She looked at me, puzzled. “It was his house.”
“Yes, I forgot. But you all lived here?”
“Of course. The family.”
“All during the time they-?”
“Yes. There was an agreement-no political talk at dinner.”
I imagined them sitting at the starched table, private, talking politely, each one whirling in his own mystery.
“Can I see them?”
“Yes, of course,” she said, walking over to the shelf. “I’m sorry. I thought, my father’s papers. It didn’t occur to me. These are Paolo’s.” She ran her hand along a line of leatherbound spines.
The books weren’t histories so much as diaries, the kind a fourteen-year-old might write, full of underlinings and exclamation marks, the world a theater with himself, luckily, at center stage. Even with my poor Italian, I could understand Gianni’s reluctance to have them fill the family library’s shelves. But here they were, not all of them thrown out. Why not?
I skimmed through a few, trying to get a sense of why these had survived. Innocuous? But here was Mussolini, a trip to Rome with friends to hear a speech, dinner afterward at the Eden-a time capsule mix. Not embarrassed here, at any rate, by the fascism or Paolo’s comments. The speech had been inspiring, Rome itself a new city. A nightclub after dinner had featured Somalian dancers. Venice now seemed a backwater, dowdy. I flipped pages. Less exalted excursions-a drive to Asolo, dinner in a villa. The Maglione history now mostly idle days. Committee meetings, just as Giulia had said. Recording it all for posterity. The war, somber fourteen-year-old’s thoughts on what it would mean. The Albanian fiasco. The Allies in Sicily. And then it stopped. Gaps here and there before, then nothing after 1943. A war with no Germans at all. But why the earlier gaps? What else had Gianni culled out?
Giulia had been hovering next to me, reading as I flipped, no doubt taking it all in more quickly. “But what do you see?” she said.
“I don’t know. Nothing, I guess. Can I borrow these? Just the last few?”
“You want to read them?”
“I want to see where the gaps are. Look, here, for instance, he just ripped the pages out. So why here and not there?”
But before she could answer there was another rap on the door, and this time Maria was carrying an old telephone with a long cord, her eyes wide with apprehension.
“ Polizia,” she whispered, pointing to me, then plugged the cord into a jack behind the desk.
Had Cavallini tracked me here? I picked up the phone and then must have registered the stunned dismay I felt as he spoke, because when I hung up, Giulia said, “My god, what is it? What’s happened?”
“Cavallini,” I said, my own voice an echo, hollow. “They’ve arrested somebody for the murder.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The Questura was like Gianni’s hospital-functional, even ordinary inside. Cavallini’s office could have been anywhere, a room with a desk and a phone and pale green institutional walls. There was a large map of the lagoon along with a few photographs of Cavallini shaking hands with various officials, but it still felt scarcely inhabited, as if he had just moved in, waiting for a new paint job. Today, at least, it was crowded with people-assistants delivering telephone messages, two policemen standing near the door waiting for orders, and a tall man in a suit conferring with Cavallini, stroking his chin in thought. I saw all this in a blur, my mind still numb with dread.
“Signor Miller,” Cavallini said, smiling. “Good. My superior wants to meet you.” The tall man turned to me. “I have told him how it started with you.”
We shook hands, with a few polite words in Italian, then he rattled off something to Cavallini.
“So everyone is very pleased,” Cavallini said. “I thank you for this.” He put his hand on the beige folder, Rosa’s file. “Of course, it’s a question of police work too,” he said, directing this to the tall man, who smiled blankly, clearly not following. “The one helps the other. Una collaborazione.” At this the other man nodded, said something more in Italian, and left, dipping his head toward me, almost a bow, as he went out the door. The two waiting policemen followed him.
“You see? Very pleased. So again I thank you.”
“But who did you arrest?” I said.
“Moretti,” he said, patting the file again. “Rosa shows us where to look and we find him.”
I leaned forward, holding the desk. “But he’s dead. You mean he didn’t die?”
“Yes, he died. That’s it-a vengeance killing. The son.”
“You think Moretti’s son killed Gianni? Why?”
“But Signor Miller, it’s as you say. The connection is the house, what happened there. I didn’t know this. But once you look.”
“But Rosa never said-”
“No, but she’s not a policeman, you know,” he said with a little smile, almost smug. “Still, she suspects. And she’s right. One man in that house was in hospital. His doctor? Maglione.” He held up a light blue folder in illustration. “And Maglione is working with the SS. She makes this connection.”
“But he was released days before they-”
“So she goes to see his son. She is an old friend of the father. How long was the father in hospital, when did he leave, did the boy see him-also Carlo, like the father. And of course he wants to know why, and she tells him she suspects Maglione of betraying his father. And what happens? He becomes agitato. ‘It’s my fault,’ he tells her. ‘I killed him.’ Why? Because he went to the house, so maybe they followed him. And Rosa tells him, ‘No, you were there before, people never followed you.’ He was a courier for them, you see. Imagine using a child that way. A Communist, of course, the boy too. No, he tells her, this time he was also bringing medicine for his father, from Maglione. A trap. So now it’s his fault. And Rosa tells him it’s foolishness-he can’t blame himself for this. They already knew somehow. But she’s troubled. She hadn’t known about the medicine, you see.”
“How do you know all this?”
“Some from him, some from her. So she leaves,” he said, picking up the story. “And he’s still agitato. An unstable boy anyway, according to the neighbors.” Police work. Collecting gossip, like a noose. “The father’s dead and he’s to blame. No, somebody else. Somebody still alive. This is a boy who worked with the partisans, someone who acts. What could be more natural?”
“So he had a motive,” I said. “But that doesn’t-”
“A strong motive. Very strong. It’s as you predicted-a political crime, but also a personal one.” He walked out from behind the desk, a courtroom gesture, enjoying himself. “Of course, we’re hoping for a confession. And it’s possible. This kind of case-so much remorse. I’ve seen it before. It’s a kind of relief for them.” He glanced at me, amused. “Signor Miller, such a face. We’re police, not SS. We hope for a confession. We don’t torture, we ask questions.”
“And if he doesn’t confess?”
Cavallini shrugged. “It’s still a very strong case. He has no alibi.”
“No?” I said weakly, sitting down to hear the rest.
“No. The night of the murder, where is he? Out for a walk. In that weather. You remember that evening, the rain? And where did he walk? Around. Along the Riva, then he’s not sure where. Who walks like that in Venice? Tourists.”
“No one saw him?”
“No one. Then the cine. Except the ticket girl doesn’t remember.”
“That doesn’t necessarily-”
“No, not necessarily,” he said, looking at me. “So, you act the defense? Good. We need to think of everything. But no one sees him, that’s the point. So, his word only. Next, his profession? He works on one of the delivery boats from the Stazione Marittima. Not just to Venice, also the outer islands. So, familiar with the lagoon.” He paused. “Even in fog.” He sat on the edge of the desk. “And after the murder, what does he do? We have witnesses to this,
