Resigning himself to the fact that any further questioning would have to be done in Milano or by phone, Brunetti got to his feet and said, ‘I’m very grateful for your help.' Then turning to the doctor, ‘For yours, too, Dottore.'
To both of them together, he said, 'Signora Gallante has made tea, and I'm sure she'd be very happy to give you some.' He walked towards the door of the apartment, turned back briefly as if about to say something, but changed his mind and left.
11
Vianello joined him on the stairway. 'Shall we go back to the apartment, sir?' he asked.
By way of an answer, Brunetti started back upstairs. The uniformed officer was still at the door when they arrived and said, when they reached the top of the steps, They've taken her away, sir.'
'You can go back to the Questura, then,' Brunetti told him and went inside. The rug was still there in the centre of the room, the discoloured fringe lying smooth now, as though someone had combed it. Brunetti took the gloves from the pocket of his jacket and slipped them on again. The grey puffs of powder that covered the surfaces of the furniture offered silent evidence that the technical squad had been through the apartment and had dusted for prints.
No matter how many times Brunetti had gone through the artefacts that no longer belonged to the dead, he could never free himself of the uneasiness with which it filled him. He poked and prodded, fingered, plucked and pried into the material secrets left behind by those taken off by sudden death, and no matter how much he willed himself to remain dispassionate about what he did, he never managed to avoid the rush of excitement that came with the discovery of what he sought: is this what a voyeur feels? he wondered.
Vianello disappeared in the direction of the bedrooms, and Brunetti remained in the living room, conscious of how reluctantly he turned his back on the place where she had lain. Just where it should have been, he found a small book of telephone numbers placed neatly on top of the city phone book and to the left of the telephone. He opened it and began to read. It was not until he got to the Js that he found what might be what he was looking for: 'Jacobs'. He paged through the rest of the book but, aside from listings for 'plumber’ and 'computers', Jacobs' was the only listing that was not a surname ending in a vowel. Further, the number began with 52 and had no out-of-city prefix written in front of it, as had some of the other numbers. He toyed for a moment with the idea of calling the number, but if Claudia had been dear to this woman, then the telephone was not the way to do it.
Instead, he flipped open the phone book and found the few listings under that letter. There it was, 'Jacobs, H.', with an address in Santa Croce. After that, his instinct that he had already found what was most important prevented him from taking much interest in the rest of his search of the apartment. Vianello, emerging from his search of Lucia's room, said only, 'Signorina Lucia seems to divide her time between histories of the Byzantine Empire and Harmony Romances.'
Brunetti, who had told Vianello about Claudia's visit to his office and her strange request for information, said, 1 think I've found the missing grandmother.'
Reaching into the pocket of his jacket for his
Brunetti waved away the offer and resisted the temptation to point out to Vianello that they were standing just beside a telephone and that his phone was unnecessary. 'No. She'd worry if I told her it was the police, and then I'd have to tell her, anyway. Better to go and talk to her directly.'
'Would you like me to come with you?' Vianello asked.
'No, that's all right. Go and have lunch. Besides, it might be better for her if there's only one of us. Before you go, see what you can find out from other people in the building what they know about the girls and if they saw or heard anything last night. Tomorrow we can begin asking questions at the university: my wife might be able to tell me something about the girl, who her friends were, her other professors. When you get back to the Questura, ask Signorina Elettra what she can find out about Claudia Leonardo or this woman, Hedi - I suppose that’ s Hedwig - Jacobs. She might as well see if there's anything about Luca Guzzardi.'
'She'll be glad of the work, I think,' Vianello said in a tone that failed to be neutral.
'Good. Then tell her I want anything at all she can find, even if it goes back to the war.'
Vianello started to say something else, perhaps about Signorina Elettra, but he stopped and instead said only, 'I'll tell her.'
Brunetti knew that the address in Santa Croce had to be somewhere near San Giacomo dell'Orio, so he walked to the Accademia and took the Number One to San Stae. From there, instinct took over and he soon entered Campo San Boldo. In the
He did as he was told and saw, beside the second door on the left, the name Jacobs. As he raised his hand to ring the bell, Brunetti felt a wave of momentary exhaustion sweep over him. He had done this too many times, brought so much terrible news, and he felt an overwhelming reluctance to do it again. How easy it would be if victims never had relatives, were always people who were solitary and unloved and whose death would not radiate out, swamping the small boats around them, washing up more victims on the shoals of life.
Knowing that he was helpless to dismiss this feeling, he waited for it to pass and a few minutes later he rang the bell. After some time, a deep voice, but still a woman's voice, called over the entry phone, 'Who is it?'
'I've come to talk to you, Signora Jacobs,' was the best he could think of.
'I don't talk to people’ she answered and replaced the phone.
Brunetti rang the bell again, keeping his finger on it until he heard her demand, 'Who are you?' The tone was peremptory, without uncertainty or fear.
‘I’m Commissario Guido Brunetti, Signora, from the police. I've come to talk to you.'
There followed a long pause. Finally, she asked, 'About what?'
'Claudia Leonardo.'
The noise he heard, or thought he heard, could simply have been static; it could just as easily have been her breathing. The door snapped open and he went in. The floor of the entrance hall was green with mould, lit only by a dim bulb in a filthy glass case. He started up the stairs, the green of the mould growing lighter as he rose. At the first landing there was another bulb, no brighter, which dimly illuminated the octagonal marble medallions that patterned the floor. A single door, a thick metal
‘I’m afraid I have very bad news for you, Signora Jacobs’ he said, halting outside the door. He watched her face for some response, but she gave none.
‘You better come inside to give it to me so I can be sitting down when I hear it,' she said. The longer sentence exposed the Teutonic underpinnings of her speech. ‘It’s my heart, and I'm not at all steady on my feet any more. I need to sit.'
She turned back into the apartment. Brunetti closed the door and followed her. His first breath proved to him that the tobacco dealer was right: if he could have walked into an ashtray, the smell would have been no stronger. He wondered when a window had last been opened in this apartment, so pervasive was the sour smell.
She led him down a wide corridor, and at first Brunetti kept his eyes on her retreating back, concerned that even the thought of bad news might cause her to falter or fall. But she seemed to proceed steadily, if slowly, so he began to pay attention to his surroundings. Looking around him, he stopped dead, assaulted by the beauty he saw spread around him as if by a profligate hand.
The walls on either side of the corridor were crowded with rows of paintings and drawings, lined up shoulder to shoulder like people waiting for a bus. Like those random waiters, the paintings in no way resembled one another: he saw what had to be a small Degas of the familiar seated dancer; what looked like a pear but only a pear as Cezanne could paint a pear; a thick-lidded Madonna of the Sienese school; and what was surely one of
