'What does she say?'
' "If you don't stop her, I'll go over there and kill her.'"
'Let me hear it’ Brunetti said.
Scarpa inserted the other tape and fast-forwarded it to the middle, hunted around until he found the right place, and played the call for Brunetti. He had quoted Signora Gismondi exactly, and Brunetti shivered when he heard her, voice almost hysterical with rage, say, 'If you don't stop her, I'll go over there and kill her.'
The fact that the call was made at three-thirty in the morning and was the fourth she had made in the same night suggested clearly to Brunetti that it was rage, not calculation, animating her voice, though a judge might not see it quite like that.
'There is also her history of violence’ added Scarpa casually. 'When that is added to these threats, I think it makes a strong case for us to question her again about her movements that morning’
'What history of violence?' Brunetti asked.
'Eight years ago, while she was still married, she attacked her husband and threatened to kill him.'
'Attacked him how?'
'The police report says she threw boiling water at him.'
'What else does the report say?' Brunetti asked.
'It's in my office if you care to read it, sir.'
'What else does it say, Scarpa?'
The surprise in Scarpa's eyes was evident, as was his instinctive step back from Brunetti. 'They were in the kitchen, having an argument, and she threw the water at him.'
'Was he hurt?'
'Not badly. It landed on his shoes and trousers.'
'Were charges pressed?'
'No, sir, but a report was filed’
Suddenly suspicious, Brunetti asked, 'Who decided not to press charges?'
"That's hardly important, sir.'
'Who?' Brunetti's voice was so tight it sounded almost like a bark.
'She did’ Scarpa said after a pause he deliberately made as lengthy as possible.
'What charges didn't she press?'
Brunetti watched as Scarpa considered mentioning the report again and made note of the instant when he decided not to bother. 'Assault’ the lieutenant finally said. 'For what?'
'He broke her wrist, or she said he did.'
Brunetti waited for Scarpa to elaborate. When he failed to do so, Brunetti asked, 'She managed to throw a pot of boiling water with a broken wrist?'
It was as if he had not spoken. Scarpa said, 'Whatever the reason, it establishes a history of violence.'
Brunetti turned and left the laboratory.
His heart was pounding with unexpressed rage as he walked up to his office. He understood the what, that Scarpa wanted to rearrange things to make Signora Gismondi look like the murderer: however clumsily he went about it, that was what he was trying to do. What Brunetti didn't understand was the why. Scarpa had nothing to gain from making it look as if Signora Gismondi was the killer.
His step faltered as he suddenly saw it and his foot came down heavily on the next step, causing him to lurch towards the wall. It wasn't that Scarpa wanted her specifically or individually to appear to be the killer. He wanted someone else not to. But as Brunetti continued up the staircase, good sense intervened and offered him a less outrageous explanation: Scarpa wanted nothing more than to obstruct Brunetti and his investigation, which he could do best by creating a false trail that led to Signora Gismondi.
So troubling was this thought that Brunetti found it impossible to sit still in his office. He waited a few minutes, giving Scarpa enough time to remove himself to somewhere other than the staircase, and then he went down to Signorina Elettra's office, but she still wasn't in. Had she walked in at that moment, he would have demanded, to the point of shouting, where she had been and by what right she absented herself half the day on Wednesday when there was work that needed to be done. On the way back to his office, he found himself continuing his tirade against her, dredging up past incidents, oversights, excesses that he could hurl at her.
Inside, he yanked off his jacket and hurled it on to his desk, but he threw it with such force that it slid across the top and landed on the floor, taking with it a pile of loose papers that he had spent the previous afternoon arranging in chronological order. His mind tight with anger, Brunetti gave voice to serious doubts as to the virtue of the Madonna.
Vianello chose this moment to arrive. Brunetti heard him at the door, turned, and gave a grumpy 'Come in.'
Vianello looked at the jacket and the papers and passed silently in front of Brunetti to take a seat.
Brunetti studied the back of Vianello's head, the shoulders, the unwarrantedly stiff posture, and his mood lightened. 'It's Scarpa,' he said, walking to his desk. He bent and picked up the jacket and hung it on the back of his chair, then gathered up the papers and tossed them on the desk and sat down. 'He's trying to make it look as though Signora Gismondi killed her.' 'How?'
'He's got the tapes of two calls she made to us, complaining about the television. In both of them, she threatens to kill the old woman.'
'Threatens how?' Vianello asked. 'Seriously or out of anger?'
'You think they're different?'
'You ever yell at your kids, Commissario?' Vianello asked. 'That's anger. Serious is when you hit them.'
‘I never have,' Brunetti said instantly, as though he had been accused.
‘I did,' Vianello said. 'Once. About five years ago.' Brunetti waited for the inspector to explain, but he did not. Instead, he said, 'If you talk about it, it means you're just talking.' Vianello turned his attention from the theoretical to the practical and asked, 'Besides, how would she get in?' Brunetti watched Vianello consider and exclude the various ways this might have been done. He finally said, 'No, it doesn't make any sense.'
'Then why's he doing it?' Brunetti asked, waiting to see if Vianello would come up with the same explanation he had.
'May I speak frankly, sir?' Vianello asked.
'Of course.'
The inspector looked at his knees, brushed away an invisible speck of something, and said,
'It's because he hates you. I'm not important enough for him to hate, but he would if he thought I was. And he's afraid of Elettra.'
Brunetti's first impulse was to object to this interpretation, but he forced himself to think it through. He realized that he found it unsatisfactory because it made Scarpa out to be less of a villain than he wanted him to be: guilty only of spite, not of conspiracy. He pulled the papers towards him and once again began to arrange them in chronological order.
'Should I go, sir?' Vianello asked.
'No. I'm thinking about what you just said.'
Whatever satisfied the criteria of possibility most simply was probably the correct explanation: how many times had he invoked this rule? Malice only, and not complicity. Even though he believed this was more likely, he could not deny the satisfaction he would derive were Vianello also to believe Scarpa might be guilty of some baser, more criminal motive.
He looked at Vianello. 'All right,' he finally said. 'It's possible.' For a moment, he considered the consequences: Scarpa would plant the idea of Signora Gismondi's guilt in Patta's mind; this meant Brunetti would have to pretend to go along with it so as not to alarm Patta and be removed from the case; more time would be spent examining Signora Gismondi's life, no doubt with sufficient heavy-handedness to turn her into a reluctant witness; and once she had been badgered into altering or retracting her statement about Flori Ghiorghiu, Patta would return to his now-confirmed conviction that the Romanian woman had been the murderer, and the case could once again be considered as solved.
‘I have measured out my life with coffee spoons’ Brunetti said in English. Vianello gave him such a strange look that Brunetti immediately said, Tt's something my wife says’
'Mine says we should look at the son’ said Vianello.
Brunetti decided to hear what Vianello had to say about Paolo Battestini before telling him about his conversation in the post office and so contented himself with a mere, 'Why?'