Palewski’s hand flew to his mouth. “Good God-what is the time? I completely forgot-I’m supposed to be seeing him at eleven.”
Brunelli looked into his eyes and slowly shook his head. “Not Barbieri, signore. And, I should add, it is already almost noon.”
If Brett was a liar, he thought, he was very good.
A simpler man-the stadtmeister, for example-might have drawn the obvious conclusion that Signor Brett was not to be trusted. “Let us not delude ourselves,” the stadtmeister might say, “mud sticks for good reason.”
But Brunelli, unlike his boss, was not a simple man. He had spent too many years considering his own motivation to assume that he always understood what motivated other people. He was a Venetian patriot, born and raised on these tightly packed islands, and he believed that Venice in all her grandeur and decay, in all her moods, in both her sweetness and her wickedness, offered him a solid and sufficient stage. Torcello, say, or Burano, or the farther reaches of the lagoon, were in the wings; the mainland was scarcely in the same theater.
He was a Venetian patriot who had taken a vow of allegiance to the Habsburg emperor. The paradox infuriated his son, as he had admitted to the contessa: but Paolo was still simple, because he was young and had not faced choices. Paolo had not taken decisions.
Brunelli took one now.
“Count Barbieri was killed last night, as he left the contessa’s party,” he said. “He was attacked on his gondola, and his head was cut off with a knife.”
Palewski sat down on a chair against the wall. “How perfectly horrible.”
“Barbieri’s head was discovered this morning by a sacristan in the church of San Paolo, not far from here. The sacristan found it on the altar, on a communion plate.”
Palewski stared at the commissario. “On a plate? Like John the Baptist?”
Brunelli grunted. “Yes. I had not thought of it that way.”
“But what could it mean?”
“I have absolutely no idea.”
Brunelli took the window seat and he and Palewski leaned forward on their elbows, looking at one another. After a pause they both spoke together:
“You think I-?”
“I don’t think you-”
Palewski was the first to recover. “I didn’t kill Count Barbieri, Commissario. On the contrary, I was hoping to do some business with him.”
“I am thinking of my report,” Brunelli said candidly. “You saw Barbieri at the contessa’s party, then you left, early. Some people-a magistrate, for example-might wonder where you went.”
“I came back here. I felt ill-a touch of sun, I think.”
“Hmmm.” The commissario looked troubled. “I don’t suppose that anyone saw you later?”
“Later? No.” Palewski hesitated. He had a code, and he sensed he should stick to it even when he was in trouble.
Especially, perhaps, when he was in trouble. What good was the code otherwise?
“I’m afraid I can’t prove that I was here,” he said stiffly.
Brunelli sighed. “It’s a shame, Signor Brett.”
Their eyes met. The door to the bedroom opened and a young woman stepped out. She fastened a pin in her hair.
“But I know, Commissario, that this gentleman was here.” She smiled sweetly. “I was with him the whole night.”
34
Stanislaw Palewski closed the door on the amiable commissario and turned back to his other uninvited guest. She looked very pretty with the light in her hair.
“I am in your debt, Maria,” he said. “I’m afraid this sounds like a terrible business.”
Maria nodded with a smile. The first rule, she had been told, was to keep her gentleman in good spirits. Until the policeman came she had been doing rather well, she thought.
“We could take a little walk,” she suggested.
They walked south, arm in arm toward the Zattere. The canals were broader in these parts; the pavements were more even. Here and there rampant roses spilled out overhead from walled gardens. Beggars sat in doorways in the sun, mumbling for alms. Through open windows came the sounds of people eating, the bright clank of crockery and knives, somebody somewhere playing a flute.
Palewski had spent almost half his life in Istanbul, and now the pressure of a woman’s arm on his, the rhythm of her smaller steps-first awkward and then agreeable-the musical sound of her prattle (it was, when one stopped to listen, scarcely more), drew him unexpectedly back to another country, long ago.
He felt her hand on the small of his back.
“Are you all right, mio caro?”
Palewski squeezed his eyes at the bridge of his nose. In a blinding moment he had seen another woman in his mind’s eye and felt the pressure of her arm on his.
“Forgive me, Maria.”
“Come. We’re there,” Maria said. They turned the corner and there was the Zattere, with the long, low silhouette of the Giudecca across the water, the church of San Giorgio, and the barges’ brown sails hanging in the summer air.
“Tell me, Maria,” Palewski said. “Where are you from?”
She squeezed his arm. “From Venice, silly.”
“But last night-how did you come?”
Maria nodded. “It was la Signora Ruggerio. She said I should.”
Palewski laughed weakly. Ruggerio, of course.
“I’m glad you did,” he said.
Maria squeezed his arm. “Can we have an ice cream?” she said brightly.
35
Like many Venetians, Brunelli believed that Venetians ate better than anyone else in the world. And like many Venetians, too, he believed that he ate better than anyone in Venice, thanks to his wife.
That morning, before he knew anything of the unfortunate Count Barbieri, his wife had announced her intention of cooking seppia con nero for lunch. She knew that Brunelli was unhappy about their son. Seppia con nero was a favorite with them both and she hoped that their differences would untangle across a bowl of steaming squid.
“You’re late, Papa,” Paolo said when Brunelli arrived.
Carla glanced at her husband. He smiled.
“If I am late, Paolo, it is because I have been working. Not lounging about in the piazza, talking and smoking cheroots.”
“But Papa, your work is all talk, too. It’s the same as mine.”
“Hmmph.” Brunelli sat down at the table and closed his eyes. “I smell it. I smell seppia con nero.” He sighed.
36
