Drawing Conclusions

9

As they emerged into the sunlight, Vianello said, ‘I never know what to do in situations like this.’

‘Situations like what?’ Brunetti asked, starting across the campo and back towards the Questura.

‘When someone pretends to know less than they do.’

Brunetti turned to the left and towards the church. ‘Hmmm,’ he muttered, letting Vianello know that he agreed.

‘All that talk about honesty,’ Vianello said. He stopped at the top of the bridge and rested his forearms on the parapet. He stared down at a boat moored to the side of the canal and continued, ‘It’s clear she knows – or suspects – more than she’s willing to let on. She’s a nun, so she probably believes it’s not right to raise unfounded suspicions or pass on gossip.’ Then, in a lower voice, he added, ‘Though I can’t imagine a convent where that doesn’t happen.’

Brunetti let that pass, waiting.

‘She’s a southerner,’ Vianello said. ‘And a nun.’ Brunetti grew alert to hear just what sort of generalization was coming. Vianello went on, ‘So that means she wanted us to know or suspect something but couldn’t bring herself to say it directly.’

Brunetti had to agree. Who knew what went on the mind of a nun, much less one from the South? They drank discretion with the first taste of mother’s milk and grew up with frequent examples of the consequences of indiscretion. He remembered the recent shock-video of a very ordinary, very casual, daytime murder in Naples: one shot, then the second to the back of the head, while people continued about their business. No one saw anything; no one noticed a thing.

It was hard-wired into them: to talk indiscreetly or say anything that might cause suspicion was to endanger not only yourself but everyone in your family. This was the Truth, no matter how many years a person had spent in a convent in Venice. Brunetti was as likely to sprout angel wings and fly off to Paradise as Madre Rosa was to speak openly to the police.

‘She made truth sound like a handicap, didn’t she?’ Vianello shoved himself away from the parapet. He raised his arms and let them fall to his sides in a gesture of complete confusion, but before Brunetti could speak, they were interrupted by the ringing of his phone.

‘Guido? It’s me,’ Rizzardi said.

‘Thanks for calling.’

Wasting no time, Rizzardi went on: ‘The mark on her throat,’ he said, but then stopped. When Brunetti said nothing, the pathologist continued, ‘It could be a thumbprint.’

Brunetti tried to imagine where the other fingers could have been when the thumbs were on her throat, but he permitted himself only, ‘Ah.’ And then, “Could be”?’

Rizzardi ignored the provocation and continued. ‘There are three faint marks that are probably bruises on the back of her left shoulder, and two on her right. And another one – barely visible – in front.’

Brunetti tilted his head to the side and trapped the phone against his shoulder. He raised his cupped hands in front of him, then he positioned his thumbs and bent his hands into claws. ‘Are the marks in the right places?’ he asked, not thinking it necessary, with Rizzardi, to say more than that.

‘Yes,’ the pathologist answered, then slipped back into his usual mode to continue, ‘They are not inconsistent with her having been grabbed from the front.’

‘“Not inconsistent”?’ Brunetti asked.

Ignoring this, Rizzardi asked, ‘You remember the cardigan she was wearing?’

‘Yes,’ Brunetti answered.

‘It would have cushioned a lot of the force: that could explain why the marks are so diffused.’

‘Could it be anything else?’ Brunetti asked, wondering if Rizzardi’s caution was like an accent, and he would never lose it.

‘In the mouth of a clever defence attorney, those marks on her back,’ Rizzardi began, his speculation about a possible court case sufficient to tell Brunetti how convinced he was that Signora Altavilla had been the victim of violence, regardless of how unwilling he was to say it directly, ‘could have happened when she fell against a radiator, or she had been trying to give herself a back massage and squeezed too hard, or she lost her balance and fell against the door when she was letting herself into the apartment-’

Brunetti cut him off. ‘Ettore, don’t tell me what it could be. Tell me what it is.’

Rizzardi behaved as if Brunetti had not spoken and went on, ‘I know lawyers and you know lawyers who would argue she fell against the door five times, Guido.’

Unable to bridle his anger, Brunetti snapped, ‘I can figure out for myself what could have happened. For God’s sake, just tell me what did happen.’ There followed a long pause, during which Brunetti considered that he might have gone too far. People did not talk to Rizzardi that way.

‘Someone grabbed her from the front, and it’s possible they shook her,’ Rizzardi said with a clarity that surprised Brunetti. No hesitation, no rhetorical self-protection, no compromise. When had the pathologist ever been this clear?

‘Why do you say that?’

‘There’s something else.’

‘What?’

‘There’s a very faint injury to her third and fourth vertebrae. And some haemorrhaging in the muscles and ligaments around them.’

Brunetti refused to ask, bent on forcing Rizzardi to say it.

‘So someone could have shaken her.’

‘Or?’

‘Or it could have happened when she fell. The blow to her head was very hard, and she hit the radiator. I saw that last night.’

‘Or she was pushed,’ Brunetti said.

‘I can’t say that,’ Rizzardi told him.

Brunetti felt as though Rizzardi had a ration of frankness, and now he had used it up.

Finally the doctor said firmly, ‘Nothing is going to change the fact that the cause of death was a heart attack.’ Again, a pause that Brunetti did not interrupt, and then Rizzardi said, ‘Her heart was in bad shape, and a shock of any sort could easily have sent her into fibrillation.’

Brunetti was aware of Vianello at his side, unable to disguise his curiosity.

‘Did your men find propafenone in her apartment?’ the doctor asked.

Brunetti had not seen a written report of the results of the search, so he avoided answering and asked, ‘What’s that?’

‘It’s used for fibrillation; which is what killed her. A shock would bring it on.’

If you burn down a house and don’t know there’s a person inside, are you guilty of murder? If you kidnap a diabetic and don’t give them insulin, are you responsible for their death? And if you frighten a person with a weak heart? Rizzardi was right, this was a defence lawyer’s playground.

‘I’ll check. They will have listed everything,’ Brunetti said, though that was never a sure thing. ‘Anything else?’

‘No. Aside from the heart, she was healthy for a woman in her mid-sixties.’ Rizzardi paused for a long time. ‘But it was a ticking bomb, so maybe it didn’t matter how healthy she was.’ Brunetti heard a click, and the doctor’s voice was gone.

Brunetti switched off his phone and put it in his pocket. Turning to Vianello, he said, ‘She died of a heart attack. But he found signs that someone might have shaken her. That might have caused it.’

Vianello gave him an appreciative look. ‘You got Rizzardi to say that?’

Ignoring him, Brunetti said, ‘So we take a closer look at her life.’

Sounding almost angry, Vianello said, ‘She sounds like a decent person, not the sort who’d get threatened or shaken. Or killed. Good people shouldn’t be killed like that.’

Brunetti thought about this for some time, and then said, ‘Would that that were true.’