Wilful behaviour

stub and dropped into a blue ceramic bowl already half filled with butts.

'Signora’ he began, 'the name of Dottor Filipetto has come up in our investigation.' He paused, waiting to see if she would question him or refer to the notary's name, but she did not. 'And so I've come to you’ he went on, 'to see if you can tell me why Claudia might have wanted to talk to him.'

'Claudia, is it, now?' she asked.

‘I beg your pardon’ Brunetti said, genuinely taken aback.

'You speak of her as though she were a friend’ she said angrily. 'Claudia’ she repeated, and his thoughts fled to her.

Which was more intimate, Brunetti wondered, to startle a person soon after sex or soon after death? Probably the latter, as they had been stripped of all pretence or opportunity to deceive. They lie there, exhausted and seeming painfully vulnerable, though they have been removed from all vulnerability and from all pain. To be helpless implies that help might be of some service: the dead were beyond that, beyond help and beyond hope.

‘I wish that had been possible’ Brunetti said.

'Why?' she demanded, 'so you could ask her questions and pick at her secrets?'

'No, Signora, so that I could have talked to her about the books we both read.'

Signora Jacobs snorted in mingled disgust and disbelief.

Offended, though also intrigued by the idea that Claudia had secrets, Brunetti defended himself. 'She was one of my wife's students. We'd already talked about books.'

'Books’ she said, this time the disgust triumphant. Her anger caused her to catch her breath, and that in its turn provoked an explosion of coughing. It was a deep, humid smoker's cough, and she went on for so long that Brunetti finally went into the kitchen and brought her a glass of water. He held it out until she took it and waited as she forced it down in tiny sips and finally stopped coughing.

Thank you,' she said quite naturally and handed him the glass.

'You're welcome’ he said, with equal ease, set the glass on the desk to her left and pulled his chair across so that he could sit facing her.

'Signora’ he began, 1 don't know what you think of the police, or what you think of me, but you must believe that all I want is to find the person who killed her. I don't want to know anything that she might have wanted to remain secret, not unless it will help me do that. If such a thing is possible, I want her to rest in peace.' He looked at her all the time he was speaking, willing her to believe him.

Signora Jacobs reached for another cigarette and lit it. Again she inhaled deeply and Brunetti felt himself grow tense, waiting for another explosion of coughing. But none came. When the butt was smouldering in the blue bowl she said, 'Her family hasn't the knack.'

Confused, he asked, 'Of what?'

'Resting in peace. Doing anything in peace.'

I'm sorry, but I don't know anyone in her family, only Claudia.' He considered how to phrase the next question, then abandoned caution and asked simply, 'Would you tell me about them?'

She pulled her hands to her face and made a steeple of them, touching her mouth with her forefingers. It was an attitude usually associated with prayer, though Brunetti suspected it had been a long time since this woman had prayed for, or to, anything.

'You know who her grandfather was,' she said. Brunetti nodded. 'And her father?' This time he shook his head.

'He was born during the war, so of course his father named him Benito.' She looked at him and smiled, as though she had just told a joke, but Brunetti did not return her smile. He waited for her to continue.

'He was that kind of man, Luca.'

To Brunetti, Luca Guzzardi was a political opportunist who had died in a madhouse, so he thought it best to remain silent.

'He really believed in it all. The marching and the uniforms and the return to the glory of the Roman Empire.' She shook her head at this but did not smile. 'At least he believed it at the beginning.'

Brunetti had never known, nor had either of his parents ever told him, if his father believed in all this. He didn't know if it made a difference or, if it did, what kind. He bided his time silently, knowing that the old will always return to their subject.

'He was a beautiful man.' Signora Jacobs turned towards the sideboard that stood against the wall, gesturing with one hand to a ragged row of bleached photographs. Sensing that it was expected of him, Brunetti got to his feet and went over to examine the pictures. The first was a half-portrait of a young man, his head all but obscured by the plume-crested helmet of the Bersaglieri, an element of uniform the adult Brunetti had always found especially ludicrous. In another, the same young man held a rifle, in the one next to it, a sword, his body half draped in a long dark cloak. In each photo the pose was self-consciously belligerent, the chin thrust out, the gaze unyielding in response to the need to immortalize this moment of high patriotism. Brunetti found the poses as silly as the plumes and ribbons and epaulettes with which the young man's uniform was bedecked. So resistant was Brunetti to the lure of the military that he could rarely resist the temptation to superimpose upon men in uniform the template of New Guinean tribesmen with bones stuck through their noses, their naked bodies painted white, their penises safeguarded by metre-long bamboo sheaths. Official ceremonies and parades thus caused him a certain amount of difficulty.

He continued to look at the photographs until he judged the necessary period of time had passed, and then he returned to his seat opposite Signora Jacobs. Tell me more about him, Signora.'

Her glance was direct, its keenness touched by the faint clouding of age. 'What’s to tell? We were young, I was in love, and the future was ours.'

Brunetti permitted himself to respond to the intimacy of her remark. 'Only you were in love?'

Her smile was that of an old person, one who had left almost everything behind. ‘I told you: he was beautiful. Men like that, in the end, love only themselves.' Before he could comment, she added, ‘I didn't know that then. Or didn't want to.' She reached for another cigarette and lit it. Blowing out a long trail of smoke, she said, 'It comes to the same thing, though, doesn't it?' She turned the burning tip of the cigarette towards herself, looked at it for a moment, then said, 'The strange thing is that, even knowing this about him, it doesn't change the way I loved him. And still do’ She glanced up at him, then down at her lap. Softly, she said, 'That's why I want to give him back his good name.'

Brunetti remained silent, not wanting to interrupt her. Sensing this, she went on, 'It was all so exciting, the sense or the hope that everything would be made new. Austria had been full of it for years, and so it never occurred to me to question it. And when I saw it again here, in men like Luca and his friends, I couldn't see what it really was or what they were really like or that all it would bring us, all of us, was death and suffering.' She sighed and then added, 'Neither could Luca.'

When it began to seem as if she would not speak again, Brunetti asked, 'How long did you know him?'

She considered this, then answered, 'Six years, all through the last years of the war and his trial and then .. ‘ her voice trailed off, leaving Brunetti curious as to how she would put it. 'And then what came after,' was all she said.

'Did you see him on San Servolo?'

She cleared her throat, a tearing, wet sound that set Brunetti's teeth on edge, so deeply did it speak of illness and dark liquids. 'Yes. I went out once a week until they wouldn't let me see him any more.'

'Why was that?'

‘I think it was because they didn't want anyone to know how they were kept.'

'But why the change? If they'd let you go in the beginning, that is’ Brunetti explained.

'Because he got much worse after he was there. And after he realized he wasn't going to leave.'

'Should he have?' Brunetti asked, then clarified his question. That is, when he first went in, did he or did you think he was going to be able to leave?'

That was the agreement,' she said.

'With whom?' Brunetti asked.

'Why are you asking all of this?' she asked him.

'Because I want to understand things. About him, and about the past.'

‘Why?'