A Question of Belief

evil spirits kept at bay by magic tisana, the future revealed in the turn of a card. We pass through centuries, and we learn nothing.

Puntera, too, had adapted to the new order: nothing he had done was in any way unusual in these modern times, and it was unlikely that anything could be proven against Judge Coltellini for her various accommodations in his favour. With bitter cynicism, Brunetti had to admit they had been in no danger from any revelations Fontana might have chosen to make. There was the risk of temporary embarrassment for Puntera and Coltellini, but if embarrassment were a bar to advancement, then there would be no government and no Church.

The return of the organ’s rumbling put an end to Brunetti’s reflections and signalled the end of the Mass; Brunetti and Vianello got to their feet and turned to face the aisle.

The four men wheeled the coffin slowly towards the door of the church; first behind it came Signora Fontana, her head covered by a black veil that blended into the long-sleeved black dress she wore. A man Brunetti did not recognize walked close beside her, supporting her by her right arm. Two steps behind them walked her nephew, who nodded to Brunetti as he passed. Brunetti recognized a few faces, people who worked at the Tribunale; he was surprised to see Judge Coltellini among them. The people filing out kept their eyes straight ahead or on the pavement in front of them.

A youngish couple walked arm in arm, and close behind them came Signora Zinka, bulky and overheated in a black dress that was too long and too tight. Her face was damp and swollen, not because of the heat, Brunetti thought. An arm’s length to her right walked Penzo, looking as though he were somewhere else, or wanted to be.

Seeing the next couple, Brunetti realized he had been wrong in believing the habitual frequenters of funerals had been deterred by the heat. Maresciallo Derutti and his wife were well known in the city, omnipresent at funerals, to which he insisted on wearing the dress uniform of the Carabinieri, whose ranks he had left more than two decades before. Seeing the Maresciallo walk by, Brunetti decided the funeral was over and stepped into the aisle, Vianello close behind.

Slowed by the solemnity of motion the situation imposed, it took them some time to reach the door of the church. From inside the church, Brunetti saw the coffin being wheeled, untolled, towards a boat moored by the riva. He and Vianello stepped outside; the marble pavement caught the light and hurled it back into Brunetti’s eyes, momentarily blinding him. He turned towards the church and, protected by his own shadow, fumbled in his pocket for his sunglasses. He felt them in his right pocket, but they were caught in his handkerchief; he pulled, but they would not come free. He opened his eyes to narrow slits to see what was wrong, but before he could look down, he noticed Signora Fulgoni emerging from the church into the dazzling light on the arm of another woman, one even taller, though not as slender, as she. Both wore wide-shouldered trouser suits, and both of them paused to put on their sunglasses.

He gave another tug and pulled the glasses free from his pocket. He slipped them on and looked back at Signora Fulgoni, only to see that the person holding her arm was actually a man who wore identical sunglasses to the woman; taller, though with the same feminine look and carefully cut short hair. Together, they descended the steps of the church and followed the other people to the water.

‘And the scales fell from his eyes,’ Brunetti whispered, wondering even as he spoke at his need, always, to be such a clever boots.

‘What?’ Vianello turned to ask him.

‘Patta joked that the murderer always comes to the funeral,’ Brunetti answered.

Confused, Vianello, eyes safe behind his own sunglasses, looked across the open space in front of the church, towards the people clustered around the boat that would take Fontana’s coffin to San Michele. He saw what Brunetti saw: the mother of the deceased, climbing now into the boat that would take her son away from her, Penzo’s rigid form next to the squat cylinder that was Zinka, the Maresciallo, arm raised in a long-held salute, and two tall people standing to his left.

Seeing the Inspector’s perplexity, Brunetti said only, ‘Wait until those two turn around.’

Brunetti and Vianello waited, both suddenly unaware of the sun or the heat. The man who had accompanied Signora Fontana handed her on to the boat and then followed her on board and down into the cabin. Someone on shore cast off the mooring rope, and the boat started to move slowly away from the riva. The people on the embankment remained motionless as the sound of the motor diminished until it was gone, leaving only silence behind. Then, as if they had all heard the same command at the same time, the people standing in front of the church turned to right or left and began to take themselves away from the place of grief.

Penzo, Brunetti noticed, went in the opposite direction from Signora Zinka, who joined the two young people. They started towards the Misericordia, and Zinka fell into step behind them.

Signora Fulgoni appeared to be keeping an eye on the other couple, for she stood still, clinging to the arm of the person with her, until the others had climbed the bridge and disappeared down the calle on the other side. She raised her head and spoke to her companion. They turned and started to walk in the same direction as the other two; Signora Fulgoni’s companion was nearest to them and thus was visible in profile.

It was a man walking beside Signora Fulgoni. Nothing strange in that. She said something to him, and he stopped and turned to her. They exchanged words, apparently not kind words, and then the man pulled his arm free of hers and waved a hand at her, as if to chase her away. Was it the way his wrist moved, finishing in a sharp angle, fingers pointing at the pavement, that made Vianello see? Was it the sudden twist of his head, a motion that was unconscious of itself as a violent parody of anger?

‘ “My husband is a bank director,” ’ said Vianello.

The sun blasted down on them from its highest point, nailing them to the pavement, and they were again aware of its weight. Brunetti looked at his watch just as the sound of the bells of some other church rolled across the city and over them. Amazed, he looked up at the bell tower of La Madonna dell’Orto and saw the bells hanging there, lifeless. ‘The bells aren’t ringing,’ he said, marvelling.

29

As Brunetti had both known and feared, Patta proved resistant to the idea of questioning Signor and Signora Fulgoni — separately — about their movements on the night of Fontana’s death. Patta also pointed out that there was no way to constrain a person to submit a DNA sample for ‘purposes of elimination’. Nor, indeed, for any reason.

Brunetti still winced at the memory of his superior’s response to his explanation of why he wanted to question the Fulgonis. ‘You want me to jeopardize my position because you think he might be gay?’ Even though the Vice-Questore was no friend of homosexuals, the force of his anger had pulled him up from his chair and halfway across his desk. ‘The man is a bank director. Have you any idea of the trouble this would cause?’

Thus the workings of Patta’s mind. Those of the mechanism controlling the bells of Madonna dell’Orto were no less strange, they having ceased to work two weeks before. The parocco, when Brunetti spoke to him, explained that it was impossible, during the long holiday, to find anyone who would come to fix them, and so they tolled neither the passing hours nor the passing of life.

Prompted by his curiosity about why one of the Fulgonis should lie, Brunetti began to wonder about the other. Banks must be like any other business, he reflected, different only because their product was money, not pencils or garden forks. This similarity dictated that employees would gossip and that the reputations of the people in power would be coloured — if not entirely fashioned — by that gossip. It was common knowledge at the Questura that Signorina Elettra — for reasons that she had never fully explained and that no one had ever fathomed — had left her job at the Banca d’Italia to come and work at the Questura, so Brunetti asked her to check among her friends who still worked in that sector to see what rumours existed about bank director Lucio Fulgoni.

Signorina Elettra came up to his office on the afternoon of the day he had made his request. He waved her to a chair. ‘I take it you’ve discovered something, Signorina?’

‘Not much, and nothing definite, I’m afraid,’ she said, sitting opposite him.

‘What does that mean?’ he asked.