Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

It took the Inspector a moment to sort out which conversation Brunetti was referring to, and when he did, he said, ‘No, nothing. I came in too late.’

‘She did it because she loves him,’ Brunetti told him, oppressed by the sadness of the words.

‘Did what?’ Vianello asked impatiently.

‘She said he — Gorini, I’m sure — was using the lab results — I think this is what it’s got to mean — to convince people he could cure them. She said if he couldn’t use the results then people wouldn’t believe he could help them any more. And then he’d leave her.’ Brunetti raised a hand in a vague gesture of incomprehension or acceptance. ‘So she changed them.’ Vianello had not heard her tell Rizzardi that she had not wanted to cause any trouble, but Brunetti didn’t know if he could bear to repeat that.

Vianello looked around the lab, at the vials of different-coloured fluids still standing upright in the wooden stands, the various machines that had perhaps been too heavy for Signora Montini to try to destroy, and the jars and bottles only a professional could understand the use of. Brunetti could almost hear the Inspector thinking it all out. To aid him, Brunetti said, ‘All he needed was to convince one person that he had worked a cure, and the word would spread.’ He waited, then added, tapping the pocket where he had put his telefonino , ‘My mother-in-law told me a friend of hers is convinced he saved her husband by giving him some herbal tea that gets rid of cholesterol.’

‘It becomes a contest, doesn’t it, once people find someone they think can help them?’ Vianello asked.

‘My doctor’s better than your doctor,’ Brunetti said. ‘Just convince one person you’ve cured them, and soon all their friends will be at your door, and soon you’ll have to beat them off with a boathook.’

‘But the tests?’ Vianello objected. ‘How could he be sure Montini would get to do them?’ Before Brunetti could begin to speculate on that, they were disturbed by a noise at the door. Dottoressa Zeno took a half-step into the lab. ‘Can we come back in?’ she asked.

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ Brunetti said and started walking towards her. ‘I’d like to talk to you, Dottoressa.’

They soon had a clear idea of how Signora Montini could have done it. Everyone at the lab had worked together for so long that the choice of who would do which tests was often left to choice: usually the first people who came to work in the morning selected the first sample that had been delivered to the lab or the ones they wanted to do, and the others took what was left. Since Signorina Montini was usually the first to get there, she took first choice.

It soon became obvious to Dottoressa Zeno what sort of possibility they were considering, and she told them she could easily check for any tests done by Signora Montini where very bad results had improved over a short time.

The results took her only minutes to find in the computer, and when she printed them out for Brunetti, they were remarkable: among the people whose exams Signora Montini had performed during the last two years, there were more than thirty — all of them well over the age of sixty — whose cholesterol level had spiked suddenly, then after a period of about two months had gradually begun to sink back towards normal levels. The same pattern showed for numerous cases of what might have been adult-onset diabetes, with suddenly spiking glucose levels that descended to normal in a period of a few months.

‘Oh, the clever bastard,’ Vianello exclaimed when the pattern became obvious. Then, more practically, ‘Why didn’t anyone see it?’

Signora Zeno pushed a few keys, and the number 73,461 came up on the screen.

‘What’s that?’ Vianello asked.

‘The number of separate tests we did last month,’ she answered coolly. Then, driving in the nails, she added, ‘That’s only the ones from patients in the hospitals in the city, not those we’re sent by doctors who take their own samples.’ She smiled and asked the Inspector, ‘Would you like to see that number?’

Vianello put up his hands like a man about to be shot. ‘You win, Dottoressa. I had no idea.’

Gracious in victory, she said, ‘Most people don’t, even people who work in the hospital.’

Brunetti heard a noise and noticed that two of the technicians were looking towards the door. He turned and saw Rizzardi. Brunetti had no idea how it had happened, but the normally dapper pathologist looked haggard and rumpled, as if he had slept in his clothing. He took a few steps into the room and raised his right hand in a half circle, ending with his hand upside down and his fingers outstretched, pointing out nothing and nothingness.

‘They bandaged her wrists and set up a transfusion, but then the nurse was called to another room,’ he began, looking across at Brunetti. He took out his handkerchief, wiped his face and forehead, and then his hands. ‘She tore off the bandages while the nurse was gone, and took out the drip.’ He shook his head.

Brunetti’s thoughts fled to Cato, that noblest of noble Republicans. When life proved intolerable, he cut open his stomach, and when his friends tried to save him, he ripped out his viscera because death was preferable to a life without honour.

‘I’m going home,’ Rizzardi said. ‘I won’t do it.’ And then he was gone.

Dottoressa Zeno left them and went over to talk to the technicians. ‘Won’t do what?’ Vianello asked.

‘The autopsy, I assume,’ Brunetti said, wishing Vianello had not asked.

That stopped Vianello in his tracks.

‘This means the case is. .’ Brunetti began but could not bring himself to use the word ‘dead’. ‘It’s over,’ he said. Without the testimony of Signorina Montini — and there was never any reason to believe she would have testified — there was no evidence against Gorini. Mistakes happen, all sorts of errors abound in the hospitals: people suffer and die as a result.

‘We don’t know if it was only the cholesterol tests she was changing.’

‘You think she’d put people in danger?’

No, Brunetti did not, but that was hardly a secure enough protection for the people whose lab work she had handled. ‘They’ll have to redo all the tests she did,’ Brunetti said, thinking that this was an order only Patta, or perhaps the director of the hospital, could give. As to making any move against Gorini, that was impossible. Signorina Montini’s death had removed any risk he ran, and it was unlikely she would have kept a written record of what she was doing. Certainly she would not keep such a document in the home she shared with Gorini, nor at work, the place where she was betraying her honour.

‘The only thing we can do is call the police in Aversa and Naples,’ Brunetti said resignedly, ‘and tell them he’s here.’

As Brunetti had both known and feared, it proved impossible to persuade Vice-Questore Patta that the laboratory tests performed by Signorina Montini should be repeated. His superior had already dismissed the idea of investigating Signor Gorini or his dealings with his clients. The man — Patta had this on good authority — had been very helpful in treating the wife of a member of the city council, and thus the idea of causing him trouble — in the face of a complete absence of evidence — was unthinkable.

When Brunetti refused to abandon the idea of redoing the tests, Patta demanded, ‘Do you have any idea how much money ULSS loses every year?’ When Brunetti did not answer, Patta said, ‘And you want to add to it because of some wild theory you have that a faith healer corrupted this woman into falsifying medical reports?’

‘A faith healer with a long criminal record, Dottore,’ Brunetti added.