Authors: Donna Leon
‘Please tell her it’s very important,’ Brunetti insisted. Thinking it best to make it evident that he intended to stay, he removed his overcoat and put it over the back of a chair, then sat at one end of the sofa. He motioned to Vianello to join him, which he did, first laying his coat on top of Brunetti’s, then taking a seat at the other end of the sofa. Vianello removed his notebook from his pocket and clipped his pen to the front cover. Neither man spoke.
The girl left the room and both men used the opportunity to look around. A large gilded mirror sat above a table on which stood an enormous spray of red gladioli, their colour and number reflected by the glass, so that they seemed to multiply and fill the room. A silk carpet, Brunetti thought it a Nain, lay in front of the fireplace, so close to the sofa that whoever sat there would have to put their feet on it. An oak chest stood against the wall opposite the flowers, on its surface a large brass salver gone grey with age. The wealth and opulence, though discreet, were evident.
Before they could say anything, the door to the room opened and a woman in her fifties came in. She was stout-bodied and wore a grey wool dress that came well below her knees. She had thick ankles and small feet in shoes that looked uncomfortably narrow. Her hair and make-up were perfectly arranged and gave evidence of great expenditure of time and effort. Her eyes were lighter than her granddaughter’s, her features thicker: in fact, there was little familial resemblance between them save that strange placidity of manner.
Both men got to their feet immediately and Brunetti moved towards her. ‘Signora Mitri?’ he asked.
She nodded but said nothing.
‘I’m Commissario Brunetti and this is Sergeant Vianello. We’d like to speak to you for a few moments about your husband and about this terrible thing that has happened to him.’ Hearing this, she closed her eyes but remained silent.
Her face had about it the same absence of animation that was so noticeable on her granddaughter’s, and Brunetti found himself wondering if the daughter in Rome, whose child she must be, displayed a similar immobility.
‘What do you want to know?’ Signora Mitri asked, still standing in front of Brunetti. Her voice had the high pitch that was common among post-menopausal women. Though Brunetti knew she was Venetian, she chose to speak in Italian, as had he.
Before he answered, Brunetti stood away from the sofa and waved his hand towards his former place. She took it automatically and only then did the two men sit, Vianello where he had been and Brunetti in a velvet-covered easy chair that faced the window.
‘Signora, I’d like to know if your husband ever spoke to you of enemies or of someone who would wish to do him harm.’
She started to shake her head in denial even before Brunetti had finished asking the question, but she did not speak, letting the gesture serve as response.
‘He never mentioned disagreements with other people, business associates? Perhaps of some arrangement or contract that didn’t go as planned?’
‘No, nothing,’ she finally said.
‘On the personal level, then. Did he ever have trouble with neighbours, perhaps with a friend?’
She shook her head at this question but again uttered no words.
‘Signora, I ask you to excuse my ignorance, but I know almost nothing about your husband.’ She didn’t respond to this. ‘Would you tell me where he worked?’ She seemed surprised at this, as if Brunetti had suggested Mitri clocked in for eight hours at a factory, so he explained, ‘That is, in which of his factories he had his office or where he spent most of his time.’
‘There’s a chemical plant in Marghera. He has an office there.’
Brunetti nodded, but didn’t ask for the address. He knew they could find it easily. ‘Have you any idea of how much he was involved in the various factories and businesses he owned?’
‘Involved?’
‘Directly, I mean, in the day-to-day running of them.’
‘You’d have to ask his secretary,’ she said.
‘In Marghera?’
She nodded.
As they spoke, however brief her answers, Brunetti watched her for signs of distress or mourning. The impassivity of her face made it difficult to tell, but he thought he detected traces of sadness, though it was more in the way she continually looked down at her own folded hands than anything she said or the tone of her voice.
‘How many years were you married, Signora?’
‘Thirty-five,’ she said without hesitation.
‘And is that your granddaughter who let us in?’
‘Yes,’ she answered, the faintest of smiles breaking the surface of her immobility. ‘Giovanna. My daughter lives in Rome, but Giovanna said she wanted to come and stay with me. Now.’
Brunetti nodded his understanding, though the granddaughter’s concern for her grandmother made the girl’s calm demeanour seem even stranger. ‘I’m sure it’s a great comfort to have her here,’ he said.
‘Yes, it is,’ Signora Mitri agreed and this time her face softened in a real smile. ‘It would be terrible to be here alone.’
Brunetti bowed his head at this and waited a few seconds before looking up and back at her. ‘Just a few more questions, Signora, then you can be with your granddaughter again.’ He didn’t wait for her to respond, but went on without preamble, ‘Are you your husband’s heir?’
Her surprise was evident in her eyes - the first time anything appeared to have touched her. ‘Yes, I think so,’ she said without hesitation.
‘Has your husband other family?’
‘A brother and a sister, and one cousin, but he emigrated to Argentina years ago.’
‘No one else?’
‘No, no one in the direct family.’
‘Is Signor Zambino a friend of your husband’s?’
‘Who?’
‘Awocato Giuliano Zambino.’
‘Not that I know of, no.’
‘I believe he was your husband’s lawyer.’
‘I’m afraid I know very little about my husband’s business,’ she said and Brunetti was forced to wonder how many women he had heard tell him the same thing over the course of the years. Very few of them turned out to have been telling the truth, so it was an answer he never believed. At times he was uncomfortable about how very much Paola knew about his own business dealings, if that’s what one called the identities of suspected rapists, the results of gruesome autopsies, and the surnames of the various suspects who appeared in the newspapers as ‘Giovanni S, 39, bus driver, of Mestre’ or ‘Federico G, 59, mason, of San Dona di Piave’. Few secrets resisted the marriage pillow, Brunetti knew, so he was sceptical about Signora Mini’s professed ignorance. Nevertheless, he let it pass unquestioned.
They already had the names of the people she had been at dinner with the night her husband was murdered, so there was no need to pursue that now. Instead, he asked, ‘Had your husband’s behaviour changed in any way during the last weeks? Or days?’
She shook her head in strong denial. ‘No, he was just the same as always.’
Brunetti wanted to ask her exactly what that was, but he resisted and instead got to his feet. ‘Thank you, Signora, for your time and help. I’m afraid I will have to speak to you again when we have more information.’ He saw that she took no pleasure in that prospect but thought she wouldn’t deny a request for further information. His last words came unsummoned: ‘I hope this time is not too painful for you and that you find the courage to bear it.’
She smiled at the audible sincerity of his words, and again he saw sweetness in that smile.
Vianello stood, took his overcoat, and handed Brunetti his. Both men put them on and Brunetti led the way to the door. Signora Mitri got up and followed them to the threshold of the apartment.
There, Brunetti and Vianello took their leave of her and made their way downstairs to the atrium, where the palm trees still flourished.
* * * *
15
Outside, neither man spoke for some time as they made their way back to the
embarcadero.
Just as they arrived, the 82 from the station was pulling in, so they took that, knowing it would make the wide sweep of the Grand Canal and take them to San Zaccaria, a short walk from the Questura.
The afternoon having grown colder, they went inside and took seats towards the front half of the empty cabin. Ahead of them, two old women sat with their heads together, talking in loud Veneziano about the sudden cold.
‘Zambino?’ Vianello asked.
Brunetti nodded. ‘I’d like to know why Mitri had a lawyer with him when he went to talk to Patta.’
‘And one who sometimes takes on criminal defence work,’ Vianello added unnecessarily. ‘It’s not as if he’d done anything, is it?’
‘Maybe he wanted advice on what sort of civil case he could bring against my wife if I managed to stop the police from proceeding with criminal charges the second time.’
‘There was never any chance of that, was there?’ Vianello asked in a voice that made evident his regret.
‘No, not once Landi and Scarpa were involved.’
Vianello muttered something under his breath, but Brunetti neither heard it nor asked the sergeant to repeat what he had said. ‘I’m not sure what happens now.’
‘About what?’
‘The case. If Mitri’s dead, it’s unlikely that his heir will press civil charges against Paola. Although the manager might.’
‘What about…’ Vianello trailed off as he wondered what to call the police. He decided and called them, ‘our colleagues?’
‘That depends on the examining magistrate.’
‘Who is it? Do you know?’
‘Pagano, I think.’
Vianello considered this, summoning up years of experience working with and for the magistrate, an elderly man in the last years of his career. ‘He’s not likely to ask for a prosecution, is he?’
‘No, I don’t think so. He’s never got on well with the Vice-Questore, so he’s not likely to be urged into it or to enjoy being cajoled.’
‘So what’ll happen? A fine?’ At Brunetti’s shrug, Vianello abandoned that question and asked instead, ‘What now?’
‘I’d like to see if anything’s come in, then go and talk to Zambino.’
Vianello looked down at his watch. ‘Is there time?’
As often happened, Brunetti had lost track entirely of how much time had passed and was surprised to see that it was well past six. ‘No, I suppose not. In fact, there’s not much sense in going back to the Questura, is there?’
Vianello smiled at this, especially as the boat was still tied up at the Rialto landing. He got up and made for the door. Just as he got to it, he heard the boat’s engines shift into a different gear and saw the sailor flip the mooring rope off the stanchion and start to secure it to the boat. ‘Wait,’ he called out.
The sailor didn’t respond, didn’t even look back at him, and the engine revved up even higher.
‘Wait.’ Vianello shouted louder, but still failed to achieve any result.
He pushed his way through the people on deck and placed his hand lightly on the arm of the sailor. ‘It’s me, Marco,’ he said in an entirely normal voice. The other looked at him, saw the uniform, recognized his face and waved a hand at the captain, who was glancing back towards the confusion on deck through the glass window of his cabin.
The sailor waved again and the captain slipped the boat suddenly into reverse. A few people on deck tottered as they tried to keep their balance. A woman fell heavily against Brunetti, who put out an arm and held her upright. He hardly wanted to be involved in a charge of police brutality or whatever would result if she fell, but he had grabbed her before he had time to think about this and, when he released her, was glad to see her grateful smile.