As they reached the top of Ponte San Antonin, Brunetti pointed with his chin at the church and said, ‘My mother always used to tell me, whenever we passed here, about some time in the nineteenth century – I think it was – that a rhinoceros – or maybe it was an elephant – she told me both versions – somehow ended up trapped inside the church.’
Vianello stopped and stared at the façade. ‘I never heard anything about that, but what could a rhinoceros have been doing, walking around the city? Or an elephant, for that matter.’ He shook his head, as if at yet another tale of the strange behaviour of tourists, and started down the steps on the other side. ‘I was at a funeral there once, years ago.’ Vianello stopped walking and looked at the façade with open surprise. ‘Isn’t that strange? I don’t even remember whose funeral it was.’
They continued, following the curve to the right, and Vianello said, returning to what Brunetti had told him, ‘It makes you understand why nothing’s ever clear, a story like that.’
‘You mean the rhinoceros? That was or wasn’t there? And that was or wasn’t a rhinoceros?’
‘Yes. Once it gets said, someone will believe it and repeat it, and then hundreds of years later, people are still repeating it.’
‘And it’s become the truth?’
‘Sort of,’ Vianello answered, sounding reluctant. They walked in silence for some time, and then he observed, ‘It’s pretty much the same today, isn’t it?’
‘That stories aren’t reliable?’ Brunetti asked.
‘That people invent stories, and then after a time there’s no telling what’s true and what isn’t.’
They turned into the campo, and the sun came back to work in front of them, lifting their mood. The trees still had their leaves, a number of people sat on the benches beneath them, and the open vista soothed their eyes.
They crossed the campo without speaking. Brunetti couldn’t remember which door it was, though he knew it was in the line of buildings to the right of the church. He stopped at the first row of bells and read the list, but only family names were given. On a panel next to the second door he found ‘Sacra Famiglia’ and rang the bell.
It was almost a full minute before a female voice, old and wavering, asked who it was. ‘Brunetti,’ he said, adding, ‘I’m a friend of Signora Altavilla’s…’ He prevented himself from continuing the lie, or at least the full lie, by concluding, ‘… son.’
‘She’s not here,’ the voice said, sounding querulous, though that might have been nothing more than the speaker-phone. ‘She didn’t come in today.’
‘I know that, Suora,’ Brunetti said. ‘I’d like to speak to the Mother Superior.’
The voice said something neither he nor Vianello could hear, and then the door snapped open. They stepped into a large entrance hall, its pavement laid out in the orange and white chequerboard pattern so common to buildings of this epoch. Nothing more than dimness entered through the grillwork of a row of windows at the back of the building. They ignored the elevator and took the staircase to the right of it. A small old woman stood at the only door on the first floor: her clothing spoke of her vows before her size and stance spoke of her age.
She nodded as the two men approached, then put out her hand. Both of them had to angle down their arms, almost as though they were shaking hands with a child: she came to their chests and actually had to put her head back to look into their eyes. ‘I’m Madre Rosa,’ she said, ‘Mother Superior here. Suora Grazia said you wanted to speak to me.’ She stepped back inside the door to get a better look at them. ‘I have to say I don’t like the look of you.’
Her face remained unmoved as she spoke, and her accent revealed even more strongly its origins far south of Venice.
One of the tenets of the mental identikit Brunetti possessed held that southerners, even the children, always recognized policemen, and so he asked, smiling as he did so, ‘Is that because we’re men or because we’re big, or because we’re policemen?’
She stepped back further and nodded to them to enter. She closed the door after them and said, ‘I know already that Costanza’s dead, so any policeman who comes saying he’s a friend of hers is lying in order to get information. That’s why I don’t like the look of you. I don’t care how big you are.’
Brunetti was struck with a sudden sympathy for the people he had outwitted in questioning and admired this woman, who had made child’s play of his attempt; further, he admired her directness in telling him her feelings. ‘I’m not a friend of her son’s, either, Madre,’ he confessed. ‘But I did just speak to him, and he asked me to come and tell you what happened.’
The nun did not respond to his frankness but turned and led them into what must once have been the over-furnished sitting room of a private apartment. From the back, she appeared even smaller; Brunetti noticed she favoured her right leg when she walked. The sofas and chairs were covered with thick brown velvet and had feet carved to look like the paws of lions. A closer look revealed that many of the toes were missing, and some of the chairs had grease spots on the backrests and bald spots on the arms, with some of the patches surrounded by horizontal tears in the fabric. The baldness was repeated on the enormous Kashan that covered the floor from wall to wall.
The nun pointed to two of the easy chairs and gingerly took her place facing them on a hard wooden chair, careful not to bend her right leg. Their chairs had sagged with age and use to such a degree that their heads, when they sat down, were on a level with hers.
Brunetti leaned to his side to reach for his wallet in order to show her his warrant card, but she forestalled him by saying, ‘I don’t need to see it, Signore. I know policemen when I see them.’
Brunetti abandoned the attempt and tried to sit upright, but his position was so constricting that he got to his feet and sat on the arm of the chair. ‘I was called last night when Signora Altavilla’s body was found, and I went to her apartment. I spoke to her neighbour,’ he said, and the nun nodded, suggesting that she knew the woman and her closeness to Signora Altavilla or that she knew about the phone call.
‘The autopsy that was performed this morning…’ he began and saw the nun’s eyes contract. ‘… suggests that she died of a heart attack.’ He paused and looked in her direction.
‘Suggests?’ Madre Rosa asked.
‘There was a cut on her forehead, which the pathologist thinks must have happened when she fell. I was there last night and saw that she had fallen close to a radiator: that might explain it.’ She nodded, understanding, but not necessarily believing.
Brunetti noticed then something he had not seen since he was a boy in elementary schooclass="underline" she reached under her long white scapular and pulled up the string of rosary beads she wore at her side. She held them as she looked at him, then let one of them slip through her fingers, and then another. He had no idea if she was praying or merely touching them to give herself strength and comfort. Finally she said only, ‘Might explain?’
Brunetti, as he always did when people caught him in prevarication, gave an easy, relaxed smile. ‘We won’t know what happened until the physical evidence from her apartment is examined.’
‘And you won’t know it then, either, will you?’ she asked. ‘Not for sure, that is.’
Brunetti watched Vianello cross and uncross his legs, then he got to his feet, as well. He put his hands on his hips and bent backwards, and when he came forward again, he said, ‘Madre, if we could use one of these chairs for people we’re questioning, I think we’d save a great deal of our time. And have a great deal more success.’
She tried to stop herself from smiling, but she failed. Then she surprised them both by saying, in purest Veneziano, ‘Ti xe na bronsa coverta.’ Hearing her so effortlessly go from her accented Italian to perfectly pronounced dialect surprised both of the men into answering smiles. Her assessment was accurate: Vianello was much like the embers in a covered brazier. One never knew what brightness lurked there or what light might break forth from his invisible silence.