Drawing Conclusions

11

They took the Number One but chose to sit inside, where Brunetti told Vianello about the contents of both Rizzardi’s and the technicians’ reports. He also gave him his general impression of Niccolini as a man made uncomfortable by unsaid things.

As the boat passed in front of the Piazza, Brunetti looked to the right and asked, ‘It never becomes ordinary, does it?’ Before Vianello could answer and as though the Inspector had removed it from his drawer while he was out of the office, Brunetti added, ‘Where’d yesterday go?’

‘We walked,’ Vianello said.

‘What?’

‘It’s not like the movies, where you get in a car and speed to where you’re going, siren blaring. You know that. We walked, and then we walked back. So it took a long time. And the old nun, even if she didn’t want to tell us anything, she still took a fair amount of time doing it. We’re not in New York, Guido,’ he said and smiled to show the vast relief with which he greeted that fact.

As if to argue in favour of Vianello’s assertion, they were strafed by a sudden burst of light reflected from the windows of the buildings on the left side of the canal. Their eyes followed the origin of the dazzle to the row of buildings: beige, ochre, something between yellow and brown, pink; and then the windows: pointing up and pirouetting at the top, pushing aside twisted columns in order to let in more light. Then, barely seen at the waterline, the enormous cubes of stone from which the city leaped up towards the heavens.

‘We should have had Foa take us,’ Brunetti said, still unsettled by how swiftly the previous day had passed. Spurred by his restlessness, they got off at San Silvestro and walked: it would take the same time if they waited to get off at San Stae, but at least this way they were moving.

As they walked, Brunetti explained that he wanted to take another look at the place. ‘And talk to the neighbour,’ he added as they walked down the bridge from San Boldo, turned into Calle del Tintor and towards the campo.

Brunetti was wearing the same jacket and pulled the keys from his pocket. The largest of the three opened the street door, and the one next to it fitted the lock on the door to the apartment, where Vianello’s tape was still in place. Brunetti pulled it loose on one side and let it hang free before opening the door.

Inside, he noticed the envelopes he had seen the night before, leafed through them, and saw that they were all – including a registered letter – addressed to Signora Giusti. He slipped them into the pocket of his jacket. During the next half-hour, they found nothing more than they had the night before save for receipts for bills that had been paid through the post office and bank records stretching back five years. Looking through them, Brunetti saw an entirely normal pattern: her pension arrived each month, along with a second payment from what might have been her widow’s pension. The first amount reflected the fact that she had chosen to retire early; the second one was more substantial and raised her monthly income to a sum on which a single person could live very comfortably. This would be even easier – Brunetti saw no sign that she had been paying rent through the bank – for a woman living in an apartment she owned.

One thing that caught Brunetti’s attention were the tiny nails, lonely nails that had lost their paintings. There were two in the corridor, under them only rectangles of paint minimally whiter than the paint on the wall. In the smaller bedroom, now that Brunetti knew to look, he saw another phantom painting and, above it, the nail.

By mutual consent, they decided to go upstairs. When they left, Vianello reattached the tape as best he could while Brunetti stood, keys in hand, waiting to lock the door. After he did, he held the keys in the palm of his hand and showed them to Vianello and said, ‘I wonder what the third one’s for.’

‘Perhaps a storeroom downstairs?’ the Inspector suggested.

Brunetti started up the stairs. ‘We can ask Signora Giusti.’

The woman opened the door to her apartment while they were still on the final flight of steps. ‘I heard you moving around down there,’ she said by way of greeting, then remembered to put out her hand and say good morning. She looked less agitated now, and Brunetti was surprised to realize that she no longer seemed as tall. Perhaps it had something to do with the relaxation of her body or her shoulders. She had also moved closer to the loveliness he had imagined before.

Brunetti introduced Vianello, and she let them into the apartment, which Brunetti thought had relaxed as much as she had. The table in the living room held two newspapers, one of them open to the Culture section, the other obviously gone through and sloppily closed. Beside it stood an empty glass and a plate that held the skin and core of an apple as well as the knife that had peeled it. The cushions on the sofa were dented; one lay on the floor.

In the front room Brunetti was again struck by the sense of drama created by the thrust of the apse seen from this height and angle, as if the church were caught in the high seas and heading towards them. Her furniture, two chairs and a sofa, were angled to look out at the church and the campo and the mountains beyond. She sat at the end of the sofa, leaving them the two chairs, a table between them. She did not bother asking if they would like anything to drink.

Brunetti removed the envelopes from his pocket and placed them on the table. Signora Giusti glanced at them but made no move to touch them. Looking at him, she nodded her thanks, sober-faced. Brunetti still had the keys in his hands, and he held them out to her. ‘There’s a third key on the set you left downstairs, Signora. Could you tell me what it’s for?’

She shook her head. ‘I have no idea. I asked her that same thing, when she gave me the keys, and she said it was…’ She paused and closed her eyes. ‘It was strange what she said.’ Vianello and Brunetti remained quiet to give her the time to remember. After a moment, she looked up and said, ‘She said something about its being a safe place to keep a key.’

She met their puzzled expression with one of her own. ‘No, it doesn’t make any sense to me, either, but that’s what she said, that it would be a safe place.’

‘When did she give you these keys, Signora?’

She was surprised by his question, as though it displayed some special power on his part. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Simple curiosity,’ Brunetti said. He had no idea how long either woman had lived there, so he had no idea how long it had taken before they trusted one another sufficiently to exchange the keys to their homes.

‘I’ve had a set of her keys for years, but a week ago she asked for them back for a day, said something about wanting to have copies made.’ She pointed to the keys as though looking at them would make the two men understand. Then she leaned over and touched them, saying, ‘But look at them. One’s red and one’s blue. They’re just cheap copies, probably doesn’t even cost a euro to have them made.’

‘And so?’ Brunetti asked.

‘And so why would she copy these when she has the master keys? When she gave them back to me, the third key was on the ring, too, and that’s when she said that, about its being a safe place to keep it.’ She looked at each of them in turn, searching for some sign that they found this as puzzling as she did.

‘Did she know where you kept them?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Of course. I’ve kept them in the same place for years, and she knew where that was,’ she said, pointing towards a room that was probably the kitchen. ‘There. In the second drawer.’ Brunetti stopped himself from saying that was precisely where a competent housebreaker would look.

‘Do you have storerooms on the ground floor?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Is one of them hers?’

She shook the idea away. ‘No, they belong to the appliance store near the pizzeria and to one of the restaurants in the campo.’

He noticed that Vianello had silently managed to take out his notebook and was busy writing.

‘Could you give me some idea of the sort of life she led, Signora?’

‘Costanza?’

‘Yes.’

‘She was a retired teacher. I think she retired about five years ago. Taught little children. And now she visits old people who are in rest homes.’ As if suddenly aware of the dissonance between events and the present tense, she put her hand to her mouth.

Brunetti let the moment pass and then asked, ‘Did she have guests?’

‘Guests?’

‘People who came to stay with her. Perhaps you met them on the stairs, or perhaps she told you that you would see strangers coming in, just so you’d know and not be concerned.’

‘Yes, I’d see people on the steps, occasionally. They were always very polite.’

‘Women?’ Vianello asked.

‘Yes,’ she said casually, and then added, ‘Her son came to see her.’

‘Yes, I know. I spoke to him yesterday,’ Brunetti answered, curious about her reluctance to discuss the female visitors.

‘How is he?’ she asked with real concern.

‘When I spoke to him, he seemed battered by it.’ This was no exaggeration; Brunetti suspected it stated the reality that lay behind Niccolini’s reserve.

‘She loved him. And the grandchildren.’ Then, with a small smile, ‘And she was very fond of her daughter-in-law, too.’ She shook her head, as if at the discovery of some exception to the rule of gravity.

‘Did she speak of them often?’

‘No, not really. Costanza – you have to understand – was not by nature a talkative person. It’s only because I’ve known her for years that I know any of this.’

‘How many years?’ Vianello interrupted to ask and held up his notebook as if to suggest he was simply doing what the pages told him to do.

‘She was living here when I moved in,’ she said. ‘That was five years ago. I think she’d been here for a few years before that, since her husband died.’

‘Did she say why she moved?’ Vianello asked, eyes on what he was writing.

‘She said the old place – it was near San Polo – was too big, and that once she was alone – her son was married by then – she decided to find somewhere smaller.’

‘But stay in the city?’ Vianello asked.

‘Of course,’ she said and gave Vianello a strange look.

‘Let me go back to something,’ Brunetti said. ‘About her guests.’

‘Guests,’ she repeated, as if she had quite forgotten having been asked the question before.

‘Yes,’ Brunetti said with his easiest smile. Then he went on, ‘Well, perhaps you wouldn’t be so much aware of them, up here. I can ask the people downstairs: they’re more likely to have noticed.’ He cleared his throat, as if preparing to change the subject and ask another question entirely.

‘As I told you, occasionally people did stay. Women,’ she said. ‘Occasionally.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said, sounding only faintly interested, ‘Friends?’

‘I don’t know.’

Vianello looked up and said, with an easy smile, ‘Everyone wants to come and stay in Venice. My wife and I are always being asked if the sons or daughters of friends can stay, and our kids always have friends they want to invite.’ He shook his head at the thought, as though he were the concierge of a quiet bed and breakfast in Castello – conveniently located out of the crowded city centre – and not an ispettore di polizia. The news of these requests surprised Brunetti. Considering the young age of his children and the fact that all of Vianello’s friends lived in Venice, what the inspector said was very unlikely, but, apparently convinced by his own story, Vianello went on to conclude, ‘That’s probably who they were,’ and bent his head over his pages.

‘Perhaps,’ Signora Giusti said uncertainly.

Sensing her hesitation, Brunetti abandoned his casual tone and spoke with the seriousness he thought this matter warranted. ‘Signora, we simply want to understand what sort of woman she was. Everyone we speak to says she was a good person, and I have no reason not to believe it. But that doesn’t give me any real understanding of her. So anything you can tell me might help.’

‘Help what?’ she asked with a sharpness that surprised Brunetti. ‘What is it you’re really asking about? You’re the police, and nothing good ever comes of getting mixed up with you. Since you came in here, you’ve been mixing truth with what you think I want or need to hear, but what you’ve never said is why these questions are important.’

She paused, but it was not to try to calm herself, nor to listen to anything either one of them might try to say. ‘I looked at the newspapers, and they’re saying she died of a heart attack. If that’s true, then there’s no need for you to be here, asking these questions.’

‘I can understand your concern, Signora, living in the same building,’ Brunetti said.

She raised both hands to her temples and pressed against the side of her head, as if there were too much noise or too much pain. ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it. Either tell me what’s going on or get out of here, the two of you.’ By the time she finished, she was almost shouting.

Training warred against instinct; Brunetti’s experience of human nature came up against his feelings of human sympathy. Caution won. Once someone knew something, you were no longer in control of it, for they were free to do with it what they pleased, and what they pleased need not be what pleased you, and often was not.

‘All right,’ he said, forcing his body to relax into an easier posture, one reflective of honesty. ‘The cause was a heart attack; there’s no question of that. But we would like to exclude the possibility that someone might have created conditions favourable to it.’

She bristled at the jargon and said, ‘What does that mean?’

Calmly, as though he had not noticed her reaction, he went on, ‘It means that someone might have…’ and here he paused and gave every appearance of pausing to assess her trustworthiness before he went on, ‘frightened her or threatened her.’

More calmly, she asked, ‘Is this an official investigation?’

He lapsed into the truth. ‘No, not really. Perhaps it’s for my peace of mind, or her son’s. But I’d like to exclude the possibility that she was… that she was forced or frightened into death. I want to know if someone menaced her in any way, and I thought you might know something.’

‘Does it make a difference?’ she asked instantly.

‘To what?’

‘Legally,’ she said.

Without telling her about those small marks on Signora Altavilla’s neck and shoulders, Brunetti had no answer to give her.

She got up and went over to the front window that looked into the campo and at the thrusting church. Back still to them, she said, ‘From down on the ground, when I go out the door, I see the church, and it looks one way: heavy, locked into the ground. But from up here, it looks almost as if it had wings.’ She paused for a long time; Brunetti and Vianello exchanged a glance.

‘Same church. Different angle,’ she said and again lapsed into silence.

‘Like Costanza,’ she said after a long pause, and Brunetti and Vianello exchanged a quicker glance. ‘When I first saw the women on the stairs, I had no idea who they were. I knew they weren’t cleaning women because we use the same one, Luba. But I couldn’t ask Costanza. Because she was such a private person. But they’d be there, and I’d see the same ones a few times. In the beginning, as I said, I really didn’t notice them. And then I did, but they never caused any trouble, were always very polite, so I just sort of got used to them.’

‘Until?’ Brunetti asked, sensing that he was meant to ask and that she needed help to tell this story.

‘Until I found one of them on the steps, well, on the landing in front of Costanza’s door: I was coming up the steps, and there she was. Costanza wasn’t home – I rang her bell – and this girl was lying there. At first I thought she might be drunk or something. I don’t know why I thought that; they’d always been very quiet.’ She looked away, and Brunetti could see her thinking about what she had just said. ‘Maybe it’s because they’d all looked poor, and it was my bourgeois prejudice coming out.’ They watched her shoulders rise in an unconscious shrug. ‘I don’t know.

‘I couldn’t just leave her there, so I tried to help her get up. She was moaning, so I knew she wasn’t unconscious. That’s when I saw her face. Her nose was pushed to one side, and there was a lot of blood down the front of her coat. At first I didn’t notice it because the coat was black and I hadn’t really seen her face until I got her to sit up.’

Signora Giusti turned around and folded her arms across her chest. ‘I asked her what had happened, and she said she had fallen on the street. So I said I was going to call an ambulance and take her to the hospital.’

‘Was she Italian?’ Vianello asked.

‘No, I don’t know where she was from. The East somewhere, I’d say, but I’m not sure.’

‘Did she speak Italian?’

‘Enough to understand what I said and to tell me about falling. “Cadere. Pavimento.” That sort of thing. And enough to understand “ospedale”.’

‘What did she do?’

‘When she heard me say that, she panicked. She grabbed my hand and said “Prego, prego,” again and again. “No ospedale.” Things like that.’

‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I heard – we both heard – the door open. The front door downstairs.’ She closed her eyes, remembering the scene. ‘The woman – she was really still a girl. Couldn’t have been much more than a teenager, really – she panicked. I’ve never seen anyone do this, just read about it. She crawled over to the corner and pushed herself into it. She pulled her coat up over her head as if she thought that would hide her or make her invisible. But she kept moaning, so anyone would know she was there.’

‘And then?’

‘And then Costanza came up. She didn’t say anything, just stopped at the top of the steps. The girl was moaning again by then, like an animal. I started to say something, but she held up a hand and said the girl’s name, Alessandra or Alexandra, I don’t remember which, and then she said that everything was all right and there was nothing to be afraid of, the same sort of thing you’d say to children when they wake up in the night.’

‘And the girl?’ Vianello asked.

‘She stopped moaning, and Costanza went over and knelt down beside her.’ She looked at them, surprised to be remembering something now. ‘But she didn’t touch her. She just said her name a few more times and told her everything was fine and not to worry.’

‘Then what?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I stood up and Costanza said, “Thank you,” as though I’d just given her a cup of tea or something. But it was clear that she was telling me to leave, so I did. I went back up to my apartment.’

‘Did you ever see the girl again?’

‘No. Never. Then, after a few months, there was another one, but I never spoke to any of them again – there might have been two or three more that I knew about.’

‘Did Signora Altavilla ever refer to it or say anything to you about it?’

‘No. Nothing. It was as though it had never happened, and after a time it felt that way, too. I’d say hello to her – Costanza – on the steps, or she’d ask me in for a cup of tea, or she’d come up here if I suggested it. But neither of us ever said anything about it.’ She looked back and forth between them, as if asking them to understand. ‘You know how it is. After a time, something that’s happened, even if it isn’t very nice, if you just don’t talk about it, it sort of goes away. Not that you forget about it, not really, but it isn’t there any more.’

Brunetti recognized the familiarity of this, and Vianello said, ‘It’s the only way life can go on, really, if you think about it.’

At this, Brunetti glanced at Signora Giusti and their eyes met. She nodded, and Brunetti found himself nodding in return. Yes, it was the only way life could go on.