Donna Leon - The Golden Egg

Was this what it would be like if he were single, if he lived alone and had never married? Paola’s grandmother’s china would not be in the cabinets, there would be no Canaletto on the wall, nor would the corner of the counter display the herd of ceramic statues of animals that Chiara had been bringing home for years. No yellow duck, no pink elephant, nor giraffe, nor family of penguins. Liberation from these thoughts came from the bubbling noise of the Moka. He took the cup from the sink, poured in the coffee, and added sugar.

An hour later, he and Griffoni sat in front of Brunetti’s new computer, a copy of the late King of Copper’s carta d’identità on the screen before them: Ludovico Fadalti. ‘I thought his name was Lembo,’ Griffoni said. ‘Not Fadalti.’ She put her finger on the screen, almost as if she thought Brunetti incapable of reading the name printed there.

‘She told you the company was the mother’s, didn’t she?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Yes, she did. But the company is called Lembo.’

Brunetti hit a key, and a new carta d’identità appeared: same date and place of birth, same photo, but the surname was now ‘Lembo’.

‘He had it changed,’ Brunetti said. He had never heard of anyone actually doing this and was curious about how much the man born Fadalti had been willing to renounce on his path to becoming the King of Copper. ‘The children could then be called by the mother’s name.’

He looked at the other documents they had accessed: birth and death certificates, driver’s licence, marriage certificate, health system registration. Lembo had had no travel pass, as these had been initiated only a few years ago, but perhaps wealthy men in their eighties were not given to taking the vaporetto. His passport had been registered and re-registered up until four years before his death, and his bank accounts and credit cards had been closed only after his death.

On all official documents, beginning soon after the marriage, his name was given as Lembo. He recalled Lucrezia’s birth certificate: he could not remember having seen any sign of ‘Fadalti’ there, so the metamorphosis had been complete before her birth.

He retrieved her birth certificate, then the wedding certificate of her parents. Same year, yes, but only six months apart. He nudged Griffoni and pointed to the two dates.

‘ Mamma mia ,’ she said. ‘Even in dissolute Naples, that sort of thing wasn’t common sixty years ago – certainly not among people of their class.’

‘Even less so here,’ Brunetti added.

Official sources exhausted, he went back to Google and put in the name Ludovico Lembo. Pages of articles appeared, though when he read quickly through the listings, he saw that although in many his name appeared, they didn’t centre on him. He began a new search, using Ludovico Fadalti, but there was no reference in the press to a church wedding: no basilica, bride arriving in a white gondola, blessing by the Patriarch. A few subsequent articles reported on the early years of Lucrezia’s wild ride through life, listing Ludovico only because he was her father.

They found a few articles about him, when he was still Ludovico Fadalti: son of a Venetian engineer, only child, degree from the University of Padova. There were a number of articles about Lembo Minerals that provided information about the company and its success under the ‘dynamic direction’ of Ludovico who-knew-when-his-name-had-become-Lembo the engineer whose ‘skills and initiative’ gave direction to a traditional company while maintaining the ‘family-centred concepts’ that had propelled its success during the early years of the century. The earliest of these articles, it seemed, had been written years after the ‘dynamic’ new path had been set for the company. There was a meagre record of the early years of Lembo’s – Brunetti decided he might as well give in and call him that – leadership. There were references to the honours he later received from business and industrial organizations, culminating in his nomination, two years before he left the company, as ‘Cavaliere del Lavoro’.

Starting in the mid-1970s, articles began to appear about the women in the family, featuring the haughty Signora Lembo and her two beautiful daughters. Seeing them posed in photo after photo, the mother’s arms encircling her teenaged daughters in a gesture redolent of love, Brunetti thought of the Mother of the Gracchi, she too glowing with pride as she displayed her jewels. Signora Lembo, he learned, was distinguished by her intense faith and ceaseless good works in the cause of Holy Mother Church. There was even a photo of her kneeling, unrecognizable in a black veil, head bowed over the extended hand of the Pope.

Then, slowly, during the next decade, the articles disappeared, replaced by articles about the woman, no longer young, whom they had apparently decided to call ‘The Princess of Copper’.

He stood to stretch his back, leaving the computer to Griffoni. She continued reading while he walked over to the window, bent to feel the radiator, which was still cold, and began to study the figures in the campo on the other side of the canal.

The father, he realized, was yet another disappearing person, though this one had given up only his name. Was it worth it, in order to become King of Copper, and what was the rest of the price? To marry the woman whom the gutter press presented as a saint? His first-born daughter had married a gigolo half her age and was now cushioning her final years with drugs or drink. The second had gone off to God-haunted Ireland to study and work, apparently to settle there. The last-born had died at twenty, and her mother had decamped soon after, leaving the former King of Copper, in his eighties, with a new companion, to die on the Giudecca.

He turned back towards Griffoni and watched her work for a minute or two. She had become enthralled in the search for information: nothing else was. Brunetti was too far away to be able to read the screen, but he could see each page flash up, flash away, only to be replaced by another, and then another.

At last she pulled her hands away from the keys and turned towards him. ‘Most of the articles about the parents are public relations nonsense. Worthless. Especially the obituaries.’

‘Only saints die,’ Brunetti said.

‘What?’

‘Only saints die. In obituaries, everyone is a saint; everything else is washed away.’

‘I’m afraid you’re right,’ she said and killed the page. ‘What do you suggest we do?’

He waved a hand at the computer. ‘Why don’t we take a look in there for the name of someone who might

have known them?’

24

That took some time. Brunetti finally, after explaining that he and Commissario Griffoni needed her help, enlisted Signorina Elettra to access the records of the state pension fund, where she found the names of two former employees of the Lembo family, a maid and a man whose job was listed as ‘major-domo’. But the man had arrived after Lucrezia’s marriage, so he would know nothing of the early history of either the marriage or the company.

The maid, however, had worked for the Lembo family all the time that Ana Cavanella had been there and had then remained on for another thirty years. Griffoni sat opposite him, with between them some sheets of paper that Signorina Elettra had delivered. Brunetti, while appearing to pay no attention, had been acutely conscious of the way the two women dealt with each other during Signorina Elettra’s brief apparition in the room and, like those seeking Signs of Peace from Heaven, had seen them.

‘So the maid would have seen it all,’ he remarked to Griffoni.

‘One trembles at the thought of what that might have been,’ Griffoni answered.