'Of course not,' she said, her voice calm again. 'I wasn't there and I
didn't see what happened. But Federica, the two times she spoke to me
about it, said, 'When they shot me...' People who are in accidents
don't talk about it that way.'
Brunetti had no doubt that this woman knew full well how people who
were in accidents speak. 'She said this twice?'
'Yes, so far as I can remember. But simply by way of description, not
complaint. I never asked her what happened, didn't want to pry. I've
had enough of that myself. And I figured she'd tell me what she wanted
to when she was ready.'
'And has she?'
She shook her head. 'No, only those two references.'
'Have you seen her often?'
'Perhaps every week or so. She stops in and has a coffee or simply
comes down and talks for a while.'
'Did you know her before she moved into this apartment?'
'No. I knew about her husband, of course. But I suppose everyone
does. Because of his report, I mean.' Brunetti nodded. 'I met her
because of Gastone she said.
'Gastone?'
The cat. She found him outside the front door one day and when she
opened the door, he came in. When he came up and
stood outside my door, she knocked and asked me if he were mine. He
gets out of here sometimes and then lurks out in the calle until
someone opens the door, or rings my bell and asks me to open the street
door so they can let him in. People who know he's mine, that is.' Her
face warmed in a smile. 'Good thing they do. It's not as if it's easy
for me to go down and let him in.' She said this simply, and Brunetti
did not hear in it an unspoken prompting to strangers to ask questions,
nor did he hear an unconscious appeal for pity.
'When did you see her last?'
She had to think about this. The day before yesterday, and I didn't
really see her, just heard her on the stairs. I'm sure of that. I'd
read about the boy's death, and then, when she came in, I recognized
her steps outside. I went over to the door, and I was going to open
it, but then I didn't know what I could say to her, so I didn't. I
just sat here and listened to her go up the stairs. Then, about an
hour later, I heard her come down again.'
'And since then?'
'Nothing.' Before he could speak, she added, 'But I sleep in the back
of the apartment, and I sleep very deeply because of the pills I take,
so she could have come in or gone out and I wouldn't have heard her.'
'Has she called you?'
'No.'
'Is it like her to be away for two days?'
Her answer was immediate, 'No, not at all. In fact, she's almost
always here, but I haven't heard her on the steps and I haven't heard
her moving around in her apartment.' She said this last with a gesture
towards the ceiling.
'Do you have any idea where she might have gone?'
'No. None. We didn't talk to one another like that.' When he looked
puzzled, she tried to clarify things. 'I mean, we weren't friends,
just lonely women who talked to one another once in a while.'
There was no hidden message in that, either, so far as Brunetti could
tell: merely the truth, and the truth told clear. 'And she lived
alone?'
'Yes, so far as I know.'
'No one ever visited her?'
'Not that I know of, no.'
'You never heard a child?'
'Do you mean her son?'
'No, her daughter.'
'Daughter?' she asked, her surprise answering the question for him.
She shook her head.
'Never?'
Again she shook her head, as though the idea of a mother never
mentioning one of her children was something too shocking to bear
