‘About crime in the city.’
The young man remained where he was, standing a bit outside the door, and made no move to open it or allow Brunetti to enter. He waited for Brunetti to explain more fully, and when it became obvious this was not about to happen, he said, ‘I thought there wasn’t supposed to be any crime in Venice.’ His Sicilian accent became audible in the longer sentence, his belligerence in the tone.
‘Is Signor La Capra at home?’ Brunetti asked, tired of sparring and beginning to feel the cold.
‘Yes.’ The young man stepped back inside the door and held it open for Brunetti. He found himself in a large courtyard with a circular well in the centre. Off to the left, marble pillars supported a flight of steps that led up to the first floor of the building that enclosed the courtyard on all sides. At the top, the stairs turned back upon themselves, still hugging the exterior wall of the building, and climbed to the second and then the third floor. The carved heads of stone lions stood at equal distances on the marble banister that ran along the stairs. Tucked below the stairs were the signs of recent work: a wheelbarrow filled with paper bags of cement, a roll of heavy-duty plastic sheeting, and large tins dripping different colours of paint down their sides.
At the top of the first flight of steps, the young man opened a door and stepped back to allow Brunetti to pass into the
They passed down a marble hallway and started up an inner stairway, and as they went, the music grew louder and louder, the voice clearer and brighter, the nearer they came to its source. The young man seemed not to hear, though the world in which they moved was filled only with that sound, nothing more. At the top of the second flight of stairs, the young man opened another door and stood back again, nodding Brunetti into a long corridor. He could only nod; there was no way Brunetti could have heard him.
Brunetti walked in front of him and along the corridor. The young man caught up with him and opened a door on the right; this time he bowed as Brunetti passed in front of him and closed the door behind him, leaving Brunetti inside, all but deafened by the music.
Robbed of every sense but sight, Brunetti saw in four corners wide cloth-covered panels that reached from the floor to the height of a man, all turned to face the centre of the room. And there in the centre, a man lay on a chaise-longue covered with pale brown leather. His attention entirely given to a small square booklet in his hands, he gave no sign that he had noticed Brunetti’s entrance. Brunetti stopped just inside the door and watched him. And he listened to the music.
The soprano’s tone was absolutely pure, a sound that was generated in the heart and warmed there until it came swelling out with the apparent effortlessness that was achieved only by the greatest singers and then only with the greatest skill. Her voice paused upon a note, soared off from it, swelled, flirted with what he now realized was a harpsichord, and then rested for a moment while the strings spoke with the harpsichord. And then, as if it had always been there, the voice returned and swept the strings up with it, higher and higher still. Brunetti could make out words and phrases here and there,
The man on the chaise-longue looked to be in his late fifties and wore around his middle proof of good eating and soft living. His face was dominated by his nose, large and fleshy — the same nose Brunetti had seen on the mug shot of the accused rapist, his son — on which sat a pair of half-lens reading glasses. His eyes were large, limpid and dark enough to seem almost black. He was cleanshaven, but his beard was so heavy that a dark shadow was evident on his cheeks, though it was still early afternoon.
The music came to a chilling diminuendo and died away. It was only in the silence that radiated out to him that Brunetti became aware of just how perfect the quality of sound had been, the volume disguised by that perfection.
The man leaned back limply on his chaise-longue, and the booklet fell from his hand to the floor beside him. He closed his eyes, head back, his entire body slack. Though he had in no way acknowledged Brunetti’s arrival, Brunetti had no doubt the man was very much aware of his presence in the room; moreover, he had the feeling that this display of aesthetic ravishment was being put on specifically for his edification.
Gently, much in the manner his mother-in-law used to applaud an aria she hadn’t liked but had been told was very well sung, he patted the tips of his fingers together a few times, very lightly.
As if called back from realms where lesser mortals dared not enter, the man on the chaise-longue opened his eyes, shook his head in feigned astonishment, and turned to look at the source of the lukewarm response.
‘Didn’t you like the voice?’ La Capra asked with real surprise.
‘Oh, I liked the voice a great deal,’ Brunetti answered, then added, ‘but the performance seemed a bit forced.’
If La Capra caught the absence of possessive pronoun, he chose to ignore it. He picked up the libretto and waved it in the air. ‘That was the best voice of our age, the only great singer,’ he said, waving the small libretto for emphasis.
‘Signora Petrelli?’ Brunetti inquired.
The man’s mouth twisted up as if he’d bitten into something unpleasant. ‘Sing Handel? La Petrelli?’ he asked with tired surprise. ‘All she can sing is Verdi and Puccini.’ He pronounced the names as a nun would say “sex” and “passion”.
Brunetti began to offer that Flavia also sang Mozart, but instead he asked, ‘Signor La Capra?’
At the sound of his name, the man pushed himself to his feet, suddenly recalled from aesthetic pronouncements to his duty as a host, and approached Brunetti, extending his hand. ‘Yes. And whom do I have the honour of meeting?’
Brunetti took his hand and returned the very formal smile. ‘Commissario Guido Brunetti.’
‘Commissario?’ One would think La Capra had never heard the word.
Brunetti nodded. ‘Of the police.’
Momentary confusion crossed the other man’s face, but this time Brunetti thought it might be a real emotion,
