Death at La Fenice

‘Precisely,’ agreed the professor, and he turned his attention to two young women who came into the room, each carrying a thick musical score. ‘But if you will excuse me, Commissario, my students are beginning to arrive, and my class is about to begin.’

‘Of course, Professor,’ Brunetti said, getting to his feet and extending his hand. ‘Thank you very much for both your time and your help.’

The other man muttered something in return, but Brunetti could tell that his attention had clearly shifted to his students. He left the room and went down the broad steps, out into Campo San Stefano.

It was a campo he walked through often, and he had come to know not only the people who worked there, in the bars and shops, but even the dogs that walked or played there. Lazing in the pale sunlight was a pink-and-white bulldog whose lack of muzzle always made Brunetti uneasy. Then there was that odd Chinese thing that had grown from what looked like a pile of furred tripe into a creature of surpassing ugliness. Last, lolling in front of the ceramics store, he saw the black mongrel that remained so motionless all day that many people had come to believe he was part of the merchandise.

He decided to have a coffee at Café Paolin. Tables were still set up outside, but the only people at them today were foreigners, desperately trying to convince themselves that it was warm enough to have a cappuccino at a table in the open air. Sensible people went inside.

He exchanged hellos with the barman, who had tact enough not to ask him if there was any news in the case. In a city where there were no secrets of any sort, people had developed a capacity to avoid asking direct questions or remarking on anything other than the casual. He knew that no matter how long the case dragged on, none of the people with whom he interacted at this level—barman, newsdealer, bank teller—would ever say a word about it to him.

After downing an espresso, he felt restless, not at all hungry for the lunch that everyone around him seemed to be hurrying toward. He called his office, to be told that Signore Padovani had called and left a name and address for him. No message, just the name: Clemenza Santina; and the address: Corte Mosca, Giudecca.

* * * *

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

The island of the Giudecca was a part of Venice Brunetti seldom visited. Visible from Piazza San Marco, visible, in fact, from the entire back flank of the island, in places no more than a hundred meters away, it nevertheless lived in strange isolation from the rest of the city. The grisly stories that appeared in the paper with embarrassing frequency, of children being bitten by rats or people found dead of overdoses, always seemed to take place on the Giudecca. Even the presence of a dethroned monarch and a fading movie star of the fifties couldn’t redeem it in the popular consciousness as a sinister, backward place where nasty things happened.

Brunetti, along with a large part of the city, usually went there in July, during the Feast of the Redeemer, which celebrated the cessation of the plague of 1576. For two days, a pontoon bridge joined the Giudecca with the main island, allowing the faithful to walk across the water to the Church of the Redeemer, there to give thanks for yet another instance of the divine intervention that seemed so frequently to have saved or spared the city.

As the number 8 boat slapped its way across the choppy waters, he stood on the deck and looked off in the distance at the industrial inferno of Marghera, where smokestacks tossed up fluffy clouds of smoke that would gradually sneak across the laguna to dine on Venice’s white Istrian marble. He wondered what divine intercession could save the city from the oil slick, this modern plague that covered the waters of the laguna and had already destroyed millions of the crabs that had crawled through the nightmares of his childhood. What Redeemer could come and save the city from the pall of greenish smoke that was slowly turning marble to meringue? A man of limited faith, he could imagine no salvation, either divine or human.

He got off at the Zittele stop, turned to the left, and walked along the water, searching for the entrance to Corte Mosca. Back across the water lay the city, glittering in the weak winter sunlight. He passed the church, closed now for God’s afternoon siesta, and saw, just beyond it, the entrance to the courtyard. Narrow and low, the heavily shadowed passageway stank of cat.

At the end of the stone tunnel, he found himself at the edge of a rank garden that grew rampant at the center of the inner courtyard. To one side, something that might have been a cat was gnawing at a feathered thing. At the sound of his footsteps, the cat backed under a rosebush, pulling with it the thing it had been eating. On the opposite side of the courtyard stood a warped wooden door. He went across, occasionally freeing himself from a clinging thorn, to knock, then pound, on it.

After minutes, the door was pulled back a handsbreadth, and two eyes looked out at him. He explained that he was looking for Signora Santina. The eyes studied him, squinting in confusion, then retreated a bit into the complete darkness of the house. In deference to the infirmities of age, he repeated his question, this time almost shouting. At that, a small hole opened up under the two eyes, and a man’s voice told him that the signora lived over there, at the opposite side of the courtyard.

Brunetti turned and looked back across the garden. Near the tunnel entrance, but almost hidden by a pile of decomposing grass and branches, was another low door. As he turned around to express his thanks, the door slammed shut in his face. Careful, he crossed the garden and knocked on the other door.

He had to wait even longer this time. When the door opened, he saw a pair of eyes at the same height as the others, and he wondered if this creature had somehow managed to run from one side of the building to the other. But closer examination showed him that these eyes were lighter and the surrounding face was clearly that of a woman, though it was as scored by wrinkles and pinched by cold as the first one had been.

‘Yes?’ she asked, looking up at him. She was a little pile of a woman, wrapped tight in layers of sweaters and scarves. From the bottom of the lowest skirt hung what appeared to be the hem of a flannel nightgown. She wore a pair of thick woolen slippers like those his grandmother had worn. Over everything, a man’s overcoat, unbuttoned, hung open.

‘Signora Santina?’

‘What do you want?’ The voice was high and sharp with age, making it difficult for him to believe that it belonged to one of the great singers of the prewar era. In that voice, too, he heard all the suspicion of authority that was instinctive to Italians, especially the old. That suspicion had taught him to delay as long as possible telling anyone who he was.

‘Signora,’ he said, leaning forward and speaking in a clear, loud voice, ‘I’d like to speak to you about Maestro Helmut Wellauer.’

Her face registered nothing that indicated she had heard about his death. ‘You don’t have lo shout. I’m not deaf. What are you, a journalist? Like that other one?’

‘No, Signora. I’m not. But I would like to speak to you about the Maestro.’ He spoke carefully now, intent upon his effect. ‘I know that you sang with him. In the days of your glory.’ At this word, her eyes shot up to his, and some trace of softness slipped into them.

She studied him, looking for the musician behind the conservative blue tie. ‘Yes, I sang with him. But that was long ago.’

‘Yes, Signora, I know that. But I would be honored if you would talk about your career.’

‘So long as it’s my career with him, you mean?’ He saw the very instant when she realized who, or what, he was.

‘You’re police, aren’t you?’ she asked, as though the news had come to her as a smell, not an idea. She pulled the overcoat closed in front of her, crossing her arms over her chest.

‘Yes, Signora, I am, but I’ve always been an admirer of yours.’

‘Then why haven’t I seen you here before? Liar.’ She said it in description, not in anger. ‘But I’ll talk to you. If I don’t, you’ll come back with papers.’ She turned abruptly and stepped back into darkness. ‘Come in, come in. I can’t afford to heat the whole courtyard.’

He went in behind her and was immediately assailed by cold and damp. He didn’t know if it was the effect of being so suddenly cut off from the sun, but the apartment seemed far colder than the open courtyard had been. She brushed past him and pushed the door closed, cutting off entirely the light and the memory of warmth. With her foot, she pushed a thick roll of flannel into place against the narrow opening under the door. Then she locked the door, slipping its bolts home. With a policeman inside, she double-locked the door.

‘This way,’ she muttered, and set off down a long corridor. Brunetti was forced to wait until his eyes adjusted to the dimness before he followed her along the dank passageway and into a small, dark kitchen, in the middle of which was an antique kerosene heater. The lowest of flames flickered at its base; a heavy armchair, as layered with blankets as the old woman was with sweaters, was pulled up close to it.

‘I suppose you want coffee,’ she said as she closed the door to the kitchen, again kicking rolled rags against the crack beneath the door.

‘That would be very kind of you, Signora,’ he said.

She pointed to a straight-backed chair that faced hers, and Brunetti moved to sit in it, though not before noticing that the woven wicker seat was worn, or chewed, through in a number of places. He sat down carefully and looked around the room. He saw the signs of desperate poverty: the cement sink with only one faucet, the lack of refrigerator or stove, the moldy patches on the walls. He smelled, more than he saw, the poverty, smelled it in the fetid air, the stink of sewer common on the ground floors of Venice, of the salami and cheese left open and unrefrigerated on the counter, and smelled it from the raw, unwashed odor that seeped across to him from the blankets and shawls heaped on the old woman’s chair.

With motions grown circumscribed by age and lack of space, she poured coffee from an espresso pot into a low saucepan and walked haltingly toward the kerosene stove, on top of which she placed the pan. Slowly she made her way back to the cement counter beside the sink and returned to place two chipped cups on the table beside her chair. Then back again, this time to return with a small crystal sugar bowl that held a mound of grubby, solidified sugar in its center. Sticking her finger into the saucepan and judging the temperature correct, she poured its contents into the two cups, one of which she shoved roughly toward him. She licked her finger clean.

She stooped to pull back the covers on her chair and then, like a person about to slip into bed, lowered herself into the chair. Automatically, as if after long training, the covers slipped down from the back and arms of the chair to cover her.

She reached beside her to take her cup from the table, and he noticed that her hands were knobbed and deformed with arthritis, so much so that the left had become a sort of hook from which protruded a thumb. He realized that the same disease caused her slowness. And then, as the cold and damp continued to lay siege to his body, he considered what it must be like for her to live in this apartment.

Neither of them had said a thing during the preparation of the coffee. Now they sat in an almost congenial silence until she leaned forward and said, ‘Have some sugar.’

She made no move to unwrap herself, so Brunetti picked up the single spoon and chipped away a piece of sugar. ‘Allow me, Signora,’ he said, and dropped it into her cup, using the spoon to move it around. He chopped off another piece of sugar and put it into his own cup, where it lay, solid and undissolvable. The liquid he sipped was thick, lukewarm, and lethal. A lump of sugar banged against his teeth, having done nothing to fight the acrid taste of the coffee. He took another sip, then set it down on the table. Signora Santina left her own untouched.

He sat back in his chair and, making no attempt to disguise his curiosity, looked around the room. If he had expected to find any evidence of a career as meteoric as it was brief, he was mistaken. No poster of past opening nights hung upon these walls, no photos of the singer in costume. The only object that might have been a sign from her past was a large portrait photo in a silver frame that stood on top of a chipped wooden bureau. Arranged in a formal, artificial V, three young women, girls really, sat and smiled at the camera.

Still ignoring the cup at her side, she asked abruptly, ‘What do you want to know?’

‘Is it true that you sang with him, Signora?’

‘Yes. The season of 1937. But not here.’

‘Where?’

‘Munich.’

‘And what opera, Signora?’

‘Don Giovanni The Germans were always mad for their own. And the Austrians. So we gave them Mozart.’ She added, with a small snort of contempt, ‘And Wagner. Of course he gave them Wagner. He loved Wagner.’

‘Who? Wellauer?’

‘No. L’imbianchino,’ she said, using the word for house-painter and, with it, conveying the sentiments that had cost countless people their lives.

‘And the Maestro, did he like Wagner as well?’

‘He liked anything the other one liked,’ she said with contempt she made no effort to disguise. ‘But he liked him on his own, liked Wagner. They all do. It’s the brooding and pain. It appeals to them. I think they like suffering. Their own or others’.’

Ignoring this, he asked, ‘Did you know the Maestro well, Signora?’

She looked away from Brunetti, over toward the photo, then down at her hands, which she held carefully separated, as if even the most casual contact could cause them pain. ‘Yes, I knew him well,’ she finally said.

After what seemed a long time, he asked, ‘What can you tell me about him, Signora?’

‘He was vain,’ she finally said. ‘But with reason. He was the greatest conductor I ever worked with. I didn’t sing with them all; my career was too short. But of those I sang with, he was the best. I don’t know how he did it, but he could take any music, no matter how familiar it was, and he could make it seem new, as if it had never been played, or heard, before. Musicians didn’t like him, usually, but they respected him. He could make them play like angels.’

‘You said your career was too snort. What caused it to end?’

She looked at him then, but she didn’t ask how anyone who said he was a fan of hers could fail to know the story. After all, he was a policeman, and they always lied. About everything. ‘I refused to sing for II Duce. It was in Rome, at the opening night of the 1938 season. Norma. The general manager came backstage just before the curtain and told me that we had the honor of having Mussolini in the audience that night. And . . .’ Her voice trailed off, seeking a way to explain this. ‘And I was young and brave, and I said I wouldn’t sing. I was young and I was famous, and I thought that I could do something like that, that my fame would protect me. I thought that Italians loved art and music enough to allow me to do that and be safe.’ She shook her head at the thought.

‘What happened, Signora?’

‘I didn’t sing. I didn’t sing that night, and I didn’t sing in public again. He couldn’t kill me for that, for not singing, but he could arrest me. I stayed in my home in Rome until the end of the war, and when it was over, when it was over, I didn’t sing anymore.’ She shifted around in her chair. ‘I don’t want to talk about that.’

‘About the Maestro, then. Is there anything else you can remember about him?’ Though neither of them had mentioned his death, both of them spoke of him as among the dead.

‘No, nothing.’

‘Is it true, Signora, that you had personal difficulties with him?’

‘I knew him fifty years ago.’ She sighed. ‘How can that be important?’

‘Signora, I want only to get an idea of the man. All I know about him is his music, which is beautiful, and his body, which I saw and which was not. The more I know about him, the more I might be able to understand how he died.’

‘It was poison, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

‘Good.’ There was no malice, no venom in her voice. She could have been remarking on a passage of music or a meal, for all the enthusiasm she showed. He noticed that her hands were joined together now, fingers nervously weaving in and out. ‘But I’m sorry someone killed him.’ Which was it? he asked himself. ‘Because I would have liked it to be suicide, so he would damn his soul as well as die.’ Her tone remained level, dispassionate.

Brunetti shivered; his teeth started to chatter. Almost involuntarily, he got up from his seat and began to walk around in an effort to bring some warmth back into his limbs. At the bureau, he stopped in front of the photo and studied it. The three girls wore the exaggerated fashions of the thirties: long lace dresses trailing to the floor, open-toed shoes with immense heels. All three had the same dark, bow-shaped lips and razor-thin eyebrows. Under the makeup and marcelled hair, he could see that they were very young. They were arranged in descending order of age, the oldest to the left. She might have been in her early twenties, the middle one a few years younger. The last seemed little more than a child, perhaps in her early teens.

‘Which one are you, Signora?’

‘In the center. I was the middle one.’

‘And the other two?’

‘Clara. She was older. And Camilla. She was the baby. We were a good Italian family. My mother had six children in twelve years, three girls and three boys.’

‘Did your sisters sing too?’

She sighed, then gave a small snort of disbelief. ‘There was a time when everyone in Italy knew the three Santina sisters, the Three C’s. But that was a long time ago, so there is no reason that you should know.’ He saw the way she looked at the photo and wondered if they were still, to her, the way they were in that photo, young and beautiful.

‘We began singing in the music halls, after the films. There was little money in our family, so we sang, the daughters, and we made some money. Arid then we began to be recognized, so there was more money. Somehow I discovered that I had a real voice, so I started singing in the theaters, but Camilla and Clara continued to sing in the music halls.’ She stopped talking and picked up her coffee, drank it down in three quick swallows, then hid her hands under the warmth of the blankets.

‘Did your trouble with him involve your sisters, Signora?’

Her voice was suddenly tired and old. ‘That was too long ago. Does it matter?’

‘Did it involve your sisters, Signora?’

Her voice shot up into the soprano register. ‘Why do you want to know? What does it matter? He’s dead. They’re dead. They’re all dead.’ She pulled the loose covers more tightly around her, protecting herself from the cold and from the cold sound of his voice. He waited for her to continue, but all he heard was the low puff and hiss of the kerosene heater giving voice to its futile attempt to keep the killing chill from the room.

Minutes passed. Brunetti could still taste the bitterness of the coffee in his mouth, and he could do nothing to lessen the cold that continued to seep into his bones.

Finally, she spoke, her voice absolute. ‘If you’ve finished your coffee, you can go.’

He went back to the table and took the two cups over to the sink. When he turned, she had unburied herself and was already at the door to the room. She shuffled ahead of him down the long corridor, which, if possible, had grown even colder while they had been in the other room. Slowly, scrabbling at the locks with her twisted hands, she pulled back the bolts and held the door open enough for him to slip through. As he turned to thank her, he heard the bolts being driven home. Though it was early winter and cold, he sighed with relief and pleasure at the faint touch of the afternoon sun on his back.

* * * *

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

As the boat carried him back to the main island, he tried to think of who would be able to tell him what had happened between the singer and Wellauer. And between him and her sister. The only person he could think of was Michele Narasconi, a friend of his who lived in Rome and somehow managed to make a living as a travel and music writer. Michele’s father, now retired, had done the same sort of thing, though with far greater success. He had been, for two decades, the leading reporter of the superfluous in Italy, a nation that demanded a steady stream of that sort of information. The older man had written, for years, weekly columns in both Gente and Oggi, and millions of readers had depended upon him for reports—accuracy being no requirement—about the various scandals of the Savoia family, stars of stage and screen, and the limitless flock of minor princelings who insisted upon migrating to Italy both before and after their abdications. Though Brunetti had no clear idea of what he was looking for, he knew that Michele’s father would be the person to ask for it.

He waited until he was back at the office to place the call. It had been so long since he had spoken to Michele that he had to ask the interurban operator for the number. While the phone rang, he tried to think of a way to ask for what he wanted without insulting his friend.

‘Pronto. Narasconi,’ a woman’s voice answered.

‘Ciao, Roberta,’ he said. ‘It’s Guido.’

‘Oh, Guido, it’s so nice to hear from you again. How are you? And Paola? And the children?’

‘We’re all fine, Roberta. Listen, is Michele there?’

‘Yes; let me go and get him for you.’ He heard the solid clunk of the phone’s being set down, Roberta’s voice calling to her husband. Various slammings and thumps ensued, and then Michele’s voice said, ‘Ciao, Guido. How are you, and what do you want?’ The laugh that followed the question removed any possibility of malice from it.

Brunetti decided not to waste time or energy in being coy. ‘Michele, this time I need your father’s memory. It’s too far back for yours. How is he?’

‘Still working. RAI wants him to write a program about the early days of television. If he does, I’ll let you know so you can watch it. What is it you want to know?’ A reporter by instinct as well as profession, Michele wasted no time.

‘I want to know if he remembers an opera singer named Clemenza Santina. She sang right before the war.’

Michele made a faint noise. ‘Sounds faintly familiar, though I can’t remember why. If it was around the war, Papà will remember.’

‘There were two other sisters. They all sang,’ Brunetti explained.

‘Yes, I remember now. The Singing C’s, or the Beautiful C’s; something like that. What do you want to know about them?’

‘Anything at all, anything he can remember.’

‘Is this related to Wellauer?’ Michele asked out of an instinct that was seldom wrong.

‘Yes.’

Michele gave a long, appreciative whistle. ‘Is it yours?’

‘Yes.’

Again, the whistle. ‘I don’t envy you that, Guido. The press will eat you alive if you don’t find out who did it. Scandal to the Republic. Crime against Art. All that stuff.’

Brunetti, who had already had three days of this, said a simple ‘I know.’

Michele’s response was immediate. ‘Sorry, Guido, sorry. What do you want me to ask Papà?’

‘If there was ever any talk about Wellauer and the sisters.’

‘The usual kind of talk?’

‘Yes, or any other kind of talk. He was married at the time. I don’t know if that’s important.’

‘Is that the one who committed suicide?’ So Michele had read the papers too.

‘No; that was the second one. He was still married to number one. And I wouldn’t mind if your father could remember anything about that, as well. But this was right before the war—’38, ‘39.’

‘Wasn’t there some sort of political trouble she got herself into? Insulted Hitler or something?’

‘Mussolini. She spent the war under house arrest. If she had insulted Hitler, she would have been killed. I want to know what her connection to Wellauer was. And, if possible, the sister’s.’

‘How urgent is this, Guido?’

‘Very.’

‘All right. I saw Papà this morning, but I can go over this evening. He’ll be delighted. It’ll make him feel important, being asked to remember. You know how he likes to talk about the past.’

‘Yes, I do. He was the only person I could think of, Michele.’

His friend laughed at this. Flattery was still flattery, no matter how true it happened to be. ‘I’ll tell him you said that, Guido.’ Then, laughter gone, he asked, ‘What about Wellauer?’ This was as close as Michele would permit himself to come to asking a direct question, but that is what it was.

‘Nothing yet. There were more than a thousand people in the theater the night it happened.’

‘Is there a connection with the Santina woman?’

‘I don’t know, Michele. I can’t know until I hear what your father remembers.’

‘All right. I’ll call you tonight after I talk to him. It’ll probably be late. Should I still call?’

‘Yes, I’ll be there. Or Paola will. And thanks, Michele.’

‘It’s nothing, Guido. Besides, Papà will be proud you thought of him.’

‘He’s the only one.’

‘I’ll be sure to tell him.’

Neither of them bothered to say they had to get together soon; neither had the time to travel half the country to see an old friend. Instead they said goodbye and wished each other well.

When he had finished speaking to Michele, he realized it was time to go back to the Wellauer apartment for his second talk with the widow. He left a message for Miotti, saying he wouldn’t be back in the office that afternoon, and scribbled a short note, asking one of the secretaries to place it on Patta’s desk at eight the next morning.

He was a few minutes late getting to the Maestro’s apartment. This time it was the maid who let him in, the woman who had been sitting in the second row of pews at the funeral mass. He introduced himself, gave her his coat, and asked if he might trouble her for a few words after he had spoken to the signora. She nodded and said no more than ‘Si,’ then led him to the room where he had spoken with the widow two days before.

She rose and came across the room to shake his hand. The intervening time had not been gentle to her, Brunetti thought, seeing the dark circles under her eyes, the skin that had become drier, rougher in texture. She went back to where she had been sitting, and Brunetti saw that there was nothing near her— no book, no magazine, no sewing. Apparently she had been sitting and waiting for him, or for the future. She sat down and lit a cigarette. She held the package toward him, offering him one. ‘Sorry; I forgot you don’t smoke,’ she said in English.

He took the same seat as before, but this time he didn’t bother with the business of the notebook. ‘Signora, there are some questions I have to ask you,’ he said. She made no acknowledgment of this, so he continued. ‘They are delicate questions, and I would prefer not to have to ask them, especially at this time.’

‘But you want the answers to them?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then I’m afraid you’ll have to ask them, Dottor Brunetti.’ She was, he realized, merely being literal, not severe, and so he said nothing. ‘Why do you have to ask these questions?’

‘Because they might help me find the person responsible for your husband’s death.’

‘Does it matter?’ she asked.

‘Does what matter, Signora?’

‘Who killed him.’

‘Doesn’t it matter to you, Signora?’

‘No, it doesn’t matter. It never did. He’s dead, and there’s no bringing him back. What do I care who did it, or why?’

‘Don’t you have any desire for vengeance?’ he asked before he remembered that she wasn’t Italian.

She tilted her head back and peered at him through the smoke of her cigarette. ‘Oh, yes, Commissario. I have a great desire for vengeance. I have always had that. I believe that people should be punished for the evil things they do.’

‘Isn’t that the same thing as vengeance?’ he asked.

‘You’re in a better position to judge that than I am, Dottor Brunetti.’ She turned away from him.

Before he realized it, he spoke out of his lack of patience. ‘Signora, I’d like to ask you some questions, and I’d like to get honest answers for them.’

‘Then ask your questions, by all means, and I shall give you answers to them.’

‘I said I would like honest answers.’

‘All right. Honest answers, then.’

‘I’d like to know about your husband’s opinion of certain kinds of sexual behavior.’

The question obviously startled her. ‘What do you mean?’

‘I’ve been told that your husband particularly objected to homosexuality.’

He realized that this was not the question she had been expecting. ‘Yes, he did.’

‘Do you have any idea of the reason for that?’

She stabbed out her cigarette and leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. ‘What is this, psychology? Next are you going to suggest that Helmut was really a homosexual and, all these years, disguised his guilt in the classic way, by hating homosexuals?’ Brunetti had seen this often enough in his career, but he didn’t think it was the case here, so he said nothing. She forced herself to laugh in contempt of the idea. ‘Believe me, Commissario, he was not what you think he was.’

Few people, Brunetti knew, ever were. He remained silent, curious to hear what she would say next. ‘I don’t deny that he disliked homosexuals. Anyone who worked with him would soon know that. But it was not because he feared that in himself. I was married to the man for two years, and there was nothing homosexual in him, I assure you of that. I think he objected because it offended some idea he had of order in the universe, some Platonic ideal of human behavior.’ Brunetti had certainly heard stranger reasons than this.

‘Did his dislike extend to lesbians as well?’

‘Yes, but he tended to be more offended by males, perhaps because their behavior is often so outrageous. I suppose, if anything, he took a prurient interest in lesbians. Most men do. But it’s not a subject we ever discussed.’

During his career, Brunetti had spoken to many widows, interrogated many, but few of them managed to sound as objective about their husbands as this woman did. He wondered if the reason for that resided in the woman herself or in the man she seemed not to be mourning.

‘Were there any men, any gay men, against whom he spoke with special dislike?’

‘No,’ she answered immediately. ‘It seemed to depend on whom he was working with at the moment.’

‘Did he have a professional prejudice against them?’

‘That would be impossible in this milieu. There are too many. Helmut didn’t like them, but he managed to work with them when he had to.’

‘And when he worked with them, did he treat them any differently from the way he treated other people?’

‘Commissario, I hope you aren’t trying to construct a scenario here of a homosexual murder, someone who killed Helmut because of a cruel word or a canceled contract.’

‘People have been murdered for far less.’

‘That’s not worth discussing,’ she said sharply. ‘Have you anything else to ask?’

He hesitated, himself offended by the next question he had to put to her. He told himself that he was like a priest, a doctor, and that what people told him went no further, but he knew that wasn’t true, knew that he would respect no confidence if it would lead him to find the person he was looking for.

‘My next question is not a general one, and it is not about his opinions.’ He left it at that, hoping she would understand and volunteer some information. No help came. ‘I refer specifically to your relations with your husband. Were there any peculiarities?’

He watched her fight down the impulse to leave her chair. Instead she ran the middle finger of her right hand over her lower lip a few times, elbow propped on the arm of her chair. ‘I take it you are referring to my sexual relations with my husband.’ He nodded. ‘And I suppose I could become angry and demand what do you mean, in this day and age, by “peculiarities.” But I will simply tell you that, no, there was nothing “peculiar” about our sexual relations, and that is all I choose to tell you.’

She had answered his questions. Whether he now had the truth was another issue entirely, one he chose not to deal with then. ‘Did he seem to have any particular difficulty with any of the singers in this production? Or with anyone else involved in it?’

‘No more than the usual. The director is a known homosexual, and the soprano is currently rumored to be so.’

‘Do you know either one of them?’

‘I’ve never spoken to Santore, other than to say hello to him at rehearsals. Flavia I do know, though not well, because we’ve met at parties and spoken to each other.’

‘What do you think of her?’

‘I think she’s superb singer, and so did Helmut,’ she answered, deliberately misunderstanding him.

‘And personally?’

‘Personally, I think she’s delightful. Perhaps a bit short on sense of humor at times, but a pleasant person with whom to pass a few hours. And she’s surprisingly intelligent. Most singers are not.’ It was obvious that she was still choosing to misunderstand his questions and wouldn’t give him what he wanted until he asked directly.

‘And the rumors?’

‘I’ve never considered them sufficiently important to give them any thought.’

‘And your husband?’

‘I think he believed them. No, that’s a lie. I know he believed them. He said something to that effect one night. I can’t remember now just what it was he said, but he made it clear that he believed the rumors.’

‘But it wasn’t enough to convince you?’

‘Commissario,’ she said with exaggerated patience, ‘I’m not sure you’ve understood what I’ve been saying. It’s not whether Helmut could or could not convince me of the truth of these rumors. It’s that he couldn’t convince me that they mattered. So I forgot about it until you mentioned it now.’

He gave no sign whatsoever of his approval and, instead, asked, ‘And Santore? Did your husband say anything in particular about him?’

‘Not that I can remember.’ She lit another cigarette. ‘This was a subject we did not agree on. I had no patience with his prejudice, and he knew that, so we avoided, by mutual consent, any discussion of the subject. Helmut was enough of a musician to keep his personal feelings to the side. It was one of the things I loved about him.’

‘Were you faithful to him, Signora?’

It was a question she had clearly been anticipating. ‘Yes, I think I was,’ she said after a long silence.

‘I’m afraid that’s a remark I can’t interpret,’ Brunetti said.

‘It depends, I think, on what you mean by “faithful.”‘

Yes, he supposed so, but he also supposed that the meaning of the word was relatively clear, even in Italy. He was suddenly very tired of this. ‘Did you have sexual relations with anyone else while you were married to him?’

Her answer was immediate. ‘No.’

He knew it was expected of him, so he asked, ‘Then why did you say only that you thought you were?’

‘Nothing. I was simply tired of predictable questions.’

‘And I of unpredictable answers,’ he snapped.

‘Yes, I imagine you would be.’ She smiled, offering a truce.

Since he hadn’t bothered with the charade of the notebook, he couldn’t signal the end of the interview by putting it in his pocket. So he got to his feet and said, ‘There is one more thing.’

‘Yes?’

‘His papers were brought back to you yesterday morning. I would like your permission to take another look at them.’

‘Isn’t that what you were supposed to do while you had them?’ she asked, making no attempt to hide her irritation.

‘There was some confusion at the Questura. The translators saw them, then they were returned before I saw them. I apologize for the inconvenience, but I’d like to take a look at them now, if I might. I’d also like to speak to your maid. I spoke to her briefly when I came in, but there are some questions I’d like to ask her.’

‘The papers are in Helmut’s office. It’s the second door on your left.’ She chose to ignore his question about the maid and remained seated, not bothering to extend her hand to him. She watched as he left the room, then she went back to waiting for her future.

Brunetti walked down the corridor to the second door. The first thing he saw when he entered the room was the buff envelope of the Questura, sitting on the desk, unopened, still plump with documents. He sat at the desk and pulled the envelope toward him. Only then did he glance out the window and notice the rooftops that soared away from him across the city. In the distance, he could see the steeply pointed bell tower of San Marco and, to his left, the grim facade of the opera house. He pulled his attention away from the window and ripped open the envelope.

The papers, which he had already read in translation, he placed to one side. They concerned, he knew, contracts, engagements, recordings, and he had judged them to be of no importance.

He pulled three photographs from the envelope. Predictably, the report he had read made no mention of photos, probably because there were no words written on them. The first was of Wellauer and his widow, taken at a lake. They appeared tan and healthy, and Brunetti had to remind himself that the man must have been over seventy years old when the photo was taken, for he didn’t look much older than Brunetti, he imagined. The second photo showed a young girl standing by a horse, a docile short thing, as round as it was high. The girl had one hand raised to the bridle of the horse and one foot halfway between the ground and the stirrup. Her head was swung around at an awkward angle, obviously caught off guard by the photographer, who must have called to her just as she was about to mount. She was tall and slender and had her mother’s light hair, which swung out in two long braids under her riding helmet. Taken by surprise, she hadn’t had time to smile and looked curiously somber.

The third photo was of the three of them together. The girl, almost as tall as her mother, but awkward even in repose, stood in the center, the adults a bit behind her, with their arms wrapped around each other. The child seemed a bit younger than in the other photo. All three launched prepared smiles into the camera.

The only other thing inside the envelope was a leather-bound datebook, the year embossed in gold on the cover. He opened it and glanced through the pages. The names of the days were given in German, and many days bore inscriptions in the slanting Gothic script he remembered from the Traviata score. Most of the notes were the names of places and operas or concert programs, abbreviations he could easily understand: ‘Salz—D.G.’; ‘Vienna—Ballo’; ‘Bonn—Moz 40’; ‘Ldn—Cosi.’ Others appeared to be personal or, at least, non-musical: ‘Von S—5PM’; ‘Erich & H—8’; ‘D&G tea—Demel—4.’

Starting with the date of the conductor’s death, he paged backward through the book for a total of three months. He found a schedule that would have exhausted a man half Wellauer’s age, a list of engagements that grew heavier, the further back in time he went. Interested in this gradual increase, he opened the book to August and read forward in time; this way, he saw the pattern in reverse, a gradual decline in the number of dinners, teas, luncheons. He took a sheet of paper from one of the drawers in the desk and quickly sorted out the pattern: personal engagements to the right, music to the left. In August and September, except for a two-week period when almost nothing was noted, there had been some sort of engagement almost every day. In October, the number started to dwindle, and by the end of the month, there were almost no social engagements at all. Even the professional engagements had diminished, from at least two a week to only one or two every few weeks.

He flipped into the next year, which Wellauer would never see, and found, noted for late January, ‘Ldn—Cos!.’ What caught Brunetti’s attention was the small mark he saw after the name of the opera. Was it a question mark or only a carelessly drawn accent?

He took another sheet of paper and made a second list, this one of the personal notes he found, beginning in October. For the sixth, he read: ‘Erich & H—9PM.’ Already familiar with those names, he could make sense of that On the seventh: ‘Erich—8AM.’ On the fifteenth: ‘Petra & Nikolai—8PM,’ and then nothing until the twenty-seventh, when he saw a note that read: ‘Erich—8AM.’ It seemed an odd time to meet a friend. The final entry of this sort was made two days before they left for Venice: ‘Erich—9AM.’

And that was all, save for a note that Brunetti saw on the page for the thirteenth of November: ‘Venice—Trav.’

He closed the book and slipped it back into the envelope, along with the photos and papers. He folded the papers on which he had taken his notes and went back to the room where he had left Signora Wellauer. She was just as she had been when he left, sitting in front of the open fire, smoking.

‘Have you finished?’ she said, when he came in.

‘Yes, I have.’ Still holding the papers, he said, ‘I noticed from your husband’s datebook that during the last few months, he was far less active than he had been in the past. Was there a particular reason for this?’

She paused a moment before answering. ‘Helmut said he felt tired, didn’t have the energy he once had. We saw a few friends, but not as many, as you noted, as we had in the past. But not everything we did was noted in the datebook.’

‘I didn’t know that. But I’m interested in this change in him. You said nothing when I asked you about him.’

‘As you might recall, Commissario, you asked about my sexual relations with my husband. Unfortunately, they are not noted in the datebook.’

‘I notice that the name Erich appears frequently.’

‘And why is that supposed to be important?’

‘I didn’t say it was important, Signora; I simply said that the name appears regularly during the last months of your husband’s life. It appears often, joined with the initial “H,” but it also appears alone.’

‘I told you that not all of our engagements were listed in the datebook.’

‘But these were important enough for your husband to note them down. May I ask who this Eric is?’

‘It’s Erich. Erich and Hedwig Steinbrunner. They are Helmut’s oldest friends.’

‘And not yours?’

‘They became my friends, but Helmut had known them for more than forty years, and I had known them for only two, so it is logical that I think of them as Helmut’s friends rather than my own.’

‘I see. Could you give me their address?’

‘Commissario, I fail to see why this is important.’

‘I’ve explained to you why I think it’s important. If you’re unwilling to give me their address, I’m sure there are other friends of your husband’s who could give it to me.’

She reeled off a street address and explained that it was in Berlin, then paused while he took out his pen and poised it above the paper he still held in his hand. When he was ready, she repeated it slowly, spelling every word, even Strasse, which he thought was an excessive comment on his stupidity.

‘Will that be all?’ she asked when he had finished writing.

‘Yes, Signora. Thank you. Now might I speak to your maid?’

‘I’m not sure I see why that’s necessary.’

He ignored her and asked, ‘Is she here in the apartment?’

Saying nothing, Signora Wellauer rose to her feet and went to the side of the room, where a cord hung down one wall. She pulled it, saying nothing, and went to stand in front of the window that looked out upon the rooftops of the city.

Soon after, the door opened and the maid entered the room. Brunetti waited for Signora Wellauer to say something, but she remained rigid in front of the window, ignoring them both. Brunetti, having no choice, spoke so that she could hear what he said to the maid. ‘Signora Breddes, I’d like to have a few words with you, if I might.’

The maid nodded but said nothing.

‘Perhaps if we might use the Maestro’s study,’ he said, but the widow was unrelenting and refused to turn back from the window. He went and stood at the door, gesturing for the maid to pass through before him. He followed her down the corridor to the now familiar study. Inside, he closed the door and motioned to a chair. She took her seat, and he went back to the chair he had sat in when he examined the papers.

She was in her mid-fifties, and she wore a dark dress that could be a sign of either her employment or her grief. The midcalf length was unfashionable, and the cut emphasized the angularity of her body, the narrowness of her shoulders, the flatness of her chest. Her face matched her body perfectly, the eyes a bit too narrow and the nose more than a little too long. She reminded him, as she sat upright on the edge of the chair, of one of the long-legged, long-necked sea birds that perched on the pilings of the canals.

‘I’d like to ask you a few questions, Signora Breddes.’

‘Signorina,’ she corrected automatically.

‘I hope there will be no trouble if we speak in Italian,’ he said.

‘Of course not. I’ve lived here for ten years.’ She said it in a way to suggest she was offended by his remark.

‘How long did you work for the Maestro, Signorina?’

‘Twenty years. Ten in Germany, and now ten years here. When the Maestro bought the apartment here, he asked me to come and take care of it. I agreed. I would have gone anywhere for the Maestro.’ From the way she spoke, Brunetti realized that she saw having to live in a ten-room apartment in Venice as a sort of suffering she would be willing to endure only because of her devotion to her employer.

‘Do you have charge of the house?’

‘Yes. I’ve been here since shortly after he bought it. He came down and gave instructions about the furniture and the painting. I was in charge of getting it organized and then of seeing that it was taken care of while he was away.’

‘And while he was here?’

‘Yes; that too.’

‘How often did he come to Venice?’

‘Two or three times a year. Seldom more than that.’

‘Did he come to work? To conduct?’

‘Sometimes. But he also came to visit friends, go to the Biennale.’ She managed to make all this sound like so much earthly vanity.

‘And while he was here, what were your responsibilities?’

‘I did the cooking, though there was an Italian cook who would come in for parties. I chose the flowers. I oversaw the work of the maids. They’re Italian.’ This, he assumed, explained the need for the overseeing.

‘Who did the shopping for the house? Food? Wine?’

‘While the Maestro was here, I planned the meals and sent the maids to Rialto every morning to get fresh vegetables.’

Brunetti thought she might be ready, now, to begin answering the real questions. ‘So the Maestro got married while you were working for him?’

‘Yes.’

‘Did this cause any changes? When he came to Venice, that is.’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, though it was clear she did.

‘In the running of the house. Were your duties any different after the Maestro was married?’

‘No. Sometimes the signora cooked, but not often.’

‘Anything else?’

‘No.’

‘Did the presence of the signora’s daughter cause you any problems?’

‘No. She ate a lot of fruit. But she was no trouble.’

‘I see, I see,’ Brunetti said, taking a piece of paper from his pocket and idly sketching some words on it. ‘Tell me, Signorina Breddes, during these last weeks that the Maestro was here, did you notice anything, well, anything different about his behavior, anything that struck you as peculiar?’

She remained silent, hands clasped on her lap. Finally, she said, ‘I don’t understand.’

‘Did he seem strange to you in any way?’ Silence. ‘Well, if not strange in any way’—and he smiled, asking her to understand how difficult this was for him—’unusual in any way, out of the ordinary.’ When she still said nothing, he added, ‘I’m sure you would have noticed anything out of the ordinary, since you had known the Maestro so long and were certainly more familiar with him than anyone else in the house.’ It was a blatant sop to her vanity, but that didn’t mean it might not work.

‘Do you mean with his work?’

‘Well,’ he began, and flashed her a smile of complicity, ‘it could have been with his work, but it could have been with anything, perhaps something personal, something that had nothing to do with his career or with his music. As I said, I’m sure your long familiarity with the Maestro would have made you particularly sensitive to anything like this.’

Watching as the bait floated toward her, he flicked at the line to bring it even closer. ‘Since you had known him for so long, you would have noticed things that others would have overlooked.’

‘Yes, that’s true,’ she admitted. She licked her lips nervously, drawing closer to the bait. He remained silent, motionless, unwilling to disturb the waters. She played idly with one of the buttons at the front of her dress, twisting it back and forth in a semicircle. Finally, she said, ‘There was something, but I don’t know if it’s important.’

‘Well, perhaps it will be. Remember, Signorina, anything you can tell me will help the Maestro.’ Somehow he knew that she was blind to the colossal idiocy of this statement. He put his pen down and folded his hands, priestlike, and waited for her to speak.

‘There were two things. Ever since he came down this time, he seemed to be more and more distracted, as if his thoughts were somewhere else. No, that’s not it, not exactly. It’s as if he didn’t care any longer what happened around him.’ She trailed off, not satisfied.

‘Perhaps you could give me an example,’ he prompted.

She shook her head, not liking this at all. ‘No, I’m not saying this right. I don’t know how to explain it. In the past, he would always ask me what had happened while he was away, ask about the house, about the maids, and what I had been doing.’ Was she blushing? ‘The Maestro knew that I loved music, that I went to concerts and operas while he was away, and he was always very careful to ask me about; them. But this time when he came, there was none of that. He said hello when he arrived, and he asked me how I was, but he didn’t seem to care at all about what I said to him. A few times—no, there was one time. I had to go into the study to ask him what time he wanted me to have dinner ready. He had a rehearsal that afternoon, and I didn’t know what time it was supposed to end, so I went to the study to ask him. I knocked and went in, just the way I always did. But he ignored me, pretended I wasn’t there, made me wait a few minutes while he finished writing something. I don’t know why he did it, but he kept me waiting there, like a servant. Finally, I was so embarrassed that I started to leave. After twenty years, he wouldn’t do that to me, keep me waiting like a criminal in front of a judge.’ As she spoke, Brunetti saw her agony rekindled in her eyes.

‘At last, when I turned around to leave, he looked up and pretended that he had just seen me there. He pretended I had appeared out of nowhere to ask him a question. I asked him when he planned to be back. I’m afraid I spoke angrily. I raised my voice to him, for the first time in twenty years. But he ignored that and just told me what time he would be back. And then I suppose he was sorry about how he had treated me, because he told me how beautiful the flowers were. He always liked to have flowers in the house when he was here.’ She trailed away, adding irrelevantly, ‘They’re delivered from Biancat. From all the way across the Grand Canal.’

Brunetti had no idea whether what he was hearing was outrage or pain, or both. To be a servant for twenty years is certainly to win the right not to be treated like a servant.

‘There were other things too, but I didn’t think anything of them at the time.’

‘What things?’

‘He seemed . . .’ she said, thinking as she spoke of a way to say something and not to say it at the same time. ‘He seemed older. I know, it had been a year since I last saw him, but the difference was greater than that. He had always been so young, so full of life. But this time he seemed like an old man.’ To offer evidence of this, she added, ‘He had begun to wear glasses. But not for reading.’

‘Did that seem strange to you, Signorina?’

‘Yes; people of my age,’ she said frankly, ‘we usually begin to need them for reading, for things that are close to us, but he didn’t wear them for reading.’

‘How do you know this?’

‘Because sometimes I’d take him his afternoon tea and I’d find him reading, but he wouldn’t be wearing them. When he saw me, he’d pick them up and put them on, or he’d just signal me to put the tray down, as if he didn’t want to be bothered or interrupted.’ She slopped.

‘You said there were two things, Signorina; May I ask what the other was?’

‘I think I’d rather not say,’ she replied nervously.

‘If it’s not important, then it won’t matter. But if it is, it might help us find whoever did this.’

‘I’m not sure; it’s nothing I’m sure about,’ she said, weakening. ‘It’s only something I sensed. Between them.’ The way she said the last word made it clear who the other part of the ‘them’ was. Brunetti said nothing, determined to wait her out.

‘This time they were different. In the past, they were always ... I don’t know how to describe it. They were close, always close, talking, sharing things, touching each other.’ Her tone showed how much she disapproved of this as a way for married people to behave. ‘But this time when they came, they were different with each other. It wasn’t anything other people would have noticed. They were still very polite with each other, but they never touched anymore, the way they used to, when no one could see them.’ But when she could. She looked at him. ‘I’m not sure if this makes any sense.’

‘Yes, I think it does, Signorina. Have you any idea of what might have caused this coolness between them?’

He saw the answer, or at least the suspicion of an answer, surface in her eyes, but then he watched it just as quickly disappear. Though he had seen it there, he could not be sure if she was aware of what had just happened. ‘Any idea at all?’ he prodded. The instant he spoke, he realized he had gone too far.

‘No. None.’ She shook her head from side to side, freeing herself.

‘Do you know if any of the other servants might have seen this?’

She sat up straighter in her chair. ‘That is not something I would discuss with servants.’

‘Of course, of course,’ he muttered. ‘I certainly didn’t mean to suggest that.’ He could see that she already regretted having told him what little she had. It would be best to minimize what she had told him so that she would not be reluctant to repeat it, should this ever become necessary, or to add to it, should this ever become possible. ‘I appreciate what you’ve told me, Signorina. It confirms what we’ve heard from other sources. There is certainly no need to tell you that it will be held in strictest confidence. If you think of anything else, please call me at the Questura.’

‘I don’t want you to think ...’ she began, but couldn’t bring herself to name what he might think of her.

‘I assure you that I think of you only as someone who continues to be very loyal to the Maestro.’ Since it was true, it was the least he could give her. The lines in her face softened minimally. He stood and extended his hand. Hers was small, birdlike, surprisingly fragile. She led him down the corridor to the door of the apartment, disappeared for a moment, and returned with his coat. ‘Tell me, Signorina,’ he asked, ‘what are your plans now? Will you remain in Venice?’

She looked at him as though he were a madman who had stopped her on the street. ‘No; I plan to return to Ghent as soon as possible.’

‘Have you any idea of when that will be?’

‘The signora will have to decide what she wants to do with the apartment. I will stay until she does that, and then I will go home, where I belong.’ Saying that, she opened the door for him and then closed it silently behind him. On his way down the steps, Brunetti stopped at the first landing and gazed out the window. Off in the distance, the angel on top of the bell tower spread his wings in benediction above the city and all those in it. Even if exile is spent in the most beautiful city in the world, Brunetti realized, it is still exile.

* * * *

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Since he was already so close to the theater, he went there directly, stopping only long enough to have a sandwich and a glass of beer, not really hungry but feeling the vague uneasiness that came upon him when he went for long periods of time without eating.

At the stage entrance, he showed his ID card and asked if Signore Traverso had come in yet. The portiere told him that Signore Traverso had arrived fifteen minutes before and was waiting for the commissario in the backstage bar. There, when Brunetti arrived, he found a tall, cadaverous man who had a familial resemblance to his cousin, Brunetti’s dentist. The noise and confusion of many people passing by, both in and out of costume, made it difficult for them to talk, so Brunetti asked if they could go someplace quiet.

‘I’m sorry,’ said the musician. ‘I should have thought of that. The only place to go is one of the dressing rooms that aren’t being used. I suppose we could go up there.’ The man placed some money on the bar and picked up his violin case. He led the way back through the theater and up the stairs Brunetti had used the first night he had come. At the top of the staircase, a stout woman in a blue smock came forward to ask them what they wanted.

Traverso had a few words with her, explaining who Brunetti was and what they needed. She nodded and led them along the narrow corridor. Taking an immense bunch of keys from her pocket, she opened a door and stepped back to let them enter. No theatrical glamour here, just a small room with two chairs on either side of a low table and a bench in front of a mirror. They seated themselves on the chairs, facing each other.

‘During the rehearsals, did you notice anything unusual?’ Brunetti asked. Because he didn’t want to suggest what he was looking for, he kept his question general—so general, he realized, as to be virtually meaningless.

‘Do you mean about the performance? Or about the Maestro?’

‘Either. Both.’

‘The performance? Same old stuff. The sets and staging were new, but we’ve used the costumes twice before. Singers are good, though, except for the tenor. Ought to be shot. Not his fault, though. Bad direction from the Maestro. None of us had much of an idea what we were supposed to be doing. Well, not at the beginning, but by the second week. I think we played from memory. I don’t know if you understand.’

‘Can you be more specific?’

‘It was Wellauer; like his age caught up with him all of a sudden. I’ve played with him before. Twice. Best conductor I’ve ever worked with. No one like him today, though there are a lot who imitate him. Last time, we played Cosi with him. We never sounded so good. But not this time. He was suddenly an old man. It was like he wasn’t paying any attention to what he did. Part of the time, when we reached a crescendo, he’d perk up and point that baton at anyone who was as little as an eighth of a beat late. It was beautiful then. But the rest of the time, it just wasn’t any good. But no one said anything. We just seemed to decide among ourselves to play the music the way it was written and take the lead from the concertmaster. I suppose it worked. The Maestro seemed content with it. But it wasn’t like those other times.’

‘Do you think the Maestro was aware of this?’

‘Do you mean did he know how bad we sounded?’

‘Yes.’

‘He must have. You don’t get to be the best conductor in the world and not hear what your orchestra is doing, do you? But it was more like he was thinking about something else most of the time. Like he wasn’t there, just not paying any attention.’

‘How about the night of the performance? Did you notice anything unusual?’

‘No, I didn’t. We were all too busy trying to keep together, so it wouldn’t sound as bad as it might have.’

‘Nothing at all? He didn’t speak to anyone in a strange way?’

‘He didn’t speak to anyone that night. We didn’t see him except when he came to the podium, down in the orchestra pit with us.’ He paused, chasing at memory. ‘There was one thing, hardly worth mentioning.’

‘What?’

‘It was at the end of the second act, right after the big scene where Alfredo throws the money at Violetta. I don’t know how the singers got through the ensemble. We were all over the place. Well, it ended, and the audience—they haven’t got ears—they began to applaud, and the Maestro, he gave this funny little smile, like someone had just told him something funny. And then he set his baton down. Didn’t toss it down on the podium, the way he usually did. Set it down very carefully, and then he smiled again. Then he stepped down from the podium and went backstage. And that’s the last I saw of him. I thought he was smiling because the act was over and maybe the rest would be easy. And then they changed conductors for the third act.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I’m not sure that’s the sort of thing you were looking for.’

He reached down for his violin, and Brunetti said, ‘One last thing. Did the rest of the orchestra notice this? Not the smile, but the difference in him?’

‘A number of us did, those who had played with him before. For the rest, I can’t say. We get so many lousy conductors here, I’m not sure if they can tell the difference between them. But maybe it’s because of my father.’ He saw Brunetti’s confusion and explained. ‘My father. He’s eighty-seven. He does the same thing, looks over his glasses at us as if we’ve been keeping a secret from him and he wants to know what it is.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘I’ve got to go. It’s only ten minutes until the curtain.’

‘Thank you for your help,’ Brunetti said, though he wasn’t sure what to make of what the musician had just told him.

‘Sounded like a lot of useless gossip to me. Nothing more. But I hope it can help.’

‘Would there be any trouble if I stayed in the theater during the performance?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, I don’t think so. Just tell Lucia when you leave, so she can lock this room.’ Then, hurriedly, ‘I’ve got to go.’

‘Thank you again.’

‘It was nothing.’ They shook hands, and the musician left.

Brunetti stayed in the room, already planning that he would take the opportunity to see how many people walked around backstage during a performance and during intermissions and how easy it would be to go into or out of the conductor’s dressing room unnoticed.

He waited in the room for a quarter of an hour, grateful for the chance to be by himself in a quiet place. Gradually, all the noise that had filtered through the door stopped, and he realized that the singers would have gone downstairs to take their places onstage. Still he lingered in the room, comforted by the silence.

He heard the overture, filtering up the stairs and through the walls, and decided it was time to find the conductor’s dressing room. He stepped out into the hall and looked around for the woman who had let them into the room, but she was nowhere to be seen. Because he had been charged with seeing that the room was locked, he walked along the hall and glanced down the stairway. ‘Signora Lucia?’ he called, but there was no reply. He went to the door of the first dressing room and knocked, but there was no reply. Nor at the second. At the third, someone called ‘Avanti!’ and he pushed the door open, ready to explain that he had left and the dressing room could be locked.

‘Signora Lucia,’ he began as he entered the room, but he stopped when he saw Brett Lynch sprawled in an easy chair, book open in her lap, glass of red wine in one hand.

She was as startled as he but recovered more quickly. ‘Good evening, Commissario. May I help you in any way?’ She set her glass down on the table beside her chair, flipped her book closed, and smiled.

‘I wanted to tell Signora Lucia she could lock that other dressing room,’ he explained.

‘She’s probably downstairs, watching from the wings. She’s a great fan of Flavia’s. When she comes back up, I’ll tell her to lock it. Don’t worry, it’ll be taken care of.’

‘That’s very kind of you. Aren’t you watching the performance?’

‘No,’ she answered. Seeing his response, she asked, ‘Does that surprise you?’

‘I don’t know if it does or it doesn’t. But if I asked you, then I suppose it does.’

Her answering grin pleased him, both because it was not the sort of thing he expected from her and because of the way it softened the angularity of her face.

‘If you promise not to tell Flavia, I’ll confess to you that I don’t much like Verdi and I don’t much like Traviata’

‘Why not?’ he asked, curious that the secretary and friend—he left it at that—of the most famous Verdi soprano of the day would admit to not liking the music.

‘Please have a seat, Commissario,’ she said, pointing to the chair opposite her. ‘Nothing much goes on for another’—she glanced at her watch—’twenty-four minutes.’

He took the seat she indicated, turned it to face her more directly, and asked, ‘Why don’t you like Verdi?’

‘It’s not exactly that. I do like some of the music. Otello, for example. But it’s the wrong century for me.’

‘Which do you prefer?’ he asked, though he was sure of the answer he’d get. Wealthy, American, modern-minded: she would have to prefer the music of the century in which she lived, the century that had made her possible.

‘Eighteenth,’ she said, surprising him. ‘Mozart and Handel, neither of which, for my sins, Flavia feels any great desire to sing.’

‘Have you tried to convert her?’

She picked up her glass and sipped at it, set it back down on the table. ‘I’ve converted her to some things, but I can’t seem to tempt her away from Verdi.’

‘I think that must be considered our great fortune,’ he answered, slipping easily into her tone, which implied far more than it said. ‘The other must be yours.’

She surprised him by giggling, and he surprised himself by laughing with her. ‘Well, that’s done. I’ve confessed. Now perhaps we can talk like human beings and not like characters in a cheap novel.’

‘I’d very much like that, Signorina.’

‘My name is Brett, and I know yours is Guido,’ she said, using the informal second person and thus making the initial step toward familiarity. She got up from her chair and went over to a small sink in the corner. Beside it was a bottle of wine. She poured some into a second glass, brought it and the bottle back, and handed the glass to him.

‘Are you back here to talk to Flavia?’ she asked.

‘No, that wasn’t my intention. But I’ll have to talk to her, sooner or later.’

‘Why?’

‘To ask what she was doing in Wellauer’s dressing room after the first act.’ If she found this at all surprising, she gave no sign of it. ‘Do you have any idea?’

‘Why do you say she was there?’

‘Because at least two people saw her go in. After the first act.’

‘But not after the second?’

‘No, not after the second.’

‘She was up here, with me, after the second act.’

‘The last time we spoke, you said she was up here, with you, after the first act, as well. And she wasn’t. Is there any reason I should believe you’re telling me the truth now, when you lied then?’ He took a drink of the wine. ‘Barolo, and very good.’

‘It’s the truth.’

‘Why should I believe that?’

‘I suppose there’s no real reason.’ She sipped at her wine again, as though they had the entire evening before them for discussion. ‘But she was.’ She emptied her glass, poured a little more into it, and said, ‘She did go to see him after the first act. She told me about it. He’d been playing with her for days, threatening to write to her husband. So, finally, she went back to talk to him.’

‘It seems a strange time to do it, during a performance.’

‘Flavia’s like that. She doesn’t think much about what she does. She simply acts, does what she wants. It’s one of the reasons she’s a great singer.’

‘I would imagine it’s difficult to live with.’

She grinned ‘Yes, it is. But there are compensations.’

‘What did she tell you?’ When she didn’t understand, he added, ‘About seeing him.’

‘That they’d had an argument. He wouldn’t give a clear answer about whether or not he had written to her husband. She didn’t say much more than that, but she was still shaking with anger when she came back up here. I don’t know how she managed to sing.’

‘And did he write to her husband?’

‘I don’t know. She hasn’t said anything else about it. Not since that night.’ She saw his surprise. ‘As I said, she’s like that. When she’s singing, she doesn’t like to talk about anything that bothers her.’ She added ruefully, ‘She doesn’t much like to do it when she’s not singing, either, but she says it destroys her concentration if she has to think about anything except the music. And I suppose everyone has always let her get away with it. God knows, I do.’

‘Was he capable of doing it, writing to her husband?’

‘The man was capable of anything. Believe me. He saw himself as some sort of protector of human morals. He couldn’t stand it if someone lived in violation of his definition of right and wrong. It maddened him that anyone would dare. He felt some sort of divine right to bring them to justice, his justice.’

‘And what was she capable of doing?’

‘Flavia?’

‘Yes.’

The question didn’t surprise her. ‘I don’t know. I don’t think she could do it like that, not in cold blood. She’d do anything to keep the children, but I don’t think ... no, not like that. Besides, she’d hardly be walking around with poison, would she?’ She seemed relieved to have thought of this. ‘But it isn’t finished. If there’s a trial or some sort of hearing, then it’ll come out, won’t it, what they argued about?’ Brunetti nodded. ‘And that’s all her husband will need.’

‘I’m not so sure of that,’ Brunetti said.

‘Oh, come on,’ she snapped. ‘This is Italy, the land of the happy family, the sacred family. She’d be allowed to have as many lovers as she wanted, so long as they were men. That would put the father, or a sort of father, back into the house. But the instant this became public, she’d never have a chance against him.’

‘Don’t you think you’re exaggerating?’

‘Exaggerating what?’ she demanded. ‘My life’s never been a secret. I’ve always been too rich for it to matter what people thought of me or said about me. But that didn’t stop them from saying it. So even if nothing could be proved about us, just think what a clever lawyer could do: “The soprano with the millionairess secretary.” No, it would look like exactly what it is.’

‘She could lie,’ Brunetti said, suggesting perjury.

‘With an Italian judge, I don’t think that would make any difference. Besides, I don’t think she’d lie. I really don’t think she would. No, not about this. Flavia really does think she’s above the law.’ Instantly, she seemed to regret saying that. ‘But she’s all words, only talk, just like on the stage. She’ll shout and rage at people, but it’s all gestures. I’ve never known her to be violent, not to anyone. Just words.’

Brunetti was enough of an Italian to believe that words might easily change to something else when a woman’s children were involved, but he kept that opinion to himself. ‘Do you mind if I ask you some personal questions?’

She sighed wearily, anticipating what was coming, and shook her head.

‘Has anyone ever tried to blackmail either one of you?’

This was clearly not the sort of question she had feared. ‘No, never. Not me, and not Flavia, or at least she’s never told me.’

‘And the children? How do you get on with them?’

‘Pretty well. Paolo is thirteen and Vittoria’s eight, so at least he might have some idea of what’s going on. But again, Flavia has never said anything, nothing has ever been said.’ She shrugged, openhanded, and in that gesture ceased to be in any way Italian and became entirely American.

‘And the future?’

‘You mean old age? Sipping tea together in the afternoon at Florian’s?’

It was rather a more sedate picture than he might have painted, but it would do. He nodded.

‘I have no idea. While I’m with her, I can’t work, so I have to decide about that, about what I want.’

‘What is it you do?’

‘I’m an archaeologist. Chinese. That’s how I met Flavia. I helped arrange the China exhibit in the Doge’s Palace three years ago. The bigwigs brought her along because she was singing Lucia at La Scala. And then they brought her to the party after the opening. Then I had to go back to Xian; that’s where the dig is, the one I’m working on. There are only three of us there, three Westerners. And I’ve been away for three months now, and I have to go back or I’ll be replaced.’

‘The soldiers?’ he asked, memory still bright with the image of the terracotta statues he had seen at that show, each one perfectly individualized and looking like the portrait of a man.

‘That’s just the beginning,’ she said. ‘There are thousands of them, more than we have any idea of. We haven’t even begun to excavate the treasure in the central tomb. There’s so much red tape with the government. But last fall we got permission to begin work on the treasure mound. From the little I’ve seen, it’s going to be the most important archaeological find since King Tut. In fact, that will look like nothing once we start to take out what’s buried there.’

He had always believed the passion of scholars to be an invention of people who wrote books, an attempt to render them more recognizably human. Seeing her, he realized how wrong he had been.

‘Even their tools are beautiful, even the small bowls the workers used to eat from.’

‘And if you don’t go back?’

‘If I don’t go back, I lose it all. Not the fame. The Chinese deserve that. But the chance to see those things, to touch them, to have a real sense of what the people who made them were like. If I don’t go back, I lose all that.’

‘And is that more important to you than this?’ he asked, gesturing around the dressing room.

‘That’s not a fair question.’ She made her own broad gesture, one that took in the makeup on the table, the costumes hanging behind the door, the wigs propped up on pedestals. ‘This sort of thing isn’t my future. Mine is pots and shards and pieces of a civilization thousands of years old. And Flavia’s is here, in the middle of this. In five years, she’ll be the most famous Verdi singer in the world. I don’t think there’s a place for me in that. It’s not anything she’s realized yet, but I told you what she’s like. She won’t think of it until it happens.’

‘But you have?’

‘Of course.’

‘What will you do?’

‘See what happens here, with all this.’ She gestured again, this time encompassing the death that had taken place in this theater four nights before. ‘And then I’ll go back to China. Or I think I will.’

‘Just like that?’

‘No, not “just like that,” but I’ll still go.’

‘Is it worth it?’ he asked.

‘Is what worth it?’

‘China.’

She shrugged again. ‘It’s my work. It’s what I do. And, in the end, I suppose it’s what I love as well. I can’t spend my life sitting in dressing rooms, reading Chinese poetry, and waiting for the opera to end so that I can live my life.’

‘Have you told her?’

‘Has she told me what?’ demanded Flavia Petrelli, making a thoroughly theatrical entrance and slamming the door behind her. She swept across the room, trailing behind her the train of a pale-blue gown. She was entirely transformed, radiant, as beautiful as Brunetti had ever seen a woman be. And it wasn’t a costume or makeup that had made this change; she was dressed as what she was and what she did. That had transformed her. Her eyes swept around the room, taking in the two glasses, the amiability of their postures. ‘Hasshe told me what?’ she demanded a second time.

‘That she doesn’t like Traviata,’ Brunetti said. ‘I remarked that it was strange to find her here, reading, while you were singing, and she explained that it wasn’t one of her favorite operas.’

‘It’s also strange to find you here Commissario. And I know it’s not one of her favorite operas.’ If she didn’t believe him, she gave no sign of it. He had stood when she came in. She walked in front of him, took one of the glasses that stood on the counter, filled it with mineral water, and drank it down in four long swallows. She filled it again and drank off half. ‘It’s like being in a sauna, with all those lights.’ She finished the water and set the glass down. ‘What are you two talking about?’

‘He told you, Flavia. Traviata.’

‘That’s a lie,’ the singer snapped. ‘But I don’t have time to talk about it.’ Turning to Brunetti, she said, voice tight with anger and high in the manner of singers’ voices after they have sung, ‘If you’d be so kind as to get out of my dressing room, I’d like to change into my costume for the next act.’

‘Certainly, Signora,’ he said, all politeness and apology. Nodding to Brett, who gave him a brief smile in return but stayed in her chair, he left the room quickly. Outside, he paused and listened, ear close to the door, not at all ashamed of what he was doing. But whatever they had to say to each other they said in low voices.

The woman in the blue smock appeared at the top of the steps. Brunetti pulled himself away from the door and walked toward her. Explaining that he had finished with the dressing room, he handed her the key, smiled, thanked her, and went back down the stairs to the stage area, where he found a chaos that amazed him. Gowned figures slumped against the walls, smoking and laughing. Men in tuxedos talked about soccer. And stagehands roamed back and forth, carrying paper ferns and trays with champagne glasses glued solidly to the bottom.

Down the short corridor to the right was the door to the conductor’s dressing room, closed now behind the new conductor. Brunetti stood at the end of the corridor for at least ten minutes, and no one bothered to ask him who he was or what he was doing there. Finally, a bell sounded and a bearded man in a jacket and tie went from group to group backstage, pointing in various directions and sending them off to whatever it was they were supposed to do.

The conductor left the dressing room, closed the door behind him, and walked past Brunetti without paying any attention to him. As soon as he was gone, Brunetti went casually down the corridor and into the room. No one saw him go in or, if they saw him, bothered to ask him what he was doing there.

The room was much as it had been the other night, save that a small cup and saucer were sitting on the table, not lying on the floor. He stayed only a moment, then left. His departure was as little noticed as his entrance, and this only four days after a man had died in that room.

* * * *

CHAPTER SEVENTEN

By the time he got home, it was too late to take Paola and the children to dinner, as he had promised he would do that evening; besides, he could smell the mingled odors of garlic and sage as he climbed the stairs.

As he walked into the apartment, he had a moment of total disorientation, for the voice of Flavia Petrelli, which voice he had last heard singing Violetta twenty minutes before, was performing the end of the second-act in his living room. He took two sudden and completely involuntary steps forward, until he remembered that the performance was being broadcast live that evening. Paola wasn’t much of an opera fan and was probably watching to figure out which of the singers was a murderer. In which curiosity, he was sure, she was joined by millions of households all over Italy.

From the living room, he heard the voice of his daughter, Chiara, call out, ‘Papà’s home,’ over which Violetta begged Alfredo to leave her forever.

He went into the living room just as the tenor threw a fistful of paper money into Flavia Petrelli’s face. She sank to the floor, gracefully, in tears, Alfredo’s father hurried across the stage to reprove him, and Chiara asked, ‘Why did he do that, Papà? I thought he loved her.’ She glanced up at him from what looked like math homework and, receiving no answer, repeated the question. ‘Why’d he do that?’

‘He thought she was going out with another man,’ was the best Brunetti could come up with by way of explanation.

‘What difference would that make? It’s not like they’re married or anything.’

‘Ciao, Guido,’ Paola called from the kitchen.

‘Well,’ Chiara persisted. ‘Why is he so angry?’

Brunetti walked in front of her and lowered the volume on the television, wondering what it was that rendered all teenagers deaf. He could tell from the way she held her pencil in front of her and wiggled it in the air that she had no intention of letting this one go. He decided to compromise. ‘They were living together, weren’t they?’

‘Yes; so what?’

‘Well, when people live together, they usually don’t go out with other people.’

‘But she wasn’t going out with anyone. She did all that just to make him think she was.’

‘I guess he believed her, and he got jealous.’

‘He doesn’t have any reason to be jealous. She really loves him. Anyone can see that. He’s a jerk. Besides, it’s her money, isn’t it?’

‘Hmm,’ he temporized, trying to remember the plot of Traviata.

‘Why didn’t he go out and get a job? As long as she’s supporting him, then she’s got the right to do whatever she wants.’ The audience thundered its applause.

‘It’s not always like that, angel’

‘Well, sometimes it is, isn’t it, Papà? Why not? Most of my friends, if their mothers don’t work, like Mamma does, then their fathers always decide everything—where they’ll go on vacation, everything. And some of them even have lovers.’ This last was delivered weakly, more as a question than as a statement. ‘And they get to do it because they earn the money, so they get to tell everyone what they have to do.’ Not even Paola, he believed, could so accurately have summed up the capitalist system. It was, in fact, his wife’s voice he heard in Chiara’s speech.

‘It’s not as easy as that, sweetheart.’ He pulled at his tie. ‘Chiara, would you be an angel of grace and mercy and go into the kitchen and get your poor old father a glass of wine?’

‘Sure.’ She tossed down her pencil, more than willing to abandon the issue. ‘White or red?’

‘See if there’s some Prosecco. If not, bring me whatever you think I’d like.’ In family jargon, this translated to whatever wine she wanted to have a taste of.

He lowered himself into the sofa and kicked off his shoes, propping his feet on the low table. He listened as an announcer filled the audience in, rather unnecessarily, on the events of the last few days. The man’s eager, ghoulish tone made it sound like something from an opera, of the more bloody verismo repertory.

Chiara came back into the room. She was tall, utterly lacking in physical grace. From two rooms away, he could tell when it was Chiara’s turn to do the dishes by the crashes and bangs that filled the house. But she was pretty, would perhaps become beautiful, with wide-spaced eyes and a soft down just beneath her ears that melted his heart with tenderness each time he saw it caught in a revealing light.

‘Fragolino,’ she said from behind him, and passed the glass to him, managing to spill only a drop, and that on the floor. ‘Can I have a sip? Mamma didn’t want to open it. She said there was just one more bottle after this, but I said you were very tired, so she said it was all right.’ Even before he could consent, she took the glass back and sipped from it. ‘How can a wine smell like strawberries, Papà?’ Why was it that, when children loved you, you knew everything, and when they were angry with you, you knew nothing?

‘It’s the grape. It smells like strawberries, so the wine does too.’ He smelled, then tasted, the truth of this. ‘You doing your homework?’

‘Yes, mathematics,’ she said, managing to put into the word an enthusiasm that confused him utterly. This, he remembered, was the child who explained his bank statements to him every three months and who was going to try to complete his tax form for him this May.

‘What sort of mathematics?’ he asked with feigned interest.

‘Oh, you wouldn’t understand, Papà.’ Then, with lightning speed, ‘When are you going to get me a computer?’

‘When I win the lottery.’ He had reason to believe that his father-in-law was going to give her a laptop computer for Christmas, and he disliked the fact that he disliked that fact.

‘Oh, Papà, you always say that.’ She sat down opposite him, plunked her feet onto the table between them, and placed them, sole to sole, against his. She gave a soft push with one foot. ‘Maria Rinaldi has one, and so does Fabrizio, and I’ll never be any good in school, not really good, until I have one.’

‘It looks like you’re doing fine with a pencil.’

‘Sure I can do it, but it takes me forever.’

‘Isn’t it better for your brain if you exercise it, rather than letting the machine do it?’

‘That’s dumb, Papà. The brain’s not a muscle. We learned that in biology. Besides, you don’t walk across the city to get information if you can use the phone to get it for you.’ He pushed back with his foot, but he didn’t answer. ‘Well, you don’t, do you, Papà?’

‘What would you do with all the time you saved if you got one?’

‘I’d do more complicated problems. It doesn’t do it for me, Papà, honest. It just does it faster. That’s all it is, a machine that adds and subtracts a million times faster than we can.’

‘Do you have any idea of how much those things cost?’

‘Sure; the little Toshiba I want costs two million.’

Luckily, Paola came into the room then, or he would have had to tell Chiara just how much chance she had of getting a computer from him. Because that might lead her to mention her grandfather, he was doubly glad to see Paola. She carried the bottle of Fragolino and another glass. At the same time, the chattering voices on the television faded away and were replaced by the prelude to the third act.

Paola set down the bottle and sat on the arm of the sofa, next to him. On the screen, the curtain rose to display a barren room. It was difficult to recognize Flavia Petrelli, whom he had seen in the full power of her beauty little more than an hour before, in the frail woman slumped under the shawl who lay on the divan, one hand fallen weakly to the floor below her. She looked more like Signora Santina than she did a famous courtesan. The dark circles under her eyes, the misery of her drawn mouth, spoke convincingly of sickness and despair. Even her voice, when she asked Annina to give what little money she had to the poor, was weak, charged with pain and loss.

‘She’s very good,’ Paola said. Brunetti shushed her. They watched.

‘And he’s dumb,’ Chiara added as Alfredo swept into the room and grabbed her up in his arms.

‘Shhh,’ they both hissed at her. She returned to her figures, muttering, for her parents to hear.

He watched Petrelli’s face transform itself with the ecstasy of reunion, watched it flush with real joy. Together, they planned a future they would never have, and her voice changed; he heard it returning to strength and clarity.

Her joy pulled her to her feet, raised her hands toward heaven. ‘I feel myself reborn,’ she cried, whereupon, this being opera, she promptly collapsed and died.

‘I still think he’s a jerk,’ Chiara insisted over Alfredo’s lamentation and the wild applause of the audience. ‘Even if she lived, how would they support themselves? Is she supposed to go back to what she was doing before she met him?’ Brunetti wanted to know nothing of how much his daughter might understand about that sort of thing. Having voiced her opinion, Chiara scribbled a long row of numbers at the bottom of her paper, slipped the paper into her math book, and flipped the book shut.

‘I had no idea she was that good,’ Paola said respectfully, completely ignoring her daughter’s comments. ‘What’s she like?’ The question was typical of her. The woman’s involvement in a murder case had not been enough to interest Paola in her, not until she had seen the quality of her performance.

‘She’s just a singer,’ he said dismissively.

‘Yes, and Reagan was just an actor,’ Paola said. ‘What’s she like?’

‘She’s arrogant, afraid of losing her children, and wears brown a lot.’

‘Let’s eat,’ Chiara said. ‘I’m starved.’

‘Then go and set the table, and we’ll be there in a minute.’

Chiara pushed herself up from her chair with every show of reluctance and went toward the kitchen, but not before saying, ‘And now I suppose you’ll make Papà tell you what she’s really like, and I’ll miss all the good parts, just like always.’ One of the great crosses of Chiara’s life was the fact that she could never get information from her father to transform into the coin of schoolyard popularity.

‘I wonder,’ Paola said, pouring wine into both their glasses, ‘how she learned to act like that. I had an aunt who died of TB years ago, when I was a little girl, and I can still remember the way she looked, the way she was always moving her hands nervously, just the way she did onstage, always shifting them around in her lap and grabbing one with the other.’ Then, with characteristic abruptness, ‘Do you think she did it?’

He shrugged. ‘She might have. Everyone’s busy trying to give me the idea that she’s the Latin fireball, all passion, knife in the ribs the instant the offending word is spoken. But you’ve just seen how well she can act, so there’s nothing to say she isn’t cold and calculating and entirely capable of having done it the way it was done. And she’s intelligent, I think.’

‘What about her friend?’

‘The American?’

‘Yes.’

‘I don’t know about her. She told me Petrelli went to see him after the first act, but only to argue with him.’

‘What about?’

‘He’d been threatening to tell her ex-husband about the affair with Brett.’

If Paola was surprised at his use of the first name, she gave no sign of it.

‘Are there children?’

‘Yes. Two.’

‘Then it’s a serious threat. But what about her, about Brett, as you call her. Could she have done it?’

‘No, I don’t think so. The affair isn’t that fundamental to her life. Or she won’t let it be. No, it’s not likely.’

‘You still didn’t answer me about Petrelli.’

‘Come on, Paola, you know I’m always wrong when I try to work by intuition, when I suspect too much or I suspect too soon. I don’t know about her. The only thing I know is that this has got to have something to do with his past.’

‘All right,’ she said, agreeing to leave it. ‘Let’s eat. I have chicken, and artichokes, and a bottle of Soave.’

‘God be praised,’ he said, getting to his feet and pulling her up from the arm of the chair. Together, they went into the kitchen.

As usual, the minute before dinner was on the table and they were ready to eat, Raffaele, Brunetti’s firstborn, son, and heir appeared from his room. He was fifteen, tall for his age, and took after Brunetti in appearance and gesture. In everything else, he took after no one in the family and would certainly have denied the possibility that his behavior resembled that of anyone, living or dead. He had discovered, by himself, that the world is corrupt and the system unjust, and that men in power were interested in that and that alone. Because he was the first person ever to have made this discovery with such force and purity, he insisted upon showing his ample contempt for all those not yet graced with the clarity of his vision. This included, of course, his family, with the possible exception of Chiara, whom he excused from social guilt because of her youth and because she could be counted on to give him half of her allowance. His grandfather, it seemed, had also somehow managed to slip through the eye of the needle, no one understood how.

He attended the classical liceo, which was supposed to prepare him for the university, but he had done badly for the last year and had recently begun to talk of not going anymore, since ‘education is just another part of the system by which the workers are oppressed.’ Nor, should he quit school, had he any intention of finding a job, as that would make him subject to ‘the system that oppresses the workers.’ Hence, to avoid oppressing, he would refuse to get an education, and to avoid being oppressed, he would refuse to get a job. Brunetti found the simplicity of Raffaele’s reasoning absolutely Jesuitical.

Raffaele slumped at the table, propped on his elbows. Brunetti asked him how he was, this still being a topic safe to mention.

‘OK.’

‘Pass the bread, Raffi.’ This from Chiara.

‘Don’t eat that clove of garlic, Chiara. You’ll stink for days.’ This from Paola.

‘Chicken’s good.’ This from Brunetti. ‘Should I open the second bottle of wine?’

‘Yes,’ piped up Chiara, holding out her glass. ‘I haven’t had any yet.’

Brunetti took the second bottle from the refrigerator and opened it. He moved around the table, pouring wine into each of their glasses. Standing behind his son, he rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder as he leaned over to pour the wine. Raffaele shrugged off his hand, then changed the gesture into an attempt to reach for the artichokes, which he never ate.

‘What’s for dessert?’ asked Chiara.

‘Fruit.’

‘No cake?’

‘Piggy,’ said Raffaele, but in definition, not in criticism.

‘Anyone want to play Monopoly after dinner?’ Paola asked. Before the children could agree, she established conditions. ‘Only if your homework’s done.’

‘Mine is,’ Chiara said.

‘So’s mine,’ Raffaele lied.

‘I’m banker,’ insisted Chiara.

‘Bourgeois piggy,’ Raffaele amended.

‘You two do the dishes,’ Paola ordered, ‘and then we’ll play.’ At the first squeak of protest, she wheeled on them. ‘No one’s playing Monopoly on this table until the dishes are off it, washed, and in the cabinet.’ As Raffaele opened his mouth to protest, she turned to him. ‘And if that’s a bourgeois way to look at it, that’s too damn bad. Eating chicken’s pretty bourgeois too, but I didn’t hear any complaints about the chicken. So do the dishes and we’ll play.’

It never failed to amaze Brunetti that she could use that tone with Raffaele and get away with it. Anytime he came close to reprimanding his son, the scene ended with slammed doors and sulks that lasted for days. Knowing he’d been outgunned, Raffaele showed his anger by snatching plates from the table and slapping them down on the counter next to the sink. Brunetti showed his by taking the bottle and his glass into the living room to wait out the inevitable thump and clatter of obedience.

‘At least he’s not building bombs in his bedroom,’ Paola offered as consolation when she came in to join him. From the kitchen, they heard the muted sound that said Raffaele was washing the dishes and the sharp clanks that declared that Chiara was drying them and putting them away. Occasionally there was a sharp burst of laughter.

‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’ he asked.

‘As long as she can still make him laugh, I suppose we don’t have to worry. He’d never do anything bad to Chiara, and I doubt he’d blow anyone up.’ Brunetti wasn’t sure just how this was supposed to serve as sufficient consolation for his concern about his son, but he was willing to accept it as such.

Chiara stuck her head into the room and cried, ‘Raffi’s got the board. Come on, let’s go.’

When he and Paola got there, the Monopoly board was set up in the middle of the kitchen table and Chiara, as she had insisted, was banker, already passing out the small piles of money. By general consent, Paola was forbidden to be banker, as she had been caught too many times, over the course of the years, with her hand in the till. Raffaele, no doubt nervous that accepting the position would leave him open to the accusation of avarice, refused. And Brunetti had enough trouble concentrating on the game without adding the responsibilities of banker, so they always left it to Chiara, who delighted in the counting and collecting, paying and changing.

They rolled to see who went first. Raffaele lost and had to go last, which was enough to make the other three nervous from the beginning. The boy’s need to win at the game frightened Brunetti, and he often played badly to give his son every advantage.

After half an hour, Chiara had all the green: Via Roma, Corso Impero, and Largo Augusto. Raffaele had two reds and needed only Via Marco Polo, which Brunetti owned, to make his set complete. After four more rounds, Brunetti allowed himself to be cajoled into selling the missing red property to Raffaele for Acquedotto and fifty thousand lire. Family rules forbade comment, but that didn’t prevent Chiara from giving her brother a fierce kick under the table.

Raffaele, predictably, protested the injustice. ‘Stop that, Chiara. If he wants to make a bad deal, let him.’ This from the boy who wanted to bring down the entire capitalist system.

Brunetti handed over the deeds and watched as Raffaele immediately built hotels on all three properties. While Raffaele was busy with that, making sure Chiara gave him the proper change, Brunetti noticed Paola calmly sliding a small pile of ten-thousand-lire notes from the banker’s pile to her own. She glanced up, noticed that her husband had seen her stealing from her own children, and gave him a dazzling smile. A policeman, married to a thief, with a computer monster and an anarchist for children.

The next time around, he landed on one of Raffaele’s new hotels and had to hand over everything he owned. Paola suddenly discovered enough cash to build herself six hotels, but at least she had the grace to avoid his eyes as she handed the money to the banker.

He sat back in his chair and watched the game progress toward the ending that his loss to Raffaele had made inescapable. Paola’s elbow began to inch toward the stack of ten-thousand-lire notes, but she was stopped by an icy glare from Chiara. Chiara, in her turn, failed to persuade Raffaele to sell her Parco della Vittoria, landed on the red hotels twice in a row, and went bankrupt. Paola held out for two more turns, until she landed on the hotel on Viale Costantino and couldn’t pay.

The game ended. Raffaele was immediately transformed from a successful captain of empire to the disaffected foe of the ruling class; Chiara went to raid the refrigerator; and Paola yawned and said it was time to go to bed. Brunetti followed her down the hall, reflecting that the commissario of police of the Most Serene Republic had spent yet another evening in the unrelenting pursuit of the person responsible for the death of the most famous musician of the age.

* * * *

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Michele’s call came at one, pulling Brunetti out of a fuddled, restless sleep. He answered on the fourth ring and gave his name.

‘Guido, it’s Michele.’

‘Michele,’ he repeated stupidly, trying to remember if he knew anyone named Michele. He forced his eyes open and remembered. ‘Michele. Michele—good. I’m glad you called.’

He switched the bedside lamp on and sat up against the headboard. Paola slept beside him, rocklike.

‘I spoke to my father, and he remembered everything.’

‘And?’

‘It was just like you said: if there’s anything to know, he’ll know.’

‘Stop gloating and tell me.’

‘There were rumors about Wellauer and the sister who sang in opera, Clemenza. Papà couldn’t remember where, but he knew it started in Germany, where she was singing with him. There was some sort of scene between the wife and La Santina, at a party, after a performance. They insulted each other, and Wellauer left.’ Michele paused for effect. ‘With La Santina. After the performances— my father thinks it was in ‘37 or ‘38—Santina came down here, to Rome, and Wellauer went home to face the music’ Bad as it was, Michele laughed at his own joke. Brunetti didn’t.

‘It seems he managed to patch things up with his wife. Papà suggested there was a lot of patching to do, then and later.’

‘Is that the way it was?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes; Papà said he was one of the worst. Or best, depending on how you look at it. They got divorced after the war.’

‘Because of that sort of thing?’

‘Papà wasn’t sure. Seems a safe bet. Or it might have been because he backed the wrong side.’

‘Then what happened, when Santina came back to Italy?’

‘He came down to conduct a Norma, the one she refused to sing. Do you know about that?’

‘Yes.’ It had been in the file Miottis from the Rome and Venice newspapers of decades ago.

‘They found another soprano, and Wellauer had a triumph.’

‘What happened? Did she continue to see him?’

‘This is where things get very cloudy, Papà says. Some people said they stayed together for a while after that. Others say that he broke it off as soon as she wasn’t singing anymore.’

‘What about the sisters?’

‘Apparently, when Clemenza stopped singing, Wellauer picked up the slack with another one.’ Michele had never been known for his delicacy of expression, especially when talking about women.

‘And then what?’

‘That went on for a while. And then there was what used to be called an “Illegal operation.” Very easy to get, even then, my father tells me, if you knew the right people. And Wellauer did. No one knew much about it at the time, but she died. It might not even have been his child, but people seemed to think so at the time.’

‘And then what?’

‘Well, she died, like I said. Nothing was ever printed, of course. You couldn’t write about that sort of thing back then. And the cause of death was given in the papers as “after a sudden illness.” Well, I suppose it was, in a sense.’

‘And what about the other sister?’

‘Papà thinks she went to live in Argentina, either right at the end of the war or soon after. He thinks she might have died there, but not until years later. Do you want to see if Papà can find out?’

‘No, Michele. She’s not important. What about Clemenza?’

‘She tried to make a comeback after the war, but the voice wasn’t the same. So she stopped singing. Papà said he thinks she lives here. Is that true?’

‘Yes. I’ve spoken to her. Did your father remember anything else?’

‘Only that he met Wellauer once, about fifteen years ago. Didn’t like him, but he couldn’t give any specific reason for it. Just didn’t like him.’

Brunetti heard the change in Michele’s voice that marked his passage from friend to journalist. ‘Does any of this help, Guido?’

‘I don’t know, Michele. I just wanted to get some idea of the sort of man he was, and I wanted to find out about Santina.’

‘Well, now you know.’ Michele’s voice was curt. He had sensed the policeman in the last answer.

‘Michele, listen, it might be something, but I don’t know yet.’

‘Fine, fine. If it is, then it is.’ He wouldn’t bring himself to ask for the favor.

‘If it does turn out to be anything, I’ll call you, Michele.’

‘Sure, sure; you do that, Guido. It’s late, and I’m sure you want to get back to sleep. Call me if you need anything else, all right?’

‘I promise. And thanks, Michele. Please thank your father for me.’

‘He’s the one who thanks you. This has made him feel important again. Good night, Guido.’

Before Brunetti could say anything, the line went dead. He switched off the light and slid down under the covers, aware now only of how cold it was in the room. In the dark, the only thing he could see was the photo in Clemenza Santina’s room, the carefully arranged V in which the three sisters posed. One of them had died because of Wellauer, and another had perhaps lost her career as a result of knowing him. Only the little one had escaped him, and she had had to go to Argentina to do it.

* * * *

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Early the next morning, Brunetti padded into the kitchen well before Paola was awake and, not fully conscious of his actions, started the coffee. He wandered back to the bathroom, splashed water on his face, and toweled it dry, avoiding the eyes of the man in the mirror. Before coffee, he didn’t trust anyone.

He got back to the kitchen just as the coffeepot erupted. He didn’t even bother to curse, just grabbed the pot from the flame and slapped off the gas. Pouring coffee into a cup, he spooned in three sugars and took the cup and himself out onto the terrace, which faced west. He hoped the morning chill would succeed in waking him if the coffee failed.

Scraggy-bearded, rumpled, he stood on the terrace and stared off at the point on the horizon where the Dolomites began. It must have rained heavily in the night, for the mountains had manifested themselves, sneaking close in the night and now magically visible in the crisp air. They would pack up and disappear before nightfall, he was sure, forced out of sight by waves of smoke that rose up ever fresh and new from the factories on the mainland or by the waves of humidity that crept in from the laguna.

From the left, the bells of San Polo rang out for the six-thirty mass. Below him, in the house on the opposite side of the calk, the curtains snapped back and a naked man appeared at the window, utterly oblivious of Brunetti, who watched him from above. Suddenly the man sprouted another pair of hands, with red fingernails, which came reaching around him from behind. The man smiled, backed away from the window, and the curtains closed behind him.

The morning chill began to bite at Brunetti, driving him back into the kitchen, glad of its warmth and the presence of Paola, who now sat at the table and looked far more pleasant than anyone had a right to look before nine in the morning.

She gave him a cheery good morning; he returned a grunt. He set his empty coffee cup in the sink and picked up a second, this one topped with hot milk, which Paola had placed on the counter for him. The first had begun to prod him toward humanity; this one might finish the job.

‘Was that Michele who called last night?’

‘Um.’ He rubbed at his face; he drank more coffee. She pulled a magazine from the end of the table and paged through it, sipping at her own mug. Not yet seven, and she’s looking at Giorgio Armani jackets. She turned a page. He scratched his shoulder. Time passed.

‘Was that Michele who called last night?’

‘Yes.’ She was pleased to have gotten a real word from him and asked nothing more. ‘He told me about Wellauer and Santina.’

‘How long ago was all that?’

‘About forty years, after the war. No, just before it, so it was more like fifty years.’

‘What happened?’

‘He got the sister pregnant, and she died after an abortion.’

‘Did the old woman tell you any of this?’

‘Not a word.’

‘What are you going to do?’