‘So when they offered him the job, he took it,’ she said. ‘We had the mortgage for the house and the costs of the clinic, and then there were the medical bills.’ Seeing their surprise, she said, ‘Andrea had to do it all privately. The waiting time for a scan at the hospital was more than six months. And he paid for all the visits to specialists. That’s the reason he took the job.’
‘Doing what, Signora?’
‘Working at the slaughterhouse. They have to have a vet there when the animals are brought in. To see that they’re healthy enough to be used.’
‘As meat, do you mean?’ Vianello asked.
She nodded again.
‘Two days a week?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes. Monday and Wednesday. That’s when the farmers bring them in. He arranged things at the clinic so that he didn’t have to be there in the morning, though his staff would accept patients if necessary.’ She stopped there, hearing herself describing this. ‘Doesn’t that sound strange: “patients”, when you’re talking about animals?’ She smiled and shook her head. ‘Crazy, really.’
‘Which slaughterhouse, Signora?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Preganziol,’ she said and then added, as though it still made a difference, ‘It’s only fifteen minutes by car.’
Thinking back to what she had said about what people would do for their pets, Brunetti asked, ‘Did any of the people who took their pets to your husband ever display anger at him?’
‘You mean, did they threaten him?’ she asked.
‘Yes.’
‘He never told me about anything as serious as that, though a few did accuse him of not having done enough to save their pets.’ She said this in a level voice; the coolness of her face suggested her opinion of such behaviour.
‘Is it possible that your husband might not have told you about something like that?’ Vianello asked.
‘You mean to keep me from worrying about him?’ she asked. It was a simple question, not a trace of sarcasm in it.
‘Yes.’
‘No, not before things got bad. He told me everything. We were…’ she began, then paused to search for the proper word. ‘… close,’ she said, having found it. ‘But he never said anything. He was always happy with his work there.’
‘Was the trouble you mentioned at the other job, then, Signora?’ Brunetti asked.
Her eyes seemed to drift out of focus, and she turned her attention to the neglected garden, where there were no signs of returning life. ‘That’s when his behaviour started to change. But that was because of… other things, I’d say.’
‘Is that where he met the woman?’ Brunetti asked, having for some reason thought she was someone who worked in his practice.
‘Yes. I don’t know what she does there: I wasn’t interested in what her job was.’
‘Do you know her name, Signora?’
‘He had the grace never to use it,’ she said with badly withheld anger. ‘All he said was that she was younger.’ Her voice turned to iron on the last word.
‘I see,’ he said, then asked, ‘How did he seem, the last time you saw him?’
He watched her send her memory back to that meeting, watched as the emotions from it played across her face. She took a deep breath, tilted her head to one side to look away from both of them, and said, ‘It was about ten days ago.’ She took a few more deep breaths, and her arm again moved across her chest to anchor her hand on her shoulder. Finally she said, ‘He’d had Teo for the weekend, and when he brought him back, he said he wanted to talk to me. He said something was bothering him.’
‘About what?’ Brunetti asked.
She released her hand and joined it to the one in her lap. ‘I assumed it was about this woman, so I told him there was nothing he could say to me that I wanted to hear.’
She stopped, and both of them could see her recall saying those words. Neither of them spoke, however, and she eventually went on, ‘He said there were things that were going on that he didn’t like, and he wanted to tell me about them.’ She looked at Vianello, then at Brunetti. ‘It was the worst thing he did, the most cowardly.’
There was a noise from somewhere else in the house, and she half rose from her chair. But the noise was not repeated, and she sat down again. ‘I knew what he wanted to tell me. About her. That maybe it wasn’t going well and he was sorry. And I didn’t care. Then. I didn’t want to listen to it, so I told him that anything he had to tell me, he could say to my lawyer.’
She took a few breaths and went on. ‘He said it wasn’t really about her. He didn’t use her name. Just called her “her”. As if it was the most natural thing in the world for him to talk to me about her. In my home.’ She had been looking between the two men as she spoke, but now she addressed her attention to the hands she kept folded in her lap. ‘I told him he could leave.’
‘Did he, Signora?’ Brunetti asked after a long silence.
‘Yes. I got up and left the room, and then I heard him leave the house, heard his car drive away. And that was the last time I saw him.’
Brunetti, who was looking at her hands, was startled by the first drop. It splashed on the back of her hand and disappeared into the fabric of her skirt, and then another drop, and another, and then she got to her feet and walked quickly from the room.
After some time, Vianello said, ‘Pity she didn’t listen to him.’
‘For her reasons or for ours?’ Brunetti asked.
Surprised by the question, Vianello answered, ‘For hers.’
16
THERE WAS NOTHING for them to do but wait for her to return. Keeping their voices low, they discussed what she had said and the possibilities it created for them.
‘We need to find this woman and see what was going on,’ Brunetti said.
Vianello’s look was easily read.
‘No, not that,’ Brunetti continued with a shake of his head. ‘She’s right: it’s a cliché, one of the oldest ones. I want to know if he was bothered by anything other than the affair he was having with her.’
‘You don’t think that’s enough to worry a married man?’ Vianello asked.
‘Of course it is,’ Brunetti conceded. ‘But most married men who are having affairs don’t end up floating in a canal with three stab wounds in their back.’
‘That’s true enough,’ Vianello agreed. Then, with a backward nod towards the door Signora Doni had used, he said, ‘If I had her to contend with, I think an affair would make me very nervous.’
‘What would Nadia do?’ Brunetti asked, not sure how much criticism of Signora Doni lay in Vianello’s question.
‘Take my pistol and shoot me, probably,’ Vianello answered with a small grin from which pride was not entirely absent. ‘And Paola?’
‘We live on the fourth floor,’ Brunetti answered. ‘And we have a terrace.’
‘Crafty, your wife,’ Vianello said. ‘Would she leave an unsigned note in the computer?’
‘I doubt it,’ Brunetti said. ‘Too obvious.’ Entering into the puzzle, he gave it some thought. ‘She’d probably tell people I’d been depressed for months and had recently talked about ending it all.’
‘Who would she persuade to agree with her and say they’d heard you say the same thing?’
‘Her parents.’ Brunetti spoke before he thought about it, then quickly amended this: ‘No, only her father. Her mother wouldn’t lie.’ Something occurred to him and he said it, his pleasure evident in his face and voice. ‘I don’t think she’d lie about me. I think she likes me.’
‘Doesn’t her father?’
‘Yes, but in a different way.’ Brunetti knew it was impossible to explain this, but he was much cheered at this sudden recognition of the Contessa’s regard.
They heard Signora Doni’s steps in the corridor and stood as she came back into the room. ‘I had to check on Teo,’ she said. ‘He knows something big is wrong, and he’s worried.’
‘You told him we were policemen?’ Brunetti asked, though the boy had told them so.