Drawing Conclusions - Donna Leon [98]
‘How did you meet her?’ Brunetti asked.
Morandi smiled at the question and at the memory. ‘I was working as a porter at the hospital and I had to go into a room to help lift one of the patients on to a stretcher so they could take him down for tests, and Maria was there already, helping the nurse.’ He looked at the wall to the left of Brunetti, perhaps seeing the hospital room. ‘But they were both very small women and couldn’t do it, so I asked them to get out of my way, and I lifted the man onto the stretcher, and when they thanked me, Maria smiled, and … well, I suppose …’ His voice trailed off but his smile remained.
‘I knew right then, you know,’ he said to Brunetti, man to man, though Brunetti thought more women than men would understand this, ‘that she was the one. And nothing in all these years has changed that.’
‘You’re a lucky man,’ Brunetti repeated, thinking that any man, or any woman, who spent decades wrapped in this feeling was a lucky person. Why, then, had they never married? He recalled the thuggish first impression Morandi had made and wondered if perhaps he had an inconvenient family lodged somewhere. Paola often referred to men who had a Mrs Rochester in the attic: did Morandi have one?
‘I think so,’ Morandi said, the key still in his hand.
‘How long has Signora Sartori been here?’ Brunetti asked, waving his hand to take in all that stood around them, as innocently as if copies of all of the payments for her care from the day she entered were not sitting on his desk to be checked at a glance.
‘Three years now,’ he said, a time that began, as Brunetti knew, with the deposit of the first of Turchetti’s cheques.
‘It’s a very good place. She’s very lucky to be here,’ Brunetti said. He would not allow himself to mention his mother’s experience, and so he said only, ‘I know that some of the other places in the city don’t take as good care as the sisters here do.’ When Morandi failed to answer, Brunetti said, ‘I’ve heard stories about the public places.’
‘We were very lucky,’ Morandi said earnestly, failing to take the bait, or avoiding it; Brunetti was not sure.
‘I’ve heard it’s very expensive,’ Brunetti said, using the voice of one citizen to another.
‘We had a little put by,’ Morandi said.
Brunetti leaned forward and took the key from Morandi’s hand. ‘Is this where they are?’ he asked, holding it up. When the old man did not answer, Brunetti slipped the key into the watch pocket of his trousers.
Morandi placed his right hand on his thigh, as if to cover the place where the key had been. Then he put the left on the other thigh. He looked at Brunetti, his face paler than it had been. ‘Did she tell you?’
Brunetti did not know if he meant Signora Sartori or Signora Altavilla, and so he answered, ‘It doesn’t matter who told me, does it, Signore? Just that I have the key and know what’s there.’
‘They don’t belong to anyone, you know,’ the old man insisted. ‘They’re all dead, all the people who wanted them.’
‘How did you get them?’
‘The old French woman had them in the house. Inside a hamper for the washing.’ He must have read the flash of concern on Brunetti’s face for he said, ‘No, they were in a plastic case on the bottom. They were safe.’
‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘But how did you get them?’ He used the plural form of ‘you’.
Morandi reacted to the word this time. ‘Maria didn’t know anything about them. She wouldn’t have liked it. Not at all. She wouldn’t have let me take them.’
‘Oh, I see, I see,’ Brunetti said, wondering how many more times he would have to say this same thing when, as now, what