back. There was only one other policeman in the room, sitting at a
desk off to one side, talking on the phone.
'Anything?' he asked the two seated policemen.
Pucetti glanced at Vianello, acknowledging his right to speak first.
'I took him back,' the Inspector began, 1jut he wouldn't let me go in
with him.' He shrugged this away and asked, 'You, sir?'
The spoke to Moro and to his cousin, who was there with him. She said
the boy couldn't have killed himself, seemed pretty insistent on it.'
Something kept Brunetti from telling the others how easy it had been
for Moro to dismiss him.
'His cousin, you said?' Vianello interrupted, echoing his
neutrality.
'That's what she told me.' The habit of doubt, Brunetti reflected, the
habit of seeking the lowest possible common moral denominator, had been
bred into all of them. He wondered if there were some sort of
psychological equation which correlated years of service with the
police and an inability to believe in human goodness. And whether it
was possible, or for how long it would be possible, to go back and
forth between his professional world and his private world without
introducing the contamination of the first to the second.
His attention was recalled by Vianello, who had just finished saying
something.
'Excuse me?' Brunetti said.
'I asked if his wife was there Vianello repeated.
Brunetti shook his head. 'I don't know. No one else came in while I
was there, but there's no reason she would want to talk to me.'
'Is there a wife?' Pucetti asked, emphasizing the first word.
Rather than admit that he didn't know, Brunetti said, 'I asked
Signorina Elettra to see what she can find out about the family.'
There was something in the papers about them, I think,' Vianello said.
'Years ago.' Brunetti and Pucetti waited for him to continue, but all
the Inspector finally said was, 'I don't remember, but I think it was
something about the wife.'
'Whatever it is, she'll find it Pucetti declared.
Years ago, Brunetti would have responded with condescension to
Pucetti's childlike faith in Signorina Elettra's powers, as one would
to the excesses of the peasant believers in the liquefaction of the
blood of San Gennaro. Himself presently numbered among that unwashed
throng, he made no demurral.
'Why don't you tell the Commissario what you've told me?' Vianello
asked Pucetti, drawing him back from his devotions and Brunetti back
from his reflections.
The portiere told me that the gate is kept locked after ten at night
the young officer began, tut most faculty members have keys, and
students who stay out later than that have to ring him to let them
in.'
'And?' Brunetti asked, sensing Pucetti's reservations.
'I'm not sure,' Pucetti answered, then explained. Two of the boys I
spoke to, separately, that is, seemed to make fun of the idea. I asked
why, and one of them smiled and went like this,' Pucetti concluded,
raising the thumb of his right hand towards his mouth.
Brunetti registered this but left it to Pucetti to continue. I'd say
the boys are right and he's a drunk, the portiere. It was what eleven
in the morning when I spoke to him, and he was already halfway
there.'
'Did any of the other boys mention this?'
'I didn't want to push them on it, sir. I didn't want any of them to
know just what I had learned from the others. It's always better if
they think I already know everything there is to know: that way, they
think I'll know when they lie. But I got the feeling that they can get
in and out when they please.'
Brunetti nodded for him to continue.
'I'm not sure I learned much more than that, sir. Most of them were so
shocked that all they could do was ask more questions,' Pucetti
answered.
'What exactly did you ask them?' Brunetti inquired.
'What you told me to, sir: how well they knew Moro and if they had
spoken to him in the last few days. None of them could think of
anything special the boy had said or done, nor that he had been
behaving strangely, and none of them said that Moro had been a
particular friend.' 'And the faculty?' Brunetti asked.
'Same thing. None of the ones I spoke to could remember anything
