Drawing Conclusions

by Donna Leon

  He let himself in, hung his jacket to the left of the door, and went towards the kitchen. Indeed, turbanti di soglie, or else both Paola and his nose were liars. She was in the kitchen, standing at the table, palms splayed on either side of an open newspaper, head bent as she read.

  He came up behind her and kissed the back of her neck. She ignored him. He opened the cabinet to her right and pulled down a glass, then another one. He opened the fridge and removed another bottle of the Moët from the vegetable drawer, thinking how lucky he was to be married to a woman who would be offered such a tasteful bribe. He stripped off the foil, put his thumbs under the cork, and shot it across the room. Not even the explosive sound stirred her to action or comment.

  He poured carefully into both glasses, allowed the bubbles to subside, added, waited, added, then put a stopper in the bottle and put it back in the door of the fridge. He slid one glass towards her until it touched the edge of the page, then picked up his glass and tapped it against hers. ‘Cin cin,’ he said in his gruff, hearty voice.

  She ignored him and turned a page. He put a hand out to steady her glass, nudged to one side by the turning page of the newspaper. ‘It does a man’s heart good to come into the bosom of his family and be welcomed with the affection he is accustomed to,’ he said and sipped at his wine. ‘Ah, that effusive warmth, that sense of familial intimacy and well-being to be had only in a man’s home, surrounded and revered by the people he most cherishes.’

  She reached aside, picked up her glass, and took a sip. What she tasted caused her to look aside at him. ‘Is this more of the Moët?’ she asked.

  ‘The woman wins a prize,’ he said, toasted her, and took another sip.

  ‘I thought we were going to save it for something special?’ she asked, sounding surprised but not at all displeased.

  ‘And what is more special than that I return to my lady wife and she greets me with the loving kindness – beneath which glow the embers of raging passion – that has characterized our union for these two decades and more?’ He tried to make his smile as idiotic as possible.

  She set her glass on top of the newspaper – in fact, right on the face of the man who had that day declared his candidacy for mayor – and said, ‘If you’ve stopped for a few ombre on the way home, Guido, then I think we might be wasting this champagne.’

  ‘No, my sweet. I was borne home on the wings of love and was so driven to be united with your sweet self that I had no time to think of stopping.’

  She picked up her glass took another sip, then tipped the base of the glass to point at the photo. ‘Can you believe this? He’s going to remain a cabinet minister and at the same time be mayor.’

  ‘Which days do we get?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Monday, Wednesday, and Friday? And the government in Rome gets Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday?’ He took a sip and said, ‘Any sane person would think this an insult, both to the nation and to the city.’

  She shrugged. ‘Didn’t the last one keep his job in Brussels and his university teaching job?’ she asked.

  ‘We are ruled by a race of heroes,’ Brunetti declared, reaching to open the refrigerator.

  ‘Do you think drinking the whole bottle quickly will make them all go away?’ she asked, emptying her glass and holding it out.

  He poured, waited, poured, then said, ‘Only for a while, and then they’ll all come back, like cockroaches, but we’ll at least be able to look at them through the bubbles of champagne.’

  In quite a conversational voice, she asked, ‘Do you think there are any people on earth who despise their politicians as much as we do?’

  He filled his own glass before he said, ‘Oh, I’m sure that, except for places like Scandinavia and Switzerland, most people do.’

  She heard the teasing end of that sentence and asked, ‘But?’

  Brunetti studied the photo in the newspaper. ‘But we have more cause than most, I think.’ He took a long drink.

  ‘I often wonder what planet they think they’re living on,’ Paola said, folding the paper closed and shifting it to one side. ‘They speak no language known to man, they know no passions other than greed and—’

  ‘If you’re listing their passions, don’t forget to include the current one for transsexuals,’ he said, aiming for precision and hoping to lighten her mood, though he was not quite sure how the subject of transsexuals was meant to do that.

  ‘Their sense of ethics would make that dead transsexual – I can’t even remember her name any more, poor girl – look like the late Mother Teresa.’

  ‘That is a comparison which many religious people would find offensive,’ he said.

  She gave this the consideration it deserved and said, ‘You’re right. Even I find it offensive. But I get carried away by these things.’

  He leaned over and kissed her on the lips. ‘I know, my dear, and that’s one of the reasons you have captured my heart.’

  ‘Oh, stop it, Guido,’ she said, holding out her glass. ‘Pour me some more and I’ll put the water on for the pasta.’

  He did as she requested, then helped her set the table, pleased to learn that the kids were both to be there. How life plays tricks with us, he thought, as he folded the napkins and set them beside the plates. When Raffi was just starting to sit at the table and eat with them, dropping as much on the table or the floor as he got into his mouth, sipping and spilling and never quite sure what to do with his fork, Brunetti had viewed his behaviour not as charming, but as a continual distraction from his own meal. Yet here he was, years later, hoping that boy – now fully competent in the use of his fork – would find the time to eat with them and not take himself off to a friend’s house. It had nothing whatsoever to do with his son’s conversation, nor his wit nor his grasp of ideas, Brunetti realized. It simply filled Brunetti’s heart to have them there and to be able to see and hear them, knowing they were safe and warm and well fed.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ Paola asked from behind him.

  ‘Hmmm?’ Brunetti asked, turning to face her.

  ‘You were standing there, staring at the table, and I wondered if something were wrong,’ she said, puzzled.

  ‘No. Nothing. I was thinking.’

  ‘Ah,’ she said in the voice of someone who had heard that one before. Then, ‘Shall we have another whack at that bottle before the kids get here?’

  With Pavlovian rapidity, Brunetti turned to the refrigerator. ‘The elegance of your thinking is matched only by that of your language,’ he said.

  She smiled and held her empty glass towards him. ‘It’s the fate of the person who lives with two teenagers.’

  There remained sufficient champagne for each of the children to find a glass in front of them as they sat down to dinner.

  ‘What are we celebrating?’ Raffi asked as he picked up his glass.

  ‘You don’t have to have something to celebrate to drink champagne,’ Chiara said, trying to sound like the sort of person who has left a trail of empty jeroboams behind her. She lifted her glass and clicked it against Raffi’s, then took a sip.

  Raffi, looking at his glass but making no attempt to drink from it, said, ‘I don’t get it about champagne.’

  Paola placed a plate of turbanti in front of him and one in front of Chiara, then went to fill two for Brunetti and herself. She set them down and took her place. ‘What don’t you understand?’ she asked, though not before she had taken a sip, as if to re-test the evidence.

  ‘Why people go crazy about it or think it’s so good,’ Raffi said, sliding his glass to the side of his plate and picking up his fork.

  ‘Snobbery,’ Chiara said through a mouthful of fish.

  ‘Chiara,’ Paola said in a warning voice, and Chiara nodded and put her hand to her mouth in acknowledgement of the reprimand. She poured some mineral water and took a sip, set her fork down and repeated, ‘Snobbery.’ Brunetti, studying her face, saw that some of the plumpness of adolescence had given way to the angles of maturity, making her resemblance to her mother ev
en stronger.

  ‘Which means what?’ Raffi said, turning his attention to his dinner.

  ‘To impress people,’ Chiara said. ‘With how sophisticated they are and how good their taste is.’ Before Raffi could say anything, she added, ‘People do it all the time, with everything. Cars, what they wear, what they say they like.’

  ‘Why say you like something when you don’t?’ Raffi asked with what sounded to Brunetti like honest confusion, forcing him to wonder if, unbeknownst to either him or Paola, their son had been spending his free time on some other planet for the last few years.

  Chiara set her fork down, rested her chin on one hand, and stared across the table at her brother. He ignored her. Finally she said, ‘It’s why you want a pair of Tod’s and not a plain old pair of shoes.’

  Raffi ignored her and continued to eat.

  ‘Or why my friends’ parents all think they have to go to the Maldives or the Seychelles for vacation,’ she persisted.

  Raffi poured himself a glass of water, ignoring the champagne. He drank the water and set the glass on the table, then pushed his chair back and turned to face his sister. He held up one foot and extended it in her direction. ‘Bought at the Lignano market this summer for nineteen euros,’ he said proudly, waving his foot in a circle, the better to display his shoe. ‘No Tod’s, no label.’ He lowered his foot and turned his chair, pulling himself back into place at the table. He picked up his fork and resumed eating.

  Crestfallen, Chiara looked at her mother and then at her father. Had she been a boy, she and Raffi would probably have got into a scuffle of some sort, and Brunetti suspected he would have broken it up to protect the smaller child. Why was it, then, that when the combatant used only words, she had to be left alone to protect herself?

  Brunetti had been in what he assumed was the normal number of fights when he was growing up: nothing had ever passed beyond a few punches and a good deal of shoving. He could not remember ever having been hurt, nor indeed hurting anyone, and none of the fights had left any clear memory. But he still remembered an afternoon when Geraldo Barasciutti, who sat next to him in mathematics class, had laughed when Brunetti made a grammatical error, mixing Veneziano with Italian.

  ‘What’s the matter with you? Does your father unload ships for a living?’ Geraldo had asked, poking him in the ribs as he said it.

  He had meant it as a joke: it was common enough for kids to confound the two languages. But the truth had sliced into Brunetti’s sense of self – a sense made delicate by having to wear his brother’s cast-off shoes and jackets – for his father had indeed once worked at the docks, unloading ships for a living. It was that day and that remark that Brunetti remembered as the worst thing that had happened to him as a child. His university education, his position as a commissario of police, the stature and wealth of his wife’s family: all of these things could be called into question by the memory of those words and the pain caused by their unintentional truth.

  ‘The strange thing,’ Brunetti said, holding up his glass to Raffi though speaking in defence of Chiara’s position, ‘is that I probably couldn’t tell the difference between this, and the prosecco we drink every day.’

  ‘Every day?’ Paola asked, though not before Brunetti had exchanged a smile with his daughter.

  ‘The prosecco we normally drink,’ he said, correcting the ambiguity. He finished his champagne, picked up the empty bottle, and went to the refrigerator in search of a second. He settled for their everyday prosecco and took it back to the table.

  ‘What your father is doing,’ Paola said to the children as Brunetti unpeeled the foil wrapping, ‘is giving an example of the scientific method. He is not prepared,’ she continued, ‘to allow his remark to go untested.’

  ‘Which one?’ Raffi asked. ‘About the difference between champagne and prosecco or that you drink it every day?’

  ‘Two pigeons with one bean,’ Brunetti said, a remark that was followed by a very loud ‘Pop.’

  23

  The following morning, Brunetti woke early and went to make himself coffee. While he was waiting for the coffee to boil, he went to the back window, hoping the mountains would be visible, but they were not. He stared at the distant haze while he considered the strange case of Madame Reynard. There was no way of knowing, short of asking them directly, how Sartori and Morandi had come to sign the will. And why had a woman of Madame Reynard’s age – to make no mention of her wealth – been in the Ospedale Civile and not a private clinic?

  The spluttering of the coffee distracted him. He poured it out, stirred in some sugar, and added cold milk, though he would have preferred it to be heated. He returned to his thoughts. In what conjunction had the orbits of those four people intersected in a hospital room: a dying heiress and the lawyer who became her heir; the witnesses to the handwritten will that named him as such? As if fallen from the heavens, a practical nurse and a man with a criminal record had witnessed the will that saw to the transfer of millions. An odd constellation, and how large was the apartment which one of the witnesses bought soon thereafter?

  His thoughts turned to the woman who had been living with Signora Altavilla. Brunetti recalled with some uneasiness his initial willingness to suspect, not her, but her lover, the chemistry teacher with the courage to come and warn Signora Altavilla of the cuckoo in her nest. The southerner.

  He stared at the painting on the kitchen wall, of the Grand Canal as it had appeared centuries before, then he pictured Signora Altavilla’s apartment as they had found it. He looked again at their painting, and the sight conjured up the memory of the lonely nails on Signora Altavilla’s walls. He retrieved his telefonino from his jacket pocket and dialled Niccolini’s number.

  As soon as the doctor heard his name, he said, ‘Commissario, I was going to call you today.’

  ‘About what, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked, relieved that he was being spared an exchange of pleasantries, though there was nothing pleasant either man had to say to the other.

  ‘My mother’s apartment. Some things are missing,’ Niccolini said, sounding troubled, not angry.

  ‘How do you know this, Dottore?’

  ‘I went there yesterday. With a friend. Just to see. He came with me to …’ His voice faded, but Brunetti, at the memory of what there was to see in that apartment, decided it would be kinder to let him find his voice.

  ‘To help.’

  Brunetti certainly understood that.

  ‘Could you tell me what’s missing?’ Brunetti prodded.

  ‘Three drawings,’ the doctor answered. ‘They were all quite small.’

  ‘Is that all?’

  ‘I think so. So far, that is.’

  ‘Missing from where?

  ‘One was in the guest room. And two were in the hallway just outside it.’

  Brunetti remembered the ghost shadows under the nails in the guest room, was vaguely conscious of two in the hallway. He did not remember seeing any others. But surely, if Gabriela Pavon had decided to add them to her last-minute packing, then those were the easiest to grab. What nerve she must have had, to take them while the other two women were just down the corridor.

  ‘What were they, the drawings?’

  ‘One was a Corot. The other two were by Salvator Rosa. Small, but good quality.’

  The doctor remained silent for a long time, and then he said, sounding weak and hesitant, ‘I thought I should tell you. It might mean something.’ Brunetti thanked the doctor and hung up.

  He sat and looked at the painting for some time, and then he finished his coffee, set the cup in the sink, and went to take a shower.

  Forty minutes later, he emerged on to the embankment of San Lorenzo. He rested his elbows on the railing and watched the boats pass by, trying to think of how he might convince Patta to pursue more actively an official investigation into the death of Signora Altavilla. He imagined the statue of blindfolded Justice, in her hand the scales of her trade. On one side he put the words ‘only a possibility’ and
on the other the publicity sure to accrue at the news that a woman had been killed in her home. After all these years, he was well aware of the workings of his superior’s mind and knew that the first obstacle would be the damage to the image of the city, second the damage to tourism.

  ‘And the effect on tourism?’ an outraged Patta demanded of him half an hour later, reversing the order of his concerns but still not managing to surprise Brunetti. The Vice-Questore had, by evident force of will, contained himself until he finished listening to these latest ravings from his ever-insubordinate subordinate. ‘What are we supposed to tell these people? That they aren’t safe in their homes, but to have a good time anyway?’

  Brunetti, well schooled in the rhetorical excesses and inconsistencies of his superior, forbore to point out that tourists, at least when they were in Venice, were not in their homes, however safe or unsafe they might be therein. He nodded in a manner he hoped would be considered sage.

  Brunetti concentrated on meeting his superior’s gaze – Patta hated to have anyone’s attention stray from him, surely the first step on the road to disobedience – and gave every appearance that he was dealing with rational opposition. ‘Yes, I see your point, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said. ‘I just hope that Dottor Niccolini …’ he allowed his voice to trail away, as if his thoughts had been written on a blackboard and he was wiping them out.

  ‘What about him?’ Patta asked, eyes alert to everything he considered a nuance.

  ‘Nothing, sir,’ Brunetti said evasively, uncertain whether he should be bored or mortified by his own behaviour.

  ‘What about Dottor Niccolini?’ Patta said in a cold voice, exactly the one Brunetti had tried to provoke.

  ‘That’s just it, sir: he’s a doctor. That’s how he introduced himself at the hospital, and that’s how Rizzardi addressed him.’ This was pure fantasy on Brunetti’s part. But it might have been true, which sufficed.