though Vianello's white uniform hat was as glaringly evident as the halo on any of the saints left behind them in the church.
Brunetti, making an attempt not to appear to be doing so, studied the faces of the people who walked past him. At first, he thought he was noticing the effect of their conscious efforts to look both innocent and ignorant, but then he realized that what he was seeing were the effects of a restrictive geography: many of them looked alike. The men were all short, their heads round, eyes close together. Their generally muscular build he attributed to the work most of them did, as must be the case with the sun-scored and deeply lined faces of all of them, even the youngest. The women showed more diversity of feature, though a common thickness seemed to have settled on the bodies of any of them over the age of thirty.
This morning no one paused on the steps of the church to talk to their neighbours. Instead, the entire congregation responded to some common, urgent summons to their homes. To say they fled is to exaggerate. To say they moved away quickly and nervously is not.
As the last of them moved off, Brunetti turned to Vianello, hoping to lighten his sense of discomfiture by asking if they should blame their failure on the sergeant's uniform. Before he could speak, however, he saw Signorina Elettra emerge from the bar that stood to the left of the church. That is, he saw her emerge from the bar briefly and then step partly back inside. She came out again, more slowly this time, and as she walked away from the door, he saw the reason for the delay: a young man held her hand and stood in the doorway, calling back to someone inside the bar. Whatever it was he said, it caused a shout of laughter from more than one voice, at which Signorina Elettra yanked his arm, finally pulling him from the doorway.
The young man stepped towards her and with what seemed the ease of long familiarity put his arm around her shoulder and pulled her close. There was an utter lack of coquettishness in the way she responded, wrapping her left arm around his waist and falling into step beside him, moving towards the two policemen they had not yet seen. Considerably taller than she, the man leaned his head down and said something; Elettra glanced up at his face and answered with a smile Brunetti had never seen her use before. The man bent and kissed the top of her head, causing them to stop for an instant. When he lifted his head, he saw Brunetti and Vianello on the steps of the church and came to a sudden halt.
Signorina Elettra, surprised, looked up at the young man's face, then followed the path of his eyes. The exclamation that emerged from her open mouth was drowned by the first peal of the church bells above them. She recovered her composure long before the twelfth bell struck, by which time she had redirected her attention, momentarily distracted by the unexpected sight of a policeman on the steps of the church, to the serious business of lunch with her new friend.
After an hour of attempting to interview the people of Pellestrina, Brunetti decided it would be futile until they had all finished their lunch. He and Vianello therefore retreated to the restaurant and had a sober meal which neither of them enjoyed, despite the freshness of the food and the crispness of the wine. They decided to split up, hoping that the sympathy Vianello had established when he spoke to people would be sufficient to overcome the inevitable response to his uniform.
At the first two houses, Brunetti was told that they did not know Signora Follini at all well, one of me men even going so far as to say that he took his wife down to the Lido in the car once a week: at the local store the prices were far too high and many of the items on sale no longer fresh. The man was an embarrassingly bad liar, a fact which his wife tried to ignore by carefully arranging and rearranging four porcelain figurines which bore a vague resemblance to dachshunds. Brunetti thanked them both, and left.
No one answered the door at the next two houses; the response might as easily have been the result of choice as absence. The third door, however, was opened almost before he finished knocking, presenting Brunetti with every policeman's dream: the watchful neighbour. He knew her from a single glance at her tight lips, recognized the type in her eager eyes and forward-leaning posture. The fact that she did not rub her palms together did not detract from the overall impression of satisfaction conveyed by her avid smile: here at last was someone who would share her shock and horror at the terrible deeds, commissions and omissions of which her neighbours were guilty.
Her hair was coiled in a thin bun at the back of her head, recalcitrant wisps held down by a scented greasy pomade. Though her face was thin, her body was rounded, with no visible waist. Over a black dress that was slowly turning green with age and repeated washing, she wore a soiled apron which, years ago, might once have been covered with flowers.
'Good afternoon, Signora,' he began, but before he could give his name, she interrupted him.
'I know who you are and why you're here. It's about time you came to talk to me.' She tried to express disapproval, but it was impossible for her to suppress her satisfaction at his arrival.
'I'm sorry, Signora,' he began, 'but I wanted to see what the others had to say before talking to you.'
'Come in, come in,' she said, turning and leading him towards the back of the house. He followed her down a long, damp hallway, at the end of which light came from an open doorway into the kitchen. Here there was no change in temperature, no comforting warmth to compensate for the seaside dankness of the corridor, and no pleasant scents of cooking to cut through the oppressive smell of mould, wool, and something feral and animal he couldn't recognize.
She directed him to a seat at the table and, without offering him anything to drink, sat down opposite.
Brunetti took a small notebook from the side pocket of his jacket, opened it, and uncapped his pen. 'Your name, Signora?' he asked, careful to speak Italian and not Veneziano, knowing that the more formal and official this interview could be made to seem, the greater would be her pleasure and sense of gratification at finally having made the authorities aware of the many things she had nursed to her bosom all these thankless years.
'Boscarini,' she said. 'Clemenza.' He made no comment and wrote silently.
'And you've lived here how long, Signora Boscarini?'
'All my life’ she answered, equally careful to speak Italian but not finding it at all easy. 'Sixty-three years.'
Emotions or experiences he couldn't imagine made her look at least ten years older than that, but Brunetti did nothing more than make another note. 'Your husband, Signora?' Brunetti asked, knowing that she would be complimented by the assumption that she must have one, insulted to be asked if she did.
'Dead. Thirty-four years ago. In a storm.' Brunetti made a note of the importance of this fact. He looked up again and decided not to ask about children.
'Have you had the same neighbours all this time, Signora?'
'Yes. Except for the Rugolettos three doors down’ she said, giving an angry toss of her chin to the left. 'They moved in twelve years ago, from Burano, when her grandfather died and left them the house. She's dirty, the wife’ she said in dismissive contempt and then, to make sure he understood why, added, 'Buranesi.'
Brunetti grunted in acknowledgement, then, wasting no time, asked, 'Did you know Signora Follini?'
She smiled at this, hardly able to contain her pleasure, then quickly smothered the expression. Brunetti heard a small noise and glanced across at her. It took him an instant to realize that she was actually licking her lips repeatedly, as if freeing them at last to tell the awful truth. 'Yes’ she finally said. ‘I knew her, and I knew her parents. Good people, hard working. She killed them. Killed them as if she'd taken a knife and driven it into her poor mother's heart.'
Brunetti, looking down at his notebook to hide his face, made encouraging noises and continued to write.
Again she paused, made the licking noise, then went on. 'She was a whore and a drug addict and brought disease and disgrace on her family. I'm not surprised that she's dead or that she died the way she did. I'm just surprised that it took so long.' She was silent for a moment, and then added, in a voice so unctuous Brunetti closed his eyes, 'God have mercy on her soul.'
Allowing the deity sufficient time to register the request, Brunetti then asked, 'You said she was a prostitute, Signora? While she was here? Was she still?'
'She was a whore when she was a child and a young woman. Once a woman does that sort of thing, she's defiled, and she never loses the taste for it.' Her voice reflected both certainty and disgust. 'So she must have been doing it now. That's obvious.'
Brunetti turned a page, mastered his expression, and looked up with an encouraging smile. 'Do you know anyone who might have been her client?' He saw her begin to answer, then think of the consequences of false accusation and close her mouth.
