'Oh, no. Claudia wasn't the sort of girl you could ask. If she wanted you to know something, she'd tell you. Otherwise, she spoke of other things or just ignored the question.'
'Did that offend you?' Vianello asked.
'Perhaps at first, but then I realized what she was like and that there was nothing I could do about it. Besides, I liked her so much it didn't matter, didn't matter at all.' Signora Gallante picked up her cup and held it to her mouth, lowering her face as if to drink from it, but then the tears got the better of her and she had to put the cup down and reach for a handkerchief. 'I don't think I want to talk about this any more, gentlemen.'
'Of course, Signora,' Brunetti said, finishing his tea, which had grown cold while they talked. ‘I’ll just see if the doctor's finished and have a word with Lucia if that's possible.'
Signora Gallante clearly disapproved of this, but she said nothing and busied herself with wiping away her tears.
Brunetti went to the door of the bedroom and knocked, then knocked again. After a time, the door was opened by the doctor, who put his head out and asked, 'Yes?'
’I’d like to speak to Signorina Mazzotti, Dottore, if that's possible.'
‘I’ll ask her,' the doctor said and closed the door in Brunetti's face. After a few minutes he pulled the door open and his head appeared again. 'She doesn't want to talk to anyone.'
'Dottore, would you explain to her that what we want to do is find the person who killed her friend. I know Signorina Mazzotti's parents are on their way from Milano to take her home, and as soon as that happens it will be very difficult to speak to her.' Brunetti didn't mention the fact that he had the legal right to forbid her to leave the city. Instead, he added, 'We'd be very grateful if she'd agree to talk to us now. It would help us a great deal.'
The doctor nodded his understanding and, Brunetti thought, his sympathy and closed the door again.
When, at least five minutes later, the doctor opened the door again, Lucia Mazzotti stood behind him. She was taller and thinner than he'd thought and now, seeing her full face.
he saw just how pretty she was. The doctor held the door for her and she stepped out into the corridor. Brunetti led her into the sitting room and waited while she took a seat on a straight-backed chair. 'Would you like the doctor to stay here while we talk, Signorina?' he asked.
She nodded, then said yes in a very soft voice.
The doctor sat on the edge of a sofa. He set his bag on the floor at his feet and leaned back, silent and still.
Brunetti took another straight-backed chair and placed it about a metre from Lucia's chair, careful to arrange it so that she remained in shadow and his face in the light that came in from the window behind her. He wanted to create as much of an atmosphere of openness as he could between them to relax her into speaking easily. He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way. She had the green eyes so common to redheads, red-rimmed now from crying.
‘I want to tell you how very sorry I am about this, Signorina,' he began. 'Signora Gallante has been telling us what a sweet girl Claudia was. I'm sure it’s very painful for you to lose such a good friend’
Lucia bowed her head and nodded.
'Could you tell me a little bit about your friendship? How long have you shared the apartment?'
The girl's voice was soft, almost inaudible, but Brunetti, by leaning forward, managed to hear. 'I moved in about a year ago. Claudia and I were enrolled in the same faculty, so we took some classes together, and so when her other flatmate decided to leave school, she asked me if I wanted to take over her room’
‘How long had Claudia been here?'
'I don't know. A year or two before I came.'
'From Milano, is that correct?'
The girl was still looking at the floor, but she nodded in assent.
‘Do you know where Claudia came from?'
‘I think from here’
At first Brunetti wasn't sure he had heard her correctly. 'Venice?' he asked.
'Yes, sir. But she was in school in Rome before she came here.'
'But she was renting her own apartment, not living with her parents?'
'I don't think she had any parents,' Lucia said but then, as if aware of how strange that must sound, she looked directly at Brunetti for the first time and added, 'I mean, I think they're dead.'
'Both of them?'
'Her father, yes. I know that because she told me.' 'And her mother?'
Lucia had to consider this. 'I'm not sure about her mother. I always assumed she was dead, too, but Claudia never said.'
'Did it ever strike you as strange that people as young as her parents probably were could both be dead?'
Lucia shook her head.
'Did Claudia have many friends?'
'Friends?'
'Classmates, people who came here to study or perhaps to have a meal or just talk.'
'Some kids from our faculty would come over to study sometimes, but there was no one special.'
'Did she have a boyfriend?'
'You mean a
'That, or just a boyfriend she went out with occasionally.'
Again, a negative motion of her head.
'Is there anyone at all you can think of that she was close to?'
Lucia gave this some thought before she answered, The only person I ever heard her talk about, or talk to on the phone, was a woman she called her grandmother, but who wasn't.'
Is this the woman called Hedi?' Brunetti asked, wondering what Lucia's response would be to learning that the police already knew about this woman.
Obviously, Lucia found it not at all strange that the police should know, for she answered, 'Yes, I think she was German, or Austrian. That's what they spoke when they talked on the phone.'
'Do you speak German, Lucia?' he asked, using her name for the first time and hoping that his familiarity would sooth her into answering more easily.
'No, sir. I never knew what they were talking about.'
'Were you curious?'
She seemed surprised at the question: whatever could be interesting in conversation between her flatmate and an old foreign woman?
'Did you ever see this woman?'
'No. Claudia went to see her, though. Sometimes she'd bring home cookies or a kind of cake with almonds in it. I never asked about it, just assumed she'd brought it from her.'
'Why did you think that, Lucia?'
'Oh, I don't know. Maybe because no one I know bakes things like that. With cinnamon and nuts.' Brunetti nodded.
'Can you remember anything Claudia might ever have said about her?'
'What sort of thing?'
'About how it was that she was her, well, her adoptive grandmother? Or where she lived?' ‘I think she must live in the city.' Why, Lucia?'
'Because the times she brought back the things to eat, she was never gone for a long time. I mean, not time to get to somewhere else and come back.' She considered this for a while and then said, 'It couldn't even have been the Lido. I mean, it could have been, because you can get to the Lido and back in a short time, but I remember Claudia once said - I forget what we were talking about - that she hadn't been to the Lido for years.'
Brunetti started to ask another question, but suddenly Lucia turned to the doctor and asked, 'Doctor, do I have to answer any more questions?'
Without consulting Brunetti for an answer, the young man said, 'Not unless you want to, Signorina.'
'I don't want to,' she said. That's all I want to say.' She looked at the doctor when she spoke, ignoring Brunetti entirely.
