a state to have done anything, since she must be close to eighty and is said to be a recluse. And I’m not sure that I’ve got the story straight or even remember it correctly.’
When he saw Paola’s look, he held up his glass in excuse and explained, ‘It’s this stuff. Destroys brain cells. Or eats them.’ He swirled the liquid around in the glass, watching the small waves he created, waiting for them to produce the tide of memory.
‘I’ll tell you what I remember or what I think I remember. Her name is Clemenza Santina.’ When neither of them showed any sign of recognition, he explained: ‘She was one of the most famous sopranos right before the war. Same thing happened to her that happened to Rosa Ponselle in America— discovered singing in a music hall with her two sisters, and within a few months she was singing at La Scala. One of those natural, perfect voices that come along only a few times a century. But she never recorded anything, so the only memory we have of her is what people heard, what they recall.’ He saw their growing impatience, so he dragged himself back to the point. ‘There was something between her and Wellauer, or between him and one of the sisters. I can’t remember what it was or who told me, but she might have tried to kill him, or she threatened to kill him.’ He waved his glass in the air, and Brunetti saw how drunk the man was. ‘Anyway, I think someone got killed or died, or maybe it was just a threat. Maybe I’ll remember in the morning. Or maybe it’s not important.’
‘What made you think of her?’ asked Brunetti.
‘Because she sang Violetta with him. Before the war. Someone I was talking to, I can’t remember who it was, told me that they’d tried to interview her recently. Let me think for a minute.’ Again he consulted his drink, and again the memory came floating back. ‘Narciso, that’s who. He was doing an article on great singers of the past, and he went to see her, but she refused to speak to him, was very unpleasant about it. Didn’t even open the door, I think he said. And then he told me the story he’d heard about her and Wellauer, before the war. In Rome, I think.’
‘Did he say where she lives?’
‘No, he didn’t. But I can call him in the morning and ask.’
Either the alcohol or the waning conversation drained the sparkle from Padovani. As Brunetti watched, the foppishness subsided, and he became a middle-aged man with a thick beard and the beginnings of a substantial paunch, sitting with his feet tucked under him, exposing an inch of calf above black silk socks. Paola, he noticed, looked tired, or was she simply tired of having had to keep up the level of university banter with her former classmate? And Brunetti felt himself to be at that balance point that alcohol brought: if he continued drinking, he would soon be fuzzy and content; if he stopped, he would just as quickly be sober and somber. Choosing the second, he set his glass on the floor under his chair, sure a roving servant would find it before morning.
Paola set hers down as well and moved to the edge of her seat. She glanced over at Padovani, waiting for him to move, but he waved them off and picked up the bottle from the table. He poured himself a generous drink and said, ‘I’ll finish this before I return to the revels.’ Brunetti wondered if he was as bored with the fiction of scintillating chatter as Paola seemed to be. The three of them exchanged bright nothings, and Padovani promised to call in the morning if he managed to get the address of the soprano.
Paola led Brunetti back through the labyrinth of the
Brunetti looked around, filled with anticipatory boredom at the sight and sound of these well-dressed, well- fed, well-versed people. He sensed that Paola had registered his feelings and was about to suggest they leave, when he saw someone he recognized. Standing at the bar, glass in one hand and cigarette in the other, was the doctor who had first examined Wellauer’s body and declared him dead. At the time, Brunetti had wondered how someone who was wearing jeans had managed to be sitting in the orchestra. Tonight she was dressed much the same, a pair of gray slacks and a black jacket, with an obvious lack of concern for her own appearance that Brunetti would have thought impossible in an Italian woman.
He told Paola he had seen someone he wanted to talk to, and she replied that she would try to find her parents to thank them for the party. They separated, and he went across the room toward the doctor, whose name he had forgotten. She made no attempt to disguise the fact that she recognized and remembered him.
‘Good evening, Commissario,’ she said when he came up beside her.
‘Good evening, Doctor,’ he replied, and then added, as if they had managed sufficient homage to the rule of formality, ‘My name is Guido.’
‘And mine is Barbara.’
‘How small the city is,’ he observed, the banality of the remark allowing him, a formal man, to avoid having to commit himself to addressing her as either
‘Sooner or later, everyone meets everyone,’ she concurred, avoiding with equal skill any direct address.
Deciding on the formal
She shrugged this away and asked, ‘Was my diagnosis correct?’
‘Yes,’ he said, wondering how she could have avoided reading about it in every newspaper in the country. ‘It was in the coffee, as you said.’
‘I thought so. But I have to confess I recognized the smell only from reading Agatha Christie.’
‘Me too. It’s the only time I ever smelled it in real life.’ Both of them ignored the awkwardness of that last word.
She stubbed out her cigarette in a potted palm the size of an orange tree. ‘How would a person get it?’ she asked.
‘That’s what I wanted to ask you, Doctor.’
She paused and considered for a few moments before she suggested, ‘In a pharmacy, a laboratory, but I’m sure it would be a controlled substance.’
‘It is and it isn’t.’
She, being an Italian, understood immediately. ‘So it could disappear and never be reported, or even missed?’
