Today Madre Rosa was sitting in one of the armchairs, a book open on her lap. She nodded when he came in and closed her book. ‘What may I do for you today, Commissario?’ she asked. She gave no indication that he should sit, and so Brunetti, though he approached her, remained standing.
‘I’d like to speak to some of the people who knew Signora Altavilla best,’ he said.
‘You must realize that your desire makes little sense to me,’ she said. When Brunetti did not respond, she added, ‘Nor does your curiosity about her.’
‘It makes sense to me, Madre,’ he said.
‘Why?’
It was out before he thought about it. ‘I’m curious about the cause of her heart attack.’ Before the nun could ask him anything, Brunetti said, ‘There’s no question that she died of a heart attack, and the doctor assures me it was very fast.’ He saw her close her eyes and nod, as if in thanks for having been given something she desired. ‘But I’d like to be sure that the heart attack was … was not brought on by anything. Anything unpleasant, that is.’
‘Sit down, Commissario,’ she said. When he did, she said, ‘You realize what you’ve just said, of course.’
‘Yes.’
‘If the cause of her heart attack – may she rest in peace – was, as you say,’ she began, pausing a moment before allowing herself to repeat his word, ‘unpleasant, then there must be a reason for that. And if you’ve come here to look for that reason, then it’s possible you think you’ll find it in something one of the people she worked with told her.’
‘That’s true,’ he said, impressed by her quickness.
‘And if that is true, then that person might equally be at risk.’
‘That’s certainly possible, as well, but I think it would depend on what it is they told her. Madre,’ he continued, deciding he had no choice but to trust her, ‘I’ve no idea what happened, and I feel foolish saying that all I have is a strange feeling that something is wrong about her death.’ Conscious of having said nothing about the marks on her body, Brunetti wondered if it were worse to lie to a nun than to any other sort of person: he decided it was not.
‘Does that mean you are not here … how to say this? That you are not here officially?’ She seemed pleased to have found the word.
‘Not at all,’ he had to admit. ‘I want only to bring some peace of mind to her son,’ he added. It was the truth, but it was not the whole truth.
‘I see,’ she said. She surprised him by opening the book in her lap and returning her attention to it. Brunetti sat quietly for a time that spread out and became minutes, and then more minutes.
At last, she held the book closer to her face, then appeared to read aloud: ‘“The eyes of the Lord are in every place, beholding the evil and the good.”’ She lowered the book and looked at him above the pages. ‘Do you believe that, Commissario?’
‘No, I’m afraid I don’t, Madre,’ he said without hesitation.
She set the book on her lap, leaving the pages open, and surprised him again, this time by saying, ‘Good.’
‘Good that I said it or that I don’t believe it?’ Brunetti asked.
‘That you said it, of course. It’s tragic that you don’t believe it. But if you had said you do, you would have been a liar, and that’s worse.’
Like Pascal, she knew the truth not by reason, but by the heart. But he made no mention of this, merely asked, ‘How do you know I don’t believe it?’ he asked.
She smiled more warmly than he had seen her do so far. ‘I might be a dried-up old stick, Commissario, and from the South, as well, but I’m not a fool,’ she said.
‘And the fact that I’m not a liar, what bearing does that have on this conversation?’
‘It makes me believe that you are really interested in finding out if anything unpleasant – as you put it – might have been involved in Costanza’s death. And since she was a friend, I am interested in that, as well.’
‘Which means you’ll help?’ he asked.
‘Which means I will give you the names of the people she spent most time with. And then you are on your own, Commissario.’
16
She gave him not only their names but their room numbers as well. Two women, one man, all in their eighties and one of them in indifferent mental health; that was the word she used: ‘indifferent’. Brunetti had the feeling that she would not choose to elucidate that last remark, so he let it pass. He thanked her, asking if he could speak to them now.
‘You can try to,’ she said. ‘It’s lunchtime, and for many of our guests, that’s the most important event of their day; it might be difficult to get them to concentrate on anything you ask, at least until after they’ve eaten.’ Hearing her, he remembered a period in his mother’s decline when she had become obsessively interested in food and eating, though she had continued to grow thinner, no matter what she ate. But soon enough she had simply forgotten what food was and had to be reminded, then almost forced, to eat.
She heard him sigh and said, ‘We do it for love of the Lord and for love of our fellow man.’
He nodded, temporarily unable to speak. When Brunetti looked across at her, she said, ‘I don’t know how helpful they’ll be if they know you’re a policemen. It might be sufficient to say that you’re a friend of Costanza’s.’
‘And leave it at that?’ he asked with a smile.
‘It would be enough.’ She did not smile in return but said, ‘After all, it’s true, in a sense, isn’t it?’
Brunetti got to his feet without answering her question. He leaned down and extended his hand. She squeezed it briefly, then said, ‘If you go out the door here, turn left and at the end of the corridor, right, you’ll be in the dining room.’
‘Thank you, Madre,’ he said.
She nodded and returned her attention to her book. At the door, he was tempted to turn and see if she was watching him, but he did not.
Brunetti did not have to use his professional skills to know that lunch was roast pork and potatoes: he had smelled them when he entered the building. As he passed by what must have been the door to the kitchen, he realized just how good roast pork and potatoes could be.
Six or seven tables, half of them small and set for only one or two persons, sat in front of the windows that looked out on the campo. There were a dozen or so people, some sitting in couples, one quartet, some alone. No table was empty. There were bottles of wine and mineral water on all of the tables, and the plates looked like porcelain. Heads turned as he entered the room, but soon two dark-skinned young women appeared behind him, dressed in a simplified version of the habit worn by Madre Rosa and the other sister. Hidden in the midst of the headcloth and veil of the first one were the almond eyes and long-arched nose of a Toltec statue. The lips carved into her mahogany face were surrounded by a thin line of lighter skin which exaggerated their natural redness. Brunetti stared at her until she turned in his direction; then he did what he did when a suspect gazed his way: he changed the focus of his eyes to long vision and panned around the room, as though she were not there or were not worthy of his attention.
The two novices went quickly around the tables, stacking the dishes in which pasta had been served. As they went past on the way to the kitchen, Brunetti saw deep green traces of pesto, a sauce he had never liked. The novices were quickly back, each carrying three plates that held pork, sliced carrots, and roasted potatoes. They served the people at the nearest tables, disappeared, then returned with more plates.
The hum of conversation that had broken off at the sight of him resumed, and the heads – most of them white but some defiantly not – bent over their lunch. Forks clicked against china, bottles against glass; the usual sounds of a communal meal.
The nun who had opened the main door suddenly appeared at his side and asked, ‘Would you like me to tell you who they are, Signore?’
Assuming that she had been sent by the Mother Superior, Brunetti said, ‘That would be very kind of you, Suora.’
?
??Dottor Grandesso is having lunch in his room today, Signora Sartori is over there, at the second table, in the black dress, and Signora Cannata is with the other people at the table next to her. She’s the one with the red hair.’
Brunetti looked across the room and singled out the two women. Signora Sartori was hunched over her food, her left arm encircling her plate, almost as if she were trying to protect her dish from someone who wanted to snatch it from her. He saw her in profile: one high cheekbone with little flesh covering it, but with a plump pouch of skin hanging under her chin. Her lipstick was a violent red and veered beyond the line of her lips. Her skin, like the skin of old people who no longer see the light of day, had a slightly greenish cast, an effect intensified by the inky blackness of her shoulder-length hair.
She held her fork in her gnarled fist and shovelled up the potatoes. Brunetti noticed that her meat had arrived pre-cut in smallish pieces. While he watched, she finished her potatoes and then, just as quickly, the carrots. She took a piece of bread, broke it in half, and proceeded to wipe half of her plate clean, then the other side with the remaining piece of bread. As he watched, she went on to finish two more slices of bread, and when there was no more, she stopped and sat immobile. One of the novices took her empty plate away and received a sharp, angry look for doing so.
Brunetti walked towards the table where the woman with the red hair sat. The novices swept past him, setting a piece of apple cake in front of each of the three people at the table. Brunetti stopped a bit before the table and addressed the woman with the wispy red hair, ‘Signora Cannata?’
She looked up at him with a smile in which he read automatic flirtatiousness. Her eyes blinked rapidly and she raised a palm to keep Brunetti at bay, as though she were a teenager and he the first boy who had paid her a compliment. Her nose was thin and finely drawn, the taut skin under her eyes a few shades lighter than the skin on the rest of her face. Her mascara had been applied with a heavy hand, as had her lipstick, traces of which were visible on her napkin and in small cracks running off from both sides of her mouth. She might have been sixty; she might have had a child of sixty.
The other people at the table turned to him, a man with thinning white hair and a suspiciously black moustache and a blonde woman whose face and what Brunetti could see of her chest appeared to be made of well-tanned leather. The woman’s head and, when he looked, her hands moved erratically in the telltale tremor.
He nodded and smiled at them all. ‘And you are?’ the man with the moustache asked.
‘Guido Brunetti,’ he said, adding, careful to use a more sober tone, ‘a friend of Costanza Altavilla.’
Their eyes did not change, though the blonde overcame the tremor for a moment to turn down the sides of her mouth and tilt her head to the side while she said, ‘Ah, povera donna,’ and the man shook his head and made a clicking noise with his tongue. Was this what happened, Brunetti wondered? Did we all reach a point in our lives when the death of other people didn’t matter, and the best we could be expected to produce was a kind of formulaic sadness, the generic form of grief instead of the real? What he observed in them was something much more like disapproval than sadness. Shame on death for having shown his face at the window of our lives; shame on death for having reminded us that he was lurking outside and waiting for us.
‘Oh, a friend of Costanza’s,’ Signora Cannata sighed.
‘More of her son’s, really. In fact, he asked me to come along to speak to the sisters,’ he began, telling the truth, then quickly segued into the lie. ‘He asked me, while I was here, if I’d try to speak to some of the people she mentioned and tell them how very fond she was of them.’
Hearing this, Signora Cannata placed her open palm on her chest, as if to ask, ‘Who? Me?’
Brunetti gave her a beneficent smile and said, ‘And I hoped I’d be able to take some words to her son, some sign of how much she was appreciated here.’
The man got to his feet abruptly, as if tired of all of this talk of affection and regard. The blonde stood, as well, and linked her arm in his. ‘We’re going out to get a coffee,’ he said, to Brunetti or to Signora Cannata or, for all anyone knew, to the Recording Angel. He nodded to Brunetti, made no motion to shake his hand, and turned away from them, taking the woman with him.
Ignoring them, Brunetti asked, ‘May I join you, Signora?’ and at her smile and wave, sat in the chair to her left, where no one had been seated. He smiled in return and said, ‘As you can well understand, Signora, her son is very troubled by this. You know how close they were.’
She raised her napkin, which Brunetti noticed was cloth and not paper, folded it to a clean patch, and made two dainty dabs at the corner of her left eye, then at the right. ‘It’s a terrible thing,’ she said. ‘But I suppose her son – he’s a doctor, isn’t he? – knew that she was not in good health.’ Her mouth turned down at the sides and she said, ‘It was a heart attack, wasn’t it?’
‘Yes, it was. At least the poor woman didn’t suffer,’ he said, doing his best to use the voice of piety he remembered hearing in his youth.
‘Ah, thank God,’ she said. ‘At least for that.’ Unconsciously, she placed her palm against her chest again; this time the gesture had nothing artificial about it.
‘Her son told me that you were one of the people she mentioned frequently. And she said how much she enjoyed talking to you.’
‘Oh, how very flattering,’ Signora Cannata said. ‘Not that I have much to talk about. Well, perhaps, when I was younger and my husband was still alive. He was an accountant, you know, helped so many important people in the city.’
Brunetti put his elbow on the table and propped his chin in his right palm, ready to sit there all afternoon and listen to the story of her husband’s numerical triumphs. Signora Cannata did not disappoint: her husband had, during his working life, discovered a serious overpayment of tax for the owner of a shipping line, once helped a famous surgeon devise a private accounting system for foreign patients, and had also – though this whole business of computers was something he came to late in life – managed to design a computer system to do the complete billing and bookkeeping for his office.
Brunetti slipped into his most complimentary mode, nodding and smiling at every triumph she recounted, wondering how this woman could possibly have put anyone at risk, save herself from the violence of the people she bored.
‘And how long have you been a guest here, Signora?’ Brunetti asked.
Her smile grew more brittle as she said, ‘Oh, I realized a few years ago that I’d have much more freedom here. And be with people of my own age. Not with people of my son’s generation, or even younger. You know how it is, how insensitive they can be,’ she continued, widening her eyes to display honesty and open-hearted sincerity, to make no mention of human warmth to the point of excess. ‘Besides, people prefer the company of their peers, who have the same memories and history.’ She smiled, and Brunetti gave a nod so filled with agreement it served to shake him fully awake.
‘Well,’ he said, pushing himself with every sign of reluctance to his feet, ‘I don’t want to keep you any longer, Signora. You’ve been very generous with your time and I’m not sure how to thank you.’
‘Well,’ she said, putting on what she probably intended to be a flirtatious smile, ‘one way would be by coming back to talk to me again.’
‘Indeed, Signora,’ Brunetti said and extended his hand. She took it and held it for a long moment, and Brunetti felt himself sink towards compassion. ‘I’ll try to do that.’
Her look was so clear he realized neither of them was fooled one bit by what he said, but both of them decided to stay in role until they were finished with the scene. ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ she said, taking back her hand and folding it into the other in her lap.
Brunetti smiled. He knew he could not simply move to the other table and start talking to Signora Sartori, who appeared not to have moved since she had finished her cake. He left the room and went do
wn the corridor towards the kitchen. One of the novices came out with a large tray and started towards him.
‘Excuse me,’ he began, uncertain what title to give her, ‘could you tell me where I might find Dottor Grandesso?’
‘Oh, he’s at the back of the hall, Signore, down on the right. Last door.’ She looked around Brunetti and pointed down the corridor, as if she feared he could not follow her instructions.
‘Thank you,’ he said and made off down the corridor. The last door on the right was closed, so he knocked. He knocked again and then, hearing no response, slowly opened the door and called into the room, ‘Dottor Grandesso?’
A noise answered. It might have been a word, though it might have been a grunt, but it was definitely a noise, so Brunetti took it as an invitation to enter. Inside, he saw what he at first took to be a skull propped on the pillow of the bed. But the skull had tufts of hair attached and a thin covering of grooved skin. There was a long, narrow form under the covers, and at the end of it a miniature bishop’s mitre of feet. The eyes were still there, and they were turned in his direction. They did not blink and they did not move, merely opened up a conduit between him and a skull. Brunetti recognized the smell he had come to know in his mother’s room.
‘Dottor Grandesso?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Sì,’ the skull answered without moving its lips, the single word pronounced in a voice that surprised Brunetti with its depth and resonance.
‘I’m a friend of Signora Altavilla’s son. He’s asked me to come to speak to the sisters and to those of you who knew his mother best. If it doesn’t upset you, that is.’
The eyes blinked. Or, more accurately, they closed and stayed closed for some time. When they reopened, they had somehow been transformed into the eyes of a living man, filled with emotion and, Brunetti was certain, pain. ‘What happened?’ he asked in that same deep voice.
As Brunetti approached the bed he was acutely aware of how Dottor Grandesso’s eyes studied him; their scrutiny filled Brunetti with a sense of the man’s oxymoronic vitality. ‘She died of a heart attack,’ Brunetti said. ‘The autopsy results said it would have been immediate and whatever pain there was would have lasted only a short time.’