Donna Leon - Drawing Conclusions

Niccolini asked in a very soft voice, ‘Could you be more specific about this “physical indication”?’

His tone, not his words, caught Rizzardi’s attention. The pathologist said, ‘There were signs of trauma.’ Ah, Brunetti found himself thinking: now we come to the mark on her throat.

Niccolini considered this and then said, his voice struggling for neutrality, ‘There are many kinds of trauma.’

Brunetti decided to intervene before Rizzardi began to simplify the meaning of the term and further antagonize Niccolini. ‘I think you should know that Dottor Niccolini is a veterinarian, Ettore.’

Rizzardi took a moment to respond, and when he did it was evident that the news pleased him. ‘Ah, then he’ll understand,’ he said.

Both Rizzardi and Brunetti heard Niccolini gasp. He wheeled towards the pathologist, one hand involuntarily closing into a fist, face blank with shock.

Rizzardi stepped away from the railing and held up his hands, palms outward in an instinctive gesture of self-protection. ‘Dottore, Dottore, I meant no offence.’ He patted repeatedly at the air between him and Niccolini until the other man, looking stunned at his own behaviour, lowered his hand. Rizzardi said, ‘I meant only that you’d understand the physiology of what I said. Nothing more.’ Then, more calmly, ‘Please, please. Don’t even think it.’

Was Niccolini so upset that he had heard Rizzardi’s remark as a comparison between animal and human anatomy? But how could he be expected to be cool and rational in the presence of the man who had performed the autopsy?

Niccolini nodded a few times, eyes closed, his face flushed, then looked at Rizzardi and said, ‘Of course, Dottore. I misunderstood. It’s all so…’

‘I know. It’s all so terrible. I’ve spoken to many people. It’s never easy.’

The men returned to silence. A beagle came out of one of the shops near the end of the campo and relieved itself against a tree, then went back into the shop.

Rizzardi’s voice summoned Brunetti’s attention away from the dog. ‘I can only repeat that your mother died of a heart attack: there’s no question of that.’ Brunetti had listened to the doctor enough times in the past to understand that Rizzardi was telling the truth, but Brunetti could see his face now, so he knew there was also something the doctor was not saying.

Rizzardi continued. ‘And to answer your question: yes, there was blood at the scene. Commissario Brunetti saw it, as well.’ Niccolini turned to Brunetti for confirmation, and Brunetti nodded, then waited to see how Rizzardi would explain it. ‘There was a radiator not far from where your mother was found, and it is not inconsistent with the evidence that she hit her head as she fell. As you know, head wounds often bleed a great deal, but because death would have come so quickly after her heart attack, she would not have bled for long, and that too is consistent with what we observed at the scene.’ With every sentence he spoke, Rizzardi’s language moved closer and closer to the officialese of printed reports and committee minutes.

Like a man coming up for air, Niccolini asked, ‘But it was the heart attack that killed her?’ How many times, Brunetti wondered, did he need to hear this?

‘Beyond question,’ Rizzardi said in his most official voice, and at the sound of it, the mild squeak of discomfort with which Brunetti had listened to his previous evasions was suddenly transformed into a klaxon of doubt. Brunetti had no idea what the doctor was lying about, but he was now convinced that he was.

Niccolini imitated the pathologist’s former position, and leaned back against the railing.

A sound resembling a war whoop caught their attention, and all of them turned and looked towards the far end of the campo , where Marco swirled in ever-narrowing circles around one of the trees. Brunetti, watching the narrowing gyre of the boy’s play, wondered at Niccolini’s behaviour. He would understand misery or grief or an explosion of tears. During his career he had seen the opposite, as well: cold-hearted satisfaction at the death of a parent. Niccolini seemed nervous and paralysed at the same time. Why else force Rizzardi to repeat his judgement that the death had been natural?

Rizzardi pushed back the sleeve of his jacket and looked at his watch. ‘I’m sorry, Signori, but I have an appointment.’ He reached to shake hands with Niccolini and said a polite goodbye. He told Brunetti that he would send him the written report as soon as he could and told him to call if he had any questions.

Niccolini and Brunetti watched silently as the pathologist walked across the campo and disappeared into the hospital.

When Rizzardi was gone, Brunetti asked, nodding in the direction of the hospital, ‘Is there anything else you have to do in there?’

‘No, I don’t think so,’ Niccolini answered, shaking his head as if to remove the idea or the place. ‘I signed some papers when I went in, but no one told me I had to do anything else.’ He looked at the hospital, then back at Brunetti, and added, ‘They said I can’t see her until this afternoon. Two o’clock.’ Then, speaking more to himself than Brunetti, he said, ‘This shouldn’t have happened.’ He looked up then and said, as if he feared Brunetti had reason to doubt it, ‘She was a good mother.’ Then, after a pause, ‘She was a good woman.’

Despite the years – decades – he had spent as a policeman, Brunetti still wanted to believe this to be true of most people. Experience suggested that they were good, at least until they were put into unusual or difficult situations, and then some – many, even – changed. Brunetti surprised himself by thinking of prayer: ‘lead us not into temptation’. How intelligent of whoever had said that – was it Christ himself? – to realize how easily we were tempted and how easily we fell, and how wise we are to pray to be spared temptation.

‘… you think they’ll…’ he heard Niccolini say and returned his attention to the other man. Instead of finishing the phrase, the veterinarian raised his hand in the air, palm towards the sky, then let it fall to his side, as if resigned to the fact that the heavens had little interest in what had happened to his mother.

Brunetti’s lack of attention had been temporary. He very much wanted to listen to whatever the doctor had to say and so, glancing at his watch, he suggested, ‘Dottore, if you’d like, we could have something to eat together.’ He paused, then said, ‘But if you’d like to be by yourself,’ Brunetti went on, involuntarily raising both palms and shifting his body backwards, ‘I understand.’

Niccolini’s glance was level and direct. Then he too looked at his watch: his eyes stayed on it for some time, as if he were trying to figure out what the numbers meant.

‘I have an hour,’ he finally said. Then, very decisively, he added, ‘Yes.’ He looked around the campo for a familiar point and said, ‘I don’t know what to do until then, and the time will pass more quickly.’ He looked back at the bar where they had had a coffee. ‘It’s all different,’ he said.

‘The bar? Or the campo ?’ Brunetti asked. Or perhaps Niccolini was talking about life. Now. After.

‘All of it, I think,’ Niccolini said. ‘I don’t come to Venice much any more. Just to visit my mother, and that’s so close to the station that I don’t see other parts of the city.’ He looked around him, his eyes as stunned by what they saw as those of a tourist, exposed to this for the first time. He turned and pointed back towards the church of the Miracoli. ‘I went to elementary school at Giacinto Gallina, so I know this neighbourhood. Or I knew it.’ He waved his hand towards one of the bars. ‘Sergio’s gone, and the bar’s Chinese now. And the two old people who used to run Rosa Salva: they’re gone, too.’