Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [97]
‘I’d like to know about the key,’ Brunetti said.
‘So she did have it,’ Morandi said with quiet resignation.
‘Yes.’
The old man shook his head in evident regret. ‘I was sure she did, but she told me it wasn’t there.’
‘It wasn’t,’ Brunetti told him.
‘What?’
‘She’d given it to someone else.’
‘Her son?’
‘A friend.’
‘Oh,’ Morandi said, resigned, then added, ‘she should have given it to me.’
‘Did you ask her for it?
‘Of course,’ Morandi said. ‘That’s why I went there; to get it back.’
‘But?’
‘But she wouldn’t give it to me. She said she knew what it was and that it wasn’t right for me to have it, or to have them.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘Did Signora Sartori tell her?’
The old man gave himself a shake, the way Brunetti had seen dogs do. It started with his head and gradually enveloped his shoulders and part of his arms. Two more strands of hair broke free of his scalp and draped themselves across the lapel of his jacket. Brunetti did not know if he was trying to shake away Brunetti’s question or the answer it required. After he stopped moving, the old man still did not speak.
‘I suppose Signora Sartori must have told her,’ Brunetti said resignedly, as though he had just followed a very complicated train of thought, and this was the only place it could lead.
‘Told her what?’ the old man asked, but his voice was slowed by tiredness, not by suspicion.
‘About what you and Signora Sartori did,’ Brunetti answered.
As if suddenly aware of the disorder of his hair, Morandi raised a hand and delicately replaced the wanton strands, draping them one after the other across the pink dome of his head. He patted them into place, then kept his hand on them as if waiting for some signal that they had adhered to the surface.
He lowered his hand and said, not looking at Brunetti when he spoke, ‘She shouldn’t have told her. Maria, that is. But ever since she … since this happened to her, she hasn’t been careful about what she says, and she …’ He trailed off, patted his hair into place again, though it was not necessary, and looked across at Brunetti, as though he expected some response to what he had said. ‘She drifts,’ he finally said.
‘What do the doctors say?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Oh, doctors,’ Morandi answered angrily, waving his hand at some place behind him, as if the doctors were lined up there and, hearing him, should be embarrassed. ‘One of them said it was a small stroke, but another says it might be the beginning of Al … of something else.’ When Brunetti said nothing and the invisible doctors did not contest his remarks, Morandi went on. ‘It’s just old age. And worry.’
‘I’m sorry she’s worried,’ Brunetti said. ‘She deserves peace and quiet.’
Morandi smiled, bowed his head as at a compliment he did not deserve, and said, ‘Yes, she does. She’s the most wonderful woman in the world.’ Brunetti heard the real tremor in his voice. He waited, and Morandi added, ‘I’ve never known anyone like her.’
‘You must know her very well to be this devoted to her, Signore,’ Brunetti said.
Because Morandi had again lowered his head, Brunetti could see only his pink scalp and the dark strands of hair that transected it. But as he watched, the pink grew darker and Morandi said, ‘She’s everything.’
Brunetti let some time pass before he said, ‘You’re lucky.’
‘I know that,’ Morandi said, and again Brunetti heard the tremor.
‘How long have you known her?’
‘Since the sixteenth of July, nineteen fifty-nine.’
‘I was still a child,’ Brunetti said.
‘Well, I was a man by then,’ Morandi said, then added in a softer voice, ‘but not a very good one and not a very nice one.’
‘But then you met her?’ Brunetti encouraged him.
Morandi looked up then, and Brunetti saw that same smile, strangely childlike. ‘Yes.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘At three-thirty in the afternoon.’
‘You’re lucky to remember the day so clearly,’ Brunetti said, surprised that he could no longer remember the date he met Paola. He knew the year, certainly, and remembered