Donna Leon - Friends in High Places

Brunetti waited a moment and then asked, ‘And piety?’

She reached into the pocket of her jacket and pulled out a narrow rectangle of paper, slightly smaller than a playing card. She passed it to Brunetti, who looked at it. Stiff, a sort of fake parchment, it had a painting of a woman dressed as a nun with her hands and, it seemed, her eyes crossed in matching piety. Brunetti read the first few lines printed below – a prayer, the first letter an illuminated ‘O’.

‘Santa Rita,’ she said after he had studied the picture for a while. ‘It seems she’s another patron saint of Lost Causes, and Signora Volpato feels especially close to her because she believes she also helps people when all other help is closed to them. That’s the reason for her special devotion to Santa Rita.’ Signorina Elettra paused to reflect momentarily upon this wonder and then saw fit to add, ‘More than to the Madonna, she confided to me.’

‘How fortunate, the Madonna,’ Brunetti said, handing the small card back to Signorina Elettra.

‘Ah, keep it, sir,’ she said, waving it away with a dismissive hand.

‘Did they ask why you didn’t go to a bank, if you owned the house?’

‘Yes. I told them my father originally gave me the house, and I couldn’t risk his learning what I was doing. If I went to our bank, where they know us all, he’d find out about my brother. I tried to cry then, when I told her that.’ Signorina Elettra gave a small smile and went on: ‘Signora Volpato said she was very sorry about my brother; she said gambling is a terrible vice.’

‘And usury isn’t?’ Brunetti asked, but it wasn’t really a question.

‘Apparently not. She asked me how old he was.’

‘What did you tell her?’ Brunetti asked, knowing she had no brother.

‘Thirty-seven, and that he’s been gambling for years.’ She stopped, reflected upon the events of the afternoon, and said, ‘Signora Volpato was very kind.’

‘Really? What did she do?’

‘She gave me another card of Santa Rita and said she’d pray for my brother.’

The only thing Brunetti did before going home that afternoon was sign the papers that would release the body of Marco Landi so that it could be sent to his parents. After he had done this, he called downstairs and asked Vianello if he would be willing to accompany the body back to the Trentino. Vianello agreed instantly, saying only that, as the next day was his day off, he didn’t know if he could wear his uniform.

Brunetti had no idea if he had the authority to do so, but he said, ‘I’ll change the roster’, opening a drawer to start to look for it, buried among the papers that came to him every week to be ignored and eventually discarded unread. ‘Consider yourself on duty and wear your uniform.’

‘And if they ask about what’s happening here, if we’ve made any progress?’ Vianello asked.

‘They won’t ask, not yet,’ Brunetti answered, not at all sure why he knew, but sure he was right.

When he got home, he found Paola on the terrace, her feet stretched out before her, resting on one of the cane chairs that had weathered yet another winter exposed to the elements.

She smiled up at him and pulled her feet off the chair; he accepted her invitation and sat opposite her.

‘Should I ask how your day was?’ she asked.

He sat lower in the chair, shook his head, but still managed to smile. ‘No. Just another day.’

‘Filled with?’

‘Usury, corruption, and human greed.’

‘Just another day.’ She took an envelope from the book in her lap and leaned forward to hand it across to him. ‘Maybe this will help,’ she said.

He took it and looked at it. It came from the Ufficio Catasto; he was uncertain of how this could be of any help to him.

He pulled out the letter and read it. ‘Is this a miracle?’ he asked. Then, looking down at it, he read the last sentence aloud, ’“Sufficient documentation having been presented, all former correspondence from our office is superseded by this decree of condono edilizio.” ‘

Brunetti’s hand, still holding the letter, fell into his lap. ‘Does this mean what I think it means?’ he asked.

Paola nodded, without smiling or looking away.

He searched for both wording and tone and, finding them, asked, ‘Could you perhaps be a bit more precise?’

Her explanation came quickly. ‘From the way I read it, I’d say it means the matter’s closed, that they’ve found the necessary papers, and we will not be driven mad by this.’

‘Found?’ he repeated.

‘Found,’ she said.

He looked down at the single page in his hand, the paper on which the word, ‘presented’ appeared, folded it, and slipped it inside the envelope, considering as he did so how to ask, whether to ask.

He handed the envelope back to her. He asked, still in command of his tone but not of his words, ‘Does your father have anything to do with this?’

He watched her and experience told him just how long she thought about lying to him; the same experience saw her abandon the idea. ‘Probably,’

‘How?’

‘We were talking about you,’ she began, and he disguised his surprise that Paola would discuss him with her father. ‘He asked me how you were, how your work was, and I told him you had more than the usual problems at the moment.’ Before he could accuse her of betraying the secrets of his work, she added, ‘You know I never tell him, or anyone, specific things, but I did tell him you were more burdened than usual.’

‘Burdened?’

‘Yes.’ Then, by way of explanation, she went on, ‘With Patta’s son and the way he’s going to get away with this,’ she said. ‘And those poor dead young people.’ When she saw his expression, she said, ‘No, I didn’t mention any of this to him, just tried to tell him how hard it’s been for you recently.’ Remember, I live and sleep with you, so you don’t have to give me daily reports on how much these things trouble you.’

He saw her sit straighter in her chair, as if she thought the conversation finished and herself free to get up and get them a drink.

‘What else did you tell him, Paola?’ he asked before she could rise.

Her answer took a while to come, but when it did, it was the truth. ‘I told him about this nonsense from the Ufficio Catasto, that though we hadn’t heard anything further, it still loomed over us like a kind of bureaucratic sword of Damocles.’ He knew the tactic: deflecting wit. He was not moved by it.

‘And what was his response?’

‘He asked if there was anything he could do.’

Had Brunetti been less tired, less burdened by a day filled with thoughts of human corruption, he probably would have let it go at that and allowed events to take their course above his head, behind his back. But something, either Paola’s complacent duplicity or his own shame at it, drove him to say, ‘I told you not to do that.’ Quickly, he amended it to, ‘I asked you.’

‘I know you did. So I didn’t ask him to help.’

‘You didn’t have to ask him, did you?’ he said, voice beginning to rise.

Her voice matched his. ‘I don’t know what he did. I don’t even know that he did anything.’

Brunetti pointed to the envelope in her hand. ‘The answer’s not far to seek, is it? I asked you not to have him help us, not to make him use his system of friends and connections.’

‘But you saw nothing wrong in using ours,’ she shot back.

‘That’s different,’ he insisted.

‘Why?’

‘Because we’re little people. We don’t have his power. We can’t be sure that we’ll always get what we want, always be able to get around the laws.’

‘You really believe that makes a difference?’ she asked, in astonishment.