The Golden Egg

27





‘Ah,’ Brunetti said, fighting to hide his astonishment. Uncertain that he could keep his voice level, he pursed his lips and frowned, as if making note of a detail that might be interesting, or might not be.

‘Do you remember when this conversation took place?’

He watched as Cresti worked out the time, assuming a bland look of infinite patience while he waited for the lawyer to answer.

‘It must have been in July some time. I remember because I’d gone out to try to find a birthday gift for my mother, and I met Signora Cavanella on the street.’

Brunetti had smiled amiably at Cresti’s mention of his mother, as though he’d done something special and virtuous by having one. ‘That’s when she asked you?’

Cresti nodded a few more times than necessary. ‘Yes, she suggested we have a coffee, and she told me she’d read something in the paper a few days before about this law, and she wanted to know what it meant.’

‘What did you tell her?’ Brunetti asked, now in full possession of his voice and with the conversation where he wanted it to be.

‘I told her it was quite simple: if the child could prove his parentage, then he or she had full rights to an equal portion of the estate. Along with the legitimate children.’ Cresti flashed a smile at Brunetti.

‘That’s all?’

‘For once, Commissario,’ Cresti said, ‘it is a law that is quite concise and easy to understand.’

‘Did she understand your explanation?’

‘I think it would be difficult’ – flash, flash – ‘for anyone not to understand.’

‘Did she ask you anything else?’

Cresti made the mistake of fidgeting in his chair so that he could remove his eyes from Brunetti’s and look down as he did so.

‘Did she ask you anything else, Signor Cresti?’ Brunetti asked again, hoping that his failure to refer to him by his professional title would remind Cresti of what might happen if Brunetti were to alert the union of lawyers to Cresti’s visit to the hospital.

‘Oh, a few things,’ he said, as if allergic to telling a policeman anything important.

‘Did she ask you anything else?’

Trapped, Cresti said, ‘She asked if it would pass to the heirs of the child.’ Then, after another nervous smile, ‘You know, if the heir – the bastard, that is – had a child, would that child inherit?’

Calm, calm, calm. Brunetti asked, as if intrigued by the chance to speculate, ‘That’s an interesting question. Would it, as it were, skip a generation and pass to the next?’

‘That’s it exactly, phrased perfectly, Commissario: if the bastard had a child – would it pass to that child?’

‘What did you tell her?’

‘I couldn’t tell her anything. I hadn’t studied the law, so I didn’t know the answer.’

‘What did you tell her?’

Cresti smoothed his hair back and left his hand at the base of his skull, as if to encourage his brain to come up with an answer. ‘I couldn’t answer, could I, since I wasn’t sure?’

‘What did you tell her?’

Cresti took his hand away and locked his fingers on the arm of his chair. ‘I told her that it probably would pass to the child’s heirs.’

Stupidity and greed, Brunetti told himself, stupidity and greed, and a willing helper in a lawyer who took advantage of the first to nudge his non-client towards the second.

‘I see,’ Brunetti said. Then, because he couldn’t stop himself, even though he knew there was no sense in doing so, he asked, ‘What did you think when her son died?’

Cresti flashed another smile, but this one was meant to show his surprise at Brunetti’s question. ‘I thought how unfortunate she was.’ His voice deepened into the solemnity so often used to give voice to grief and the tragedies to which the world exposes us, poor, frail humans that we are. ‘The poor woman, to lose her only child like that.’

‘And she his only relative,’ Brunetti could not stop himself from answering. He got to his feet. ‘Thank you for coming in, Signor Cresti. I’ll call you if we need any further information.’

Cresti’s face went blank with genuine surprise. He was being let go. He had said what he had said, and this man was letting him leave. He started to push himself to his feet, but one of the pockets of his jacket hooked itself on the arm of the chair. His upward motion pulled the chair from the floor, then the pocket ripped free. Cresti lost his footing for a moment, flailed his arms in the air, and regained his balance.

Brunetti stood behind his desk, unwilling to help, nodded when Cresti said goodbye, and watched the lawyer leave the room.

He picked up his phone and dialled Signorina Elettra’s number. When she answered, he said, ‘Could you have a look at Signora Cavanella’s bank statements again and tell me the date when those payments arrive?’

Responding to the tone of his voice, she said only ‘One moment.’ He looked at his watch and saw that today was the fifth.

She was back. ‘It usually arrives on the first of the month, Commissario.’

‘Has it come this month?’

A few seconds’ delay, and then she said, ‘No, it hasn’t.’

He thanked her and replaced the phone.

All that remained was to talk to Lucrezia Lembo again, but this time he wanted to do it himself: no rosary, no Madonna, no religious excess of any sort. He wanted numbers and dates and facts, and she would be able to give them to him.

He walked. It was late afternoon, the day was drawing down, and it looked as if it was coming on to rain. As he passed the campi and buildings between the Questura and the Accademia Bridge, which was the only place where he could cross the Grand Canal and backtrack to her home, Brunetti constructed a narrative based on random facts and even more random possibilities. When he checked the report from the crew that took Signora Cavanella to the hospital, he had seen, but not then noted, that she had been found on the steps of a house only a few minutes from the Lembo palazzo. The payment into her account had not arrived this month. Ana Cavanella had ceased working for the Lembo family four decades ago and had received a monthly payment since that time. She lived in a house owned by a member of the Lembo family in which her child had the right to remain for the duration of his lifetime. The King of Copper had left his wife of thirty-four years for a younger woman, by whom he had a child, another girl, only to have the woman leave him soon after the death of that child.

Lucrezia was the only one left: her parents were dead, her half-sister had drowned, and her other sister had moved to a foreign country. Signora Ghezzi had said all she was going to say, Ana Cavanella was not to be trusted to tell the truth, and poor silent Davide couldn’t tell it, even if he had known what truth was.

Brunetti heard the rain before he saw it, heard it in the squelching of his feet on the pavement. He heard it, he saw it, and when he put his hands to his head, he felt it. Sure enough, at the bottom of the Accademia Bridge he found three Tamil umbrella sellers – he often wondered if they were freeze-dried and popped back to life at the first drop of rain, their hands laden with five-Euro umbrellas. He committed a crime by buying an umbrella from one of them, gave the man ten Euros and told him to keep the change, then turned down towards the Salute. In Campo San Vio he turned right, and then into the calle.

He rang the bell, keeping his finger on it until he heard it bleating away inside. He removed it. Silence. He pushed it again, shifted his feet to make himself more comfortable while leaning against it. The noise went on for a very long time. At last he heard a sound from the courtyard, released his finger, and the noise turned into the sound of footsteps approaching the door.

A woman’s voice said something from inside, and Brunetti ignored it. The door was pulled open by Lucrezia Lembo, who seemed not at all surprised to see him there. ‘You’ve come for me, then?’ she asked, sounding far more lucid than she had the last time he spoke to her.

‘I’ve come to talk to you, Signora,’ he declared; a statement, not a request.

Without protest, she turned away, leaving the door open, and he stepped into the courtyard. She led him back towards the entrance, then upstairs, but this time to the kitchen, a room with windows on the canal; like the other room, this one was spotlessly clean. Brunetti stopped just inside the door.

She could have been a different person. Her hair was clean, and she was dressed in a very conservative skirt, sweater, and light woollen jacket. Her low pumps were the sort, and of the same high quality, Paola wore when she went to teach. She was no longer fat, only robust.

She went to the counter in front of the row of windows that looked across the canal to the shuttered windows of the building opposite. She turned and leaned back against

the counter. ‘Sit if you please, Signore.’

Brunetti approached the table, hearing the noise his shoes made on the marble floor. She took his umbrella and placed it in the sink behind her. Because it would give her the advantage, Brunetti pulled out a chair and lowered himself into it.

‘Have you come to arrest me?’ she asked.

‘For what, Signora?’

It looked as though she had had a good night’s sleep. He reminded himself that she might just as easily have found the right combination of alcohol or drugs, but it did not seem that way to him.

‘To the best of my knowledge, there is no reason to arrest you, Signora.’ He saw her eyes widen, and then her face relaxed even more. ‘Nor is it my desire, Signora.’

‘Then why are you here?’

‘To talk about your father.’

‘Father?’ She lowered her head and shook it, and when she raised it again, she was smiling at him, as if at his innocence in saying such a thing.

‘Ludovico Lembo, once Fadalti, also known as the King of Copper,’ Brunetti said.

‘What do you want to know about him, Signore?’

‘Is he the father of Ana Cavanalla’s son?’

‘Davide?’

‘Yes.’

‘Yes, he is. Or was.’

‘Have you been paying for Davide’s upkeep?’

‘Yes.’

‘Is the house in San Polo where he lived yours?’

‘Yes, it is. It was left to me by the same man.’

‘Ludovico Lembo?’

‘Once called Fadalti. Yes.’

‘And Davide had the usufrutto of that house?’

‘Until his death. Yes.’

All of these things, Brunetti knew, save for the first, were matters of public record. ‘Was Ana Cavanella blackmailing you, Signora?’

‘What?’ she asked with honest surprise.

‘Was she blackmailing you?’

‘About what?’

‘The name of Davide’s father?’

‘Why should she do that?’ Lucrezia asked.

‘To keep other people – your mother, perhaps – from finding out.’

This time she shook her head, as if he had told her something too ridiculous to believe but was afraid of hurting his feelings if she laughed.

‘Finding out what?’

‘I don’t know,’ Brunetti said honestly. With this family, no possibility could be excluded. Then, not admitting to himself that he was irritated by her air of knowing something he did not, he said, ‘I know your mother learned about her pregnancy.’

She turned away, but it was only to open a cabinet behind her and lift down a glass, then another one. She turned on the water in the sink and filled them both, placed one in front of him and drank half of her own. She kept her glass in her hands; Brunetti pulled his closer to him but did not drink.

‘Tell me your name again, please. I’m afraid I wasn’t myself the last time you were here.’

‘Brunetti,’ he said, relieved to learn that she remembered the other visit.

‘And the name of your rather excitable colleague?’ she asked.

‘Griffoni.’

‘Ah. Yes.’ And then, ‘Signor Brunetti, I think you and I have some of the same information. But it means different things to us.’ She sipped at her water.

When Brunetti judged that she was not going to say anything else, he said, ‘The payments to her, from your account. If they are not blackmail, what are they?’

‘Just what you said, money for his upkeep. Enough to let the two of them live.’

‘And the use of the house they were living in?’

‘The same. The attempt on the part of a very decent man to see that his son did not live in misery.’

‘You mean your father?’

‘Ludovico Lembo, formerly Fadalti.’

Her tone told him. ‘Who is or who is not your father?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Who is not my father, nor my sister Lavinia’s father, but was the father of his companion’s daughter Ludovica and of Davide, Ana Cavanella’s son.’

‘You say that very lightly, Signora,’ Brunetti risked observing.

‘You’re sadly mistaken, Signor Brunetti,’ she said. ‘I say it with more pain than you will ever be able to understand.’ Another sip of water. ‘But we were raised in a very hard school, my sister and I, and we are not much given to lamentation or complaint.’

‘Raised by whom?’

‘By my mother and her cousin.’

‘Sister Maria Rosaria Lembo-Malfa?’ Brunetti inquired, unable to stop himself from showing off.

‘Exactly. She and my mother. Cousins united in their service and devotion to Christ. Except . . .’

‘Except what, Signora?’

‘Except that my mother’s devotion was perhaps not characterized by the same purity as was her cousin’s.’

Brunetti was suddenly tired of her and her posturing and her speaking in allusion and riddles. He almost preferred her drunken excesses. ‘Could you speak more clearly, Signora? It would save us both time and effort.’

He saw her surprise, but then her amusement. ‘How refreshing, to be spoken to directly. I thank you for it, Signore. I’ve seen very little of it in my life.’

He believed her. ‘Then tell me, but don’t tell it slant.’

‘My mother did not like my father, and my father did not like my mother. That is, the man I’ve spent my life calling my father did not like my mother, and my mother did not like the man I’ve spent my life calling my father.’

‘But he married her?’

‘He married her because she was pregnant and asked him to marry her.’

‘Pregnant by him or some other man?’

‘Good heavens: a man like my father would never have had sex before marriage – not with the woman he hoped to marry. It was not done: not if you’re an upstart engineer and the girl is the daughter of your boss, and the company is one of the biggest in the country.’

‘So he married her to get the business?’

‘My father was a businessman before he was anything else. He loved it, loved making things work and loved making money from that.’

‘You automatically call him your father,’ Brunetti pointed out.

‘I loved him. He was a good man and very kind to the two of us. I’ve never met our real father – at least not knowingly – and so he was the man I loved as my father. Lavinia, too.’

‘She wasn’t his daughter, either?’

‘Haven’t I just said that?’ she asked and turned to fill her glass.

‘Of course, of course,’ Brunetti assured her when she was again facing him.

‘But were they never . . .’ he didn’t know how to say it, not while speaking to a lady. ‘Were they never really husband and wife?’

‘I have no idea of that, and I don’t want to know,’ she said heatedly, speaking quickly, the faster to have it said. ‘They always had separate rooms and separate lives. And my mother went off to see her cousin in the convent every month, didn’t she?’ she asked, leaving Brunetti to make of that whatever he pleased.

‘And then Ana Cavanella came into the palazzo,’ he said.

‘Indeed. She was our age. That is, near to our age. I’m sure the psychiatrists would have a wonderful time with that: talking about his hidden lusts for us. None of which either of us ever detected.’

‘How did she behave?’

‘I don’t know. That is, I don’t remember. I was at an age when I found life difficult and revolting.’ Then, with a shrug, she added, ‘I suppose I still do to a certain degree,’ and Brunetti realized he was beginning to like her.

‘Does your sister remember?’

‘She was at school. In Ireland. With the sisters.’

‘I see,’ Brunetti said, though he didn’t.

‘And then Ana became pregnant?’ he asked.

‘Yes. And my mother went wild. I’d never seen her like that.’

‘Jealousy?’

She laughed. ‘Hardly. She raged on about the insult to her honour, to her family.’

‘What happened?’

‘Ana left.’

‘And the house and the payments?’

‘My father bought the house in my name. I was nineteen then, and he asked me if I’d do it for him: allow for the usufrutto and allow the payments to go in my name. I signed the papers: he was a good man.’

Brunetti picked up the glass and drank some of the water. He could not reconcile this conservatively dressed and clearly spoken woman with the raving wreck they had met the day before. He had a growing suspicion that this woman had outwitted them, and the victim of deceit had been Griffoni.

‘Why did you think I was here to arrest you, Signora?’

‘Because of what I did to Ana Cavanella.’

‘You mean hitting her?’

‘Is that what she says?’ she asked, unable to hide her surprise.

‘No. Would you tell me what happened?’

‘She came here two days ago, and I let her in. I didn’t recognize her: forty years is a long time. She had to tell me who she was. That’s when I let her in.’

‘What happened?’

‘She told me that her son was dead. And I told her I knew that.

‘She came because she’d received a letter from my lawyer, telling her that the death of her son Davide changed the nature of our existing fiscal relationship. She came to ask me what that meant.’

‘Did you explain it to her?’

With something close to irritation, Lucrezia said, ‘I don’t know why lawyers can’t say things clearly. Just tell her there would be no more money. And she’d have to leave the house.’ She looked across at Brunetti. ‘I tried to explain it to her, but I don’t think she understood. Or didn’t want to. I told her my obligation was to Davide, not to her.’

Curious as he was at her use of the word, ‘obligation’, Brunetti said nothing.

‘She got angry and said the family couldn’t lie about him any more, or about her.’ She followed that with a puff of incredulity and went on. ‘I told her she was nothing to me and told her to leave, but she said Davide was my half-brother and was entitled to a third of my father’s estate.’

She made a shivering motion. ‘She’d read something about the law that was passed last year, and she said there was proof.’

‘Proof of what?’

‘That my father – that is, my mother’s husband – was also Davide’s father. And then when I told her there could be no proof, she said something about what she called DNU. I didn’t understand at first what she was talking about, and then she said it was the proof in the body, in the blood, that people were related.’

‘DNA,’ Brunetti whispered and breathed a silent prayer to be delivered from the hands of the ignorant.

‘Yes. DNA. God knows where she got the information. She didn’t understand anything, but she kept talking about the DNU test and that it would prove he was Davide’s father. I told her to go ahead and try to prove it.’

‘Did you tell her anything else?’

‘No. She wouldn’t stop talking, and then she was shouting. We were still standing at the door. I opened it and told her to get out: we’d been talking in the courtyard all this time. I didn’t want her in the house. She kept shouting that she deserved to be helped, and I told her all she deserved was to be put away in jail or an institution.’ Lucrezia’s emotions overcame her, and she stopped, breathing heavily.

‘I raised my hand to her. It frightened her. I grabbed her shoulders, shoved her out into the calle and slammed the door in her face before she could come back in. Then I went into the house.’ She smiled then, speaking to Brunetti as though he were an old friend. ‘I have to confess I’ve never enjoyed anything so much in my life.’

‘In her face?’

‘I meant it figuratively,’ she said. ‘She stood out there, howling like a hyena. It must have been ten minutes. But then it stopped. She went away.’

She finished her glass of water and placed it behind her on the counter.

‘What did you mean about her belonging in prison or in an institution?’

In that same, easy voice, still speaking to a friend, she said, ‘For what she did to Davide.’

‘What did she do?’

Her eyes widened. ‘You mean you don’t know? I thought everyone in the neighbourhood knew.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about, Signora.’

‘Really?’

‘Really.’

‘About the room?’

‘What room?’

‘Oh my God,’ she said, honestly stricken. ‘I swear by my father’s memory I thought you knew, that you’d found out from the people in the neighbourhood.’

‘I don’t know anything, Signora,’ Brunetti said, feeling the profound truth of this.

She leaned forward and put her palms flat on the table, thumbs barely touching, and she looked at them as she spoke. It took her a long time to find the energy to continue speaking. ‘When my father told her she had to leave our home, she refused, and when he said he’d make sure she and the baby were taken care of, all she said was that she’d take care of the baby.’ She stopped, and swallowed twice. Then she pulled out a chair and sat, facing him.

‘We didn’t know what she meant. At first she went and lived in the house, but then she disappeared. Later, she came back to live with her mother. And she got some sort of job, but I think that was only to keep her out of the house.’

‘And the mother?’

‘She helped her.’

‘With what?’

Her hands gave the only indication, beyond her voice, of her emotions. The fingers contracted into fists, and the veins on the back of her hands stood out.

‘They didn’t talk.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘They didn’t talk to the baby. To the boy. He was there. Maybe she even had him there and no one ever knew.

He lived in a room, and they fed him and cleaned him – I suppose. But they didn’t talk to him. That’s what she meant when she said she’d take care of the baby.’

She looked up then. ‘Don’t think she’s crazy, Signore. She’s not. She’s bad. They both were.’

‘How long did this go on?’

‘Years, a decade or more. Then the old woman left or died or disappeared. I don’t know. I was busy making a ruin of my own life: I had no time to pay attention to hers. Theirs.’

‘How did you learn all of this?’

‘Signora Ghezzi. But not until years later.’ Brunetti fabricated a confused shake of his head. ‘My mother’s maid. She had friends in that neighbourhood, and she heard the talk. Nothing certain, only rumours. No one wanted to get involved. No one had the courage to interfere in what she was doing. No one trusted the police.’

She pushed herself to her feet, then sat down again. ‘And one day the old woman was gone and the boy was there, her son, her disabled and retarded son. She told people he had been raised by relatives in the country; even then no one dared to ask questions.’

‘And you kept paying?’

‘My father did. Through my account. When he died, I kept paying. I’d promised him that.’

‘Did he know about the boy?’

‘What she did to him?’

Unable to say the word, Brunetti nodded.

‘No one ever had the courage. He had moved to the Giudecca by then.’ She paused and gazed into the middle distance. ‘He might have killed her if he had known. Davide was his only son, you know.’

She met his gaze. ‘If you do the research, you’ll find out that’s what happens. If you don’t talk to them, that is. They’re like animals. Like Davide.’

Then she rose to her feet, saying, ‘I think that’s enough, don’t you?’

He did. He left.