As if to exacerbate his reflections, a group of off-season tourists wandered by, led by a raised umbrella. Water on his left, he passed through the piazza, amazed by the people who seemed to find the pigeons more interesting than the basilica.

He crossed the bridge after Campo San Moise, turned right, then right again, and into a narrow calk that ended in a huge wooden door.

He rang and heard a disembodied, mechanical voice ask who he was. He gave his name and, seconds later, heard the snap that released the lock on the door. He stepped into a newly restored hall, its ceiling beams stripped to their original wood and varnished to a high gloss. The floor, he noticed with a Venetian eye, was made of inlaid marble tiles set in a geometric pattern of waves and swirls. From the gentle undulance of it, he guessed that it was original to the building, perhaps early fifteenth century.

He began to climb the broad, space-wasting steps. At each landing there was a single metal door; the singleness spoke of wealth and the metal of the desire to protect it. Engraved nameplates told him to keep ascending. The steps ended, five flights up, at another metal door. He rang the bell and a few moments later was greeted by the woman he had spoken to in the theater the night before, the Maestro’s widow.

He took her extended hand, muttered, ‘Permesso,’ and crossed into the apartment.

If she had slept the night before, there was no sign of it in her face. She wore no makeup, so the intense pallor of her face was accented, as were the dark smudges beneath her eyes. But even under the fatigue, the structure of great beauty was visible. The bones of her cheeks would carry her into great age safely, and the line of her nose would always create a profile that people would turn to see again.

‘I’m Commissario Brunetti. We spoke last night.’

‘Yes, I remember,’ she replied. ‘Please come this way.’ She led him down a corridor to a large study. In one corner, there was a fireplace with a small open fire. Two chairs separated by a table stood in front of the fire. She waved him to one of the chairs and sat in the other. On the table, a burning cigarette rested in a full ashtray. Behind her was a large window, through which he could see the ocher rooftops of the city. On the walls hung what his children insisted on calling ‘real’ paintings.

‘Would you like a drink, Dottor Brunetti? Or perhaps tea?’ She repeated the Italian phrases as though she had learned them by rote from a grammar book, but he found it interesting that she would know his proper title.

‘Please don’t go to any trouble, Signora,’ he said, responding in kind.

‘Two of your policemen were here this morning. They took some things away with them.’ It was evident that her Italian wasn’t adequate to name the things that had been removed.

‘Would it help if we spoke English?’ he asked in that language.

‘Oh, yes,’ she said, smiling for the first time and giving him a hint of what her full beauty would be. ‘That would be much easier for me.’ Her face softened, and some of the signs of stress disappeared. Even her body seemed to relax as the language difficulty was removed. ‘I’ve just been here a few times, to Venice, and I’m embarrassed by how badly I speak Italian.’

In other circumstances, the situation would have demanded that he deny this and praise her ability with the language. Instead he said, ‘I realize, Signora, how difficult this is for you, and I want to express my condolences to you and your family.’ Why was it that the words with which we confronted death always sounded so inadequate, so blatantly false? ‘He was a great musician, and the loss to the world of music is enormous. But I’m sure yours must be far worse.’ Stilted and artificial, it was the best he could do.

He noticed a number of telegrams sitting next to the ashtray, some open, some not. She must have been hearing much the same thing all day long, but she gave no indication of that and, instead, said simply, ‘Thank you.’ She reached into the pocket of her sweater and pulled out a package of cigarettes. She took one of them from the pack and raised it to her lips, but then she saw the cigarette still smoking in the ashtray. She tossed fresh cigarette and package on the table and pulled the lighted cigarette from the ashtray. She took a deep breath of smoke, held it for a long time, then expelled with obvious reluctance.

‘Yes, he will be missed by the world of music,’ she said. Before he could reflect on the strangeness of this, she added, ‘And here as well.’ Though there was only a millimeter of ash on the end of it, she flicked her cigarette at the ashtray, then bent forward and scraped the sides, as though it were a pencil she wanted to sharpen.

He reached into his pocket and took out his notebook, opened it to a page on which he kept a scribbled list of new books he wanted to read. He had noticed the night before that she was almost beautiful, would become unquestionably so from certain angles and in certain lights. Under the weariness that veiled her face today, that beauty was still evident. She had wide-spaced blue eyes and naturally blond hair, which today she wore pulled back and knotted simply at her neck.

‘Do you know what killed him?’ she asked.

‘I spoke to the pathologist this morning. It was potassium cyanide. It was in the coffee he drank.’

‘So it was fast. There is at least that.’

‘Yes,’ he agreed. ‘It would have been almost instantaneous.’ He jotted something in his notebook, then asked, ‘Are you familiar with the poison?’

She shot him a quick glance before she answered, ‘No more than any other doctor would be.’

He flipped a page. ‘The pathologist suggested that it’s not easily come by, cyanide,’ he lied.

She said nothing, so he asked, ‘How did your husband seem to you last night, Signora? Was there anything strange or in any way peculiar about his behavior?’

Continuing to wipe her cigarette against the edge of the ashtray, she answered, ‘No; I thought he was quite the same as always.’

‘And how was that, if I might ask?’

‘A bit tense, withdrawn. He didn’t like to speak to anyone before a performance, or during intermissions. He didn’t like to be distracted by anything.’

That seemed normal enough to him. ‘Did he appear any more nervous than usual last night?’

She considered this for a moment. ‘No, I can’t say that he was. We walked to the theater at about seven. It’s

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