She laughed. It was a noise devoid of all possibility of amusement or pleasure, but it seemed the only response she could find to a statement which was, to her, so obviously absurd.
'Signor Commissario’ she said, ‘I am eighty-three years old, and as my need for those pills ought to have shown you, I am in poor health.' Before he could respond, she went on, 'Even more fortunate, at least in the face of my refusal to speak to you further, is the fact that there does not exist the doctor who would not certify that any questions you might ask me in this matter would put my life at risk.'
'You make it sound as if you don't believe it’ he observed.
'Oh, I do believe it. I was raised in a school far harder than you Italians have any concept of, and I therefore have never been a crybaby, but, believe me, if you could feel how my heart is pounding now, you would know that this is true. Your questions would put my life at risk. I mention the doctor only to make clear to you the lengths to which I will go in order not to continue to speak to you.'
'Is it the questions that would put your life in danger, Signora, or the answers?'
Suddenly aware that her cigarette had gone out, she tossed it to the floor and reached for the packet. 'You can see yourself out, Commissario’ she said, her voice rich with the command that lingers after a youth spent in a house where there are many servants.
12
Brunetti's work had exposed him to the many forms in which despair manifested itself, and so he wasted no more time in what he knew would be a vain attempt to persuade Signora Jacobs to tell him more about the murdered girl.
He left her apartment and decided to walk back to the Questura, using the time to wonder how’ even if, the old woman and her link to the Guzzardis might be connected to Claudia's death. Why should criminal actions committed decades before the girl's birth be connected to what might have been a simple robbery gone wrong? Simple thieves, the voice of experience and habitual scepticism whispered in his ear, do not carry knives, and simple thieves do not murder the people who discover them at their work; push them aside, perhaps, in attempting to flee, but not stab them until they are dead.
He found himself looking across at the campanile of San Giorgio, studying the angel who perched atop it, restored now after having been blasted to flame by lightning some years ago. Realizing that he must have walked past the Questura without noticing where he was, he turned and went back towards San Lorenzo. The officer at the door saluted him normally and gave no sign that he had seen his superior walk by a few minutes ago.
Brunetti paused outside Signorina Elettra's office and peered inside, relieved to see an abundance of flowers on the windowsill. A step further confirmed his hope that more of them stood on her desk: yellow roses, at least two dozen of them. How he had prayed in the last months that she be returned to her shameless depredation of the city's finances by claiming these exploding bouquets as ordinary office expenses. Every bud, every blossom was rich with the odour of the misappropriation of public funds; Brunetti breathed in deeply and sighed in relief.
She sat, as he had hoped, behind her desk, and he was happy to see she was wearing a green cashmere sweater; he was even happier to see that she was reading a magazine. 'What is it today, Signorina?' he asked,
She looked up but she did not smile. 'No, sir, I always give that to my aunt.'
'Is she religious?' Brunetti inquired.
'No, sir. She has a parakeet.' She shut the magazine, preventing him from seeing what it was. He hoped it was
'Has Vianello told you?' he asked. 'Poor girl. How old was she?' 'I'm not sure, no more than twenty.' Neither commented on the awful waste. 'He said she was one of your wife's students.' Brunetti nodded. 'I've just been to see an old woman who knew her.'
'Do you have any idea of what happened?' 'It could have been a robbery.' When he saw her reaction, he added, 'Or it could have been something else entirely.' 'Such as?'
'Boyfriend. Drugs’
'Vianello said you had spoken to her’ Signorina Elettra said. 'Does either of those seem possible?'
'My first impulse is to say no, but I don't understand the world any more. Anything is possible. Of anyone’
'Do you really believe that, sir?' she asked, and her tone suggested that her question held greater significance than his remark, which he had made without thinking.
'No’ he said after some thought. 'I suppose I don't believe it. In the end, there are some people it makes sense to trust’
‘Why?'
He had no idea where this line of questioning had come from nor where it might lead them, but he sensed the seriousness with which she was pursuing it. 'Because there are some people, still, who can be trusted absolutely. We have to believe that's so.'
Why?'
'Because if we don't find at least someone we can trust absolutely, then, well, we're made less by not having them. And by not having the experience of trusting them.' He wasn't exactly sure what he meant by this, or perhaps he was just doing a bad job of explaining what it was he did mean, but he knew he felt that he would be a lesser man if there were no one into whose hands he would put himself.
Before he could say or she could ask anything else, the phone rang. She answered it, 'Yes, sir.' She glanced at Brunetti, and this time she did smile. 'Yes, he's just come in, sir. I'll send him in.'
Brunetti wasn't sure if he were relieved or disappointed to have their conversation cut off like this, but he didn't think he could linger to continue it, not once Vice-Questore Patta had been alerted to his arrival.
'If I'm not out in fifteen minutes,' he said, 'call the police’
She nodded and opened the magazine.
Patta sat at his desk, seeming neither pleased nor displeased and looking, as he always did, so suited to a position of responsibility and authority that his promotion could have been the result of natural law. Seeing him, Brunetti realized how used he was to searching for signs of what was to come in Patta's expression, like an augur examining the kidneys of a freshly slaughtered chicken. 'Yes, sir,' he said, taking the seat towards which Patta waved him.
'What’s all this about a dead girl, Brunetti?' Patta asked, short of a demand but somewhere past a question.
'She was stabbed to death some time last night, sir. I'll know more about the time after Dottor Rizzardi gives me his report.'
'Did she have a boyfriend?' Patta asked.
'Not that either her landlady or her flatmate knew of’ Brunetti replied calmly.
'Have you excluded the possibility of robbery?' Patta asked, surprising Brunetti by the suggestion that he did not want to attribute her death to the most obvious cause.
'No, sir.'
What have you done?' Patta asked, not forgetting to come down heavily on the second word.
Deciding that intentions and deeds were interchangeable, at least while he was speaking to his superior, Brunetti said: I've got men questioning the neighbours, asking if they saw anything last night; Signorina Elettra is checking phone records for the girls' apartment; I've already interviewed the girl she shared the apartment with, but she was still too shocked to be of much help; and we've begun asking her friends at the university what they know about her.' Brunetti hoped he'd succeed in getting all of these things in train that afternoon.
'Is that inspector of yours working on this with you?' Patta asked.
Brunetti bit back a remark about the possible ownership of
Lieutenant Scarpa and contented himself with a simple, 'Yes, sir’
'Right, then, I want you to get this taken care of as quickly as possible. The
