Acqua Alta

the arrival of acqua alta, Brunetti went home early and had two quiet hours to himself before Paola got back from the university. When she got home, soaked by the increasing intensity of the rain, she said that she had used the quotation, given the spurious attribution, but still the dreaded marchese had managed to spoil it, suggesting that a writer such as James, who was supposed to have such a good reputation, certainly could have avoided such simple-minded redundancies. Brunetti listened as she explained, surprised at how much he had come, over the last months, to dislike this young man he had never met. Food and wine tempered Paola’s mood, as they always did, and when Raffi volunteered to do the dishes, she radiated contentment and well-being.

They were in bed by ten, she deeply asleep over a particularly infelicitous example of student writing and he deeply engrossed in a new translation of Suetonius. He had just reached the passage describing those little boys swimming in Tiberius’ pool at Capri when the phone rang.

‘Pronto’ he answered, hoping it wouldn’t be police business but knowing that, at ten to eleven, it probably was.

‘Commissario, this is Monico.’ Sergeant Monico, Brunetti recalled, was in charge of the night shift that week.

‘What is it, Monico?’

‘I think we’ve got a murder, sir.’

‘Where?’

‘Palazzo Ducale.’

‘Who is it?’ he asked, though he knew.

‘The director, sir.’

‘Semenzato?’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘What happened?’

‘It looks like a break-in. The cleaning woman found him about ten minutes ago and went screaming down to the guards. They went back up to the office and saw him, and they called us.’

‘What have you done?’ He dropped the book on to the floor at the side of the bed and began looking around the room to see where he had left his clothes.

‘We called Vice-Questore Patta, but his wife said he wasn’t there, and she has no idea of how to get in touch with him.’ Either of which, Brunetti reflected, could be a lie. ‘So I decided to call you, sir.’

‘Did they tell you what happened, the guards?’

‘Yes, sir. The man I spoke to said there was a lot of blood, and it looked like he’d been hit on the head.’

‘Was he dead when the cleaning lady found him?’

‘I think so, sir. The guards said he was dead when they got there.’

‘All right,’ Brunetti said, flipping back the covers. ‘I’ll go over there now. Send whoever’s there — who is it tonight?’

‘Vianello, sir. He was here on night shift with me, so he went over as soon as the call came in.’

‘Good. Call Dottor Rizzardi and ask him to meet me there.’

‘Yes, sir, I was going to call him as soon as I spoke to you.’

‘Good,’ Brunetti said, swinging his feet out and putting them on the floor. ‘I should be there in about twenty minutes. We’ll need a team to photograph and take prints.’

‘Yes, sir. I’ll call Pavese and Foscolo as soon as I’ve spoken to Dottor Rizzardi.’

‘All right. Twenty minutes,’ Brunetti said and hung up. Was it possible to be shocked and still not be surprised? A violent death, and only four days after Brett was attacked with similar brutality. While he pulled on his clothing and tied his shoes, he warned himself against jumping to conclusions. He walked around to Paola’s side of the bed, leaned down, and shook her gently by the shoulder.

She opened her eyes and looked up at him over the top of the glasses she had begun, that year, to use for reading. She wore a ragged old flannel dressing gown she had bought in Scotland more than ten years ago and, pulled over it, an Irish knit cardigan her parents had given her for Christmas almost as long ago. Seeing her like that, momentarily confused by his having pulled her from her first deep sleep and peering myopically at him, he thought how much she looked like the homeless and apparently mad women who passed their winter nights in the railway station. Feeling traitorous for the thought, he leaned into the circle of light created by her reading lamp and bent down to kiss her forehead.

‘Was that the sovereign call of duty?’ she asked, immediately awake.

‘Yes. Semenzato. The cleaning woman found him in his office at the Palazzo Ducale.’

‘Dead?’

‘Yes.’

‘Murdered?’

‘It looks that way.’

She removed her glasses and placed them on the papers that spilled across the covers in front of her. ‘Have you sent a guard to the American’s room?’ she asked, leaving it to him to follow the swift logic of what she said.

‘No,’ he admitted, ‘but I will as soon as I get to the Palazzo. I don’t think they’d risk two in the same night, but I’ll send a man over.’ How easily ‘they’ had come into existence, created by his refusal to believe in coincidence