‘It was a long time ago; maybe she’s changed,’ Signorina Elettra said, then, ‘Read the articles.’
The first, which was dated two days after the previous one, gave the name of Pietro Cavanis, Venetian, as the man who had saved the girl’s life, and named her parents, both of whom were at the girl’s bedside, waiting for her to emerge from the coma in which she had been since being pulled from the water.
The next had appeared the same day in the other local paper and described the girl as a promising equestrian – which explained the photo with the horse. Manuela was well known at her riding club near Treviso, although for some time she had not participated in competitions.
‘That’s all?’ Brunetti asked as he looked away from the screen.
‘Yes,’ Signorina Elettra answered. ‘What do you make of it?’
He couldn’t let this go on any longer. ‘I’ve spoken to her grandmother.’
‘What?’
‘I was at dinner with her – she’s a friend of my mother-in-law – and she said she wanted to talk to me.’ He pointed to the screen. ‘About her.’
‘When did you see her?’
‘Yesterday. I came up to tell you about it.’ It seemed strange to Brunetti to be sitting at her computer, she at his usual place, but he didn’t want to break the mood of their conversation by suggesting they move.
‘What did she tell you?’
‘About the accident,’ he said, waving at the screen, where the barest facts of the story were given. ‘The girl’s never been the same. She was under the water so long the oxygen to her brain was cut off.’ Brunetti let her consider that and then added, ‘The word she used was “damaged”.’
‘Poor girl,’ Signorina Elettra whispered.
‘Poor everyone,’ Brunetti added and then went on with his story. ‘The man who dived into the canal and pulled her out was drunk when he did it. Didn’t think about it, just went in after her.’ He remembered what the Contessa had told him and added, ‘It sounds like he was the local drunk.’
‘The article didn’t say he was drunk,’ she said. ‘But I suppose they wouldn’t.’
‘She said the police told her about him. She also said that when the police arrived, he reported that he’d seen a man throw Manuela into the water, but he was so drunk they paid no attention to him. And they were probably right because the next morning, when he woke up, he had no memory of it.’
Signorina Elettra hopped down from the windowsill and came over to her desk. She picked up a notebook and pencil and immediately went back to where she had been sitting and asked, ‘What’s his name? I saw it in the article, but I don’t remember it.’
‘Pietro Cavanis.’
She nodded and wrote it down. ‘Did she say anything else about him?’ she asked.
‘Only that she gave him some money, and he stayed drunk for a month on it.’
‘I see,’ she said, writing in the notebook. ‘What do you think we did?’
‘We?’
‘The police.’
It could have been anything, Brunetti realized, but it was more likely nothing. The uncorroborated story of a man known to be the local drunk, given at a time of great stress, a story he retracted the day after: no one would have paid attention to it. Brunetti shrugged.
She jabbed at her computer with the eraser on the pencil. ‘The date’s there. I’ll see if I can find a record of the incident.’ She wrote a bit more and stopped to look across at him. ‘What do you make of it?’ she asked.
Brunetti had been considering this since the Contessa spoke to him. A drunken witness who didn’t remember his own story? ‘I don’t know. If he didn’t remember anything the next morning, there was nothing for them to do.’ She waited, forcing him to admit he had not answered her question. ‘The most likely thing is that the girl fell into the water,’ he continued. ‘Or it would be if it weren’t for her phobia.’ Her glance was a question; he went on. ‘Her grandmother told me the girl almost drowned when she was a child: after that, she was terrified of the water and never went anywhere near it, which means she wouldn’t be walking along a riva, especially alone and especially in the dark.’ Before she could ask, he continued, ‘Her grandmother said she managed to live in the city by knowing which calli didn’t run along a canal. And she looked at the pavement when she had to go over bridges.’ Her expression showed that she, as any Venetian would, found this improbable if not impossible.
‘More importantly, she told me the girl had grown reserved and unhappy in the months before the incident, so there’s the possibility of drugs or drink,’ Brunetti added. ‘If she were using them, then she might have walked along the riva,’ he added.
‘Ummm,’ was Signorina Elettra’s response as she continued to write. ‘What about the fact that she hadn’t ridden in competitions for some time?’ Was that an inquisitorial note in her voice?