Beastly Things

by Donna Leon

  Brunetti waited. This was not a moment when a man could interrupt a woman who was speaking.

  ‘He said he thought she planned it.’ Abruptly, she raised one hand and made a waving gesture, as though she wanted to shoo away her husband, or the woman, or the memory of what he had said. Then, voice just over the edge of bitterness, she added, ‘It wouldn’t be the first time a man’s claimed that, would it?’

  Vianello, in his good-cop voice, slipped in to ask, ‘You said he told you about it, Signora. Why was that?’

  She glanced at the Inspector, reminded that he was there. ‘He said the woman was going to tell me, so he wanted to be the one to do it before she did.’ She raised her hand and rubbed at her forehead a few times. ‘To tell me, that is.’

  She gave the Inspector a level glance, then turned to Brunetti. ‘So he didn’t leave me for her, Commissario. I told him to get out.’

  ‘And he left?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes. He left the same day. Well, the next day.’ She sat quietly for some time, apparently reflecting on those events. ‘We had to talk about what to tell Teo.’ Then, in a softer voice, she said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything you can tell them – children – not really.’

  Brunetti was tempted to ask her what they had told their son, but he could not justify that and so he asked, instead, ‘When did this happen?’

  ‘Three months ago. We’ve both spoken to lawyers and signed papers.’

  ‘And where was this leading, Signora?’

  ‘Do you mean was I going to divorce him?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Of course.’ More slowly and far more thoughtfully, she added, ‘Not for the affair; please understand that. But because he didn’t have the courage of it, because he had to play the victim.’ Then, in a savage voice, she said, one arm raised across her breast and hand grabbing her shoulder as if to contain her rage, ‘I hate victims. I hate people who don’t have the courage of their own foul behaviour and blame it on someone else or something else.’ She fought herself into silence, but lost the fight and went on: ‘I hate the cowardice of it. People have affairs. They have affairs all the time. But for God’s sake, at least admit that you did it. Don’t go blaming the woman or the man. Just say you did it and, if you’re sorry, say you’re sorry, but don’t go blaming some other person for your own weakness or stupidity.’

  She stopped, exhausted, perhaps not so much by what she had said as by the circumstances in which she had said it. Two complete strangers, after all, and policemen, to boot, who had come to tell her that her husband was dead.

  ‘Assuming that you are not the person responsible, Signora,’ Brunetti said with the smallest of smiles, hoping that his irony would turn her away from the path this conversation seemed to have taken, ‘can you think of anyone else who might have wanted to harm your husband?’

  She weighed his question, and her face softened. ‘Before I answer that, let me tell you one thing,’ she said.

  Brunetti nodded.

  ‘The papers said the man in Venice – Andrea – was found on Monday morning,’ she said, but it was a question.

  Brunetti answered it. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I was here with my sister that night. She brought her two kids over, and we had dinner together, and then they all spent the night here.’

  Brunetti permitted himself a glance in Vianello’s direction and saw that the good cop was nodding. Signora Doni’s voice called his attention back as she said, ‘As to your other question, I don’t know of anyone. Andrea was a …’ She paused here, perhaps conscious that she had now to speak his epitaph. ‘He was a good man.’ Taking three deep breaths, she went on. ‘I do know he was troubled at work or because of work. It was only during the last months we were together that I realized this; that’s when he was …’ Her voice trailed off, and Brunetti left her to remember what she chose. But then she spoke again. ‘It might have been guilt about what he was doing. They were doing. But it might have been more than that.’ Another long pause. ‘We didn’t talk much in the months before he told me.’

  ‘Where does he work, Signora?’ Brunetti asked, then cringed at the realization that he had used the present tense. To attempt to correct it would make things worse.

  ‘His office isn’t far from here. But two days a week he works at another job.’ Unconsciously – perhaps because she had heard Brunetti do it – she had also fallen back into the present tense.

  Brunetti assumed the work of a veterinarian must be pretty standard; he wondered what extra work Dr Nava could have done, aside from his private practice. ‘Was he working as a veterinarian at this other job, too?’

  She nodded. ‘He was offered it about six months ago. With the financial crisis, there was less work at his clinic. That’s strange, really, because people will usually do anything or pay anything to take care of their pets.’ She twisted her hands together in a cliché gesture of helplessness, and Brunetti found himself wondering if she worked or whether she stayed home to take care of their son. And if so, then what would become of her now?

  ‘So when they offered him the job, he took it,’ she said. ‘We had the mortgage for the house and the costs of the clinic, and then there were the medical bills.’ Seeing their surprise, she said, ‘Andrea had to do it all privately. The waiting time for a scan at the hospital was more than six months. And he paid for all the visits to specialists. That’s the reason he took the job.’

  ‘Doing what, Signora?’

  ‘Working at the slaughterhouse. They have to have a vet there when the animals are brought in. To see that they’re healthy enough to be used.’

  ‘As meat, do you mean?’ Vianello asked.

  She nodded again.

  ‘Two days a week?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes. Monday and Wednesday. That’s when the farmers bring them in. He arranged things at the clinic so that he didn’t have to be there in the morning, though his staff would accept patients if necessary.’ She stopped there, hearing herself describing this. ‘Doesn’t that sound strange: “patients”, when you’re talking about animals?’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘Crazy, really.’

  ‘Which slaughterhouse, Signora?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Preganziol,’ she said and then added, as though it still made a difference, ‘It’s only fifteen minutes by car.’

  Thinking back to what she had said about what people would do for their pets, Brunetti asked, ‘Did any of the people who took their pets to your husband ever display anger at him?’

  ‘You mean, did they threaten him?’ she asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘He never told me about anything as serious as that, though a few did accuse him of not having done enough to save their pets.’ She said this in a level voice; the coolness of her face suggested her opinion of such behaviour.

  ‘Is it possible that your husband might not have told you about something like that?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘You mean to keep me from worrying about him?’ she asked. It was a simple question, not a trace of sarcasm in it.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, not before things got bad. He told me everything. We were …’ she began, then paused to search for the proper word. ‘… close,’ she said, having found it. ‘But he never said anything. He was always happy with his work there.’

  ‘Was the trouble you mentioned at the other job, then, Signora?’ Brunetti asked.

  Her eyes seemed to drift out of focus, and she turned her attention to the neglected garden, where there were no signs of returning life. ‘That’s when his behaviour started to change. But that was because of … other things, I’d say.’

  ‘Is that where he met the woman?’ Brunetti asked, having for some reason thought she was someone who worked in his practice.

  ‘Yes. I don’t know what she does there: I wasn’t interested in what her job was.’

  ‘Do you know her name, Signora?’

  ‘He had the grace never to use it,’ she said with badly withheld anger. ‘
All he said was that she was younger.’ Her voice turned to iron on the last word.

  ‘I see,’ he said, then asked, ‘How did he seem, the last time you saw him?’

  He watched her send her memory back to that meeting, watched as the emotions from it played across her face. She took a deep breath, tilted her head to one side to look away from both of them, and said, ‘It was about ten days ago.’ She took a few more deep breaths, and her arm again moved across her chest to anchor her hand on her shoulder. Finally she said, ‘He’d had Teo for the weekend, and when he brought him back, he said he wanted to talk to me. He said something was bothering him.’

  ‘About what?’ Brunetti asked.

  She released her hand and joined it to the one in her lap. ‘I assumed it was about this woman, so I told him there was nothing he could say to me that I wanted to hear.’

  She stopped, and both of them could see her recall saying those words. Neither of them spoke, however, and she eventually went on, ‘He said there were things that were going on that he didn’t like, and he wanted to tell me about them.’ She looked at Vianello, then at Brunetti. ‘It was the worst thing he did, the most cowardly.’

  There was a noise from somewhere else in the house, and she half rose from her chair. But the noise was not repeated, and she sat down again. ‘I knew what he wanted to tell me. About her. That maybe it wasn’t going well and he was sorry. And I didn’t care. Then. I didn’t want to listen to it, so I told him that anything he had to tell me, he could say to my lawyer.’

  She took a few breaths and went on. ‘He said it wasn’t really about her. He didn’t use her name. Just called her “her”. As if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to talk to me about her. In my home.’ She had been looking between the two men as she spoke, but now she addressed her attention to the hands she kept folded in her lap. ‘I told him he could leave.’

  ‘Did he, Signora?’ Brunetti asked after a long silence.

  ‘Yes. I got up and left the room, and then I heard him leave the house, heard his car drive away. And that was the last time I saw him.’

  Brunetti, who was looking at her hands, was startled by the first drop. It splashed on the back of her hand and disappeared into the fabric of her skirt, and then another drop, and another, and then she got to her feet and walked quickly from the room.

  After some time, Vianello said, ‘Pity she didn’t listen to him.’

  ‘For her reasons or for ours?’ Brunetti asked.

  Surprised by the question, Vianello answered, ‘For hers.’

  16

  THERE WAS NOTHING for them to do but wait for her to return. Keeping their voices low, they discussed what she had said and the possibilities it created for them.

  ‘We need to find this woman and see what was going on,’ Brunetti said.

  Vianello’s look was easily read.

  ‘No, not that,’ Brunetti continued with a shake of his head. ‘She’s right: it’s a cliché, one of the oldest ones. I want to know if he was bothered by anything other than the affair he was having with her.’

  ‘You don’t think that’s enough to worry a married man?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘Of course it is,’ Brunetti conceded. ‘But most married men who are having affairs don’t end up floating in a canal with three stab wounds in their back.’

  ‘That’s true enough,’ Vianello agreed. Then, with a backward nod towards the door Signora Doni had used, he said, ‘If I had her to contend with, I think an affair would make me very nervous.’

  ‘What would Nadia do?’ Brunetti asked, not sure how much criticism of Signora Doni lay in Vianello’s question.

  ‘Take my pistol and shoot me, probably,’ Vianello answered with a small grin from which pride was not entirely absent. ‘And Paola?’

  ‘We live on the fourth floor,’ Brunetti answered. ‘And we have a terrace.’

  ‘Crafty, your wife,’ Vianello said. ‘Would she leave an unsigned note in the computer?’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Brunetti said. ‘Too obvious.’ Entering into the puzzle, he gave it some thought. ‘She’d probably tell people I’d been depressed for months and had recently talked about ending it all.’

  ‘Who would she persuade to agree with her and say they’d heard you say the same thing?’

  ‘Her parents.’ Brunetti spoke before he thought about it, then quickly amended this: ‘No, only her father. Her mother wouldn’t lie.’ Something occurred to him and he said it, his pleasure evident in his face and voice. ‘I don’t think she’d lie about me. I think she likes me.’

  ‘Doesn’t her father?’

  ‘Yes, but in a different way.’ Brunetti knew it was impossible to explain this, but he was much cheered at this sudden recognition of the Contessa’s regard.

  They heard Signora Doni’s steps in the corridor and stood as she came back into the room. ‘I had to check on Teo,’ she said. ‘He knows something big is wrong, and he’s worried.’

  ‘You told him we were policemen?’ Brunetti asked, though the boy had told them so.

  She met his gaze directly. ‘Yes. I thought you’d come in uniform, and I wanted him to be prepared for that,’ she said too quickly, as if she had been waiting for his question. Perhaps encouraged by their silence, she finally got to it: ‘And I was afraid when you asked about Andrea. He usually called once or twice during the week. But I hadn’t heard from him since he left.’ She placed her palms on her thighs and studied them. ‘I suppose I knew what you were going to tell me.’

  Ignoring this, Brunetti said, ‘You told us that his behaviour changed after he started the other job.’ Brunetti knew he had to go carefully here, find a way to work himself through the tangle of her emotions. ‘You said that you and he were close, Signora.’ He paused to let that sink in. ‘Do you remember how soon after he began to work there he showed signs of being worried?’

  He read in the stiffness of her mouth that she was close to the end of what she would accept and answer. She started to speak, coughed lightly, then went on: ‘He hadn’t been there long; maybe a month. But by then the disease had grown worse.

  ‘He’d started eating less to try to lose weight, and that made him cranky, I’m afraid.’ She frowned at the memory of this. ‘I couldn’t get him to eat anything except vegetables and pasta, and bread and some fruit. He said that would work. But it didn’t do any good: he kept getting bigger.’

  ‘Did he ever talk about a problem?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Other than the disease.’

  She had grown visibly restless, so Brunetti forced himself into a more relaxed posture, hoping it would prove contagious.

  ‘He didn’t like the new job. He said it was hard to do both, especially now that the disease had got worse, but he couldn’t leave because we needed the extra money.’

  ‘That’s quite a burden for a man who isn’t in good health,’ Vianello offered sympathetically.

  She looked at him and smiled. ‘That’s the way Andrea was,’ she said. ‘He worried about the people who worked for him at the clinic. He felt responsible and wanted to keep it open.’

  Brunetti left this alone. Years ago, less versed in the ways of emotions, he might have pointed to the dissonance between her behaviour towards her husband and these remarks, but the years had worn away his desire to find consistency, and so he never assumed it nor questioned its absence. She was aboil with emotions: Brunetti suspected the most powerful of them might be remorse, not anger.

  ‘Could you tell us where his clinic is, Signora?’ Brunetti asked. Vianello pulled a notebook from his pocket.

  ‘Via Motta 145,’ she said. ‘It’s only five minutes from here.’ Brunetti thought she looked embarrassed. ‘They called me yesterday and told me Andrea hadn’t come in. I told them I didn’t … didn’t know where he was.’ In the manner of a person not accustomed to lying, she looked down at her hands, and Brunetti suspected she had also told them she didn’t care.

  She forced herself to look at him and went on. ‘He was livin
g in a small apartment on the second floor of the building. Should I call them and tell them you’re coming?’ she asked.

  ‘No, thank you, Signora. I think I’d like to go there unannounced.’

  ‘To see if anyone tries to run away when they hear you’re policemen?’ she asked, only half joking.

  Brunetti smiled. ‘Something like that. Though if your husband hasn’t been there for two days, and we show up without an animal, they’ll probably guess who we are.’

  It took a few moments for her to decide that he was exaggerating. She did not smile.

  ‘Is there anything else?’ she asked.

  ‘No, Signora,’ Brunetti said, then added, speaking with great formality, ‘I’d like to thank you for being generous with your time.’ Speaking as a father, he said, ‘I hope you can find a way to tell your son,’ unconsciously using the plural when he spoke.

  ‘He is, isn’t he?’ she asked.

  ‘What?’

  ‘Ours.’

  Vezzani was waiting for them in the bar, watching an afternoon cooking programme, the Gazzettino open on the table in front of him, a coffee cup placed to its side.

  ‘Coffee?’ he asked.

  They nodded, and Vezzani waved to the barman and asked for two coffees and a glass of water.

  They came and sat at his table. He folded the newspaper and tossed it on the empty fourth chair. ‘What did she tell you?’

  ‘That he was having an affair with a woman at work,’ Brunetti answered.

  Vezzani opened his mouth in a gasping O and held up both hands. ‘Well, who ever heard of such a thing? What’s the world coming to?’ The waiter approached with the coffees and a glass of water for Vezzani.

  They drank and then Vezzani, in a more serious voice, asked, ‘What else?’

  ‘He was also working at the slaughterhouse,’ Vianello began.

  ‘The one at Preganziol?’ Vezzani asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Are there others?’

  ‘I think there’s one in Treviso, but that’s a different province. Preganziol’s the closest one to us.’