“Or, rather,” Paola continued, “he gave me the general outlines. And since we broke up, I’ve never said anything to Michela about this little conspiracy.”
“You could have mentioned it last night.”
“Would you believe me if I said I didn’t have the courage? Michela was so sure that Elena was lying …”
“Can you describe the contents of the letter?”
“Of course. Angelo had to go to Holland for a week, and Michela had made it clear she intended to go with him. So he had me write a letter saying I’d asked for a ten-day leave from school so I could accompany him. It wasn’t true; it was exams time. Like they’re going to give me a ten-day vacation during exams! Anyway, he said he would show his sister the letter, and this would allow him to go alone, as he wished.”
“And if Michela had run into you in Montelusa when Angelo was in Holland, how would you have explained that to her?”
“Angelo and I had thought about this. I would have said that at the last moment the school denied me permission to leave.”
“And you didn’t mind him going away alone?”
“Well, I did, a little, of course. But I realized that it was important for Angelo to liberate himself for a few days from Michela’s overbearing presence.”
“Overbearing?”
“I don’t know how else to define it, Inspector. Words like ‘assiduous,’ ‘affectionate,’ ‘loving’ don’t really give a sense of it. They fall short. Michela felt this sort of absolute obligation to look after her brother, as though he were a little boy.”
“What was she afraid of?”
“Nothing, I don’t think. My explanation for it—there’s nothing scientific about it, mind you, I don’t know a thing about psychoanalysis—but in my opinion it came from a sort of frustrated craving for motherhood that was transferred entirely, and apprehensively, onto her brother.”
She gave her usual giggle.
“I’ve often thought that if I’d married Angelo, it would have been very hard for me to free myself not from my mother-in-law’s clutches—since she, poor thing, counts for nothing—but from my sister-in-law’s.”
She paused. Montalbano realized she was weighing the words she would use to express what she was thinking.
“When Angelo died, I expected Michela to fall apart. Whereas the opposite happened.”
“Meaning?”
“She wailed, she screamed, she cried, yes, but at the same time I sensed a feeling of liberation in her, at the unconscious level. It was as if she’d thrown off a burden. She seemed more serene, more free. You know what I mean?”
“Perfectly.”
Then, who knows why, a question popped into his mind.
“Has Michela ever had a boyfriend?” “Why do you ask?” “Dunno, just wondering.”
“She told me that when she was nineteen, she fell in love with a boy who was twenty-one. They were officially engaged for three years.”
“Why did they break up?”
“They didn’t. He died. He was a little too fond of driving really fast on his motorcycle, even though he was apparently a gifted cyclist. I don’t know the details of the accident. In any case, after that, Michela never wanted to get close to other men. And I think that from that moment on, she redoubled her vigilance over poor Angelo, until she became asphyxiating.”
“You’re an intelligent woman, you’re in no way under investigation, and you’ve long considered your relationship with Angelo over,” said Montalbano, looking her in the eye.
“Your preamble is a bit distressing,” said Paola with her usual grin. “What are you getting at?”
“I want an answer. Who was Angelo Pardo?”
She didn’t seemed surprised by the question.
“I’ve asked myself the same thing, Inspector. And I don’t mean when he left me for Elena. Because up till then I knew who Angelo was. He was an ambitious man, first of all.”
“I’d never thought of him in that light.”
“Because he didn’t want to appear so. I think he suffered a lot from being expelled from the medical association. It cut short a very promising career. But, you see, even with the profession he had, he would have had exclusive rights of representation for two multinational pharmaceutical companies across all of Sicily, not just Montelusa and its province.” “He told you this?”
“No, but I overheard many of his phone conversations with Zurich and Amsterdam.”
“And when did you start asking yourself who Angelo Pardo was?”
“When he was killed. Things began to appear in a different light, things for which you had an explanation before and which now, after his death, are not so easily explained anymore.”
“Such as?”
“Such as certain gray areas. He was capable of disappearing for a few days at a time and then, when he came
