Acqua Alta

on for about a month after it.’

‘How much contact did you have with him?’

‘Very little. He was on vacation for much of the time it was being set up, and then when he got back, he had to go to Rome for conferences with the Minister, trying to arrange an exchange with the Brera in Milan for another exhibition they were planning.’

‘But certainly you dealt with him personally at some time during all of this?’

‘Yes, I did. He was utterly charming and, when he could be, very helpful. He gave me carte blanche with the exhibition, allowed me to set it up as I pleased. And then, when it closed, he did the same for my assistant.’

‘Your assistant?’ Brunetti asked.

Brett glanced across towards the kitchen and then answered, ‘Matsuko Shibata. She was my assistant in Xian, on loan from the Tokyo Museum, in an exchange policy between the Japanese and Chinese governments. She’d studied at Berkeley but gone back to Tokyo after she got her degree.’

‘Where is she now?’ Brunetti asked.

She bent down over the book and turned a block of pages, her hand coming to rest beside a delicate Japanese screen painting that showed herons in flight above a tall growth of bamboo. ‘She’s dead. She was killed in an accident on the site.’

‘What happened?’ Brunetti spoke very softly, aware that Semenzato’s death made this accident into something that Brett had already begun to examine in an entirely new fashion.

‘She fell. The dig in Xian is little more than an open pit covered by an aeroplane hangar. All of the statues were buried, part of the army that the emperor would take into eternity with him. In some places, we’ve had to dig down three or four metres to reach them. There’s an outer perimeter above the dig, and there’s a low wall that protects tourists from falling into it or from kicking dirt down on us when we’re working. In some areas, where tourists aren’t permitted, there’s no wall. Matsuko fell,’ she began, but Brunetti watched as she continued to process new possibilities and adjusted her language accordingly. She restated this. ‘Matsuko’s body was found at the bottom of one of these places. She’d fallen about three metres and broken her neck.’ She glanced across at Brunetti and made open admission of her new doubts by changing that last sentence. ‘She was found at the bottom, with a broken neck.’

‘When was she killed?’

A loud shot rang out from the kitchen. Entirely without thinking, Brunetti pivoted out of his chair and crouched in front of Brett, his body placed between her and the open door to the kitchen. His hand was underneath his jacket, pulling at his revolver, when they heard Flavia shout, ‘Porco vacca,’ and then both of them heard the unmistakable sound of champagne splashing from the neck of a bottle on to the floor.

He released his hold on the pistol and moved back into his seat without saying anything to Brett. In different circumstances, it might have been funny, but neither of them laughed. By silent consent, they decided to ignore it, and Brunetti repeated his question: ‘When was she killed?’

Deciding to save time and answer all of his questions at once, she said, ‘It happened about three weeks after I’d sent my first letter to Semenzato.’

‘When was that?’

‘In the middle of December. I took her body back to Tokyo. That is, I went with it. With her.’ She stopped, voice dried up by memory that she was not going to let Brunetti have any part of.

‘I was going to San Francisco for Christmas,’ she continued. ‘So I left early and spent three days in Tokyo. I saw her family.’ Again, a long pause. ‘Then I went to San Francisco.’

Flavia came back from the kitchen, balancing a silver tray with three tall champagne flutes on one hand, the other wrapped around the neck of a bottle of Dom Perignon as if she were carrying a tennis racquet. No stinting here, not on the after-breakfast champagne.

She had heard Brett’s last words and asked, ‘Are you telling Guido about our happy Christmas?’ The use of his first name did not go unnoticed by any of them, nor did her emphasis on ‘happy’.

Brunetti took the tray and set it down on the table; Flavia poured champagne liberally into the glasses. Bubbles rushed over the rim of one of them, spilled down the side and over the edge of the tray, racing towards the book that still lay open on the table. Brett nipped it closed and placed it on the sofa beside her. Flavia handed Brunetti a glass, put one on the table in front of the place where she had been sitting, and passed the third to Brett.

‘Cin Cin,’ Flavia toasted with bright artificiality, and they raised their glasses to one another. ‘If we’re going to talk about San Francisco, then I think I need at least champagne.’ She sat down facing them and took something too big to be called a sip from her glass.

Brunetti gave her an inquiring glance, and she rushed to explain. ‘I was singing there. Tosca. God, what a disaster.’ In a gesture so consciously theatrical it mocked itself, she placed the back of her hand to her forehead, closed her eyes for a moment, then continued, ‘We had a German director who had a “concept”. Unfortunately, his concept was to update the opera to make it relevant,’ which word she pronounced with special contempt, ‘and stage it during the Romanian Revolution, and Searpia was supposed to be Ceaucescu, or however that terrible man pronounced his name. I was still supposed to be the reigning diva, but of Bucharest, not Rome.’ She draped the hand over her eyes at the memory but forged ahead. ‘I remember that there were tanks and machine guns, and at one point I had to hide a hand grenade in my cleavage.’

‘Don’t forget the telephone,’ Brett said, covering her mouth and pressing her lips closed so as not to laugh.

‘Oh, sweet heavens, the telephone. It tells you how much I’ve tried to put it out of my memory that I didn’t remember it.’ She turned to Brunetti, took a mouthful far more suited to mineral water than champagne, and continued, eyes alive at the memory. ‘In the middle of “Visse d’arte”, the director wanted me to try to telephone for help. So there I was, stretched across a sofa, trying to convince God that I didn’t deserve any of this, and I didn’t, when the Searpia — I think he was a real Romanian - I certainly never understood a word he said.’ She paused a moment and then added, ‘Or sang.’

Brett interrupted to correct her. ‘He was Bulgarian, Flavia.’

Flavia’s wave, even encumbered with the glass, was airily dismissive. ‘Same thing,