27
Silently, so as not to disturb the sleeping man, Brunetti pulled from his pocket Signora Altavilla’s key ring, which he had taken from the evidence room before leaving the Questura. He trapped it between his palms and used his thumbnail to prise open the metal ring, then slid the third key – the one that fitted neither door – towards the narrow opening. He slipped it along and slowly, slowly, urged it until it came free in his hand. Leaning forward, he laid the key on Morandi’s right thigh, then returned the key ring to his pocket, folded his arms, and pushed himself back in his chair.
He thought it invasive to look at the sleeping man, so he turned his eyes to the window and the wall on the opposite side of the canal while he thought about monkeys. He had recently read an article that explained experiments devised to test the inherent sense of justice in a species of monkey, Brunetti could not remember which. Once each member of the group was accustomed to receiving the same reward for the same action, they grew angry if one of their band received a greater reward than his peers. Though the cause of their agitation was nothing more than the difference between a piece of cucumber and a grape, it seemed to Brunetti that they were reacting in a very human way: unmerited reward was offensive even to those who lost nothing by it. Add to this the presumption of deceit or theft on the part of the winner of the grape, and the sense of outrage became stronger. In the case of Avvocato Cuccetti, all that had ever existed was the presumption of theft, nothing more, though he had been rewarded with considerably more than a grape. Enough time had passed, however, for there to be no legal consequences even if the presumption were confirmed. Even if he could be proven to have stolen the grape, there was to be no giving it back.
Morandi had not been surprised at the arrival of a policeman: he thought the police were bound to come because of what he had done. Because of Madame Reynard’s will? Because he went to see Signora Altavilla? Because he tried to reason against her terrible honesty? Or because he put his hands on her shoulders and tried to shake some sense into her? Or pushed her to the ground, having seen or not seen the radiator?
People occasionally rang the bell, and the Toltec went to open the door for them, but they were all preoccupied with other things and did not bother to look into the room. Had they done so, what would they have seen? Another of the residents of the home, fallen away from the worries of the day – and was that his son sitting with him?
‘What do you want?’ the old man asked in a dead level voice.
Brunetti looked at Morandi and saw that he was fully awake and held the key in one hand. He rubbed it between his thumb and index finger, as though it were a coin and he was testing to see if it were counterfeit or not.
‘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 why he was in the library, the subject of the essay he had to write, so if he checked his university records for when he took that class, he could probably work out at least the month, but the date was gone. He would be embarrassed to ask Paola because, if she knew it off by heart, he’d feel a cad for not remembering it. But she might just as easily say he was a sentimental fool for wanting to remember something like that, which was probably true. Which made Morandi a sentimental fool, he supposed.
‘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.