Death at La Fenice

‘I’ll have to talk to her again.’

‘This morning?’

‘No; I’ve got to go to the Questura. This afternoon. Tomorrow.’ He realized how reluctant he was to return to that cold and misery.

‘If you do go, wear your brown shoes.’ They would help to protect him against the cold; nothing would protect him, or anyone, against the misery.

‘Yes, thanks,’ he said. ‘Do you want to take a shower first?’ he asked, remembering that she had an early class that morning.

‘No, go ahead. I’ll finish this and make some more coffee.’

As he walked by her, he bent to kiss her head, wondering how she managed to remain civil, even friendly, with the grumbling thing he was in the morning. He smelled the flowery scent of her shampoo and noticed that the hair just above her temple was faintly flecked with gray. He had never noticed it before, and he bent to kiss her there again, trembling at the fragility of this woman.

When he got to his office, he collected all the papers and reports that had accumulated concerning the conductor’s death and began to read through them all again, some for the third or fourth time. The translations of the German reports were maddening. In their exhaustive attention to detail—as in the list of items taken from Wellauer’s home during each of the two robberies—they were monuments to Germanic efficiency. In their almost total lack of information about the conductor’s activities, personal or professional, during the war years, they gave evidence to an equally Germanic ability to remove a truth by simply ignoring it. Given the current president of Austria, Brunetti had to admit it was a tactic that met with remarkable success.

Wellauer had discovered his second wife’s body. She had called a friend shortly before going down into the cellar to hang herself and had invited the woman to join her for a cup of coffee, a blending of the macabre and the mundane that upset Brunetti each time he read the report. Delayed, the woman had arrived only after Wellauer had found his wife’s body and phoned the police. That meant he could just as easily have found anything she might have left—a note, a letter—and destroyed it.

Paola had given him Padovani’s number that morning and told him that the journalist was planning to go back to Rome the following day. Knowing that the lunch could go on his expense account as ‘interviewing a witness,’ Brunetti called Padovani and invited him to lunch at Galleggiante, a restaurant Brunetti liked but could seldom afford. The other man agreed to meet him there at one.

He called down to the office where the translators worked and asked that the one who worked with German be sent up to him. When she arrived, a young woman he had often nodded to on the stairs or in the corridors of the building, he explained that he needed to put a call through to Berlin and might need her help if the person he spoke to didn’t speak either English or Italian.

He dialed the number Signora Wellauer had given him. The phone was picked up on the fourth ring, and a woman’s voice said crisply— Germans always sounded crisp to him— ‘Steinbrunner.’ He passed the phone to the translator and could understand enough of what she said to glean that the doctor was in his office, not in his home, which was the number he had been given. He signaled the translator to make the next call, listened while she explained who she was and what the call was about. She held up her hand in a waiting gesture and nodded. Then she handed the phone to him, and he thought that some miracle had occurred and Dr. Steinbrunner had answered his phone in Italian. Instead of a human voice, however, he heard mild-mannered, innocuous music coming across the Alps at the cost of the city of Venice. He handed the phone back to her and watched while she beat time in the air with her hand while they waited.

Suddenly she pulled the phone closer and said something in German. She spoke a few more sentences and then told Brunetti, ‘His receptionist is transferring the call. She said he speaks English. Do you want to handle it, then?’

He nodded, took the phone from her, but waved for her to stay there. ‘Wait and see if his English is as good as your German.’

Before he had finished this sentence, he heard a deep voice at the other end say, ‘This is Dr. Erich Steinbrunner. May I know to whom I’m speaking?’

Brunetti introduced himself and signaled to the translator that she could leave. Before doing so, she leaned across his desk and pushed a pad and pencil toward him.

‘Yes, Commissario, what can I do for you?’

‘I’m investigating Maestro Wellauer’s death, and I’ve learned from his widow that you were a close friend of his.’

‘Yes, I was. My wife and I were friends of his for many years. His death has hurt us both.’

‘I’m sure it has, Doctor.’

‘I wanted to go there for the funeral, but my wife is in very poor health and cannot travel, and I didn’t want to leave her.’

‘I’m sure Signora Wellauer understands,’ he said, surprised at the internationality of platitudes.

‘I’ve spoken to Elizabeth,’ said the doctor. ‘She seems to be bearing it well.’

Cued by something in his tone, Brunetti said, ‘She seemed somewhat . . . I’m not sure how to express this. She seemed somewhat reluctant that I call you, Doctor.’ When that got no answer, he added, ‘Perhaps it is too soon after his death for her to want to remember happier times.’

‘Yes, that’s possible,’ the doctor responded dryly, making it clear that he thought it wasn’t.

‘Doctor, might I ask you a few questions?’

‘Certainly.’

‘I’ve examined the Maestro’s datebook and saw that for the last few months of his life, he saw you and your wife frequently.’

‘Yes, we had dinner three or four times.’

‘But there were other times when your name alone was listed, Doctor, early in the morning. From the hour, I guessed that it might have been a professional visit—that is, that he was seeing you as a doctor and not as a friend.’ Rather belatedly, he asked, ‘Doctor, may I ask if you’re a . . .’ He stopped, not wanting to offend the man by asking if he was a general practitioner, and said, ‘I’m sorry I’ve forgotten the word in English. Could you tell me what your specialization is?’

‘Nose, ear, and throat. But particularly throat. That’s how I met Helmut, years ago. Years ago.’ The man’s voice grew warmer as he said this. ‘I’m known here in Germany as “the singers’ doctor.”‘ Did he sound surprised at actually having to explain this to anyone?

‘Is that why he was seeing you, because one of his singers was having trouble? Or was he having trouble with his voice?’

‘No, there was nothing wrong with his throat or his voice. The first time, he asked me to meet for breakfast, and it was to speak about one of his singers.’

‘And after that, Doctor, there were other morning dates listed in the book.’

‘Yes, I saw him twice. The first time, he came to the office and asked me to give him an exam. And then, a week later, I gave him the results.’

‘Would you tell me what those results were?’

‘Before I do, can you tell me why you think this is important?’

‘It seems that the Maestro was deeply preoccupied, worried about something. I’ve learned that from the people I’ve spoken to here. And so I am trying to find out what it might have been—anything that might have influenced his state of mind.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t see how this is pertinent,’ the doctor said.

‘Doctor, I’m trying to learn as much as I can about the state of his health. Remember, anything I learn might help me find the person responsible for his death and see that he is punished.’ Paola had often told him that the only way to appeal to a German was to invoke the law. The swiftness of the man’s response seemed to prove her right.

‘In that case, I’ll willingly help you.’

‘What kind of exam was it that you gave him?’

‘As I said, his voice and throat were fine. Eyesight perfect. There was a slight hearing loss, however, and it was this that made him ask for the exam.’

‘And what were the results, Doctor?’

‘As I said, a slight hearing loss. Minimal. The sort of thing that is to be expected in a man of his age.’ He immediately corrected himself: ‘Of our age.’

‘When did you give him the exam, Doctor? The dates I have are for October.’

‘Yes, it was sometime then. I’d have to check my records to give you the exact dates, but it was about that time.’

‘And do you remember the exact results?’

‘No, no, I don’t. But the loss was certainly less than ten percent, or I would have remembered.’

‘Is this a significant loss, Doctor?’

‘No, it’s not.’

‘Is it noticeable?’

‘Noticeable?’

‘Would it have interfered with his conducting?’

‘That’s exactly what Helmut wanted to know. I told him that it was nothing of that order, that the loss was barely measurable. He believed me. But that same morning, I had some other news to give him, and that news disturbed him.’

‘What was that?’

‘He had sent a young singer to me because she was having vocal problems. I discovered that she had nodes on her vocal cords that would have to be removed surgically. I told Helmut that it would be six months before she could sing again. He had been planning to have her sing with him in Munich this spring, but that was impossible.’

‘Is there anything else you remember?’

‘No, nothing in particular. He said he’d see me when they got back from Venice, but I took that to mean socially, the four of us together.’

Brunetti heard the slight hesitation in the man’s voice and asked, ‘Anything else, Doctor?’

‘He asked me if I knew anyone in Venice I could recommend. As a doctor. I told him not to be silly, that he was as healthy as a horse. If he got sick, the opera would find him the best doctor they could. But he was insistent, wanted to know if there was someone I could recommend.’

‘A specialist?’

‘Yes. I finally gave him the name of a doctor I’ve consulted with a few times. He teaches at the University of Padova.’

‘His name, Doctor?’

‘Valerio Treponti. He also has a private practice in the city, but I don’t have his number. Helmut didn’t ask for it, seemed content merely to have the name.’

‘Do you remember if he made a note of the name?’

‘No, he didn’t. In fact, at the time, I thought he was simply being obstinate. Besides, we were really there to talk about the singer.’

‘One last question, Doctor.’

‘Yes?’

‘During the last few times you saw him, did you notice any change in him, any sign that he might have been preoccupied or concerned about something?’

The doctor’s answer came after a long pause. ‘There might have been something, but I don’t know what it was.’

‘Did you ask him about it?’

‘One did not ask Helmut that sort of question.’

Brunetti restrained himself from saying that men who had been friends for more than forty years sometimes did. Instead he asked, ‘Have you any idea what it might have been?’

This pause was just as long as the first. ‘I thought it might have something to do with Elizabeth. That’s why I didn’t mention it to Helmut. He was always very sensitive about her, about the difference in their ages. But perhaps you could ask her, Commissario.’

‘Yes, Doctor. I plan to do that.’

‘Good. Is there anything else? If not, I really must get back to my patients.’

‘No, nothing else. It was very kind of you to talk to me. You’ve been very helpful.’

‘I hope so. I hope you find whoever did this and punish him.’

‘I’ll certainly do whatever I can, Doctor,’ Brunetti said politely, failing to add that his only interest was in the first and he didn’t care at all about the second. But perhaps Germans thought about such things differently.

As soon as the line was clear, he dialed information and asked for the number of Dr. Valerio Treponti in Padova. When he reached the doctor’s office, he was told that Treponti was busy with a patient and could not come to the phone. Brunetti explained who he was, said the call was urgent, and told the receptionist he would hold on.

While he waited, Brunetti leafed through the morning papers. Wellauer’s death had disappeared from the major national newspapers; it was present in the Gazzettino, on the second page of the second section, because a music scholarship in his name was being established at the conservatory.

The line clicked, and a deep, resonant voice said, ‘Treponti.’

‘Doctor, this is Commissario Brunetti of the Venice police.’

‘So I was told. What do you want?’

‘I’d like to know if, during the last month, you’ve had as a patient a tall, elderly man who spoke Italian, very good Italian, but with a German accent.’

‘How old?’

‘About seventy.’

‘You mean the Austrian. What was his name? Doerr? That’s it, yes, Hilmar Doerr. But he wasn’t German; he was Austrian. Same thing, really. What do you want to know about him?’

‘Could you describe him to me, Doctor?’

‘Are you sure this is important? I’ve got six patients in my waiting room, and I have to be at the hospital in an hour.’

‘Could you describe him to me, Doctor?’

‘Haven’t I done that? Tall, blue eyes, middle sixties.’

‘When did you see him?’

In the background at the other end of the line, Brunetti heard another voice say something. Then all sound disappeared as the doctor covered the mouthpiece of the phone. A minute passed, and then he was back, sounding even more hurried and impatient. ‘Commissario, I can’t speak to you now. I have important things to do.’

Brunetti let that pass and asked, ‘Could you see me today, Doctor, if I came to your office?’

‘At five this afternoon. I can give you twenty minutes. Here.’ He hung up before Brunetti could ask him the address. Patiently, forcing himself to remain calm, he redialed the number and asked the woman who answered if she would give him the address of the doctor’s office. When she did so, Brunetti thanked her with deliberate politeness and hung up.

He sat and thought about the easiest way to get to Padova. Patta, he knew, would order a car, a driver, and perhaps a pair of motorcycle escorts, should the traffic in terrorists be especially heavy on the autostrada that day. Brunetti’s rank entitled him to a car, but his desire to save time led him to call the station and ask when the afternoon trains to Padova left. The express to Milan would get him there in plenty of time to reach the doctor’s office by five. He would have to go to the train station directly after lunch with Padovani.

* * * *

CHAPTER TWENTY

Padovani was waiting inside the restaurant when Brunetti got there. The journalist stood between the bar and the glass case filled with various antipasti: periwinkles, cuttlefish, shrimp. They shook hands briefly and were shown to their table by Signora Antonia, the Junoesque waitress who reigned supreme here. Once seated, they delayed the discussion of crime and gossip while they consulted with Signora Antonia about lunch. Though a written menu did exist, few regular clients ever bothered with it; most had never seen it. The day’s selections and specialties were listed in Antonia’s head. She quickly ran through the list, though Brunetti knew that this was the merest of formalities. She quickly decided that what they wanted to eat was the antipasto di mare, the risotto with shrimp, and the grilled branzino, which she assured them had come fresh that morning from the fish market. Padovani asked if he might possibly, if the signora advised it, have a green salad as well. She gave his request the attention it deserved, assented, and said they wanted a bottle of the house white wine, which she went to get.

When the wine was on the table and the first glass poured, Brunetti asked Padovani how much work he had to do before he left Venice. The critic explained that he had two gallery openings to review, one in Treviso and one in Milan, but he’d probably do them by phone.

‘Call the reviews down to the newspaper in Rome?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Oh, no,’ Padovani replied, snapping a bread stick in two and eating half. ‘I do the reviews by phone.’

‘Art reviews?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Of paintings?’

‘Certainly,’ Padovani answered. ‘You don’t expect me to waste my time going to see that crap, do you?’ When he saw Brunetti’s confusion, he explained. ‘I know both of the painters’ work, which is worthless. Both of them have hired the galleries, and both of them will send friends along to buy the paintings. One of them is the wife of a lawyer in Milan, and the other is the son of a neurosurgeon in Treviso, who runs the most expensive private clinic in the province. Both of them have too much time and nothing to do, so they have decided to become artists.’ He said the last word with undisguised contempt.

Padovani interrupted himself long enough to sit back and smile broadly as Signora Antonia placed the oblong plates of antipasto in front of them.

‘What sort of reviews do you write?’

‘Oh, that depends,’ Padovani said, spearing a chunk of octopus with his fork. ‘For the doctor’s son, I say he shows “complete ignorance of color and line.” But the lawyer is a friend of one of the directors of the newspaper, so his wife “displays a mastery of composition and draftsmanship,” when, in fact, she couldn’t draw a square without making it look like a triangle.’

‘Does it bother you?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Does what bother me—writing what I don’t believe?’ Padovani asked, breaking another bread stick in half.

‘Yes.’

‘In the beginning. I suppose it did. But then I realized it was the only way I could be free to write the reviews I really care about.’ He saw Brunetti’s look and smiled. ‘Come now, Guido, don’t tell me you’ve never ignored a piece of evidence or written a report in a way to suggest something other than what that evidence suggested.’

Before he could answer this, Antonia was back. Padovani finished the last shrimp on his plate and smiled up at her. ‘Delicious, Signora.’ She took his plate, then Brunetti’s.

Immediately she was back with the risotto, steaming and rich. When she saw Padovani reach out for the salt on the table, she said, ‘There’s enough salt already.’ He pulled his hand back as though it had been burned and picked up his fork.

‘But come, Guido, you didn’t invite me here—at the city’s expense, I hope—to chat about the progress of my career, nor to examine my conscience. You said that you wanted more information.’

‘I’d like to know what else you learned about Signora Santina.’

Delicately, Padovani extracted a small piece of shrimp shell from his mouth, placed it on the side of his plate, and said, ‘I’m afraid, then, that I’ll have to pay for my own lunch.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I can’t give you any more information about her. Narciso was just on his way out when I called him, and all he had time to do was give me the address. So all I know is what I told you that night. I’m sorry.’

Brunetti thought it artless of him to make the remark about paying for his lunch. ‘Well, then, perhaps you could tell me about some of the other people instead.’

‘I’ll confess, Guido, that I’ve been busy. I’ve called a number of my friends here, and in Milan and Rome, and you have but to speak their names and I shall become a very fountain of information.’

‘Flavia Petrelli?’

‘Ah, the divine Flavia.’ He placed a forkful of risotto in his mouth and pronounced it excellent. ‘You would no doubt also like to know about the equally divine Miss Lynch, I suppose?’

‘I’d like to know whatever you know about either one of them.’

Padovani ate some more of his risotto and pushed it aside. ‘Do you want to ask me specific questions, or do you want me simply to chatter on?’

‘The chatter would probably be best.’

‘Yes. No doubt. So I’ve often been told.’ He sipped at his wine and began. ‘I forget where Flavia studied. Possibly Rome. In any case, the unexpected happened, as it always does, and she was asked to step in at the last minute and replace the ever ailing Caballé. She did, the critics went wild, and she was famous overnight.’ He leaned forward to touch the back of Brunetti’s hand with one finger. ‘I thought I might, for dramatic purposes, divide the story into two parts: professional and personal.’ Brunetti nodded.

‘That, pretty much, was the professional. She was famous, and she remained that way. Remains that way.’ He sipped at his wine again, poured some more into his glass.

‘So now for the personal. Enter the husband. She was singing in the Liceo in Barcelona, about two or three years after her success in Rome. He was something important in Spain. Plastics, factories, I think; in any case, something very dull but very profitable. In any case, lots of money, lots of friends with big houses and important names. Fairy-tale romance, garlands of flowers, truckloads of the things wherever she happened to be singing, jewels, all the usual temptations, and La Petrelli—who is, between parentheses, just a simple little country girl from some small town near Trento—went and fell in love and married him. And his factories, and his plastics, and his important friends.’

Antonia arrived and carried away their plates, clearly disapproving of the fact that Padovani’s was still half full.

‘She continued to sing; she continued to grow more famous. And he seemed to like traveling with her, liked being the Latin husband of the famous diva, meeting more famous people, seeing his picture in the papers—all the sort of thing that people of his class need. Then came the children, but she continued to sing, and she continued to become more famous. But it soon became evident that things were no longer as honeymoonish as they had been. She canceled a performance, then another. Soon after that, she stopped singing for a year, went back to Spain with him. And didn’t sing.’

Antonia approached the table with a long metal tray upon which lay their branzino. She placed it on a small serving table next to them and very efficiently cut two portions of tender white fish from it. She placed the portions in front of them. T hope you like this.’ The men exchanged a glance in silent acceptance of the threat.

‘Thank you, Signora,’ Padovani said. ‘Might I trouble you for the green salad.’

‘When you finish the fish,’ she said, and went back toward the kitchen. This, Brunetti reminded himself, is one of the best restaurants in the city.

Padovani took a few bites of the fish. ‘And then she was back, as suddenly as she had disappeared, and the voice, during the year when she hadn’t sung in public, had grown bigger, become more that immense, clearvoice she has now. But now the husband was no longer in sight, and then there was a quiet separation, and an even more quiet divorce, which she got here, and then, when it became possible, in Spain.’

‘What were the grounds for the divorce?’ Brunetti asked.

Padovani held up an admonitory hand. ‘All in good time. I want this to have the sound and pace of a nineteenth-century novel. So she began to sing again, our Flavia, and as I said, she was more magnificent than ever. But we never saw her. Not at dinners, not at parties, not at the performances of other singers. She had become something of a recluse, lived quietly with her children in Milan, where she was singing regularly.’ He leaned across the table. ‘Is the suspense growing?’

‘Agonizingly so,’ said Brunetti, and took another mouthful of fish. ‘And the divorce?’

Padovani laughed. ‘Paola warned me about this, said you were a ferret. All right, all right, you shall have the truth. But unfortunately, the truth, as it so often has a habit of being, is quite pedestrian. It turns out that he beat her, quite regularly and quite severely. I suppose it was his idea of how a real man treats his wife.’ He shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know.’

‘But she left?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Not until he put her in the hospital. Even in Spain, some people are willing to draw the line at this. She went to the Italian embassy with her children. With no money and no passports. Our ambassador at the time, like all of them, was a lick-spittle and tried to send her back to her husband. But his wife, a Sicilian—and let not a word be said against them—stormed down to the consular section and stood there while three passports were made out, and then she drove Flavia and her children to the airport, where she charged three first-class tickets to Milan to the embassy account and waited with them until the plane took off. It appears that she had seen Flavia sing Odabella three years before and felt she owed her at least that much.’

Brunetti found himself wondering just how much of this could be important to Wellauer’s death and, made suspicious by Padovani’s ironical manner, wondering how much of it was true.

As if reading his mind, Padovani leaned forward and said, ‘It’s true. Believe me.’

‘How did you learn all this?’

‘Guido, you’ve been a policeman long enough to have learned that as soon as a person reaches a certain level of notoriety, there are no more secrets.’ Brunetti smiled in agreement, and Padovani continued. ‘Now we have the interesting part, the return of our heroine to life. And the cause, as always in stories like this, is love. Well, at any rate,’ he added after a reflective pause, ‘lust.’

Brunetti, aware of the man’s obvious enjoyment of the story he was telling, was tempted to take his revenge by telling Antonia that Padovani hadn’t eaten all his fish but had hidden it in his napkin.

‘Her period of seclusion lasted almost three years. And then there was a series of, well, involvements. The first was a tenor she happened to be singing with. A very bad tenor but, luckily for her, a very nice man. Unluckily for her, he had an equally nice wife, to whom he very quickly returned. Then there were, in quick succession’—he began to tick them off on his fingers as he named them—’a baritone, another tenor, a dancer, or perhaps that was the director, a doctor who seems to have slipped in unnoticed, and finally, wonder of wonders, a countertenor. And then, as quickly as all this had begun, it stopped.’ So did Padovani, while Antonia set his salad down in front of him. He prepared it, adding far too much vinegar for Brunetti’s taste. ‘She was seen with no one for about a year. And suddenly l’americana was on the scene and seemed to have conquered the divine Flavia.’ Sensing Brunetti’s interest, he asked, ‘Do you know her?’

‘Yes.’

And what do you think of her?’

‘I like her.’

‘So do I,’ agreed Padovani. ‘This thing between her and Flavia makes no sense at all.’

Brunetti felt uncomfortable about showing any interest in this, so he didn’t ask Padovani to expand on the subject.

Asking him to do so was hardly necessary. ‘They met about three years ago, during that China exhibition. They were seen a few times after that, having lunch together, going to the theater, but then l’americana had to go back to China.’

All the coy archness dropped out of Padovani’s voice. ‘I’ve read her books on Chinese art, the two that have been translated into Italian and the short one in English. If she’s not the most important archaeologist working in the field today, she soon will be. I don’t understand what she sees in Flavia, for Flavia, though she might be a genius, is really something of a bitch.’

‘But what about love?’ Brunetti asked, then amended the question as Padovani had. ‘Or lust?’

‘That’s all right for the likes of Flavia; it doesn’t take her away from her work. But the other one has in her hands one of the most important archaeological discoveries of our time, and I think she has the judgment and the skill to—’ Padovani stopped suddenly, picked up his wine, and emptied his glass. ‘Excuse me. I seldom get carried away like this. It must be the influence of the stately Antonia.’

Even though he knew it had nothing to do with the investigation, Brunetti couldn’t stop himself from asking, ‘Is she the first, ah, woman lover Petrelli had?’

‘I don’t think so, but the others have been passing affairs.’

‘And this? Is it different?’

‘For which one?’

‘Both.’

‘Since it’s gone on for three years, I’d say yes, it’s serious. For both of them.’ Padovani picked the last green leaf from the bottom of his salad bowl and said, ‘Perhaps I’m being unfair to Flavia. It costs her a lot, this affair.’

‘In what way?’

‘There are a great number of lesbian singers,’ he explained. ‘Strangely enough, most of them seem to be mezzo-sopranos. But that’s neither here nor there. The difficulty is that they are far less tolerated than their male colleagues who also happen to be gay. So none of them dare to be open about their lives, and most of them are very discreet, choosing to disguise their lover as their secretary or their agent. But Flavia can hardly disguise Brett as anything. And so there is talk, and I’m sure there are looks and whispers when they come into a room together.’

Brunetti had only to remember the portiere’s tone to know how true this was. ‘Have you been to their apartment here?’

‘Those skylights,’ Padovani said, and they both laughed.

‘How did she manage that?’ asked Brunetti, who had been refused a permit to install thermal windows.

‘Her family is one of those old American ones, which stole its money more than a hundred years ago and is, therefore, respectable. An uncle of hers left her the apartment, which I think he won at cards about fifty years ago. As for the windows, the story goes that she tried to get someone to do them for her, but no one would lift a finger without a permit. So, finally, she simply went up on the roof, took off the tiles, cut holes in the roof, and built the frames.’

‘Didn’t anyone see her?’ In Venice, all a person had to do was lift a hammer to the outside of a building and phones would be lifted in every house in the area. ‘Didn’t anyone call the police?’

‘You’ve seen how high she is. No one who saw her up there could really tell what she was doing and would assume she was just checking the roof. Or fixing a tile.’

‘And then what?’

‘Once the windows were in, she called the office of the city planner and told them what she had done. She asked them to send someone around to figure out how much the fine would be.’

‘And?’ marveled Brunetti, amazed that a foreigner would come up with so perfectly Italianate a solution.

‘A few months later, that’s what they actually did. But when they got there and saw how well the work had been done, they wouldn’t believe her when she told them she had done the job herself and insisted that she give them the names of her “accomplices.” She repeated that she had done it herself, and they continued to refuse to believe her. Finally, she picked up the phone and dialed the mayor’s office and asked to speak to “Lucio.” This with two architects from the city planning office standing there with their rulers in their hands. She had a few words with “Lucio” handed the phone to one of them, and said that the mayor wanted to have a word with him.’ Padovani mimicked the whole thing, ending by passing an invisible phone across the table.

‘So the mayor had a few words with them, and they climbed out on the roof and measured the skylights, calculated the fine, and she sent them back to their office with a check in their hands.’ Brunetti threw back his head and laughed so loud that people sitting at other tables looked their way.

‘Wait, it gets better,’ Padovani said. ‘The check was made out to cash, and she never received an acknowledgment that the fine had been paid. And I’m told that the blueprints in the office of deeds at city hall have been changed, and the skylights are on them.’ They laughed together at this victory of ingenuity over authority.

‘Where does all this money come from?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Oh, God, who knows? Where does American money come from? Steel. Railways. You know how it is over there. It doesn’t matter if you murder or rob to get it. The trick is in keeping it for a hundred years, and then you’re aristocrats.’

‘Is that so different from here?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Of course,’ Padovani explained, smiling. ‘Here we have to keep it five hundred years before we’re aristocrats. And there’s another difference. In Italy, you have to be well-dressed. In America, it’s difficult to tell which are the millionaires and which are the servants.’ Remembering Brett’s boots, Brunetti wanted to demur. But there was no stopping Padovani, who was off again. ‘They have a magazine there. I can’t remember which one it is, but each year they publish a list of the richest people in America. Only the names and where the money comes from. I think they must be afraid to publish all their pictures. The ones they do, it’s enough to make a person believe that money really is the root of all evil or, at the very least, bad taste. The women all look as though they’d been hung over open fires and dried. And the men, good God, the men. God, who dresses them? Do you think they eat plastic?’

Whatever answer Brunetti might have given was cut short by Antonia’s return. She asked if they wanted fruit or cake for dessert. Nervously, they both said they would forgo dessert and have coffee instead. She didn’t like it, but she cleared the table.

‘But to answer your question,’ Padovani said when she was gone, ‘I don’t know where the money comes from, but there seems to be no end to it. Her uncle was very generous to various hospitals and charities in the city, and she seems to be doing the same, though most of what she gives is specifically for restoration.’

‘Then that would explain the help from “Lucio.”‘

‘Certainly.’

‘What about her personal life?’

Padovani gave him a strange glance, having long since realized how little any of this had to do with the investigation of Wellauer’s death. But that could hardly be enough to stop him from telling what he knew. After all, gossip’s greatest charms was its utter superfluity. ‘Very little. I mean, there’s not much that anyone knows for sure. She seems always to have been of this persuasion, but almost nothing is known about her personal life before she came here.’

‘Which was when?’

‘About seven years ago. That is, that it became her permanent address. She spent years here, with her uncle, when she was a child.’

‘That explains the Veneziano, then.’

Padovani laughed. ‘It is strange to hear someone who isn’t one of us speak it, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

At this point, Antonia returned with the coffees, bringing with her two small glasses of grappa, which she told them were offered with the compliments of the restaurant. Though neither of them wanted the fiery liquid, they made a show of sipping at it and praising its quality. She moved off, suspicious, and Brunetti caught her looking back at them from the door of the kitchen, as if she expected them to pour the grappa into their shoes.

‘What else about her personal life?’ Brunetti asked, frankly curious.

‘She keeps it very personal, I think. I have a friend in New York who went to school with her. Harvard, of course. Then Yale. After which she went to Taiwan and then to the mainland. She was one of the first Western archaeologists to go there. In ‘83 or ‘84, I think. She’d written her first book by then, while she was in Taiwan.’

‘Isn’t she young to have done all this?’

‘Yes, I suppose she is. But she’s very, very good.’

Antonia sailed past them, carrying coffees to the next table, and Brunetti signaled to her, mimed writing the check. She nodded.

‘I hope some of this will be of help to you,’ said Padovani, meaning it.

‘So do I,’ replied Brunetti, unwilling to admit that it wouldn’t, equally unwilling to admit that he was simply interested in the two women.

‘If there’s any other way I can help you, please call,’ Padovani said, then added, ‘We could come here again. But if we do, I insist that you bring along two of your biggest policemen to protect me against . . . Ah, Signora Antonia,’ he said effortlessly as she came up to the table and placed the bill in front of Brunetti. ‘We have eaten superbly well and hope to return as soon as possible.’ The results of this flattery astonished Brunetti. For the first time that afternoon, Antonia smiled at them, a radiant blossoming of pure pleasure that revealed deep dimples at either side of her mouth and perfect, brilliant teeth. Brunetti envied Padovani his technique; it would prove invaluable in questioning suspects.

* * * *

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The intercity train made its way slowly across the causeway that joined Venice to the mainland and was soon passing to the right of the industrial horror of Marghera. Like a person who cannot keep from prodding an aching tooth with his tongue, Brunetti failed to look away from the forest of cranes and smokestacks and the miasma of filthy air that drifted back across the waters of the laguna toward the city from which he had come.

Soon after Mestre, barren winter fields replaced the industrial blight, but the general prospect was not much improved. After the devastating drought of the summer, most of the fields were covered with unharvested corn that had proved too expensive to irrigate and too parched to pick.

The train was only ten minutes late, so he was on time for his appointment with the doctor, whose office was in a modern building not far from the university. Because he was Venetian, Brunetti didn’t think to use the elevator and climbed the stairs to the third floor. When he opened the door to the office, he found the waiting room empty save for a white-uniformed woman who sat behind a desk. ‘The doctor will see you now,’ she said when he entered, not bothering to ask who he was. Did it show? Brunetti wondered yet again.

Dr. Treponti was a small, neat man with a short dark beard and brown eyes that were slightly magnified by the thick glasses he wore. His cheeks were as round and tight as a chipmunk’s, and he carried a small marsupial paunch in front of him. He didn’t smile when Brunetti came in, but he did offer his hand. Gesturing to a chair in front of his desk, he waited for Brunetti to sit down before resuming his own chair, and then he asked, ‘What is it you’d like to know?’

Brunetti took a small publicity still of the conductor from his inside pocket and held it out to the doctor. ‘Is this the man who came to you? The man you said was Austrian?’

The doctor took the photo, studied it briefly, and handed it back to Brunetti. ‘Yes, that’s the man.’

‘Why did he come to see you, Doctor?’

‘Aren’t you going to tell me who he is? If the police are involved in this and his name isn’t Hilmar Doerr?’

Brunetti was amazed that anyone could live in Italy and not know about the death of the conductor, but he simply said, ‘I’ll tell you that after you tell me what you can about him, Doctor.’ Before the other man could object, he added, ‘I don’t want anything you might tell me to be colored by that information.’

‘This isn’t political, is it?’ the doctor asked, with the deep distrust that only Italians can put into the question.

‘No, it has nothing to do with politics. I give you my word.’

However dubious the value of that commodity might have seemed to the doctor, he agreed. ‘Very well.’ He opened the manila folder on his desk and said, ‘I’ll have my nurse give you a copy of this later.’

‘Thank you, Doctor.’

‘As I said, he told me that his name was Hilmar Doerr, and he said he was an Austrian who lived in Venice. Because he was not part of the Italian health plan, he came to me as a private patient. I saw no reason not to believe him.’ As he spoke, the doctor studied the notes on the lined paper in front of him. Brunetti could see how neat they were, even upside down.

‘He said that he had suffered some loss of hearing during the last months and asked me to check it. This was,’ the doctor said, flipping the chart back to the front and checking the date there, ‘on the third of November.

‘I performed the usual tests and found that there had been, as he said, a significant hearing loss.’ He anticipated Brunetti’s question and answered it. ‘I estimated that he still had sixty to seventy percent of normal hearing.

‘What confused me was his saying that he had not had any hearing problems before; they had suddenly appeared in the last month or so.’

‘Would this sort of thing be common in a man of his age?’

‘He told me he was sixty-two. I assume that, too, is a lie? If you could give me his proper age, I might be better able to answer the question.’

‘He was seventy-four.’

Hearing this, Dr. Treponti turned the file back to the cover, crossed out something, and wrote a correction above it. ‘I don’t think that would change things,’ he said, ‘at least not substantially. The damage was sudden, and because it was to nerve tissue, it was irreversible.’

‘Are you sure about that, Doctor?’

He didn’t even bother to answer. ‘Because of the nature of the loss, I suggested he return in two weeks, when I repeated the tests and found that there had been even more loss, and more damage. Also irreversible.’

‘How much more?’

‘I would estimate,’ he said, glancing down again at the figures on the chart, ‘another ten percent. Perhaps a bit more.’

‘Was there anything you could do to help him?’

‘I suggested one of the new hearing aids. I hoped—I didn’t really believe—that it would help him.’

‘And did it?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘He never returned to my office.’

Brunetti calculated for a moment. The second visit had taken place well into rehearsals for the opera. ‘Can you tell me more about this hearing aid?’

‘It’s very small, mounted on a pair of normal-looking glasses, with clear or prescription lenses. It works on the principle of—’ He broke off. ‘I’m not sure why this is important here.’

Instead of explaining, Brunetti asked, ‘Is it something that might have helped?’

‘That’s difficult to say. So much of what we hear, we don’t hear with our ears.’ Seeing Brunetti’s confusion, he explained. ‘We do a good deal of lip reading, we fill in missing words from the context of the others we do hear. When people wear these hearing aids, they’ve finally accepted the idea that something is wrong with their hearing. So all of their other senses begin to work overtime, trying to fill in the missing signals and messages, and because the only thing that’s been added is the hearing aid, they believe it’s the hearing aid that’s helping them, when the only thing that’s happened, really, is that their other senses are working to their maximum to. make up for the ears that can no longer hear as well.’

‘Was that the case here?’

‘As I told you, I can’t be sure. When I fitted him with the hearing aid, during the second appointment, he insisted that he could hear better. He responded more accurately to my questions, but they all do, no matter whether there’s any real physical improvement. I’m in front of them, asking questions directly to them, looking at them, seen by them. With the tests, where the voices come to them through earphones and there are no visual signals, there’s seldom any improvement, not in cases like his.’

Brunetti considered all this, then asked, ‘Doctor, you said that when he returned for the second examination, there had been even more loss of hearing. Have you any idea what could cause a loss like that, so sudden?’

It was clear from his smile that the doctor had been anticipating this question. He folded his hands in front of him, much in the fashion of a television doctor on a soap opera. ‘It could be age, but that really wouldn’t explain a loss as sudden as his. It could be a sudden infection of the ear, but then there would very likely be pain, and he complained of none, or loss of balance, and he said he had not experienced that. It could have been continued use of diuretics, but he said he was taking none.’

‘You discussed all this with him, Doctor?’

‘Of course I did. He was more concerned about it than I’ve ever seen a patient be, and as my patient, he had a right to know.’

‘Certainly.’

Placated, the doctor continued. ‘Another possibility I mentioned to him was antibiotics. He seemed interested in this possibility, so I explained that the dosage would have to have been very heavy.’

‘Antibiotics?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes. One of the side effects, not at all common but possible, is damage to the auditory nerve. But as I said, the dose would have to be massive. I asked him if he was taking any, but he said no. So with all the possibilities excluded, the only reasonable explanation would be his advanced age. As a doctor, I wasn’t satisfied with that, and I still am not.’ He glanced down at his calendar. ‘If I could see him now, enough time has passed so I could at least check the deterioration. If it continued at the same rate as I observed in the second examination, he would be almost entirely deaf by now. Unless, of course, I was mistaken and it was an infection I didn’t notice or that didn’t show up on the tests I conducted.’ He closed the file and asked, ‘Is there any chance that he will return for another examination?’

‘The man is dead,’ Brunetti said flatly.

Nothing registered in the doctor’s eyes. ‘May I ask the cause of death?’ he asked, then hastened to explain: ‘I’d like to know in case there was some sort of infection I overlooked.’

‘He was poisoned.’

‘Poisoned,’ the doctor repeated, then he added, ‘I see, I see.’ He considered that and then asked, strangely diffident, acknowledging that the advantage had passed to Brunetti, ‘And what poison, may I ask?’

‘Cyanide.’

‘Oh.’ He sound disappointed.

‘Is it important, Doctor?’

‘If it had been arsenic, there would have been some hearing loss, of the sort he appeared to have. That is, if it was given over a long period of time. But cyanide. No, I don’t think so.’ He considered this for a moment, opened the file, made a brief note, then drew a heavy horizontal line under what he had just added. ‘Was an autopsy performed? I believe they are obligatory in cases like this.’

‘Yes.’

‘And was any note made of his hearing?’

‘I don’t believe any special search was made.’

‘That’s unfortunate,’ the doctor said, then corrected himself: ‘But it probably wouldn’t have shown anything.’ He closed his eyes, and Brunetti could see him leafing through textbooks in his mind, pausing here and there to read a passage with particular attention. Finally, he opened his eyes and looked across at Brunetti. ‘No, it wouldn’t have been evident.’

Brunetti stood. ‘If you could have your nurse make me a copy of your file, Doctor, I won’t take any more of your time.’

‘Yes, certainly,’ said the doctor, getting to his feet and following Brunetti to the door. In the outer office, he handed the file to his nurse and asked her to make a copy for the commissario, then he turned to one of the patients who had appeared while he was speaking to Brunetti and said, ‘Signora Mosca, you may come in now.’ He nodded to Brunetti and followed the woman into his office, closing the door behind them.

The nurse returned and handed him a copy of the file, still warm from the copying machine. He thanked her and left. In the elevator, which he remembered to take, he opened it and read the final note: ‘Patient dead of cyanide poisoning. Results of suggested treatment unknown.’

* * * *

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

He was home before eight, only to discover that Paola had taken the children to see a film. She had left a note saying that a woman had called twice during the afternoon but had not left her name. He rooted around in the refrigerator, finding only salami and cheese and a plastic bag of black olives. He pulled them all out and set them on the table, then went back to the counter and got himself a bottle of red wine and a glass. He popped an olive into his mouth, poured a glass of wine, then spat the pit into his cupped hand. He looked around for a place to put it while he ate another. And another. Finally, he tossed them into the garbage bag under the sink.

He cut two slices of bread, put some salami between them, and poured a glass of wine. On the table was that week’s issue of Epoca, which Paola must have been reading at the table. He sat down, flipped open the magazine, and took a bite of his sandwich. And the phone rang.

Chewing, he walked slowly into the living room, hoping that the ringing would stop before he got there. On the seventh ring, he picked it up and said his name.

‘Hello. This is Brett,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m sorry to call you at home, but I’d like to talk to you. If that’s possible.’

‘Is it something important?’ he asked, knowing it had to be for her to call but hoping, nevertheless, that it was not.

‘Yes. It’s Flavia.’ He knew that too. ‘She’s had a letter from his lawyer.’ There was no need to ask her whose lawyer. ‘And we talked about the argument she had with him.’ This would have to be Wellauer. Brunetti knew he should volunteer to meet her, but he lacked the will to do it.

‘Guido, are you there?’ He heard the tension in her voice, even as he heard her struggle to keep it calm.

‘Yes. Where are you?’

‘I’m at home. But I can’t see you here.’ Her voice caught at that, and he suddenly wanted to talk to her.

‘Brett, listen to me. Do you know the Giro bar, the one just near Santa Marina?’

‘Yes.’

‘I’ll meet you there in fifteen minutes.’

‘Thank you, Guido.’

‘Fifteen minutes,’ he repeated, and hung up. He scribbled a note for Paola, saying he had to go out, and ate the rest of his sandwich as he went down the steps.

Giro’s was a smoky, dismal place, one of the few bars in the city that stayed open after ten at night. The management had changed hands a few months before, and the new owners had done their best to tart the place up, adding white curtains and slick music. But it had failed to become a hip pub, while ceasing to be a local bar where friends met for a coffee or a drink. It had neither class nor charm, only overpriced wine and too much smoke.

He saw her when he walked in, sitting at a table in the rear, looking at the door and being looked at in her turn by the three or four young men who stood at the bar, drinking small glasses of red wine and talking in voices that were meant to float back and impress her. He felt their eyes on him as he made his way to her table. The warmth of her smile made him glad he had come.

‘Thank you,’ she said simply.

‘Tell me about the letter.’

She looked at the table, where her hands lay, palms down, and she kept them there while she spoke to him. ‘It’s from a lawyer in Milan, the same one who fought the divorce. He says that he has received information that Flavia is leading “an immoral and unnatural life”—those were the words. She showed me the letter. “An immoral and unnatural life.”‘ She looked up at him and tried to smile. ‘I guess that’s me, eh?’ She brought one hand up, embracing emptiness. ‘I don’t believe it,’ she said, shaking her head from side to side. ‘He said that they were going to file a suit against her and ask . . . they would demand that the children be returned to the custody of their father. This was an official notice of their intention.’ She stopped and covered her eyes with one hand. ‘They’re officially giving us notice.’ She moved her hand to her mouth and covered it, as though keeping the words inside. ‘No, not us, just Flavia. Only her—that they’re going to reinstitute proceedings.’

Brunetti sensed the arrival of a waiter and waved him back with an angry hand. When the man had retreated out of hearing, he asked, ‘What else?’ She tried; he could see that she tried to push the words out, but she couldn’t do it. She looked up and gave him a nervous grin, just the sort Chiara produced when she had done something wrong and had to tell him about it.

She muttered something, lowered her head.

‘What, Brett? I didn’t hear.’

She looked at the top of the table. ‘Had to tell someone. No one else.’

‘No one else?’ She had spent much of her life in this city, and there was no one she could tell this to, only the policeman whose job it was to find out if she loved a murderess?

‘No one?’

‘I’ve told no one about Flavia,’ she said, meeting his glance this time. ‘She said she wanted no gossip, that it could damage her career. I’ve never told anyone about her. About us.’ He remembered, in that instant, Padovani’s telling the tale of Paola’s first blush of love for him, of the way she carried on, telling all her friends, talking of nothing else. The world had permitted her not only joy but public joy. And this woman had been in love, there was no question of that, for three years and had told no one. Except him. The policeman.

‘Was your name mentioned in the letter?’

She shook her head.

‘What about Flavia? What did she say?’

Biting her lips, she lifted one hand and pointed it at her heart.

‘She blames you?’

Just like Chiara, she nodded and then dragged the back of her hand under her nose. It came away wet and gleaming. He pulled out his handkerchief and handed it to her. She took it, but seeming not to have any idea what she was supposed to do with it, she sat with it in her hand, tears running down her face, nose dripping. Feeling not a little foolish but remembering that, after all, he was someone’s father, he took the handkerchief and patted at her face with it. She started back in her seat and took the handkerchief from him. She wiped her face, blew her nose, and put it in her pocket, the second he had lost in a week.

‘She said it was my fault, that none of this would have happened if it weren’t for me.’ Her voice was tight and raspy. She grimaced. ‘The awful thing is it’s true. I know it’s not really true, but I can’t make it not be true, the way she says it is.’

‘Did the letter say where the information came from?’

‘No. But it had to be Wellauer.’

‘Good.’

She looked at him in surprise. ‘How can that be good? The lawyer said they were going to bring charges. That would make everything public’

‘Brett,’ he said, voice level and calm. ‘Think about it. If his witness was Wellauer, he’d have to testify. And even if he were still alive, he’d never get himself caught in something like this. It’s just a threat.’

‘But still, if they bring charges ...’

‘All he’s trying to do is scare you. And look how he’s succeeded. No court, even an Italian court, would admit anything on hearsay, and that’s all the letter is, without the person who wrote it to give evidence.’ He watched her as she considered this. ‘There isn’t any evidence, is there?’

‘What do you mean by evidence?’

‘Letters. I don’t know. Conversations.’

‘No, nothing like that. I’ve never written anything, not even from China. And Flavia’s always too busy to write.’

‘What about her friends? Do they know?’

‘I don’t know. It’s not something that people like to talk about.’

‘Then I don’t think you have anything to worry about.’

She tried to smile, tried to convince herself that he had somehow managed to bring her back from grief to safety. ‘Really?’

‘Really,’ he said, and smiled. ‘I spend a lot of time with lawyers, and all this one is trying to do is scare you and threaten you.’

‘Well,’ she began, with a laugh that turned into a hiccup, ‘he certainly managed to do that.’ Then, under her breath, ‘The bastard.’

With that, Brunetti thought it was safe to order two brandies, which the waiter was very quick to bring. When the drinks arrived, she said, ‘She was awful.’

He took a sip and waited for her to say more.

‘She said terrible things.’

‘We all do sometimes.’

‘I don’t,’ she retorted immediately, and he suspected that she didn’t, that she would use language as a tool and not a weapon.

‘She’ll forget it, Brett. People who say such things always do.’

She shrugged, dismissing that as irrelevant. She, clearly, wouldn’t forget.

‘What are you going to do?’ he asked, really interested in her answer.

‘Go home. See if she’s there. See what happens.’

He realized that he had never so much as bothered to learn if Petrelli had her own home in the city, had never initiated an investigation of her behavior, either before or after Wellauer’s death. Was it that easy for him to be misled? Was he so different from the rest of men—show him a pretty face, cry a little, appear to be intelligent and honest, and he’d just cancel out the possibility that you could have killed a man or could love someone who did?

He was frightened by how easily this woman had disarmed him. He pulled some loose bills from his pocket and dropped them on the table. ‘Yes, that’s a good idea,’ he finally said, pushing back his chair and getting to his feet.

He caught her sudden insecurity at seeing him so suddenly change from friend to stranger. He couldn’t even do this well. ‘Come on, I’ll go as far as San Giovanni e Paolo with you.’ Outside, because it was night and because it was habit, he linked his arm with hers as they walked. Neither one of them spoke. He was aware of how much she felt like a woman, of the wider arc of her hips, of how pleasant it was to have her move close against him when they passed people on the narrow streets. All this he realized as he walked her home to her lover.

They said goodbye under the statue of Colleoni, no more than that, just a simple goodbye.

* * * *

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

Brunetti walked back through the quiet city, troubled by what he had just heard. He thought he knew something of love, having learned about it with Paola. Was he so conventional, then, that this woman’s love— for there was no question that it was love—had to remain alien to him because it didn’t conform to his ideas? He dismissed that all as sentimentality at its worst and concentrated, instead, on the question he had asked himself in the bar: whether his affection for this woman, his attraction toward something in her, had blinded him to what he was supposed to be doing. Flavia Petrelli just didn’t seem to be someone who would kill in cold blood. He had no doubt that, in a moment of heat or passion, she would be capable of killing someone; most people are. For her, it would have been a knife in the ribs or a shove down the steps, not poison, administered coolly, almost dispassionately.

Who, then? The sister in Argentina? Had she come back and exacted vengeance for her older sister’s death? After waiting almost half a century? The idea was ludicrous.

Who, then? Not the director, Santore. Not for a friend’s canceled contract. Santore certainly had enough connections, after a lifetime in the theater, to find his friend a place to sing, even if he had the most modest of talents. Even if he didn’t have any talent at all.

That left the widow, but Brunetti’s instincts told him that her grief was real and that her lack of interest in finding the person responsible had nothing to do with protecting herself. If anything, she seemed to want to protect the dead man, and that led Brunetti back where he had begun, needing and wanting to know more about the man’s past, about his character, about the crack in his careful pose of moral rectitude that would have led someone to put poison in his coffee.

Brunetti was uncomfortable with the fact that he didn’t like Wellauer, had none of the compassion and outrage he usually felt for those whose lives had been stolen from them. He couldn’t shake himself of the belief that— he couldn’t express it any more clearly— Wellauer had somehow been involved in his own death. He snorted; everyone is involved in his own death. But no matter how he tried, the idea would neither disappear nor clarify, and so he kept searching for the detail that might have provoked the death, and he kept failing to find it.

The next morning was as dismal as his mood. A thick fog had appeared during the night, seeping up from the waters on which the city was built, not drifting in from the sea. When he stepped out of his front door, cold, misty tendrils wrapped themselves around his face, slipped beneath his collar. He could see clearly for only a few meters, and then vision grew cloudy; buildings slipped into and out of sight, as though they, and not the fog, shifted and moved. Phantoms, clothed in a nimbus of shimmering gray, passed him on the street, floating by as though disembodied. If he turned to follow them with his eyes, he saw them disappear, swallowed up by the dense film that filled the narrow streets and lay upon the waters like a curse. Instinct and long experience told him there would be no boat service on the Grand Canal; the fog was far too thick for that. He walked blindly, telling his feet to lead, allowing decades of familiarity with bridges, streets, and turns to take him over to the Zattere and the landing where both the number 8 and the number 5 stopped on their way to the Giudecca.

Service was limited, and the boats, divorced from any idea of a schedule, appeared randomly out of clouds of fog, radar screens spinning. He waited fifteen minutes before a number 5 loomed up, then slammed heavily into the dock, rocking it and causing a few of the people waiting there to lose their balance and fall into one another. Only the radar saw the crossing; the humans huddled down in the cabin, blind as moles in sand.

When he got off the boat, Brunetti had no choice but to walk forward until he could almost touch the front of the buildings along the waterfront. Keeping them an arm’s length away, he walked toward where he remembered the archway to be. When he got to an opening in the line of facades, he turned into it, not really certain that this was Corte Mosca. He could not read the name, though it was painted on the wall only a foot above his head.

The humidity had worsened the smell of cat; the cold sharpened it. The dead plants in the courtyard now lay under a blanket of fog. He knocked at the door, knocked again more loudly, and heard her call out from the other side. ‘Who is it?’

‘Commissario Brunetti.’

Again he listened to the slow, angry rasp of metal on metal as she pulled back the heavy bolts that secured the door. She pulled it toward her. The sharp increase in humidity forced her to give it an upward tug in the middle of its arc to lift it from the uneven floor. Still wearing the overcoat, though it was now buttoned tight, she didn’t bother to ask him what he wanted. She stepped back enough to allow him to enter, then slammed the door behind him. Again she bolted it securely before turning to lead him down the narrow passageway. In the kitchen, he went and sat near the stove, and she stopped to kick the rags back into place beneath the door.

She shuffled to her chair and collapsed into it, to be immediately enveloped in the waiting scarves and shawls.

‘You’re back.’

‘Yes.’

‘What do you want?’

‘What I came for last time.’

‘And what’s that? I’m an old woman, and I don’t remember things.’ The intelligence in her eyes belied that.

‘I’d like some information about your sister.’

Without bothering to ask which one he meant, she said, ‘What do you want to know?’

‘I don’t want to make you remember your grief, Signora, but I need to know more about Wellauer so that I can understand why he died.’

‘And if he deserved to die?’

‘Signora, we all deserve to die, but no one should get to decide for us when that will be.’

‘Oh, my.’ She chuckled dryly. ‘You’re a real Jesuit, aren’t you? And who decided when my sister would die? And who decided how?’ As suddenly as her anger had flared up, it died, and she asked, ‘What do you want to know?’

‘I know of your relation with him. I know that he was said to be the father of your sister’s child. And I know that she died in Rome in 1939.’

‘She didn’t just die. She bled to death,’ she said in a voice as bleak as blood and death. ‘She bled to death in a hotel room, the room he put her in after the abortion and where he didn’t go to visit her.’ The pain of age struggled in her voice with the pain of memory. ‘When they found her, she had been dead for a day. Perhaps two. And it was another day before I learned about it. I was under house arrest, but friends came to tell me about her. I left the house. I had to strike a policeman to do it, knock him to the ground and kick him in the face to do it, to get away. But I left. And none of them, none of the people who saw me kick him, none of them stopped to help him.

‘I went with my friends. To where she was. Everything that was necessary had already been done, and we buried her the same day. No priest came, because of the way she died, so we just buried her. The grave was very small.’ Her voice trailed away, borne off by the power of memory.

He had seen this happen many times in the past, and he therefore had the sense to remain quiet. The words had started now, and she wouldn’t be able to stop until she had said them all and gotten free of them. He waited, patient, living now in the past with her.

‘We dressed her all in white. And then we buried her, in that tiny grave. That tiny hole. I went back to my home after the funeral, and they arrested me. But since I was already arrested, it didn’t make any difference. I asked them about the policeman, and they said he was all right. I apologized to him when I saw him later. After the war, when the Allies were in the city, he hid in my cellar for a month, until his mother came and took him away. I had no reason to dislike him or want to hurt him.’

‘How did it happen?’

She glanced up at him in confusion, honestly not understanding.

‘Your sister and Wellauer?’

She licked her lips and studied her gnarled hands, just visible among the shawls. ‘I introduced them. He had heard about the way my singing career started, so when they came to Germany to see me sing, he asked me to introduce him to them, to Clara and to little Camilla.’

‘Were you involved with him then?’

‘Do you mean, was he my lover?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, he was. It started almost immediately, when I went up there to sing.’

‘And his affair with your sister?’ he asked.

Her head snapped back as though he had hit her. She leaned forward, and Brunetti thought she was going to strike out at him. Instead she spat. A thin, watery gobbet landed on his thigh and slowly sank into the fabric of his trousers. He was too stunned to wipe it away.

‘Damn you. You’re all the same. Still all the same,’ she shouted in a wild, cracked voice. ‘You look at something, and you see the filth you want to see.’ Her voice grew louder, and she repeated what he had said, mockingly. ‘His affair with my sister. His affair.’ She leaned closer to him, eyes narrowed with hatred, and whispered, ‘My sister was twelve years old. Twelve years old. We buried her in her First Communion dress; she was still that small. She was a little girl.

‘He raped her, Mr. Policeman. He didn’t have an affair with my little sister. He raped her. The first time, and then the other times, when he threatened her, threatened to tell me about her, about what a bad girl she was. And then, when she was pregnant, he sent us both back to Rome. And I didn’t know anything about it. For he was still my lover. Making love to me and then raping my little baby sister. Do you see, Mr. Policeman, why I’m glad he’s dead and why I say he deserved to die?’ Her face was transformed by the rage she had carried for half a century.

‘Do you want to know it all, Mr. Policeman?’

Brunetti nodded, seeing it, understanding.

‘He came back to Rome, to conduct that Norma there with me. And she told him she was pregnant. She was too frightened to tell us, too afraid that we would tell her what a bad girl she was. So he arranged the abortion, and he took her there, and then he took her to that hotel. And he left her there, and she bled to death. And when she died, she was still only twelve years old.’

He saw her hand move out of its wrapping of shawls and scarves, saw it swing up toward him. He did little more than move his head back, and the blow missed him. This maddened her, and she slammed her gnarled hand against the wooden arm of the chair and shrieked with the pain of it.

She lunged out of her chair, sending shawls and blankets slithering to the floor. ‘Get out of my house, you pig. You pig.’

Brunetti leapt away from her, tripping over the leg of his chair, and stumbled down the corridor before her. Her hand remained raised in front of her, and he fled from screaming rage. She stopped, panting, while he fumbled with the bolts, pulling them back. In the courtyard, he could still hear her voice as she screamed at him, at Wellauer, at the world. She slammed and bolted the door, but still she raged on. He stood shivering in the fog, shaken by the anger he had raised in her. He forced himself to take deep breaths, to forget that first instant when he had felt real fear of the woman, fear of the tremendous impulse of memory that had pulled her up from her chair and toward him.

* * * *

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

He had to wait almost half an hour at the boat stop, and by the time the number 5 came, he was thoroughly chilled. There had been no change in the atmosphere, so during the trip back across the laguna to San Zaccaria, he huddled in the barely heated inner cabin and looked out on damp whiteness that clawed at the misty windows. Arrived at the Questura, he walked up to his office, ignoring the few people who greeted him. Inside, he closed the door but kept his coat on, waiting for the chill to pass from his body. Images crowded into his mind. He saw the old woman, a fury, screaming her way down the damp corridor; he saw the three sisters in the artful V of their pose; and he saw the little girl lying dead in her First Communion dress. And he saw it all, saw the pattern, saw the plan.

He finally took off his coat and tossed it on the back of a chair. He went to his desk and started to search through the papers littered across its top. He set files and folders aside, hunting until he found the green-covered autopsy report.

On the second page, he found what he remembered would be there: Rizzardi had made note of the small bruises on arm and buttock, listing them only as ‘traces of subcutaneous bleeding, cause unknown.’

Neither of the two doctors he had spoken to had mentioned giving Wellauer any sort of injection. But a man who was married to a doctor would hardly have had to make an appointment to receive an injection. Nor did Brunetti believe he had to have an appointment to speak to that doctor.

He returned to the pile of papers and found the report from the German police and read through it until he found something that had tugged at his memory. Elizabeth Wellauer’s first husband, Alexandra’s father, not only taught at the University of Heidelberg but was chairman of the Department of Pharmacology. She had stopped to see him on her way to Venice.

* * * *

‘Yes?’ Elizabeth Wellauer said as she opened the door for him.

‘Again I apologize for disturbing you, Signora, but there is new information, and I’d like to ask you some more questions.’

‘About what?’ she asked, making no move to open the door any further.

‘The results of the autopsy on your husband,’ he explained, certain that this would be enough to give him entry. With a sharp, graceless motion, she pulled the door back and stood aside. Silently, she led him to the room where they had had their two previous interviews and pointed to what he was beginning to think of as his chair. He waited while she lit a cigarette, a gesture so habitual with her that he now paid almost no attention to it.

‘At the time of the autopsy’—he began with no preliminaries—’the pathologist said that he found signs of bruising on your husband’s body that might have been caused by injections of some sort. The same thing is mentioned in his report.’ He paused, giving her the opportunity to volunteer an explanation. When none came, he continued. ‘Dr. Rizzardi said that they might have come from anything: drugs, vitamins, antibiotics. He said that the pattern of the bruises was inconsistent with your husband’s having given them to himself—he was right-handed, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes.’

‘The bruises on the arm were on the right side as well, so he couldn’t have given himself those injections.’ He allowed himself a minimal pause. ‘If they were injections, that is.’ He paused again. ‘Signora, did you give your husband these injections?’

She ignored him, so he repeated the question. ‘Signora, did you give your husband these injections?’ No response. ‘Signora, do you understand my question? Did you give your husband these injections?’

‘They were vitamins,’ she finally answered.

‘What kind?’

‘B -twelve.’

‘Where did you get them? From your former husband?’

The question clearly surprised her. She shook her head in strong denial. ‘No; he had nothing to do with it. I wrote a prescription for them while we were still in Berlin. Helmut had complained of feeling tired, so I suggested that he try a series of B-twelve injections. He had done so in the past, and they had helped him then.’

‘How long ago did you begin with the injections, Signora?’

‘I don’t remember exactly. About six weeks ago.’

‘Did he seem to improve?’

‘What?’

‘Your husband. Did he improve as a result of these injections. Did they have the effect you intended?’

She glanced up at him sharply when he asked this second question, but answered calmly. ‘No, they didn’t seem to help. So after six or seven, I decided to discontinue them.’

‘Did you decide that, or did your husband, Signora?’

‘What difference does it make? They didn’t work, so he stopped taking them.’

‘I think it makes a great deal of difference, Signora, who decided to stop them. And I think you know that.’

‘Then I suppose he decided.’

‘Where did you get the prescription filled? Here in Italy?’

‘No; I’m not licensed to practice here. It was in Berlin, before we came down here.’

‘I see. Then the pharmacist would surely have a record of it.’

‘Yes, I suppose he would. But I don’t remember where I had it filled.’

‘You mean you just wrote a prescription and chose a pharmacy at random?’

‘Yes.’

‘How long have you lived in Berlin, Signora?’

‘Ten years. I don’t see why that’s important.’

‘Because it seems strange to me that a doctor would live in a city for ten years and not have a permanent pharmacy. Or that the Maestro wouldn’t have a pharmacy where he usually went.’

Her response was just a second too long in coming. ‘He did. We both do. But that day, I wasn’t at home when I wrote the prescription, so I just took it to the first pharmacy I saw and asked them to fill it.’

‘But surely you remember where it was. It wasn’t so long ago.’

She looked out the window, concentrating, trying to remember. She turned to him and said, ‘I’m sorry, but I can’t remember where it was.’

‘That’s no matter, Signora,’ he said dismissively. ‘It for us.’ She glanced up at this, surprised, or something more. ‘And I’m sure they’ll be able to find out what the prescription was, what sort of—he paused for just a second before saying the last word—’vitamin.’

Though her cigarette was still burning in the ashtray, she reached for the package, then changed the motion and simply pushed the pack around with one finger, giving it a precise quarter turn each time. ‘Shall we stop this now?’ she asked, voice neutral. ‘I’ve never liked games, and you aren’t very good at them, either.’

Through the years, he had seen this happen more times than he could count, seen people reach the point they couldn’t go beyond, the point where they would, however reluctantly, tell the truth. Like a city under siege: their outer defenses gave in first, then came the first retreat, the first concession to the approaching enemy. Depending upon the defender, the struggle would be fast or slow, bogged down at this rampart or that; there could be a counterattack, or there could be none. But the first motion was always the same, the almost relieved shrugging off of the lie, which led, in the end, to the final opening of the gates to truth.

‘It wasn’t a vitamin. You know that, don’t you?’ she asked.

He nodded.

‘And do you know what it was?’

‘No, I don’t know what it was, not exactly. But I believe it was an antibiotic. I don’t know which one, but I don’t think that’s important.’

‘No, it’s not important.’ She looked up at him with a small smile, its sadness centered in her eyes. ‘Netilmicina. I believe that’s the name it’s sold under here in Italy. The prescription was filled at the Ritter Pharmacy, about three blocks from the entrance to the zoo. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding it.’

‘What did you tell your husband it was?’

‘Just as I told you, B-twelve.’

‘How many injections did you give him?’

‘Six, at six-day intervals.’

‘How soon was it before he began to notice the effect?’

‘A few weeks. We weren’t speaking much to each other then, but he still saw me as his doctor, so first he asked me about his fatigue. And then he asked me about his hearing.’

‘And what did you tell him?’

‘I reminded him of his age, and then I told him it might be a temporary side effect of the vitamin. That was stupid of me. I have medical books in the house, and he could easily have gone and checked what I told him.’

‘Did he?’

‘No, no, he didn’t. He trusted me. I was his doctor, you see.’

‘Then how did he learn? Or how did he begin to suspect?’

‘He went to see Erich about it. You know that, or you wouldn’t be here now, asking these questions. And after we were here, he began to wear the glasses with the hearing aid, so I knew he must have gone to see another doctor. When I suggested another injection, he refused. He knew by then, of course, but I don’t know how he found out. From the other doctor?’ she asked.

Again he nodded.

She gave him the same sad smile.

‘And then what happened, Signora?’

‘We had come down here in the middle of the treatment. In fact, I gave him the last injection in this room. Even then he might have known but refused to believe what he knew.’ She closed her eyes and rubbed at them with her hands. ‘It becomes very complicated, this idea of when he knew everything.’

‘When did you finally realize that he knew?’

‘It must have been about two weeks ago. In a way, I’m surprised it took him so long, but that was because we were so much in love.’ She looked across at him when she said this. ‘He knew how much I loved him. So he couldn’t believe that I’d do this to him.’ She smiled bitterly. ‘There were times, after I started, when I couldn’t believe it, either, when I remembered how much I loved him.’

‘When did you realize that he knew what the injections were?’

‘I was in here one night, reading. I hadn’t gone to the rehearsal that day, the way I usually did. It was too painful, listening to the music, to the bad chords, the entrances that came too soon or too late, and knowing that I’d done that, done it as surely as if I’d taken the baton from his hands and waved it crazily around in the air.’ She stopped speaking, as though listening to the discordant music of those rehearsals.

‘I was in here, reading, or trying to read, and I heard—’ She looked up at the sound of the word and said, like an actor delivering an aside in a crowded theater, ‘My God, it’s hard to avoid that word, isn’t it?’ and slipped back into her role. ‘He was early, had come back early from the theater. I heard him come down the hall and then open the door. He was still wearing his coat, and he was carrying the score of Traviata. It was one of his favorite operas. He loved to conduct it. He came in and stood there, just over there,’ she said, pointing to a space where no one stood now. ‘He looked at me, and he asked me, “You did this, didn’t you?”‘ She continued looking at the door, waiting for the words to be said again.

‘Did you answer him?’

‘I owed him that much, didn’t I?’ she asked, voice calm and reasonable. ‘Yes, I told him I’d done it.’

‘What did he do?’

‘He left. Not the house, just the room. And then we managed not to see each other again, not until the prima.’

‘Did he threaten you in any way? Say that he was going to go to the police? Punish you?’

She seemed to be honestly puzzled by his question. ‘What good would that have done? If you’ve spoken to the doctor, you know that the damage is permanent. There was nothing that the police could do, there was nothing that anyone could do, to get his hearing back. And there was no way he could punish me.’ She paused long enough to light another cigarette. ‘Except by doing what he did,’ she said.

‘And what is that?’ Brunetti asked.

She chided him openly. ‘If you know as much as you. seem to know, then you must know that as well.’

He met her glance, keeping his face expressionless, ‘I still have two questions, Signora. The first is an honest question that I ask out of ignorance. And the second is simpler, and I think I know the answer already.’

‘Then start with the second one,’ she said.

‘It concerns your husband. Why would he try to punish you in this way?’

‘By “in this way,” do you mean by making it look as if I had murdered him?’

‘Yes.’

He watched as she tried to speak, saw the words begin to form themselves and then drop, forgotten. At last she said, voice low, ‘He saw himself as above the law, above the law the rest of us had to follow. I think he believed that it was his genius that gave him this power, this right. And God knows we all encouraged him in that. We made him a god of music, and we fell down and worshiped him.’ She stopped and looked across at him. ‘I’m sorry; I’m not answering your question. You wanted to know if he was capable of trying to make it look as if I was responsible. But you see,’ she said, raising her hands to him, as if she wanted to pull understanding from him, ‘I was responsible. So he did have a right to do this to me. It would have been less horrible if I had killed the man; that would have left the god untouched.’ She broke off, but Brunetti said nothing.

‘I’m trying to tell you how he would have seen it. I knew him so well, knew how he felt, what he thought.’ Again she paused, then she continued with her attempt to make him understand. ‘Something strange occurred to me after he died and I began to realize how careful he had been, inviting me back, letting me into the dressing room. It seemed to me then, and it still does now, that he had a right to do what he did, to punish me. In a way, he was his music. And I killed that instead of killing him. He was dead. Before he died, he was already dead. I’d killed his spirit. I saw it during the rehearsals, when he peered over those glasses and tried to hear through his useless hearing aid what was happening to the music. And he couldn’t hear. He couldn’t hear.’ She shook her head at something she didn’t understand. ‘He didn’t have to punish me, Mr. Brunetti. That’s been done. I’ve spent my time in hell.’

She folded her hands in her lap and continued. ‘Then, the night of the prima, he told me what he was going to do.’ When she saw Brunetti’s surprise, she explained: ‘No, he didn’t tell me, not like that, not clearly. I didn’t realize it at the time.’

‘Was this when you went backstage?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes.’

‘What happened?’

‘At first, he didn’t say anything when he saw. me at the door. Just looked up at me. But then he must have seen someone in the corridor behind me. Perhaps he thought they were coming toward the dressing room.’ She bowed her head wearily. ‘I don’t know. All he said was something that sounded rehearsed: what Tosca says when she sees Cavaradossi’s body— “Finire cosi, finire cosi.” I didn’t understand then—”to finish like this, like this”—but I should have. She says it just before she kills herself, but I didn’t understand. Not then.’ Brunetti was surprised to see a grin of near amusement flash across her face. ‘That was very like him, to be dramatic at the last minute. Melodramatic, really. Later, I was surprised that he would take his last words from an opera by Puccini.’ She looked up, serious. ‘I hope that doesn’t sound strange. But I thought he would want to be remembered quoting something by Mozart. Or Wagner.’ He watched her struggle with mounting hysteria. He stood and went over to a cabinet that stood between the two windows and poured her a small glass of brandy. He stood for a moment, glass in hand, and looked out at the bell tower of San Marco. Then he went back to her and handed her the glass.

Not really conscious of what it was, she took it and sipped at it. He returned to the window and continued his observation of the bell tower. When he was sure it was the way it had always been, he resumed his seat opposite her.

‘Will you tell me why you did it, Signora?’

Her surprise was genuine. ‘If you were clever enough to find out how I did it, then surely you must know why.’

He shook his head. ‘I won’t say what I think, because if I’m wrong, I’ll dishonor the man.’ Even as he spoke the words, he knew how much he was himself sounding like a Puccini libretto.

‘That means you do understand, doesn’t it?’ she asked, and leaned forward to place the still-full glass next to the package of cigarettes.

‘Your daughter, Signora?’

She bit at her upper lip and gave a nod so small as to be imperceptible. When she released her lip, he saw the white marks where she had bitten into it. She extended her hand toward the cigarettes, pulled it back, caught it in the other, and said in a voice so low he had to lean forward to hear her, ‘I had no idea,’ and shook her head at the ugliness of it. ‘Alex is not a musical child. She didn’t even know who he was when I started seeing him. When I told her that I wanted to marry him, she seemed interested. Then, when I told her that he had a farm and that he had horses, she was very interested. That’s all she ever cared about, horses, like the heroine in an English book for children. Horses and books about horses.

‘She was eleven when we were married. They got on well. After she learned who he was—I think her classmates must have told her—she seemed a little frightened of him, but that passed. Helmut was very good with children.’ She stopped and grimaced at the grotesque irony of what she had just said.

And then. And then. And then,’ she repeated, unable to free herself from the grooves of memory. ‘This summer, I had to go back to Budapest. To see my mother, who isn’t well. Helmut said that everything would be all right while I was gone. I took a cab, and I went to the airport. But the airport was closed. I don’t remember why. A strike. Or trouble with the customs officers.’ She looked up then. ‘It really doesn’t matter why it was closed, does it?’

‘No, Signora.’

‘There was a long delay, more than an hour, and then we were told that there would be no flights until the following morning. So I took another cab and went home. It wasn’t very late, not even midnight, so I didn’t bother to call and tell him I was coming back. I went home and let myself into the house. There were no lights on, so I went upstairs. Alex has always been a restless sleeper, so I went to her room to check on her. To check on her.’ She looked up at him, expressionless.

‘When I got to the top of the stairs, I could hear her. I thought she was having a nightmare. It wasn’t a scream, just a noise. Like an animal. Just a noise. Only that. And I went to her room. He was there. With her.

‘This is the strange part,’ she said quite calmly, as though she were sharing a puzzle with him, asking him what he thought of it. ‘I don’t remember what happened. No, I know that he left, but I don’t remember what I said to him or he said to me. I stayed with Alex that night.

‘Later, days later, he told me that Alex had had a nightmare.’ She laughed in disgust and disbelief. ‘That’s all he said. We never talked about it. I sent Alex to her grandparents. To school there. And we never talked about it. Oh, how modern we were, how civilized. Of course, we stopped sleeping together, and stopped being with each other. And Alex was gone.’

‘Do her grandparents know what happened?’

A quick shake of her head. ‘No; I told them what I told everyone, that I didn’t want her schooling interrupted when we came to Venice.’

‘When did you decide? To do what you did?’ Brunetti asked.

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. One day, the idea was simply there. The only thing that was really important to him, the only thing he really loved, was his music, so I decided that was the thing I’d take away from him. At the time, it seemed fair.’

‘And does it now?’

She considered this for a long time before she answered. ‘Yes, it still does seem fair. Everything that’s happened seems fair. But that’s not the point, is it?’

To him, there was no point in any of it. No point, and no message, and no lesson. It was no more than human evil and the terrible waste that comes from it.

Her voice was suddenly tired. ‘What happens now?’

‘I don’t know,’ he answered honestly. ‘Do you have any idea where he got the cyanide?’

She shrugged her shoulders, as though she thought the question irrelevant. ‘It could have been anywhere,’ she said. ‘He has a friend who is a chemist, or it could have been one of his friends from the old days.’ When she saw Brunetti’s puzzled glance, she explained. ‘The war. He made a lot of powerful friends then, and many of them are important men now.’

‘Then the rumors about him are true?’

‘I don’t know. Before we were married, he said they were all lies, and I believed him. I don’t believe it anymore.’ She said this bitterly, then forced herself back to her original explanation. ‘I don’t know where he got it, but I know it would have been no problem for him.’ Her sad smile returned. ‘I had access to it, of course. He knew that.’

‘Access? How?’

‘We didn’t come down here together. We didn’t want to travel together. I stopped in Heidelberg for two days on the way down, to see my former husband.’ Who, Brunetti recalled, taught pharmacology.

‘Did the Maestro know that you were there?’

She nodded. ‘My first husband and I remained friends, and we hold property together.’

‘Did you tell him what happened?’

‘Of course not,’ she said, raising her voice for the first time.

‘Where did you see him?’

‘At the university. I met him at his laboratory. He’s working on a new drug to minimize the effects of Parkinson’s. He showed me through the laboratory, and then we went to lunch together.’

‘Did the Maestro know this?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I might have told him. I probably did. It was very difficult for us to find anything to talk about. This was a neutral topic, so we were glad to have it to talk about.’

‘Did you and the Maestro ever talk about what happened?’

She couldn’t bring herself to ask what he meant; she knew. ‘No.’

‘Did you ever talk about the future? What you were going to do?’

‘No, not directly.’

‘What does that mean?’

‘One day, when I was coming in and he was going to rehearsal, he said, “Just wait until after Traviata.” I thought he meant that we would be able to decide what to do then. But I had already decided to leave him. I’d written to two hospitals, one in Budapest and one in Augsburg, and I’d talked to my former husband about his help in finding me a position in a hospital.’

Either way, Brunetti realized, she was trapped. There was evidence that she had been planning a separate future, even before he died. And now she was a widow, and enormously rich. And even if the information about her daughter was made public, there was evidence that she had stopped on the way to Venice to talk to the girl’s father, a man who surely had access to the poison that had killed the Maestro.

No Italian judge would convict a woman for what she had done, not if she explained about her daughter. Given the evidence Brunetti had—Signora Santina’s testimony about her sister, the interviews with the doctors, even the suicide of his second wife at a time when their daughter was twelve years old—there was no court in Italy that would bring a charge of murder against her. But all of this would hang upon the testimony of the girl, upon the tall girl Alex, in love with horses and still a child.

Brunetti knew that this woman would never let that testimony take place, regardless of the consequences if she did not. Further, he knew that he would never allow it to happen, either.

And without the testimony of the daughter? There was the obvious coolness between them, her easy access to the poison, her presence in the dressing room that night, wildly out of keeping with what they had always done. All that had the appearance of truth. If she was charged only with having given him injections that she knew would destroy his hearing, she would be freed of the accusation of murder, but this scenario would work only if her daughter’s name was mentioned. He knew that was impossible.

‘Before he died, before any of this ever happened,’ he began, leaving it to her to interpret what he meant by ‘this,’ ‘did your husband ever speak about his age; was he afraid of a physical decline?’

She paused for a while before she answered him, puzzled by the irrelevance of his question. ‘Yes, we talked about it. Not often, but once or twice. Once, when we’d all had more than enough to drink, we talked about it with Erich and Hedwig.’

‘And what did he say?’

‘It was Erich, if I remember correctly. He said that in the future, if anything should ever stop him from working—not just stop him from doing surgery but make him be, well, not himself anymore, not able to be a doctor in any way—he said he was a doctor and knew how to take care of that himself.

‘It was very late, and we were all very tired, so perhaps that made the conversation more serious than it might have been. He said that, and then Helmut said that he understood him perfectly and would do the same thing.’

‘Would Dr. Steinbrunner remember this conversation?’

‘I think so. It was only this summer. The night of our anniversary.’

‘Did your husband ever say anything more specific than that?’ Before she could answer, he completed the question: ‘When there were other people present?’

‘Do you mean, when there were witnesses?’

He nodded.

‘No, not that I can remember But that night, the conversation was so serious that it was clear to us all just what they meant.’

‘Will your friends remember it as meaning what you say it did?’

‘Yes, I think so. I don’t think they approve of me, not as a wife for Helmut.’ After she said that, she looked up at him suddenly, eyes wide with horror. ‘Do you think they knew?’

Brunetti shook his head, hoping to assure her that, no, they didn’t know, couldn’t have known something like that about him and remained silent. But he had no reason to believe that. He veered away and asked, ‘Can you remember any other time your husband might have made reference to that subject?’

‘There were the letters he sent me before we were married.’

‘What did he say?’

‘He was joking, trying to dismiss the difference in our ages. He said that I’d never be burdened with a feeble, helpless old husband, that he’d see that this never happened.’

‘Do you still have those letters?’

She bowed her head and said softly, ‘Yes. I still have everything he ever gave me, all the letters he sent me.’

‘I still don’t understand how you could do it,’ he said, not shocked or outraged; simply puzzled.

‘I don’t know anymore, either. I’ve thought about it so much that I’ve probably invented new reasons for it, new justifications. To punish him? Or maybe I wanted to weaken him so much that he’d be absolutely, completely dependent on me. Or maybe I knew that it would force him to do what he did. I simply don’t know anymore, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand why.’ He thought she had finished, but she added, voice icy, ‘But I’m glad I did it, and I’d do it again.’

He looked away from her then. Because Brunetti was not a lawyer, he had no idea of the nature of the crime. Assault? Theft? If you steal a man’s hearing, what do you steal from him? And is the crime worse if the victim’s hearing is more important to him than other people’s hearing is to them?

‘Signora, do you believe he invited you backstage to make it look as if you had killed him?’

‘I don’t know, but he might have. He believed in justice. But if he wanted that, he could have arranged things to look far worse for me. I’ve thought about this, since that night. Maybe he left it like this so that I wouldn’t ever be sure what he intended. And this way, he wouldn’t be responsible for whatever happened to me because of it.’ She gave a small smile. ‘He was a very complex man.’

Brunetti leaned toward her and placed his hand on her arm. ‘Signora, listen very carefully to what happened during this interview,’ he said, deciding, thinking of Chiara and deciding. ‘We talked about the way your husband had confided in you his fears about his growing deafness.’

Startled, she began to protest. ‘But—’

He cut her off before she could say anything else. ‘How he told you of his deafness, how he feared it. That he had gone to his friend Erich in Germany and then to another doctor, in Padova, and that both of them had told him that he was growing deaf. That this explains his behavior here, his obvious depression. And that you told me you were afraid that he had killed himself when he realized that his career was over, that he had no future as a musician.’ His voice sounded as tired as he felt.

When she started to protest, he said only, ‘Signora, the only person who would suffer because of the truth is the only innocent one.’

She was silenced by the truth of this. ‘How do I do all this?’

He had no idea how to advise her, never before having helped a criminal invent an alibi or deny the evidence of a crime. ‘The important thing is that you told me about his deafness. From that, everything will follow.’ She looked at him, still puzzled, and he spoke to her as he would to a dull child who refused to understand a lesson. ‘You told me this the second time I spoke to you, the morning I came to visit you here. You told me that he had been having serious trouble with his hearing and had spoken to his friend Erich.’ She began to protest, and he could have shaken her for her dullness. ‘He also told you he had been to another doctor. All of this will be in the report of our meeting.’

‘Why are you doing this?’ she finally asked.

He dismissed the question with a gesture.

‘Why are you doing this?’ she repeated.

‘Because you didn’t kill him.’

‘And the rest? What I did do to him?’

‘There’s no way you can be made to suffer for that without making your daughter suffer even more.’

She winced away from this truth. ‘What else do I have to do?’ she asked, obedient now.

‘I’m not sure yet. Just remember that we-talked about this the first morning I came here to see you.’

She started to speak and then stopped.

‘What?’ he asked.

‘Nothing, nothing.’

He got suddenly to his feet. It made him uncomfortable, sitting here and plotting. ‘That’s all, then. I imagine you’ll have to testify at the inquest, when it happens.’

‘Will you be there?’

‘Yes. I’ll have filed my report by then and given my opinion.’

‘And what will that be?’

‘It will be the truth, Signora.’

Her voice was level. ‘I don’t know what the truth is anymore.’

‘I will tell the procuratore that my investigation revealed that your husband committed suicide when he realized that he was going deaf. Just as it was.’

‘Yes,’ she echoed. ‘Just as it was.’

He left her sitting in the room where she had given her husband the last injection.

* * * *

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

At eight the next morning, just as ordered, Brunetti placed his report on Vice-Questore Patta’s desk, where it sat until his superior officer arrived at his office, just past eleven. When, after returning three personal phone calls and reading through the financial newspaper, the vice-questore brought himself to read the report, he found it both interesting and illuminating:

The results of my investigation lead me to conclude that Maestro Helmut Wellauer took his own life as a result of his growing deafness.

1. During the last months, his hearing had deteriorated to the point where he had less than 40 percent of normal hearing. (See attached interviews with Drs. Steinmbrunner and Treport; and attached medical records.)

2. This loss of hearing resulted in increasing inability to function as a conductor. (See attached interviews with Prof. Rezzonico and Signore Traverse)

3. The Maestro was in a depressed state of mind. (See attached interviews with Signora Wellauer and Signorina Breddes.)

4. He had access to the poison used. (See attached interviews with Signora Wellauer and Dr. Steinbrunner.)

5. He was known to favor the idea of suicide, should he arrive at a point in which he could no longer function as a musician (See attached telephone interview with Dr. Steinbrunner. Personal correspondence to follow from Germany.)

Given the overwhelming weight of this information, plus the logical exclusion of suspects who might have had either motive or opportunity to commit a crime, I can conclude only that the Maestro accepted suicide as an alternative to deafness.

Respectfully submitted,

Guido Brunetti

Commissario of Police

‘I suspected this from the beginning, of course,’ Patta said to Brunetti, who had answered his superior’s request that he come to his office to discuss the case. ‘But I didn’t want to say anything at the beginning and thus prejudice your investigation.’

‘That was very generous of you, sir,’ Brunetti said. ‘And very intelligent.’ He studied the facade of the church of San Lorenzo, partof which was visible beyond his superior’s shoulder.

‘It was unthinkable that anyone who loved music could have done such a thing.’ It was evident that Patta included himself among that number. ‘His wife says here . . .,’ he began, looking down at the report. Brunetti studied, this time, the small diamond tie tack in the form of a rose that Patta wore in his red tie. ‘. . . that he was “visibly disturbed.”‘ This reference convinced Brunetti that Patta had indeed read the report, an event of surpassing rarity. ‘Revolting as the behavior of those two women is,’ Patta continued, making a small moue of disgust at something that did not appear in the report, ‘it is unlikely that either of them would have the psychological profile of a murderer.’ Whatever that meant.

‘And the widow—impossible, even if she is a foreigner.’ Then, even though Brunetti had not asked for clarification of the remark, Patta gave it. ‘No woman who is a mother could have done something as cold-blooded as this. There’s an instinct in them that prevents such things.’ He smiled at the brilliance of his perception, and Brunetti, too, smiled, delighted to hear it.

‘I’m having lunch with the mayor today,’ Patta said, with a studied casualness which relegated that fact to the events of daily life, ‘and I’ll explain the results of our investigation to him.’ Hearing that plural, Brunetti was in no doubt that by lunchtime, the investigation would have slipped back into the singular, but it would not be in the third person.

‘Will that be all, sir?’ he asked politely.

Patta glanced up from the report, which he appeared to be committing to memory. ‘Yes, yes. That will be all.’

‘And the procuratore? Will you inform him too?’ Brunetti asked, hoping that Patta would insist upon this as well, adding the weight of his office to any recommendation for nonprosecution that would be passed to the chief magistrate.

‘Yes, I’ll see to that.’ Brunetti watched as Patta considered the possibility of inviting the chief magistrate to lunch with the mayor, saw him reject it. ‘I’ll take care of that when I get back from lunch with His Honor.’ That, Brunetti reflected, would give him two scenes to play.

Brunetti got to his feet. ‘I’ll get back to my office, then, sir.’

‘Yes, yes,’ Patta muttered absently, still reading the page in front of him.

‘And, Commissario,’ Patta said from behind him.

‘Yes, sir,’ Brunetti said, turning and smiling as he set up the conditions of today’s bet.

‘Thanks for your help.’

‘It was nothing, sir,’ he said, thinking that a dozen red roses would do.

* * * *

Seven months later, a letter arrived, addressed to Brunetti at the Questura. His attention was caught by the stamps, two lilac rectangles with a delicate tracery of calligraphy flowing down their sides. Below each was printed, ‘People’s Republic of China.’ He knew no one there.

There was no return address on the envelope. He tore it open and from it slid a Polaroid photo of a jeweled crown. A sense of scale was missing, but if it had been designed for a human to wear, then the stones that encircled the central jewel must have been the size of pigeons’ eggs. Rubies? No other stone he could think of so resembled blood. The central stone, massive and square-cut, could only have been a diamond.

He flipped the photo over to the back and read: ‘Here is a part of the beauty I have returned to.’ It was signed, ‘B. Lynch.’ There was no other message. Nothing else was in the envelope.