Donna Leon - The Golden Egg

He paid and started towards the Questura.

He found Griffoni in Signorina Elettra’s office, the two of them sitting behind the computer like friends at a PlayStation. When he came in, Griffoni was saying, ‘Could you go back to her will, please?’

She used the familiar tu , and Signorina Elettra answered in kind, when she said, ‘But you’ve already seen it.’

‘I know, but I want . . .’ Griffoni began but stopped when she became aware of Brunetti standing at the door, all traces of paternal approbation wiped from his face. ‘Come and look at this,’ she said, moving her chair to clear a space between them.

‘It’s Signora Lembo’s will,’ she explained, pointing to the monitor. He saw that she had died fifteen years before. ‘Her husband and daughters got her interest in the company, and almost all of the rest was divided among them.’ He looked at the copy of the will and saw what a considerable ‘rest’ it was. She tapped at a name, Sister Maria Rosaria Lembo-Malfa, who had received a modest sum. She was probably the nun who lived with them: perhaps nuns didn’t need large bequests.

‘They were still married?’ Brunetti asked. Her husband had left her for the physical therapist, Brunetti recalled, but a man of his wealth was unlikely to complicate his finances with a divorce.

‘Of course,’ Signorina Elettra answered, and hit a few keys, to display the last will and testament of Ludovico Lembo. Both the company and all of his remaining wealth were divided evenly between Lucrezia and Lavinia. There were no codicils, no other stipulations, just that simple statement of desire prefaced and followed by the usual decoration of legal terminology.

Griffoni moved her chair farther to the side and turned to him. ‘What did she tell you?’

‘That she worked for Lucrezia Lembo: that’s where the money’s coming from. The first’s a lie.’ She nodded her agreement and he went on. ‘It took her a while to understand about the usufrutto , but when she did, she said it wouldn’t matter.’

‘Which means?’ Signorina Elettra asked.

‘That she has a plan of some sort. Or a place to go. She’s not troubled in the least.’

‘How smart is she?’ Griffoni asked.

Brunetti had not thought about Cavanella in these terms, but his answer was immediate: ‘Not very.’ Seeing that this was insufficient, he went on. ‘She doesn’t think about the consequences of things. I doubt she plans anything or thinks anything through. Or she thinks she does, but doesn’t know how to do it.’

Silence fell as each of them tried to find a way to continue this conversation. Finally Brunetti said, ‘Beni Borsetta was in her room.’ He used the nickname because it was the more widely known; the lawyer’s real name had almost fallen into disuse apart from direct address or by someone meeting him for the first time.

‘ Oddio ,’ Griffoni exclaimed. ‘If we need proof that she’s stupid, there it is. Poor woman.’

A more reflective Signorina Elettra asked Brunetti, ‘Do you have any idea what he was doing there?’

‘Trying to earn money by persuading her to bring a case against someone, I’d guess,’ Griffoni interrupted to answer. Neither of the others tried to contradict her, even though she’d been in Venice only a few years.

Brunetti thought about the extent of Beni’s creative genius. Would he try to sue the pharmaceutical company for having sold a sleeping pill that was packaged like a sweet? The rescue service for being late? The social services for forty years of negligence?

Beni, he knew, was willing to take chances with his clients: there was no ambulance he would not chase. But he doubted that even a gambler like Beni would waste his time in litigation about any of those claims. No lawyer in his right mind, even one with a better reputation than Beni Borsetta’s, would go up against Big Pharma with such a weak case; the rescue services came when they came; and where was Davide’s birth certificate to authorize the intervention of the social services?

‘While you have that turned on,’ he said to Signorina Elettra, his choice of words causing her to close her eyes in momentary distress, ‘could you check the register of the lawyers and see if Avvocato Cresti is still listed?’ Walking to the Questura, he had recalled a few incidents in Beni’s variegated past when he had been threatened with expulsion from the union of lawyers and one time – it must have been ten years ago – when a judge had had him removed from the courtroom by the bailiffs when he refused to stop talking. Beni, in Brunetti’s estimation, was not a man who would learn from his mistakes, and certainly change of behaviour was not in his repertory.

He stepped back to give Signorina Elettra better access to the computer; Griffoni leaned to her left, better to see the screen, but did not move her chair. Brunetti folded his arms and studied the screen from behind them. Documents appeared on the monitor but remained there for such a brief time that he had no chance to read them. Griffoni, he noticed, occasionally wrote things in a notebook open on the desk beside her. Once she asked Signorina Elettra to explain something, nodded at her answer, muttering, ‘Very nice.’

After ten minutes, Signorina Elettra swivelled around and said, ‘If he’s practising law, he’s also breaking it. He’s been barred for three years, and the time isn’t up for another twenty-seven months.’

Beni might be a friend of Ana Cavanella’s, Brunetti supposed, were it not that Beni didn’t have any friends. The fact that his visit had taken place in the hospital made it even more certain that he had been in pursuit of work, not practising one of the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy. If he needed proof of Ana Cavanella’s lack of intelligence, the fact that she would have anything to do with Beni Borsetta was more than enough.

With a pleasant nod in the direction of the computer, Brunetti asked, ‘You think that thing could find his address and phone number?’

Avvocato Cresti, when Brunetti called him a short time later, sounded not in the least surprised to be contacted by an officer of the law. Indeed, he was vociferous in his expressions of goodwill towards the Commissario, whom he had met on various occasions and remembered well. Eager to be of service to the state, he seemed delighted to learn that all it requested of him was conversation. He asked for a moment to check his calendar and seemed even more delighted to discover that he had a convenient gap in his schedule and could pass by the Questura in an hour. That is, unless it suited the Commissario’s convenience that they meet in some other place?

‘My office is fine, Avvocato,’ Brunetti interrupted the stream of words to say and broke the connection before the lawyer could return to the floodgates. Brunetti had twice been a witness in trials where Beni had appeared for the defence and remembered clearly the feeling he had had, both times, of being suffocated by irrelevant detail. He had been in the courtrooms only briefly, but he had heard enough not to be surprised when both of Beni’s clients lost their cases.

Griffoni had opted to remain downstairs with Signorina Elettra, who had started to explain to her the easiest way to access the records of two state agencies which had, until then, proven resistant to all legitimate requests for information on the holding company that owned the company that owned the chain of hotels that had displayed interest in acquiring the gutted factory. As he left the office, the last thing Brunetti had heard was Griffoni, saying, ‘It’s like one of those Russian dolls, isn’t it? There’s always something else inside.’

Brunetti went to the window and stared down at the water of the canal and, not for the first time, began to ask himself what in heaven’s name he had been doing for the last week. He had not broken any laws, he had not lied to any of the people he had spoken to, he had not subverted the cause of justice in any way. But he had also not learned anything significant about Davide Cavanella. His mother was a liar, his doctor knew more about him than he was willing to say, an old woman knew probably even more but would not say what that was, and the daughter of his mother’s former employer lived in a buffered world where she didn’t have to know or say anything and was probably paying her way out of having to.