it strange that a woman who had once owned several apartments would live in a rented one, but he had the rent receipts to prove it.
He came upon a small stack of receipts, all from the Patmos Gallery in Lausanne, all initialled 'EL', and all written for the sale of what was described as 'objects of value'.
He got to his feet then and went back to the corridor, where he found Vianello almost finished with the second bookshelf. Hillocks of books drifted up the walls to both sides of each bookcase; in one place, an avalanche had fallen across the corridor.
Vianello saw him when he came in. 'Nothing,' he said. 'Not even a used vaporetto ticket or a matchbook cover.'
'I've found the source of Claudia's Leonardo's allowance,' Brunetti said.
Vianello's glance was sharp, curious.
'Receipts from the Patmos Gallery for 'objects of value'‘ he explained.
'Are you sure?' Vianello asked, already familiar with the name of the gallery.
'The first receipt is dated one month before the first deposit in the girl's account.'
Vianello gave a nod of approval.
'Here, let me help,' Brunetti said, clambering over a low mound of books and reaching down to the bottom shelf. Side by side, they flicked through the remaining books until the bookcase was empty, but they found nothing in the books other than what had been placed there by the authors.
Brunetti closed the last one and set it down on its side on the shelf at his elbow. 'That's enough. Let's get something to eat.'
Vianello was not at all inclined to disagree. They left the apartment, Brunetti using the tobacconist's key to lock the door behind them.
20
After a disappointing lunch, the two men walked back to the Questura, occasionally suggesting to one another some connection that had yet to be explored or some question that remained unanswered. No matter how conscientiously Rizzardi might seek evidence that Signor Jacobs had been the victim of violence, in the absence of concrete evidence, no judge would authorize an investigation of her death; much less would Patta, who was reluctant to authorize anything unless the last words of the dying victim had been the name of the killer.
They separated when they entered the Questura, and Brunetti went up to Signorina Elettra's office. As he walked in, she looked up and said, 'I heard.'
'Rizzardi said it might have been a heart attack.'
‘I don't believe it, either’ she said, not even bothering to ask his opinion. 'What now?'
'We wait to see the results of the autopsy, and then we wait to see who inherits the things in her apartment.'
'Are they really that wonderful?' she asked, having heard him talk of them.
'Not to be believed. If they're real, then it was one of the best collections in the city.'
It doesn't make any sense, does it? To live like that, in the midst of all that wealth.'
The place was clean, and someone brought her cigarettes and food,' Brunetti answered. 'It's not as if she was living in a pit.'
'No, I suppose not. But we tend to think that, well, we tend to think that people will live differently if they have the money.'
'Maybe that's how she wanted to live,' Brunetti said. 'Possibly,' Signorina Elettra conceded reluctantly. 'Perhaps it was enough for her to be able to look at those things,' he suggested.
'Would it be? For you?' she asked.
'I'm not eighty-three’ Brunetti said, then, changing the subject, he asked, 'What about London?'
She handed him a single sheet of paper. 'As I said, the British are much better at these things.'
Reading quickly, Brunetti learned that Benito Guzzardi, born in Venice in 1942, had died of lung cancer in Manchester in 1995. Claudia's birth had been registered in London twenty-one years ago, but only her mother's name, Petra Leonhard, was listed. There was no listing for her mother's marriage or death. That explains the last name, doesn't it?' he asked.
Signorina Elettra handed him a copy of Claudia's application to the university. 'It was easy enough. She simply presented documents with the name Leonhard and wrote it down as Leonardo.'
Before Brunetti could inquire, Signorina Elettra said, 'The name of her aunt was listed on her passport as the person to contact in case of accident.'
The one in England?'
‘Yes. I called her. She hadn't been notified of Claudia's death. No one here had thought to do it.' 'How did she take it?'
'Very badly. She said Claudia had spent summers with her since she was a little girl.'
'Is she the mother's sister or the father's?'
'No’ she said with a confused shake of her head at such things, 'it's like the grandmother. She's not really an aunt at all, but Claudia always called her that. She was the mother's best friend.'
'Was? Is she dead?'
'No. She's disappeared.' Before Brunetti could ask, she explained, 'But not in the sense we'd usually use. Nothing bad's happened to her. The woman said she's just one of those free spirits who come and go through life as they please.' She stopped there and then added her own editorial comment, 'Leaving other people to pick up behind them.' When Brunetti remained silent, she continued. The last this woman heard from her was a few months after the father's death, a postcard from Bhutan, asking her to keep an eye on Claudia.'
Suddenly protective of the dead girl and outraged that her mother could have discarded her like this, Brunetti demanded, 'Keep an eye on her? How old was she - fifteen, sixteen? What was she supposed to do while her mother was off finding inner harmony or whatever it is people do in Bhutan?'
As this is the sort of question to which there is no answer, Elettra waited for his anger to pass away a bit and then said, The aunt told me Claudia lived with her parents until her father's death but then chose to come back to Italy, to a private school in Rome. That's when she got in touch with Signora Jacobs, I think. In the summers she went back to England and lived with the aunt.'
Listening to her explain Claudia's story calmed him somewhat, and after a time he said, 'Claudia told me her parents never married but that the father accepted parentage’
Signorina Elettra nodded. That's what the woman told me.'
'So Claudia was Guzzardi's heir,' Brunetti said.
'Heir to very little, it would seem,' Signorina Elettra said. Head tilted to one side, she looked up at him and added, ‘Unless...'
'I don't know what the law is regarding someone who dies in possession of objects the ownership of which is unclear,' Brunetti said, reading her mind. 'Then again, it's not normal to question the ownership of the things that are in a person's home when they die.'
'Not normally, no,' Signorina Elettra agreed. 'But in this case ...' She allowed her voice to trail off in an invocation of possibility.
There was nothing in her papers, no bills of sale for any of it.' Brunetti said.
She followed the current of his thoughts. 'Her notary or lawyer might have them.'
Brunetti shook his head: there had been nothing from either a lawyer or a notary among her papers, and the search through the pages of the books had proven entirely fruitless. It was Signorina Elettra who gave voice to the consequence of this thought. 'If there's no will, then it goes to her family’
'If she has a family.'
And in their absence, both realized, everything would go to the state. They were Italian and thus believed that nothing worse could happen to a person: everything they possessed, doomed to fall into the hands of faceless bureaucrats and plundered before being sent for storage, cataloguing and shifting, until what little survived the winnowing was eventually sold or forgotten in the cellar of some museum.
'Might as well just put it all out on to the street,' Signorina Elettra said.
Though in complete agreement, Brunetti did not think it fitting to admit this, so he asked, instead, What
