Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

‘So I left the subject alone, and we tried to go on as if nothing were wrong.’

‘But?’

Penzo took the tall glass and swirled the remaining water around a few times, then drank the last of it. ‘You have to understand that Araldo was an honest man. A good man, and an honest man.’

‘Meaning?’ asked Brunetti.

‘Meaning that the idea that a judge was lying to him or lying about something would upset him. And then anger him.’

‘What would he do about it?’ Brunetti asked.

Penzo gave a shrug. ‘What could he do? He was in the honeytrap, wasn’t he? His mother was as happy as she was capable of being. Would he want to take that away?’

‘Was he sure they’d lose the apartment?’

Penzo did not bother to answer this.

‘Was the apartment that important to her?’

‘Yes,’ Penzo answered instantly. ‘Because she had the address and could invite her friends — the few she had — to come and visit her there and see how well she was doing, she and her son who was only a clerk. And not a lawyer.’

‘And so?’ Brunetti asked.

‘And so he didn’t talk about it. And I didn’t ask about it.’

‘And that was that?’ Brunetti asked.

Penzo’s glance was sudden and sober, as if he were deciding whether to be offended or not. ‘Yes. That was that,’ he said. In this heat, a light coating of perspiration lay upon everyone’s face and arms, so Brunetti at first did not notice that tears had begun to run down Penzo’s cheeks. He seemed not to notice them himself, certainly made no attempt to wipe them away. As Brunetti watched, they began to drip off his chin, splashing into invisibility on his white shirt.

‘I will go to my grave wishing I’d done something. Made him talk. Made him tell me what he was doing. What she was asking him to do,’ Penzo said and wiped at the tears absently. ‘I didn’t want to cause trouble.’

‘Did you see him that day?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Or speak to him?’

‘You mean the day he was killed?’

‘Yes.’

‘No, I was in Belluno, seeing a client, and I didn’t get back until the following morning.’

‘Which hotel?’ Vianello asked mildly.

Penzo’s face froze, and it cost him an effort to turn to the Inspector. ‘Hotel Pineta,’ he said in a tight voice. He reached down and picked up his briefcase and walked out of the bar so quickly that neither Brunetti nor Vianello, had they had the will, would have had time to stop him.

Brunetti went over to the bar and was quickly back with two more glasses of white wine. He handed one to Vianello and drank some of his own.

‘Well?’ he asked Vianello.

The Inspector picked up the toothpick he had used to eat an artichoke and absently began to break it into small pieces, laying them one after the other on the plate beside Penzo’s uneaten sandwich. ‘Well,’ he finally said, ‘it looks like we have to examine his life.’

‘Fontana’s or Penzo’s?’

Vianello glanced up quickly. ‘Both, really, but we’ve already started with Fontana. First we find that he’s gay, and then we have a tearful account of his sad life from someone who may well turn out — unless I’m misreading all the signs — to have been his lover. So it might be wise to find out where Penzo was the night Fontana was killed.’

‘Does that mean you’re not persuaded by his tearful story?’ asked Brunetti in a tone more cynical than was his wont.

Breaking off another piece of toothpick, Vianello answered, ‘I was, and am, persuaded by it. It’s pretty obvious that he loved Fontana.’

‘But?’

‘People kill the people they love every day,’ Vianello said.

‘Exactly,’ Brunetti affirmed.

‘Does that mean we’re treating him as a suspect?’

‘It means we have to treat him as a suspect,’ Brunetti said. He looked at the Inspector and asked, ‘What do you think?’

‘I told you I think Penzo loved him,’ Vianello said, then paused a moment and went on in a voice that sounded almost disappointed, ‘but I don’t think he killed him.’

Brunetti was forced to agree with both propositions, but he finally gave voice to an uneasiness that had been created by their conversation with the lawyer, ‘You think that means Penzo was his lover?’

‘You heard the way he spoke,’ Vianello insisted.

‘Loving someone for forty years isn’t the same as being his lover,’ Brunetti said.

He saw Vianello’s look of rigid opposition, and before the Ispettore could speak, Brunetti added, ‘It’s not the same thing, Lorenzo.’ It came to Brunetti that he and Vianello surely loved one another, but this was not anything he could say, surely not to Vianello. Nor, he admitted, would he want Vianello to say it to him.

‘You can see them as different, if you want,’ Vianello said, sounding as if it were something he would choose not to do. ‘If it turns out that he wasn’t in Belluno that night, then what do we do?’

Brunetti could do nothing more than shrug off the possibility.

Back in his office, a wilted Brunetti stood by the window in search of any passing breeze and considered new connections and the possibilities they might create. Penzo and Fontana as loving friends: whatever that meant. Or as lovers: he did not exclude that possibility. Fontana and Judge Coltellini as adversaries over the whereabouts of legal documents. Fontana as the other side of two ‘ battaglie ’ of words with his fellow tenants. And then Signor Puntera, wealthy businessman and owner of the palazzo , with a finger in this and that and therefore many reasons to want accommodating friends at the Courthouse.

He gave up on any hope of solace from the heat and went down to Signorina Elettra’s office. Her door was closed. He knocked and, at a sound, entered. Into Paradise. It was cool, and it was dry, and he felt an automatic shiver, whether of cold or delight he did not know. She sat behind her computer wearing a light blue cardigan that appeared to be — could this be in August? — cashmere.

He stepped inside and quickly shut the door. ‘How did he manage it?’ he demanded. Then, unable to restrain his surprise, ‘Did you help him?’

‘Please, Commissario,’ she said in an indignant voice. ‘You know my feelings about air conditioning.’ Indeed, he did. They had had a near falling-out over the subject, he maintaining that it was necessary for some people and in some circumstances — in which he silently included his own home in the months of July and August — while she argued that it was wasteful and thus immoral.

‘What happened?’

‘Lieutenant Scarpa,’ she said with unveiled contempt, ‘has a friend who rebuilds air conditioners; he had him bring one over here this morning and install it in the Vice-Questore’s office.’ Sitting up straighter, she added, ‘I told him I had no need of one: enough cold air floods in here every time the door opens.’

At this, the door behind Signorina Elettra’s desk slammed back against the wall and, instead of cold air, Patta erupted into the room. ‘There you are. I’ve been calling your office for hours. Get in here.’ He did not shout: he did not have to. The force of his anger almost reversed the effect of the air conditioning.

The Vice-Questore turned and started back into his office, but because the door had slammed shut from the force with which he had opened it, he had to open it again.

Brunetti had time to cast a glance at Signorina Elettra, but she raised her hands in an empty gesture and shook her head. Brunetti followed Patta into his office and closed the door.

‘Are you out of your mind?’ Patta demanded when he was standing behind his desk. He sat but did not wave Brunetti to a chair, which meant that things were bad and Patta was serious.