Authors: Donna Leon
He got to his feet, folded the paper in four, and slipped it into the inner pocket of his jacket.
‘Have you ever met him?’ Signorina Elettra asked.
‘Once, years ago, when he was still practising.’ Then he asked her, ‘Do you know him?’
‘My father dealt with him, years ago. It went very badly.’
‘For whom? Your father or Dottor Filipetto?’
‘I think it would be impossible to find anything that ever went badly for a Filipetto, either the son or the father,’ she said, then added mordantly, ‘aside from his pancreas, of course.’
‘What was it about?’
She considered this for a while, then explained, ‘My father had part ownership of a restaurant that had tables alongside a canal. Dottor Filipetto lived on the third floor, above the restaurant, and he claimed that the tables obstructed his view of the other side of the canal.’
‘From the third floor?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’
‘Filipetto was an old friend of the judge who was assigned to the case. At first, my father and his partner didn’t worry because the claim was so
absurd
. But then he learned that both the judge and Filipetto were Masons, members of the same lodge, and once he knew that, he knew he had no choice but to settle the case out of court.’
‘What was the settlement?’
‘My father had to pay him a million lire a month in return for his promise not to file another complaint.’
‘When was this?’
‘About twenty years ago.’
‘That was a fortune then.’
‘My father sold his share in the restaurant soon after that. He never mentions it now, but I remember, at the time, how he spoke Filipetto’s name.’
For Brunetti this story recalled many he had heard, over the course of years, concerning Notaio Filipetto. ‘I think I’ll go along and see if he’s at home.’
On the way out he stopped in the officers’ room and found Vianello, who had been forced to remain at his desk there even after his promotion, Lieutenant Scarpa having refused to assign him a desk among the other
ispettori
.
‘I’m going over to Castello to talk to someone. Would you like to come along?’
‘About the girl?’ Vianello asked.
‘Yes.’
‘Gladly,’ he said, getting to his feet and grabbing his jacket from the back of his chair. ‘Who is it?’ Vianello asked as they emerged from the Questura.
‘Notaio Gianpaolo Filipetto.’
Vianello did not stop in his tracks, but he did falter for an instant. ‘Filipetto?’ he asked. ‘Is he still alive?’
‘It would seem so,’ Brunetti answered. ‘Claudia Leonardo had his phone number in her address book.’ They reached the
riva
and turned right, heading for the Piazza, and as they walked Brunetti also explained the pattern of money transfers and, listing the charities, their final destinations.
‘It hardly sounds like the sort of thing a Filipetto would be involved in,’ Vianello observed.
‘What, giving this much money to charity?’
‘Giving anything to charity, I’d say,’ Vianello answered.
‘We don’t know there’s any connection between him and her money,’ Brunetti said, though he didn’t for an instant believe this.
‘If ever there is a Filipetto and money, there is a connection,’ Vianello said, pronouncing it as a truth Venetians had come to learn through many generations.
‘You have any idea how old he could be?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No. Close to ninety, I’d say.’
‘Seems a strange age to be interested in money, doesn’t it?’
‘He’s a Filipetto,’ Vianello answered, effectively silencing any speculation Brunetti might have felt tempted to make.
The address was in Campo Bandiera e Moro, in a building just to the right of the church where Vivaldi had been baptized and from which, according to common belief, many of the paintings
and
statues had disappeared into private hands during the tenure of a previous pastor. They rang, then rang again until a woman’s voice answered the speaker phone, asking them who it was. When Brunetti said it was the police, coming to call on Notaio Filipetto, the door snapped open and the voice told them to come to the first floor.
She met them at the door, a woman composed of strange angularities: jaws, elbows, the tilt of her eyes all seemed made of straight lines that sometimes met at odd angles. No arcs, no curves: even her mouth was a straight line. ‘Yes?’ she asked, standing in the equally rectangular doorway.
‘I’d like to speak to Notaio Filipetto,’ Brunetti said, extending his warrant card.
She didn’t bother to look at it. ‘What about?’ she asked.
‘Something that might concern the Notaio,’ Brunetti said.
‘What?’
‘This is a police matter, Signora,’ Brunetti said, ‘and so I’m afraid I can discuss it only with the Notaio.’
Either her emotions were easy to read, which Brunetti thought might not be the case, or she wanted them to see how greatly she disapproved of his intransigence. ‘He’s an old man. He can’t be disturbed by questions from the police.’
From behind her, a high voice called out, ‘Who is it, Eleonora?’ When she did not answer, the voice repeated the question, then, as she remained silent, asked it again. ‘Who is it, Eleonora?’
‘You’d better come in. You’ve upset him now,’
she
said, backing into the apartment and holding the door for them. The voice continued from some inner place, repeating the same question; Brunetti was certain that it would not stop until the question was answered.
Brunetti saw her lips tighten and felt a faint sympathy for her. The scene reminded him of something, but the memory wouldn’t come: something in a book.
Silently, she led them towards the back of the apartment. From behind, she was equally angular: her thin shoulders were parallel with the floor, and her hair, streaked heavily with grey, was cut off in a straight line just above the collar of her dress.
‘I’m coming, I’m coming,’ she called ahead of them. Either in response to the sound of her voice or perhaps, like a clock running down, the other voice stopped.
They arrived at an enormous archway; two inlaid wooden doors stood open on either side. ‘He’s in here,’ she said, preceding them into the room.
An old man sat at a broad wooden desk, a semicircle of papers spread out around him. A small lamp to his left threw a dim light on the papers and kept the upper half of his face in shadow.
His mouth was thin, his lips stretched back over a set of false teeth that had grown too large as the flesh of his face was worn away by age. Heavy dewlaps, so long as to remind Brunetti of those of a hound, hung from both sides of his mouth; the skin below hung in wattles, bunched loosely over his collar.
Brunetti was aware that the man was looking at them, but the light did not reach Filipetto’s eyes, so it was impossible for him to read the man’s expression. ‘
Sì
?’ the old man asked in the same high-pitched tone.
‘Notaio,’ Brunetti began, stepping a bit closer so as to afford himself a better view of Filipetto’s entire face, ‘I’m Commissario Guido Brunetti,’ he began, but the old man cut him off.
‘I recognize you. I knew your father.’
Brunetti was so surprised that it took him a moment to recover, and when he did he thought he saw a faint upturning of those thin lips. Filipetto’s face was long and thin, the skin waxlike. Sparse tufts of white hair adhered to his speckled skull, like down on the body of a diseased chick. As Brunetti’s eyes adjusted to the light, he saw that Filipetto’s own were hooded and vulpine, the irises tinged the colour of parchment.
‘He was a man who did his duty,’ Filipetto said in what was clearly meant to be admiration. He said nothing more, but his lips kept moving as he sucked them repeatedly in and out against his false teeth.
The comment confirmed Brunetti’s memory of the man and was all he needed. ‘Yes, he was, sir. It was one of the things he tried to teach us.’
‘You have a brother, don’t you?’ asked the old man.
‘Yes, sir, I do.’
‘Good. A man should have sons.’ Before Brunetti could respond to this, though he had no
idea
what he could say, Filipetto asked, ‘What else did he teach you?’
Brunetti was vaguely aware that the woman was still standing in the doorway and that Vianello had automatically pulled himself up straighter, as close to a stance of military attention as he could achieve while wearing a yellow tie.
‘Duty, honour, devotion to the flag, discipline,’ Brunetti recited, doing his best to remember all the things he had always found most risible in the pretensions of Fascism, but pronouncing them in earnest tones. At his side, he sensed Vianello growing even straighter, as if bolstered by the invigorating force of these ideas.
‘Sit down, Commissario,’ Filipetto said, ignoring Vianello. ‘Eleonora, hold his chair,’ he commanded. She came from the door and Brunetti forced himself to wait as would a man accustomed to the service of women. She pulled out a chair opposite the old man and Brunetti sat in it, not bothering to thank her.
‘What is it you’ve come about?’ Filipetto asked.
‘Your name has come up, sir, in an investigation we’re conducting. When I read it, I…’ Brunetti began, coughed a nervous little laugh, then looked over at the old man and said, ‘Well, I remembered the way my father always spoke of you, sir, and I, to tell the truth, I couldn’t resist the opportunity finally to meet you.’
To the best of Brunetti’s memory, the only time he had ever heard his father mention Filipetto’s name was when he raged against the men who had been most guilty of plundering the state’s coffers
during
the war. Filipetto’s name had not been at the top of the list, a place always reserved for the man who had sold the Army the cardboard boots that had cost Brunetti’s father six toes, but it had been there, his name among those others who had made the effortless passage from wartime profiteering to post-war prominence.
The old man glanced idly at Vianello and, observing the smile of approval with which he greeted his superior’s last remark, Filipetto said, ‘You can sit down, too.’
‘Thank you, sir,’ Vianello said and did as he was told, though he was careful to sit up straight, as if attentive and respectful to whatever further truths would be revealed during this conversation between men who so closely mirrored his own political ideals.
Brunetti used the momentary distraction caused by Filipetto’s remark to Vianello to look at the papers in front of the old man. One was a magazine containing photos of Il Duce in various, but equally fierce, postures. The rest were documents of some sort, but before he could adjust his eyes to try to read them, Filipetto demanded his attention.
‘What investigation is this?’ he asked.
‘Your name,’ Brunetti began, assuming that a phone number was as good as a name, ‘was found among the papers of a person who died recently, and I wanted to ask you if you had any dealings with her.’
‘Who?’ he asked.
‘Claudia Leonardo,’ Brunetti said.
Filipetto made no sign that the name meant anything to him and once again looked at the papers, but the radar of long experience told Brunetti that it was not unfamiliar to him. Given the coverage the murder had had in the papers, it was unlikely that anyone in the city would be unfamiliar with her name.
‘Who?’ the Notary asked, head bowed.
‘Claudia Leonardo, sir. She died – she was murdered – here in the city.’
‘And how did my name come to be among her effects?’ he asked, looking again at Brunetti but not bothering to inquire how or why Claudia had been killed.
‘It doesn’t matter, sir. If you’ve never heard of her, then there’s no need to continue with this.’
‘Do you want me to sign something to that effect?’ Filipetto asked.
‘Sir,’ Brunetti answered hotly, as if unable to disguise his surprise, ‘your word is more than enough.’
Filipetto looked up then, his teeth bared in a smile of open satisfaction ‘Your mother?’ he asked. ‘Is she still with us?’
Brunetti had no idea what Filipetto meant by this: whether his mother was alive, which she was; whether she was still sane, which she was not; or whether she still held true to the political ideas that had cost her husband his youth and his peace. As she had never held those ideas in anything but contempt, Brunetti felt secure in answering the first question, ‘Yes, sir, she is.’
‘Good, good. Though there are many people
now
who are beginning to realize the value of what we tried to do, it’s comforting to know that there are still people who are faithful to the old values.’
‘I’m sure there will always be,’ Brunetti said, without a trace of the disgust he felt at the idea. He stood, leaving the chair where it was, and leaned across the table to shake the old man’s hand, cold and fragile in his own. ‘It’s been an honour, sir,’ he said. Vianello nodded deeply, unable to convey his complete agreement in any other way.
The old man raised a hand and waved towards the woman, who was still standing at the doorway. ‘Eleonora, make yourself useful. See the Commissario out.’ He gave Brunetti a valedictory smile and again bent his head over his papers.
Eleonora, her connection to the old man still unexplained, turned and led them to the front door of the apartment. Brunetti made no attempt to penetrate the veil of silent resentment she had wrapped so tightly about herself during this interview and at the door did no more than mutter his thanks before preceding Vianello down the stairs and out into the
campo
.
16
‘ENOUGH TO CHOKE
a pig,’ was Vianello’s only comment as they walked out into the cool evening air.
‘Well he
did
make the trains run on time,’ Brunetti offered.
‘Yes, of course. And, in the end, what’s a couple million dead and a country in ruins if the trains run on time?’
‘Exactly.’
‘God, you think they’re all dead and then you turn over a rock and you find one’s still under there.’
Brunetti grunted in assent.
‘You can understand young people believing all that shit. After all, the schools don’t teach them anything about what really happened. But you’d
think
people who lived it, who were adults all during it and who saw what happened, you’d think they’d realize.’