Brunetti thought she was finished, but that was not so. ‘The next day I told Maurizio what I’d seen in the mirror, and he said it didn’t matter. I still remember the way he waved his hand and said, “
She pushed the cup and saucer away from her. ‘And I believe he meant that, and means it still. To him, I’m still the young woman he married.’
‘And during these last two years?’ Brunetti asked.
‘What do you mean?’ she asked angrily.
‘Has he never suspected?’
‘What? That Antonio was my — what do I call him? — my lover?’
‘Hardly,’ Brunetti said. ‘Has he suspected?’
‘I hope not,’ she said instantly. ‘But I don’t know what he knows, or if he can let himself think about it. He knew that I spent time with Antonio, and I think. . I think he was afraid to ask. And I couldn’t tell him anything, could I?’ She sat back in her chair and crossed her arms. ‘It’s all such a cliche, isn’t it? The old man with the young wife. Of course she’ll take a young lover.’
‘“And so on both sides is simple truth suppressed,”’ Brunetti surprised himself by saying.
‘What?’ she asked.
‘Sorry, something my wife says,’ Brunetti answered, not explaining, not knowing himself how he had dredged that up.
‘Could you tell me about last night?’ he asked.
‘There’s little to say, really,’ she answered, again sounding very tired. ‘He told me to meet him there, and I’d got used to obeying him. So I went.’
‘And your husband?’
‘He’s become as accustomed to it as I have, I suppose,’ she said. ‘I told him I was going out, and he didn’t ask me anything.’
‘You didn’t get home until morning, did you?’ Brunetti asked.
‘I’m afraid Maurizio’s grown accustomed to that, as well.’ Her voice was bleak.
‘Ah,’ was the only thing Brunetti could find to say. Then, ‘What happened?’
She propped her elbows on the table and put her chin on her folded hands. ‘Why should I tell you that, Commissario?’
‘Because, sooner or later, you are going to have to tell someone, and I’m a good choice,’ he said, meaning both.
Her eyes, he thought, grew softer, and she said, ‘I knew that anyone who liked Cicero so much had to be a good man.’
‘I’m not,’ he said, meaning that, as well. ‘But I’m curious and, if I can — and within the limits of the law — I’d like to be able to help you.’
‘Cicero spent his life lying, didn’t he?’ she asked.
Brunetti’s first response was to be insulted, but then he realized that what he was hearing was a question, not a comparison. ‘Do you mean in the legal cases?’
‘Yes. He twisted evidence, certainly bribed every witness he could get money to, distorted the truth, and probably used every cheap trick lawyers have ever used.’ She seemed pleased with the list.
‘But not in his private life,’ Brunetti said. ‘Perhaps he was vain, and weak, but in the end he was an honest man, I think. And a brave one.’
She studied his face, weighing what he had said. ‘The first thing I said to Antonio was that you were a policeman and had come to arrest him,’ she told him. ‘He always carried a gun. I knew him well enough by then. .’ she began and paused a long time after saying that, as if listening to an echo, then went on, ‘to know he would try to use it. But then he saw you — I think he saw you both, with guns — and I told him it was useless, that his family’s lawyers could get him out of any trouble he might be in.’
She pressed her lips together, and Brunetti was struck by how very unattractive the gesture was. ‘He believed me, or he was so confused he didn’t know what to do, so he handed me the gun when I told him to.’
The front door slammed and they both looked in that direction, but it was only a woman with a pram trying to leave. One of the women at the table near the door got up and held the door for her, and she left.
Brunetti looked back at her. ‘What did you say to him then?’ he asked.
‘I told you I knew him well enough by then, didn’t I?’
‘Yes.’
‘So I told him I thought he was gay, that he fucked like a fag, and that he probably wanted me because I didn’t really look like a woman.’
She waited for his response, but Brunetti made none, and she said, ‘It wasn’t true, of course. But I knew him, and I knew what he’d do.’ Her voice changed, all emotion long since leached from it, and she said with a detachment that was almost academic, ‘Antonio had only one reaction to opposition: violence. I knew what he’d do. So I shot him.’ She paused, but when Brunetti remained silent, she went on, ‘And when he was on the ground, I realized I might not have killed him, so I shot him in the face.’ Her own face remained immobile as she said this.
‘I see,’ Brunetti finally said.
‘And I’d do it again, Commissario. I’d do it again.’ He was tempted to ask her why, but he knew she was now incapable of stopping herself from explaining. ‘I told you: he had unpleasant tastes.’
And that was the last thing she said.
29
‘Well,’ Paola said, ‘I’d give her a medal.’ Brunetti had gone to bed soon after dinner, saying he was tired, not explaining why. Paola had come to bed some hours later, had fallen instantly asleep, only to be awakened at three by a sleepless, motionless Brunetti lying beside her, his memory chasing after everything that had happened the day before. He went over his conversations with the Contessa, with Griffoni, and then with Franca Marinello.
It took him some time to tell all of this, his voice interrupted every so often by the sound of bells from different parts of the city that neither of them paid any attention to. He could explain, theorize, try to imagine, but his memory kept swirling back to that phrase she had sought, and found: ‘unpleasant tastes’.
‘God above,’ Paola had said when he repeated it. ‘I don’t know what it could mean. And I think I don’t want to know.’
‘Would a woman let something like that go on for two years?’ he finally asked, knowing as he spoke that he had sounded the wrong note.
Instead of answering, she switched on her bedside lamp and turned towards him.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing,’ Paola said. ‘I just want to see the face of a person capable of asking a question like that.’
‘What question?’ asked an indignant Brunetti.
‘Whether a woman would
‘What’s wrong with it?’ he asked. ‘The question, I mean.’
She slid down a bit and pulled the covers over her shoulder. ‘To begin with, it assumes that there is something like the female mind, that all women would react in the same way in those circumstances,’ she said. Abruptly, she propped herself up on her elbow and said, ‘Think about the fear, Guido: think about what has been happening to her for two years. This man was a murderer, and she knew what he had done to the dentist and his wife.’
‘Do you believe that she felt she had to sacrifice herself to keep her husband’s illusions about himself intact?’ he asked, feeling quite virtuous in doing so and in phrasing it the way he did. He tried, but failed, to keep himself from going on and asked, ‘What sort of a feminist are you, to defend something like that?’
For a moment, even though she opened her mouth to speak, Paola found it difficult to find the words. Finally she said, ‘Look at the pulpit from which this sermon comes.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
