Brunetti nodded again, acknowledging the legitimacy of this desire.
'One of them, she was from Moldavia, asked me one day if I had any work for her. I had to tell her I already had a cleaning woman, who had worked for me for years. But she looked so desperate that I asked around and found a friend whose cleaning woman had left, so she took her and she liked her, said she was honest and hard working.' She smiled and shook her head at her own garrulousness. 'Anyway, Jana told her that all she was being paid was seven thousand lire – that was before the Euro – an hour’ Failing to keep the indignation from her voice, she said, 'That's less than four Euros an hour, for God's sake. No one can live on that.'
Admiring her for her anger, Brunetti asked, 'Do you think this is what she was paying Signora Ghiorghiu?'
'I've no idea, but I wouldn't be surprised.'
'What was her response when you gave her all that money?' he asked.
Embarrassed, she said, 'Oh, she was pleased, I think.'
'I'm sure she was’ Brunetti said. 'How did she react?'
Signora Gismondi looked down at her hands, clasped in her lap, and said, 'She started to cry.' She paused, then added, 'And she tried to kiss my hand. But I couldn't have that, not there on the street.'
'Certainly not’ Brunetti agreed, trying not to smile. 'Can you remember anything else about Signora Battestini?'
'She used to be a secretary, I think, in one of the schools, I'm not sure which one, elementary, I think. But she must have retired more than twenty years ago. Maybe even more than that, when it was so easy to retire.' Brunetti wasn't sure, but he thought there was more reproach than regret as she said this.
'And her family? You said you spoke to a niece, Signora.'
'Yes, and she didn't want to have anything to do with her. There was a sister in Dolo, presumably the mother of the niece, but the last time I called, I got the niece, and she told me her mother had died’ She considered all of this and added, 'I got the feeling she didn't want to hear anything about her aunt until she was dead, too, and she could inherit the house’
'You said you spoke to a lawyer, didn't you, Signora?'
'Yes, Dottoressa Marieschi. She has an office, at least it's listed in the phone book, down in Castello somewhere. I've never met her, just spoken to her on the phone.'
'How did you locate all these people, Signora?' he asked.
Detecting only curiosity in his tone, she answered, 'I asked around and I looked them up in the phone book.'
'How did you learn the name of the lawyer?'
She considered this for a long time before saying, ‘I called her once, Signora Battestini, and I said I was from the electric company and had to talk to her about a bill that hadn't been paid. She gave me the name of the lawyer and told me to call her, even gave me the number.'
Brunetti gave her an admiring smile but stopped himself from praising her for what was no doubt a crime of some sort. 'Do you know if this lawyer handles all of her affairs?'
'She made it sound like that when I spoke to her,' she answered.
'Signora Battestini or the lawyer herself?'
'Oh, I'm sorry. Signora Battestini. The lawyer was, well, she was the way lawyers always are: she gave very little information and made it sound as though she had very little control over her client.'
That sounded as good a description of the ways of lawyers as Brunetti had ever heard. Instead of complimenting her on her sagacity, however, he asked, 'In all you've learned, is there anything you think might be important?'
Smiling, she said, I'm afraid I have no idea of what might be important or not, Commissario. All the neighbours really said was that she was terrible, and if any of them mentioned the husband, it was to say he was an ordinary man, nothing special at all, and that they were not happy together.' He waited for her to comment on the unlikelihood of anyone's finding happiness with Signora Battestini, but she did not.
'I'm sorry I haven't been very helpful,' she said, signalling her desire to end the conversation.
'On the contrary, Signora, I'd say you've been immensely helpful. You've stopped us from closing a case before we had investigated it sufficiently, and you've given us good reason to suspect that our original conclusions were wrong.' He left it to her to understand that he at least believed there was no need to corroborate her story before accepting it.
He got to his feet and stepped back from his chair. He extended his hand, saying, 'I'd like to thank you for coming to talk to us. Not many people would have done as much.'
Taking this as an apology for Lieutenant Scarpa's behaviour, she shook his hand, and left his office.
6
After the woman had gone, Brunetti went back to his desk, considering what he had just heard, not only from Signora Gismondi, but from Lieutenant Scarpa. What the first had told him seemed an entirely plausible story: people left the city and events continued in their absence. Often enough, people chose to have no contact with home, perhaps the better to savour the sense of being away or, as she had told Scarpa, to immerse themselves totally in a foreign language or culture. He tried to think of a reason why a woman as apparently sensible and honest as Signora Gismondi should invent such a story and hold to it in the face of what he was sure must have been Scarpa's opposition. He came up with no convincing explanation.
It was far easier to speculate about Scarpa's motives. To accept her story was to accept that the police had acted with unwonted haste in accepting a convenient solution to the crime. It was also to require an explanation of the whereabouts of the money that had disappeared while in police custody. Both matters had been in the hands of Lieutenant Scarpa. More importantly, to accept her story would demand a re-examination of the case, or rather, it would demand that, more than three weeks after the murder, the case finally be examined for the first time.
Brunetti had been on vacation when Signora Battestini's body was discovered and had returned to Venice only after the case had been set aside, when he had continued with the investigation of the baggage handlers at the airport. Since the accused had been repeatedly filmed rifling through and stealing from passengers' luggage and since some of them were willing to testify against the others in the hope of receiving lighter sentences, there was very little for Brunetti to do save to keep the papers and files straight and interview those who had not yet confessed but who might perhaps be persuaded to do so. He had read about the murder while he had been away and, foolishly lulled into believing what he read in the papers, had been convinced that the Romanian woman was guilty. Why else should she try to leave the country? Why else that panicked attempt to flee from the police?
Signora Gismondi had just provided him with alternative answers to these questions: Florinda Ghiorghiu left the country because her job was gone, and she tried to escape the police because she was a citizen of a country where the police were believed to be as corrupt as they were violent and where the thought of falling into their hands was enough to drive a person to flee in maddened panic.
When Brunetti had seen Scarpa in Signorina Elettra's office an hour before, the lieutenant was stiff with anger at what he insisted were a witness's lies. Sensing his rage, Signorina Elettra suggested to the lieutenant, 'Perhaps someone else could get the truth out of her.'
Brunetti was astonished by Signorina Elettra's civility to the lieutenant and by her apparent willingness to believe him. Her craft became evident only when she turned to him and said, 'Commissario, it seems the lieutenant has laid the groundwork by seeing through this woman's story. Maybe someone else could try to find out what's motivating her.' Turning back to the lieutenant and raising her hands in a gesture rich with deferential uncertainty, she added, 'If you think that might help, Lieutenant, of course.' He noticed that she was wearing a simple white cotton blouse: perhaps it was the tightly buttoned collar that made her seem so innocent.