Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [82]
He had meant it as a joke: it was common enough for kids to confound the two languages. But the truth had sliced into Brunetti’s sense of self – a sense made delicate by having to wear his brother’s cast-off shoes and jackets – for his father had indeed once worked at the docks, unloading ships for a living. It was that day and that remark that Brunetti remembered as the worst thing that had happened to him as a child. His university education, his position as a commissario of police, the stature and wealth of his wife’s family: all of these things could be called into question by the memory of those words and the pain caused by their unintentional truth.
‘The strange thing,’ Brunetti said, holding up his glass to Raffi though speaking in defence of Chiara’s position, ‘is that I probably couldn’t tell the difference between this, and the prosecco we drink every day.’
‘Every day?’ Paola asked, though not before Brunetti had exchanged a smile with his daughter.
‘The prosecco we normally drink,’ he said, correcting the ambiguity. He finished his champagne, picked up the empty bottle, and went to the refrigerator in search of a second. He settled for their everyday prosecco and took it back to the table.
‘What your father is doing,’ Paola said to the children as Brunetti unpeeled the foil wrapping, ‘is giving an example of the scientific method. He is not prepared,’ she continued, ‘to allow his remark to go untested.’
‘Which one?’ Raffi asked. ‘About the difference between champagne and prosecco or that you drink it every day?’
‘Two pigeons with one bean,’ Brunetti said, a remark that was followed by a very loud ‘Pop.’
23
The following morning, Brunetti woke early and went to make himself coffee. While he was waiting for the coffee to boil, he went to the back window, hoping the mountains would be visible, but they were not. He stared at the distant haze while he considered the strange case of Madame Reynard. There was no way of knowing, short of asking them directly, how Sartori and Morandi had come to sign the will. And why had a woman of Madame Reynard’s age – to make no mention of her wealth – been in the Ospedale Civile and not a private clinic?
The spluttering of the coffee distracted him. He poured it out, stirred in some sugar, and added cold milk, though he would have preferred it to be heated. He returned to his thoughts. In what conjunction had the orbits of those four people intersected in a hospital room: a dying heiress and the lawyer who became her heir; the witnesses to the handwritten will that named him as such? As if fallen from the heavens, a practical nurse and a man with a criminal record had witnessed the will that saw to the transfer of millions. An odd constellation, and how large was the apartment which one of the witnesses bought soon thereafter?
His thoughts turned to the woman who had been living with Signora Altavilla. Brunetti recalled with some uneasiness his initial willingness to suspect, not her, but her lover, the chemistry teacher with the courage to come and warn Signora Altavilla of the cuckoo in her nest. The southerner.
He stared at the painting on the kitchen wall, of the Grand Canal as it had appeared centuries before, then he pictured Signora Altavilla’s apartment as they had found it. He looked again at their painting, and the sight conjured up the memory of the lonely nails on Signora Altavilla’s walls. He retrieved his telefonino from his jacket pocket and dialled Niccolini’s number.
As soon as the doctor heard his name, he said, ‘Commissario, I was going to call you today.’
‘About what, Dottore?’ Brunetti asked, relieved that he was being spared an exchange of pleasantries, though there was nothing pleasant either man had to say to the other.
‘My mother’s apartment. Some things are missing,’ Niccolini said, sounding troubled, not angry.
‘How do you know this, Dottore?’
‘I went there yesterday. With a friend. Just to see. He came with me to …’ His voice faded, but Brunetti, at