The next day he went first to Signorina Elettra's office, where he found her besieged by regiments of paper advancing across her desk.
'Am I meant to find all of that promising?' he asked as he came in.
'What was it Harold Carter said when he could finally see into the tomb, 'I see things, marvellous things'?'
'Presumably you don't see golden masks and mummies, Signorina,' Brunetti responded.
Like a croupier raking in cards, she swept up some of the papers on her right and tapped them into a pile. 'Here, take a look: I've printed out the files in her computer.'
'And the bank records?' he asked, pulling a chair up to her desk and sitting beside her.
She waved disdainfully at a pile of papers on the far side of her desk. 'Oh, it was as I suspected’ she said with the lack of interest with which one mentions the obvious. The bank never called the attention of the Finanza to the deposits, and it seems they never troubled to ask the bank.'
'Which means what?' he asked, though he had a fair idea.
'The most likely possibility is that the Finanza simply never bothered to cross-check her statements with the reports on money transfers arriving in the country.'
'And that means?' he asked.
'Negligence or bribery, I'd say.'
'Is that possible?'
'As I have told you upon more than one occasion, sir, when you are dealing with banks, anything at all is possible.'
Brunetti deferred to her greater wisdom and asked, 'Was this difficult for you to get?'
'Considering the laudable reticence of the Swiss banks and the instinctive mendacity of our own, I suppose it was more difficult than usual.'
Brunetti knew the extent of her friendships, and so let it go at that, always uneasy at the thought of the information she might some day be asked to provide in return, and whether she would.
These are her letters’ Signorina Elettra said, handing him the pile of papers. The dates and the sums mentioned correspond to bank transfers made from her account.'
He read the first, to the orphanage in India, saying that she hoped her contribution would help the children have better lives, and then one to a home for battered women in Pavia, saying much the same thing. Each letter explained that the money was being given in memory of her grandfather, though it did not give his name nor, for that matter, her own.
'Are they all like this?' he asked, looking up from the page.
Brunetti hefted the pile of papers. 'How many are there?'
'More than forty. All the same.'
'Is the amount always the same?'
'No, they vary, though she seemed to like ten million lire. The total is close to the amount that went into her account.'
He considered what a fortune one of these transfers would be to an Indian orphanage or for a shelter for battered women.
'Are there any repeated donations?'
'To the orphanage in Kerala and the AIDS hospice. Those seemed to be her favourites but, so far as I can see, all of the others are different.'
'What else?' he asked.
She pointed to the closest pile. 'There are the papers she wrote for her literature classes. I haven't had time to read through all of them, though I must say her dislike of Gilbert Osmond is quite ferocious.'
It was a name he'd heard Paola use; she shared Claudia's dislike. 'What else?' he asked.
Indicating a thick pile to the left of her computer. Signorina Elettra said, ‘Personal correspondence, none of it very interesting.'
'And that?' he asked, pointing to the single remaining sheet. ‘It would cause a stone to weep’ she said, handing it to him.
'I, Claudia Leonardo’ he read, 'declare that all of the worldly goods of which I am in possession should, at my death, be sold and the profits distributed to the charities listed below. This is hardly enough to make up for a life of rapacious acquisition, but it is, if nothing else, an attempt to do so.' Below were listed the names and addresses of sixteen charities, among them the Indian orphanages and the women's home in Pavia.
''Rapacious acquisition'?' he asked.
'She had three million, six hundred thousand lire in the bank when she died’ was Signorina Elettra's only reply.
Brunetti read through the will again, pausing at 'rapacious acquisition'. 'She means her grandfather’ he said, finally perceiving the obvious.
Signorina Elettra, who had heard from Vianello some of the history of Claudia's family, agreed instantly.
He noticed that there was no signature on the paper. 'Is this your print-out?' he asked.
'Yes.' Before he could ask, she said, There was no copy among her papers.'
That makes sense. People that young don't think they're going to die.'
'And they usually don't’ Signorina Elettra added.
Brunetti put the will down on the desk. 'What was in the personal correspondence?'
'Letters to friends and former classmates, letters to an aunt in England. These were in English, and she usually talked about what she was doing, her studies, and asked about her aunt’s children and the animals on her farm. I really don't think there's anything in them, but you can take a look if you want.'
'No, no, that's all right. I trust you. Any other correspondence?'
'Just the usual business things: the university, the rough draft of what looks like a letter of application for a job, but there's no address on it.'
'A job?7 Brunetti interrupted. 'She was being sent more than a hundred million lire a year: why would she want a job?'
'Money isn't the only reason people work, sir,' Signorina Elettra reminded him with sudden force. 'She was a university student,' Brunetti said. 'What does that mean?'
'She wouldn't have had time to work, at least not during the academic year.'
'Perhaps,' Signorina Elettra conceded with a scepticism suggesting a certain measure of familiarity with the academic demands made by the university. 'Certainly there was no change in her finances that would indicate she had another source of income,' she said, pushing some of the papers aside until she found Claudia Leonardo's bank account. 'Look, she was still drawing out the same amounts every month when she died. So she didn't have any other income.'
'Of course she might have been working for nothing, as a volunteer or an apprentice,' Brunetti said. 'If s a possibility.'
'You just said she was a university student, sir, and wouldn't have had the time.'
'It could have been part time,' Brunetti insisted. 'Do you remember anything in the letters that suggests she might have been working?'
Signorina Elettra considered this for a while and finally said, 'No, nothing, but I wasn't looking for anything specific when I read the letters.' Without asking, she picked up the copies of Claudia Leonardo's letters, divided the pile in two, and handed half to Brunetti.
He moved his chair back from her desk, stretched out his legs and began to read. As he read his way through these records of Claudia's truncated life, he recalled a present an aunt of his had once, decades ago, given him for Christmas. He had been disappointed when he opened the matchbox and found nothing more than what looked like a bean made out of paper. Unable to disguise his disappointment, he had asked his aunt, 'But what’s this for?' and in answer she had filled a pan with water and told him to put the bean into it.
When he did, it swam magically on the surface of the water and then, under his marvelling eyes, gradually began to move and twist around, as the water unfurled what seemed like hundreds of tiny folds, each one pulling another one open after it. When it was finally still, he found himself gazing down at a perfect white carnation, the
