Donna Leon - The Golden Egg

He saw the glance the owner gave her. Nothing at all was to be gained in getting involved in the affairs of other people. Authority existed only to cause trouble, to impale you on the thorns of bureaucracy, to make you lose time at work, and in the end to force you to hire a lawyer and spend years freeing yourself of the consequences of any revelation of information. The State was your Enemy.

As if unaware of all of this, Brunetti addressed the owner directly. ‘Signora, at the moment all we know is that he died in his sleep. It looks as if it was an accidental death. I tried to speak to his mother, but she didn’t – or perhaps she couldn’t – answer me.’ When it seemed they had no questions, he shook his head to suggest confusion, or resignation in the face of things we could not understand. ‘I don’t know how to say this,’ he began, ignoring the look they exchanged and hoping to pull the conversation temporarily away from the mother, ‘but it’s always been our assumption – my wife’s and mine, that is – that you let him stay here out of what I suppose I can only call the goodness of your hearts.’ He smiled his approval of their action. ‘I think that was very generous of you. No, it was more than that.’

‘He was just a poor creature,’ Renata said, then looked at her employer as if to ask belated permission for her comment. At the other woman’s nod, she went on. ‘It was Maria Pia’s idea to let him help.’ The other woman made a gesture, as if to dismiss the remark, but Renata went on. ‘It wasn’t easy,’ she continued, then turned to Maria Pia and asked, ‘Was it?’

‘No, I suppose it wasn’t. But he needed something to do.’ She glanced quickly at Brunetti, at the other woman, then back at Brunetti. Keeping her eyes on his, she asked, ‘It wasn’t against the law, was it, letting him stay here?’

Believing there probably was a law that made it illegal to allow someone to pretend to work in your place of business, Brunetti said, ‘Of course not, Signora.’ He smiled at the absurdity of the idea, waved it away negligently. ‘It was a kind thing for you to do.’ To establish his position as a sympathetic supporter of her behaviour and to dispel any question of legal peril, he added, ‘Any decent person would approve. Any decent person would have done the same thing.’

She smiled in evident relief: if a commissario of police said it was not illegal, then it could not be, could it?

‘How did he . . .’ Brunetti began, wondering how to phrase it. ‘How did he begin here?’

Maria Pia smiled. ‘He used to come in with his mother sometimes. And stand there and watch the things going around in the machines,’ she said, pointing to the round glass window of the cleaning machine that had been in motion every time Brunetti came here.

‘And then Pupo saw him,’ Renata said. The women exchanged a smile that conveyed nothing but sadness.

‘Pupo?’ Brunetti inquired.

‘The cat,’ Maria Pia said. ‘Didn’t you ever see him here?’

Brunetti shook his head.

She pulled out a telefonino and switched it on, pressed buttons, summoning up memories and the images that captured them. Finding what she wanted, she came around the counter and stood beside him. ‘Here,’ she said, flicking photos across the screen as though she had done this all her life. He looked at the small rectangle and saw a photo of her holding an enormous cat in her arms, the largest cat he had ever seen. Its ears made it look like a lynx.

‘What’s that?’

‘They’re called Maine Coon Cats,’ Maria Pia said, pronouncing the name in Italian, smoothing her hand across the surface of the phone and showing him more photos of the same enormous animal. He stood on the counter, slept on the ironing board, stood with his paws on either side of the window of the machine, intent on the spinning clothing. Then he appeared in the arms of Davide Cavanella.

‘Pupo,’ Brunetti said.

‘Davide was the only person he really liked. Other than us,’ she said.

‘Not our husbands and not our children,’ Renata added. ‘Only Davide.’

‘It was one of the reasons we let him stay here,’ Maria Pia said, abandoning the pretence that he’d worked there.

‘What happened?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Pupo was already ten when Davide came. Then last year he got sick with an ugly disease. Davide was his doctor: Pupo let him give him the shots.’ Brunetti raised his eyebrows and Maria Pia went on: ‘We showed him how to do it, and Pupo didn’t seem to mind when he did it.’

‘And then?’

‘And then we had to take him to the vet and have him . . .’ Unable to name the disease that killed Pupo, neither could she name what they had had to do.

Looking at the photo of the two of them together, Maria Pia finished the story. ‘Davide never came back after that.’ She switched off the phone and put it in her pocket.

‘I think some of our clients didn’t approve of his being here, anyway,’ Renata said, shifting her weight from one foot to the other. Before her employer could speak, she went ahead: ‘Like that Signora Callegaro. With her green suit and her husband’s jacket he’s too cheap to get cleaned more than once a year.’ She pushed herself away from the counter, to stand up straight while making her denunciation. ‘The stuff’s been here all summer, and she comes in now. To sniff around.’ And then, almost spitting, ‘Spy.’

She turned to Brunetti. ‘She complained about him once.’ She stopped speaking, but a quick glance showed Brunetti that her employer’s face was calm.

‘About what, Signora?’ he asked.

‘She came in here, must have been two years ago, straight from the market, and she had two big bags with her. She came to pick up her cleaning, but when Maria Pia put it on the counter and started to wrap it, she said it was too much to carry and she’d come back for it.’

‘What did you do?’ Brunetti asked, addressing the question to the space between them so that either of them could answer him.

Maria Pia chose to interrupt here to explain what had happened. ‘I know where she lives; over by Ponte dei Pugni, so I told her that Davide could carry the bags for her, and she could take the cleaning.’

‘And she complained about that?’ Brunetti asked.

‘No, no,’ Renata said and grabbed the story back. ‘She said it would be all right, so Maria Pia went to the back and got Davide and told him to go with her, and they left.’ Though curious about how she could have ‘told’ him anything, Brunetti said nothing.

‘He came back, just the same as ever, so we forgot about it. Then, the next time she came in, she said he had frightened her.’

‘How?’ Brunetti asked.

As with any old couple, the story passed between them and now Maria Pia continued. ‘She told me he carried the bags back to her house and up the stairs. They live on the fourth floor. She opened the door and pointed to the floor to tell him he could leave them there, but he pushed past her and found the kitchen and put them on the table. And then he took all of the things out of the bags and lined them up on the table. She came in and told him he could leave, that she’d do it herself, but she said he ignored her.’ She looked at Maria Pia, as if to ask whether a deaf person could do anything other than that.

‘When he was done, he folded the bags and put them on the counter, and when she tried to give him some money – this is what she told me, though I doubt she’d give anyone anything: it’s no accident those two are married – he ignored her and left.’

When it seemed she had nothing more to add, Brunetti said, ‘But what did she complain about?’

Renata made a huffing noise. ‘She said she was frightened when he went into the house, that she didn’t know what he’d do. I suppose she meant to her.’ She rolled her eyes to suggest the lunacy of this possibility or the woman’s fear.