size of an apple. Before the water could soak and ruin it, his aunt plucked it out and set it on the windowsill, in the pale winter sun, where it stood for days. Each time Brunetti looked at it, he recalled the magic that had turned one thing into such a wonderfully different other.
Much the same process took place as he read Claudia's words and heard her natural voice. These poor Albanians. People hate them as soon as they learn where they're from, as though their passports (if the poor devils even have passports) were pairs of horns.'
After about ten minutes he looked up and asked, 'Found anything?'
She shook her head and kept reading.
After another few minutes he observed, 'She seemed to spend a great deal of time in the library, didn't she?'
'She was a student,' Signorina Elettra said, looking up from the papers. Then she added, 'But, yes, she did, didn't she?'
'And it never sounds like she's doing research there, I'd say.' Brunetti asked, turning back a page and reading out,
' 'I had to be at the library at nine this morning, and you know what a horror I am that early, enough to frighten anyone away’'
Brunetti set the page down. 'Seems a strange concern, doesn't it? Turning people away?'
'Especially if she's going there to read or study. Why would it matter?' Though Signorina Elettra's question was rhetorical, both of them considered it.
'How many libraries are there in the city?' Brunetti asked.
There's the Marciana, the Querini Stampalia, the one at the university itself and then those in the
'Let's try them,' Brunetti said, reaching for the phone.
Just as quickly, Signorina Elettra opened the bottom drawer of her desk, pulled out the phone book and flipped to 'Comune di Venezia'. One after the other, Brunetti called the city libraries in Castello, Canareggio, San Polo and Giudecca, but none of them had an employee or a volunteer working there called Claudia Leonardo nor, when he called them, did the Marciana, the Querini Stampalia, or the library of the university.
'Now what?' she asked, slapping the directory shut. Brunetti took it from her and looked under the B's. 'You ever heard of the Biblioteca della Patria?' he asked.
'Of the what?' she asked.
'Patria’ he repeated and read out the address, saying, 'Sounds like it might be down at the end of Castello.' She pressed her lips together and shook her head.
He dialled the number and, when a man answered, asked if someone named Claudia Leonardo worked there. The man, speaking with a slight accent, asked him to repeat the name, told him to hold on a moment, and set the phone down. A moment later he was back and asked, 'Who's calling, please?'
'Commissario Guido Brunetti,' he answered, then asked, 'And Claudia Leonardo?'
'And you are?' Brunetti asked.
'Maxwell Ford’ he answered, all the Italianate softness of his voice slipping away to reveal the Anglo-Saxon bedrock. In response to Brunetti's demanding silence, he explained, 'I'm co-director of the Library.'
'And where, exactly, is this library?'
'It's at the very end of Via Garibaldi, across the canal from Sant’ Anna.'
Brunetti knew where it must be, but he had no memory of ever having been conscious of the existence of a library in that area. I'd like to talk to you’ Brunetti said.
'Of course’ the man answered, his voice suddenly much warmer. 'Is it about her death?'
'Yes.'
'A terrible thing. We were shocked.' 'We?' Brunetti asked.
A brief pause, and then the man explained, 'The staff here at the library.' When Ford spoke Italian his accent was so slight as almost not to be there.
'It should take me about twenty minutes to get there’ Brunetti said and put the phone down.
'And?' Signorina Elettra asked.
'Signor Ford is the co-director of the Biblioteca, but seemed uncertain at first about whether she worked there or not.'
'Anyone would be nervous, being asked about someone who was murdered.'
'Possibly’ Brunetti said. I'll go and talk to him. What about Guzzardi?' he asked.
'A few things. I'm trying to check on some houses he owned when he died.'
Brunetti had been moving towards the door, but he stopped and turned back.
'Were there many?'
'Three or four’
What happened to them?'
‘I don't know yet’
'How did you learn about them?'
‘I asked my father’ She waited to see what Brunetti would say in response, but he had no time to talk to her about this now: he was reluctant to keep Signor Ford waiting. In fact, he already regretted having called and told the library director he was coming: people's response to the unexpected arrival of the police on their doorstep was often as illuminating as anything they subsequently said.
Brunetti walked back towards the Arsenale, turning and choosing bridges by instinct as he allowed the tangled story of Claudia*Leonardo and her grandfather to take shape, evaporate, and then reform in his mind. Facts, dates, pieces of information, fragments of rumour swirled around, blinding him so that it wasn't until he found himself at the entrance to the Arsenale, the goofy lions lined up on his left, that he came back to the present. At the top of the wooden bridge he allowed himself a moment to gaze through the gateway into what had once been the womb of Venice's power and the ultimate source of her wealth and dominion. With only manpower and hammers and saws and all those other tools with strange names that carpenters and boat builders use, they had managed to build a ship a day and fill the seas with the terrible power of their fleet. And today, with cranes and drills and endless sources of power, there was still no sign that the burnt-out Fenice would ever be rebuilt.
He turned both from these reflections and the gateway and continued, weaving back towards Via Garibaldi and then, keeping the canal on his left, down towards Sant’ Anna. When he saw the facade of the church, he realized he had no memory of ever having been inside; perhaps, like so many others in the city, it didn't function any longer as a church. He wondered how much longer they could continue to serve as places of worship, now that there were so few worshippers and young people were bored, as were his own children, by the irrelevance of what the Church had to say to them. Brunetti would not much regret its passing, but the thought of what little there was to replace it unsettled him. Again, he had to summon himself back from these thoughts.
He crossed the small bridge on his left and saw, on his right, a single long building the back of which faced the church. He turned into Calle Sant'Anna and found himself in front of an immense green
The door snapped open and he walked into an entrance hall that must have been five metres high. Enough light filtered in from the five barred windows on the canal to illuminate the enormous beams, almost as thick as those of the Palazzo Ducale, that spanned the ceiling. The floor was of brick, set in a simple herringbone pattern. He noticed that, towards the back door and particularly around the stairs that ran down to the water gate, the bricks glistened slickly with a thin coat of dark moss.
There was only one set of steps. At the first landing a short, thickset man dressed in a very expensive dark grey suit waited at the door. A bit younger than Brunetti, he had thinning reddish hair the curious dappled colour such hair turns on its way to white. 'Commissario Brunetti?' he asked and extended his hand.
‘Yes. Signor Ford?' Brunetti asked in return, shaking hands.
'Please come in.' Ford stepped back and stood just inside the door, holding it open for Brunetti.
