‘I’m sorry, Signora. Sorry you had to learn it this way.’
‘There’s no way to learn it,’ she said coolly, but seeing his response, added, ‘is there?’
‘How long did he have the disease?’ Brunetti asked from simple curiosity.
‘That’s hard to say,’ she told him. ‘At first he thought he was just gaining weight. Nothing helped: no matter how little he ate, he kept getting heavier. It went on for almost a year. So he asked a friend. They’d been at university together, but Luigi went on to study medicine: human medicine, that is. He said what he thought it was, but we didn’t believe him at first. We couldn’t, really: Andrea never drank more than a glass or two of wine with dinner, often nothing, so it didn’t seem possible.’ She shifted her legs and moved around on her chair.
‘Then about six months ago, he had a biopsy and a scan. And that’s what it was.’ All emotion scoured from her voice, she said, ‘There’s no treatment and no cure.’ Then, with a false smile, she added, ‘But it’s not life-threatening. It turns you into a barrel, but it doesn’t kill you.’
The false smile now forgotten, she said, ‘But you didn’t come here to talk about that, did you?’
Brunetti tried to assess how much he could ask of her and decided to risk speaking frankly. ‘No, we didn’t, Signora.’ He paused, then asked, ‘Is there anyone who might have wanted to do your husband an injury?’
‘Besides me, you mean?’ she asked with absolute lack of humour. Brunetti was taken aback by her remark and, glancing at Vianello, saw that the Inspector was, as well.
‘Because of the separation?’ Brunetti asked.
She looked out of the window, studying the mess in the garden. ‘Because of what caused the separation,’ she finally answered.
‘Which was?’ Brunetti asked.
‘The oldest cliché in the world, Commissario. A woman where he worked, who is more than ten years younger than he is.’ Then, with real rancour, she added, ‘Or I am, which is perhaps closer to the point.’ She looked at Brunetti directly, as if to suggest that he lived with a woman, too, and was merely biding his time before doing the same thing.
‘He left you for her?’ Brunetti asked.
‘No. He had an affair with her, and when he told me about it – I suppose the right word here is “confessed” – he said he hadn’t wanted to do it, that she’d seduced him.’ Like a thermometer on to which the morning sun begins to shine, the bitterness in her voice rose as she spoke.
Brunetti waited. This was not a moment when a man could interrupt a woman who was speaking.
‘He said he thought she planned it.’ Abruptly, she raised one hand and made a waving gesture, as though she wanted to shoo away her husband, or the woman, or the memory of what he had said. Then, voice just over the edge of bitterness, she added, ‘It wouldn’t be the first time a man’s claimed that, would it?’
Vianello, in his good-cop voice, slipped in to ask, ‘You said he told you about it, Signora. Why was that?’
She glanced at the Inspector, reminded that he was there. ‘He said the woman was going to tell me, so he wanted to be the one to do it before she did.’ She raised her hand and rubbed at her forehead a few times. ‘To tell me, that is.’
She gave the Inspector a level glance, then turned to Brunetti. ‘So he didn’t leave me for her, Commissario. I told him to get out.’
‘And he left?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Yes. He left the same day. Well, the next day.’ She sat quietly for some time, apparently reflecting on those events. ‘We had to talk about what to tell Teo.’ Then, in a softer voice, she said, ‘I don’t think there’s anything you can tell them – children – not really.’
Brunetti was tempted to ask her what they had told their son, but he could not justify that and so he asked, instead, ‘When did this happen?’
‘Three months ago. We’ve both spoken to lawyers and signed papers.’
‘And where was this leading, Signora?’
‘Do you mean was I going to divorce him?’
‘Yes.’
‘Of course.’ More slowly and far more thoughtfully, she added, ‘Not for the affair; please understand that. But because he didn’t have the courage of it, because he had to play the victim.’ Then, in a savage voice, she said, one arm raised across her breast and hand grabbing her shoulder as if to contain her rage, ‘I hate victims. I hate people who don’t have the courage of their own foul behaviour and blame it on someone else or something else.’ She fought herself into silence, but lost the fight and went on: ‘I hate the cowardice of it. People have affairs. They have affairs all the time. But for God’s sake, at least admit that you did it. Don’t go blaming the woman or the man. Just say you did it and, if you’re sorry, say you’re sorry, but don’t go blaming some other person for your own weakness or stupidity.’
She stopped, exhausted, perhaps not so much by what she had said as by the circumstances in which she had said it. Two complete strangers, after all, and policemen, to boot, who had come to tell her that her husband was dead.
‘Assuming that you are not the person responsible, Signora,’ Brunetti said with the smallest of smiles, hoping that his irony would turn her away from the path this conversation seemed to have taken, ‘can you think of anyone else who might have wanted to harm your husband?’
She weighed his question, and her face softened. ‘Before I answer that, let me tell you one thing,’ she said.
Brunetti nodded.
‘The papers said the man in Venice – Andrea – was found on Monday morning,’ she said, but it was a question.
Brunetti answered it. ‘Yes.’
‘I was here with my sister that night. She brought her two kids over, and we had dinner together, and then they all spent the night here.’
Brunetti permitted himself a glance in Vianello’s direction and saw that the good cop was nodding. Signora Doni’s voice called his attention back as she said, ‘As to your other question, I don’t know of anyone. Andrea was a…’ She paused here, perhaps conscious that she had now to speak his epitaph. ‘He was a good man.’ Taking three deep breaths, she went on. ‘I do know he was troubled at work or because of work. It was only during the last months we were together that I realized this; that’s when he was…’ Her voice trailed off, and Brunetti left her to remember what she chose. But then she spoke again. ‘It might have been guilt about what he was doing. They were doing. But it might have been more than that.’ Another long pause. ‘We didn’t talk much in the months before he told me.’
‘Where does he work, Signora?’ Brunetti asked, then cringed at the realization that he had used the present tense. To attempt to correct it would make things worse.
‘His office isn’t far from here. But two days a week he works at another job.’ Unconsciously – perhaps because she had heard Brunetti do it – she had also fallen back into the present tense.
Brunetti assumed the work of a veterinarian must be pretty standard; he wondered what extra work Dr Nava could have done, aside from his private practice. ‘Was he working as a veterinarian at this other job, too?’
She nodded. ‘He was offered it about six months ago. With the financial crisis, there was less work at his clinic. That’s strange, really, because people will usually do anything or pay anything to take care of their pets.’ She twisted her hands together in a cliché gesture of helplessness, and Brunetti found himself wondering if she worked or whether she stayed home to take care of their son. And if so, then what would become of her now?