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Curious, he asked, ‘Why would he do that?’
‘My husband is Spanish. But my divorce is Italian. So is the decree that gives me custody of our children. If my husband were to bring an accusation like that against me in this country . . .’ She allowed her voice to trail off, making it clear what she thought the chances would be of her keeping her children.
‘And the children?’ he asked.
She shook her head in confusion, not understanding the question.
‘The children. Where are they?’
‘In school, where they should be. We live in Milan, and they go to school there. I don’t think it’s right to drag them along to wherever I happen to be singing.’ She came closer to him, then sat at the end of the sofa. When he glanced at her friend, he saw that she sat with her face turned away, looking off at the bell tower, almost as if this conversation in no way involved her.
For a long time, no one said anything. Brunetti considered what he had just been told and wondered whether it was the cause of his instinctive backing away from the American. He and Paola had enough friends of variegated sexuality for him to believe that, even if the accusation was true, this would not be the reason.
‘Well?’ the singer finally said.
‘Well what?’ he asked.
Aren’t you going to ask if it’s true?’
He dismissed the question with a shake of his head. ‘Whether it’s true or not is irrelevant. All that’s important is whether he would have gone through with his threat to tell your husband.’ Brett Lynch had turned back to face him with speculative eyes.
When she spoke, her voice was level. ‘He would have done it. Anyone who knew him well would have known that. And Flavia’s husband would move mountains to get custody of the children.’ When she said her friend’s name, she glanced over at her, and their eyes locked for a moment. She moved down in her seat, shoved her hands into her pockets, and stretched her feet out in front of her.
Brunetti studied her. Was it those gleaming boots, the careless display of wealth in this apartment, that caused him to feel such resentment toward her? He tried to clear his mind, to see her for the first time, a woman in her early thirties who had offered him her hospitality and, now, appeared to be offering him her trust. Unlike her employer—if that’s what Petrelli was—she didn’t bother with dramatic gestures or try in any way to highlight the sharp Anglo-Saxon beauty of her face.
He noticed that the strands of her beautifully cut hair were damp at the neck, as though she had not long ago stepped from either a bath or a shower. Turning his attention to Flavia Petrelli, he thought that she had about her, too, the fresh smell of a woman who had just finished bathing. He suddenly found himself embroiled in an erotic fantasy of the two women entwined, naked, in the shower, breasts pushed up against breasts, and he was amazed at the power of the fantasy to stir him. Oh, God, how much easier it had been in Naples, with a kick and a shove.
The American released him from his reverie by asking, ‘Does this mean you think Flavia could have done it? Or that I could have?’
‘It’s far too early to speak like that,’ he said, though this was hardly true. ‘It’s far too early to speak of suspects.’
‘But it’s not too early to speak of motive,’ the singer said.
‘No, it’s not,’ he agreed. He hardly needed to point out that she now appeared to have one.
‘I suppose that means I’ve got one as well,’ added her friend, as strange a declaration of love as Brunetti had ever heard. Or friendship? Or loyalty to an employer? And people said Italians were complicated.
He decided to temporize. ‘As I said, it’s too early to talk of suspects.’ He decided to change the topic. ‘How long will you be in the city, Signora?’
‘Until the end of the performances,’ she said. ‘That’s another two weeks. Until the end of the month. Though I’d like to go back to Milan for the weekends.’ It was phrased as a statement, but it was clear that she was asking for permission. He nodded, the gesture conveying both understanding and police permission to leave the city.
She continued. After that, I don’t know. I haven’t any other engagements until—’ she paused, looking across at her friend, who supplied immediately, ‘Covent Garden, on the fifth of January.’
‘And you’ll be in Italy until then?’ he asked.
‘Certainly. Either here or in Milan.’
‘And you, Miss Lynch?’ he asked, turning to her.
Her glance was cool, as cool as her answer. ‘I’ll be in Milan, as well.’ Though it was hardly necessary, she added, ‘With Flavia.’
He took his notebook from his pocket then and asked if he could have the address in Milan where they would be. Flavia Petrelli gave it to him and, unasked, supplied the phone number. He wrote down both, put the notebook back in his pocket, and stood.
‘Thank you both for your time,’ he said formally.
‘Will you want to speak to me again?’ the singer asked.
‘That depends on what I’m told by other people,’ Brunetti said, regretting the menace in it but not the honesty. Understanding only the first, she picked up the score and opened it, posing it on her lap. He no longer interested her.
He took a step toward the door and, as he did, stepped into one of the beams of light that washed across the floor. Looking up toward its source, he turned to the American and asked, finally, ‘How did you manage to get those skylights?’
She crossed in front of him and went into the hallway, stopped before the door, and asked him, ‘Do you mean how did I get the skylights themselves or the permits to build them?’
‘The permits.’
Smiling, she answered, ‘I bribed the city planner.’
‘How much?’ he asked automatically, calculating the total area of the windows. Six of them, each about a meter square.
She had obviously lived in Venice long enough not to be offended by the indelicacy of the question. She smiled more broadly and answered, ‘Twelve million lire,’ as though she were giving the outside temperature.
That made it, Brunetti calculated, about half a month’s salary a window.
‘But that was two years ago,’ she added by way of explanation. ‘I’m told prices have risen since then.’
He nodded. In Venice, even graft was subject to inflation.
They shook hands at the door, and he was surprised at the warmth of the smile she gave him, as though their talk of bribery had somehow made them fellow conspirators. She thanked him for having come, though there was no need for that. He responded with equal politeness and found real warmth in his voice. Had it taken so little to win him over? Had her display of corruptibility rendered her more human? He said goodbye and mused on this last question as he walked down the stairs, glad again to feel their sea-like unevenness under his feet.
* * * *
CHAPTER NINE
Back at the Questura, he learned that officers Alvise and Riverre had gone to the Maestro’s apartment and looked through his personal effects, coming away with documents and papers, which were now being translated into Italian. He called down to the lab, but they still had no results on fingerprints, though they had confirmed the self-evident, that the poison was in the coffee. Miotti was nowhere to be found; presumably he was still at the theater. At a loss for what to do, knowing that he would have to speak to her soon, Brunetti called the Maestro’s widow and asked if it would be possible for her to receive him that afternoon. After an initial and entirely understandable reluctance, she asked him to come at four. He rooted around in the top drawer of his desk and found half a package of bussolai, the salty Venetian pretzels he loved so much. He ate them while he looked through the notes he had taken on the German police report.
A half hour before his appointment with Signora Wellauer, he left his office and walked slowly up toward Piazza San Marco. Along the way, he paused to look into shop windows, shocked, as he always was when in the center of the city, by how quickly their composition was changing. I
t seemed to him that all the shops that served the native population— pharmacies, shoemakers, groceries—were slowly and inexorably disappearing, replaced by slick boutiques and souvenir shops that catered to the tourists, filled with luminescent plastic gondolas from Taiwan and papier-mâché masks from Hong Kong. It was the desires of the transients, not the needs of the residents, that the city’s merchants answered. He wondered how long it would take before the entire city became a sort of living museum, a place fit only for visiting and not for inhabiting.
As if to exacerbate his reflections, a group of off-season tourists wandered by, led by a raised umbrella. Water on his left, he passed through the piazza, amazed by the people who seemed to find the pigeons more interesting than the basilica.
He crossed the bridge after Campo San Moisè, turned right, then right again, and into a narrow calk that ended in a huge wooden door.
He rang and heard a disembodied, mechanical voice ask who he was. He gave his name and, seconds later, heard the snap that released the lock on the door. He stepped into a newly restored hall, its ceiling beams stripped to their original wood and varnished to a high gloss. The floor, he noticed with a Venetian eye, was made of inlaid marble tiles set in a geometric pattern of waves and swirls. From the gentle undulance of it, he guessed that it was original to the building, perhaps early fifteenth century.
He began to climb the broad, space-wasting steps. At each landing there was a single metal door; the singleness spoke of wealth and the metal of the desire to protect it. Engraved nameplates told him to keep ascending. The steps ended, five flights up, at another metal door. He rang the bell and a few moments later was greeted by the woman he had spoken to in the theater the night before, the Maestro’s widow.
He took her extended hand, muttered, ‘Permesso,’ and crossed into the apartment.
If she had slept the night before, there was no sign of it in her face. She wore no makeup, so the intense pallor of her face was accented, as were the dark smudges beneath her eyes. But even under the fatigue, the structure of great beauty was visible. The bones of her cheeks would carry her into great age safely, and the line of her nose would always create a profile that people would turn to see again.
‘I’m Commissario Brunetti. We spoke last night.’
‘Yes, I remember,’ she replied. ‘Please come this way.’ She led him down a corridor to a large study. In one corner, there was a fireplace with a small open fire. Two chairs separated by a table stood in front of the fire. She waved him to one of the chairs and sat in the other. On the table, a burning cigarette rested in a full ashtray. Behind her was a large window, through which he could see the ocher rooftops of the city. On the walls hung what his children insisted on calling ‘real’ paintings.
‘Would you like a drink, Dottor Brunetti? Or perhaps tea?’ She repeated the Italian phrases as though she had learned them by rote from a grammar book, but he found it interesting that she would know his proper title.
‘Please don’t go to any trouble, Signora,’ he said, responding in kind.
‘Two of your policemen were here this morning. They took some things away with them.’ It was evident that her Italian wasn’t adequate to name the things that had been removed.
‘Would it help if we spoke English?’ he asked in that language.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said, smiling for the first time and giving him a hint of what her full beauty would be. ‘That would be much easier for me.’ Her face softened, and some of the signs of stress disappeared. Even her body seemed to relax as the language difficulty was removed. ‘I’ve just been here a few times, to Venice, and I’m embarrassed by how badly I speak Italian.’
In other circumstances, the situation would have demanded that he deny this and praise her ability with the language. Instead he said, ‘I realize, Signora, how difficult this is for you, and I want to express my condolences to you and your family.’ Why was it that the words with which we confronted death always sounded so inadequate, so blatantly false? ‘He was a great musician, and the loss to the world of music is enormous. But I’m sure yours must be far worse.’ Stilted and artificial, it was the best he could do.
He noticed a number of telegrams sitting next to the ashtray, some open, some not. She must have been hearing much the same thing all day long, but she gave no indication of that and, instead, said simply, ‘Thank you.’ She reached into the pocket of her sweater and pulled out a package of cigarettes. She took one of them from the pack and raised it to her lips, but then she saw the cigarette still smoking in the ashtray. She tossed fresh cigarette and package on the table and pulled the lighted cigarette from the ashtray. She took a deep breath of smoke, held it for a long time, then expelled with obvious reluctance.
‘Yes, he will be missed by the world of music,’ she said. Before he could reflect on the strangeness of this, she added, ‘And here as well.’ Though there was only a millimeter of ash on the end of it, she flicked her cigarette at the ashtray, then bent forward and scraped the sides, as though it were a pencil she wanted to sharpen.
He reached into his pocket and took out his notebook, opened it to a page on which he kept a scribbled list of new books he wanted to read. He had noticed the night before that she was almost beautiful, would become unquestionably so from certain angles and in certain lights. Under the weariness that veiled her face today, that beauty was still evident. She had wide-spaced blue eyes and naturally blond hair, which today she wore pulled back and knotted simply at her neck.
‘Do you know what killed him?’ she asked.
‘I spoke to the pathologist this morning. It was potassium cyanide. It was in the coffee he drank.’
‘So it was fast. There is at least that.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘It would have been almost instantaneous.’ He jotted something in his notebook, then asked, ‘Are you familiar with the poison?’
She shot him a quick glance before she answered, ‘No more than any other doctor would be.’
He flipped a page. ‘The pathologist suggested that it’s not easily come by, cyanide,’ he lied.
She said nothing, so he asked, ‘How did your husband seem to you last night, Signora? Was there anything strange or in any way peculiar about his behavior?’
Continuing to wipe her cigarette against the edge of the ashtray, she answered, ‘No; I thought he was quite the same as always.’
‘And how was that, if I might ask?’
‘A bit tense, withdrawn. He didn’t like to speak to anyone before a performance, or during intermissions. He didn’t like to be distracted by anything.’
That seemed normal enough to him. ‘Did he appear any more nervous than usual last night?’
She considered this for a moment. ‘No, I can’t say that he was. We walked to the theater at about seven. It’s very close.’ He nodded. ‘I went to my seat, even though it was early. The ushers were used to seeing me at rehearsals, so they let me in. Helmut went backstage to change and take a look at the score.’
‘Excuse me, Signora, but I think I read in one of the papers that your husband was famous for conducting without a score.’
She smiled at this. ‘Oh, he did, he did. But he always kept one in the dressing room, and he’d look over it before the performance and during the intervals.’
‘Is that why he didn’t want to be interrupted during the intervals?’
‘Yes.’
‘You said you went backstage to speak to him last night.’ She said nothing, so he asked, ‘Was that normal?’
‘No; as I told you, he didn’t like anyone to talk to him during a performance. He said it destroyed his concentration. But last night, he asked me to go back after the second act.’
‘Was anyone with you when he asked you?’
Her voice took on a sharp edge. ‘Do you mean, do I have a witness that he asked me?’ Brunetti nodded. ‘No, Dottor Brunetti, I don’t have a witness. But I was surprised.’
‘Why?’
‘Because Helmut seldo
m did things that were . . . I’m not sure of the words to use . . . out of the ordinary. He seldom did things that were not part of his routine. So it surprised me that he asked me to go and see him during a performance.’
‘But you went?’
‘Yes, I went.’
‘Why did he want to see you?’
‘I don’t know. I met friends in the foyer, and I stopped to talk to them for a few minutes. I’d forgotten that during a performance, you can’t get backstage from the orchestra, that you have to go upstairs to the boxes. So by the time I finally got backstage and to his dressing room, the second bell was already ringing for the end of the interval.’
