Donna Leon - About Face

They were distracted by the waitress’s return. She carried a large tray with a teapot and a small jar of honey, along with cups and saucers. She set everything on the table, saying, ‘I remembered you like it with honey, Signora.’

‘How very kind of you,’ Marinello said, her smile in her voice. The waitress left; she lifted the top of the teapot and bounced the teabags up and down a few times, then replaced it. ‘I always think of Peter Rabbit when I drink this,’ she told Brunetti as she picked up the teapot. ‘His mother gave it to him when he was sick.’ She swirled the pot a few times.

Brunetti had read the book to the kids when they were small and remembered that this was true, but he said nothing.

She poured out the tea, spooned some honey into hers and pushed the bottle in his direction. Brunetti added some to his, trying to remember if old Signora Rabbit had added honey or not.

He knew the tea was too hot to drink, so he ignored it and asked, choosing not to return to a discussion of Ovid, ‘How did you meet him?’

‘Who? Antonio?’

‘Yes.’

She stirred the spoon around in her cup and set it in her saucer. Then she looked across at Brunetti. ‘If I tell you that, then I’ll have to tell you everything, won’t I?’

‘I’d like you to do that,’ Brunetti answered.

‘Well, then.’ She returned to stirring the tea. She glanced up, then back at her cup, and finally said, ‘My husband has many business contacts.’

Brunetti was silent. ‘Some of them are. . well, they are persons who. . persons he would prefer I knew nothing about.’

She looked to see that he was following and continued, ‘A few years ago, he began a collaboration. .’ She stopped herself short. ‘No, that’s too easy a word, I think; or too evasive. He hired a company run by people he knew to be criminals, though what he was doing was not illegal.’

She sipped at her tea, added more honey, and stirred it around. ‘I learned later,’ she began, and Brunetti made note of the fact that she did not say how she came to learn whatever it was she was about to tell him, ‘that it happened at dinner. He was out with the most important of them: they were celebrating their contract or their agreement or whatever they called it. I had refused to go with him, and Maurizio told them I was sick. It was the only thing he could think of that wouldn’t offend them. But they understood, and they were offended.’

She looked at him and said, ‘You have more experience with these people than I do, I suppose, so you know how important it is to them that they be respected.’ At Brunetti’s nod, she added, ‘I think part of it must have begun there, when Maurizio didn’t bring me to meet them.’ She shrugged and said, ‘It doesn’t matter, I suppose. But one does like to understand things.’

Suddenly, she said, ‘Drink your tea, Commissario. You don’t want it to get cold.’ Commissario, then, Brunetti thought. He did as he was told and drank some: it brought back his youth and being in bed with a cold or the flu.

‘When he told them that I was sick,’ she went on, ‘the man who had invited him asked what was wrong — I had had more dental work that day.’ She looked at him as if to see whether he understood the significance of this, and he nodded. ‘It was all part of the other thing.’

She drank more tea. ‘And Maurizio must have sensed their resentment because he told them more than he should have; at least, enough for them to understand what had happened. It must have been Antonio who asked about it.’ She looked at him again and said in a voice as cold as death, ‘Antonio could be very charming and sympathetic.’

Brunetti said nothing.

‘So Maurizio told them at least part of what had happened. And then he said something. .’ She paused and asked him: ‘Did you ever read the play about Becket and Henry the Somethingth?’

‘Second,’ Brunetti said.

‘So you know the part about the king’s asking his knights if no one would rid him of that pesky cleric, or something like that?’

‘Yes, I know it.’ The historian in him wanted to add that the story was probably apocryphal, but this did not seem the moment.

She stared into her cup and puzzled him by saying, ‘The Romans were so much more direct.’ Then she continued, as if she had not mentioned the Romans, ‘That’s what happened, I think. Maurizio told them what had happened, about the fake dentist and what he did, and that he had been in jail, and I suppose he said something about there being no justice in this country.’ It sounded to Brunetti as if she were repeating something she had learned by rote or had said — at least to herself — many times. She looked at him and added, in a softer voice, ‘It’s what people are always saying, isn’t it?’

She looked at her teacup, picked it up but did not drink. ‘I think that was all Antonio needed. A reason to hurt someone. Or worse.’ There was a faint clink as she set her cup back in the saucer.

‘Did he say anything to your husband?’

‘No, nothing. And I’m sure Maurizio must have thought that was the end of it.’

‘He didn’t tell you about the conversation?’ Brunetti asked, and at her confusion, explained, ‘Your husband, that is.’

Her astonishment was complete. ‘No, of course not. He doesn’t know I know anything about it.’ Then, in a much slower, softer voice, ‘That’s what this is all about.’

‘I see,’ was the only thing Brunetti could think of to say, though it seemed as if he was seeing less and less.

‘Then, some months later, the dentist was killed. Maurizio and I were in America when it happened, but we heard about it when we got home. The police from Dolo came to ask us about it, but when Maurizio told them we had been in America, they went away.’ He thought she was finished, but then she added, in a different voice, ‘And the wife.’

She closed her eyes and said nothing for a long time. Brunetti finished his tea and poured them both some more.

‘It was Antonio, of course,’ she said conversationally.

Of course, thought Brunetti. ‘Did he tell your husband what he’d done?’ he asked, wondering if this was going to become a tale of blackmail, and that was why she had come to the Questura to speak to him.

‘No. He told me . He called and asked to come and see me — I don’t even remember what the excuse was. He said he was one of my husband’s business associates’ — she said the words with malice. ‘I told him to come to the apartment. And he told me.’

‘What did he say?’

‘What had happened. That Maurizio, at least according to him — Antonio, that is — had made it clear what he wanted to be done, and Antonio had done it.’ She looked at him, and he had the feeling she had said everything she had to say and was waiting for him to comment. ‘But that’s impossible,’ she added, trying to sound convinced.

Brunetti let some time pass and then asked, ‘Did you believe him?’

‘That Antonio had killed him?’

‘Yes.’

Just as she was about to answer, the high-pitched noise of a child’s delight flew in from the campo , and her eyes turned towards it. Not looking at Brunetti, she said, ‘It’s strange: that was the first time I saw Antonio, but it never occurred to me to doubt him.’

‘Did you believe that your husband asked him to do it?’

If Brunetti had expected her to be shocked by his question, he was disappointed. If she sounded anything, it was tired. ‘No. Maurizio couldn’t have done that,’ she said in a voice that tried to stave off doubt or discussion.

She turned her eyes back to Brunetti. ‘The most he could have done was talk about it; there’s no other way they could have known, is there?’ Her voice was painful to hear as she asked, ‘How else would Antonio have known the dentist’s name?’ She waited for some time, then said, ‘But Maurizio, no matter how much he might want it to happen, would not ask him do something like that.’