Drawing Conclusions

the campo. The building had only the front door, so Brunetti could easily have waited in the campo, but he fell into step with Morandi, who seemed not to notice or, if he did, to mind.

This time, in deference to the other man’s age, Brunetti took the elevator, though he hated them and felt trapped inside. The Toltec waited in front of the elevator, smiled at Morandi, nodded to Brunetti, and took the old man’s arm to lead him through the door of the nursing home and down the corridor.

Left alone, Brunetti went into a small sitting room that had a view of the front door. He sat on a precarious chair and picked up the single magazine – Famiglia cristiana – that lay on a table. At a certain point, he found himself confronted with the need to choose between reading the Pope’s catechism lesson for the week or the recipe for a cheese and ham pie. The ingredients were just being slipped into the oven when he heard footsteps coming into the room.

One strand of Morandi’s hair had come loose and snaked down on to the shoulder of his jacket. He looked at Brunetti with stunned eyes. ‘Why do they have to tell the truth?’ he asked as he came in, voice harsh and desolate. Brunetti got quickly to his feet and took the man under the arm, holding him up and leading him to the overstuffed sofa.

Morandi sat in the centre, made his right hand into a fist, and pounded it a few times into the seat next to him. ‘Doctors. To hell with them all. Sons of bitches, all of them.’ With each phrase, his face grew more mottled as his fist came crashing down on to the cushion, and with each phrase he came more to resemble the man Brunetti had seen in Signora Sartori’s room.

Finally spent, he fell against the back of the sofa and closed his eyes. Brunetti returned to his chair, closed the magazine and put it back on the table. He waited, wondering which Morandi would open his eyes, the soft-hearted San Francesco or the enraged enemy of doctors and bureaucrats?

Time passed, and Brunetti used it to construct a scenario. Morandi expected the police to come and find him after Signora Altavilla’s death: and for what reason other than guilt? At the memory of those bruises, Brunetti turned his eyes to Morandi’s hands: broad and thick, the hands of a worker. If the sight of a stranger in Signora Sartori’s room or the thought that a doctor would tell the truth could catapult him into such anger, how was he likely to respond to… to what, exactly? What form had Signora Altavilla’s dangerous honesty taken? Had she encouraged him to confess their help in the deceit of Madame Reynard without considering its effect on Signora Sartori?

Brunetti’s mind ran into a wall. Oddio, what if Madame Reynard’s will had not been falsified? What if the handwriting had indeed been hers, and she had really wanted her lawyer – who certainly would have been as courteous and helpful as Lucifer himself – to have it all? The fact that Cuccetti was a liar and a thief in the eyes of half of Venice meant nothing if the old woman had sincerely wanted him to inherit her estate. Must only the good be rewarded?

Why, then, the apartment, and whence the Dillis and the Tiepolos and the Salanthe? Brunetti looked at the old man, who appeared to have fallen asleep, and the desire swept over him to grab him by the shoulders and shake him until he told the truth.

27

Silently, so as not to disturb the sleeping man, Brunetti pulled from his pocket Signora Altavilla’s key ring, which he had taken from the evidence room before leaving the Questura. He trapped it between his palms and used his thumbnail to prise open the metal ring, then slid the third key – the one that fitted neither door – towards the narrow opening. He slipped it along and slowly, slowly, urged it until it came free in his hand. Leaning forward, he laid the key on Morandi’s right thigh, then returned the key ring to his pocket, folded his arms, and pushed himself back in his chair.

He thought it invasive to look at the sleeping man, so he turned his eyes to the window and the wall on the opposite side of the canal while he thought about monkeys. He had recently read an article that explained experiments devised to test the inherent sense of justice in a species of monkey, Brunetti could not remember which. Once each member of the group was accustomed to receiving the same reward for the same action, they grew angry if one of their band received a greater reward than his peers. Though the cause of their agitation was nothing more than the difference between a piece of cucumber and a grape, it seemed to Brunetti that they were reacting in a very human way: unmerited reward was offensive even to those who lost nothing by it. Add to this the presumption of deceit or theft on the part of the winner of the grape, and the sense of outrage became stronger. In the case of Avvocato Cuccetti, all that had ever existed was the presumption of theft, nothing more, though he had been rewarded with considerably more than a grape. Enough time had passed, however, for there to be no legal consequences even if the presumption were confirmed. Even if he could be proven to have stolen the grape, there was to be no giving it back.

Morandi had not been surprised at the arrival of a policeman: he thought the police were bound to come because of what he had done. Because of Madame Reynard’s will? Because he went to see Signora Altavilla? Because he tried to reason against her terrible honesty? Or because he put his hands on her shoulders and tried to shake some sense into her? Or pushed her to the ground, having seen or not seen the radiator?

People occasionally rang the bell, and the Toltec went to open the door for them, but they were all preoccupied with other things and did not bother to look into the room. Had they done so, what would they have seen? Another of the residents of the home, fallen away from the worries of the day – and was that his son sitting with him?

‘What do you want?’ the old man asked in a dead level voice.

Brunetti looked at Morandi and saw that he was fully awake and held the key in one hand. He rubbed it between his thumb and index finger, as though it were a coin and he was testing to see if it were counterfeit or not.

‘I’d like to know about the key,’ Brunetti said.

‘So she did have it,’ Morandi said with quiet resignation.

‘Yes.’

The old man shook his head in evident regret. ‘I was sure she did, but she told me it wasn’t there.’

‘It wasn’t,’ Brunetti told him.

‘What?’

‘She’d given it to someone else.’

‘Her son?’

‘A friend.’

‘Oh,’ Morandi said, resigned, then added, ‘she should have given it to me.’

‘Did you ask her for it?

‘Of course,’ Morandi said. ‘That’s why I went there; to get it back.’

‘But?’

‘But she wouldn’t give it to me. She said she knew what it was and that it wasn’t right for me to have it, or to have them.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘Did Signora Sartori tell her?’

The old man gave himself a shake, the way Brunetti had seen dogs do. It started with his head and gradually enveloped his shoulders and part of his arms. Two more strands of hair broke free of his scalp and draped themselves across the lapel of his jacket. Brunetti did not know if he was trying to shake away Brunetti’s question or the answer it required. After he stopped moving, the old man still did not speak.

‘I suppose Signora Sartori must have told her,’ Brunetti said resignedly, as though he had just followed a very complicated train of thought, and this was the only place it could lead.

‘Told her what?’ the old man asked, but his voice was slowed by tiredness, not by suspicion.

‘About what you and Signora Sartori did,’ Brunetti answered.

As if suddenly aware of the disorder of his hair, Morandi raised a hand and delicately replaced the wanton strands, draping them one after the other across the pink dome of his head. He patted them into place, then kept his hand on them as if waiting for some signal that they had adhered to the surface.