by Donna Leon
She began to protest, and he stopped her with an out-thrust hand. ‘Further, if you lie to me again, I will today file a report about the death of your dog, making note of your assertion that Signora Battestini’s niece killed her, and that will require that the woman be questioned about possible motives for having killed the dog.’
She was not looking at him, but he could tell she was attending to his every word. ‘Is that clear?’
‘Yes.’
‘I want you to tell me everything she ever said in reference to those accounts, and I want you to tell me any thoughts you may have entertained, during the years you knew about them, of their possible source, regardless of where this information came from or how credible you think it to be.’ He paused, then added, ‘Do you understand?’
There was no hesitation before she answered, ‘Yes.’ She sighed, but she was such an accomplished liar that he paid no attention. She allowed some time to pass and then said, ‘She told me about the accounts when she made her will, but she never told me where the money came from. I told you that. But once, about a year ago, she was talking about her son – I told you I never met him – and she said that he had been a good boy and had provided for her in her old age. That he and the Madonna would take good care of her.’ He studied her face as she spoke, wondering if she was telling the truth and wondering if he would be able to tell if she wasn’t.
‘She’d become very repetitive by then,’ she went on, ‘the way old people get, so I didn’t pay much attention to what she said.’
‘Why were you there this time? You said it was three years ago she wanted to make a will.’
‘It was about the television. I went to ask her to try to remember to turn it down before she went to bed. The only thing I could think of to do was to tell her the police would come in and sequester the television if she didn’t. I’d told her before, but she always forgot things, or else she remembered only the things she wanted to.’
‘I see,’ he said.
‘And she told me, again, what a good boy he had been, always staying with her. And that’s when she said that he had left her safe and under the protection of the Madonna. I didn’t think much of it at the time – when she started to ramble, I never paid much attention – but later it occurred to me that she might have been talking about the money, that it was the son who had arranged for it or who had done whatever it was that got the money deposited.’
‘Did you ask her about this?’
‘No. I told you, it didn’t occur to me until a couple of days later. And I’d learned by then never to ask her directly about the accounts, so I didn’t.’
There were still questions he wanted to ask her: when she had begun to plan to steal the money; what made her certain the niece wouldn’t bring charges against her. But for the moment, he had obtained the information he wanted. He thought she had been frightened enough to tell the truth and was neither proud nor ashamed of the techniques he had used to make her do so.
He got to his feet. ‘If I have any further questions, I’ll contact you,’ he said. ‘If you think of anything else, I want you to call me.’ He took one of his cards, wrote his home phone number on the back, and handed it to her.
He turned to leave, but she stopped him by asking, ‘What do I do if it wasn’t the niece?’
He was fairly certain it was the niece and she had nothing to fear. But then he remembered how immediate her protestation had been that she would not kill anyone for so little, and he saw no reason to save her from being afraid. ‘Try not to be alone in your office or your home. Call me if anything suspicious happens,’ he said and left her office.
18
AS SOON AS he was outside, he called Vianello, who answered his telefonino but was already back at the Questura, having found no one at Avvocatessa Marieschi’s home address. Brunetti quickly explained what had happened at the lawyer’s and told Vianello to meet him at Romolo, where he wanted, finally, to talk to Signora Battestini’s niece.
‘You think she could have done it?’ Vianello asked, and when Brunetti was slow to answer, he clarified his question by adding, ‘Poisoned the dog?’
‘I think so,’ Brunetti answered.
‘I’ll see you there,’ Vianello said, and was gone.
To save time, Brunetti took the 82 at Arsenale and got off at Accademia. He crossed the small campo without paying attention to the long line of scantily clad tourists in front of the museum, passed on his left the gallery he always thought of as the Supermarket of Art, and headed down towards San Barnaba.
In the narrow streets, the heat assailed him. In the past, heat like this had reduced the number of tourists; now it seemed to serve the same purpose as heat in a petri dish: the alien life form multiplied under his very eyes. When he arrived at the pasticceria, he saw Vianello standing on the other side of the calle, looking into the window of a shop that sold masks.
They went into the pastry shop together. Vianello ordered a coffee and a glass of mineral water, and Brunetti nodded his request for the same. The glass cabinet was filled with the pastries Brunetti knew so well: the cream-filled puffs of pastry, the chocolate bigne, and Chiara’s favourite, the whipped-cream-filled swans. The heat rendered them all equally unappetising.
As they drank their coffee, Brunetti recounted in greater detail his conversation with the lawyer, saying only that the dog had been poisoned, but giving no details of the circumstances.
‘It means this woman –’ Vianello said, indicating the back regions of the shop where presumably the kitchens lay – ‘knew enough about Marieschi to know how to hurt her.’
‘If you’d seen her with the dog, even once, you’d know that,’ Brunetti said, recalling their meeting and that noble golden head.
Vianello finished his water and held up his glass to the woman behind the bar. Brunetti drank his, set the glass on the counter, and nodded when she held up the bottle and looked his way.
When she began to pour the water, Brunetti asked, ‘Is Signorina Simionato here?’
‘You mean Graziella?’ the woman asked, evidently curious as to what these two men could want.
‘Yes.’
‘I think so,’ she said uneasily, stepping back from the counter and turning to a door at the back of the shop. ‘Let me ask.’ Before she could move away from them, Brunetti held up his hand and said, ‘I’d rather you didn’t speak to her, Signora, not before we do.’
‘Police?’ she asked, wide-eyed.
‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered, wondering why they bothered to carry warrant cards if they were this easily recognized, even by the women behind the counters in pastry shops.
‘Is she there?’ Brunetti asked, indicating the open door behind the far end of the counter.
‘Yes,’ the young woman answered. ‘What is . . .?’ she left the question unfinished.
Vianello pulled out a notebook and asked, ‘What time did she get here today, Signora? Do you know?’
The woman stared at the notebook as though it were a living, dangerous thing. Seeing her reluctance, Brunetti took out his wallet but, instead of showing her his warrant card, took out a five Euro note and laid it on the counter to pay their bill. ‘What time did she get here today, Signora?’
‘About two, maybe a little later,’ she said.
That seemed like a strange time for a baker to arrive at work, Brunetti thought. But at once she explained, ‘There’s going to be a health inspection next week, so we have to get ready. Everybody’s working an extra half-shift.’ Brunetti thought it inappropriate to comment on the fact that these inspections were not meant to be announced in advance. The woman added, ‘Some of the bakers are here, too, during the afternoons, getting ready.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said. Then, pointing to the door, he asked, ‘Through there?’
Suddenly reluctant, she said, ‘I think it would be better if the owner showed you.’ Without bothering to see if he agreed, she walked over to a red-haired woman who was standing behind the cash register a
nd said a few words to her. The other woman glanced suspiciously in their direction, back at the counterwoman, then back at them. Then she said something to the first woman, who took her place behind the cash register.
The woman with red hair approached them and asked, ‘What has she done?’
Brunetti smiled, he hoped disarmingly, and lied. ‘Nothing that I know of, Signora. But as I’m sure you know, her aunt was the victim of a crime, and we hope that Signorina Simionato can give us some information that might help us with our investigation.’
‘I thought you knew who did it,’ she said, her voice just short of an accusation. ‘That Albanian woman.’ As she talked to them, her eyes kept moving back to the woman at the cash register each time a client approached to pay.
‘So it would seem,’ Brunetti said, ‘but we need some more information about her aunt.’
‘Do you have to do it here?’ she asked truculently.
‘No, Signora. Not here. I thought we could talk to her back there, in the kitchen,’ he said.
‘I mean here, while she’s at work. I’m paying her to work, not stand around talking about her aunt.’ Every so often, and always to his surprise, life brought Brunetti further evidence of the legendary venality of the Venetians. It was not the greed that surprised him so much as the lack of embarrassment in showing it.
He smiled. ‘I can certainly understand that, Signora. So perhaps it would be better if I were to return later and place uniformed officers at the door while I talk to her. Or perhaps I could have a word with the people at the Department of Health and ask them how it is you know about next week’s inspection.’ Before she could say a word, he concluded, ‘Or perhaps we could just go into the kitchen and have a word with Signorina Simionato.’
Her face reddened with anger she knew she could not display, while Brunetti entirely failed to reproach himself for this flagrant abuse of power. ‘She’s in the back,’ the woman said and turned away from them to return to the cash register.
Vianello led the way into the kitchen, which was lit by a bank of windows set into the far wall. Empty metal racks stood against three walls, and the windowed doors of the vast ovens gleamed. A man and a woman, both wearing immaculate white coats and hats, stood in front of a deep sink from which rose the steam of soapy water. Emerging from the suds were the handles of implements and the tops of the broad wooden boards on which the dough was set to rise before baking.
Running water drowned all other sound, so Brunetti and Vianello were within a metre of the two before the man became aware of their presence and turned. When he saw them standing there, he turned back and shut off the water and, into the silence, said, ‘Yes?’ He was shorter than average, stocky, but had a handsome face in which only inquisitiveness was evident.
Apparently the woman had not noticed them until her companion spoke, and she turned only then. Shorter than he, she wore glasses with heavy rectangular frames and lenses so thick that they distorted her eyes, turning them into giant marbles. As she looked from Brunetti to Vianello, the focus in the lenses changed with the motion of her head, giving the sense that the marbles were rolling about under the glass. While the man’s face had displayed curiosity at the sight of strangers in his kitchen, hers remained strangely impassive, the only sign of activity those rolling eyes.
‘Signorina Simionato?’ Brunetti asked.
Owl-like, her head turned towards the sound, and she considered the question before answering, ‘Yes.’
‘I’d like to speak to you, please.’
The man’s glance shot from Brunetti to the woman, to Vianello, and back to Signorina Simionato, searching for the meaning of the arrival of these two strangers, but she kept her eyes on Brunetti’s face and said nothing.
It was Vianello who addressed himself to the man, ‘Perhaps there’s a place where we might talk to Signorina Simionato in private?’
The man shook his head. ‘There’s nothing like that here,’ he said. ‘But I can go outside and have a cigarette while you talk.’ When Brunetti nodded, the man removed his cap and wiped the sweat from his face with the inside of his elbow. Hitching up his jacket, he pulled a blue packet of Nazionali from the pocket of his trousers and walked away. Brunetti noticed that there was a back door into the calle.
‘Signorina Simionato,’ Brunetti began, ‘I’m Commissario Brunetti, from the police.’
If it were possible for an immobile face to freeze, hers did. Even the eyes halted their busy traffic between Brunetti and Vianello and turned their attention to the windows at the back. But she said nothing. Brunetti studied her face, saw the flat nose and the frizzy orange hair that fought to escape from the white hat. Her skin was shiny, either with sweat or natural oiliness. The sight of her general blankness was enough to convince him that this woman was not capable of using a computer to make bank transfers to unnamed accounts in the Channel Islands.
‘I’d like to ask you a few questions.’
She gave no sign that she heard him and did not remove her gaze from the back wall.
‘You are Graziella Simionato, aren’t you?’ he asked.
The sound of her name appeared to make some impression, for she nodded in assent.
‘The niece of Maria Grazia Battestini?’ he asked.
That summoned both her attention and her eyes back to him. ‘Yes,’ she muttered. When she opened her mouth to speak, he saw that her two front teeth were outsized and jutted forward over the lower teeth.
‘It is my understanding that you are her heir, Signorina.’
‘Her heir. Yes,’ she affirmed. ‘I was supposed to get everything.’
Sounding concerned and puzzled, Brunetti asked, ‘Didn’t you, Signorina?’
As he watched her, he was struck by the way she kept reminding him of different animals. An owl. Then a caged rodent. And at this question something feral and secretive entered her expression.
She turned those magnified eyes towards him and asked, ‘What do you want?’
‘I’d like to talk about your aunt’s estate, Signorina.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘I’d like to know if you have any idea where her money came from.’
The instinct to hide all evidence of wealth overcame her. ‘She didn’t have much money,’ she insisted.
‘But she had bank accounts,’ Brunetti said.
‘I don’t know about that.’
‘At the Uni Credit and at four other banks.’
‘I don’t know.’ Her voice was as stolid as her expression.
Brunetti shot a glance at Vianello, who raised his brows to show that he too recognized the mule-like obstinacy with which peasants have always resisted danger. Brunetti had quickly seen that sweet reason would do no more than shatter itself against the armour of her stupidity, and so he said, injecting an unpleasant severity into his voice, ‘Signorina, you have two choices.’
Her eyes floated up towards his face, her attention caught by his tone.
‘We can talk about the source of your aunt’s wealth or we can talk about dogs.’
Her lips pulled back over her outsized teeth, and she started to speak, but Brunetti interrupted her. ‘I don’t think anyone who runs a business where there is food would want to continue to employ a person accused of using poison, do you, Signorina?’ He watched this register and asked, his voice entirely conversational, ‘And your employer doesn’t seem like the kind of person who would be very patient with an employee who had to take time off to stand trial, does she? That is,’ he asked, having given her a moment to reflect upon these two questions, ‘if that employee still had a lawyer to help with the trial.’
Signorina Simionato took her left hand in the fingers of her right and began to rub it, as if trying to bring it back to life. Her lenses moved to Vianello’s face, then back to Brunetti’s. Still caressing her hand, she started to say, ‘I don’t . . .’ but Brunetti interrupted her in a loud voice and said, ‘Vianello, tell the owner we’re taking her with us. And tell he
r why.’
Acting as if this were a command he was really expected to carry out, Vianello said, ‘Yes, Commissario,’ and turned towards the door that led to the shop.
He had not taken a step before she said, her voice high-pitched with terror, ‘No, wait, don’t do that. I’ll tell you, I’ll tell you.’ Her speech was sloppy, as though the consonants could be produced only with the aid of large amounts of saliva.
Vianello turned back but stayed at least a metre from her, reluctant to add the threat of his size to that in Brunetti’s words. Both men regarded her, saying nothing.
‘It was Paolo,’ she said. ‘He did it. He got it for her, but I don’t know how. She would never tell me that, only how proud she was of him. She said he always thought of her first.’ She stopped, as if she thought this sufficient to answer their questions and counter the threat to her.
‘What, exactly, did she tell you?’ asked a relentless Brunetti.
‘What I just told you,’ she answered belligerently.
Brunetti turned away from her. ‘Go out and tell her, Vianello,’ he said.
Signorina Simionato looked from one to the other, seeking mercy. When she saw none, she put her head back and began to wail like an animal, howling as if wounded.
Fearful of what would happen, Brunetti took a step towards her, but stopped himself and moved back, not wanting to be seen near her when anyone came to investigate. In an instant, the owner appeared at the door and shouted, ‘Graziella. Stop it. Stop it or you’re gone from here today.’
Instantly, as quickly as it had begun, the noise ceased, but Signorina Simionato continued to sob. The owner looked at Brunetti and Vianello, made a disgusted noise, and left, closing the door on them.
