Joseph Kanon - Alibi

“Oh, I’ve heard. The poor servants, over and over. I suppose one conked Gianni on the head in a fit of pique. He can’t be serious.”

“He’s just being thorough. The house, the hospital. He’s doing the patients now. He’ll probably get around to you any day,” I said, teasing.

“As a suspect?”

I smiled. “As someone who knew him.”

“But why should it be anyone who knew him? A thief wouldn’t-”

“Because it wasn’t robbery. He still had his money on him. His watch.”

“Really,” Bertie said, then looked over at me. “What else?”

“All we know is what it wasn’t. And if it wasn’t robbery, then it was about him somehow. Who he was.” I fiddled with my coffee cup. “Your little mystery. We need to know more about him.”

“Such as?”

“Anything. Paolo, for instance. Tell me about Paolo.”

“Oh, we’re back to Paolo. But he didn’t count for anything. Awful thing to say, isn’t it? But he didn’t. Simply didn’t matter.”

“But Gianni was upset when he died. Everyone says so,” I said, trying it out.

“Do they?” Bertie looked away, thinking. “I suppose he was. Family, after all. That was important to him, probably more than Paolo was, really. But now that you mention it, he did take it hard. Went all quiet and monkish for a while. But they do that here.”

“So they were close?”

“Only in the sense of Paolo’s being there all the time-we’re talking about the early days now. He was always around. You know, at the beach, parties, whatever.”

“Like a puppy, you said.”

“Yes. Whatever Gianni wanted, he’d fetch it. It was like that.”

“But he was the older brother.”

“Well, what’s there to that? I’m an only child and I’ve always been sociable. Anyway, he didn’t seem to mind. He looked up to Gianni.” He reached over to the cigarettes on the cafe table and took one out. “Is that what you want to know? I can’t think why.”

“So Gianni was distressed when Paolo died?”

“Well, yes,” Bertie said, striking the match and cupping it at the end of the cigarette. “Why wouldn’t he be? Awful way to go, a crash like that. So young. And so typical, I must say, so careless, although of course one didn’t say it.”

“You know there are rumors that it wasn’t an accident.”

Bertie looked at me through the smoke, not saying anything.

“That he was killed by partisans.”

“And?”

“And if he was, there might be a political angle to this murder too. Gianni’s murder.”

“Oh, both now. Very Il Gazzettino of you. Is that the line you’re taking down at the Questura?”

“Did he ever say anything to you about Paolo’s death?”

“No, he didn’t,” Bertie said, tapping the end of his cigarette, his voice prickly. “And if he had, I wouldn’t have listened. I don’t listen to rumors either. Political angle. I don’t listen and I don’t know. All I want is to be left alone. I have no politics. None. I’m the most neutral man in Venice. And it’s very wrong of you to go on about it. Badgering people. Even Cavallini didn’t do that. And that was during the war.”

“I wasn’t asking about your politics, I was asking about Gianni’s,” I said quietly.

He leaned his head back, reprimanded, or surprised at his own reaction.

“Well, how would I know?” he said.

“Because you do,” I said, looking at him.

He made a face, peevish. “Well, as a matter of fact, I don’t. Oh, Adam, what politics? Gianni didn’t have any politics. He just blew with the wind. We all did. The only party he ever cared about was the Maglione family. That was his politics.”

“His brother worked for the Germans.”

“Do you know that?”

I nodded. “And so did Gianni.”

He looked away, then put out his cigarette and picked up his hat from the table. “I’m sorry to hear that,” he said finally. “But it’s got nothing to do with me.” He lifted a finger. “And it’s got nothing to do with you, either. Watch you don’t make a mess of things. All this huffing and puffing. Shall I tell you something? You will never understand this society. This isn’t even Italy. It’s Venice. Nothing has been real here since Napoleon. Nothing.”

“But it happened anyway. He worked for the Germans. He was killed. It happened.”

“Not where I live.” He stood, putting on his hat and looking out onto the square. “You see this? It’s like a jewel box. Beautiful. And nothing gets in.”

“And you’re the jewel, I suppose.”

He smiled. “You could do worse. Anyway, it’s what I like. Just the way it is. As far as I’m concerned, Paolo was a slow-witted boy who drove too fast. Gianni was a perfectly respectable man who gave the most boring Sunday lunches you can imagine. Once would do it. And that’s all. If they weren’t, I don’t want to hear it. Politics. Murk. You want to make everything murky. Well, I don’t. Not here.”

Gianni’s papers took no time at all. His businesses were all in the hands of managers, and Giulia, his heir, had already been to their offices, looking through the accounts.

“I thought it could be someone afraid of being caught. Everybody took a little during the war, to survive. But not enough to kill.”

How much was that? I wondered, but let it drop, not really interested in the businesses anyway. But the personal papers were disappointing too-a neat drawerful of bank statements and house accounts; another of official documents, birth, death, and accreditation, crowded with elaborate seals; some hospital paperwork; a few letters, none revealing; a small pile of receipts; a program from La Fenice; clipped articles from professional journals put aside for a rainy day. A blameless life, anybody’s.

We sat at the big mahogany desk in the library, a dark room that backed onto a side calle, away from the canal. Giulia had turned on the desk lamp, making the polished wood gleam. The house was as perfectly waxed and still as it had been after the funeral, maybe the way it would always be now, a convent quiet.

“But did he keep everything here?” I said, rummaging through the deep bottom drawer.

“Yes, I think so. And the albums over there on the shelf. Where I found the pictures for your mother. Maybe you should see the rest. What are you looking for?”

“I don’t know. Him. People he knew.”

“There’s an address book,” she said, bringing it over.

For a few minutes we looked at it together, flipping pages. “That’s a patient, that one,” she said, and so, I assumed, were the others. And friends and dinner partners and tradesmen, all Italian. But what had I expected? Extension numbers at the Villa Raspelli? Checkmarks and combination letters, a coded secret life? I closed the book.

“Any diaries, anything like that?”

She shook her head. “No, only the Maglione books, from the old days.” She pointed to a shelf behind her, scrapbooks and odd-shaped journals, some bound in leather, others in gathered-together, yellowing folios. A few boxes, meant to look like books, for stacks of letters bound with ribbon. “They kept everything. For their history.”

“It must have stopped with him.” I closed the drawer.

“Well, my uncle did the notes. I remember him writing. My father was too busy for that.”

“But letters? There must be some letters. Your mother?”

“No. They never wrote. Or they’re gone.” She looked over at me. “Before-I never thought about it. They didn’t love each other. Maybe that’s why.”

We looked at the photo albums-stiffly posed grandparents, then the Maglione childhood, Gianni and Paolo in sailor suits, the usual. Then the book from which she must have got my mother’s pictures-sunny days on the Lido in wet wool bathing suits, groups lolling in front of changing cabanas.