‘Good morning, Dottore,’ the nun said loudly, enunciating clearly. ‘I’m so glad you could come to see your mother. Isn’t she looking well?’
He came a few more steps into the room and stopped, holding his hands well away from his body. ‘Buon di, Mamma,’ he said. ‘It’s Guido. I’ve come to see you. How are you, Mamma?’ He smiled.
The old woman grabbed at the nun’s arm and pulled her down, whispered something into her ear, never taking her eyes off Brunetti.
‘Oh, no, Signora. Don’t say such things. He’s a good man. It’s your son, Guido. He’s come to see you and see how you are.’ She stroked the old woman’s hand, knelt down to be closer to her. The old woman looked at the nun, said something else to her, then looked back at Brunetti, who hadn’t moved.
‘He’s the man who killed my baby,’ she suddenly shouted. ‘I know him. I know him. He’s the man who killed my baby.’ She pushed herself from side to side in her chair. She raised her voice and began to shout, ‘Help, help, he’s come back to kill my babies.’
Suor’Immacolata put her arms around the old woman, held her tight, and whispered in her ear, but nothing could contain the woman’s fear and wrath. She pushed the nun away with such force that she fell sprawling on the ground.
Suor’Immacolata quickly pushed herself to her knees and turned to Brunetti. She shook her head and made a gesture to the door. Brunetti, keeping his hands clearly visible in front of him, backed slowly out of the room and closed the door. From inside, he heard his mother’s voice, screaming wildly for long minutes, then gradually growing calmer. Under it, in soft counterpoint, he heard the softer, deeper voice of the young woman as she soothed, calmed, and gradually removed the old woman’s fear. There were no windows in the corridor, and so Brunetti stood outside the door and looked at it.
After about ten minutes, Suor’Immacolata came out of the room and stood beside him. ‘I’m sorry, Dottore. I really thought she was better this week. She’s been very quiet, ever since she took the Communion.’
‘That’s all right, Sister. These things happen. You didn’t hurt yourself, did you?’
‘Oh, no. Poor thing, she didn’t know what she was doing. No, I’m all right.’
‘Is there anything she needs?’ he asked.
‘No, no, she has everything she needs.’ To Brunetti, it seemed like his mother had nothing she needed, but maybe that was only because there was nothing she needed any longer, and never would again.
‘You’re very kind, Sister.’
‘It’s the Lord who is kind, Dottore. We merely do His service.’
Brunetti found nothing to say. He put out his hand and shook hers, kept her hand in his for long seconds, and then wrapped his other hand around it. ‘Thank you, Sister.’
‘God bless you and give you strength, Dottore.’
Chapter Sixteen
A week had passed, so the story of Maria Lucrezia Patta was no longer the sun around which the Questura of Venice revolved. Two more cabinet ministers had resigned over the weekend, each vociferous in his protestations that his decision had nothing whatsoever to do with and was in no way related to his having been named in the most recent scandals about bribery and corruption. Ordinarily, the staff of the Questura, like all of Italy, would yawn over this and turn to the sports page, but as one of them happened to be the Minister for Justice, the staff took a special interest, if only to speculate about what other heads would soon be seen rolling down the steps of the Quirinale.
Even though this was one of the biggest scandals in decades – and when had there ever been a small scandal? – popular opinion held that it would all be insabbiata, buried in sand, hushed up, just as had happened with all of the other scandals in the past. Once any Italian got this particular bit between his teeth, he was virtually unstoppable, and there usually followed a list of the cases that had been effectively covered up: Ustica, PG2, the death of Pope John Paul I, Sindona. Maria Lucrezia Patta, no matter how dramatic her exit from the city had been, could hardly be expected to keep company at such dizzy heights, and so life drifted back to normal, the only news being that the transvestite found in Mestre last week had turned out to be the director of the Banca di Verona, and who would have expected that, a bank director, for God’s sake?
One of the secretaries in the passport office up the street had heard in her bar that morning that this Mascari was pretty well known in Mestre and that it had been an open secret for years what he did when he went away on his business trips. Furthermore, it was learned at another bar, his marriage wasn’t a real marriage, just a cover for him because he worked in a bank. Here someone interjected that he hoped his wife had at least worn the same size clothing; why else marry her? One of the fruit vendors at Rialto had it on very good authority that Mascari had always been like that, even when he was at school.
By late morning, it was necessary for public opinion to pause for breath, but by the afternoon, common knowledge had it that Mascari was dead as a result of the ‘rough trade’ he pursued, even against the warnings of those few friends who knew of his secret vice, and that his wife was refusing to claim his body and give it Christian burial.
Brunetti had an appointment with the widow at eleven and went to it ignorant of the rumours that were swirling around the city. He called the Banca di Verona and learned that, a week before, their office in Messina had received a phone call from a man identifying himself as Mascari, explaining that his visit would have to be delayed, perhaps for two weeks, perhaps a month. No, they had not bothered to confirm this call, having no reason to suspect its validity.
The Mascari apartment was on the third floor of a building one block back from Via Garibaldi, the main thoroughfare of Castello. When she opened the door for Brunetti, the widow looked much the same as she had two days before, save that her suit today was black, and the signs of weariness around her eyes were more pronounced.
‘Good morning, Signora. It’s very kind of you to speak to me today.’
‘Come in, please,’ she said and stepped back from the door. He asked permission, then walked into the apartment and, for a moment, had a strange sense of complete dislocation that he had already been here. It was only after he looked around that he realized the source of this feeling: the apartment was almost identical to the apartment of the old woman in Campo San Bartolomeo and had the look of a place in which the same family had lived for generations. An identical heavy credenza stood against the far wall, and the velvet upholstery on the two chairs and sofa was the same vaguely patterned green. Curtains were also pulled closed in front of these windows, either to keep out the sun or the eyes of the curious.
‘Can I get you something to drink?’ she asked, an offer that was clearly formulaic.
‘No, please, nothing, Signora. I would like only a bit of your time. There are some questions we have to ask you.’
‘Yes, I know,’ she said and moved back into the room. She sat in one of the overstuffed chairs, and Brunetti took the other. She removed a small piece of thread from the arm of the chair, rolled it into a ball, and put it carefully in the pocket of her jacket.
‘I don’t know how much you’ve heard of the rumours surrounding your husband’s death, Signora.’
‘I know he was found dressed as a woman,’ she said in a small, choking voice.
‘If you know that, then you must realize that certain questions must be asked.’
She nodded and looked down at her hands.
He could make the question sound either brutal or awkward. He chose the latter. ‘Do you have any or did you have any reason to believe that your husband was involved in such practices?’
‘I don’t know what you mean,’ she said, though it must have been clear what he meant.