Authors: Donna Leon
She nodded, then said yes in a very soft voice.
The doctor sat on the edge of a sofa. He set his bag on the floor at his feet and leaned back, silent and still.
Brunetti took another straight-backed chair and placed it about a metre from Lucia’s chair, careful to arrange it so that she remained in shadow and his face in the light that came in from the window behind her. He wanted to create as much of an atmosphere of openness as he could between them to relax her into speaking easily. He smiled in what he hoped was a reassuring way. She had the green eyes so common to redheads, red-rimmed now from crying.
‘I want to tell you how very sorry I am about this, Signorina,’ he began. ‘Signora Gallante has been telling us what a sweet girl Claudia was. I’m sure it’s very painful for you to lose such a good friend.’
Lucia bowed her head and nodded.
‘Could you tell me a little bit about your friendship? How long have you shared the apartment?’
The girl’s voice was soft, almost inaudible, but Brunetti, by leaning forward, managed to hear. ‘I moved in about a year ago. Claudia and I were enrolled in the same faculty, so we took some classes together, and so when her other flatmate decided to leave school, she asked me if I wanted to take over her room.’
‘How long had Claudia been here?’
‘I don’t know. A year or two before I came.’
‘From Milano, is that correct?’
The girl was still looking at the floor, but she nodded in assent.
‘Do you know where Claudia came from?’
‘I think from here.’
At first Brunetti wasn’t sure he had heard her correctly. ‘Venice?’ he asked.
‘Yes, sir. But she was in school in Rome before she came here.’
‘But she was renting her own apartment, not living with her parents?’
‘I don’t think she had any parents,’ Lucia said but then, as if aware of how strange that must sound, she looked directly at Brunetti for the first time and added, ‘I mean, I think they’re dead.’
‘Both of them?’
‘Her father, yes. I know that because she told me.’
‘And her mother?’
Lucia had to consider this. ‘I’m not sure about her mother. I always assumed she was dead, too, but Claudia never said.’
‘Did it ever strike you as strange that people as young as her parents probably were could both be dead?’
Lucia shook her head.
‘Did Claudia have many friends?’
‘Friends?’
‘Classmates, people who came here to study or perhaps to have a meal or just talk.’
‘Some kids from our faculty would come over to study sometimes, but there was no one special.’
‘Did she have a boyfriend?’
‘You mean a
fidanzato
?’ Lucia asked in a tone that made it clear she had not.
‘That, or just a boyfriend she went out with occasionally.’
Again, a negative motion of her head.
‘Is there anyone at all you can think of that she was close to?’
Lucia gave this some thought before she answered, ‘The only person I ever heard her talk about, or talk to on the phone, was a woman she called her grandmother, but who wasn’t.’
‘Is this the woman called Hedi?’ Brunetti asked, wondering what Lucia’s response would be to learning that the police already knew about this woman.
Obviously, Lucia found it not at all strange that the police should know, for she answered, ‘Yes, I think she was German, or Austrian. That’s what they spoke when they talked on the phone.’
‘Do you speak German, Lucia?’ he asked, using her name for the first time and hoping that his familiarity would sooth her into answering more easily.
‘No, sir. I never knew what they were talking about.’
‘Were you curious?’
She seemed surprised at the question: whatever could be interesting in conversation between her flatmate and an old foreign woman?
‘Did you ever see this woman?’
‘No. Claudia went to see her, though. Sometimes she’d bring home cookies or a kind of cake with almonds in it. I never asked about it, just assumed she’d brought it from her.’
‘Why did you think that, Lucia?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because no one I know bakes things like that. With cinnamon and nuts.’
Brunetti nodded.
‘Can you remember anything Claudia might ever have said about her?’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘About how it was that she was her, well, her adoptive grandmother? Or where she lived?’
‘I think she must live in the city.’
‘Why, Lucia?’
‘Because the times she brought back the things to eat, she was never gone for a long time. I mean, not time to get to somewhere else and come back.’ She considered this for a while and then said, ‘It couldn’t even have been the Lido. I mean, it could have been, because you can get to the Lido and back in a short time, but I remember Claudia once said – I forget what we were talking about – that she hadn’t been to the Lido for years.’
Brunetti started to ask another question, but suddenly Lucia turned to the doctor and asked, ‘Doctor, do I have to answer any more questions?’
Without consulting Brunetti for an answer, the young man said, ‘Not unless you want to, Signorina.’
‘I don’t want to,’ she said. ‘That’s all I want to say.’ She looked at the doctor when she spoke, ignoring Brunetti entirely.
Resigning himself to the fact that any further questioning would have to be done in Milano or by phone, Brunetti got to his feet and said, ‘I’m very grateful for your help.’ Then turning to the doctor, ‘For yours, too, Dottore.’
To both of them together, he said, ‘Signora Gallante has made tea, and I’m sure she’d be very happy to give you some.’ He walked towards the door of the apartment, turned back briefly as if about to say something, but changed his mind and left.
11
VIANELLO JOINED HIM
on the stairway. ‘Shall we go back to the apartment, sir?’ he asked.
By way of an answer, Brunetti started back upstairs. The uniformed officer was still at the door when they arrived and said, when they reached the top of the steps, ‘They’ve taken her away, sir.’
‘You can go back to the Questura, then,’ Brunetti told him and went inside. The rug was still there in the centre of the room, the discoloured fringe lying smooth now, as though someone had combed it. Brunetti took the gloves from the pocket of his jacket and slipped them on again. The grey puffs of powder that covered the surfaces of the furniture offered silent evidence that the technical squad had been through the apartment and had dusted for prints.
No matter how many times Brunetti had gone through the artefacts that no longer belonged to the dead, he could never free himself of the uneasiness with which it filled him. He poked and prodded, fingered, plucked and pried into the material secrets left behind by those taken off by sudden death, and no matter how much he willed himself to remain dispassionate about what he did, he never managed to avoid the rush of excitement that came with the discovery of what he sought: is this what a voyeur feels? he wondered.
Vianello disappeared in the direction of the bedrooms, and Brunetti remained in the living room, conscious of how reluctantly he turned his back on the place where she had lain. Just where it should have been, he found a small book of telephone numbers placed neatly on top of the city phone book and to the left of the telephone. He opened it and began to read. It was not until he got to the Js that he found what might be what he was looking for: ‘Jacobs’. He paged through the rest of the book but, aside from listings for ‘plumber’ and ‘computers’, ‘Jacobs’ was the only listing that was not a surname ending in a vowel. Further, the number began with 52 and had no out-of-city prefix written in front of it, as had some of the other numbers. He toyed for a moment with the idea of calling the number, but if Claudia had been dear to this woman, then the telephone was not the way to do it.
Instead, he flipped open the phone book and found the few listings under that letter. There it was, ‘Jacobs, H.’, with an address in Santa Croce.
After
that, his instinct that he had already found what was most important prevented him from taking much interest in the rest of his search of the apartment. Vianello, emerging from his search of Lucia’s room, said only, ‘Signorina Lucia seems to divide her time between histories of the Byzantine Empire and Harmony Romances.’
Brunetti, who had told Vianello about Claudia’s visit to his office and her strange request for information, said, ‘I think I’ve found the missing grandmother.’
Reaching into the pocket of his jacket for his
telefonino
, the Inspector asked, ‘Would you like to call her first and tell her you’re coming?’
Brunetti waved away the offer and resisted the temptation to point out to Vianello that they were standing just beside a telephone and that his phone was unnecessary. ‘No. She’d worry if I told her it was the police, and then I’d have to tell her, anyway. Better to go and talk to her directly.’
‘Would you like me to come with you?’ Vianello asked.
‘No, that’s all right. Go and have lunch. Besides, it might be better for her if there’s only one of us. Before you go, see what you can find out from other people in the building what they know about the girls and if they saw or heard anything last night. Tomorrow we can begin asking questions at the university: my wife might be able to tell me something about the girl, who her friends were, her other professors. When you get back to the Questura, ask Signorina Elettra what she can find out about Claudia Leonardo or this woman,
Hedi
– I suppose that’s Hedwig – Jacobs. She might as well see if there’s anything about Luca Guzzardi.’
‘She’ll be glad of the work, I think,’ Vianello said in a tone that failed to be neutral.
‘Good. Then tell her I want anything at all she can find, even if it goes back to the war.’
Vianello started to say something else, perhaps about Signorina Elettra, but he stopped and instead said only, ‘I’ll tell her.’
Brunetti knew that the address in Santa Croce had to be somewhere near San Giacomo dell’Orio, so he walked to the Accademia and took the Number One to San Stae. From there, instinct took over and he soon entered Campo San Boldo. In the
campo
he saw that the numbers were close to the one he was looking for, so he stopped in a
tabacchaio
and asked for directions. When the man said he wasn’t sure, Brunetti explained he was looking for an old Austrian woman. The shopkeeper smiled and answered, ‘Keeps me in business, Signora Hedi, and keeps me hopping, taking them up to her. Smokes like a Turk. You’ve walked past her place. Go out, turn right, and hers is the third door’
He did as he was told and saw, beside the second door on the left, the name ‘Jacobs’. As he raised his hand to ring the bell, Brunetti felt a wave of momentary exhaustion sweep over him. He had done this too many times, brought so much terrible news, and he felt an overwhelming reluctance to do it again. How easy it would be if victims never had relatives, were always people who were solitary and unloved and whose death
would
not radiate out, swamping the small boats around them, washing up more victims on the shoals of life.
Knowing that he was helpless to dismiss this feeling, he waited for it to pass and a few minutes later he rang the bell. After some time, a deep voice, but still a woman’s voice, called over the entry phone, ‘Who is it?’
‘I’ve come to talk to you, Signora Jacobs,’ was the best he could think of.
‘I don’t talk to people,’ she answered and replaced the phone.
Brunetti rang the bell again, keeping his finger on it until he heard her demand, ‘Who are you?’ The tone was peremptory, without uncertainty or fear.
‘I’m Commissario Guido Brunetti, Signora, from the police. I’ve come to talk to you.’
There followed a long pause. Finally, she asked, ‘About what?’
‘Claudia Leonardo.’
The noise he heard, or thought he heard, could simply have been static; it could just as easily have been her breathing. The door snapped open and he went in. The floor of the entrance hall was green with mould, lit only by a dim bulb in a filthy glass case. He started up the stairs, the green of the mould growing lighter as he rose. At the first landing there was another bulb, no brighter, which dimly illuminated the octagonal marble medallions that patterned the floor. A single door, a thick metal
porta blindata
, stood open to his left and just inside it was a tall, painfully stooped woman, her
white
hair arranged in an elaborate crown of braids of the sort he was familiar with from photos from the Thirties and Forties. She leaned forward, her hands wrapped around the ivory handle of a walking stick. Her eyes were grey with just the faintest touch of the cloudiness of age, but no less filled with suspicion for that.
‘I’m afraid I have very bad news for you, Signora Jacobs,’ he said, halting outside the door. He watched her face for some response, but she gave none.
‘You better come inside to give it to me so I can be sitting down when I hear it,’ she said. The longer sentence exposed the Teutonic underpinnings of her speech. ‘It’s my heart, and I’m not at all steady on my feet any more. I need to sit.’
She turned back into the apartment. Brunetti closed the door and followed her. His first breath proved to him that the tobacco dealer was right: if he could have walked into an ashtray, the smell would have been no stronger. He wondered when a window had last been opened in this apartment, so pervasive was the sour smell.
She led him down a wide corridor, and at first Brunetti kept his eyes on her retreating back, concerned that even the thought of bad news might cause her to falter or fall. But she seemed to proceed steadily, if slowly, so he began to pay attention to his surroundings. Looking around him, he stopped dead, assaulted by the beauty he saw spread around him as if by a profligate hand.
The walls on either side of the corridor were crowded with rows of paintings and drawings,
lined
up shoulder to shoulder like people waiting for a bus. Like those random waiters, the paintings in no way resembled one another: he saw what had to be a small Degas of the familiar seated dancer; what looked like a pear but only a pear as Cézanne could paint a pear; a thick-lidded Madonna of the Sienese school; and what was surely one of Goya’s drawings of a firing squad.