Donna Leon - The Golden Egg

come get you.’

Brunetti said he would, though he trembled at the thought of Chiara’s reaction should she learn that he had had a boat travel twice all the way across the city, and the second time when there was no urgency. She’d probably send him out for the nails, too.

He had checked the address in Calli, Campielli e Canali , and so found it easily, an undistinguished building with a dark green double door. The doctor’s name was on one of the bells, and the door opened soon after Brunetti rang. The entrance hall smelled of damp; no surprise after the previous day’s rain. At the very end of the hallway, facing the entrance, a door stood open. Brunetti entered and found the standard chair-lined walls of a doctor’s waiting room, though here the chairs were separate, wooden, antique, and beautiful. More surprisingly, the walls displayed, not the usual sentimental portraits of dogs and children, but three fine-lined drawings that drew his eye. At first, he thought they were surreal cityscapes, with abstract towers and cupolas, until closer examination showed that it was his eyes, and not the lines, that created the illusion of a city. The lines were so close together that the background of the drawing seemed grey: Brunetti wondered what technique the artist

had used to put them so flawlessly close, for nowhere did one line touch another.

Brunetti took his reading glasses from his pocket and put them on, the better to study these magical lines that drew the gaze of the viewer with the force of an electromagnet. The second drawing suggested a beach, though here again it was the viewer who imposed this reality on the drawing, where the varied spaces between horizontal lines of different widths and lengths suggested the variation in surface and texture between sand and sea.

The third had to be the facades of the buildings on the eastern side of Campo San Polo, but only a Venetian would see that, just as only a Venetian would recognize Palazzo Soranzo and Palazzo Maffetti-Tiepolo. Or perhaps not. When Brunetti stepped back from the drawing, the distance transformed it into mere lines, closely drawn but utterly abstract and devoid of meaning. He swept his eyes along the three drawings and was very relieved to see that they were covered with glass. Then he moved closer to the third one again, and the magic repeated itself: the palazzi materialized among the lines. Enough to move back forty centimetres, and again they dissolved.

‘Commissario?’ a man’s voice said behind him.

He turned, removed his reading glasses, and saw a short, thickset man a decade younger than himself. Though the doctor wore glasses, Brunetti saw that one eye was slightly larger than the other, or angled differently in his face. Yet when he looked for similar imperfection in his mouth, he found it was perfectly proportioned. He searched for a resemblance to Umberto and found it in the general squareness of the face: ears tight to the head, jawbone prominent and almost as wide as the cheekbones.

Brunetti extended his hand. ‘Thank you for letting me come,’ he said. He had learned, when greeting people who had agreed to speak to him, to say only that and to say nothing at first that would remind them that he was there to ask them questions. He returned his glasses to his pocket.

‘Do you like the drawings?’ the doctor asked.

‘More than that, I’d say.’ Brunetti turned back to them and, from this distance, saw that all three had turned into entirely different images. ‘Where did you get them?’

‘Here,’ Proni said. ‘A local artist.’ Then he turned, saying, ‘Perhaps we’d be more comfortable in my office.’

He held the door open for Brunetti, who passed through what must be the nurse’s reception room and then into the doctor’s, in which there was a desk that held a computer and a small bouquet of orange tulips. Two more of the antique chairs stood in front of the desk, and Brunetti went over to one of them, leaving the doctor to take his seat behind the desk. Being questioned by the police was so alien an experience for most people that it was best to make the circumstances as comfortable and close to normal as possible.

Brunetti sat and glanced around the room. The windows were heavily barred, standard practice in any doctor’s office where drugs might be, or be thought to be. A glass-doored cabinet between the windows, its shelves stacked with unruly piles of boxes of medicine, was exactly what addicts hoped to see: cocktail time. Brunetti was pleased to see another of the drawings on the wall opposite the windows. Had he not seen those in the waiting room, Brunetti would have taken it for an abstract watercolour in different tones of grey, but he now realized that the colour resulted from the closeness of the lines: there could not be a millimetre between them.

Proni called back Brunetti’s attention by saying, ‘I called the hospital and spoke to the doctor in charge of her ward. He says he wants to keep her there for at least another day. The concussion is very slight, but they want to be careful.’

‘Did she tell him what happened?’ Brunetti asked, though he was certain he knew what the answer would be.

‘Just what she told the man who found her: she fell down the steps.’ After saying that, Proni kept his eyes on Brunetti’s.

‘Let’s hope that’s what happened,’ was his response.

‘What does that mean, Commissario?’

‘Exactly what I said, Dottore: I hope that’s what happened.’

‘Instead of?’

‘Instead of an attempt to harm her.’

‘Who would want to do that?’ the Doctor asked, seeming honestly puzzled.

Brunetti allowed himself a small smile. ‘You’d have a better idea of that than I would, Dottore.’

Proni was immediately indignant. ‘If I might repeat myself, what does that mean?’

Brunetti held up one hand and gave a soft answer, to turn away wrath. ‘You’re her doctor, so you’d know more about her life than I do. All I know is that she is the mother of a man who died, Davide Cavanello.’ He knew more than that, but little of it was of substance, and none of any help.

‘What sort of thing do you expect me to know, Commissario?’ Proni asked, careful to use the polite form of address.

Brunetti responded with equal formality. ‘I’d like to know anything you can tell me about the relationship between Signora Cavanella and her son.’

‘She was his mother.’

Try as he might, Brunetti found no sarcasm there, so he responded quite naturally. ‘Was she a good mother?’

Proni’s face remained unchanged. ‘That’s an entirely subjective judgement, one I’m not qualified to make.’ There was no apology in his voice, only explanation. ‘She took care of his physical needs to the best of her ability, if that’s the sort of information you’re looking for.’

It wasn’t, but it was still information Brunetti had not had before and was glad to have. He did, however, find it interesting that the doctor specified physical needs and did not describe her ability.

Brunetti had no intention of telling him that he had seen Ana Cavanella’s medical records: no doctor should know how easily they were available to anyone skilled enough to look for them. ‘Could you give me a general idea of her health?’

The doctor’s eyes contracted, as if he had been awaiting a question about the son and not the mother. He appeared to give the question some thought and then answered, ‘I’d say that, for a woman of her age, she’s healthy. She doesn’t smoke and never has, drinks moderately – not even that – and to the best of my knowledge has never taken drugs.’

‘Did you prescribe the sleeping pills, Dottore?’

This question could not have surprised him, yet the doctor failed to disguise his nervousness in answering it. He pulled his eyes away from Brunetti’s and looked at the drawing on the far wall, then said, eyes still on the drawing, ‘Yes, I did.’