Donna Leon - Beastly Things

‘Assuming that you are not the person responsible, Signora,’ Brunetti said with the smallest of smiles, hoping that his irony would turn her away from the path this conversation seemed to have taken, ‘can you think of anyone else who might have wanted to harm your husband?’

She weighed his question, and her face softened. ‘Before I answer that, let me tell you one thing,’ she said.

Brunetti nodded.

‘The papers said the man in Venice – Andrea – was found on Monday morning,’ she said, but it was a question.

Brunetti answered it. ‘Yes.’

‘I was here with my sister that night. She brought her two kids over, and we had dinner together, and then they all spent the night here.’

Brunetti permitted himself a glance in Vianello’s direction and saw that the good cop was nodding. Signora Doni’s voice called his attention back as she said, ‘As to your other question, I don’t know of anyone. Andrea was a…’ She paused here, perhaps conscious that she had now to speak his epitaph. ‘He was a good man.’ Taking three deep breaths, she went on. ‘I do know he was troubled at work or because of work. It was only during the last months we were together that I realized this; that’s when he was…’ Her voice trailed off, and Brunetti left her to remember what she chose. But then she spoke again. ‘It might have been guilt about what he was doing. They were doing. But it might have been more than that.’ Another long pause. ‘We didn’t talk much in the months before he told me.’

‘Where does he work, Signora?’ Brunetti asked, then cringed at the realization that he had used the present tense. To attempt to correct it would make things worse.

‘His office isn’t far from here. But two days a week he works at another job.’ Unconsciously – perhaps because she had heard Brunetti do it – she had also fallen back into the present tense.

Brunetti assumed the work of a veterinarian must be pretty standard; he wondered what extra work Dr Nava could have done, aside from his private practice. ‘Was he working as a veterinarian at this other job, too?’

She nodded. ‘He was offered it about six months ago. With the financial crisis, there was less work at his clinic. That’s strange, really, because people will usually do anything or pay anything to take care of their pets.’ She twisted her hands together in a cliché gesture of helplessness, and Brunetti found himself wondering if she worked or whether she stayed home to take care of their son. And if so, then what would become of her now?

‘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.