Death at La Fenice

by Donna Leon

  And then he was at the water’s edge, the bridge to his right. How typically Venetian it was, looking, from a distance, lofty and ethereal but revealing itself, upon closer reflection, to be firmly grounded in the mud of the city.

  Across the bridge, he walked through the now abandoned market. It was usually a cross to bear, shoving and pushing through the crowded street, through herds of tourists jammed together between vegetable stalls on one side and shops filled with the worst sort of tourist junk on the other, but tonight he had it to himself and could stride freely. Ahead of him, in the middle of the street, a pair of lovers stood, glued hip to hip, blind to the beauty about them but perhaps, after all, somehow inspired by it.

  At the clock, he turned left, glad to be almost home. Five minutes brought him to his favourite shop, Biancat, the florist, whose windows offered the city a daily explosion of beauty. Tonight, through the clinging humidity of the glass, tubs of yellow roses preened themselves, while behind them lurked a cloud of pale jasmine. He walked quickly past the second window, crowded with lurid orchids, which always looked faintly cannibalistic to him.

  He let himself into the palazzo in which he lived, bracing himself, as he always had to do when he was tired, for the task of climbing the ninety-four steps to their fourth-floor apartment. The previous owner had built the apartment illegally more than thirty years before, simply added another floor to the existing building without bothering with official permission of any sort. This situation had somehow been obscured when Brunetti bought the apartment ten years ago, and ever since, he had lived in recurrent fear of being confronted with a summons to legalize the obvious. He trembled at the prospect of the Herculean task of getting the permits that would authenticate both that the apartment existed and that he had a right to live there. The mere fact that the walls were there and he lived within them would hardly be thought relevant. The bribes would be ruinous.

  He opened the door, glad of the warmth and smell he associated with the apartment: lavender, wax, the scent of something cooking in the kitchen at the back; it was a mixture that represented to him, in a way he couldn’t explain, the existence of sanity in the daily madness that was his work.

  ‘Is that you, Guido?’ Paolo called from the living room. He wondered who else she might be expecting at two in the morning, but he didn’t ask.

  ‘Yes,’ he called back, kicking off his shoes and removing his coat, just now beginning to accept how tired he was.

  ‘Would you like some tea?’ She came into the hall and kissed him lightly on the cheek.

  He nodded, making no attempt to hide his exhaustion from her. Trailing her down the hall towards the kitchen, he took a chair while she filled the kettle and put it on the stove to boil. She pulled down a bag of dried leaves from a cupboard above her head, opened it, sniffed, and asked, ‘Verbena?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ he answered, too tired to care.

  She tossed a handful of dried leaves into the terra-cotta teapot that had been his grandmother’s and came over to stand behind him. She kissed the back of his head, right on the spot where his hair was beginning to thin. ‘What is it?’

  ‘At La Fenice. Someone poisoned the conductor.’

  ‘Wellauer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  She placed her hands on his shoulders and gave them a gentle squeeze that he found encouraging. No comment was necessary; it was obvious to both of them that the press would make a sensation of the death and become screamingly insistent that the culprit be found as quickly as possible. Either he or Paola could have written the editorials that would appear in the morning, were probably being written even now.

  The kettle shot out a burst of steam and Paola went to pour the water into the chipped pot. As always, he found her mere physical presence comforting, found solace in observing the easy efficiency with which she moved and did things. Like many Venetian women, Paola was fair-skinned and had the red-gold hair so often seen in portraits of the women of the seventeenth century. Not beautiful by any ordinary canon, she had a nose that was a bit too long and a chin that was more than a bit too determined. He liked both.

  ‘Any ideas?’ she asked, bringing the pot and two mugs to the table. She sat opposite him, poured out the aromatic tea, then went back to the cupboard and returned with an immense jar of honey.

  ‘It’s too early,’ he said, spooning honey into his mug. He swirled it around, clicking his spoon against the side of the mug, then spoke in rhythm with the clicking of the spoon. ‘There’s a young wife, a soprano who lied about not seeing him before he died, and a gay director who had an argument with him before he was killed.’

  ‘Maybe you ought to try to sell the story. It sounds like something we’d see on TV.’

  ‘And a dead genius,’ he added.

  ‘Yes, that would help.’ Paola sipped at her tea, then blew on it to cool it. ‘How much younger is the wife?’

  ‘Easily young enough to be his daughter. Thirty years, I’d say.’

  ‘OK,’ she said, using one of the Americanisms towards which her vocabulary was prone. ‘I say it was the wife.’

  Though he had repeatedly asked her not to do this, she insisted on choosing a suspect at the beginning of any investigation he worked on, and she was generally wrong, for she always opted for the most obvious choice. Once, exasperated beyond bearing, he’d asked her why she insisted on doing it, and she’d explained that since she had written her dissertation on Henry James, she considered herself entitled to the release of finding the obvious in real life, since she’d never found it in his novels. Nothing Brunetti had ever done could stop her from making her choice, and nothing could ever induce her to inject any subtlety into her selection.

  ‘Which means,’ he said, still swirling his spoon, ‘that it will turn out to be someone in the chorus.’

  ‘Or the butler.’

  ‘Hmm,’ he agreed, and drank his tea. They sat in companionable silence until the tea was gone. He took both mugs and placed them in the sink, and set the teapot on the counter beside it, safe from harm.

  6

  The morning after the conductor’s body was found, Brunetti arrived at his office a bit before nine, to discover that an event almost as marvellous as that of the night before had transpired: his immediate superior, Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta, was already in his office and had been calling for Brunetti for almost half an hour. This fact was revealed to him first by the porter who stood just inside the entrance to the building, then by an officer he met on the stairs, then by the secretary who worked for him and the two other commissarios of the city. Making no attempt to hurry, Brunetti checked his mail, phoned the switchboard to see if there had been any calls, and at last went down the flight of stairs that led to his superior’s office.

  Cavaliere Giuseppe Patta had been sent to Venice three years before in an attempt to introduce new blood into the criminal justice system. In this case, the blood had been Sicilian and had proved to be incompatible with that of Venice. Patta used an onyx cigarette holder and had been known, upon occasion, to carry a silver-headed walking stick. Though the first had made Brunetti stare and the second laugh, he tried to reserve judgement until he had worked long enough with the man to decide if he had a right to these affectations. It had taken Brunetti less than a month to decide that though the affectations did suit the man, he had little right to them. The vicequestore’s work schedule included a long coffee each summer morning on the terrace of the Gritti, and, in the winter, at Florian’s. Lunch was usually taken at the Cipriani pool or Harry’s Bar, and he usually decided at about four to ‘call it a day’. Few others would so name it. Brunetti had quickly learned, as well, that Patta was to be addressed, at all times, as ‘Vice-Questore’ or the even grander ‘Cavaliere’, the provenance of which title remained obscure. Not only did he insist that his title be used, but he had to be addressed formally as lei, leaving it to the rabble to call one another by the familiar, tu.

  Patta preferred not to be disturbed by any of the more
distressing details of crime or other such messiness. One of the few things that could drive him to run his fingers through the graceful curls at his temples was a suggestion in the press that the police were in any way lax in their duties. It did not matter what the press chose to comment on: that a child had managed to slip through a police cordon to give a flower to a visiting dignitary or that notice had been taken of the open sale of drugs by African street vendors. Any suggestion that so little as hinted at anything less than a police stranglehold on the inhabitants of the city sent Patta into paroxysms of accusation, most of which fell upon his three commissarios. His ire was usually expressed in long memos to them, in which the crimes of omission by the police were made to sound infinitely more heinous than those of commission by the criminal population.

  Patta had been known, as the result of a suggestion in the press, to declare various ‘crime alerts’, in which he singled out a particular crime, much in the way he would select an especially rich dessert from the cloth-draped sweet table in a restaurant, and announced in the press that, this week, the crime in question would be wiped out or, at least, minimized. Brunetti could not, when he read of the most recent ‘crime alert’ – for this was information that was generally revealed to him only by the press – help but think of the scene in Casablanca in which the order was given to ‘round up the usual suspects’. That was done, a few teenagers were sentenced to jail for a month or so, and things went back to normal until the press’s attentions once again provoked an ‘alert’.

  Brunetti often mused that the crime rate in Venice was low – one of the lowest in Europe and certainly the lowest in Italy – because the criminals, and they were almost always thieves, simply didn’t know how to get away. Only a resident could navigate the spiderweb of narrow calles, could know in advance that this one was a dead end or that one ended in a canal. And the Venetians, the native population, tended to be law-abiding, if only because their tradition and history had given them an excessive respect for the rights of private property and the imperative need to see to its safekeeping. So there was very little crime, and when there was an act of violence or, much more rarely, a murder, the criminal was quickly and easily found: the husband, the neighbour, the business partner. Usually all they had to do was round up the usual suspects.

  But Wellauer’s death, Brunetti knew, was different. He was a famous man, no doubt the most famous conductor of the age, and he had been killed in Venice’s little jewel of an opera house. Because it was Brunetti’s case, the vice-questore would find him directly responsible for any bad publicity that might attach to the police.

  He knocked on the door and waited to be told to enter. When the shout came, Brunetti pushed open the door and saw Patta where he knew he would be seated, poised as he knew he would find him, sitting behind his enormous desk, bent over a paper that was made important by the scrutiny he gave it. Even in a country of handsome men, Patta was shockingly handsome, with a chiselled Roman profile, wide-spaced and piercing eyes, and the body of an athlete, though he was well into his fifties. He preferred, when photographed for the papers, to be taken in left profile.

  ‘So you’ve finally come,’ Patta said, suggesting that Brunetti was hours late rather than on time. ‘I thought I’d have to wait all morning for you,’ he added, which Brunetti thought was overplaying the role. When Brunetti made no response to either remark, Patta demanded, ‘What have you got?’

  Brunetti pulled that morning’s Gazzettino from his pocket and answered, ‘The paper, sir. It’s right here on page one.’ Then, before Patta could stop him, he read out, ‘Famous Maestro Found Dead. Murder Suspected.’ He offered the paper to his superior.

  Patta kept his voice level but dismissed the paper with a wave. ‘I’ve already read that. I meant what have you found out?’

  Brunetti reached into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out his notebook. There was nothing written in it except for the name, address, and phone number of the American woman, but so long as he was kept standing in front of the seated Patta, there was no way the other man could see that the pages were virtually empty. Pointedly, he wet the finger of one hand and leafed slowly through the pages. ‘The room was unlocked, and there was no key in the door. That means that anyone could have gone in or out at any time during the performance.’

  ‘Where was the poison?’

  ‘In the coffee, I think. But I won’t know until after the autopsy and the lab report.’

  ‘When’s the autopsy?’

  ‘This morning, I think. At eleven.’

  ‘Good. What else?’

  Brunetti turned a page, exposing fresh emptiness. ‘I spoke to the singers at the theatre. The baritone saw him, but only to say hello. The tenor says he didn’t see him, and the soprano says she saw him only when she came into the theatre.’ He glanced down at Patta, who waited. ‘The tenor’s telling the truth. The soprano’s lying.’

  ‘Why do you say that?’ Patta snapped.

  ‘Because I think it’s true, sir.’

  With exaggerated patience, as if he were speaking to an especially slow child, Patta asked, ‘And why, Commissario, do you think it’s true?’

  ‘Because she was seen going into his dressing room after the first act.’ Brunetti didn’t bother to clarify that this was only a suggestion from a witness, not yet confirmed. His interview had suggested she wasn’t telling the truth, perhaps about that, perhaps about something else.

  ‘I also spoke to the director,’ Brunetti continued. ‘He had an argument with the conductor before the performance began. But he didn’t see him again during the performance. I think he’s telling the truth.’ Patta didn’t bother to ask him why he thought this.

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘I sent a message to the police in Berlin last night.’ He made a business of leafing through his notebook. ‘The message went out at –’

  ‘Never mind.’ Patta cut him off. ‘What did they say?’

  ‘They’ll fax down a full report today, any information they have on Wellauer or his wife.’

  ‘What about the wife? Did you speak to her?’

  ‘Not more than a few words. She was very upset. I don’t think anyone could have talked to her.’

  ‘Where was she?’

  ‘When I spoke to her?’

  ‘No, during the performance.’

  ‘She was sitting in the audience, in the orchestra. She said she went back to see him after the second act but got there too late to speak to him, that they never spoke.’

  ‘You mean she was backstage when he died?’ Patta asked with an eagerness so strong Brunetti almost believed the man would need little more to arrest her for the crime.

  ‘Yes, but I don’t know whether she saw him, whether she went into the dressing room.’

  ‘Well, make it your business to find out.’ Even Patta realized that his tone had been too harsh. He added, ‘Sit down, Brunetti.’

  ‘Thank you, sir,’ he said, closing his notebook and slipping it into his pocket before taking a seat opposite his superior. Patta’s chair, he knew, was a few centimetres higher than this one, something the vice-questore undoubtedly regarded as a delicate psychological advantage.

  ‘How long was she back there?’

  ‘I don’t know, sir. She was very upset when I spoke to her, so her story wasn’t very clear.’

  ‘Could she have gone into the dressing room?’ Patta asked.

  ‘She might have. I don’t know.’

  ‘It sounds like you’re making excuses for her,’ said Patta, then added, ‘Is she pretty?’ Brunetti realized Patta must have found out about the difference in age between the dead man and his widow.

  ‘If you like tall blondes,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Don’t you?’

  ‘My wife doesn’t permit me to, sir.’

  Patta thrust around for a way to pull the conversation back together. ‘Did anyone else go into the dressing room during the performance? Where did the coffee come from?’

&nb
sp; ‘There’s a bar on the ground floor of the theatre. Probably from there.’

  ‘Find out.’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘Now pay attention, Brunetti.’ Brunetti nodded. ‘I want the name of anyone who was in the dressing room, or near it, last night. And I want to find out more about the wife. How long they’ve been married, where she comes from, that sort of thing.’ Brunetti nodded.

  ‘Brunetti?’ Patta suddenly asked.

  ‘Yes, sir?’

  ‘Why aren’t you taking notes?’

  Brunetti permitted himself the smallest of smiles. ‘Oh, I never forget anything you say, sir.’

  Patta chose, for reasons of his own, to give this a literal reading. ‘I don’t believe what she told you about not seeing him. People don’t start to do something and then change their minds. I’m sure there’s something here. It probably has something to do with the difference in their ages.’ It was rumoured that Patta had spent two years studying psychology at the University of Palermo before changing to the law. But it was unblemished fact that, after an undistinguished career as a student, he had taken his degree and, soon thereafter, as a direct result of his father’s very distinguished career in the Christian Democratic party, had been appointed a vice-commissario of police. And now, after more than twenty years, he was Vice- Questore of the police of Venice.

  Patta having apparently finished with his orders, Brunetti prepared himself for what was coming, the speech about the honour of the city. As night the day, the thought gave birth to Patta’s words. ‘You might not understand this, Commissario, but this is one of the most famous artists of our era. And he was killed here in our city, Venice’ – which name never failed to sound faintly ridiculous coming from Patta, with his Sicilian accent. ‘We have to do everything in our power to see that this crime is solved; we cannot allow this crime to blot the reputation, the very honour, of our city.’ There were times when Brunetti was tempted to take notes of what the man said.