Donna Leon - About Face

‘It might be any number of things,’ she said with a seriousness that Brunetti found troubling.

‘Such as?’ he inquired.

She waved his question away then reunited her hands, latching her fingers, and said, looking across at him. ‘My husband is an honest man, Commissario.’ She waited for him to comment, and when he did not, she repeated, ‘Honest.’ She gave Brunetti more time to comment, and still he did not. ‘I know that sounds an unlikely thing to say about a man as successful as he is.’ Suddenly, just as if Brunetti had voiced opposition, she said, ‘It sounds like I’m talking about his business dealings, but I’m not. I don’t know much about them, and I don’t want to. That’s his son’s concern — his right — and I don’t want to be involved. I can’t speak of what he does in business. But I know him as a man, and I know he’s honest.’

Brunetti listened, part of him making a list of men he himself knew to be honest men, all of them driven to dishonesty by the various depredations of the state. In a country where false bankruptcy was no longer a serious crime, it took little for a man to be considered honest.

‘. . he were a Roman, he would be considered an honour-able man,’ she concluded, and Brunetti had little difficulty in reconstructing the parts that his own thoughts had distracted him from hearing.

‘Signora,’ he began, deciding to try to establish a more formal tone, ‘I’m still not sure I can be of any help to you here.’ He smiled to show his good will, adding, ‘It would help me immeasurably if you told me, specifically, what it is you’re afraid of.’

She began, in a gesture he thought entirely unconscious, to rub the skin of her forehead with her right hand. She turned and looked out the window as she did it, and Brunetti, not without a twinge of discomfort, watched the trail of whitened skin that was left behind by each stroke. She surprised him by getting suddenly to her feet and going over to the window, then surprised him again by asking, without glancing back, ‘That’s San Lorenzo, isn’t it?’

‘Yes.’

She continued to gaze across the canal at the eternally unrestored church. Finally she said, ‘He was put on the grill and roasted to death, wasn’t he? They wanted him to renounce his faith, I believe.’

‘So the story has it,’ Brunetti answered.

She turned then and came back towards him, saying, ‘So much suffering, these Christians. They really loved it, couldn’t have enough of it.’ She sat and looked at him. ‘I think that’s one of the reasons I admire the Romans so much. They didn’t like to suffer. They seem not to have minded dying, were really quite noble about it. But they didn’t enjoy pain — at least if they had to suffer it themselves — not the way the Christians did.’

‘Have you finished with Cicero and moved on to the Christian era, then?’ he asked ironically, hoping to lighten her mood.

‘No,’ she said, ‘the Christians really don’t interest me. As I said, they like suffering too much.’ She stopped talking and gave him a long, level look, and then said, ‘At the moment, I’m reading Ovid’s Fasti . I never did before, never saw the need.’ Then, with special emphasis, as if the words were being forced from her and as if to suggest she thought Brunetti might want to go home and begin reading it, she added, ‘Book Two. Everything’s there.’

Brunetti smiled and said, ‘It’s been so long that I don’t even remember if I’ve ever read it. You must forgive me.’ It was the best he could think of to say.

‘Oh, there’s nothing to forgive, Commissario, in not having read it,’ she said, her mouth hinting at a smile. Then, her voice suddenly different and her face returned to immobility, she added, ‘Nothing to forgive in what’s there, either.’ Again, that long look. ‘You might want to read it some time.’

Then, with no transition, as if this incursion into Roman culture had not taken place or she had seen his growing restlessness, she said, ‘It’s kidnapping that I’m afraid of.’ She nodded a few times as if to confirm it as the truth. ‘I know it’s foolish, and I know Venice is a place where it never happens, but it’s the only explanation I can come up with. Someone might have done it because they wanted to know how much Maurizio might be able to pay.’

‘If you were kidnapped?’

Her surprise was completely unfeigned, ‘Who’d want to kidnap me?’ As if hearing herself, she hastened to add, ‘I thought of his son, Matteo. He’s the heir.’ Then, with a shrug that Brunetti could describe only as self-effacing, she added, ‘Even his ex-wife. She’s very rich, and she has a villa out in the countryside near Treviso.’

Speaking lightly, Brunetti said, ‘It sounds as if you’ve been thinking about this a great deal, Signora.’

‘Of course I have. But I don’t know what to think. I don’t know anything about all of this: that’s why I came to you, Commissario.’

‘Because it’s my line of work?’ he asked, smiling.

If nothing else, his tone broke her mounting tension: she relaxed visibly. ‘You could say that, I suppose,’ she said with a small laugh. ‘I suppose I needed someone I trust who can tell me I’m worrying about nothing.’

The plea was there: Brunetti could not have ignored it had he wanted to. Luckily, though, he had an answer to give her. ‘Signora, as I told you, I’m not an expert on these things, certainly not on the way the Guardia di Finanza chooses to conduct its business. But I think in this case the correct answer to who’s been trying to break in could also be the most obvious one, and the Finanza seems to be it.’ Unable to bring himself to the lie direct, Brunetti could do no more than tell himself that it could be the Finanza.

‘ L a Finanza ?’ she asked in the voice of every patient who has ever received the less-bad diagnosis.

‘I think so. Yes. I don’t know anything about your husband’s businesses, but I’m sure they must be protected against anything except the most expert invasion.’

She shook her head and raised her shoulders in an admission of ignorance. Brunetti chose his words carefully. ‘It’s been my experience that kidnappers are not sophisticated people; much of what they do is impulsive.’ He saw how attentively she was following what he said. ‘The only people,’ he continued, ‘who could do something like this would have to have the technical skills to get past whatever barriers are in place at your husband’s companies.’ He smiled, then permitted himself a small ironic snort. ‘I must confess this is the only time in my career I’ve ever been happy to suggest to someone they’ve been the target of an exam by the Finanza.’

‘And the first time in the history of this country when someone’s been relieved to hear it,’ she finished, and this time she laughed. Her face took on the same mottled pattern Brunetti had seen when she first came in from the cold, and he realized she was blushing.

Signora Marinello got to her feet quickly, bent to retrieve her purse, then put out her hand. ‘I don’t know how to thank you, Commissario,’ she said, keeping his hand in hers while she spoke.

‘He’s a lucky man, your husband,’ Brunetti said.

‘Why?’ she asked, and he thought she meant it.

‘To have someone so concerned about him.’

Most women would smile at a compliment like this, or feign false modesty. Instead she pulled back from him and gave him a level gaze that was almost fierce in its intensity. ‘He’s my only concern, Commissario.’ She thanked him again, waited while he retrieved her things from the armadio , and left the room before Brunetti could move to the door to open it for her.