Death at La Fenice

by Donna Leon

  ‘I had no idea she was that good,’ Paola said respectfully, completely ignoring her daughter’s comments. ‘What’s she like?’ The question was typical of her. The woman’s involvement in a murder case had not been enough to interest Paola in her, not until she had seen the quality of her performance.

  ‘She’s just a singer,’ he said dismissively.

  ‘Yes, and Reagan was just an actor,’ Paola said. ‘What’s she like?’

  ‘She’s arrogant, afraid of losing her children, and wears brown a lot.’

  ‘Let’s eat,’ Chiara said. ‘I’m starved.’

  ‘Then go and set the table, and we’ll be there in a minute.’

  Chiara pushed herself up from her chair with every show of reluctance and went towards the kitchen, but not before saying, ‘And now I suppose you’ll make Papà tell you what she’s really like, and I’ll miss all the good parts, just like always.’ One of the great crosses of Chiara’s life was the fact that she could never get information from her father to transform into the coin of schoolyard popularity.

  ‘I wonder,’ Paola said, pouring wine into both their glasses, ‘how she learned to act like that. I had an aunt who died of TB years ago, when I was a little girl, and I can still remember the way she looked, the way she was always moving her hands nervously, just the way she did onstage, always shifting them around in her lap and grabbing one with the other.’ Then, with characteristic abruptness, ‘Do you think she did it?’

  He shrugged. ‘She might have. Everyone’s busy trying to give me the idea that she’s the Latin fireball, all passion, knife in the ribs the instant the offending word is spoken. But you’ve just seen how well she can act, so there’s nothing to say she isn’t cold and calculating and entirely capable of having done it the way it was done. And she’s intelligent, I think.’

  ‘What about her friend?’

  ‘The American?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I don’t know about her. She told me Petrelli went to see him after the first act, but only to argue with him.’

  ‘What about?’

  ‘He’d been threatening to tell her ex-husband about the affair with Brett.’

  If Paola was surprised at his use of the first name, she gave no sign of it.

  ‘Are there children?’

  ‘Yes. Two.’

  ‘Then it’s a serious threat. But what about her, about Brett, as you call her. Could she have done it?’

  ‘No, I don’t think so. The affair isn’t that fundamental to her life. Or she won’t let it be. No, it’s not likely.’

  ‘You still didn’t answer me about Petrelli.’

  ‘Come on, Paola, you know I’m always wrong when I try to work by intuition, when I suspect too much or I suspect too soon. I don’t know about her. The only thing I know is that this has got to have something to do with his past.’

  ‘All right,’ she said, agreeing to leave it. ‘Let’s eat. I have chicken, and artichokes, and a bottle of Soave.’

  ‘God be praised,’ he said, getting to his feet and pulling her up from the arm of the chair. Together, they went into the kitchen.

  As usual, the minute before dinner was on the table and they were ready to eat, Raffaele, Brunetti’s firstborn, son, and heir appeared from his room. He was fifteen, tall for his age, and took after Brunetti in appearance and gesture. In everything else, he took after no one in the family and would certainly have denied the possibility that his behaviour resembled that of anyone, living or dead. He had discovered, by himself, that the world is corrupt and the system unjust, and that men in power were interested in that and that alone. Because he was the first person ever to have made this discovery with such force and purity, he insisted upon showing his ample contempt for all those not yet graced with the clarity of his vision. This included, of course, his family, with the possible exception of Chiara, whom he excused from social guilt because of her youth and because she could be counted on to give him half of her allowance. His grandfather, it seemed, had also somehow managed to slip through the eye of the needle, no one understood how.

  He attended the classical liceo, which was supposed to prepare him for the university, but he had done badly for the last year and had recently begun to talk of not going anymore, since ‘education is just another part of the system by which the workers are oppressed’. Nor, should he quit school, had he any intention of finding a job, as that would make him subject to ‘the system that oppresses the workers’. Hence, to avoid oppressing, he would refuse to get an education, and to avoid being oppressed, he would refuse to get a job. Brunetti found the simplicity of Raffaele’s reasoning absolutely Jesuitical.

  Raffaele slumped at the table, propped on his elbows. Brunetti asked him how he was, this still being a topic safe to mention.

  ‘OK.’

  ‘Pass the bred, Raffi.’ This from Chiara.

  ‘Don’t eat that clove of garlic, Chiara. You’ll stink for days.’ This from Paola.

  ‘Chicken’s good.’ This from Brunetti. ‘Should I open the second bottle of wine?’

  ‘Yes,’ piped up Chiara, holding out her glass. ‘I haven’t had any yet.’

  Brunetti took the second bottle from the refrigerator and opened it. He moved around the table, pouring wine into each of their glasses. Standing behind his son, he rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder as he leaned over to pour the wine. Raffaele shrugged off his hand, then changed the gesture into an attempt to reach for the artichokes, which he never ate.

  ‘What’s for dessert?’ asked Chiara.

  ‘Fruit.’

  ‘No cake?’

  ‘Piggy,’ said Raffaele, but in definition, not in criticism.

  ‘Anyone want to play Monopoly after dinner?’ Paola asked. Before the children could agree, she established conditions. ‘Only if your homework’s done.’

  ‘Mine is,’ Chiara said.

  ‘So’s mine,’ Raffaele lied.

  ‘I’m banker,’ insisted Chiara.

  ‘Bourgeois piggy,’ Raffaele amended.

  ‘You two do the dishes,’ Paola ordered, ‘and then we’ll play.’ At the first squeak of protest, she wheeled on them. ‘No one’s playing Monopoly on this table until the dishes are off it, washed, and in the cabinet.’ As Raffaele opened his mouth to protest, she turned to him. ‘And if that’s a bourgeois way to look at it, that’s too damn bad. Eating chicken’s pretty bourgeois too, but I didn’t hear any complaints about the chicken. So do the dishes and we’ll play.’

  It never failed to amaze Brunetti that she could use that tone with Raffaele and get away with it. Anytime he came close to reprimanding his son, the scene ended with slammed doors and sulks that lasted for days. Knowing he’d been out-gunned, Raffaele showed his anger by snatching plates from the table and slapping them down on the counter next to the sink. Brunetti showed his by taking the bottle and his glass into the living room to wait out the inevitable thump and clatter of obedience.

  ‘At least he’s not building bombs in his bedroom,’ Paola offered as consolation when she came in to join him. From the kitchen they heard the muted sound that said Raffaele was washing the dishes and the sharp clanks that declared that Chiara was drying them and putting them away. Occasionally there was a sharp burst of laughter.

  ‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’ he asked.

  ‘As long as she can still make him laugh, I suppose we don’t have to worry. He’d never do anything bad to Chiara, and I doubt he’d blow anyone up.’ Brunetti wasn’t sure just how this was supposed to serve as sufficient consolation for his concern about his son, but he was willing to accept it as such.

  Chiara stuck her head into the room and cried, ‘Raffi’s got the board. Come on, let’s go.’

  When he and Paola got there, the Monopoly board was set up in the middle of the kitchen table and Chiara, as she had insisted, was banker, already passing out the small piles of money. By general consent, Paola was forbidden to be banker, as she had been caught too many times,
over the course of the years, with her hand in the till. Raffaele, no doubt nervous that accepting the position would leave him open to the accusation of avarice, refused. And Brunetti had enough troubles concentrating on the game without adding the responsibilities of banker, so they always left it to Chiara, who delighted in the counting and collecting, paying and changing.

  They rolled to see who went first. Raffaele lost and had to go last, which was enough to make the other three nervous from the beginning. The boy’s need to win at the game frightened Brunetti, and he often played badly to give his son every advantage.

  After half an hour, Chiara had all the green: Via Roma, Corso Impero, and Largo Augusto. Raffaele had two reds and needed only Via Marco Polo, which Brunetti owned, to make his set complete. After four more rounds, Brunetti allowed himself to be cajoled into selling the missing red property to Raffaele for Acquedotto and fifty thousand lire. Family rules forbade comment, but that didn’t prevent Chiara from giving her brother a fierce kick under the table.

  Raffaele, predictably, protested the injustice. ‘Stop that, Chiara. If he wants to make a bad deal, let him.’ This from the boy who wanted to bring down the entire capitalist system.

  Brunetti handed over the deeds and watched as Raffaele immediately built hotels on all three properties. While Raffaele was busy with that, making sure Chiara gave him the proper change, Brunetti noticed Paola calmly sliding a small pile of ten-thousand-lire notes from the banker’s pile to her own. She glanced up, noticed that her husband had seen her stealing from her own children, and gave him a dazzling smile. A policeman, married to a thief, with a computer monster and an anarchist for children.

  The next time around, he landed on one of Raffaele’s new hotels and had to hand over everything he owned. Paola suddenly discovered enough cash to build herself six hotels, but at least she had the grace to avoid his eyes as she handed the money to the banker.

  He sat back in his chair and watched the game progress towards the ending that his loss to Raffaele had made inescapable. Paola’s elbow began to inch towards the stack of ten-thousand-lire notes, but she was stopped by an icy glare from Chiara. Chiara, in her turn, failed to persuade Raffaele to sell her Parco della Vittoria, landed on the red hotels twice in a row, and went bankrupt. Paola held out for two more turns, until she landed on the hotel on Viale Costantino and couldn’t pay.

  The game ended. Raffaele was immediately transformed from a successful captain of empire to the disaffected foe of the ruling class; Chiara went to raid the refrigerator; and Paola yawned and said it was time to go to bed. Brunetti followed her down the hall, reflecting that the commissario of police of the Most Serene Republic had spent yet another evening in the unrelenting pursuit of the person responsible for the death of the most famous musician of the age.

  Eighteen

  Michele’s call came at one, pulling Brunetti out of a fuddled, restless sleep. He answered on the fourth ring and gave his name.

  ‘Guido, it’s Michele.’

  ‘Michele,’ he repeated stupidly, trying to remember if he knew anyone named Michele. He forced his eyes open and remembered. ‘Michele. Michele – good. I’m glad you called.’ He switched the bedside lamp on and sat up against the headboard. Paola slept beside him, rocklike.

  ‘I spoke to my father, and he remembered everything.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘It was just like you said: if there’s anything to know, he’ll know.’

  ‘Stop gloating and tell me.’

  ‘There were rumours about Wellauer and the sister who sang in opera, Clemenza. Papà couldn’t remember where, but he knew it started in Germany, where she was singing with him. There was some sort of scene between the wife and La Santina, at a party, after a performance. They insulted each other, and Wellauer left.’ Michele paused for effect. ‘With La Santina. After the performances – my father thinks it was in ‘37 or ‘38 – Santina came down here, to Rome, and Wellauer went home to face the music.’ Bad as it was, Michele laughed at his own joke. Brunetti didn’t.

  ‘It seems he managed to patch things up with his wife. Papà suggested there was a lot of patching to do, then and later.’

  ‘Is that the way it was?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes; Papà said he was one of the worst. Or best, depending on how you look at it. They got divorced after the war.’

  ‘Because of that sort of thing?’

  ‘Papà wasn’t sure. Seems a safe bet. Or it might have been because he backed the wrong side.’

  ‘Then what happened, when Santina came back to Italy?’

  ‘He came down to conduct a Norma, the one she refused to sing. Do you know about that?’

  ‘Yes.’ It had been in the file Miotti had given him, Xerox copies of news clippings from the Rome and Venice newspapers of decades ago.

  ‘They found another soprano, and Wellauer had a triumph.’

  ‘What happened? Did she continue to see him?’

  ‘This is where things get very cloudy, Papà says.

  Some people said they stayed together for a while after that. Others say that he broke it off as soon as she wasn’t singing anymore.’

  ‘What about the sisters?’

  ‘Apparently, when Clemenza stopped singing, Wellauer picked up the slack with another one.’ Michele had never been known for his delicacy of expression, especially when talking about women.

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘That went on for a while. And then there was what used to be called an ‘illegal operation’. Very easy to get, even then, my father tells me, if you knew the right people. And Wellauer did. No one knew much about it at the time, but she died. It might not even have been his child, but people seemed to think so at the time.’

  ‘And then what?’

  ‘Well, she died, like I said. Nothing was ever printed, of course. You couldn’t write about that sort of thing back then. And the cause of death was given in the papers as “after a sudden illness”. Well, I suppose it was, in a sense.’

  ‘And what about the other sister?’

  ‘Papà thinks she went to live in Argentina, either right at the end of the war or soon after. He thinks she might have died there, but not until years later. Do you want to see if Papà can find out?’

  ‘No, Michele. She’s not important. What about Clemenza?’

  ‘She tried to make a comeback after the war, but the voice wasn’t the same. So she stopped singing. Papà said he thinks she lives there. Is that true?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve spoken to her. Did your father remember anything else?’

  ‘Only that he met Wellauer once, about fifteen years ago. Didn’t like him, but he couldn’t give any specific reason for it. Just didn’t like him.’

  Brunetti heard the change in Michele’s voice that marked his passage from friend to journalist. ‘Does any of this help, Guido?’

  ‘I don’t know, Michele. I just wanted to get some idea of the sort of man he was, and I wanted to find out about Santina.’

  ‘Well, now you know.’ Michele’s voice was curt. He had sensed the policeman in the last answer.

  ‘Michele, listen, it might be something, but I don’t know yet.’

  ‘Fine, fine. If it is, then it is.’ He wouldn’t bring himself to ask for the favour.

  ‘If it does turn out to be anything, I’ll call you, Michele.’

  ‘Sure, sure; you do that, Guido. It’s late, and I’m sure you want to get back to sleep. Call me if you need anything else, all right?’

  ‘I promise. And thanks, Michele. Please thank your father for me.’

  ‘He’s the one who thanks you. This has made him feel important again. Good night, Guido.’

  Before Brunetti could say anything, the line went dead. He switched off the light and slid down under the covers, aware now only of how cold it was in the room. In the dark, the only thing he could see was the photo in Clemenza Santina’s room, the carefully arranged V in which the three sisters posed. One of them had died because of Wel
lauer, and another had perhaps lost her career as a result of knowing him. Only the little one had escaped him, and she had had to go to Argentina to do it.

  Nineteen

  Early the next morning, Brunetti padded into the kitchen well before Paola was awake and, not fully conscious of his actions, started the coffee. He wandered back to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and towelled it dry, avoiding the eyes of the man in the mirror. Before coffee, he didn’t trust anyone.

  He got back to the kitchen just as the coffeepot erupted. He didn’t even bother to curse, just grabbed the pot from the flame and slapped off the gas. Pouring coffee into a cup, he spooned in three sugars and took the cup and himself out onto the terrace, which faced west. He hoped the morning chill would succeed in waking him if the coffee failed.

  Scraggy-bearded, rumpled, he stood on the terrace and stared off at the point on the horizon where the Dolomites began. It must have rained heavily in the night, for the mountains had manifested themselves, sneaking close in the night and now magically visible in the crisp air. They would pack up and disappear before nightfall, he was sure, forced out of sight by waves of smoke that rose up ever fresh and new from the factories on the mainland or by the waves of humidity that crept in from the laguna.

  From the left, the bells of San Polo rang out for the six-thirty mass. Below him, in the house on the opposite side of the calle, the curtains snapped back and a naked man appeared at the window, utterly oblivious of Brunetti, who watched him from above. Suddenly the man sprouted another pair of hands, with red fingernails, which came reaching around him from behind. The man smiled, backed away from the window, and the curtains closed behind him.