by Donna Leon
‘I think so, yes.’
As if speaking to a person who had reached adulthood without having learned to calculate time, he said, ‘That’s more than an hour, Signora.’
The absurdity of this forced her to say, ‘That’s ridiculous. She wasn’t the sort of person who would go back and kill someone.’
‘And are you experienced in dealing with such people, Signora?’
She resisted the impulse to hit him. Instead, she took a quick breath and said, ‘I’ve told you what happened.’
‘Do you expect me to believe all this, Signora?’ Lieutenant Scarpa asked in a half-mocking voice.
She knew that she had acted out of human decency; thus, no, she did not expect Lieutenant Scarpa to believe her. ‘Whether you believe me or not, Lieutenant, makes no difference at all. What I’ve told you is true.’ Before he could say anything, she added, ‘I have no reason to lie about this. In fact, your response makes me realize it would have been far easier if I hadn’t said anything. But I know the old woman would not let her into the apartment. I gave Flori the money, and I took her to the station.’ He started to object, but she held up a hand and said, ‘And it remains true, Lieutenant, whether you choose to believe it or not: she did not kill Signora Battestini.’
4
THEY SAT OPPOSITE one another for some time, until finally Scarpa pushed himself out of his chair, came around behind hers, and left the room, careful to leave the door open behind him. Signora Gismondi sat and studied the objects on the lieutenant’s desk, but she saw little to reflect the sort of man she was dealing with: two metal trays that held papers, a single pen, a telephone. She raised her eyes to the wall: Christ looked back at her from the crucifix as if equally unwilling to reveal whatever he might have learned from his proximity to Lieutenant Scarpa.
The room had only a small window, and it was closed, so after twenty minutes Signora Gismondi could no longer ignore how uncomfortable she felt, even with the door open behind her. It had grown unpleasantly warm, and she got to her feet, hoping it might be cooler in the corridor. At the moment she stood, however, Lieutenant Scarpa came back into the room, a manila folder in his right hand. He saw her standing and said, ‘You weren’t thinking of leaving, were you, Signora?’
There was no audible menace in what he said, but Signora Gismondi, her arms falling to her sides, sat down again and said, ‘No, not at all.’ In fact, that was just what she wanted to do, leave and have done with this, let them work it out for themselves.
Scarpa went back to his chair, took his seat, glanced at the papers in the trays, as if searching for some sign that she had looked through them while he was away, and said, ‘You’ve had time to think about this, Signora. Do you still maintain that you gave money to this woman and took her to the train station?’
Though the lieutenant was never to know this, it was this flash of sneering insinuation that stiffened Signora Gismondi’s resolve. She thought of her husband, who had been short and light-haired and looked nothing at all like Scarpa, and realized nevertheless how very similar the two men were. ‘I am not “maintaining” anything, Lieutenant,’ she said with studied calm. ‘I am stating, declaring, asserting, proclaiming, and, if you will give me the opportunity to do so, swearing that the Romanian woman whom I knew as Flori was locked out of the home of Signora Battestini and that Signora Battestini was alive and standing at the window when I met Flori on the street. Further, I state that, little more than an hour later, when I took her to the station, she seemed calm and untroubled and gave no sign that she had the intention of murdering anyone.’ Then, remembering his remark, she added, ‘Whatever those signs might be.’ She wanted to continue, to make it clear to this savage that there was no way that Flori, poor dead Flori, could have committed this crime. Her heart pounded with the desire to continue telling him how wrong he was; sweat accumulated between her breasts with the desire to embarrass him, but the habit of civilian caution exerted itself and she stopped speaking.
Scarpa, impassive, got up and, taking the folder with him, left the room again. Signora Gismondi sat back in her chair and tried to relax, told herself that she had had her say and it was finished. She forced herself to take deep breaths, then leaned back in the chair and closed her eyes.
After long minutes she heard a sound behind her, opened her eyes, and turned towards the door. A man as tall as Scarpa, though not dressed in uniform, stood there, holding what looked to be the same manila folder. He nodded when her eyes met his and gave a half-smile. ‘If you’d be more comfortable, Signora, we can go up to my office. It has two windows, so I imagine it will be a little cooler.’ He stepped aside, thus inviting her to approach.
She stood and walked to the door. ‘And the lieutenant?’ she asked.
‘He won’t trouble us there,’ he said and put out his hand. ‘I’m Commissario Guido Brunetti, Signora, and I’m very interested in what you have to tell us.’
She studied his face, decided that he was telling the truth when he said that he was interested in what she had to say, and took his hand. After this formal moment, he waved her through the door. When they got to the bottom of the staircase, a surprisingly elegant survivor in a building that had suffered indignities in the name of efficiency, he came up beside her.
‘I think I know you,’ she said.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘And I think I know you, too. Do you work near Rialto?’
She smiled and relaxed. ‘No, I work at home, over by the Misericordia, but I come to the market at least three times a week. I think that’s where we’ve seen one another.’
‘At Piero’s?’ Brunetti asked, naming the postage-stamp-sized shop where she bought parmigiano.
‘Of course. And I think I’ve seen you in Do Mori,’ she added.
‘Less and less, though.’
‘Since Roberto and Franco sold it?’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I know the new guys are perfectly nice, but it’s not the same, somehow.’
How maddening it must be to take over a successful business in this city, she thought. No matter how good you are and no matter how many improvements you might make, ten, twenty years after you take over, people will still be whining about how much better it was when Franco or Roberto or Pinco Pallino, for that matter, ran the place. These two new owners – she had never learned their names – were just as nice as the former ones, had the same wine, even had better sandwiches, but no matter how good anything they sold could be, they were doomed to spend their professional lives being held up to a long-forgotten standard, held up and found wanting, at least until all the old customers died or moved away, when they would become the new standard against whom the inadequacy of whoever replaced them would be measured.
At the top of the steps, Brunetti turned left and led her down the corridor and stopped outside one of the doors, inviting her to enter before he did. The first things she noticed were the tall windows that looked across to the church of San Lorenzo, and the large wardrobe that stood against one wall. Once again, there was a desk, a chair behind it, and two in front of it.
‘May I offer you something to drink, Signora? A coffee? A glass of water?’ He smiled, willing her to accept, but she was still bearing a grudge against Scarpa’s behaviour, so she refused, though she did it politely. ‘Perhaps later,’ she said and took the chair nearer the window.
Choosing not to retreat behind his desk, he pulled the second chair around to face her and sat down. He set the folder down, smiled, and said, ‘Lieutenant Scarpa has told me what you told him, Signora, but I’d like to hear it in your own words. I’d be grateful for as many details as you can give me.’
She wondered if he were going to turn on a tape recorder or take out a notebook: she had read crime novels. But he sat facing her, quiet, his elbow on the desk, and waited for her to speak.
She told him, then, everything she had told Scarpa: coming back from the bank after cashing the cheque; seeing Flori with the plastic bag in her hand; Signora Battestini up at the w
indow, looking down at them, silent, waving her outstretched finger back and forth in a sign of absolute negation.
‘Can’t you remember how much money you gave her, Signora?’ he asked when she was finished.
She shook her head. ‘No, the cheque was for about a thousand Euros. I bought some things on the way home: cosmetics and some batteries for my Discman; some other things but I don’t remember what they were. I recall that, when I took the money out to give it to her, I kept some of the bills – it was all in one hundred notes – then gave her the rest.’ She thought back to the scene, tried to recall if she had counted the money when she got home. ‘No, I don’t remember exactly, but it must have been six or seven hundred Euros.’
‘You’re a very generous woman, Signora,’ he said and smiled.
From Scarpa, she realized, the words would have been a sarcastic declaration of disbelief; from this man, they were a simple compliment and she felt flattered by his praise. ‘I don’t know why I did it,’ Signora Gismondi said. ‘She was out there in the street, wearing some sort of housedress made out of synthetic fabric, and canvas gym shoes. I remember one of them had a tear on the side. And she’d been working for her for months. I’m not sure exactly when she started, but I know she came when the windows were still closed.’
He smiled. ‘That’s a strange way to date things, Signora.’
‘Not if you lived near her,’ she said with some vehemence. Seeing his confusion, she said, ‘The television. It’s always on, all day long and all night long. During the winter, when we all have our windows closed, it’s not so bad. But in the summer, from about May until September, it’s enough to make me crazy. My windows are directly opposite hers, you see. She keeps it on all night, so loud I’ve had to call the police.’ She realized the tense she was using and said only, ‘Kept.’
He shook his head in sympathetic understanding, as would any Venetian, citizen of a city with some of the narrowest streets and one of the oldest populations in Europe.
Encouraged by this, she went on. ‘I used to call you, that is, call the police and complain about it, but no one ever did anything. But then, last summer, one of the men I talked to said I should call the firemen. But when I did, they said they couldn’t come just for the noise, not unless there was some danger or there was an emergency.’ Brunetti’s nod suggested that he found her explanation interesting.
‘So if she left it on, even if I could see her asleep in her bed – I can see her bed from my own bedroom window,’ she added parenthetically, unable to stop herself using the present tense – ‘I’d call the firemen and say I couldn’t see her and . . .’ her voice took on the robotic sound of someone reading from a prepared text, ‘and was afraid that something had happened to her.’ She looked up, grinned, and then grinned even more broadly when she saw his own smile of understanding. ‘And then they were obliged by law to come.’
Suddenly sobered by the return of reality, she added, ‘And now something awful has happened to her.’
‘Yes,’ Brunetti said. ‘It has.’
Silence fell between them until finally he asked, ‘Could you tell me more about this woman called Flori? Did you ever learn her surname?’
‘No, no. I didn’t,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t like that at all, not as though we’d ever been introduced. It’s just that we saw one another at the window every so often, and, the way one does, we smiled and said hello, and then I asked how she was or she asked me. And then we’d talk. Not about anything at all, just to say hello.’
‘Did she ever say anything about Signora Battestini?’ he asked, his words revealing only curiosity, not suspicion.
‘Well,’ Signora Gismondi revealed, ‘I had a pretty good idea of what sort of person she was. You know how it is in a neighbourhood: everyone knows everyone else’s business, and I knew people didn’t like her very much. And she’d had that television on for ever. So I asked how the Signora was, and all Flori did was smile and shrug and shake her head and say “difficile”, or something like that, just enough to let me know that she realized what the old woman was like.’
‘Anything else?’
‘Occasionally, I’d telephone and ask her to turn the television down,’ she said, then explained, ‘Flori, that is. I’d been calling Signora Battestini for years, and sometimes she’d be very nice and turn it down, and other times she’d scream at me. Once she even slammed down the phone and turned the television up louder, God knows why.’ She glanced at him to see what he was making of all of this, nothing more than the worst sort of small town gossip, but he still seemed genuinely interested. ‘But Flori would say “Sì, Signora” and turn it down. I suppose that’s why I liked her, or I felt sorry for her, whatever it was.’
‘I’m sure that was a great relief. Nothing’s worse, is it, especially when you’re trying to sleep?’ His sympathy was audible.
‘Sometimes, during the summer, it was impossible. I’ve got a house up in the mountains, near Trento, and I’d have to go up there just to get a good night’s sleep.’ She smiled and shook her head at the apparent lunacy of the situation. ‘I know it sounds crazy that a person can drive you out of your own home, but that’s the way it was.’ Then, with a puckish smile, she added, ‘Until I discovered the firemen.’
‘How did they get in?’ Brunetti asked.
She told him with evident pleasure. ‘The downstairs door was always locked, and they couldn’t open it. So they had to go to Madonna dell’Orto, or somewhere over there, and come back with a ladder. They’d lay it on the ground in front of her house and put it together, then raise it up to her windows . . .’
‘Second floor?’ he asked.
‘Yes. It must have been, I don’t know, seven or eight metres long. And then one or two of them would climb up and in her window and go into her bedroom and wake her up.’
‘You saw all of this?’ he asked.
‘Yes. I watched it from my windows. When they got inside, I’d move into my bedroom. That’s when I saw them wake her up.’ She smiled at the memory. ‘They were really very nice, the firemen. They’re all Venetian, so she had no trouble understanding them. They’d ask her how she was and then they’d suggest she turn down the television. And then they’d leave.’
‘How?’
‘Excuse me?’ she asked.
‘How did they leave? Back down the ladder?’
‘Oh, no,’ she said with a laugh. ‘They’d go out the door and down the stairs, and when they got outside, they’d take the ladder down and take it apart.’
‘How many times did you do this, Signora?’
‘Why? Is it illegal?’ she asked, worried for the first time in her conversation with Brunetti.
‘I don’t see how it could be,’ he answered calmly. ‘Quite the opposite, in fact. If you couldn’t see her from one of the windows in your apartment, then it seems to me you’d have every reason to be concerned that something had happened to her.’
He didn’t repeat his question, but still she answered it. ‘Four times, I think. They always got here in about fifteen minutes.’
‘Hum,’ he said appreciatively, and she wondered if he was surprised or pleased. Then he said, ‘Did it stop when Flori came?’
‘Yes.’
He allowed a long time to pass and then said, ‘The lieutenant told me that you took her to the station, Signora, and left her there. Is this true?’
‘Yes.’
‘At about ten-thirty?’
‘Yes.’
Changing the subject, he asked, ‘Did Signora Ghiorghiu have any other friends here that you know of?’
Hearing him refer to Flori with such formality pleased her, but her smile was brief, more a tightening of her lips than a smile. ‘I was hardly a friend, Commissario.’
‘You behaved like one.’
Reluctant to try to speak about this, she returned to his question. ‘No, not that I know of. We weren’t really friends because we really couldn’t talk. Just people who liked one another.’
‘And when you left her at the station, how would you describe her behaviour or her mood?’
‘She was still upset by what had happened but much less so than before.’
He looked down at the floor for a moment, then back at her. ‘Did you ever see anything else from your window, Signora?’ he asked, but before she could even think about defending herself from the suggestion of nosiness, he went on, ‘I ask because, if we accept the premise that Flori didn’t do this, then someone else must have, and anything you can tell me about Signora Battestini might help.’
‘You mean, to find out who it really was?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
So effortless had been his acceptance of the possibility of Flori’s innocence that she didn’t have time to register surprise. ‘I’ve been thinking about this since I called you,’ she said.
‘I imagine you must have, Signora,’ he said but didn’t prod her.
‘I’ve lived across from her for more than four years, since I bought the apartment.’ She paused but he gave no indication of wanting or needing to hurry her. ‘I moved in in February, I think; towards the end of winter, at any rate. So I didn’t notice her, not until the spring, when it got warmer and we started to open our windows. That is, I might have seen her moving around the apartment, but I paid no attention to her.
‘As soon as the noise started, though, I paid attention. I started by calling across the calle, but it didn’t do any good. She was always asleep; never woke up. So one day I went over and looked at the doorbells, then I found her number in the phone book and called her. I didn’t say who I was or where I lived or anything like that; I just asked her if she could, at night, try to keep her television turned down.’
‘And how did she respond?’ he asked.
‘She said she always turned it off before she went to bed and hung up.’
‘And then?’
‘Then it started during the day, and I’d call and when she answered I’d ask her, always very politely, to turn it down.’
