The Death of Faith (8 page)

‘His brother’s gay?’ Brunetti asked, not even bothering to look at Vianello.

Vianello stopped in the middle of the staircase. When Brunetti turned to him, the sergeant asked, ‘How did you know that, sir?’

‘He seemed nervous about his brother and his clerical friends, and I couldn’t think of anything else about a priest that would make Miotti nervous. It’s not as if he’s the most open-minded man we have.’ After a moment’s reflection, Brunetti added, ‘And it’s not as if it’s a surprise when a priest is gay.’

‘It’s the opposite that’s a surprise, I’d say,’ Vianello remarked and started back down the steps. He turned his attention back to Miotti, not needing to explain the leap to Brunetti. ‘But you’ve always said he’s a good policeman, sir.’

‘He doesn’t have to be open-minded to be a good policeman, Vianello.’

‘No, I suppose not,’ Vianello agreed.

They emerged from the Questura a few minutes later and found Bonsuan, the pilot, waiting for them aboard a police launch. Everything glistened: the brass fittings on the boat, one of the metal tags on Bonsuan’s collar, the new green leaves on the vine coming back to life on the wall across the canal, a wine bottle drifting by on the surface of the water, itself a gleaming field. For no reason other than the light, Vianello spread his arms wide and smiled.

Bonsuan’s attention was drawn by the movement, and he stared. Caught between embarrassment and joy, Vianello began to turn his motion into the tired stretch of a deskbound man, but then a pair of amorous swifts flashed by, low to the water, and Vianello dropped all pretence. ‘It’s springtime,’ he called happily to the pilot and leaped onto the deck beside him. He clapped Bonsuan on the shoulder, his own joy suddenly overflowing.

‘Do we owe all of this to your exercise class?’ Brunetti asked as he came aboard.

Bonsuan, who apparently knew nothing about Vianello’s latest enthusiasm, gave the sergeant a disgusted look, turned, hit the motor into life, and pulled the launch out into the narrow canal.

Spirits undampened, Vianello remained on deck while Brunetti went down into the cabin. He pulled down a city guide that rested on a shelf running along one side of the cabin and checked the locations of the three addresses on the list. From inside, he watched the interaction between the two men: his sergeant, as unashamedly filled with high spirits as an adolescent; the dour pilot, staring ahead as they pulled out into the
bacino
of San Marco. As he watched, Vianello placed a hand on Bonsuan’s shoulder and pointed off to the east, calling his attention to a thick-masted sailboat that came toward them, its sails fat-cheeked with the fresh spring breeze. Bonsuan nodded once but turned his attention back to their course. Vianello tossed his head back and laughed, sending the deep sound spilling down into the cabin.

Brunetti resisted until they were in the middle of the
bacino,
but then he gave in to the magnet of Vianello’s happiness and came up on deck. Just as he stepped outside, the wake of a passing Lido ferry caught them broadside, knocking Brunetti off balance and toward the boat’s low railing. Vianello’s hand shot out; he grabbed Brunetti by the sleeve and pulled him back. He held his superior’s arm until the boat steadied, then let him go, saying, ‘Not in that water.’

‘Afraid I’d drown?’ Brunetti asked.

Bonsuan broke in. ‘More likely the cholera would get you.’

‘Cholera?’ Brunetti asked, laughing at his exaggeration, the first joke he’d ever heard Bonsuan attempt.

Bonsuan swung his head around and gave Brunetti a level glance. ‘Cholera,’ he repeated.

When Bonsuan turned back to the wheel, Vianello and Brunetti stared at one another like guilty schoolboys, and Brunetti had the impression that it was with difficulty that Vianello stopped himself from laughing.

‘When I was a boy,’ Bonsuan said with no introduction, ‘I used to swim in front of my house. Just dive into the water from the side of the Canale di Cannaregio. You could see to the bottom. You could see fish, crabs. Now all you see is mud and shit.’

Vianello and Brunetti exchanged another glance.

‘Anyone who eats a fish from out of that water is crazy.’ Bonsuan said.

Late last year, there had been numerous cases of cholera reported, but in the south, where that sort of thing happened. Brunetti remembered that the health authorities had closed the fish market in Bari and warned the local people to avoid eating fish, which had seemed to him like telling cows to avoid eating grass. The autumn rains and floods had driven the story from the pages of the national newspapers, but not before Brunetti had begun to wonder whether the same thing was possible, here in the north, and how wise it was to eat anything that came from the increasingly putrid waters of the Adriatic.

When the boat pulled up at the gondola stop to the left of Palazzo Dario, Vianello grabbed the end of a coiled rope and leaped onto the dock. Leaning back, he held the rope taut and the boat close to the dock as Brunetti stepped ashore.

‘You want me to wait for you, sir?’ Bonsuan asked.

‘No, don’t bother. I don’t know how long we’ll be,’ Brunetti told him. ‘You can go back.’

Bonsuan raised a hand languidly toward the peak of his uniform cap, a gesture that served as both salute and farewell. He slipped the motor into reverse and arched the boat out into the canal, not bothering to look back at the two men who stood on the landing.

‘Where first?’ Vianello asked.

‘Dorsoduro 723. It’s up near the Guggenheim, on the left.’

The men walked up the narrow
calle
and turned right at the first intersection. Brunetti found himself still wanting a coffee, then surprised that there were no bars to be seen on either side of the street.

An old man walking his dog came toward them, and Vianello moved behind Brunetti to give them room to pass, though they continued to talk about what Bonsuan had said. ‘You really think the water is that bad, sir?’ Vianello asked.

‘Yes.’

‘But some people still swim in the Canale della Giudecca,’ Vianello insisted.

‘When?’

‘Redentore.’

‘They’re drunk, then,’ Brunetti said dismissively.

Vianello shrugged and then stopped when Brunetti did.

‘I think this is it,’ Brunetti said, pulling the paper from his pocket. ‘Da Pr
è
,’ he said aloud, looking at the names engraved on the two neat rows of brass plates that stood to the left of the door.

Who is it?’ Vianello asked.

‘Ludovico, heir to Signorina da Prè. Could be anyone. Cousin. Brother. Nephew.’

‘How old was she?’

‘Seventy-two,’ Brunetti answered, remembering the neat columns on Maria Testa’s list.

‘What did she die of?’

‘Heart attack.’

‘Any suspicion that this person,’ Vianello began, nodding with his chin toward the brass plate beside the door, ‘had anything to do with it?’

‘She left him this apartment and more than five hundred million lire.’

‘Does that mean that it’s possible?’ Vianello asked.

Brunetti, who had recently learned that the building in which they lived needed a new roof and that their share of it would be nine million lire, said, ‘If the apartment’s nice enough, I might kill someone to get it.’

Vianello, who knew nothing about the roof, gave his commissario a strange look.

Brunetti pressed the bell. Nothing happened for a long time, so Brunetti pressed it again, this time holding it for much longer. The two men exchanged a glance, and Brunetti pulled out the list, looking for the next address. Just as he turned away to the left and up toward the Accademia, a disembodied, high-pitched voice called out from the speaker above the name plates.

‘Who is it?’

The voice was imbued with the asexual plaint of age, providing Brunetti with no idea of how to address the speaker, whether Signora or Signore. ‘Is that the da Prè family?’ he asked.

‘Yes. What do you want?’

‘There are some questions about the estate of Signorina da Prè, and we need to talk to you.’

Without further question, the door clicked open, letting them into a broad courtyard with a vine-covered well in the centre. The only staircase was through a door on the left. On the landing at the second floor, a door stood open, and in it stood one of the smallest men Brunetti had ever seen.

Though neither Vianello nor Brunetti was particularly tall, they both towered over this man, who seemed to grow even smaller as they drew near him.

‘Signor da Prè?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes,’ he said, coming a step forward from the door and extending a hand no larger than a child’s. Because the man raised his hand almost to the height of his own shoulder, Brunetti did not have to lean down to take it; otherwise, he would certainly have had to do so. Da Prè’s handshake was firm, and the glance he shot up toward Brunetti’s eyes was clear and direct. His face was narrow, almost blade-like in its thinness. Either age or prolonged pain had cut deep grooves on either side of his mouth and scooped out dark circles under his eyes. His size made his age impossible to determine: he could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy.

Taking in Vianello’s uniform, Signor da Prè did not extend his hand and did no more than nod in his direction. He stepped back through the door, opening it wider and inviting the two men into the apartment.

Muttering ‘
Permesso
,’ the two policemen followed him into the hall and waited while he closed the door.

‘This way, please,’ the man said, heading back down the corridor.

From behind him, Brunetti saw the sharp hump that stuck up through the cloth of the left side of his jacket like the breastbone of a chicken. Though da Prè did not actually limp, his whole body canted to the left when he walked, as though the wall were a magnet and he a sack of metal filings pulled toward it. He led them into a living room that had windows on two sides. Rooftops were visible from those on the left, while the others looked across to the shuttered windows of a building on the other side of the narrow
calle.

All of the furniture in the room was on the same scale as two monumental cupboards that filled the back wall: a high-backed sofa that seated six; four carved chairs which, from the ornamental work on their armrests, must have been Spanish; and an immense Florentine sideboard, its top littered with countless small objects at which Brunetti barely glanced. Da Prè climbed up into one of the chairs and waved Brunetti and Vianello into two of the others.

Brunetti’s feet, when he sat down, just barely reached the floor, and he noticed that da Prè’s hung midway between the seat and the floor. Somehow, the intense sobriety of the man’s face kept the wild disparity in scale from being in any way ridiculous.

‘You said there is something wrong with my sister’s will?’ da Prè began, voice cool.

‘No, Signor da Prè,’ Brunetti returned, ‘I don’t want to confuse the issue or mislead you. Our curiosity has nothing to do with your sister’s will or with any stipulations that might be made in it. We’re interested, instead, in her death, or with the cause of her death.’

‘Then why didn’t you say that at the beginning?’ the little man asked, voice warmer now, but not in a way that Brunetti liked.

‘Are those snuff boxes, Signor da Prè?’ Vianello interrupted, getting down from his chair and going over to the sideboard.

‘What?’ the little man said sharply.

‘Are these snuff boxes?’ Vianello asked, bending down over the surface, bringing his face closer to the small objects that covered it.

‘Why do you ask?’ da Prè said, voice no warmer but certainly curious.