A Question of Belief

11

Before he could leave her office, Signorina Elettra asked, ‘Are you still curious about Signor Fontana?’

Fontana? Fontana? What did that name have to do with Vianello’s aunt? Then it came back to him — that ‘decorous man’ — and he said, ‘Ah, yes. Certainly.’

‘As you told me, he’s an usher at the Tribunale, so it was very easy to find him. He’s worked there for thirty-five years, lives with his mother, never married. Never taken a day off sick. Only day he’s ever missed work was the day of his father’s funeral, thirty-four years ago.’

Brunetti stopped her there with an abruptly raised hand. ‘Never missed a day of work? Well, one day, for his father’s funeral. And you say this man is a civil servant?’

‘Yes,’ she answered. ‘Should I get you a chair, Commissario?’

‘Thank you, no,’ he said in a very quiet voice. He placed one hand flat on her desk and made a business of supporting himself with it, head cast down limply. ‘I’m sure if I just stand here quietly for a moment, I’ll be all right.’ After that moment had passed, he shook his head a few times and lifted his hand tentatively from her desk. ‘Pucetti said yesterday that he’d seen something he would tell his grandchildren about. I think the same thing has just happened to me. Absent only once in thirty-five years.’ He gazed at the far wall, as though he were watching a flaming hand write the numbers. Then, suddenly tired of foolery, he said, ‘What else?’

‘He and his mother rent an apartment up near San Leonardo. They lived in Castello until three years ago, when they moved into an apartment in a palazzo on the Misericordia.’

‘Very nice,’ Brunetti said, suddenly alert. ‘Does the mother work?’

‘No. Never.’

‘Be interesting to know how he pays the rent, wouldn’t it?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I doubt he’d have difficulty paying it,’ she surprised him by saying.

‘Why? Is the place small?’

‘No, quite the opposite. It’s a hundred and fifty square metres.’

‘Then how does he manage to pay for it?’

Her small, self-satisfied smile warned him to prepare for her next remark, but even Brunetti could not have imagined what was to come. ‘Because the rent’s only four hundred and fifty Euros,’ she said. From that, she progressed to arrant grandstanding and said, ‘Or so the monthly transfers from his bank account would suggest.’

‘For an apartment on the Misericordia? A hundred and fifty square metres?’

‘Perhaps now you have something else to tell your grandchildren, Dottore,’ she said with a smile.

His mind shot ahead, trying to find an explanation. Blackmail? A contract written with a falsely low rent so that Fontana could pay the rest in cash, letting the landlord avoid taxes? A relative?

‘Who does the payment go to?’ he asked.

‘Marco Puntera,’ she said, naming a businessman who had made a fortune in real estate in Milano and then moved back to his native Venice seven or eight years before.

A cat, Brunetti knew, could look at a king, but how on earth did an usher know a man as wealthy as Puntera was reported to be, and how was it that he was given an apartment with such a rent?

‘He owns lots of apartments, doesn’t he?’ Brunetti asked.

‘At least twelve, and all are rented out. And two palazzi on the Grand Canal,’ she said. ‘Also rented.’

‘At comparable rents?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I haven’t had time to check, sir. But I believe many of them are rented to foreigners.’ She paused, as if in search of the proper phrase. Finding it, she went on, ‘He is said to be an ornament to the Anglo-American community.’

‘But he’s neither Anglo nor American,’ said Brunetti quickly, having gone to elementary school with Puntera’s younger brother.

‘In the sense that he is involved in their social life, sir,’ she went on imperturbably. ‘Membership at the Cipriani pool; Christmas carols at the English Church; Fourth of July party; first-name basis with the owners of the best restaurants.’

To Brunetti, this sounded like one of the tortures Dante had overlooked. ‘And Fontana gets a deal on his rent from a man like this?’ he said, more in the sense of one repeating a wonder than asking a question about it.

‘So it would seem.’

‘Have you learned anything else?’ he asked.

‘I thought I’d speak to you first, Commissario, and see if you found their association as thought-provoking as I do.’

‘I find it fascinating,’ Brunetti said, always interested in the possibilities that arose from the various relationships formed among people in the city. The more unusual the couple, the more intriguing the possibilities often turned out to be.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I thought you might.’ She paused, then said, ‘But taking a closer look might require me to call in some favours, so I wanted to see if you agreed before I began to ask questions.’

He looked at Signorina Elettra and asked, ‘What did you have in mind?’

Instead of answering, Signorina Elettra said, ‘I’m pleased you approve of the staffing schedule, Commissario. I’ll have it posted by the end of the day.’

‘Good, Signorina. I appreciate it,’ Brunetti replied seam-lessly and turned towards the door, then gave every evidence of being surprised to discover there Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta and, to his right, Lieutenant Scarpa, his creature.

‘Ah, good morning, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said with a pleasant smile. Then, like Copernicus recognizing a lesser planet, ‘Lieutenant.’

Patta had reached the near-zenith of his summer colouring. Since May, he had been swimming daily in the pool of the Hotel Cipriani and had almost attained the colour of a horse chestnut. A few more weeks and he would have achieved that, but soon after, the days would begin to shorten and the sun’s rays would lose their ferocity. And by October the Vice-Questore would resemble a caffè macchiato into which, as the weeks progressed, more and more milk would be added until, by December, he would be blanched to cappuccino paleness. Unless he took the expedient of using the Christmas vacation to top up his colour in the Maldives or the Seychelles, Patta ran the risk of arriving at the portals of springtime a pale shadow of his summer self.

‘Signorina Elettra has just explained the new summer scheduling plan to me,’ Brunetti said with an affable smile and a complimentary nod in Scarpa’s direction. ‘I think it’s good to maximize the possibilities of force deployment with these innovations, sir.’ Patta smiled, but Scarpa gave Brunetti a savage look. ‘It shows creative organizational skills, really innovative planning if I might. .’ — and here he looked away, the very picture of admiring modesty — ‘venture to observe.’

‘I’m glad you think that way,’ said an expansive Patta. ‘I have to confess,’ and here it was Patta who draped himself in the cloth of modesty, ‘that the Lieutenant gave me the benefit of his hands-on experience with the men here.’

‘Teamwork, that’s the answer,’ said a positively beaming Brunetti.

Signorina Elettra used this moment to interrupt, ‘There was a call for you from the Cipriani while you were out, Vice-Questore. They said something about your lunch table for tomorrow and asked you to call.’

‘Thank you, Signorina,’ Patta said, moving towards his office door. ‘I’ll see to that now.’ He disappeared inside, answering a Higher Call, leaving the three of them in Signorina Elettra’s office.

Time passed. Signorina Elettra opened her drawer and pulled out that month’s Vogue. She opened it and spread it on her keyboard.

Brunetti took a step towards her, glanced at the pages and asked, ‘Do you really think those side vents in jackets are a good idea?’

‘I haven’t decided yet, Commissario. What does your wife think?’

‘Well, she’s always liked a jacket without vents: says it’s more flattering to the figure. That might be because she’s tall. But certainly that one is perfect,’ he said, leaning forward and pointing to a beige jacket at the centre of the left-hand page. ‘I’ll ask her again tonight and see if she has any further ideas on the subject.’

She turned to the Lieutenant but he, apparently having no strong opinion to offer about vents, chose that moment to leave her office, failing to close the door behind him.

‘A man without a sense of fashion is a man without a soul,’ Signorina Elettra said and turned a page.