Carlotti grinned at this, then glanced towards the door to the waiting room, from which the voices of the two women could be heard speaking in soft, nervous voices. ‘I suppose it's a habit we all have, doctors especially, always afraid we'll be caught saying something we ought not to say about a patient, caught telling the truth.'
At Brunetti's nod, he went on. 'She was a nasty old shrew, and I never heard a good word said about her.'
'Nasty in what way, Dottore?' Brunetti asked.
The doctor considered before answering, as though he'd never stopped to think about why this woman was nasty or in what particular ways she was. His hand moved to his head and went back to scratching at the same spot. Finally he looked at Brunetti and said, 'Maybe all I can do is give you examples. Like the women who worked for her. She never stopped complaining about them or telling me, or them, that the things they did weren't done the right way. They used too much coffee to make her coffee, or they left lights on, or they should wash the dishes in cold water, not hot. If they tried to defend themselves, she'd scream at them, telling them they could go back where they came from.'
There was a cry from one of the children in the waiting room, but it stopped. Carlotti went on. 'It doesn't sound like a lot, I realize now, when I hear myself saying it, but it was terrible for them. They were probably all illegal, the women, so they couldn't complain, and the last thing any of them wanted to do was go back to where they came from. And she knew it.'
'Did you know any of them, Dottore?'
'Know them how?' he asked.
'Speak to them about where they came from, about what they did before they came here.'
'No. She wouldn't let me, probably wouldn't let anyone. If the phone rang while I was there, she demanded to know who it was, made them hand over the phone. Even if their telefonini rang, she wanted to know who was calling them, told them they couldn't talk on the phone while she was paying them to work.'
'And the last one?'
'Flori?' the doctor asked.
'Yes.'
'Do you think she killed her?' Dottor Carlotti asked.
'Do you, Dottore?'
'I don't know. When I found her, the first thing I did was look for Flori's… for her body. It never occurred to me that she could have done it: the only possibility I could think of was that she might have been another victim.'
'And now, Dottore?'
The man seemed genuinely pained. ‘I read the papers, and I spoke to that other, officer, and everyone seems sure she did it.' Brunetti waited. 'But I still can't believe it.'
'Why is that?'
The doctor hesitated for a long time, glancing at Brunetti's face as if to see if this man who also spent his time with human weakness would understand. 'I've been a doctor for more than twenty years, Commissario, and it's part of my profession to notice things in people. It might seem as though all I need to pay attention to are physical things, but I've seen enough sick people to know that what's wrong with the soul is often also wrong with the body. And I'd say that there was nothing wrong with Flori's soul.' He looked away, looked back, and said, 'I'm afraid I can't be more precise or professional than that, Commissario.'
'And Signora Battestini? Do you think there was something wrong with her soul?'
'Nothing more than greed, Commissario,' Carlotti answered instantly. 'The ignorance and stupidity, they didn't come from the soul. But the greed did.'
'Many old people have to be careful with their money,' Brunetti suggested, playing devil's advocate.
'This wasn't being careful, Commissario. This was obsession.' Then he surprised Brunetti by slipping into Latin. "'Radix malorum est Cupiditas." Not money, Commissario. That's not the root of all evil. It's the love of money. Cupiditas’
'Did she have much money to be greedy about?' Brunetti asked.
'I've no idea,' the doctor answered. One of the children in the outer room began to cry, that high-pitched wail that cannot be faked. Carlotti looked at his watch. 'If you have no more questions, Commissario, I'd like to get on with seeing my patients.'
'Certainly,' Brunetti said, getting to his feet and returning his notebook to his pocket. 'You've been more than generous with your time.'
As they walked towards the door, Brunetti asked, 'Did Signora Battestini ever receive visitors while you were there?'
'No, no one ever came to see her that I can recall,' the doctor said. He stood still as he searched his memory. 'Once or twice, as I said, she'd get phone calls, but she'd always say she was busy and tell whoever it was to call back.'
'Did she speak Veneziano to these people, do you remember, Dottore, when she talked to them?'
'I don't remember,' Carlotti answered. 'Probably Veneziano. She'd almost forgotten how to speak Italian. Some of them do.' Then, for the sake of clarity, he added, 'At least I never heard her speak it.' He put his hand back to his head. 'Once, ^bout three years ago, she was on the phone when I came in. I had a key by then, you see, and I could let myself in if she didn't hear the bell. The television was on – I could hear it down in the street – so I knew she wouldn't hear me if I did ring, so I didn't bother. I opened the door, but the sound had been lowered. The phone must have rung while I was coming up the steps, and she was talking to someone.' He paused for a moment, then added, ‘I suppose that whoever it was had called her. She often said it cost too much to make phone calls. At any rate, she had turned the television down a bit and was talking to someone.'
Brunetti waited beside him, saying nothing, allowing him space and time for memory.
'She said something about having hoped to hear from the person, whoever it was, but her voice was… oh, I don't know… cruel or sarcastic or something between the two. And then she said goodbye and called the person something. I can't remember now what it was. Dottore maybe, or Professore, something like that, and because she used a title, you'd think she would have spoken respectfully, but it was just the opposite.' Brunetti watched him as he spoke, saw the memory take shape. 'Yes, it was Dottore, but she was speaking in Veneziano. I'm sure of that.'
When it was clear that the doctor had no more to say, Brunetti asked, 'Did you say anything about the conversation to her?'
'No, no, I didn't. In fact, the moment was so strange, perhaps because of her voice, or just some feeling I had about the way she was talking, that I stayed just outside the doorway and didn't go in. There was something so strange in the air that I pulled the door closed and then made a business of putting the key in the lock and making a lot of noise with it when I opened the door. And I called her name and asked her if she was there before I went in.'
'Could you explain why you did this?' Brunetti asked, puzzled that this seemingly practical man should have had such a strong reaction.
The doctor shook his head. 'No. It was just a feeling, something I picked up from the way she was speaking. I felt as though I'd come into the presence of… of something evil.'
The child's screams had intensified while they had been talking. The doctor opened the door. He put his head through the opening and said, 'Signora Ciapparelli, you can bring Piero in now.'
He stood back to let Brunetti leave and shook his hand; by the time Brunetti reached the door of the waiting room, the door to the office was closed and the child had stopped crying.
13
Back in his office, Brunetti dialled the number for Signorina Simionato, but again there was no answer. What puzzled him was the money in the four accounts. Not the total sum: many apparently poor people managed to accumulate hidden fortunes during long lives of daily privation: lira by lira, renunciation by renunciation, they amassed something to pass on to their relatives or to the Church. They must spend their lives counting, Brunetti realized, counting and saying no to anything that was not fundamentally necessary to physical survival. Pleasures went untasted, desires unheeded, as life passed by. Or worse, pleasure was transformed and could be had only by negation and the resultant accumulation, and desire was satisfied only by acquisition.