“Dear Tina. The trunks were in the care/possession of the Propaganda Fide, as sinister a name as your lot could come up with short of KGB or CIA. I was told that someone who was doing an inventory found the trunks. His research probably found the names of the original cousins and he looked for people with the same surnames in the area about Castelfranco and got in touch with them. That’s certainly what I or any other researcher would do, but this is only a guess, not a certainty.
“When I opened them, it looked as though no one had done so since the time they were first sealed, but I’m sure breaking and entering and leaving no traces is the least of the Black Arts practiced by the PF.
“Yes, tonight’s lawyer is the cousins’ lawyer. I’ll ply him with wine and grappa and try to get him to explain how they got their hands on the trunks. That failing, I might be forced to tempt him with the possibility of my charms, and where the grown man who could prove resistant to those?
“Thanks for the information about the statute of limitations, and I’m ashamed I never thought of it. Of course I knew it, but I’m afraid Avvocato Moretti quite drove all memory of the study of the law, to make no mention of good sense, out of my head. Or maybe I simply wanted to keep this job because it’s interesting and lets me be at home. Love, Cati.”
Ten minutes after she sent the mail, her
telefonino
rang. Her first thought was her parents, calling to see if she was free for dinner, they as ever ready to feed their last born and save her from a night of solitude.
She answered with her name.
“
Ciao
, Caterina,” Andrea said. “I’m out in the street. Come down when you’re finished.”
“Don’t you have a key?” she blurted.
“Yes, but I’m off duty tonight,” he said with a laugh. “Listen, there’s a bar out on Via Garibaldi, first on the left. I’ll be in there, all right?”
For a moment, she could find nothing to say, caught between surprise and embarrassment. “I’ll be two minutes. Order me a spritz, all right? With Aperol.”
“
Sarà fatto
,” he said and was gone.
The tactic of playing hard to get had never appealed to Caterina, not because it was not effective—her friends had used it with great success—but because it was so obvious. Above all things, she hated being kept waiting, and few things could embarrass her as much as keeping another person waiting unnecessarily. She turned off the computer, put her
telefonino
in her bag, went to check that the door to the storeroom was locked, locked the office, and went downstairs.
He was there, standing at the bar, that day’s
Gazzettino
spread open beside him as he sipped a glass of white wine. A spritz of the proper orange stood on the counter to the left of the newspaper.
He heard her come in, looked up, and smiled. He closed the paper and set it to the side of the counter. “I didn’t take you away from anything, did I?” he asked. For a moment, Caterina was puzzled by the change in him. Face and height the same, wire-rimmed glasses and carefully shined shoes. But he was wearing a light tweed jacket. A tie, of course, and a white shirt, but he was not wearing a suit. Was this an honor or an insult?
“No, not at all. I was sending an email.” She nodded toward the paper. “Anything there? I haven’t read the papers for days.”
“Same old things. Jealous husband kills wife, North Korea threatens the South, politician caught taking a bribe from a builder, woman gives birth at sixty-two.”
Andrea, obviously judging this the wrong way to begin their evening, handed her the spritz, tapped his glass against hers, and said, “
Cin cin
.”
“Sounds like I’m wiser to stay in the eighteenth century, then,” she said and took a sip. It was perfect, sharp and sweet at the same time, and today one of the first days of the year when a person might want to drink something cold.
“Still digging?” he asked, but idly, as if he were only being polite.
“I’ve stopped digging,” she said. His expression of more than mild surprise led her to add, “That is, digging into things that don’t concern me.”
He gave her a long, appraising glance, as if he were weighing her answer, and then said, “That’s the first time I’ve ever heard a woman say that.” His smile and the glance that preceded it took any sting out of the remark.
“Ha, ha,” she said in the manner of a cartoon character and then allowed herself to laugh, managing thus both to disapprove of the remark while still being amused by it.
“What is it you’re not digging into?” he asked and took another sip of his drink. Before she could answer, he signaled the barman and asked for some peanuts. “I didn’t have lunch today,” he said by way of explanation.
Caterina started to ask why, but he took another sip and said only, “Meeting,” then, “Tell me about your not digging.”
He sounded curious, so she told him the background to the Königsmarck Affair. His lawyer’s mind, accustomed to hearing many names dragged into a story, seemed to keep them all straight. When she moved on to the account contained in Countess von Platen’s memoirs, he stopped her to ask if this were Königsmarck’s ex-mistress, impressing Caterina with both his memory and his concentration.
Then, before she could continue, he said, “She’s an unreliable witness.” He watched her expression, then added, “I mean in legal terms, theoretical terms.”
“Why?” she asked, though it was evident. She wanted to know if he had some other, lawyerly reason so to judge her.
“The obvious one is that she had reason to dislike him, especially if he ended the affair. That means she’d be unlikely to speak in his favor.”
“To say the minimum,” she agreed. “Why else?”
“It means, as well, that she might attempt to hide the real killer.”
“For ending a love affair?” Caterina asked, unable to stifle her astonishment.
“Your surprise does you credit, Dottoressa,” he said, raising his glass to her and finishing his wine. He set it on the counter and went on, “And, yes, for ending the affair.” Before she could protest, he said, “I don’t practice criminal law, but I have colleagues who do, and they tell me things that would make your hair stand on end.”
He saw that he had her complete attention. “You’ve probably read the phrase in the paper
motivi futili
. My friends have told me about a lot of the trivial things that cost people their lives: a car parked in someone else’s space, the refusal to give a cigarette, a radio too loud or a television, a minor car accident.” He raised his hand toward the barman, signaling for the bill.
“So keeping quiet about the murder of someone who said he wasn’t in love with you anymore, especially if he wasn’t graceful about it . . . it makes complete sense to me. So does saying something that might protect the murderer.”
“Then you doubt her account? That she saw Steffani kill him?”
“Is that what she says? That she saw him do it?”
Caterina had to pause and think back over the precise wording in Tina’s friend’s email. “Something about his having received blood money,” she said.
“I’m not sure that’s the same thing as saying she saw him commit the murder,” Andrea said, and then, just as she was about to make the same suggestion, added, “Maybe we could talk about something else?”
What a relief his suggestion was. He paid the bill and moved over to the door to hold it open for her.
He led them to a small trattoria behind the Pietà, a place that held no more than half a dozen tables, the stout-legged sort she remembered from her youth, with surfaces scarred and carved and edges hollowed out by countless forgotten cigarettes. Bottles stood on mirrored shelves behind the zinc-covered bar; a rectangular space with a sliding door opened into the kitchen.
Two of the tables were already taken. The waiter recognized Moretti and showed them to a table in the far corner. He handed them menus and disappeared through a pair of swinging doors.
“I hope you don’t mind eating in a simple place,” he said.
“I’d rather,” she said. “My parents keep telling me how hard it’s become to find a place where the food’s good and you don’t have to take out a mortgage to pay the bill.”
“That’s not the case here,” he said, then laughed and said, “I mean, the food’s good, not that it’s cheap.” And, hearing that, he added, “That’s the reason I come, that is, because the food’s good.” Hearing what a pass he had talked himself into, he shrugged and opened his menu.
Conversation was general: families, school, travel, reading, music. Much of his life was completely at one with the persona he presented: father a lawyer, mother a housewife; two brothers, the surgeon he had already mentioned and the other a notary; school, university, first job, partnership. But then came the odd bits: a case of encephalitis seven years ago that had left him in bed for six months, during which he had read the Fathers of the Church, in Latin. When these facts were painted into the picture she was attempting to form of the man, everything went out of focus for a moment. A brush with death; she knew little about encephalitis save that it was bad, quite often fatal, and just as often left people gaga. Perhaps that last explained six months reading the Fathers of the Church, her cynical self remarked, but her better self limited her to asking, “Encephalitis?”
He bit into a shrimp and said, “I went for a hike in the mountains above Belluno. Two days later I found a tick on the back of my knee, and a week later I was in the hospital with a temperature of forty.”
“Near Belluno?” It was only two hours from Venice, a beautiful city where nothing happened.
“It’s common. There are more and more cases every year,” he said, then smiled and added, “More evidence of the wisdom of living in cities.”
She decided not to ask about the Fathers of the Church. The evening continued, and conversation remained general and friendly. The absence of reference to Steffani or Königsmarck came as a great relief to Caterina. How pleasant to spend a few hours in this century, in this city, and, she added to herself, in this company.
They shared a branzino baked in salt, drank most of a bottle of Ribolla Gialla, and both turned down dessert. When the coffee came, Andrea grew suddenly serious and said, with no preparation at all, “I’m afraid I have to confess I haven’t told you the complete truth.”
There being nothing she could think of to say, Caterina remained silent.
“About the cousins.”
Better than about himself, she thought, but she said nothing to him, certainly not this. If he was confessing he lied, she had no obligation to make it easy for him, so she remained silent; in order to appear to be doing something, she poured sugar into her coffee and stirred it round.
“The story of how the trunks got here,” he said, then drew one hand into a fist and placed it on the table.
“Ah,” she permitted herself to say.
“They didn’t track them down. The trunks turned up during an inventory, and the researcher did find Steffani’s name on them, and he did do the research and locate the descendants.”
He paused and gave her a quizzical glance, but Caterina kept her face impassive. “Descendants,” he had said. Not “heirs.”
She stifled her curiosity and drank her coffee. He must have realized she was not going to be cooperatively inquisitive, so he said, his voice a mixture of the pedantic and the apologetic, “They have no claim to ownership. You studied law, so you probably know that it reverts to the State.”
Caterina kept her eyes on her coffee cup, even lifted the spoon and ran it around the empty bottom a few times. Then she carefully spooned up the mixture of melted sugar and froth from the bottom and licked the spoon before replacing it on the saucer.
She raised her eyes and looked across the table at him, with his lovely, expensive jacket and his moderate tie. He met her eyes with his own steady glance and said, “I apologize.”
“Why did you tell me a different story?” she asked, consciously avoiding the use of the word
lie
.
“They asked me to.”
“Why?”
He looked down at his own empty coffee cup but did not busy himself with his spoon. Eyes still lowered, he said, “They said they didn’t want to have to explain how the trunks got here. The real way, I mean. Or I presume.” Even in his explanation, she noticed, he still strove for clarity.
Making herself sound the very voice of moderation, she asked, “Why wouldn’t they want anyone to know?”
He tried to shrug but abandoned the gesture halfway, with one shoulder higher than the other. “My guess is that they bribed someone to have the trunks sent here.” When her gaze remained level on his, he actually blushed and said, “In fact, it’s the only way it could have happened.”
“The researcher?” she asked, knowing this was impossible. He would have no power over where the trunks went.
Andrea smiled at her question and said, “Not likely.”
“Then who?” she asked, doing her best to look very confused.
“It would have to be someone at the Propaganda Fide, I’d guess. Or someone at the warehouse.”
“Then why me?”