Drawing Conclusions

15

‘You’ve read the reports?’ Brunetti asked, his interest in and respect for her habit of reading all official documents with attention and scepticism overcoming any scruples he might have about her civilian status.

Signorina Elettra nodded.

‘And?’

‘The technicians were thorough,’ she said. Brunetti thought it best to forgo comment, which encouraged her to add, ‘The marks on her throat and back and the trauma to her back caught my attention.’

‘And mine,’ Brunetti said, deciding to follow the path of caution and say nothing about what Rizzardi had told him in private.

Her look was sharp, but her voice was calm when she said, ‘What a pity such things fail to rouse the doctor’s.’

‘That’s usually the case,’ Brunetti admitted.

‘Indeed.’ From her inflection, he had no idea if she were making a statement or asking a question about Rizzardi’s opinion. She continued: ‘You spoke to the nuns at the casa di cura in Bragora.’ This time there was no doubt about the question.

‘Yes.’

‘And?’ she asked, showing that two could play at Monosyllable.

‘And the nun with whom I spoke regarded her highly. The Mother Superior seemed forthcoming, but…’ he began and then drifted off, uncertain how to admit to his worst prejudice. She gave him no help, and so after a while he was constrained to continue. ‘But she’s from the South, so I sensed a certain…’

‘Reticence?’

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Vianello was with me.’

‘That usually helps,’ she said. ‘With women.’

‘Not this time. Perhaps because there were two of us. And we’re big.’

She looked across at him as though examining him for the first time. ‘I’ve never thought of either one of you as being particularly big,’ she said, then looked at him again. ‘But perhaps you are. How small was she?’

Brunetti, keeping his palm horizontal, brought it up to the centre of his chest.

Signorina Elettra nodded. He watched the animation leave her face and her eyes shift focus, two things he’d noticed in the past when her attention was captured by something. He knew enough to wait for her to come back to the conversation. When she did, she said, ‘I’ve often thought that nuns have a different reaction to men.’

‘Different in what way or from whose?’ he asked.

‘Different from women who…’ she paused, obviously unable to find the proper formulation ‘… from women who find them attractive.’

‘Do you mean in a romantic way?’

She smiled. ‘How delicately you put it, Commissario. Yes, “in a romantic way”.’

‘What’s different?’ Brunetti asked.

‘We’re less frightened of them,’ she said instantly but then added, ‘Or maybe it’s that we’re more likely to trust them because we’re more familiar with how their minds work.’

‘You think women do understand us?’

‘It’s a survival skill, Commissario.’ She smiled when she said it, but then her face grew serious and she said, ‘Maybe that really is the difference, because we live with men and deal with them every day and fall in love with them, and out of love with them. I think that must minimize our sense of the alien.’

‘Alien?’ Brunetti asked, unable to hide his surprise.

‘Different, at any rate,’ she said.

‘And nuns?’ he asked, drawing her back to what had started her down this path.

‘One whole area of interaction is closed down. Call it flirting if you want, Dottore. I mean that whole area where we play back and forth with the idea that the other person is attractive.’

‘You mean nuns don’t feel this?’ he asked, wondering at her use of the word ‘play’.

She gave a small shrug. ‘I have no idea if they do or they don’t. For their sake, I hope they do because if you manage to stifle that, then something’s gone wrong.’ Abruptly she got to her feet, both surprising him and, he realized, disappointing him that she did not want to continue with this subject.

‘You said the nun was reluctant to talk to you,’ she said, standing behind her chair. ‘If it wasn’t because of her feelings about men – and I think it would be hard for anyone to find Vianello threatening – then maybe it is because she’s a southerner or because there’s something she doesn’t want you to know. I’d never want to exclude that possibility.’ She smiled and was gone, leaving Brunetti to consider why she had not said she thought it would be hard for anyone to find him threatening.

He looked up and saw Lieutenant Scarpa at his door. Brunetti did his best to disguise his surprise and said, ‘Good morning, Lieutenant.’ He could never look at the Lieutenant without the word ‘reptile’ coming into his mind. It had nothing to do with the Lieutenant’s appearance, for indeed he was a handsome man: tall and slender, with a prominent nose and broad-spaced eyes over high cheekbones. Perhaps it had to do with a certain sinuosity in the way he moved, a failure to pick his feet up fully when he walked, which caused an undulant liquidity in his knees. Brunetti was reluctant to admit that he attributed it to his own belief that inside the man there was nothing but the icy chill found in reptiles and the far reaches of space.

‘Have a seat, Lieutenant,’ Brunetti said and folded his hands on his desk in a gesture of polite expectation.

The Lieutenant did as he was requested. ‘I’ve come to ask your advice, Commissario,’ he said, smoothing out the consonants in his Sicilian way.

‘Yes?’ Brunetti asked with rigorous neutrality.

‘It’s about two of the men in my squad.’

‘Yes?’

‘Alvise and Riverre,’ Scarpa said, and Brunetti’s sense of danger could have been no stronger had the man hissed.

Brunetti put a look of mild interest on his face, wondering what those two clowns had done now, and repeated, ‘Yes?’

‘They’re impossible, Commissario. Riverre can be trusted to answer the phone, but Alvise isn’t even capable of that.’ Scarpa bent forward and placed his palm on Brunetti’s desk, a gesture he had no doubt taught himself to make when he wanted to imitate sincerity and concern.

Brunetti could not have more strongly agreed with this assessment of the two men. Riverre, however, had a certain knack in getting adolescents to talk: no doubt by dint of fellow feeling. But Alvise was, in a word, hopeless. Or in two, hopelessly stupid. He recalled that Alvise had spent months working on a special project with Scarpa a few years ago: had the poor fool stumbled on something that might compromise the Lieutenant? If so, he had been too stupid to realize it, or surely the entire Questura would have known about it the same day.

‘I’m not sure I agree with you, Lieutenant,’ Brunetti lied. ‘Nor that I know why you’ve chosen to come to me about this.’ If the Lieutenant wanted something, Brunetti would oppose it. It was as simple as that.

‘I’d hoped that your concern for the safety of the city and the reputation of the force would encourage you to try to do something about them. That’s why I’ve come to ask your advice,’ he said, and then, the echo arriving with its usual tantalizing delay, ‘… sir.’

‘I certainly appreciate your concern, Lieutenant,’ Brunetti said in his blandest voice. Then, getting to his feet, he added, trying to sound sorry about the fact, ‘But, unfortunately, I’m late for an appointment and must leave now. But I’ll certainly consider your comments and…’ he began and then – to show that he was equally capable of making use of the echo – paused before adding, ‘and the spirit that animates them.’

Brunetti came around his desk and paused beside the Lieutenant, who had no choice but to get to his feet. Brunetti guided Scarpa out of his office, turned to close the door, something he seldom did, and then led the way downstairs. Brunetti nodded to the Lieutenant and crossed the lobby, not bothering to stop and talk to the guard. Outside, he decided to continue to Bragora and see if he could speak to any of the old people Signora Altavilla had befriended, convinced that listening to old people talk about their pasts, no matter how exaggerated their memories, would be vastly preferable to hearing the truth – especially from the likes of Lieutenant Scarpa – about Alvise and Riverre.

He thought he would take the longer route to Bragora and crossed the bridge into Campo San Lorenzo. Up close, Brunetti saw that the sign stating the date when the restoration of the church had begun had been bleached clean by the sun. He could no longer remember when they were supposed to begin – surely it was decades ago. People at the Questura said the work had actually started, but that was before Brunetti’s time, and so he had only rumour to rely upon. During the years he had stood at his window and studied the campo, he had seen the restoration of the casa di cura begin, continue, and even finish. Perhaps that was of greater importance than the restoration of a church.

He turned right and left a few times and found himself again passing the church of San Antonin. Then down the Salizada and out into the campo, where the trees still invited passers-by to sit for a while in their shade.

He crossed and rang the bell at the casa di cura. He announced himself and said he had come to speak to Madre Rosa. This time, a different nun, even older than Madre Rosa, waited for him at the door at the top of the stairs. Brunetti gave his name, entered, and turned to close the door himself. The nun smiled her thanks and led him to the room where he had already spoken to the Mother Superior.

Today Madre Rosa was sitting in one of the armchairs, a book open on her lap. She nodded when he came in and closed her book. ‘What may I do for you today, Commissario?’ she asked. She gave no indication that he should sit, and so Brunetti, though he approached her, remained standing.

‘I’d like to speak to some of the people who knew Signora Altavilla best,’ he said.

‘You must realize that your desire makes little sense to me,’ she said. When Brunetti did not respond, she added, ‘Nor does your curiosity about her.’

‘It makes sense to me, Madre,’ he said.

‘Why?’

It was out before he thought about it. ‘I’m curious about the cause of her heart attack.’ Before the nun could ask him anything, Brunetti said, ‘There’s no question that she died of a heart attack, and the doctor assures me it was very fast.’ He saw her close her eyes and nod, as if in thanks for having been given something she desired. ‘But I’d like to be sure that the heart attack was… was not brought on by anything. Anything unpleasant, that is.’

‘Sit down, Commissario,’ she said. When he did, she said, ‘You realize what you’ve just said, of course.’

‘Yes.’

‘If the cause of her heart attack – may she rest in peace – was, as you say,’ she began, pausing a moment before allowing herself to repeat his word, ‘unpleasant, then there must be a reason for that. And if you’ve come here to look for that reason, then it’s possible you think you’ll find it in something one of the people she worked with told her.’

‘That’s true,’ he said, impressed by her quickness.

‘And if that is true, then that person might equally be at risk.’

‘That’s certainly possible, as well, but I think it would depend on what it is they told her. Madre,’ he continued, deciding he had no choice but to trust her, ‘I’ve no idea what happened, and I feel foolish saying that all I have is a strange feeling that something is wrong about her death.’ Conscious of having said nothing about the marks on her body, Brunetti wondered if it were worse to lie to a nun than to any other sort of person: he decided it was not.

‘Does that mean you are not here… how to say this? That you are not here officially?’ She seemed pleased to have found the word.

‘Not at all,’ he had to admit. ‘I want only to bring some peace of mind to her son,’ he added. It was the truth, but it was not the whole truth.

‘I see,’ she said. She surprised him by opening the book in her lap and returning her attention to it. Brunetti sat quietly for a time that spread out and became minutes, and then more minutes.

At last, she held the book closer to her face, then appeared to read aloud: ‘“The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.”’ She lowered the book and looked at him above the pages. ‘Do you believe that, Commissario?’

‘No, I’m afraid I don’t, Madre,’ he said without hesitation.

She set the book on her lap, leaving the pages open, and surprised him again, this time by saying, ‘Good.’

‘Good that I said it or that I don’t believe it?’ Brunetti asked.

‘That you said it, of course. It’s tragic that you don’t believe it. But if you had said you do, you would have been a liar, and that’s worse.’

Like Pascal, she knew the truth not by reason, but by the heart. But he made no mention of this, merely asked, ‘How do you know I don’t believe it?’ he asked.

She smiled more warmly than he had seen her do so far. ‘I might be a dried-up old stick, Commissario, and from the South, as well, but I’m not a fool,’ she said.

‘And the fact that I’m not a liar, what bearing does that have on this conversation?’

‘It makes me believe that you are really interested in finding out if anything unpleasant – as you put it – might have been involved in Costanza’s death. And since she was a friend, I am interested in that, as well.’

‘Which means you’ll help?’ he asked.

‘Which means I will give you the names of the people she spent most time with. And then you are on your own, Commissario.’