Delicately, Padovani extracted a small piece of shrimp shell from his mouth, placed it on the side of his plate, and said, ‘I’m afraid, then, that I’ll have to pay for my own lunch.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I can’t give you any more information about her. Narciso was just on his way out when I called him, and all he had time to do was give me the address. So all I know is what I told you that night. I’m sorry.’
Brunetti thought it artless of him to make the remark about paying for his lunch. ‘Well, then, perhaps you could tell me about some of the other people instead.’
‘I’ll confess, Guido, that I’ve been busy. I’ve called a number of my friends here, and in Milan and Rome, and you have but to speak their names and I shall become a very fountain of information.’
‘Flavia Petrelli?’
‘Ah, the divine Flavia.’ He placed a forkful of risotto in his mouth and pronounced it excellent. ‘You would no doubt also like to know about the equally divine Miss Lynch, I suppose?’
‘I’d like to know whatever you know about either one of them.’
Padovani ate some more of his risotto and pushed it aside. ‘Do you want to ask me specific questions, or do you want me simply to chatter on?’
‘The chatter would probably be best.’
‘Yes. No doubt. So I’ve often been told.’ He sipped at his wine and began. ‘I forget where Flavia studied. Possibly Rome. In any case, the unexpected happened, as it always does, and she was asked to step in at the last minute and replace the ever ailing Caballe. She did, the critics went wild, and she was famous overnight.’ He leaned forward to touch the back of Brunetti’s hand with one finger. ‘I thought I might, for dramatic purposes, divide the story into two parts: professional and personal.’ Brunetti nodded.
‘That, pretty much, was the professional. She was famous, and she remained that way. Remains that way.’ He sipped at his wine again, poured some more into his glass.
‘So now for the personal. Enter the husband. She was singing in the Liceo in Barcelona, about two or three years after her success in Rome. He was something important in Spain. Plastics, factories, I think; in any case, something very dull but very profitable. In any case, lots of money, lots of friends with big houses and important names. Fairy-tale romance, garlands of flowers, truckloads of the things wherever she happened to be singing, jewels, all the usual temptations, and La Petrelli—who is, between parentheses, just a simple little country girl from some small town near Trento—went and fell in love and married him. And his factories, and his plastics, and his important friends.’
Antonia arrived and carried away their plates, clearly disapproving of the fact that Padovani’s was still half full.
‘She continued to sing; she continued to grow more famous. And he seemed to like traveling with her, liked being the Latin husband of the famous diva, meeting more famous people, seeing his picture in the papers—all the sort of thing that people of his class need. Then came the children, but she continued to sing, and she continued to become more famous. But it soon became evident that things were no longer as honeymoonish as they had been. She canceled a performance, then another. Soon after that, she stopped singing for a year, went back to Spain with him. And didn’t sing.’
Antonia approached the table with a long metal tray upon which lay their branzino. She placed it on a small serving table next to them and very efficiently cut two portions of tender white fish from it. She placed the portions in front of them. T hope you like this.’ The men exchanged a glance in silent acceptance of the threat.
‘Thank you, Signora,’ Padovani said. ‘Might I trouble you for the green salad.’
‘When you finish the fish,’ she said, and went back toward the kitchen. This, Brunetti reminded himself, is one of the best restaurants in the city.
Padovani took a few bites of the fish. ‘And then she was back, as suddenly as she had disappeared, and the voice, during the year when she hadn’t sung in public, had grown bigger, become more that immense, clearvoice she has now. But now the husband was no longer in sight, and then there was a quiet separation, and an even more quiet divorce, which she got here, and then, when it became possible, in Spain.’
‘What were the grounds for the divorce?’ Brunetti asked.
Padovani held up an admonitory hand. ‘All in good time. I want this to have the sound and pace of a nineteenth-century novel. So she began to sing again, our Flavia, and as I said, she was more magnificent than ever. But we never saw her. Not at dinners, not at parties, not at the performances of other singers. She had become something of a recluse, lived quietly with her children in Milan, where she was singing regularly.’ He leaned across the table. ‘Is the suspense growing?’
‘Agonizingly so,’ said Brunetti, and took another mouthful of fish. ‘And the divorce?’
Padovani laughed. ‘Paola warned me about this, said you were a ferret. All right, all right, you shall have the truth. But unfortunately, the truth, as it so often has a habit of being, is quite pedestrian. It turns out that he beat her, quite regularly and quite severely. I suppose it was his idea of how a real man treats his wife.’ He shrugged. ‘I wouldn’t know.’
‘But she left?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Not until he put her in the hospital. Even in Spain, some people are willing to draw the line at this. She went to the Italian embassy with her children. With no money and no passports. Our ambassador at the time, like all of them, was a lick-spittle and tried to send her back to her husband. But his wife, a Sicilian—and let not a word be said against them—stormed down to the consular section and stood there while three passports were made out, and then she drove Flavia and her children to the airport, where she charged three first-class tickets to Milan to the embassy account and waited with them until the plane took off. It appears that she had seen Flavia sing Odabella three years before and felt she owed her at least that much.’
Brunetti found himself wondering just how much of this could be important to Wellauer’s death and, made suspicious by Padovani’s ironical manner, wondering how much of it was true.
As if reading his mind, Padovani leaned forward and said, ‘It’s true. Believe me.’
‘How did you learn all this?’
