neither of them could make it out. Tentatively, she moved her toe from side to side in front of her, feeling around for the shoe. Nothing. The rain pounded down.
‘Here,’ Brunetti said, closing his umbrella and handing it to her. Quickly, he leaned forward and lifted her from the ground, taking her so by surprise that she wrapped her arms around him, hitting him in the back of the head with the handle of his closed umbrella. He stumbled forward, one arm around her shoulders and one under her knees, regained his balance and walked ahead. He made the two turns and got them to the door of the building before he set her down.
His hair was soaked; rain poured under his collar and down his body. At one point while carrying her, he had stumbled and felt the cold water surging over the top of his boot and down into his shoe. But he had carried her to the doorstep, where he set her down and brushed his hair back from his forehead.
Quickly, she opened the door to the building and splashed into the entrance, where the water was just as high as it was outside. She walked across it and up to the second step, which was dry. Hearing Brunetti splash through the water behind her, she moved up two steps and turned towards him. ‘Thank you.’
She kicked off her other shoe and left it where it lay, then started up the stairs, he following close behind. At the second landing, they heard the music that flowed down the stairs. At the top, in front of the metal door, she selected a key, placed it in the lock, and turned it. The door didn’t move.
She pulled out the key, chose another and turned the lock at the top of the door, then went back and opened the first lock. ‘That’s strange,’ she said, turning to him. ‘It’s double locked.’ It seemed sensible enough to him that Brett would dead-bolt the door from the inside.
‘Brett,’ Flavia called out as she pushed open the door. The music called out to meet them, but not Brett. ‘It’s me,’ Flavia called. ‘Guido’s with me.’ No one answered.
Barefoot, dripping water across the floor as she walked, Flavia went to the living room, then into the rear of the apartment to check both bedrooms. When she came back, she had grown paler. Behind her, violins soared, trumpets pealed, and universal harmony was restored. ‘She’s not here, Guido. She’s gone.’
* * * *
Chapter Twenty-One
After Flavia slammed her way out of the apartment that afternoon, Brett sat and stared down at the pages of notes that covered the surface of her desk. She gazed down on charts that listed the burning temperatures of different types of wood, the sizes of the kilns unearthed in western China, the isotopes found in the glazes on tomb pottery from the same area, and an ecological reconstruction of the flora of that same area two thousand years ago. If she interpreted and combined the data one way, she got one result about the way the ceramics were fired, but if she arranged the variables in a different fashion, then her thesis was disproved, it was all nonsense, and she should have stayed in China, where she belonged.
That word led her to wonder if she would ever belong there again, if Flavia and Brunetti could somehow manage to fix all of this — she could think of no better term — so that she could continue to work. She pushed the papers back in disgust. There was no sense in finishing the article, not if the writer was soon to be discredited as having been an instrumental part of a major art fraud. She left the desk and went to stand in front of the rows of neatly organized compact discs, looking for music that would suit her current mood. Nothing vocal. Not those fat gits singing about love and loss. Love and loss. And surely not the harpsichord; the plunky sound of it would snap her nerves. All right, then, the Jupiter Symphony: if anything could prove to her that sanity, joy and love remained in the world, it was that.
She was convinced of sanity and joy and was beginning to believe again in love when the phone rang. She answered it only because she thought it might be Flavia, who had been gone more than an hour.
‘Professoressa Lynch?’ a male voice enquired.
‘Yes.’
‘Friends of mine paid you a visit last week,’ the man said, voice well modulated and calm sounds elongated by the slurred undertones of a Sicilian accent. When Brett said nothing, he added, ‘I’m sure you remember.’
She still said nothing, her hand rigid on the telephone and her eyes closed with the memory of their visit.
‘Professoressa, I thought you might be interested to know that your friend; and his voice came down ironically on the word, ‘your friend Signora Petrelli, is talking to those same friends of mine. Yes, even as we speak, you and I, my friends are talking to her.’
‘What do you want?’ Brett asked.
‘Ah, I’d forgotten how very direct you Americans are. Why, I’d like to talk to you, Professoressa.’
After a long silence, Brett asked him, ‘About what?’
‘Oh, about Chinese art, of course, especially about some ceramics from the Han Dynasty that I think you might like to see. But before we do that, I think we should discuss Signora Petrelli.’
‘I don’t want to talk to you.’
‘I was afraid of that, Dottoressa. That’s why I took the liberty of asking Signora Petrelli to join me.’
Brett said the only thing she could think of to say. ‘She’s here with me.’
The man laughed outright. ‘Please, Dottoressa, I know just how bright you are, so please don’t be stupid with me. If she were there, you would have hung up the phone and would be calling the police right now, not talking to me.’ He allowed that to sink in and then asked, ‘Aren’t I right?’
‘How do I know she’s there with you?’
‘Ah, you don’t, Dottoressa. That’s part of the game, you see. But you know she’s not there, and you know she’s been gone since fourteen minutes after two, when she left your apartment and started towards Rialto. It’s a very unpleasant day to have gone for a walk. It’s raining very heavily. She should be back by now. In fact, if I might be so bold as to suggest it, she should have been back long before this, isn’t that right?’ When Brett didn’t answer
