Authors: Donna Leon
He came upon a small stack of receipts, all from the Patmos Gallery in Lausanne, all initialled ‘EL’, and all written for the sale of what was described as ‘objects of value’.
He got to his feet then and went back to the corridor, where he found Vianello almost finished with the second bookshelf. Hillocks of books drifted up the walls to both sides of each bookcase; in one place, an avalanche had fallen across the corridor.
Vianello saw him when he came in. ‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Not even a used vaporetto ticket or a matchbook cover.’
‘I’ve found the source of Claudia Leonardo’s allowance,’ Brunetti said.
Vianello’s glance was sharp, curious.
‘Receipts from the Patmos Gallery for “objects of value”,’ he explained.
‘Are you sure?’ Vianello asked, already familiar with the name of the gallery.
‘The first receipt is dated one month before the first deposit in the girl’s account.’
Vianello gave a nod of approval.
‘Here, let me help,’ Brunetti said, clambering over a low mound of books and reaching down to the bottom shelf. Side by side, they flicked through the remaining books until the bookcase was empty, but they found nothing in the books other than what had been placed there by the authors.
Brunetti closed the last one and set it down on its side on the shelf at his elbow. ‘That’s enough. Let’s get something to eat.’
Vianello was not at all inclined to disagree. They left the apartment, Brunetti using the tobacconist’s key to lock the door behind them.
20
AFTER A DISAPPOINTING
lunch, the two men walked back to the Questura, occasionally suggesting to one another some connection that had yet to be explored or some question that remained unanswered. No matter how conscientiously Rizzardi might seek evidence that Signor Jacobs had been the victim of violence, in the absence of concrete evidence, no judge would authorize an investigation of her death; much less would Patta, who was reluctant to authorize anything unless the last words of the dying victim had been the name of the killer.
They separated when they entered the Questura, and Brunetti went up to Signorina Elettra’s office. As he walked in, she looked up and said, ‘I heard.’
‘Rizzardi said it might have been a heart attack.’
‘I don’t believe it, either,’ she said, not even bothering to ask his opinion. ‘What now?’
‘We wait to see the results of the autopsy, and then we wait to see who inherits the things in her apartment.’
‘Are they really that wonderful?’ she asked, having heard him talk of them.
‘Not to be believed. If they’re real, then it was one of the best collections in the city.’
‘It doesn’t make any sense, does it? To live like that, in the midst of all that wealth.’
‘The place was clean, and someone brought her cigarettes and food,’ Brunetti answered. ‘It’s not as if she was living in a pit.’
‘No, I suppose not. But we tend to think that, well, we tend to think that people will live differently if they have the money.’
‘Maybe that’s how she wanted to live,’ Brunetti said.
‘Possibly,’ Signorina Elettra conceded reluctantly.
‘Perhaps it was enough for her to be able to look at those things,’ he suggested.
‘Would it be? For you?’ she asked.
‘I’m not eighty-three,’ Brunetti said, then, changing the subject, he asked, ‘What about London?’
She handed him a single sheet of paper. ‘As I said, the British are much better at these things.’
Reading quickly, Brunetti learned that Benito Guzzardi, born in Venice in 1942, had died of lung cancer in Manchester in 1995. Claudia’s birth had been registered in London twenty-one years ago, but only her mother’s name, Petra Leonhard, was listed. There was no listing for her mother’s
marriage
or death. ‘That explains the last name, doesn’t it?’ he asked.
Signorina Elettra handed him a copy of Claudia’s application to the university. ‘It was easy enough. She simply presented documents with the name Leonhard and wrote it down as Leonardo.’
Before Brunetti could inquire, Signorina Elettra said, ‘The name of her aunt was listed on her passport as the person to contact in case of accident.’
‘The one in England?’
‘Yes. I called her. She hadn’t been notified of Claudia’s death. No one here had thought to do it.’
‘How did she take it?’
‘Very badly. She said Claudia had spent summers with her since she was a little girl.’
‘Is she the mother’s sister or the father’s?’
‘No,’ she said with a confused shake of her head at such things, ‘it’s like the grandmother. She’s not really an aunt at all, but Claudia always called her that. She was the mother’s best friend.’
‘Was? Is she dead?’
‘No. She’s disappeared.’ Before Brunetti could ask, she explained, ‘But not in the sense we’d usually use. Nothing bad’s happened to her. The woman said she’s just one of those free spirits who come and go through life as they please.’ She stopped there and then added her own editorial comment, ‘Leaving other people to pick up behind them.’ When Brunetti remained silent, she continued. ‘The last this woman heard from her was a few months after the father’s death, a
postcard
from Bhutan, asking her to keep an eye on Claudia.’
Suddenly protective of the dead girl and outraged that her mother could have discarded her like this, Brunetti demanded, ‘Keep an eye on her? How old was she – fifteen, sixteen? What was she supposed to do while her mother was off finding inner harmony or whatever it is people do in Bhutan?’
As this is the sort of question to which there is no answer, Elettra waited for his anger to pass away a bit and then said, ‘The aunt told me Claudia lived with her parents until her father’s death but then chose to come back to Italy, to a private school in Rome. That’s when she got in touch with Signora Jacobs, I think. In the summers she went back to England and lived with the aunt.’
Listening to her explain Claudia’s story calmed him somewhat, and after a time he said, ‘Claudia told me her parents never married but that the father accepted parentage.’
Signorina Elettra nodded. ‘That’s what the woman told me.’
‘So Claudia was Guzzardi’s heir,’ Brunetti said.
‘Heir to very little, it would seem,’ Signorina Elettra said. Head tilted to one side, she looked up at him and added, ‘Unless…’
‘I don’t know what the law is regarding someone who dies in possession of objects the ownership of which is unclear,’ Brunetti said, reading her mind. ‘Then again, it’s not normal to question the ownership of the things that are in a person’s home when they die.’
‘Not normally, no,’ Signorina Elettra agreed. ‘But in this case…’ She allowed her voice to trail off in an invocation of possibility.
‘There was nothing in her papers, no bills of sale for any of it,’ Brunetti said.
She followed the current of his thoughts. ‘Her notary or lawyer might have them.’
Brunetti shook his head: there had been nothing from either a lawyer or a notary among her papers, and the search through the pages of the books had proven entirely fruitless. It was Signorina Elettra who gave voice to the consequence of this thought. ‘If there’s no will, then it goes to her family.’
‘If she has a family.’
And in their absence, both realized, everything would go to the state. They were Italian and thus believed that nothing worse could happen to a person: everything they possessed, doomed to fall into the hands of faceless bureaucrats and plundered before being sent for storage, cataloguing and shifting, until what little survived the winnowing was eventually sold or forgotten in the cellar of some museum.
‘Might as well just put it all out on to the street,’ Signorina Elettra said.
Though in complete agreement, Brunetti did not think it fitting to admit this, so he asked, instead, ‘What about Claudia’s phone calls to Filipetto?’
‘I haven’t printed them out yet, sir,’ she said, ‘but if you’ll have a look, you can see.’ She touched some keys and letters flicked across the screen of her computer. The screen rolled to black for an instant, then came back to life filled with short
columns
of numbers. Signorina Elettra tapped her finger against the heading of each and explained: ‘Number called, date, time, and length of call. Those are her calls to Filipetto,’ she said, then touched another key, and further columns inserted themselves below. ‘And these are the ones from his house to hers.’ She gave him a moment to study the numbers and then asked, ‘Strange, isn’t it, seven calls between people who didn’t know one another?’
She punched more keys, and new numbers replaced the old ones.
‘What are those?’ Brunetti asked.
‘The calls between her number and the Library. I haven’t had time to separate them yet, so they’re mixed in together in chronological order.’
He studied the column of figures. The first three were from her number to the Library. Then one from the Library. One from her. Then, after a gap of three weeks, a series of calls from the Library began. They were repeated at four-or five-day intervals and went on for six weeks. At first, Brunetti assumed they must be calls from Claudia to her flatmate, but then he saw that some of the calls were made after nine at night, a strange time for anyone to be in the Library. He studied the final column, which gave the length of each call, and found that, although the later calls in the series had lasted for five or ten minutes, the last one was very short, less than a minute.
Signorina Elettra had been studying the list along with him and said, ‘I’ve had it happen to me, so I recognize the pattern.’
‘Harassment?’ Brunetti asked, forced to use the English word and struck by its absence from Italian. Does that mean we lack the concept, as well as the word? he wondered.
‘I’d say so.’
‘Can you print me a copy of the first ones?’ he asked, and at her nod, he explained, ‘I think I’ll go and speak to Dottor Filipetto again. See if the list refreshes his memory.’
The woman Filipetto called Eleonora let Brunetti in again and, without bothering to inquire as to the reason for his visit, led him into the study. Had Brunetti been asked, he would have sworn that the old man had not moved since they had spoken. As they had the last time, papers and magazines covered the surface in front of him.
‘Ah, Commissario,’ Filipetto said with every suggestion of pleasure, ‘you’ve come back.’ He waved Brunetti forward and held up a restraining hand to the woman, gesturing for her, however, not to leave the room. Brunetti was vaguely conscious of her presence behind him, somewhere near the door.
‘Yes, sir, I’ve come to ask you a few more questions about that girl,’ Brunetti said as he took the chair the old man indicated.
‘Girl?’ Filipetto asked, sounding befuddled; to Brunetti, it seemed intentionally so.
‘Yes, sir, Claudia Leonardo.’
Filipetto stared up at Brunetti and blinked a few times. ‘Leonardo?’ he asked. ‘Is this someone I know?’
‘That’s what I’ve come to ask about, sir. I came here a few days ago and you said you’d never heard of her.’
‘That’s true,’ Filipetto said, a slight irritation audible in his voice. ‘I’ve never heard the name.’
‘Are you sure of that, sir?’ Brunetti asked blandly.
‘Of course I’m sure of that,’ Filipetto insisted. ‘Why do you question my word?’
‘I’m not questioning your word, sir; I’m merely questioning the accuracy of your memory.’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ the old man demanded.
‘Nothing at all, sir, just that we sometimes forget things, all of us.’
‘I’m an old man…’ Filipetto began, but then stopped, and Brunetti watched as a transformation took place. Filipetto hunched down in his chair; his mouth fell open and one hand scrabbled over the surface of the desk to rest on the other one. ‘I don’t remember everything, you know,’ Filipetto said in a voice that was suddenly high pitched, the voice of a querulous old man.
Brunetti felt like Odysseus’ dog, the only one able to penetrate his master’s deceit and disguise. Had he not watched Filipetto deliberately turn himself into a feeble old man, compassion would have prevented his asking further questions. Even so, guile stood upon his tongue and stopped him from mentioning the record of the calls to and from Claudia Leonardo.
With a smile he worked hard to make appear as warm as it was credulous, Brunetti asked, ‘Then
you
might have known her, sir?’
Filipetto raised his right hand and waved it weakly in the air. ‘Oh, perhaps, perhaps. I don’t remember much any more.’ He raised his head and called to the woman near the door, ‘Eleonora, did I know anyone called…’ He turned to Brunetti and asked, as if she had not been perfectly able to hear Claudia’s name, ‘What did you say her name was?’
‘Claudia Leonardo,’ Brunetti supplied neutrally.
The woman’s response was a long time in coming. Finally she said, ‘Yes, I think the name is familiar, but I can’t remember why it is I know it.’ She said no more and didn’t ask Brunetti to tell her who Claudia was.
Though it angered him to have been out-manoeuvred, Brunetti felt a grudging admiration for the way in which Filipetto had capitalized on his age and apparent infirmity. The phone records, now, could do no more than prompt his old man’s memory into recalling that, yes, yes, now that Brunetti mentioned it, perhaps he had spoken to some young girl, but he couldn’t remember what it was they’d talked about.
Defeat would be no less decisive, Brunetti realized, if he were to stay to ask more questions. He put his hands on his knees and pushed himself to his feet. Leaning across the desk, he shook Filipetto’s hand and said, ‘Thank you for your help, Notaio. I’m sorry to have bothered you with these questions.’ Filipetto’s grasp had actually grown weaker; his hand felt as insubstantial as a
handful
of dry spaghetti. The old man, speechless, could do no more than nod in Brunetti’s direction.
Brunetti turned towards the door, and the woman stepped aside to let him pass. He stopped at the end of the hall, just at the door of the apartment. With no preparation, he said, ‘May I ask what your relationship to Dottor Filipetto is?’