Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [44]
He dropped the magazine on the table and handed her back her glasses. ‘What’s it about?’
‘It’s one of the usual horror articles, the sort of thing you wish you hadn’t started reading but then can’t stop once you begin. About what’s done to them.’
‘Chickens? Horror chickens?’ he enquired, listening to the sound of crackling from the oven, a sure portent of what was roasting inside.
‘It’s something Chiara brought home and told me to read.’ Paola rested her head on her hand and asked, ‘Do you think that’s another sign that they’ve grown beyond your control?’
‘What?’
‘When they stop asking you to read things and start telling you to read them?’
‘It could be,’ he said and went over to the refrigerator in search of something that would dull the horror of the chicken. Lying in one of the drawers at the bottom he saw a few bottles of Moët. ‘Where’d the champagne come from?’ he asked.
‘One of my students,’ she answered.
‘Students?’
‘Yes. He passed his final exam a few days ago, and he sent me a few bottles.’
‘Why?’
‘I oversaw his thesis. It was brilliant, about the use of the imagery of light in the late novels.’ Suddenly alert, Brunetti realized this was the moment crucial for intervention. If he did not act immediately, head her off, stop her, he was faced with a yet-to-be-determined period of time listening to what a student had written, under the direction of his lady wife, about the use of light imagery in the late novels of Henry James. Considering the fact that he had recently endured a meeting with Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta and yesterday had had only three tramezzini – one stolen – for lunch, he decided that no time was to be lost.
‘How many bottles did he send you?’ he asked, stalling for time.
‘A few cases.’
‘What?’
‘A few cases. Three or four, I don’t remember.’
This, Brunetti knew, was the consequence of being born into a noble family that was possessed not only of pedigree but of great wealth: you lost count of the cases of Moët that a student sent you.
‘That’s a bribe,’ he declared in his bad cop voice.
‘What?’
‘A bribe. I’m shocked you’d accept it. I hope you didn’t give him a high grade on this thesis.’
‘As high as I could. It was brilliant.’
Brunetti buried his face in his hands and moaned. He pulled out one of the bottles and took two glasses from the cabinet. He put the glasses on the table, making a lot of noise as he set them down, then turned his attention to the bottle, ripping off the gold foil. He aimed the cork at the far corner and pushed it off: the explosion shot through the house and warmed his heart.
He had disturbed the bottle, and so the champagne foamed out and ran across his hand. Quickly, he poured some into the first glass, which it overran, then into the second, where the same thing happened. Two small puddles spread round the glasses.
‘Quick, quick,’ he said, handing her a glass. Saying nothing else, he tapped his glass against hers, said ‘Cin, cin,’ and drank deep. ‘Ah,’ he said, at peace with the world once more. With another quick swig, he emptied the glass.
‘What’s the matter with you?’ Paola asked, then picked up her glass and took a sip after she said it. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Destroying the evidence.’
‘Oh, you are a fool, Guido,’ she said, but she laughed while she said it and the bubbles went up her nose and made her cough.
Lunch was, perhaps because of the bubbles or the laughter or some combination of the two, an easy, comfortable meal. Chiara seemed satisfied when her mother assured her that the chicken was a free range, bio chicken, that it had lived a healthy, happy life, and Brunetti, a man sworn to keep the peace, did so by not enquiring