All that had the appearance of truth. If she was charged only with having given him injections that she knew would destroy his hearing, she would be freed of the accusation of murder, but this scenario would work only if her daughter’s name was mentioned. He knew that was impossible.
‘Before he died, before any of this ever happened,’ he began, leaving it to her to interpret what he meant by ‘this,’ ‘did your husband ever speak about his age; was he afraid of a physical decline?’
She paused for a while before she answered him, puzzled by the irrelevance of his question. ‘Yes, we talked about it. Not often, but once or twice. Once, when we’d all had more than enough to drink, we talked about it with Erich and Hedwig.’
‘And what did he say?’
‘It was Erich, if I remember correctly. He said that in the future, if anything should ever stop him from working—not just stop him from doing surgery but make him be, well, not himself anymore, not able to be a doctor in any way—he said he was a doctor and knew how to take care of that himself.
‘It was very late, and we were all very tired, so perhaps that made the conversation more serious than it might have been. He said that, and then Helmut said that he understood him perfectly and would do the same thing.’
‘Would Dr. Steinbrunner remember this conversation?’
‘I think so. It was only this summer. The night of our anniversary.’
‘Did your husband ever say anything more specific than that?’ Before she could answer, he completed the question: ‘When there were other people present?’
‘Do you mean, when there were witnesses?’
He nodded.
‘No, not that I can remember But that night, the conversation was so serious that it was clear to us all just what they meant.’
‘Will your friends remember it as meaning what you say it did?’
‘Yes, I think so. I don’t think they approve of me, not as a wife for Helmut.’ After she said that, she looked up at him suddenly, eyes wide with horror. ‘Do you think they knew?’
Brunetti shook his head, hoping to assure her that, no, they didn’t know, couldn’t have known something like that about him and remained silent. But he had no reason to believe that. He veered away and asked, ‘Can you remember any other time your husband might have made reference to that subject?’
‘There were the letters he sent me before we were married.’
‘What did he say?’
‘He was joking, trying to dismiss the difference in our ages. He said that I’d never be burdened with a feeble, helpless old husband, that he’d see that this never happened.’
‘Do you still have those letters?’
She bowed her head and said softly, ‘Yes. I still have everything he ever gave me, all the letters he sent me.’
‘I still don’t understand how you could do it,’ he said, not shocked or outraged; simply puzzled.
‘I don’t know anymore, either. I’ve thought about it so much that I’ve probably invented new reasons for it, new justifications. To punish him? Or maybe I wanted to weaken him so much that he’d be absolutely, completely dependent on me. Or maybe I knew that it would force him to do what he did. I simply don’t know anymore, and I don’t think I’ll ever understand why.’ He thought she had finished, but she added, voice icy, ‘But I’m glad I did it, and I’d do it again.’
He looked away from her then. Because Brunetti was not a lawyer, he had no idea of the nature of the crime. Assault? Theft? If you steal a man’s hearing, what do you steal from him? And is the crime worse if the victim’s hearing is more important to him than other people’s hearing is to them?
‘Signora, do you believe he invited you backstage to make it look as if you had killed him?’
‘I don’t know, but he might have. He believed in justice. But if he wanted that, he could have arranged things to look far worse for me. I’ve thought about this, since that night. Maybe he left it like this so that I wouldn’t ever be sure what he intended. And this way, he wouldn’t be responsible for whatever happened to me because of it.’ She gave a small smile. ‘He was a very complex man.’
Brunetti leaned toward her and placed his hand on her arm. ‘Signora, listen very carefully to what happened during this interview,’ he said, deciding, thinking of Chiara and deciding. ‘We talked about the way your husband had confided in you his fears about his growing deafness.’
Startled, she began to protest. ‘But—’
He cut her off before she could say anything else. ‘How he told you of his deafness, how he feared it. That he had gone to his friend Erich in Germany and then to another doctor, in Padova, and that both of them had told him that he was growing deaf. That this explains his behavior here, his obvious depression. And that you told me you were afraid that he had killed himself when he realized that his career was over, that he had no future as a musician.’ His voice sounded as tired as he felt.
When she started to protest, he said only, ‘Signora, the only person who would suffer because of the truth is the only innocent one.’
She was silenced by the truth of this. ‘How do I do all this?’
He had no idea how to advise her, never before having helped a criminal invent an alibi or deny the evidence of a crime. ‘The important thing is that you told me about his deafness. From that, everything will follow.’ She looked at him, still puzzled, and he spoke to her as he would to a dull child who refused to understand a lesson. ‘You told me this the second time I spoke to you, the morning I came to visit you here. You told me that he had been having serious trouble with his hearing and had spoken to his friend Erich.’ She began to protest, and he could have shaken her for her dullness. ‘He also told you he had been to another doctor. All of this will be in the report of our meeting.’
