Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [28]
They continued, following the curve to the right, and Vianello said, returning to what Brunetti had told him, ‘It makes you understand why nothing’s ever clear, a story like that.’
‘You mean the rhinoceros? That was or wasn’t there? And that was or wasn’t a rhinoceros?’
‘Yes. Once it gets said, someone will believe it and repeat it, and then hundreds of years later, people are still repeating it.’
‘And it’s become the truth?’
‘Sort of,’ Vianello answered, sounding reluctant. They walked in silence for some time, and then he observed, ‘It’s pretty much the same today, isn’t it?’
‘That stories aren’t reliable?’ Brunetti asked.
‘That people invent stories, and then after a time there’s no telling what’s true and what isn’t.’
They turned into the campo, and the sun came back to work in front of them, lifting their mood. The trees still had their leaves, a number of people sat on the benches beneath them, and the open vista soothed their eyes.
They crossed the campo without speaking. Brunetti couldn’t remember which door it was, though he knew it was in the line of buildings to the right of the church. He stopped at the first row of bells and read the list, but only family names were given. On a panel next to the second door he found ‘Sacra Famiglia’ and rang the bell.
It was almost a full minute before a female voice, old and wavering, asked who it was. ‘Brunetti,’ he said, adding, ‘I’m a friend of Signora Altavilla’s …’ He prevented himself from continuing the lie, or at least the full lie, by concluding, ‘… son.’
‘She’s not here,’ the voice said, sounding querulous, though that might have been nothing more than the speaker-phone. ‘She didn’t come in today.’
‘I know that, Suora,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’d like to speak to the Mother Superior.’
The voice said something neither he nor Vianello could hear, and then the door snapped open. They stepped into a large entrance hall, its pavement laid out in the orange and white chequerboard pattern so common to buildings of this epoch. Nothing more than dimness entered through the grillwork of a row of windows at the back of the building. They ignored the elevator and took the staircase to the right of it. A small old woman stood at the only door on the first floor: her clothing spoke of her vows before her size and stance spoke of her age.
She nodded as the two men approached, then put out her hand. Both of them had to angle down their arms, almost as though they were shaking hands with a child: she came to their chests and actually had to put her head back to look into their eyes. ‘I’m Madre Rosa,’ she said, ‘Mother Superior here. Suora Grazia said you wanted to speak to me.’ She stepped back inside the door to get a better look at them. ‘I have to say I don’t like the look of you.’
Her face remained unmoved as she spoke, and her accent revealed even more strongly its origins far south of Venice.
One of the tenets of the mental identikit Brunetti possessed held that southerners, even the children, always recognized policemen, and so he asked, smiling as he did so, ‘Is that because we’re men or because we’re big, or because we’re policemen?’
She stepped back further and nodded to them to enter. She closed the door after them and said, ‘I know already that Costanza’s dead, so any policeman who comes saying he’s a friend of hers is lying in order to get information. That’s why I don’t like the look of you. I don’t care how big you are.’
Brunetti was struck with a sudden sympathy for the people he had outwitted in questioning and admired this woman, who had made child’s play of his attempt; further, he admired her directness in telling him her feelings. ‘I’m not a friend of her son’s, either, Madre,’ he confessed. ‘But I did just speak to him,