A Question of Belief cb-19

by Donna Leon

  ‘Because then you’d eat tramezzini every day, and never go home for lunch,’ Vianello said and ordered a plate of artichoke hearts and bottoms, some fried olives, shrimp, and calamari, explaining, ‘It’s for all of us.’ He also asked for an artichoke and ham tramezzino and a shrimp and tomato; Penzo chose bresaola and ruccola, Speck and Gorgonzola, and Speck and mushroom; Brunetti practised moderation and asked for bresaola and artichoke and Speck and mushrooms.

  They all chose Pinot Grigio, and large glasses of mineral water. They carried the glasses and plates to the small counter behind them, set them out, and handed round the sandwiches. When each had eaten his first tramezzino, Vianello raised his glass; the others joined him.

  Penzo stuck a toothpick into one of the fried olives, bit off half of it, and asked, ‘What client is it you want to ask me about?’

  Before Brunetti could answer, a man passing by patted Penzo on the back and said, ‘They feeding you or arresting you, Renato?’ but it was said, and taken, as a joke, and Penzo returned his attention to finishing his olive. He tossed the toothpick on to the plate and picked up his wine.

  ‘Zinka,’ Brunetti said. He was about to explain how it was that he came to be curious about the woman when the flash of pain that shot across Penzo’s face stopped him. The lawyer closed his eyes for an instant, then opened them again and took a sip of wine.

  He set his glass down, picked up his second sandwich and turned to Brunetti. ‘Zinka?’ he inquired, voice light. ‘Why would you be interested in her?’

  Brunetti drank some of his water and reached for his second sandwich, as casually as if he had not noticed Penzo’s reaction. ‘We’re not really interested in her but in something she said.’

  ‘Really? What?’ Penzo asked in a voice he had mastered and that sounded entirely calm. He raised the sandwich to his lips but set it back on the plate untasted.

  Vianello glanced across at Brunetti and raised his eyebrows as he finished his glass of wine. ‘Anyone want another?’ he asked.

  Brunetti nodded; Penzo said no.

  Vianello went over to the bar. Brunetti put down his empty glass and said, ‘She mentioned an argument her employer had had with one of his neighbours.’

  Penzo looked at his sandwich and, keeping his eyes lowered, asked politely, ‘Ah, did she?’

  ‘With Araldo Fontana,’ Brunetti said. By now, Penzo should have glanced up or looked at him, but he continued to study his sandwich, as though it, and not Brunetti, were speaking to him. ‘And she said that Signor Fontana also had an argument with the man on the top floor.’ Brunetti let some time pass and then said, ‘Since the ground floor’s empty, one could say that Signor Fontana argued with everyone in the building.’

  Penzo did not reply. ‘Yet Signora Zinka said — and she seems like a very sensible person — ’ Brunetti added, ‘that Signor Fontana was a good man.’ Brunetti glanced over to the counter, where Vianello stood, back to them, sipping at a glass of white wine.

  If the normal number of clients had been there, Penzo’s voice would have been drowned out, so softly did he say, ‘He was.’

  ‘I’m glad that’s true,’ Brunetti replied. ‘It makes his death worse. But it makes his life better.’

  Penzo raised his head slowly and looked at Brunetti. ‘What did you say?’ he asked.

  ‘That his goodness must have made his life better,’ Brunetti repeated.

  ‘And his death worse?’ Penzo asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti said. ‘But that’s not what counts, is it? It’s the life that went before that’s important. And what people will remember.’

  ‘All people will remember,’ Penzo said in a voice that was no less fierce for being so soft, almost a whisper, ‘is that he was gay and was killed by some trick he brought back to his home for sex in the courtyard.’

  ‘I beg your pardon,’ Brunetti said, unable to disguise his astonishment. ‘Where did you hear something like that?’

  ‘In the Tribunale, in the offices, in the corridors. That’s what people are saying. That he was a fag who liked dangerous sex and that he was killed by one of his anonymous tricks.’

  ‘That’s absurd,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘Of course it’s absurd,’ Penzo hissed. ‘But that doesn’t stop people from saying it, and it won’t stop them from believing it.’ There was rage in his voice but Penzo had returned his attention to his plate so Brunetti could not study his expression.

  In other circumstances, hearing his tone, Brunetti would have been compelled to place a comforting hand on the arm of the speaker, but he stopped himself from making the gesture from some vague sense that it would be misunderstood. In a flash, Brunetti realized what that must mean and decided to risk any chance of trust on one word and said, ‘You must have loved him very much.’

  Penzo raised his head and stared at Brunetti like a man who has been shot. His face was blank, scrubbed of all expression by Brunetti’s words. He tried to speak, and Brunetti read the history of years of denial that spurred him to look puzzled and ask whatever could Brunetti mean by saying such a thing: the habit of caution that had trained him to treat Fontana’s name as though it were any other name, the man just like any other colleague.

  ‘We met in liceo. That was almost forty years ago,’ Penzo said and picked up his water. He put his head back and swallowed it all in four long gulps. Then, as if the water had restored his conversation with Brunetti to the most businesslike of events, he asked, ‘What did you want to know about him, Commissario?’

  Just as if he had not asked Penzo his previous question, Brunetti asked, ‘Do you have any idea why Signor Fontana argued with his neighbours?’

  Instead of answering, Penzo said, ‘Could you get me another glass of water, please?’ When Brunetti started to move towards the bar, Penzo added, ‘You can bring the Inspector back with you.’

  Brunetti did both things. When Penzo had drunk half of the water he set the glass down and said to Brunetti, ‘Araldo told me that he thought the people who lived in those apartments — both of them — had got them in return for doing favours for the landlord.’

  ‘Signor Puntera?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes.’

  Penzo looked at the ground and said, ‘It’s very complicated.’

  Brunetti lifted his chin in Vianello’s direction, and the Inspector said, ‘We’re not in any hurry, Avvocato. Take all the time you need.’

  Penzo, his lips tight, nodded. He looked at Brunetti and said, ‘I’m not sure where to begin.’

  ‘With his mother,’ Brunetti suggested.

  ‘Yes,’ Penzo said with a bitter little shrug, ‘with his mother.’ He went on. ‘She’s a widow. If ever a woman had a profession, hers was widowhood. Araldo was only eighteen when his father died, and because he was the only child, he assumed that it was his responsibility to take care of his mother. His father had been a clerk; at first there was some money, but his mother quickly went through that. She spent it to keep up appearances. Araldo was supposed to go to university: we were both going to study law. But when the money was gone, he had to take a job, and his mother thought the safest thing was to become a civil servant, as his father had been.’

  ‘So he became a clerk at the Tribunale?’ supplied Brunetti.

  ‘Yes. And worked and rose and was promoted and became — even he knew this — something of a joke for the seriousness with which he took his job. But there was never enough money, and then five years ago his mother got sick, or she thought she was sick. And then they needed more money for doctors and exams and tests and cures.

  ‘It became difficult for him to pay her bills and still pay the rent. I offered to help, but he wouldn’t let me. I knew he wouldn’t, but I still wanted him to. So they moved, from Cannaregio down to a dark little apartment in Castello. And she got sicker and sicker, had more and more tests.’

  ‘Was there anything wrong with her?’ Vianello broke in to ask.

  Penzo shrugged, quite an eloquent gesture. ‘Something is w
rong with her, but the tests found nothing.’

  He stopped speaking for so long that Brunetti was finally moved to ask, ‘What happened?’

  ‘He went to his bank to try to borrow money to pay the bills. He knew enough people to be able to get to talk to the director, but he told Araldo it would be impossible to lend him any money since there was no guarantee that he could ever pay it back.’

  ‘Was the bank director Signor Fulgoni?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Who else?’ Penzo asked with a bitter laugh.

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘And then?’

  ‘And then, one day, like Venus arising from the seas or descending on a cloud, Judge Coltellini appeared in Araldo’s office — I think this was about three years ago — and told him she’d heard that he was looking for a new apartment.’

  Penzo glanced at them to check that they had registered the significance of the name, then continued, ‘Araldo told her that he was not looking, not at all, and she said how very disappointed she was because a friend of hers had an apartment on the Misericordia that he wanted to rent to what he called “decent people”. She said he wasn’t interested in the rent, that he simply wanted people in the apartment who were reliable, good people.’

  Penzo gave them a look that asked if they had ever heard of such a thing. ‘Before he spoke to me, Araldo made the mistake of talking to his mother about it.’

  ‘She wanted to move?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Their apartment was fifty metres: two rooms, for two people, one of them a sick woman. The boiler was at least forty years old, and Araldo said they were never sure when there would be hot water,’ Penzo said.

  ‘Did you ever see it?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘I never saw any of their apartments,’ Penzo answered in a voice that cut off discussion of that topic.

  ‘The apartment on the Misericordia had a lower rent, and it had been restored two years before: new heating system, and the utilities were included. The way she presented it to them, she made it sound like they would be doing the landlord a favour. Which was exactly the right tack to take with Araldo’s mother. She’s always considered herself a cut above everyone else.’ Penzo’s voice took on a bitter edge when he said, ‘Just the person to condescend to a landlord.’

  ‘So he took it?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Once he told her about it,’ Penzo said with a resigned shake of his head, ‘he had no choice. She would have driven him mad if he hadn’t taken it.’

  ‘And when they’d moved?’

  ‘She was happy with it, at least at the beginning.’ Penzo looked at the sandwich he had abandoned. ‘But she was never able to be happy for long.’ He put one finger on the springy white bread and pressed down, then removed his finger. The bread remained compressed. He pushed the plate to the back of the counter and took a sip of water.

  Brunetti and Vianello waited.

  ‘After they had been living there for about six months, Judge Coltellini gave a file back to Araldo after a hearing. He took the file back to his office and checked through the documents to see that they were all there. I think he’s the only one in the Tribunale who bothers — bothered — to do such a thing. A paper was missing, the deed to a house. So he took the file back to the judge and told her it was missing, and she said she knew nothing about it, that it had not been in the file when she read through it, or at least she had no memory of having seen it.’

  ‘What was his reaction?’

  ‘He believed her, of course. She was a judge, after all, and he had been raised to respect rank and authority.’

  ‘And then?’ prompted Vianello.

  ‘A few months later, the judge postponed a hearing because the file on the case was missing,’ he said and stopped.

  ‘And where was it?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘On her desk, buried under some others. Araldo found it when he went back in the afternoon to retrieve the case files.’

  ‘Did he speak to her?’

  ‘Yes. And she apologized and said she hadn’t seen it there, that it must have been stuck inside one of the others.’

  ‘And this time?’ It was Vianello who asked.

  ‘He still thought nothing of it. Or that’s what he told me.’

  ‘And then?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘And then he stopped telling me about it.’

  ‘How do you know there was anything to tell?’

  ‘I told you, Commissario. We went to liceo together. Forty years. You learn to know what a person is thinking in that time, when something’s bothering them.’

  ‘Did you ask about it?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes, a few times.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘And he told me to leave him alone, that it was something at work and he didn’t want to talk about it.’ Penzo returned his attention to his abandoned sandwich. This time, he used his thumbnail to score an X in the lingering fingerprint, then returned to Brunetti.

  ‘So I left the subject alone, and we tried to go on as if nothing were wrong.’

  ‘But?’

  Penzo took the tall glass and swirled the remaining water around a few times, then drank the last of it. ‘You have to understand that Araldo was an honest man. A good man, and an honest man.’

  ‘Meaning?’ asked Brunetti.

  ‘Meaning that the idea that a judge was lying to him or lying about something would upset him. And then anger him.’

  ‘What would he do about it?’ Brunetti asked.

  Penzo gave a shrug. ‘What could he do? He was in the honeytrap, wasn’t he? His mother was as happy as she was capable of being. Would he want to take that away?’

  ‘Was he sure they’d lose the apartment?’

  Penzo did not bother to answer this.

  ‘Was the apartment that important to her?’

  ‘Yes,’ Penzo answered instantly. ‘Because she had the address and could invite her friends — the few she had — to come and visit her there and see how well she was doing, she and her son who was only a clerk. And not a lawyer.’

  ‘And so?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘And so he didn’t talk about it. And I didn’t ask about it.’

  ‘And that was that?’ Brunetti asked.

  Penzo’s glance was sudden and sober, as if he were deciding whether to be offended or not. ‘Yes. That was that,’ he said. In this heat, a light coating of perspiration lay upon everyone’s face and arms, so Brunetti at first did not notice that tears had begun to run down Penzo’s cheeks. He seemed not to notice them himself, certainly made no attempt to wipe them away. As Brunetti watched, they began to drip off his chin, splashing into invisibility on his white shirt.

  ‘I will go to my grave wishing I’d done something. Made him talk. Made him tell me what he was doing. What she was asking him to do,’ Penzo said and wiped at the tears absently. ‘I didn’t want to cause trouble.’

  ‘Did you see him that day?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Or speak to him?’

  ‘You mean the day he was killed?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘No, I was in Belluno, seeing a client, and I didn’t get back until the following morning.’

  ‘Which hotel?’ Vianello asked mildly.

  Penzo’s face froze, and it cost him an effort to turn to the Inspector. ‘Hotel Pineta,’ he said in a tight voice. He reached down and picked up his briefcase and walked out of the bar so quickly that neither Brunetti nor Vianello, had they had the will, would have had time to stop him.

  23

  Brunetti went over to the bar and was quickly back with two more glasses of white wine. He handed one to Vianello and drank some of his own.

  ‘Well?’ he asked Vianello.

  The Inspector picked up the toothpick he had used to eat an artichoke and absently began to break it into small pieces, laying them one after the other on the plate beside Penzo’s uneaten sandwich. ‘Well,’ he finally said, ‘it looks like we have to examine his life.’

  ‘Fontana’s or Penzo’s?’

  Vianel
lo glanced up quickly. ‘Both, really, but we’ve already started with Fontana. First we find that he’s gay, and then we have a tearful account of his sad life from someone who may well turn out — unless I’m misreading all the signs — to have been his lover. So it might be wise to find out where Penzo was the night Fontana was killed.’

  ‘Does that mean you’re not persuaded by his tearful story?’ asked Brunetti in a tone more cynical than was his wont.

  Breaking off another piece of toothpick, Vianello answered, ‘I was, and am, persuaded by it. It’s pretty obvious that he loved Fontana.’

  ‘But?’

  ‘People kill the people they love every day,’ Vianello said.

  ‘Exactly,’ Brunetti affirmed.

  ‘Does that mean we’re treating him as a suspect?’

  ‘It means we have to treat him as a suspect,’ Brunetti said. He looked at the Inspector and asked, ‘What do you think?’

  ‘I told you I think Penzo loved him,’ Vianello said, then paused a moment and went on in a voice that sounded almost disappointed, ‘but I don’t think he killed him.’

  Brunetti was forced to agree with both propositions, but he finally gave voice to an uneasiness that had been created by their conversation with the lawyer, ‘You think that means Penzo was his lover?’

  ‘You heard the way he spoke,’ Vianello insisted.

  ‘Loving someone for forty years isn’t the same as being his lover,’ Brunetti said.

  He saw Vianello’s look of rigid opposition, and before the Ispettore could speak, Brunetti added, ‘It’s not the same thing, Lorenzo.’ It came to Brunetti that he and Vianello surely loved one another, but this was not anything he could say, surely not to Vianello. Nor, he admitted, would he want Vianello to say it to him.

  ‘You can see them as different, if you want,’ Vianello said, sounding as if it were something he would choose not to do. ‘If it turns out that he wasn’t in Belluno that night, then what do we do?’

  Brunetti could do nothing more than shrug off the possibility.