“I don’t know. I never thought so.” But then, so much else had been wrong.
“And who sleeps with retired nurses? Young nurses, yes. So maybe it’s just this one’s idea.” She nodded back toward the nurses’ station. “She thinks they were lovers because he helped her find a place to live-what else could it be? After all those years together, devoted to him, what does she get? Two rooms in Castello. Put away somewhere so he can marry his American. Typical, the man does as he likes, while the woman-” She stopped, shaking her head. “And maybe, she thinks, the nurse didn’t like it. Who would have a better reason?”
“To kill him?”
“She reads magazines.”
We had left the hospital and were walking across the campo past the equestrian statue.
“And who dumped him in the lagoon?”
“She’s not that far. Still with the romance. They worked together for years, and not a hint. Only now, when she’s old and he helps her. And this one believes that.”
“Were there rumors-other nurses?”
“Of course not. He was a saint,” Claudia said, her mouth turned down. “A saint.”
“A savior of men.”
“Yes,” she said, still grim. “Except my father.”
We followed the directions through several back calles of hanging wash to a house whose plaster front had peeled off in patches, leaving irregular pockets of dark brick, like Dalmation spots. Anna della Croce was on the second floor, up a staircase that smelled of cat and listed to one side. When we rang the bell, we could hear a series of locks being turned, as if the room had been barricaded against the rest of the sagging house. Then the creak of the door, a pair of eyes peering into the stairwell. It was only after Claudia mentioned Gianni’s name that the door swung open. For a second no one said anything, adjusting to the light. Then Claudia’s eyes widened, and her whole body went rigid with surprise.
“ Voi,” she said softly.
The woman looked at her, wary again. “ Che cosa volete?”
“What is it?” I said to Claudia.
“It’s the same nurse, the one with my father. Look, she has no idea. No memory at all. I’m someone new to her. She watched them take me away, but she never saw me before. It meant nothing.”
“You’re scaring her. Speak Italian.”
The woman had drawn closer to the door, stepping slightly behind it, as if it were a shield.
“Imagine. Nothing to her,” Claudia said, her voice almost dreamy.
“Claudia,” I said, touching her shoulder. “Ask her about Gianni.”
She looked at me, coming back, then smiled wryly. “Yes, that’s right. Something she’d remember. Scusi,” she said, turning to the woman, reassuring her with a spurt of Italian that I couldn’t follow but that got us through the door.
We went into a tidy small room filled with porcelain figurines, Claudia still talking. We had gotten the address from the hospital, she was so nice to see us, it had been a tragedy about Gianni, and then I lost the thread again. I was given a straight-backed chair with upraised arms and a velvet-covered seat, formal, the kind that’s kept for visiting priests.
The nurse sat primly on the edge of the daybed, a severe-looking woman in her sixties who still seemed to be wearing a starched uniform, her eyes sharp and suspicious, even now on the lookout for sloppily made bed corners. I could see that she would never have spoken to me, but Claudia, another woman, had somehow put her at ease. Tea was made, an excuse for small talk to find out why we had come, whether we could be trusted. This time Claudia did translate, first paraphrasing their conversation, then finally with nearly simultaneous answers so that it felt as if we were all really talking.
“She’s worried about her pension. But I told her it’s to solve the murder, so that’s different.”
“Because he was a saint.”
She nodded. “The best man she ever knew. Would this hurt his reputation? And I said no, now everyone would admire him for this.”
“So it was a bullet wound?”
“Yes. She helped him remove it, just the two of them. He said he would take the responsibility-he didn’t want her to get in any trouble. Always thinking of others, you see. But of course she wanted to help him. So they took out the bullet and cleaned the wound and then she dressed it so no one else would know, not even the other nurses. Then they made out the report.”
“Had he done anything like this before?”
“No. But he knew the man. A family friend. And Dr. Maglione told her, ‘I can’t refuse him. I have to help. But no one has to know.’ ”
“He came into the hospital with a bullet wound and no one else knew?”
This involved a longer answer, filled with what sounded like medical details.
“You couldn’t tell. The wound was shallow. Not much blood. But of course the bullet had to be taken out. Maglione saw him right away-and after, all people knew was a bandage. Except for Anna,” she said, nodding to the nurse.
“Why would Moretti take the risk?” I said to myself. “If it wasn’t serious. Going to a hospital.”
“The bullet still has to come out. You need a doctor. And this one he knows. She says they were friends- Maglione liked to talk to him.”
“About what?”
A shrug. “She assumes old times. They hadn’t seen each other in years.”
“No, they wouldn’t have.”
“But the risk.” The nurse was shaking her head at the memory of it. “She was worried the whole time. But with him it was always the patient. When he found out Moretti had left, he said it was too soon. It needed more time.”
“But he discharged him.”
“No, he left. In the night. Like a thief in the night.” Hunching her shoulders, stealthy. “Because he was so grateful. The Germans came one day and he saw that it was a risk for Maglione. How long before someone found out? So he left in the night. He didn’t wait.”
“But the medical report-”
“They had to say discharged. What else? Escape? Then everything would come out. So he was ‘discharged,’ and she signed it, and that was the end. Until now.”
I went over to the window, a view across the calle to another window, shuttered. “So Gianni couldn’t have had him followed,” I said. Wrong about this too. Moretti had gone without Gianni’s even knowing. Then the report had been faked to protect him, all witnessed by a sharp-eyed nurse.
“There’s no doubt about this, any of it?”
“You don’t want me to ask her that. She’d be offended.”
“The Germans who were there-soldiers or SS?”
“SS. They were looking for Jews.”
“And did they find any?”
Claudia looked at me, but translated. The nurse nodded, lowering her head.
“There was nothing they could do. The Germans knew. Grini, maybe, the informer. That was his specialty, hospitals and mental homes.”
“But he wasn’t there that day.”
“No, but they knew. Dr. Maglione was helpless. He used to say, ‘The Germans are like wild animals. You have to be careful with them. If you frighten them, they’ll bite. You can’t get too close.’ ”
For a minute no one said anything, the only sound in the room a teacup clinking on its saucer.
“Anything else?” Claudia said.
I shook my head. “I thought there’d be something. Something she’d seen.”
“Oh, and she’d tell you? She sees what she wants to see.”
She started again in Italian, calm, almost in a monotone, so the nurse’s reaction seemed all the more abrupt, a shocked expression, head jerked back.
“What?” I said.
