by Donna Leon
‘And?’
‘And most of the times she did.’
‘I see. And at night?’
‘Sometimes it wasn’t on, for weeks at a time. I’d begin to hope something had happened, that she’d been taken away or gone away.’
‘Did you ever think of getting her a pair of those earphones, Signora?’
‘She’d never wear them,’ she answered with absolute certainty. ‘She’s crazy. That’s why. Mad as a horse. Believe me, Signore, I did my homework on this woman. I spoke to her lawyer, her doctor, her niece, the people at the psychiatric centre at Palazzo Boldù, to the neighbours, even to the postman.’
She saw his interest and went on. ‘She was a patient at Boldù for years, when she could still manage the stairs and leave the house. But either she stopped or they threw her out – if a psychiatric centre can throw people out, that is.’
‘I doubt they can,’ he said. ‘But I suppose they could encourage her to leave.’ He waited a moment, then asked, ‘The niece? What did she say?’
‘That her aunt was “a difficult woman”.’ She snorted in scorn, ‘As though I didn’t know that. She didn’t want to have anything to do with it. In fact, I’m not sure she really understood what I was talking about. Same with the police, as I told you, and with the Carabinieri.’ She paused, then added, ‘Someone in the neighbourhood – I can’t remember who it was – told me her son died five or six years ago, and that’s when the television began. For company.’
‘So he died before you moved in?’
‘Yes. But from what I’ve heard, I suspect she was always “a difficult woman”.’
‘And her lawyer?’ Brunetti asked.
‘She said she’d speak to Signora Battestini.’
‘And?’
Signora Gismondi pushed her lips together as if in disgust.
‘The postman?’ he asked with a smile.
She laughed out loud. ‘He had nothing good to say about her, as a matter of fact. He’d take everything up to her, whenever it came – he was always climbing those steps – and she never gave him anything. Not even at Christmas. Nothing.’
His attention was unwavering and so she went on. ‘The best story I heard about her was from the marble man, the one over by the Miracoli,’ she said.
‘Costantini?’ he asked.
‘Yes. Angelo,’ she said, pleased that he knew whom she was talking about. ‘He’s an old friend of the family, and when I told him who I was having trouble with, he told me that she called him about ten years ago and asked him to come and give her an estimate for a new flight of steps. He said he already knew her or knew about her, so he knew it was pointless to go, but he went anyway. He measured the steps, did all the calculations, and went back the next day to tell her how many steps she needed and how high they would have to be, and how much it would cost.’ Like anyone who enjoys telling a good story, she paused there, and he responded like any good listener.
‘And?’
‘And she said she knew he was trying to cheat her, and she wanted him to do it with fewer stairs and each of them lower.’ She allowed the full idiocy of this to sink in, then added, ‘It makes you wonder whether maybe Palazzo Boldù really did throw her out.’
He nodded at this. ‘Did people visit her, Signora?’ he asked after a moment.
‘No, no one I can remember, well, not anyone I remember seeing more than a few times. There were all the women who worked for her, of course. Most of them were black, and once I spoke to a woman who said she was from Peru. But they all left, usually after only a few weeks.’
‘But Flori stayed?’ he asked.
‘She said she had three daughters and seven grandchildren, and I suppose she had to keep the job so she could send them money.’
‘Do you know if she was paid, Signora?’
‘Who? Flori?’
‘Yes.’
‘I think so. At least she had a little money.’ Before he could ask her to explain, she said, ‘I met her once on Strada Nuova. It was about six weeks ago and I was having a coffee in a bar, and she came in. It was that place just at the corner near the Santa Fosca traghetto. When I went over, she recognized me, you know, from the window, and she kissed me on the cheek, as if we were old friends. She had her purse open in her hands, and I saw that all she had were some coins. I don’t know how much. I didn’t look, you know, but I saw there wasn’t much.’ She stopped speaking, memory taking her back to that afternoon in the bar. ‘I asked why she had come in, and she said she wanted an ice-cream. I think she said she loved ice-cream. I know the man who runs the place, so I told him I was offering and not to take her money, that I’d pay.’
It was only now that the possibility occurred to her: ‘I hope I didn’t hurt her feelings. By insisting I pay, I mean.’
‘I don’t think it would, Signora,’ he said.
‘I asked her what she wanted and she said chocolate, so I asked him to give her a double cone, and I could see from her face when he gave it to her that all she had been going to get for herself was a single, and that made me feel so sorry for her. She had to put up with that horrible woman all day and all night long, and she couldn’t even afford a double ice-cream cone.’
For a long time, neither of them said anything.
‘And the money you gave her, Signora?’ he asked.
‘It was an impulse, nothing more than that. The money I had was for a job I’d bid for and intentionally bid too high, hoping I wouldn’t get it because it was very boring: designing packaging for a new range of light bulbs. But they gave me the job, and it turned out to be so easy that I felt a little bit guilty about being paid all that money. So I guess it was easier to give it away than it would have been if I’d really worked to get it.’ She remembered the money and the impulse that had caused her to give it to Flori. ‘It didn’t do her much good, did it?’ she asked. ‘She never got to spend it.’
As the idea came to her, she said, ‘Wait a minute; I’ve just realized something. I’ve still got three hundred Euros of that money. I left it here when I went to England. I knew I couldn’t use it there. So I’ve still got the notes.’
The evident interest in his glance prompted her to continue, ‘That’s all you’ve got to do to prove that I did give it to her, that she didn’t steal it from Signora Battestini.’ When he didn’t respond, she went on. ‘The notes were all new and were probably in a series, so all I’ve got to do is give you the notes I’ve still got, and if you compare the serial numbers with the ones on the money she had with her on the train, you’ll see that she didn’t steal anything.’
Puzzled by his lack of enthusiasm and, she admitted to herself, hurt by his lack of appreciation, she asked, ‘Well? Wouldn’t it be proof?’
‘Yes,’ he said with evident reluctance, ‘it would be proof.’
‘But?’ she asked.
‘But the money is gone.’
5
‘HOW CAN THAT be?’ she asked. Enough time elapsed between her question and his response to render it, when it came, redundant. She had to consider only for a moment to realize that such a sum of money passing through a series of public offices and officials had as much chance of survival as would an ice cube passed from hand to hand on the beach at the Lido.
‘There seems to be no record of the money after it left the police in Villa Opicina,’ he said.
‘Why are you telling me this, Commissario?’
‘In the hope that you won’t tell anyone else,’ he answered, making no attempt to avoid her gaze.
‘Are you afraid of the bad publicity?’ she asked with more than a little of Lieutenant Scarpa’s sarcasm, as if it were somehow contagious.
‘No, not particularly, Signora. But I would like this piece of information not to be made public, just as I would like to keep everything you’re telling me from becoming public knowledge.’
‘And may I ask why?’ The sarcasm had backed off, but there was still plenty of scepticism left in her voice.
‘Bec
ause, the less the person who did this knows about what we know, the better it is for us.’
‘You say, “the person who did this”, Commissario. Does that mean you believe me, that Flori didn’t kill her?’
He sat back in his chair and touched his lower lip with the forefinger of his left hand. ‘From what you tell me, Signora, it doesn’t sound likely that she was a killer, especially in that way.’
Hearing this and believing him, she relaxed, and he went on, ‘And once she had a ticket home and some money, I find it unlikely that she’d go back and kill the old woman, no matter how difficult she had been.’ He took a notebook from the pocket of his jacket and flipped it open. ‘Could you tell me what she was wearing, please, when you took her to the train?’
‘A housedress, the sort of thing you never see any more. Buttons down the front, short sleeves, made of something like nylon or rayon. Synthetic. Must have been terrible for her in this heat. It was grey or beige, some light colour, and had a small pattern on it; I don’t remember what.’
‘Was it something you saw her wearing in the house, when you saw her from your window?’
Signora Gismondi considered this, then answered, ‘I think so. She had that and a light-coloured blouse and dark skirt. But most of the time she had an apron on, so I don’t have a clear memory of her clothes.’
‘Did you see any changes in her while she was there?’
‘I don’t know what you mean by changes.’
‘Did she get her hair cut, or coloured? Start to wear glasses?’
She remembered the white roots of Flori’s hair that last day, when she’d taken her to the café to try to calm her down. ‘She stopped dyeing her hair,’ she finally said. ‘She probably couldn’t afford it.’
‘Why do you say that?’ he asked.
‘Do you have any idea of what it costs to have your hair dyed in this city?’ she asked him, wondering if he had a wife and, if so, whether she was of an age to dye her hair. She guessed him to be somewhere in his fifties: he would have seemed younger than that, she realized, were it not for the thinning of the hair at the crown of his head and for the lines around his eyes. But, paradoxically, his eyes seemed those of a much younger man: astute, bright, quick to register what they saw.
‘Of course,’ he said, understanding the meaning of her question, and then, ‘Is there anything else you can tell me about Signora Battestini? Anything at all, Signora, no matter how unimportant or inconsequential it might seem and, yes,’ he went on with an easy smile, ‘no matter how much it might sound like gossip.’
She responded easily to the invitation to be of help. ‘I think I said that everyone in the neighbourhood knows her.’ He nodded and she continued. ‘And they know she’s caused me so much trouble . . .’ Here she stopped briefly to interrupt herself, ‘You see, I’m the only person whose bedroom faces her apartment. I don’t know whether other people’s bedrooms were always at the back, or if they’ve changed their houses around over the course of the years to get away from the noise.’
‘Or whether it’s just recently that this has begun,’ he suggested.
‘No,’ she responded immediately. ‘Everyone I talk to tells me it’s been going on since the son died. The people to my right have air conditioning, so they sleep with the windows closed, and the old people below me close their shutters and windows both. God knows why it is they don’t suffocate during the summer.’ She suddenly realized how stupidly garrulous she must sound and broke off, tried to remember what had started her on this subject, then, finding the thread, returned to it. ‘Everyone knows her, and if I mention her name, everyone is ready to talk about her. I’ve heard her life story a dozen times.’
‘Really?’ he asked, obviously interested. He turned a page in his notebook and glanced at her with what she took to be an encouraging smile.
‘Well, let’s say I’ve heard bits and pieces of her life story.’
‘And would you tell me what they are?’
‘That she’s lived there for decades. I’d guess from what people say that she was in her eighties, maybe older,’ she said. ‘There was the one son, but he died. People have told me it wasn’t a happy marriage. I think her husband died about ten years ago.’
‘Do you know what he did?’
She paused and tried to remember, dredging through half a decade of random gossip. ‘I think he had some sort of job with the city or the provincial government, but I don’t know what it was. People said he spent most of his time after work in the bar on the corner, playing cards. They also said that’s the only thing that kept him from, er, from killing her.’ She looked up nervously, hearing what she had said, but then went on. ‘Everyone who ever mentioned him sounded like they thought he was a pleasant enough man.’
‘Do you know the cause of his death?’
She paused for a long time. ‘No, but I think someone told me it was a stroke or a heart attack.’
‘Did it happen here?’
‘I’ve no idea. They just said he died and left them everything, her and the son: the house, whatever money he had, another apartment on the Lido, I think. When the son died, she must have inherited it all.’
He nodded occasionally as she spoke, in acknowledgement that he understood what she was saying and in encouragement.
‘I think that’s all I ever heard about the husband.’
‘And the son?’
She shrugged.
‘What did people say about him?’
‘They didn’t,’ she said, apparently surprised by her own answer. ‘No one ever mentioned him to me, that is. Well, aside from the person who told me that he’d died.’
‘And about her?’
This time, her answer was immediate. ‘Over the years, she fought with all of the people who lived around her.’
‘About what sort of things?’
‘You’re Venetian, aren’t you?’ she asked, but because this was so evident in his face and audible in his voice, she meant it as a joke.
Brunetti smiled, and she said, ‘Then you know the sort of things we fight about: garbage left in front of someone’s door, or a letter put in the wrong letter box and not passed on, a dog that barks all the time: it doesn’t really matter what it is. You know that. All you’ve got to do is respond to it in the wrong way, and you’ve got an enemy for life.’
‘And Signora Battestini sounds like the kind of person who responded in the wrong way.’
‘Yes,’ she said, with an assertive double nod.
‘Was there any incident in particular?’ he asked.
‘Do you mean was there any incident that might have led someone to kill her?’ Signora Gismondi asked, trying to make it sound like a joke and not really succeeding.
‘Hardly. People like this don’t get killed by their neighbours. Besides,’ he said with a small, bold smile, ‘from what you’ve told me, you were the most likely to have done it, but I hardly think you did.’
Hearing him say that, she was struck by an awareness that this was one of the strangest conversations she’d ever had, though no less enjoyable for that.
‘Do you want me to continue to repeat things people said or try to tell you what I made of it all?’ she asked.
‘I think the second would be more helpful,’ he said.
‘And quicker,’ she offered.
‘No, no, Signora. I’m in no hurry at all; please don’t think that. Everything you have to say interests me.’
From another man, these words might have sounded deliberately ambiguous, their flirtatiousness disguised by their apparent sincerity, but from him she took only their literal meaning.
She sat back in her chair, relaxed in a way she could not have been with the other policeman, as she knew she could never be with him or with men like him. ‘I told you I’ve been in that apartment only four years. But I work at home, and so I’m usually willing to listen to people when they talk to me because I spend most of my time alone, working.’ She considered, then added ruefully, ‘Tha
t is, when the noise lets me.’
He nodded, having learned over the years that most people need to talk and how easy it was, with either the reality or the semblance of concerned curiosity, to get them to talk about anything at all.
With a wry smile she said, ‘And you see, people in the neighbourhood have told me other things about her. No matter how much their stories showed how much they hated her, they always finished by saying she was a poor widow who had lost her only child, and it was necessary to feel sorry for her.’
Sensing her desire to be prodded into gossip, he asked, ‘What other things did they tell you, Signora?’
‘About her meanness, for one thing. I told you she never tipped the postman, but many people have told me she would always buy the cheapest thing on offer. She’d walk halfway across the city to save fifty lire on the price of a packet of pasta: things like that. And my shoemaker said he got tired of her always saying she’d pay him next time and then saying, when she came in again, that she already had, until he wouldn’t let her into the shop any more.’ She saw his expression and added, ‘I don’t know what’s true in all of this. You know how it is: once a person gets a reputation for being one way or another, then stories begin to be told, and it no longer much matters whether the thing ever happened or not.’
Brunetti had long been familiar with this phenomenon. He’d known people who had been killed because of it, and he’d known people to take their own lives because of it.
Signora Gismondi went on. ‘Sometimes I’d hear her screaming at the women who worked for her, hear it from across the campo. She’d shout terrible things: accuse them of lying or stealing. Or she’d complain about the food they made for her or the way they’d made the bed. I could hear it all, at least during the summer if I didn’t use the Discman. Sometimes I’d see them at the window and I’d wave or smile at them, the way you do. Then if I saw one of them on the street I’d say hello or nod.’ She looked to one side as if she’d never previously bothered to consider why she had done this. ‘I suppose I wanted them to know that not all people were like her, or that not all Venetians were.’
