm made it worse. He searched for the source and saw an electric heater in the corner, five red bars glowing in defiance of the cold. Light filtered in through a single curtained window, illuminating little but giving shape to the few objects in the room: a double bed, a small table, and an empty glass. The locusts had passed through here, as well. They had overlooked the man in the bed, lying on his back, eyes closed. A grubby white sheet was folded back over the top of a dark blue blanket.

  Sartor’s face was rough with beard; the light from the window hollowed and darkened the cheek it illuminated. The collar of his T-shirt exposed his stubble-covered neck. His breathing was audible.

  The room was so small that two steps brought Brunetti close to the side of the bed. A chair stood beside it; he sat. Nestled in the hair on Sartor’s neck, Brunetti saw, was a small coral bull’s horn on a silver chain, worn by many men – though usually in the South – as a totem to ward off bad luck and call down good.

  He had left the door of the room open in automatic response to the smell: he decided to leave it: cold was better than this. He heard a ping that might have been a cup or, he hoped, a plate. When he turned his attention back to Sartor, he realized the man’s breathing had quickened. Sudden footsteps approached, and Brunetti got to his feet, reluctant to permit either of the women into the room.

  When the footsteps passed away, moving down the calle and away from the house, Brunetti was struck by the strangeness of living in a place where you had no idea if people were in the house with you or out on the street. He sat down again and said, careful to speak in a normal voice, ‘Signor Sartor, it’s Brunetti. We met at the library.’

  Sartor opened his eyes and looked at him. Brunetti saw recognition in them; Sartor nodded and said, ‘Yes, I remember.’

  ‘I came because of the books.’

  This time Sartor did no more than nod.

  Changing the subject, Brunetti said, ‘You’ve been in bed for two days, is that right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Are you sick?’

  ‘No,’ he answered. ‘Not really.’

  ‘Then why are you in bed?’ Brunetti asked, posing it as a normal question.

  ‘There’s nowhere else I can go.’

  ‘You could go to work. You could go for a walk. You could go to a bar for a coffee.’

  Sartor moved his head from side to side on the pillow. ‘No. That’s over.’

  ‘What is?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘My life.’

  Brunetti let his surprise show. ‘But you’re talking to me, and your wife is in the kitchen, so your life isn’t over.’

  ‘Yes it is,’ he said with childlike insistence.

  ‘Why do you think that?’

  Sartor closed his eyes for a moment, opened them and looked at Brunetti. ‘Because I’ll lose my job.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Brunetti asked innocently.

  Sartor stared at him and then closed his eyes. Brunetti sat and waited. After more than a minute, Sartor opened his eyes and said, ‘I stole books.’

  ‘From the library?’

  Sartor nodded.

  ‘Why did you steal them?’

  ‘To pay him.’

  ‘Pay who?’ Brunetti asked, doing his best to sound confused.

  ‘Tertullian. Franchini.’

  ‘Pay him what? Why?’ Brunetti asked. He thought there could be only one reason a gambler would have to pay someone.

  ‘He gave me money. Lent me.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Brunetti said. ‘Why would you borrow money from him?’

  ‘To pay other debts,’ Sartor said. He closed his eyes and pulled his mouth tight at the thought of those debts.

  ‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I needed money. Two years ago. So I went to someone who lends it.’

  ‘Not to a bank?’

  Sartor dismissed the idea with a heavy snort. ‘Someone in the city.’

  ‘Ah, I understand,’ Brunetti said. There were more than a few usurers in Venice: sign your house over as collateral and you can have what you want. Your mother’s gold? Your father’s life insurance? Your furniture? Nothing easier. Sign here and you can have whatever money you need. Only 10 per cent interest. Per month. Everything they did was indecent; nothing could be done to stop them.

  ‘We had to pay interest every month. We gave him that, but then he wanted the money back.’ Brunetti found it interesting that Sartor borrowed the money, but ‘we’ had to pay it back.

  ‘When did this start?’

  ‘I told you: two years ago. We managed for a year, paying the interest, but then it got to be too much.’ One of Sartor’s hands contracted under the covers, bunching and pulling at the sheet and blanket. ‘When he told me he wanted the money back, I said we couldn’t pay it.’ His hand emerged to finger the coral horn for a moment, then slipped back to safety. ‘He came here with a friend and talked to my wife.’ He left it to Brunetti to imagine the tenor of that conversation.

  ‘So you asked Franchini to lend it to you?’ Brunetti asked.

  The question shocked Sartor. ‘No. Of course not. He was one of our readers.’

  Brunetti was no less shocked by the answer than by the vehemence with which Sartor gave it.

  The rhythm of these conversations changed constantly, Brunetti knew: it was time for even more softness. ‘I see,’ he said. ‘How did it happen, then?’

  He watched as Sartor tried to formulate an answer, saw the way he pulled his lips inside his teeth, as if by closing his mouth like that, he could remain silent for a longer time; perhaps until Brunetti forgot about the question.

  Brunetti sat and waited. He imagined that he was a plant, perhaps a lilac bush, and he had just dug his roots into this chair. If he sat here long enough he would become a permanent part of the chair, of the room, of Sartor’s life: the man would never rid himself of the sight of Brunetti, rooted into his life.

  ‘One day,’ Sartor finally said, ‘when he was leaving the library – we always exchanged a few words when he came in and when he left – he said he thought I looked worried and asked if there was anything he could do to help me.’

  ‘You knew he had been a priest?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And we went and had a coffee, and I told him – like you say, he was a priest once – that I was worried about money.’ Brunetti did not see the connection, believing that priests were meant for other things, but he said nothing. ‘He offered to lend it to me. I said I couldn’t take it, and he said if I wanted, we could make it official.’

  ‘Official?’

  ‘With a paper that I’d sign.’ A hand emerged from the covers to make a signing gesture in the air.

  ‘So there was interest?’

  ‘No,’ Sartor said, sounding almost offended. ‘Just that he had lent me the money.’

  ‘How much was it?’

  He watched Sartor get ready to lie, and then he did. ‘A thousand Euros.’

  Brunetti nodded in apparent belief.

  There was a long pause, as if Sartor could, by wishing, make all of this be over.

  Brunetti was tiring of it, of the lies and delays, and so he asked, to hurry things, ‘And then what happened?’

  The look Sartor flashed at him suggested Brunetti had nudged him too hard or insulted him. He turned his head away and stared at the wall.
Brunetti waited.

  ‘After a few months, Franchini told me he needed the money back,’ Sartor muttered, to the wall. ‘But I didn’t have it. When I told him that, he said I could help him, instead.’

  ‘How?’

  Sartor turned suddenly and shot Brunetti a sharp glance. ‘By giving him books, of course,’ he said in a tight voice. Brunetti realized that either Sartor’s patience or his powers of invention were nearly exhausted.

  ‘Did he tell you what books?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes. He found them in the catalogue and told me their titles.’

  ‘Did you give them to him?’ Brunetti asked, conscious of the verb and its suggestion that the books were Sartor’s to give.

  ‘I had no choice.’ Sartor sounded indignant.

  ‘And Nickerson?’ Brunetti asked, hoping to surprise him with the question.

  Sartor’s response was immediate, his voice tight. ‘What about him?’

  ‘Did he know Franchini?’

  Sartor looked across at him quickly, unable to disguise his surprise, and Brunetti wondered if he had asked the wrong question, or asked it too soon. Sartor’s glance sharpened, but then he closed his eyes and remained silent for so long that Brunetti feared they had reached the point he had known was coming when Sartor would refuse to say anything more. He waited, making evident his retreat from the conversation, but Sartor remained motionless, eyes closed. From the other room, he heard a noise and hoped that the women would not choose this moment to return.

  Sartor opened his eyes. His face looked different, more alert; even his beard, which had seemed scraggly and unkempt, now appeared to be the result of an exercise in studied negligence.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, finally answering Brunetti’s question. ‘He was very clever. Franchini.’

  Not clever enough, Brunetti wanted to say but, instead, asked, ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘He told me he recognized him, Nickerson. From before,’ Sartor began. Slowly, he continued, considering every word, as if it were necessary to make what he was saying clear. ‘He didn’t tell me where. Or when. Just that he knew him.’

  ‘Were they working together?’ Brunetti asked.

  It took so long for Sartor to answer that Brunetti again feared he had decided to stop speaking, but then he said, ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you helped?’

  ‘Very little. Franchini told me to leave Nickerson alone.’

  ‘At the exit?’ Brunetti asked.

  Sartor lowered his head to indicate embarrassment. ‘Yes,’ he muttered, as if he didn’t want even Brunetti to hear this confession. His eyes were rich with appeal when he asked, ‘What else could I do?’ When Brunetti didn’t answer, he said, ‘I just didn’t bother to look in his briefcase.’

  Sartor moved his left hand to the side of the bed and took hold of the hem of the sheet. He started to roll the edge between his thumb and middle finger, turning it into a thin cylinder. Back and forth, back and forth, like someone stroking a cat.

  ‘Then what happened?’ Brunetti asked, hoping this was the question Sartor wanted to hear.

  ‘Nickerson wanted the Doppelmayr.’

  ‘The what?’ Brunetti asked, though he knew the book of maps.

  ‘It’s an atlas of the heavens,’ Sartor said with the condescension of the expert. ‘There’s one in the library, and Nickerson said he wanted it.’

  ‘Why that one?’

  ‘For a client. That’s what Franchini told me.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘Franchini was a cautious man, and he said it was too important to take. And too big. He told Nickerson he’d have nothing to do with it, no matter what he said or what he offered.’

  Brunetti made his face as blank as possible and asked, ‘What happened?’

  Brunetti watched Sartor think of how to answer. ‘He told me, the day before Nickerson left, to go into the reading room and the next day say I had to take one of the books he was using back to the desk because it had to be sent to another library. He told me that would frighten him away. And it did.’

  ‘Why did he tell you to do that?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Franchini said they’d had an argument about the Doppelmayr; then they argued about money.’ Sartor saw what looked like raw curiosity on Brunetti’s face, and said, ‘He told me – Franchini did – that he wanted to get rid of him because he was afraid of him.’

  Ah, there it was, Brunetti thought, finally, the thing he was meant to believe. He had no doubt that an argument about money was the cause of Franchini’s death, but perhaps not a fight between those two men.

  Brunetti had long been of the opinion that one of the handicaps of stupidity was its inability to imagine intelligence. Though stupid people might know the word ‘intelligent’ and have seen that some people understood things more quickly, their own monochrome intelligence could never truly fathom the difference. So Sartor would never see how transparent his story was. Brunetti didn’t know whether to hit him or pity him.

  He was distracted from the need to make that decision by the sound of footsteps, this time not from the calle but from the next room. ‘Commissario,’ he heard Griffoni call.

  He got to his feet and went to the door. Claudia was in the middle of the room, Sartor’s wife in the opening that led to the kitchen. ‘We’ve been talking, the Signora and I,’ Claudia said, turning to the woman and smiling at her. The soft voice she used filled him with fear.

  Brunetti closed the door to the bedroom and walked closer to Claudia.

  ‘We’ve been talking,’ she said, ‘about how hard it is to make ends meet with only one salary.’ In the background, the woman nodded in agreement with these truths only women seemed to understand. She looked calmer; perhaps Claudia had managed to get some sugar into her, even some food.

  Turning to her, Claudia asked, ‘That’s right, isn’t it, Gina?’

  ‘Yes. And with the crisis, salaries stay the same and everything becomes more expensive.’ She was a more composed person than the shattered woman who had pulled them into the apartment.

  ‘So we all have to be careful,’ Claudia said with heavy emphasis. ‘No waste: make do with what we have.’ She turned to Brunetti and said, with shrieking falsity that the other woman could not sense, ‘The Signora’s told me that her husband’s frightened he might lose his job.’ A cloud crossed the woman’s face, and her hands came together to console one another.

  Brunetti wondered if Claudia was perhaps in need of some sugar herself, but her voice had warned him that all of this was leading somewhere. Then, as if suddenly reminded of that fact, she turned to the woman and said, ‘That’s why it’s so wise of you not to have let your husband throw those boots away.’

  The woman smiled, proud of her housekeeping skills. ‘They’ve got a good few years left in them,’ she said. ‘He paid a hundred and forty-three Euros for them, only four years ago.’ A pause, and then she said, ‘We couldn’t afford to buy them, not now: things are so bad.’

  ‘Can’t be too careful, Signora,’ Brunetti said with an approving smile, while thinking that it was going to destroy her to have done this. Then, his voice caught between two emotions, he said, ‘Signora, do you think I could have a glass of water, too?’

  ‘Oh, let me make you a coffee, Dottore,’ she said and turned back towards the kitchen.

  As he followed her, he turned to Griffoni and said, ‘Call them and tell them we need a warrant to search this place for the boots.’

  Instead of the easy compliance he had come to expect from her, Griffoni said, ‘I’ve been Judas once; I don’t want to do it again.’

  Brunetti pulled out his phone and dialled the number of the Questura and requested the warrant, then he went into Signora Sartor’s kitchen to accept her hospitality.

  Table of Contents

  Half Title

  Also by Donna Leon

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

/>   Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22