The Death of Faith (15 page)

‘Did you know she read things like that?’

‘You make it sound like she’s reading kiddie-porn, Guido.’

‘No, I just wondered if you knew she read books like that, that she was a serious reader?’

‘She is my mother, after all. Of course I knew it.’

‘But you never told me.’

‘Would that make you like her any more than you do?’

‘I like your mother, Paola,’ he said, voice perhaps a bit too insistent. ‘What I’m talking about is that I never knew who she was. Or,’ he corrected himself, ‘what she was.’

‘And will knowing what she reads make you know who she is?’

‘Can you think of a better way to tell?’

Paola considered this for a long time and then gave him the answer he expected. ‘No, I suppose I can’t.’ He heard her move around on her chair, but Brunetti kept his eyes closed. ‘What were you doing, talking to my mother? And how did you find out about the book? Surely you didn’t call her up to ask her for some reading suggestions.’

‘No, I went to see her.’

‘My mother? You went to see my mother?’

Brunetti grunted.

‘Whatever for?’

‘To ask her about some people she knows.’

‘Who?’

‘Benedetta Lerini.’

‘Ou la la,’ Paola sang out. ‘What’s she done, finally confessed she beat that old bastard’s head in with a hammer?’

‘I believe her father died of a heart attack.’

‘To universal rejoicing, I’m sure.’

‘Why universal?’ When Paola didn’t answer him for a long time, Brunetti opened his eyes and glanced across toward her. She sat with the other leg under her now, chin propped on one hand. ‘Well?’ he asked.

‘It’s funny, Guido. Now that you ask, I don’t know why it should be. I guess it’s just because I’ve always heard that he was a terrible man.’

‘Terrible in what way?’

Again, her answer was long delayed. ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember anything, not a single specific thing I might have heard about him, just this general impression that he was bad. That’s strange, isn’t it?’

Brunetti closed his eyes again. ‘I’d say so, especially in this city.’

‘You mean everybody knows everybody?’

‘Pretty much. Yes.’

‘I suppose so.’ Both stopped talking, and Brunetti knew she was running her mind back down the long passages of her memory, trying to hunt out the comment, the remark, some trace of the opinion of the late Signor Lerini which she seemed to have taken on, unexamined, as her own.

Paola’s voice called Brunetti back from near sleep. ‘It was Patrizia.’

‘Patrizia Belloti?’

‘Yes.’

‘What did she say?’

‘She worked for him, for about five years before he died. That’s how I know about him and his daughter. Patrizia said she’d never known a person so awful and that everyone in his office hated him.’

‘He was in real estate, wasn’t he?’

‘Yes, among other things.’

‘Did she say why?’

‘Why what?’

‘People hated him?’

‘Let me think for a minute,’ Paola said. Then, after a pause, she added, ‘I think it had to do with religion.’

Brunetti had been half expecting this. If the daughter was any indication, he would have been one of those sanctimonious bigots who forbade swearing in the office and gave rosaries as Christmas presents. ‘What did she say?’

‘Well, you know Patrizia, don’t you?’ A childhood friend of Paola s, she had never seemed very interesting to Brunetti, though he had to confess he had seen her no more than a dozen times in all these years.

‘Um hum.’

‘She’s very religious.’

Brunetti remembered: it was one of the reasons he didn’t like her.

‘I think she said that he made a scene one day because someone, a new secretary or something, put some sort of religious picture on the wall in her office. Or a cross. I really don’t remember now what she told me. It was years ago. But he made a scene, made her take it down. And he swore terribly, too, I think I remember her telling me. Really a foul mouth — “the Madonna this, the Madonna that”. Things that Patrizia wouldn’t even repeat. Things that would offend even you, Guido.’

Brunetti ignored this casual revelation that Paola appeared to consider him some sort of arbiter of scurrility and directed his thoughts, instead, to this revelation about Signor Lerini. From this drifty world Brunetti was called back by the soft press of Paola’s body as she sat down on the sofa near his hip. He pulled himself closer to the back of the sofa to allow her more room without bothering to open his eyes, then felt her elbow, arm, breast lean across his chest.

‘Why did you go to see my mother?’ her voice asked from just below his chin.

‘I thought she might know the Lerini woman, and the other one.’

‘Who?’

‘Claudia Crivoni.’

‘And did she know Claudia?’

‘Uh hum.’

‘What did she say?’

‘Something about a priest.’

‘A priest?’ Paola said, exactly as had Brunetti when he heard the same thing.

‘Yes. But only rumour.’

‘That means it’s probably true.’

‘What’s true?’

‘Oh, don’t be a goose, Guido. What do you think is true?’

‘With a priest?’

‘Why not?’

‘Aren’t they supposed to take a vow?’

She pushed herself away. ‘I don’t believe you. Do you actually believe that makes any difference?’

‘It’s supposed to.’

‘Yes, and children are supposed to be obedient and dutiful.’

‘Not ours,’ he said and smiled.

He felt Paola’s body shake in a quick laugh. ‘That’s true enough. But really, Guido, you really don’t mean that about priests, do you?’

‘I don’t think she’s involved with anyone.’

‘Why are you so sure?’

‘I’ve had a look at her,’ he said and made a sudden grab at Paola, catching her around the waist and pulling her on top of him.

Paola squealed aloud in surprise, but the noise had much the same delighted horror as did the shrieks Chiara made whenever Raffi or Brunetti tickled her. She squirmed, but Brunetti tightened his arms around her and forced her to lie still.

After a while, he said, ‘I never knew your mother.’

‘You’ve known her for twenty years.’

‘No, I mean I never knew her as a person. All these years and I had no idea of who she was.’

‘You sound sad,’ Paola said, pushing herself up on his chest, the better to see his face.

He released his hold on her. ‘It is sad, to know a person for twenty years and never have any idea of what they’re like. All that time wasted.’

She lay back down and moved around until her curves fitted more easily into his body. At one point, he let out a sudden, ‘Ouf,’ as her elbow dug into his stomach, but then she lay still and he wrapped his arms around her again.

Chiara, who came in a half hour later, hungry and looking for dinner, found them asleep like that.

* * * *

Chapter Eight

The next day, Brunetti woke with a strange, clearheaded sensation, as if a sudden fever had passed in the night and he’d been returned to his senses. He lay in bed for a long time, running through all of the information he had accumulated during the last two days. Rather than come to the conclusion that he had spent his time well, that the Questura and its doings were in safe hands and he in pursuit of crime, he felt himself suddenly embarrassed by his having run off in pursuit of what he now admitted gave every indication of being a wild-goose chase. Not content with believing Maria Testa’s story, he had commandeered Vianello and gone off to question people who obviously had no idea what he was talking about nor any idea of why a
commissario
of police would come unannounced to their door.

Patta was due back in ten days, and Brunetti had no doubt what his response would be when he learned how police time had been spent. Even in the warmth and safety of his bed, Brunetti could feel the icy chill of Patta’s remarks: ‘You mean you believed this story told by a
nun,
by a woman who’s been hiding in a convent all her life? And you went and hounded those people, made them think their relatives had been murdered? Are you out of your mind, Brunetti? Do you know who these people
are?

He decided that, before abandoning everything, he would speak to one last person, someone who might be able to corroborate, if not Maria’s story, then at least her reliability as a witness. And who would know her better than the man to whom she had confessed her sins for the last six years?

* * * *

The address Brunetti sought was toward the end of the
sestiere
of Castello, near the church of San Francesco della Vigna. The first two people he asked had no idea where the number was, but when he asked where he could find the Fathers of the Sacred Cross, he was immediately told they were at the foot of the next bridge, the second door on the left. So it proved, announced by a small brass plate that bore the name of the order beside a small Maltese cross.

The door was answered after his first ring by a white-haired man who could well have been that figure so common in medieval literature — the good monk. His eyes radiated kindness as the sun radiates warmth, and the rest of his face glowed in a broad smile, as if truly made glad by the arrival of this stranger at his door.

‘May I help you?’ he asked as if nothing could give him more joy than to be able to do just that.

‘I’d like to speak to Padre Pio Cavaletti, Brother.’

‘Yes, yes. Come in, my son,’ the monk said, opening the door even wider and holding it open for Brunetti. ‘Careful there,’ he said, pointing down and reaching out instinctively to put a steadying hand on Brunetti’s arm as he stepped over the wooden cross bar which formed the bottom of the frame of the heavy wooden door. He wore the long white skirt of Suor’Immacolata’s order, but his was covered by a tan apron stained by years of work in grass and dirt.

Brunetti stepped into sweetness and stopped, looking around, trying to identify the odour.

‘Lilac,’ the monk explained, taking joy in the pleasure he read on Brunetti’s face. ‘Padre Pio is mad for them, has them sent to him from all over the world.’ And so, as Brunetti looked around, it proved to be. Shrubs, bushes, even tall trees filled the entire courtyard in front of them, and the scent swirled around him in waves. As he looked, he saw that only a few of the bushes were bent under the magenta clusters; most of them were not yet in flower.

‘But there are so few of them to give such a strong smell,’ Brunetti said, unable to disguise his astonishment at the strength of their perfume.

‘I know,’ the monk said with a proud smile. ‘They’re the first bloomers, the dark ones: Dilatata and Claude Bernard and Ruhm von Horstenstein.’ Brunetti assumed that the monk’s linguistic flight had to do with the names of the lilacs he was smelling. ‘Those white ones, over there against the far wall,’ he began, taking Brunetti’s elbow and pointing off to their left, to a dozen green-leafed shrubs that huddled up against the high brick wall, ‘White Summers, and Marie Finon, and Ivory Silk — they won’t bloom until June, and we’ll probably have some still in flower until July, so long as it doesn’t get too hot too soon.’ Looking around with pleasure that filled both his voice and his face, he said, ‘There are twenty-seven different varieties in this courtyard. And in our chapter house up by Trento, we’ve got another thirty-four.’ Before Brunetti could say anything, he went on, ‘They come from as far away as Minnesota,’ which he pronounced with an entirely Italian crispness of consonant, ‘and Wisconsin,’ which he could barely get his tongue around.