apartment. As he passed the door to the Delia Vedova apartment, he
wondered if she was sitting inside, holding her cat, listening for the
footsteps that carried life back and forth outside her door.
i8
It was not until after the kids had gone to bed that night, when he and
Paola sat alone in the living room, she reading Persuasion for the
hundred and twenty-seventh time, and he contemplating Anna Comnena's
admonition that, 'Whenever one assumes the role of historian,
friendship and enmities have to be forgotten', that Brunetti returned
to his visit to Signora Moro's apartment, though he did so indirectly.
'Paola,' he began. She peered at him over the top of her book, eyes
vague and inattentive. 'What would you do if I asked you for a
separation?'
Her eyes had drifted back to the page before he spoke, but they shot
back to his face now, and Anne Elliot was left to her own romantic
problems. 'If you what?'
'Asked for a separation.'
Voice level, she inquired, 'Before I go into the kitchen to get the
bread knife, could you tell me if this is a theoretical question?'
'Absolutely/ he said, embarrassed by how happy her threat of violence
had made him. 'What would you do?'
She placed the book by her side, face down. 'Why do you want to
know?'
Till tell you that as soon as you answer my question. What would you
do?'
Her look was discomfiting. 'Well?' he prodded.
'If it were a real separation, I'd throw you out of the house and after
you I'd throw everything you own.'
His smile was positively beatific. 'Everything?'
'Yes. Everything. Even the things I like.'
'Would you use one of my shirts to sleep in?'
'Are you out of your mind?'
'And if it were a fake separation?'
'Fake?'
'Done so that it would look as if we were separated when in reality we
weren't but just needed to look as if we were.'
'I'd still throw you out, but I'd keep all the things I like.'
'And the shirt? Would you sleep in it?'
She gave him a long look. 'Do you want a serious answer or more
foolishness?'
'I think I want a real answer he confessed.
Then yes, I'd sleep in your shirt or I'd put it on my pillow so that I
could have at least the smell of you with me.'
Brunetti believed in the solidity of his marriage with the same faith
he invested in the periodic table of the elements, indeed, rather more;
nevertheless, occasional reinforcement did no harm. He found himself
equally assured of the solidity of the Moros' marriage, though he had
no idea what that meant.
'Signora Moro,' he began, 'is living apart from her husband.' Paola
nodded, acknowledging that he had already told her this. 'But one of
his dress shirts is under the pillow of the bed in which she is
sleeping alone.'
Paola looked off to the left, to where an occasional light could still
be seen burning in the top floor window of the apartment opposite.
After a long time, she said, 'Ah.'
*55
'Yes/ he agreed,' 'Ah,' indeed
'Why do they have to look as if they're separated?'
'So whoever shot her won't come back and do a better job of it, I'd
guess.'
'Yes, that makes sense.' She thought about this, then asked, 'And who
could they be?'
'If I knew that, I'd probably understand everything.'
Automatically, not really thinking about what she said but asserting
truth by habit, she said, 'We never know everything.'
'Then at least I'd know more than I know now. And I'd probably know
