deliberation with which she moved, like a person under sedation or one recovering from a serious illness. Signora Doni nodded in recognition when she saw the two men. A few beats passed before she extended her hand to them. And then, after that, it took her some time to ask them to come inside. Brunetti noticed how dusty the lenses of her glasses were.
They followed her into the same room. The table in front of the sofa was covered with newspapers neither man had to study to know were opened to the articles about her husband’s murder. Littering the open papers were cups. All appeared to have once held coffee; some still did. A kitchen towel lay across the arm of the sofa, with a plate with a desiccated sandwich beside it.
She sat on the sofa this time, absently picking up the abandoned towel, which she spread on her lap and began to fold longitudinally in three. She kept her eyes on the towel while the two men sat on the chairs facing her.
Finally she said, ‘Are you here about the funeral?’
‘No, Signora,’ Brunetti answered.
Eyes still lowered, she seemed to have run out of things to say.
‘How is your son, Signora?’ Brunetti finally asked.
She looked across at him and made a motion with her mouth that she probably thought was a smile. ‘I’ve sent him to stay with my sister. And his cousins.’
‘How did he bear the news?’ Brunetti asked, pushing away the idea that someone might some day ask Paola the same question. This was the sister he’d spoken to, who had confirmed Signora Doni’s account of their where- abouts on the night of her husband’s death.
She gestured with her right hand; the towel waved in the air, calling attention to itself. She lowered it to her lap and started to fold it again, and finally said, ‘I don’t know. I told him his father had gone to Jesus. I don’t believe it, but it’s the only thing I could think of to tell him.’ She ran her hand along the two creases in the towel. ‘It helped him, I think. But I don’t know what he’s thinking.’ She turned abruptly and replaced the towel on the arm of the sofa.
‘Did you come about Teodoro?’ she asked, her confusion audible in the emphasis she put on the last word.
‘Partly, Signora. He’s a nice little boy, and I’ve thought about him in these days.’ This, the Lord be praised, was at least true. ‘But we’ve come, I’m afraid, to ask you more questions about your husband and how he was behaving in the last few months,’ he said, having managed to avoid ‘the months before he died’, which came to the same thing, in the end.
Again, there was a longer lapse than there should have been between question and response. ‘What do you mean?’
‘You said, when we spoke the other day, Signora, that he seemed troubled, perhaps worried. What I would like to know is whether he gave you any indication of the cause for his… his preoccupation?’
This time she managed to resist the towel’s allure. Instead, she ran her hand around her watch strap, unclasped it and immediately closed it again. ‘Yes, I’d say he was worried, but I told him I didn’t want to hear it – this was the last time we talked – I think I told him to go and tell her his troubles, and that’s when he said that he thought she was his trouble.’
This was an elaboration of the account she had given last time. Brunetti could not resist the impulse to take a quick glance at Vianello, who sat impassive, listening. Signora Doni looked directly at him. ‘Well, she was, wasn’t she? I suppose he thought I’d give him the chance to choose between us, either her or me. But I didn’t: I just told him to get out.’ Then, after a pause, ‘The first time and the last time.’
‘This last time, Signora, did he say anything about his work?’
She started to answer, but lethargy fell upon her, and she looked down at her watch again. She could have been trying to remember how to tell the time or she could have been thinking about how to answer his question: Brunetti saw no need to hasten her.
‘He said it wasn’t worth it, taking that job. He said it had ruined everything. I suppose he meant because of meeting her there. I mean, that’s what I thought when he said it.’
‘Could he have meant something else, Signora?’ Vianello broke in to ask.
She must have remembered the good cop because the motion her mouth made this time was closer to a smile. After a long time, she said, ‘Perhaps.’
‘Do you have any idea what that might have been?’ Vianello prodded.
‘Once,’ she began, looking beyond them at some memory that was not there in the room, at least not with them, ‘he said that what they did there was terrible.’
Brunetti had only to remember what they had seen to feel the force and truth of this. ‘What was done to the animals?’ he asked.
She gave him a tilt-chinned glance and said, ‘That’s what’s so strange. Now, I mean. Now that I think about what happened, I think that maybe he didn’t mean what happened to the animals.’ She leaned aside again and stroked the towel as though it were some sort of pet. ‘The first time he went there, we talked about it. I had to ask him because he loves… loved animals so much. And I remember his telling me that it was far less terrible than he feared it would be.’ She shook her head. ‘I couldn’t believe it at first, but he said he’d spent an hour there that morning, to see what went on. And it was less bad than he’d feared.’
An explosive sigh escaped her lips. ‘Maybe he was lying to spare me. I don’t know.’ Her voice had slowed perceptibly.
Brunetti didn’t know, either. He had no idea what sort of scene the knackers could have set for the inspecting veterinarian’s first day, nor did he know if the inspector would have to return to see the killing or if his only concern was to inspect the resulting meat. He thought of the sense of frenzied action, the shouting and kicking. ‘Do you remember anything else he said?’ Brunetti asked.
Even with the slowness of her reactions, her hesitation was visible. She touched her watch again, and for a moment he thought she was going to wind it, but then she said, eyes still on her watch, ‘Not to me.’
Brunetti was about to ask, when he thought better of it and lifted his chin towards Vianello.
‘To your son, Signora?’ the Inspector asked.
‘Yes. To Teo.’
‘Could you tell us what it was?’
‘He was telling Teo a bedtime story one night after he brought him home. This was about three weeks ago.’ She let that drift away. ‘He always did that when they came home.’ The last word stopped her. She coughed, then she went on. ‘It was always a story or a book about an animal. This one – he must have made it up because we don’t have any book like that – was about a dog who wasn’t very brave. Things frightened him: cats frightened him, other dogs did, too. In the story he’s kidnapped by robbers, who want to train him to help them. They train him to befriend people who are walking on the path through the forest. When the people see this big friendly dog start to walk along with them, they feel safe and keep walking deeper and deeper into the forest. The robbers tell him that, at a certain point, he has to run away, so then they can hurt the people and rob them.
‘But even though he’s a coward, he’s still a dog, and he can never let bad things happen to people. So after all that training, when the robbers finally take him out to help them rob someone, the dog acts like a real dog and turns on the robbers and barks and growls at them – he even bites one of them, though not very hard – until the police come and arrest them. And the man they were going to rob takes the dog back to his old home and tells the family what a good dog he is. They take him back in and they love him, even though he’s still not really a very brave dog.’
‘Why do you think of the story, Signora?’ Vianello asked gently when he understood that she was finished.
‘Because, when the story was over, Andrea told Teo that he should always remember the story and never let anyone do bad things to people because that’s the worst thing you can ever do.’ She stopped and took a deep breath. ‘But then I came into the room, and he stopped talking.’
She tried to laugh at herself, but it came out as a cough. ‘I mention it because he seemed so serious when he was telling the story. He really wanted Teo to learn that lesson: you never let bad things happen to people, even if the robbers threaten you.’
She gave in to temptation and grabbed the towel. She no longer tried to fold or straighten it but twisted it in her hands as though it were something she wanted to destroy.
However curious he might still have been about the Borelli woman, Brunetti knew it was folly to ask. Instead, he got to his feet and thanked Signora Doni. When she offered to show them to the door, he declined, and they left her to the rags of memory.
