Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [83]
‘To help.’
Brunetti certainly understood that.
‘Could you tell me what’s missing?’ Brunetti prodded.
‘Three drawings,’ the doctor answered. ‘They were all quite small.’
‘Is that all?’
‘I think so. So far, that is.’
‘Missing from where?
‘One was in the guest room. And two were in the hallway just outside it.’
Brunetti remembered the ghost shadows under the nails in the guest room, was vaguely conscious of two in the hallway. He did not remember seeing any others. But surely, if Gabriela Pavon had decided to add them to her last-minute packing, then those were the easiest to grab. What nerve she must have had, to take them while the other two women were just down the corridor.
‘What were they, the drawings?’
‘One was a Corot. The other two were by Salvator Rosa. Small, but good quality.’
The doctor remained silent for a long time, and then he said, sounding weak and hesitant, ‘I thought I should tell you. It might mean something.’ Brunetti thanked the doctor and hung up.
He sat and looked at the painting for some time, and then he finished his coffee, set the cup in the sink, and went to take a shower.
Forty minutes later, he emerged on to the embankment of San Lorenzo. He rested his elbows on the railing and watched the boats pass by, trying to think of how he might convince Patta to pursue more actively an official investigation into the death of Signora Altavilla. He imagined the statue of blindfolded Justice, in her hand the scales of her trade. On one side he put the words ‘only a possibility’ and on the other the publicity sure to accrue at the news that a woman had been killed in her home. After all these years, he was well aware of the workings of his superior’s mind and knew that the first obstacle would be the damage to the image of the city, second the damage to tourism.
‘And the effect on tourism?’ an outraged Patta demanded of him half an hour later, reversing the order of his concerns but still not managing to surprise Brunetti. The Vice-Questore had, by evident force of will, contained himself until he finished listening to these latest ravings from his ever-insubordinate subordinate. ‘What are we supposed to tell these people? That they aren’t safe in their homes, but to have a good time anyway?’
Brunetti, well schooled in the rhetorical excesses and inconsistencies of his superior, forbore to point out that tourists, at least when they were in Venice, were not in their homes, however safe or unsafe they might be therein. He nodded in a manner he hoped would be considered sage.
Brunetti concentrated on meeting his superior’s gaze – Patta hated to have anyone’s attention stray from him, surely the first step on the road to disobedience – and gave every appearance that he was dealing with rational opposition. ‘Yes, I see your point, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said. ‘I just hope that Dottor Niccolini …’ he allowed his voice to trail away, as if his thoughts had been written on a blackboard and he was wiping them out.
‘What about him?’ Patta asked, eyes alert to everything he considered a nuance.
‘Nothing, sir,’ Brunetti said evasively, uncertain whether he should be bored or mortified by his own behaviour.
‘What about Dottor Niccolini?’ Patta said in a cold voice, exactly the one Brunetti had tried to provoke.
‘That’s just it, sir: he’s a doctor. That’s how he introduced himself at the hospital, and that’s how Rizzardi addressed him.’ This was pure fantasy on Brunetti’s part. But it might have been true, which sufficed.
‘And so?’
‘They asked him to identify his mother’s body,’ Brunetti added, trying to make it sound as if he were suggesting something to Patta that delicacy made difficult to say.
‘People just see the face,’ Patta asserted, but an instant later he compromised his certainty by asking, ‘don’t they?’
Brunetti nodded and said, ‘Of course,’ as though that were the end of it.
‘What does that mean?’ Patta demanded in a voice intended to be menacing but which Brunetti, familiar