The Temptation of Forgiveness

by Donna Leon

  When he was finished, Griffoni closed the notebook and placed it to the side of her desk. ‘Nothing in there,’ she began, waving towards the notebook, ‘would lead me anywhere.’ She paused, considered, and then corrected herself. ‘Except back to Professoressa Crosera. I think it’s worth talking to her again.’

  Brunetti was in complete agreement with this: he knew how adept Griffoni could be at playing good cop, especially with female witnesses. ‘All right. I’ll see if she’ll talk to us. Maybe we can …’

  Griffoni broke in to say, ‘If she’s at the hospital, it shouldn’t be there. That would be too much for her.’

  Brunetti pulled out his telefonino and held it up. Griffoni nodded, and he found and keyed in the number.

  It rang nine times, ten, and on the eleventh she picked it up and said her name.

  ‘Signora, it’s Commissario Brunetti. How is your husband?’

  ‘As you saw him the last time. He’s still here; there’s been no change.’

  ‘Ah,’ Brunetti sighed. ‘I’m very sorry for your trouble, Signora, but I’m afraid I have to add to it.’

  ‘Did you find the person you think attacked him?’ she asked in a far more neutral voice than Brunetti would have expected. But then it occurred to him: what difference was there between knowing and not knowing, really?

  ‘No, we haven’t. That’s why I’d like to come and talk with you again.’

  ‘Here?’ she asked, sounding alarmed.

  ‘No. At your home. If you would permit that.’

  ‘What good would it do?’

  He realized that finding the guilty person would do no one any good at all and never would. It would do bad to the person who had committed the crime and to their family; it could do bad to the family of the victim, too, for all they’d have was the temptation of vengeance, and Brunetti had seen how quickly vengeance corrupted all who went near it.

  ‘It’s not my job to do good, Signora,’ he admitted. ‘Only to find the guilty person and see that they are arrested.’

  ‘What will that change?’ she asked. Her voice was very low: he had to struggle to hear it. He thought he could hear rattling noises in the background, but he wasn’t sure.

  ‘When would you like to come?’ she suddenly asked, surprising him.

  ‘After lunch, perhaps? Would three o’clock be convenient for you?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said and hung up.

  ‘She agreed,’ Brunetti told Griffoni.

  ‘Good,’ Griffoni said. It will be better in her home, I think.’

  ‘Better because she’ll be more relaxed?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Griffoni answered and got to her feet. ‘And because we can take a look around.’

  They had lunch together. Brunetti had called Paola to tell her he had to talk to someone, and she’d been completely accepting of his news, explaining that the children would be content with what she gave them, so long as there was a lot of it.

  ‘Work?’ he asked, wondering if she had a paper to prepare or exams to correct.

  ‘Reading,’ she said and left it at that.

  At lunch, he and Griffoni talked about a case that was filling the local papers, concerning a doctor from Egypt who was accused of having killed his sixteen-year-old daughter, having found what he considered flirtatious messages on her Facebook account sent by a boy in her class, an Italian boy. One of the messages that had driven the man to murder was, ‘Your answer in history class today was very good.’ Another time the boy wrote, ‘Do you have time for a coffee after class?’ Because the father was no adept at following the order of messages on Facebook, he did not notice that she had not responded to the first and had said, ‘No’ to the second.

  The father had stabbed her while she was asleep, later telling the police that he could not have done it if she had been awake and looking at him: he loved her too much.

  Brunetti and Griffoni spoke of the incident with the despair that comes at the realization of human prejudice and stupidity. ‘She was sixteen years old, and he killed her because a boy asked if she wanted to have a coffee, for the love of God,’ Griffoni said. ‘If I think of what I was doing when I was sixteen …’ she began and covered her eyes with her right hand.

  ‘You aren’t Egyptian,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Neither was she,’ Griffoni shot back. ‘She came here when she was three years old. Is she supposed to behave as if she’d been raised in a tent in the desert?’

  ‘The father says he wants to die, wants us to kill him.’

  ‘Oh, Guido, give it a rest, would you?’ she shot back, hiding neither her surprise nor her anger.

  ‘What does that mean?’ he asked, startled by her vehemence.

  At the approach of the waiter with their pasta, both stopped talking. As soon as he was out of hearing, Brunetti repeated, ‘Tell me what that means.’

  Griffoni sprinkled cheese on her pasta, speared some peas one by one, then a final piece of yellow pepper, before twirling her fork full of tagliolini. The pasta remained suspended on the end of her fork while she looked at him. ‘It means it’s all nonsense. He doesn’t want to die. He wants to suck up to Westerners and make them believe his heart is broken because he murdered his daughter.’

  She set her fork down and put her face in her hands but continued speaking. ‘He isn’t content with having murdered her: now he wants sympathy because he’s a victim trapped between two cultures.’ She removed her hands and picked up her fork. ‘It makes me want to scream: it’s all so orchestrated and fake.’

  ‘You really think that? You don’t believe him?’

  This time, her fork slammed against her plate. ‘No, I don’t believe him. And I don’t believe those old men who say they had to kill their poor, suffering wives because they just couldn’t stand to see the woman they loved become another person because of Alzheimer’s.’ She made a fist and set it on the table. ‘Tell me when you’ve ever read about a woman giving the same excuse for murdering her husband.’

  Brunetti noticed that the people at the next table were looking at them nervously, probably afraid they were a husband and wife having an argument.

  ‘What about the girl’s mother? Surely you believe her.’

  ‘Because she’s a woman, you mean?’ Griffoni demanded with soft-voiced sarcasm. Before he could answer, she said, ‘No, as a matter of fact, I don’t: I think she probably handed him the knife.’

  Brunetti was so surprised that it was his turn to set his fork on his plate and stare across the table at her. Where had all of this been hiding for so long?

  ‘That’s a bit severe, don’t you think, Claudia?’ he asked, keeping his voice calm and conversational.

  ‘You read the papers, didn’t you? She said she went in to wake her daughter up for school, and when she saw the blood, she screamed and ran out of the house. She’d slept beside her husband and woke up to find her daughter murdered in her bed.’

  Brunetti nodded. This, indeed, was the story that the papers had printed and were still printing.

  ‘You think he’d come back into the bedroom and slip into bed quietly, Guido? He’d just stabbed his only child seven times, and he goes back to bed, and his wife doesn’t even wake up, and off he goes to sleep?’

  Brunetti looked at his pasta, no longer wanting it.

  ‘They found blood all over his pyjamas, Guido. Or better, we found blood all over his pyjamas. And in their bed. And we found his wife’s fingerprints on the handle of the knife.’

  ‘She said it was on the floor, and she picked it up without thinking.’

  ‘And washed the blood off and put it back in the kitchen drawer? How’d it get into the drawer, Guido? And who washed the blood off?’

  The waiter approached their table, but Griffoni waved him away. She opened her mouth, closed it and then took five or six very deep breaths.

  She reached across the table and put her right hand on his arm. ‘I’m sorry, Guido, but I get crazy when I have to listen to this.’


  ‘To what?’

  ‘To men explaining their violence towards women and expecting people to believe they really didn’t have a choice. I’m sick to death of it and sick of people being taken in by it. He murdered her because he was losing control of her. It’s as simple as that. Anything else is just smoke in our eyes and an appeal to our desire to feel good about ourselves because we’re so tolerant of other cultures. And it’s fake, fake, fake.’

  She stopped and stared at him for a long time, weighing something Brunetti couldn’t identify. ‘And, if I might add, only men are stupid enough to believe it because they feel the same desire to control women and – if truth must be told – secretly sympathize with it.’

  She beckoned the waiter and, when he came, told him he could take the plates away and bring them two coffees. They were very quiet when he picked up the plates.

  19

  Both of them preferred to walk. Not bothering to try to exchange idle conversation, they reached Gasparini’s home just past three. Brunetti rang the bell, and soon they were seated in the living room where he had spoken to her – had it been only yesterday? Professoressa Crosera had turned strangely pale. Her hair was the same rich brown, but that only made the other change more obvious. Her skin had faded and resembled parchment. The curves of her cheekbones had been replaced by angles. Two days had done this to her, Brunetti thought.

  ‘Professoressa Crosera,’ Brunetti said, after refusing what had been a pro forma offer of coffee, ‘we’d like you to talk about your husband.’

  She looked at Brunetti, then at Griffoni, then back to Brunetti, as though waiting for him to translate what he’d said into a language she could understand. ‘What do you mean?’ she finally asked. Even her voice was grey, with the flat inertia of lack of sleep and constant fear.

  ‘I found the man who was selling drugs at the school,’ Brunetti said.

  Her eyes leapt back to his face, and she asked, ‘Did he do it?’

  Brunetti shook his head. ‘It would be impossible for him; he’s very sick.’

  ‘Is he in the hospital?’ she asked, and Brunetti wondered if she would try to find him there and do him harm.

  ‘He was: he’s having chemotherapy.’ Wanting to test her, he added, ‘But it doesn’t look like there’s any chance it’s going to be of any help to him.’

  ‘Good,’ she said savagely.

  Brunetti was at a loss how to respond. As if she had not spoken, he went on, ‘He isn’t capable of having attacked your husband. I’m sure of that.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘It has to have been someone else.’

  Professoressa Crosera turned her attention from him and asked Griffoni, ‘Did I surprise you with what I just said about him?’ Brunetti realized she wanted to know what another woman’s reaction would be.

  ‘Not at all,’ Griffoni answered.

  ‘Even if I want him dead?’

  ‘If he was selling drugs to your son, it’s an entirely natural reaction.’ Griffoni’s voice was filled with Delphic calm.

  ‘Would you think the same?’

  Griffoni clasped her hands and rested them in her lap. Looking at them, she said, ‘I don’t have children, so I can’t feel what you do.’ Then, before the other woman could speak, she went on, head still lowered. ‘But I think it’s what I’d want, too.’ That said, Griffoni raised her head and looked at the other woman, face expressionless.

  Professoressa Crosera nodded but said nothing.

  Brunetti saw that his only choice was to pretend that the conversation had been proceeding in linear form since he’d said he wanted her to talk about her husband. He was conscious he’d thought of Fornari as the assailant: now he had nothing. ‘We’d like you to tell us about anything unusual your husband did or said in the last few weeks or anything strange that he might have mentioned or talked about.’

  ‘Even something in the newspaper he commented on,’ Griffoni offered. ‘Or a subject that angered or excited him.’

  Professoressa Crosera closed her eyes and raised her right hand to rub at her forehead. She pushed at the skin, as though trying to smooth it up to her hairline. ‘Tullio’s a calm person: it’s seldom that he gets angry. He’s patient, doesn’t yell at the kids. He works hard.’

  ‘What sort of things do you talk about together?’ Griffoni risked asking.

  She had to think about this for a while, as though the man lying in the hospital bed was an obstacle to her memory of the other one, the man she had married. ‘Our work, both his and mine. The children. Films we’ve seen. Our families. Where we want to go on vacation.’ Her voice had slowed with each subject, and now it stopped. She raised her right hand in a helpless wave. ‘We talk about what everyone talks about.’

  Brunetti tried again. ‘Has he mentioned any trouble at work?’

  Her glance was sudden, almost fearful: Brunetti interpreted it as meaning she had never thought that her husband might have been in danger.

  Reading her expression, he realized how improbable it all sounded. Gasparini worked in Verona, for heaven’s sake: how likely was it that some jealous colleague or angry client would come to Venice and roam around the city until he conveniently met his unsuspecting victim on a bridge?

  ‘Or someone here in the city with whom he’s had trouble of any sort?’ Griffoni asked.

  Professoressa Crosera, who had lowered her head after Brunetti’s question about her husband’s work, raised it to meet Griffoni’s glance. ‘No, nothing. At least nothing I know about.’

  Brunetti took the opportunity to say, ‘Yesterday, I asked if I might look through his belongings.’ He waited to let her acknowledge his having asked. ‘Would you let us look through them?’ Her face tightened in resistance, but before she could speak, Brunetti remembered her voice when she’d said the word, ‘Good’, and he added, ‘It might help find the person who did this to him.’

  ‘You believe that?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t know what will help, Signora,’ he admitted, surprised at his own frankness. ‘That’s why I’d like Commissario Griffoni to have a look, as well. She might notice something I don’t.’

  Professoressa Crosera put her fingers back on her forehead and made the same upward pushing motion. ‘Go ahead, then. It’s the second door on the left.’

  They found the room in order: the bed was made; there was no discarded clothing. Brunetti walked over to what must be the door to the bathroom and poked his head inside. Here the same order prevailed, save for a shelf above the sink that held cosmetics and lotions.

  The wardrobe was a modern, white thing, enormous, set in the middle of the far wall of the room. Brunetti pulled open the two doors; one squeaked terribly. They stepped back to get a better view. A row of men’s shoes were lined up on the right side. Above them, the waistbands of trousers peeked from below matching jackets, and to the right of those hung a few jackets and at least twenty shirts, all white.

  The left side held dresses, skirts, slacks, shirts, and two long gowns all mixed together with no attempt at order. At least a dozen pairs of shoes stood below, some of them next to their partners. Griffoni moved back and stood with her arms folded, as if to get an impression of the two people who shared the space from the state in which they left their respective sections. Three shelves stood to each side of the hanging clothing; three drawers below the shelves.

  Men’s winter hats and gloves sat on the top shelf, beneath them heavy sweaters, and beneath those lighter sweaters and sweatshirts; the feminine side repeated the same contents on the same shelves, though there was considerably less order in their arrangement.

  ‘He’s a neat man, wouldn’t you say?’ Griffoni asked, pointing with her chin to the piles of folded clothing.

  ‘It looks that way,’ Brunetti answered, thinking of what must be the dull routine of an accountant’s work. ‘And his wife?’ he asked.

  Instead of answering, Griffoni stepped closer to the left side of the wardrobe and touched the material of one of the gowns and
two of the dresses. ‘She knows what suits her.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ Brunetti said. Griffoni reached up with palms pressed together and slipped them between the two dresses to separate them. ‘Look at these,’ she said. ‘They’re perfect for her: cut, material, the way they’d fall from the shoulder.’ She removed her hands, and the dresses went back to caressing one another. ‘She knows what looks good on her.’

  ‘And those?’ Brunetti said, pointing to the shoes below, lying around in drunken disorder.

  ‘They all have wooden shoe trees, Guido. Did you notice that?’

  No, he hadn’t: he had been too busy seeing that some were not standing neatly next to their mates. ‘And at least five pairs are hand made,’ she added.

  ‘And him?’ Brunetti asked, wondering if he’d be asking her to interpret their handwriting next.

  ‘Orderly, perhaps annoyingly so at times; very conventional and fixed in his ideas.’

  ‘You read all that from the way his suits are lined up?’ Brunetti asked.

  She smiled. ‘He has three grey suits, Guido,’ she said, pointing to his side of the wardrobe. She started at the top drawer on the right side and worked her way down, opening, putting a hand inside to move things around, and closing them one after the other. Underwear, socks, and handkerchiefs. She pulled open the third one and looked inside. Instead of reaching in, she put her hands behind her back and said, ‘Just look at what we see.’

  ‘Meaning?’ Brunetti asked with more than a hint of impatience.

  ‘Meaning that, in the midst of all that order, here we have the secret centre of the man.’

  ‘Oh, come on, Claudia,’ Brunetti said, ‘that’s nonsense.’

  ‘Just look,’ she said, pulling the drawer out farther and stepping away from it.