The Golden Egg

25





‘What does that mean, Signora?’ Brunetti asked calmly. The boy had become a man, so there had been no abortion or miscarriage or early death. The woman had, however unknowingly, expressed what had been bothering Brunetti from the moment he first heard about Davide Cavanella’s death: his failure ever to exist.

‘She never talked about Ana again or allowed anyone to mention her.’ She looked into the past and said, ‘I can still hear her saying it, when Lucrezia asked where she was: “That person doesn’t exist.” The girl had been there for more than two years, and suddenly she didn’t exist.’ She looked at them, first at one, then the other. ‘That’s exactly what she said. Those were her words. “That person doesn’t exist.”’

She remained silent for some time, so as to allow them to hear the words and then their echo. When she glanced at Brunetti again, it seemed to him that her face had changed somehow or that her eyes had become sharper and she had ceased being the retired old maidservant and become a younger and stronger woman.

‘Why are you asking this?’ she asked.

Brunetti realized that, had the woman who had let them into the house and given them biscuits asked that question, he probably would have given her a sweet lie. But this woman would have none of that and, from the look of her, would laugh at him if he tried it.

‘I want him to have lived.’ He listened to that, unsure why he could not make things clearer.

‘Why does it concern you so much?’ Signora Ghezzi asked. Griffoni turned and looked at him, as curious as the other woman.

‘Because everything I’ve been told since he died means something different, and everyone I talk to has something to hide or that they don’t want me to know.’ He remembered the stone-blank faces of the neighbours and their truculent refusal to speak. Solidarity with an unfortunate woman who had lost her only son? Shame at having been part of the even greater silence that had filled the life of the deaf man?

Brunetti shoved his chair back and got to his feet. He took two steps away from the table but turned back and sat down again. He looked across at Signora Ghezzi’s lined face, feeling himself reduced to honesty. ‘What should I know, Signora?’

Slowly she got to her feet and stood for a moment to steady herself, the way many old people did when standing up after having been sitting for any length of time. She stacked her cup and Brunetti’s but, before she could reach for Griffoni’s, the younger woman stood and carried her cup to the sink. Taking the plastic box to the counter, she put on the cover and snapped it closed.

She took the other cups from Signora Ghezzi, put them in the sink and ran cold water in them. After that she stood by the window, leaving it to the others to decide what was going to happen.

Signora Ghezzi kept one palm flat on the table. ‘I think you should find out who owns the house where Ana lives,’ she said. ‘And I think you should bear in mind that most people don’t change as they go through life, and as life goes through them.’

‘Do you mean Ana?’

‘I mean all of them,’ she said. She appeared to consider this, then added, ‘Lucrezia is the best of them. Of all the people you’ll meet because of this, she’s the only honest one.’

‘Not Ana?’

‘Ana Cavanella is a cold-hearted viper,’ she said with no inflection whatsoever. ‘But Signora Lembo was worse.’

If this kind-eyed old woman had hurled herself to the floor in a fit of demonic possession and begun to scream obscenities at him and Griffoni, Brunetti could have been no more startled. That would have shocked him only for herself, but her quietly spoken words spurred him to re-examine most of the people he had spoken to or heard about during the last days.

Ana Cavanella was the bereaved mother; Lucrezia was a ruin; Signora Lembo the much-photographed wife, mother, and saint. The King of Copper remained an enigma: powerful, potent, always away on business.

In a voice softer than Brunetti had ever heard her use, Griffoni broke the silence to ask, ‘Will you tell us more, Signora?’

Neither woman moved, then Signora Ghezzi lowered herself into her chair, looked at both of them and finally said, ‘Most of them are dead, you know. All that’s left is the money, and it’s never done them any good. Now all they can do is fight over that. No, I don’t think I want to tell you any more. Because it doesn’t make any difference.’

Brunetti opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to protest, but she raised a hand, and he stopped. ‘I’m older than you are, Signore,’ she told him and then, with a kind look towards Griffoni, ‘and much older than the Signora, and I have my own ideas about this, different from yours.’

There was a ring of liquid on the surface of the table, and she stuck a forefinger into it and rubbed at it until it was gone. She looked at Brunetti and addressed him. ‘They all did things because of the way they are, you know, not because they wanted something or because of something special that happened. It’s just the way they are. And that doesn’t change.’

She leaned forward, as if to push herself to her feet again, but gave up the effort and settled back into her chair. ‘You can go now, and thank you for the visit. It’s nice for old people to see new faces. It’s not good for us always to look at the faces from the past.’ She smiled after she said this and waved a hand as a signal of some sort: to brush them out of her house; to wish them well; to sum up the futility of human desires. It could have been any one of these. Or all of them. They left.

‘Do we go and talk to her?’ Griffoni asked.

It was convenience that decided him. They were less than a hundred metres from the Celestia stop, and he could hear the boat approaching from the right. Instead of answering, he turned away and walked quickly to the imbarcadero; she followed in his wake.

As the boat pulled up, Brunetti turned and said, ‘Go back and find out who owns the house. Call me as soon as you know. I’ll be at the hospital.’

Griffoni was walking away even before he was on the boat for the one-stop trip to the Ospedale. When he asked at the desk in the entrance hall, Brunetti was told that Signora Cavanella had been taken to Geriatria, the only ward with free beds.

Brunetti made his way through the courtyard, decided to take the steps, and heard the ward as soon as he turned into the last flight. A high-pitched voice, no telling its sex, began to climb up the scales, dully repeating ‘No, no, no, no,’ until it reached the top of its vocal range and fell back down into the lower notes, only to begin again. Brunetti emerged at the nurses’ desk and asked where he could find Signora Cavanella.

‘Room fifteen,’ the nurse said, without glancing up from her magazine.

He passed the room from which the voice was coming, turned right and then left at the end of the corridor, the voice growing fainter, but no less agonized, with each turn. He stopped just before the next to last room in the corridor, not certain how he was going to deal with a woman who had, with a phrase, been transformed from a bereaved mother to a cold-hearted viper. Deciding that he would leave it to events to resolve that, he knocked lightly on the side of the open door and went in.

An old man slept in the bed closest to the door, toothless mouth agape. In the other bed, a long, mountainous form lay under the blankets; Brunetti didn’t even have to look at the bearded face to know it was a man and that he’d entered the wrong room. He turned and took one step towards the door and suddenly stopped as he saw a man he knew pass by, coming from the direction of the last room on the ward. Leaving him enough time to get beyond the door, Brunetti moved quickly over and put his head out into the corridor.

He recognized the portly form that moved away, feet splayed to either side, forced there by thick thighs. From his right hand hung the battered brown leather briefcase that had, over the years, become a metaphor for the man: Beni Borsetta, aka Beniamino Cresti, lawyer to the masses, paladin of the lower orders in their endless fight against the myriad injustices of the wealthy and successful. For a mere 50 per cent, it was rumoured in some circles.

As Brunetti watched, Cresti turned right at the end of the corridor, showing in profile the out-thrust paunch that Brunetti had several times seen clear a path from the courtrooms in which Avvocato Cresti had worked in the pursuit of justice.

He glanced at his watch, propped his shoulders against the wall of the corridor, and began to draw up a list of reasons why Beni Borsetta might have taken his briefcase on a visit to the hospital. He could come up with none he liked, but he found all of them interesting. He let a few minutes pass before he went down to the door from which the lawyer had emerged. Standing slightly to the side, he knocked and said, in a normal voice, ‘Signora Cavanella?’

He heard a voice answer and went in. She was sitting up in bed today, looking much better, though her face was worse. That is, though she recognized him and seemed fully conscious, the entire left side, from the eye to her hairline and down across her cheekbone and almost to her chin, had turned a light grey-red that Brunetti knew would, in two days, turn almost black.

‘Good morning, Signora,’ he said.

‘You’re the policeman, aren’t you?’ she asked. Her look was calm, lucid, disconcertingly so, at least to someone who was now curious to see how the viper might manifest itself.

He approached the bed, his face taut with a look of concern. He allowed himself a small smile, rich in every sign of relief. ‘I’m glad you recognize me, Signora.’

‘I recognized you the other time,’ she said, annoyed but not angry.

He broadened his smile. ‘I’m even happier to learn that, Signora. The doctor was worried about your fall and thought you might have a concussion.’ There it was: from the police. A fall.

She did not smile, but her face softened, as if she too felt relief. ‘I hit my head.’ Then, meaning it as a joke, ‘I suppose it was as hard as whatever it hit.’

Brunetti added a nod to his smile, radiating satisfaction at this happy circumstance. ‘Have they told you when you can go home?’

‘Tomorrow.’

‘Good,’ Brunetti said and turned, as if preparing to leave the room. What were she and Beni up to? he wondered. She had said nothing about having tripped, so perhaps she was not going to claim negligence on the part of the city, one of Beni’s standard cases. And since it was being treated as a fall, Beni was not going to bring a case of assault, as he had over many barroom shoves – even once against the owner of a bicycle over which a man had tripped.

His phone rang and, excusing himself to the woman, he answered it.

‘Lucrezia Lembo owns the house,’ Griffoni said.

‘I see.’

‘But Ana Cavanella’s son had the legal right to stay in it all of his life, after which it reverts to the owner or her heirs.’

‘I see,’ he repeated. ‘And when did this start?’

‘If you mean the contract, it was the the year she left her job at the Lembos’.’

‘Ah,’ was all Brunetti would permit himself to say. But then he thought of something else and asked, ‘And the expenses?’

‘Paid by Lucrezia Lembo: tax, gas, light, garbage.’ Then, before he could ask, ‘We’re checking Cavanella’s bank account.’

‘We?’

‘Signorina Elettra and I. She’s much better at these things than I am.’ True as that might be, Brunetti, who had recognized Signorina Elettra’s office telephone as the source of the call, had to admit that Griffoni was no slouch when it came to flattery.

‘Good. Let me know.’

‘Of course,’ Griffoni said and was gone.

‘Excuse me, Signora,’ he said. ‘My wife.’

‘Of course,’ she said in a warmer voice, as if he had become more human by having a wife.

‘If you need any help, Signora, in getting home, I’m sure we could send a launch, and I’m sure Pucetti would be glad to accompany you.’

‘He’s very kind, Roberto,’ she said.

‘He’s a good boy,’ Brunetti answered, meaning it. He was running out of things to say to keep him there long enough for Griffoni to call him again. It came to him. ‘I’m afraid there’s been no progress, Signora,’ he said.

‘In what?’ She sounded honestly confused.

‘In finding any identification for your son. Official,

that is.’

Her face hardened. ‘I told you. There was a robbery in my house, and they took all of the papers.’

His gaze was so level, his scepticism so palpable, that she said, ‘They took them. And my money. And my wedding ring. Everything.’ For a moment, it looked as though she were going to attempt to cry, but then she abandoned the idea and settled for putting a hand across her eyes.

His phone rang again. ‘Money’s been transferred into her account every month for the last forty years,’ Griffoni said. ‘From Lucrezia Lembo’s account.’

‘Really? And how much would that be?’

‘It started in lire and changed to Euros, but it’s always been the equivalent of a monthly salary.’

‘For what sort of work?’

‘Hardly for a maid. It’s now three thousand Euros.’

‘I see. Thanks. We can talk about it tomorrow,’ he said and replaced his phone in his pocket.

Brunetti waited until Ana Cavanella took her hand from her eyes and looked across at him, when, just as though he were asking her the time, he said, ‘What were you blackmailing the Lembo family about, Signora?’