Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

She shrugged, took a deep breath, and then said, voice much calmer, ‘It’s probably better that Patta shouldn’t know how easy it is for me to do the work. So long as he — or his Lieutenant — continues to think he’s doing it all, then I can do what I want.’

‘Riverre said he thought things would be much better if you ran the place.’

‘Ah, the wisdom of fools,’ she said, but she smiled nevertheless.

Returning to business, Brunetti asked, ‘What are you going to do about Fontana?’ Translated, the question really meant: Who are you going to ask, and what is that going to cost us in terms of having to pay back favours?

‘There’s a clerk at the Tribunale I’ve known for years. I call into his office every so often when I’m over there, and occasionally we go out for a coffee, or he comes along when I buy flowers for the office. He’s asked me to dinner a few times, but I’ve always been busy. Or said I was.’ She looked at Brunetti and smiled. ‘I’ll wait until Tuesday and go over to the flower market. Then maybe I’ll stop on the way back and see if he’s free to go for a coffee.’

‘What’s wrong with him?’

‘Oh, nothing, not really. He’s honest and hard-working and quite good-looking.’ From her tone, one would think she was listing his handicaps.

‘And?’

‘And very dull. If I make a joke, I feel like I’m hitting a puppy. He looks at me with his big brown eyes, confused and hoping I won’t be angry with him because he can’t learn to do the trick.’

‘But he’s a clerk at the Tribunale?’

‘And I am but weak human flesh,’ she said with a long sigh, ‘and could never resist a bargain.’ Before he could ask, she went on, ‘And this is the best bargain around. I have a coffee with him, and the secrets of the Tribunale are at my disposal, should I choose to ask about them.’

‘Haven’t you?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Never before,’ she said. ‘I’ve always thought I’d keep him in reserve.’ She searched for the proper simile. ‘Like a squirrel burying a nut, in case it turns out to be a long, hard winter.’

‘To me, it sounds more like the wolf in “ Cappuccetto Rosso ”,’ Brunetti said, ‘dressed up as the Grandmother and just waiting for the right time to gobble her up.’

‘But I don’t want to gobble him up,’ she insisted. ‘I just want to ask him some questions.’

‘If Paris was worth a Mass,’ Brunetti observed, ‘then perhaps information about Fontana is worth a coffee.’

Primly, she said, ‘It’s not you who has to have it with him.’

‘I know,’ replied Brunetti, not at all certain how much of her tale was truth, how much art, not that one was ever sure of that with Signorina Elettra. To get her away from the subject, he asked, ‘And Signor Puntera?’

‘A friend of mine at the bank once worked as a consultant for him, I think. I’ll see if he’s still working in Venice and ask him what he knows.’

Brunetti could not remember, in all these years, that Signorina Elettra had ever used a female source. ‘Is it easier to get men to talk?’ he asked.

‘You mean, easier than getting women to talk?’

‘Yes.’

She tilted her head and looked at the closed door to Patta’s office. ‘I suppose it is. Women are much more discreet than men, at least when it comes to boasting. Or we boast about different things.’

‘Is that why you prefer to use men?’ he asked, not aware until after he had asked the question of how crass it made her sound.

‘No,’ she answered calmly. ‘It would be more dishonest to get information from women this way.’

‘Dishonest?’ he repeated.

‘Of course it’s dishonest, what I do. I’m taking advantage of people’s innocence and betraying their trust. You want that not to be dishonest?’

‘Is it more dishonest than breaking into someone’s computer system?’ he asked, though he thought it was.

She gave him a puzzled glance, as if amazed that he could ask such an obvious question. ‘Of course it is, Dottore. Information systems are built to stop you from breaking in: people know you’re going to do it or try to do it. So in a sense, they’re warned, and they take precautions, or they should. But when people tell you things in confidence or trust you with information they think you’re not going to repeat, they have no defences.’ She reached forward and touched a few keys, but nothing changed on the screen.

‘So I’ll go and have a coffee with him and see what he can tell me about Araldo Fontana, model worker.’

‘For what it’s worth,’ Brunetti said, ‘my source was convinced that there’s nothing to tell about him. He said Fontana is a decorous man; he even seemed surprised that I should want to know anything about him.’

‘ “Decorous,” ’ she repeated, savouring the word. ‘How long has it been since I’ve heard that?’ she asked with a small smile.

‘Probably too long,’ Brunetti said. ‘It’s a nice thing to say about a person.’

‘Yes it is, isn’t it?’ Signorina Elettra agreed and then said nothing for a long time. ‘I suppose it could be said about my friend at the Tribunale.’

‘The clerk?’

‘Yes.’ Brunetti waited, but all she said was, ‘I’ll ask him about Fontana.’

‘See if he knows anything about a Judge Coltellini, if you can,’ Brunetti requested. He had hesitated before, but if Fontana was a dead end, perhaps she had best take a look at the other name that had appeared on the papers.

‘Luisa?’

‘Yes. Do you know her?’

‘No, but I used to work with her sister. At the bank. She was one of the assistant directors. Nice person.’

‘She ever have anything to say about her sister?’

‘Not that I can remember,’ Signorina Elettra said. ‘But I suppose I can ask her. I see her once in a while on the street, and occasionally we have a coffee.’

‘Does she know where you work?’

‘No. I told her I got a job at the Commune: that’s usually enough to kill anyone’s interest.’

‘From what the person I spoke to said, I gather that Fontana is interested in her sister.’

‘And she’s not in him?’

‘No.’

‘Sounds familiar,’ she said and turned to her computer.

‘That’s very much like her,’ Paola said that evening, stretched out on the sofa and listening to him tell her about his conversation with Signorina Elettra and her remarks about dishonesty and deceit: ‘that she thinks it’s more dishonest to deceive a woman. I thought the days of feminine solidarity were over.’

‘It wasn’t exactly feminine solidarity, so far as I could tell,’ Brunetti replied. ‘I think it’s simply that she believes dishonesty is in proportion to how much trust you’re betraying, not to the lie you actually tell. And, from what she said, men are more indiscreet, more prone to boasting, and in those circumstances she thinks she’s got the right to use anything they say.’

‘And women?’

‘She thinks they need to trust people more before they reveal things.’

‘Or perhaps what women reveal is usually weakness, but what men talk about is strength,’ Paola suggested. She looked at her bare feet and wiggled her toes.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Think about the dinners we’ve been to, or conversations you’ve had with groups of men alone. There’s usually some tale of conquest: a woman, a job, a contract, even a swimming race. So it’s more boasting than confession.’ When he looked sceptical, she said, ‘Tell me you’ve never listened to a man boast about how many women he’s had.’

After a moment’s reflection, Brunetti said, ‘Of course I have,’ sitting up a bit straighter as he said it.

‘Women, at least women my age, would not do that in front of women they don’t know.’