‘I hope so,’ she said, still stirring her tea.
Brunetti wondered which of them would say it first. He looked across at her, saw the bright wings of her hair falling to either side of her face and, touched by that, said, ‘So you had nothing to do with it.’
She was silent.
‘Nothing at all,’ he repeated.
This time she shrugged, but still she didn’t speak.
He reached across the table and eased the spoon from her fingers. He placed it on the raffia mat and took her hand in his. When she made no response he insisted, ‘Paola, you had nothing at all to do with it. He would have killed him anyway.’
‘But I gave him a way to make it easier.’
‘You mean the note?’
‘Yes.’
‘He would have used something else, done something else.’
‘But he did that.’ Her voice was firm. ‘If I hadn’t given them the opportunity, perhaps he wouldn’t have died.’
‘You don’t know that.’
‘No and I never will. That’s what I can’t stand, that I’ll never know. So I’ll always feel responsible.’
He paused a long time before he found the courage to ask, ‘Would you still do it?’ She didn’t answer, so he added, needing to know, ‘Would you still throw the stone?’
She considered this for a long time, her hand motionless beneath his. Finally she said, ‘If I knew only what I knew then, yes. I’d still do it.’
When he made no answer, she turned her hand over and gave his an interrogative squeeze. He looked down, then up at her. ‘Well?’ she finally asked.
His voice was level when he said, ‘Do you need me to approve?’
She shook her head.
‘I can’t, you know,’ he said, not without sadness. ‘But I can tell you that you weren’t responsible for what happened to him.’
She considered this for a while. ‘Ah, Guido, you want so much to take the trouble from the world, don’t you?’
He picked up his mug with his free hand and took another sip. ‘I can’t do that.’
‘But you want to, don’t you?’
He thought about that for long time and finally said, as though confessing to a weakness, ‘Yes.’
She smiled then and squeezed his hand again. ‘The wanting’s enough, I think.’
DONNA LEON
