Wilful behaviour

carved initials and words and pictures. Her face was splotched with red, her eyes still swollen from crying. She traced some initials with the forefinger of her right hand then finally looked up at Brunetti.

Is it true that Claudia Leonardo worked at the library where you are one of the directors?' He thought it best to avoid any reference to her husband until the interview had taken on its own momentum.

She nodded.

'I'm sorry, Signora,' he said with a softening of his face that was not quite a smile, *but you must say something. Because of the recording.'

She looked around, searching for the microphones, but as they were set into two wall sockets that looked like light switches, she failed to identify them.

'Did Claudia Leonardo work at the Biblioteca della Patria?' he asked again.

‘Yes.'

How long after she began to work there did you meet her?'

'Not very long.'

'Could you tell me how you first met her? The circumstances, I mean.'

She folded the fingers of her right hand into the palm and, using the nail of her thumb, began to dig idly at one of the letters on the table, freeing it of the greasy material that had accumulated over the years. As Brunetti watched, her nail pried free a tiny sliver of what looked like black wax. She brushed it to the floor. She looked at him. 1 had to go down to the library to look for a book, and when I came in she asked me how she could help me. She didn't know who I was.'

'What was your first impression of her, Signora?'

She shrugged the question away, but before Brunetti could remind her of the microphones, she said, 1 didn't have much of an impres...' Then, perhaps recalling where they were and why she was here, she sat up straighter in her chair, looked over at Brunetti and said, voice a bit firmer, 'She seemed like a nice girl.' She emphasized 'seemed'. 'She was very polite, and when I told her who I was she was very respectful.'

'Do you think that was an accurate assessment of the girl's character?' Brunetti asked.

She paused not an instant over this question and said, 'It can't be, not after what she did to my husband.'

'But what did you think at the beginning, when you first met her?' he asked.

It was evident to Brunetti that she had to overcome her reluctance to answer this question, but when she did she said, ‘I was wrong. I saw the truth, but it took time.'

Abandoning the attempt to get her to describe her first impression of the girl, Brunetti asked, 'What did you come to believe?'

‘I saw that she was, that she was, that she was...' Stuck on that phrase, her voice died away. She looked down at the initial on the table, dug a bit more material out of it, and finally said, That she was interested in my husband.'

'Interested in an improper way?' Brunetti suggested.

'Yes.'

'Was this something that had happened before, that women became interested in your husband?' He thought it might be better to phrase it this way, placing the guilt on the women, at least for the moment, until she was more adjusted to accepting the so-obvious truth.

She nodded, then quickly said, voice too loud and nervous, 'Yes.'

‘Did this happen often?' 'I don't know.'

'Had it happened before with the employees of the Biblioteca?'

‘Yes. The last one.' 'What happened?'

‘I found out. About them. He told me what happened, that she was... well, that she was immoral. I sent her away, back to Geneva, where she came from.'

'And did you find out about Claudia, as well?'

‘Yes.'

'Could you tell me how that happened?'

‘I heard him talking on the phone to her.'

'Did you hear what he was saying?' When she nodded, he asked, 'Did you listen to the conversation or only to his part of it?'

'Only his part. He was in his office, but the door wasn't closed. So I could hear him talking.'

'What did he say?' * That if she wanted to continued to work in the Biblioteca, nothing else would happen.' He watched her going back in time and listening to her husband's part of that conversation. 'He told her that if she would just forget about it and not tell anyone, he promised not to do anything else.'

'And you took that to mean that it was Claudia Leonardo who was bothering your husband?' Brunetti asked, not voicing his scepticism but curious that she could have interpreted his words this way.

'Of course.'

'Do you still think that now?'

Her voice suddenly grew fierce, the linked initials on the table below her forgotten. 'It had to be that way,' she said with tight conviction. 'She was his lover.'

'Who told you that she was his lover?' As he waited for her answer he studied this woman, the restrained frenzy in her hands, recalling the way she had hungrily leaned her breast into the accidental touch of her husband's hand, and an entirely new possibility came to him. 'Did your husband confess that they were lovers, Signora?' he asked in a softer voice.

First came the tears, which surprised him by coming without any emotion registering on her face. 'Yes,' she said, turning her attention back to the table.

Hunting dogs, Brunetti knew, were divided into two general classes: sight hounds and scent hounds. Like one of the second, he was off, racing through the thick, wet grass of an autumn day, leaping over obstacles that had been placed in his path, catching traces of his prey that had previously been obscured by heavier scents. His mind circling, leaping, lurching after its prey, he found himself back again at the starting point, and he asked, 'Whose idea was it to talk to the old woman, Signora, and offer her the chance to clear Guzzardi's name? Was it your husband's?'

She should have been surprised. She should have looked up at him, startled, and asked him what he was talking about. Had she done that, he would not have believed her, but he would have realized how far he still had to go before he hunted her to ground.

Instead, she surprised him by asking, 'How did you know about that?'

'It doesn't matter. But I know. Which of them had the idea?'

'Maxwell,' she said. 'One of the people who wrote a letter of recommendation for Claudia was Signora Jacobs. She'd been a patron of the Biblioteca for some time, always asking about Guzzardi and whether we had ever received any papers that would prove he didn't take those drawings.' She paused and Brunetti resisted the urge to prompt her. 'My father knew him and he said there never would be any proof because he did take them. They'd be worth a fortune now, my father said, but no one knew where they were.'

'No one knew that Signora Jacobs had them?'

'No, of course not. No one ever went to her house, and everyone knew how poor she was.' She paused, then corrected this, 'Or thought she was.'

'How did he find out?' he asked, still careful not to refer directly to her husband.

'Claudia. One day, talking about Signora Jacobs, she said something about the things that were in her house and what a pity it was that no one got to see them except her and the old woman. I think she was the only one who went there.' And the cleaning woman, Brunetti wanted to tell her. And the Somali cleaning woman so honest she was trusted with the keys while the rest of the city was kept away, untrusted and ignorant.

'How do you know about this, Signora?'

‘I heard them talking, my father and Maxwell. They were both so used to ignoring me,' she began, and Brunetti marvelled that she could seem so casually accepting of this, 'that they talked about everything in front of me’

Was the idea of clearing Guzzardi's name a way to get the drawings from her?' Brunetti asked.

‘I think so. Maxwell told Claudia that someone had come to the Biblioteca with papers that showed that Guzzardi was innocent.' He watched as she tried to recall what had been said in front of her.