Brunetti put his elbow on the table and propped his chin in his right palm, ready to sit there all afternoon and listen to the story of her husband’s numerical triumphs. Signora Cannata did not disappoint: her husband had, during his working life, discovered a serious overpayment of tax for the owner of a shipping line, once helped a famous surgeon devise a private accounting system for foreign patients, and had also – though this whole business of computers was something he came to late in life – managed to design a computer system to do the complete billing and bookkeeping for his office.
Brunetti slipped into his most complimentary mode, nodding and smiling at every triumph she recounted, wondering how this woman could possibly have put anyone at risk, save herself from the violence of the people she bored.
‘And how long have you been a guest here, Signora?’ Brunetti asked.
Her smile grew more brittle as she said, ‘Oh, I realized a few years ago that I’d have much more freedom here. And be with people of my own age. Not with people of my son’s generation, or even younger. You know how it is, how insensitive they can be,’ she continued, widening her eyes to display honesty and open-hearted sincerity, to make no mention of human warmth to the point of excess. ‘Besides, people prefer the company of their peers, who have the same memories and history.’ She smiled, and Brunetti gave a nod so filled with agreement it served to shake him fully awake.
‘Well,’ he said, pushing himself with every sign of reluctance to his feet, ‘I don’t want to keep you any longer, Signora. You’ve been very generous with your time and I’m not sure how to thank you.’
‘Well,’ she said, putting on what she probably intended to be a flirtatious smile, ‘one way would be by coming back to talk to me again.’
‘Indeed, Signora,’ Brunetti said and extended his hand. She took it and held it for a long moment, and Brunetti felt himself sink towards compassion. ‘I’ll try to do that.’
Her look was so clear he realized neither of them was fooled one bit by what he said, but both of them decided to stay in role until they were finished with the scene. ‘I’ll look forward to it,’ she said, taking back her hand and folding it into the other in her lap.
Brunetti smiled. He knew he could not simply move to the other table and start talking to Signora Sartori, who appeared not to have moved since she had finished her cake. He left the room and went down the corridor towards the kitchen. One of the novices came out with a large tray and started towards him.
‘Excuse me,’ he began, uncertain what title to give her, ‘could you tell me where I might find Dottor Grandesso?’
‘Oh, he’s at the back of the hall, Signore, down on the right. Last door.’ She looked around Brunetti and pointed down the corridor, as if she feared he could not follow her instructions.
‘Thank you,’ he said and made off down the corridor. The last door on the right was closed, so he knocked. He knocked again and then, hearing no response, slowly opened the door and called into the room, ‘Dottor Grandesso?’
A noise answered. It might have been a word, though it might have been a grunt, but it was definitely a noise, so Brunetti took it as an invitation to enter. Inside, he saw what he at first took to be a skull propped on the pillow of the bed. But the skull had tufts of hair attached and a thin covering of grooved skin. There was a long, narrow form under the covers, and at the end of it a miniature bishop’s mitre of feet. The eyes were still there, and they were turned in his direction. They did not blink and they did not move, merely opened up a conduit between him and a skull. Brunetti recognized the smell he had come to know in his mother’s room.
‘Dottor Grandesso?’ Brunetti asked.
‘Sì,’ the skull answered without moving its lips, the single word pronounced in a voice that surprised Brunetti with its depth and resonance.
‘I’m a friend of Signora Altavilla’s son. He’s asked me to come to speak to the sisters and to those of you who knew his mother best. If it doesn’t upset you, that is.’
The eyes blinked. Or, more accurately, they closed and stayed closed for some time. When they reopened, they had somehow been transformed into the eyes of a living man, filled with emotion and, Brunetti was certain, pain. ‘What happened?’ he asked in that same deep voice.
As Brunetti approached the bed he was acutely aware of how Dottor Grandesso’s eyes studied him; their scrutiny filled Brunetti with a sense of the man’s oxymoronic vitality. ‘She died of a heart attack,’ Brunetti said. ‘The autopsy results said it would have been immediate and whatever pain there was would have lasted only a short time.’
‘Rizzardi?’ the other man surprised Brunetti by asking.
‘Yes. Do you know him?’ Brunetti had not considered the possibility that this man’s title was a medical one.
‘I know of him. Or did, when I still worked. Solid man,’ he said. The doctor’s lips moved as he spoke, and his eyes paid careful attention to Brunetti, but the grooves in his cheeks remained motionless, and his expression was to be read only in his eyes.
What he said of Rizzardi was both description and praise, pronounced in a voice that should not have been able to emerge from that form. The doctor closed his eyes again, and that simple act transformed him, subtracting the spirit and leaving in its place nothing more than that ravaged head and the sticks below it, under the covers.
Not wanting to invade, Brunetti glanced away, but the window beside the bed gave out on a narrow calle and provided nothing more than a view of a wall and a shuttered window. He continued to look at them until the other man said, ‘Did you know her?’
He looked back then, and saw animation and interest reborn. ‘No. Only her son. I was with him while Rizzardi…’ The sentence languished, Brunetti uncertain what to do with it.
‘He asked me to come here to speak to the sisters,’ Brunetti resumed. ‘He said his mother was happy when she came here. I took it upon myself, after I spoke to the Mother Superior, to try to speak to the people she was especially fond of.’
‘Did the son know our names?’ he asked, and Brunetti heard the surge of hope in his voice.
He wanted to lie and tell the doctor that, yes, she had spoken to her son about the people she cared for most, but Brunetti couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he said, ‘I don’t know. I decided to try to speak to you after I talked to the Mother Superior. She gave me your name.’
The man in the bed turned his head aside when he heard this, surprising Brunetti with the motion. But his eyes did not close, and he did not repeat that complete disappearance of humanity Brunetti had observed.
He turned back; his glance met Brunetti’s, and he asked in a level voice, ‘What is it you want to know?’
Brunetti considered for a moment whether he should perhaps ask what the man meant. But Dottor Grandesso held his glance, and Brunetti saw that this was a man who had no time to waste. The expression, so often used as a cliché, came to him with stunning force. The doctor had an appointment, not with him, and not one that anyone wanted to keep, but there was no avoiding it.
‘I want to know if there is any reason a person might have wanted to do her an injury,’ Brunetti said. Hearing himself say it, he felt a sudden chill, as though he had been asked to put a coin in this man’s mouth to pay for his voyage to the other world or, worse, had given him some heavy burden to take with him.
‘If I were somehow able to call Rizzardi, would he tell me that she died of a heart attack?’ the doctor asked.
‘Yes.’
Grandesso looked away from Brunetti, as if examining the shuttered window across the calle in search of what to say. ‘You’re not a religious man, are you?’