saw Brunetti’s confusion and explained. ‘My father. He’s eighty-seven. He does the same thing, looks over his glasses at us as if we’ve been keeping a secret from him and he wants to know what it is.’ He looked at his watch again. ‘I’ve got to go. It’s only ten minutes until the curtain.’
‘Thank you for your help,’ Brunetti said, though he wasn’t sure what to make of what the musician had just told him.
‘Sounded like a lot of useless gossip to me. Nothing more. But I hope it can help.’
‘Would there be any trouble if I stayed in the theater during the performance?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No, I don’t think so. Just tell Lucia when you leave, so she can lock this room.’ Then, hurriedly, ‘I’ve got to go.’
‘Thank you again.’
‘It was nothing.’ They shook hands, and the musician left.
Brunetti stayed in the room, already planning that he would take the opportunity to see how many people walked around backstage during a performance and during intermissions and how easy it would be to go into or out of the conductor’s dressing room unnoticed.
He waited in the room for a quarter of an hour, grateful for the chance to be by himself in a quiet place. Gradually, all the noise that had filtered through the door stopped, and he realized that the singers would have gone downstairs to take their places onstage. Still he lingered in the room, comforted by the silence.
He heard the overture, filtering up the stairs and through the walls, and decided it was time to find the conductor’s dressing room. He stepped out into the hall and looked around for the woman who had let them into the room, but she was nowhere to be seen. Because he had been charged with seeing that the room was locked, he walked along the hall and glanced down the stairway. ‘Signora Lucia?’ he called, but there was no reply. He went to the door of the first dressing room and knocked, but there was no reply. Nor at the second. At the third, someone called
‘Signora Lucia,’ he began as he entered the room, but he stopped when he saw Brett Lynch sprawled in an easy chair, book open in her lap, glass of red wine in one hand.
She was as startled as he but recovered more quickly. ‘Good evening, Commissario. May I help you in any way?’ She set her glass down on the table beside her chair, flipped her book closed, and smiled.
‘I wanted to tell Signora Lucia she could lock that other dressing room,’ he explained.
‘She’s probably downstairs, watching from the wings. She’s a great fan of Flavia’s. When she comes back up, I’ll tell her to lock it. Don’t worry, it’ll be taken care of.’
‘That’s very kind of you. Aren’t you watching the performance?’
‘No,’ she answered. Seeing his response, she asked, ‘Does that surprise you?’
‘I don’t know if it does or it doesn’t. But if I asked you, then I suppose it does.’
Her answering grin pleased him, both because it was not the sort of thing he expected from her and because of the way it softened the angularity of her face.
‘If you promise not to tell Flavia, I’ll confess to you that I don’t much like Verdi and I don’t much like
‘Why not?’ he asked, curious that the secretary and friend—he left it at that—of the most famous Verdi soprano of the day would admit to not liking the music.
‘Please have a seat, Commissario,’ she said, pointing to the chair opposite her. ‘Nothing much goes on for another’—she glanced at her watch—’twenty-four minutes.’
He took the seat she indicated, turned it to face her more directly, and asked, ‘Why don’t you like Verdi?’
‘It’s not exactly that. I do like some of the music.
‘Which do you prefer?’ he asked, though he was sure of the answer he’d get. Wealthy, American, modern- minded: she would have to prefer the music of the century in which she lived, the century that had made her possible.
‘Eighteenth,’ she said, surprising him. ‘Mozart and Handel, neither of which, for my sins, Flavia feels any great desire to sing.’
‘Have you tried to convert her?’
She picked up her glass and sipped at it, set it back down on the table. ‘I’ve converted her to some things, but I can’t seem to tempt her away from Verdi.’
‘I think that must be considered our great fortune,’ he answered, slipping easily into her tone, which implied far more than it said. ‘The other must be yours.’
She surprised him by giggling, and he surprised himself by laughing with her. ‘Well, that’s done. I’ve confessed. Now perhaps we can talk like human beings and not like characters in a cheap novel.’
‘I’d very much like that, Signorina.’
‘My name is Brett, and I know yours is Guido,’ she said, using the informal second person and thus making the initial step toward familiarity. She got up from her chair and went over to a small sink in the corner. Beside it was a bottle of wine. She poured some into a second glass, brought it and the bottle back, and handed the glass to him.
‘Are you back here to talk to Flavia?’ she asked.
‘No, that wasn’t my intention. But I’ll have to talk to her, sooner or later.’
‘Why?’
