Donna Leon - A Question of Belief

‘A long history of accusation of crime,’ Patta corrected. ‘I don’t think you, of all people, Commissario, should have to be reminded that they are not the same thing.’ Patta gave a friendly smile here, as if this were a joke with an old friend who had never understood the difference.

Brunetti was having none of it. ‘If this woman was tampering with test results, Vice-Questore, then the tests have to be redone.’

Patta gave another smile, but there was no humour in his voice when he said, ‘In the absence of any evidence that this woman was involved in criminal behaviour — regardless of what you suspect, Commissario — I think it would be irresponsible on our part to spread needless alarm among the people whose tests she might have performed.’ He paused in reflection and then added, ‘Or to weaken in any way the public’s faith in government institutions.’

As so often happened when Brunetti dealt with Patta, he was forced to admire the skill with which his superior could transmute his own worst failings — in this case blind ambition and an absolute refusal to perform any action that did not benefit him directly — into the appearance of probity.

Not bothering to explain or prepare for the change in subject, Brunetti said, ‘I’m going to Fontana’s funeral tomorrow morning, sir.’

The temptation proved too strong for Patta, who asked, ‘In hopes of seeing the murderer there?’ He smiled, inviting Brunetti to share the joke.

‘No, sir,’ Brunetti said soberly. ‘So that his death isn’t treated as something insignificant.’ Good sense and the instinct of survival stopped Brunetti from adding, ‘too’ to his sentence. He got to his feet, said something polite to the Vice-Questore, went upstairs and made two disappointing calls to his colleagues in Aversa and Naples, and then went home and spent the rest of the day and evening reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a pleasure he had not permitted himself for some years.

The funeral took place in the church of Madonna dell’Orto, the parish into which Fontana’s mother had been born and which had always been the spiritual centre of her life. Brunetti and Vianello arrived ten minutes before the Mass began and took seats in the twelfth row. Vianello wore a dark blue suit and Brunetti dark grey linen. He was glad of the jacket, for this was the first place he had felt cool since stepping into the house where he had found Lucia and Zinka.

The heat of the day had kept at bay the morbidly curious and the habitual attenders of funerals, so there were only about fifty people present, seated sparsely and in sad separation in the rows in front of them. After doing his rough count of those present, Brunetti realized they averaged only one person for each year of Fontana’s life.

Brunetti and Vianello were too far back to see who sat in the first rows, reserved for family and close friends, but they would soon file from the church after the coffin and reveal themselves.

The music began: some sort of dreary organ theme that would have suited an elevator in a very respectable, if not necessarily wealthy, neighbourhood. Noise from behind slipped under the sound of the organ; Brunetti and Vianello stood and turned to face it.

A flower-draped coffin on a wheeled bier came down the aisle, pulled along by four black-suited men who looked extraneous to any emotional weight this scene might have. Would the mother have hired mutes if they had been available, Brunetti wondered? When the coffin stopped in front of the altar, everyone in the church sat and the Mass began. Brunetti was attentive for the first minutes, but the ceremony was duller now than it had been when he, as a boy, had attended the funerals of his grandparents and his aunts and uncles. The words were spoken in Italian: he missed the magical incantation of the Latin. Suddenly aware of the silence, he wondered if the absence of the tolling of the death bell during the Mass, the sound that had accompanied so many members of his family to their last resting place, most recently his mother, was also planned in this modern — and banal — ceremony.

As he stood and sat, knelt briefly only to rise to his feet again, moved on the tides of memory, Brunetti reflected on this strange death. Signorina Elettra had ‘accessed’ the files of the Tribunale and had managed to trace Signor Puntera’s legal history. Both the case of the contested warehouses and the injured worker had been assigned to Judge Coltellini, and in both cases long delays had resulted from the absence or temporary misplacing of files and pertinent documents. Further, other cases that had been assigned to the judge’s docket had experienced similar delays. In all of them, Signorina Elettra’s researches had ascertained, one party in the cause stood to profit from these delays. The judge, however, owned her own home, which she had bought three years ago, though not from Signor Puntera.

The bank of which Signor Fulgoni was the director, it turned out, had granted a loan to Signor Puntera at very favourable rates, and Signor Marsano was a lawyer in a firm that had once represented a client in a case brought, unsuccessfully, against Signor Puntera. Signor Puntera’s tax return listed the rent he received from each of their apartments, as well as that occupied by the Fontanas, at four hundred and fifty Euros a month or about 20 per cent of the rent they might be expected to pay.

The priest circled the coffin, dipping his aspergillum repeatedly into the holy water and sprinkling it across the surface. Brunetti saw how perfectly the rituals of pre-Christian Rome — priests mumbling incantations that put evil spirits to flight, searching for the future in the organs of sacrificed animals — blended with those of the new Italy — evil spirits kept at bay by magic tisana , the future revealed in the turn of a card. We pass through centuries, and we learn nothing.

Puntera, too, had adapted to the new order: nothing he had done was in any way unusual in these modern times, and it was unlikely that anything could be proven against Judge Coltellini for her various accommodations in his favour. With bitter cynicism, Brunetti had to admit they had been in no danger from any revelations Fontana might have chosen to make. There was the risk of temporary embarrassment for Puntera and Coltellini, but if embarrassment were a bar to advancement, then there would be no government and no Church.

The return of the organ’s rumbling put an end to Brunetti’s reflections and signalled the end of the Mass; Brunetti and Vianello got to their feet and turned to face the aisle.

The four men wheeled the coffin slowly towards the door of the church; first behind it came Signora Fontana, her head covered by a black veil that blended into the long-sleeved black dress she wore. A man Brunetti did not recognize walked close beside her, supporting her by her right arm. Two steps behind them walked her nephew, who nodded to Brunetti as he passed. Brunetti recognized a few faces, people who worked at the Tribunale; he was surprised to see Judge Coltellini among them. The people filing out kept their eyes straight ahead or on the pavement in front of them.

A youngish couple walked arm in arm, and close behind them came Signora Zinka, bulky and overheated in a black dress that was too long and too tight. Her face was damp and swollen, not because of the heat, Brunetti thought. An arm’s length to her right walked Penzo, looking as though he were somewhere else, or wanted to be.

Seeing the next couple, Brunetti realized he had been wrong in believing the habitual frequenters of funerals had been deterred by the heat. Maresciallo Derutti and his wife were well known in the city, omnipresent at funerals, to which he insisted on wearing the dress uniform of the Carabinieri, whose ranks he had left more than two decades before. Seeing the Maresciallo walk by, Brunetti decided the funeral was over and stepped into the aisle, Vianello close behind.