Donna Leon - The Golden Egg

There was a brief hesitation. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Then you’ve been told, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked. He was her doctor, so the hospital would have called him.

‘About what?’ Proni asked in a voice somewhere between curiosity and concern, but nowhere near alarm.

‘Signora Cavanella’s in the hospital.’

‘What?’ the doctor asked.

‘I’m sorry, Dottore. I thought they would have called you.’

‘No. What happened?’

‘She was found over on the Zattere yesterday. She told the man who found her that she’d fallen down.’ Brunetti spoke neutrally, merely repeating a piece of information. When Proni said nothing, Brunetti continued, ‘She may have a concussion, two fingers are crushed, and her face is badly bruised. But the doctor who examined her says she’s not in any danger.’ Proni still said nothing.

‘I’d like to speak to you,’ Brunetti added.

‘You realize I’m her doctor,’ he said, this time using that fact to construct a barrier to information.

‘I understand that, Dottore.’ Brunetti abandoned any idea of asking about Davide: all he wanted was the chance to talk to Proni directly. ‘I know what it means in terms of your professional responsibility.’

‘But still you want to talk to me?’

Brunetti decided to tell him the truth. ‘Yes, I do. There are things about her I don’t understand. And about her son.’

‘You mean his death?’

‘Yes.’

‘It was an accident,’ Proni said.

‘I believe that, Dottore. But I’d like to understand how it was possible.’

‘This sounds like nothing more than personal curiosity, Commissario.’

Brunetti let out a small puff of air, exasperated at how transparent he had become. ‘I suppose it is.’

‘In that case, I’ll speak to you,’ Proni surprised him by saying.

Brunetti glanced at his watch. ‘I could be at your office in twenty minutes, Dottore.’

‘All right.’ Brunetti heard the click of the phone as the doctor replaced it.

18

Brunetti went to the window, leaned out and saw Foa on the fondamenta , talking to the guard at the door. Brunetti called the pilot’s name and shouted down that he had to go over to San Polo; Foa raised an arm in assent. As he went down the stairs, Brunetti was conscious of the dim view Chiara would take of his crossing the entire city in a police boat when he could just as easily have used public transportation, even though the Number Two would take more than twenty minutes to get him there. ‘People have to learn to wait,’ was her current mantra.

He stepped on to the boat, ignoring the pilot’s outstretched hand. Foa turned the key, revved the motor, and pulled them away from the dock towards the bacino . ‘Last days for standing around outside, I’m afraid, sir,’ the pilot said amiably.

‘For the likes of me, it certainly is,’ Brunetti said. ‘Until the first sign of springtime, I’ll leave being out in the weather to you.’

Foa heard the friendliness and smiled. ‘I called a couple of people I know, sir. About the Lembo family, like you asked me to. To see what else I could learn.’

‘Very good,’ Brunetti said. ‘What did they have to

tell you?’

‘Well, sir,’ Foa said, turning right in a broad sweep that would take them up the Grand Canal, ‘It’s una famiglia sfigata .’ It was the language of the streets, but from the little Brunetti had heard, it did sound as if the whole family was screwed.

‘What did they tell you?’

‘Well, there’s the daughter that died. In Brazil, I think. There’s another one in Ireland or some place like that, but it seems she turned out all right. And then there’s the one who had the kids, Lucrezia.’ He gave a little puff of exasperation with the name. ‘Who’d do that to a kid, give her a name like that?’

‘She named her own children Loredano and Letizia.’

Foa made another exasperated noise. ‘I suppose that was to keep in good with her parents. From what my friends said, they ran a tight ship.’ Then, after a moment’s reflection, Foa said, ‘Though a couple of them said it was the mother. A real tiger. And a religious one at that.’

‘What does that mean?’ Brunetti looked up to the top of the bell tower of San Giorgio just at the instant when the angel chose to shift in the wind and wave his wings at Brunetti.

‘She was a friend of the Patriarch, always wore a black veil when she went to Mass, the worst sort of basabanchi .’ Then, after a pause, ‘Got it from her family, I’m told.’

Brunetti smiled, in love with his own language. He’d seen them as a boy, those veiled women in black, bending forward as if to kiss the top of the pew in front of them. Baciare il banco . Only the dialect of anti-clerical – proudly, historically anti-clerical – Venice could transform the word, and the act, and the idea, with such acid contempt. Basabanchi.

‘The mother had a nun living in the palazzo and governesses to turn the girls into ladies. Her father – the mother’s father, that is, so the girls’ grandfather – had some sort of title, but it was one that the Savoias gave him, so it was really just a piece of shit.’

Well, there’s a bit of vox pop to tell Paola about, Brunetti reflected. He hoped she would pass the remark on to her father: because his own title was several centuries older, he was sure to appreciate it. Foa paused and looked aside at Brunetti, who nodded in agreement. ‘This is all gossip, sir,’ the pilot went on. ‘You know what it’s like when people sit around in the bars and talk about other people.’

‘Who aren’t there to defend themselves?’ Brunetti asked with a laugh. He did not add that it also helped if the person under discussion was rich or successful, or both.

‘Exactly. Besides, it sounds as if the family always – well, the grandfather, they told me – was always quick to go to law with everyone, and no one likes that. Cross him in a deal, try to buy a property he wanted, and you’d find six lawyers at breakfast the next morning. I asked my father, and he said he never heard a good word about him.’

Brunetti stopped himself from observing that the list of the people about whom he himself had never heard a good word was longer than Leporello’s list of Don Giovanni’s conquests, but, instead, he asked, ‘Did you ever meet any of the daughters?’

‘Me, no. But my best friend Gregorio told me he had an affair with Lucrezia. A long time ago, before they were married. Wasn’t anything important, really.’ Brunetti did not have to strain to understand that they did not marry one another. ‘Gregorio always thought she did it to spite her mother.’

‘What sort of reputation did she have?’ Brunetti asked. ‘When she was a girl, that is.’

‘Oh, you know what it’s like, Signore,’ Foa said and cut to the left and into Rio de la Madoneta. ‘Once a woman goes with a man, everyone’s going to say he’s had her, too.’ Brunetti put this nugget in a side pocket in his memory to pull out the next time someone spoke to him of human progress.

Then, as if to make up for what he had said, Foa added, ‘Gregorio said she was a nice girl. They remained friends for a long time.’

‘But not now?’

‘Not on your life, sir. He married a girl from Giudecca, and she keeps him on a short lead. If she found out he even telephoned another woman, she’d have the cross up in the garden, and she’d send him out to get the nails.’

‘Would he go?’

‘I’m afraid so, sir.’ Foa brought the boat to a smooth stop on the right side of the canal.

‘No need to wait for me, Foa,’ Brunetti said.

‘Thank you, sir. I’ll have a coffee and go back to the Questura. If you change your mind, call me and I’ll