‘She still had the horse,’ he answered. ‘Her grandmother was paying for it.’ He was conscious of how inadequate this sounded, even to himself.
Signorina Elettra raised a hand in a gesture that could mean anything. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, looking down at her feet. She swung them away from the wall one by one, then looked over at Brunetti. ‘The story’s caught you, hasn’t it?’
Brunetti accepted that it had, but he had no idea what might have caught Signorina Elettra’s attention in this sorry tale: lost youth, lost possibility, bad luck? It might be no more than an interest in the unfortunate destinies of the noble names of her native city, or just as easily it could be her heightened sensibility to the fate of women. He switched the screen back to the photo of the girl and studied it for a while. ‘She could have been away from riding because of a fall,’ he suggested. ‘Or it could be – we don’t know how old she was when this photo was taken – that, like many girls, she forgot about horses when she discovered boys.’ He glanced over to see her response, but she seemed occupied with seeing just how high she could raise her feet.
‘Her horse could have been injured,’ Brunetti added. Paola having long ago declared their family an Animal Free Zone, he had no first-hand information about the relationships between young girls and their horses. He had read, however, that they could be very strong.
She pushed herself off the windowsill and landed silently. Brunetti got to his feet as she moved towards the desk, leaving the chair and computer to her. He thought he knew her well enough to ask, and so said, ‘Has it caught you, too?’
She turned to look at him. ‘Of course.’ She brushed a strand of hair behind her ear, then sat and tapped at the keyboard with one finger. ‘There’s something wrong about it all. Let me see if I can find the original reports and witness statements, for example.’
‘She’d be how old now – more than thirty?’
‘Yes, just a bit,’ Signorina Elettra said. ‘But if what her grandmother said is true, then she hasn’t had the last fifteen years in any real sense.’
‘The grandmother wasn’t precise,’ he explained, ‘but she spoke of Manuela as though she were a child.’
He watched her hit a few more keys, but she didn’t bother to look at the screen: it must be a nervous habit, the way a smoker rolls a pencil in his hand, just to keep his fingers nimble.
He stood there for a long time, but she said nothing. Finally he asked, ‘What are you going to do?’ as if she were another commissario, and they were planning strategy together.
‘I’ll start with the stables and see if anyone there remembers her. Same with her school.’
‘And when you’ve done that?’ he asked.
‘Then I tell you what I’ve learned.’
‘And then?’
‘And then we’ll see.’
That afternoon, Brunetti spent some hours writing ‘performance assessments’ for six members of the uniformed branch. When he was finished, he allowed himself to leave the Questura, took the Number One to the Lido, and went for a long walk on the beach. Autumn was in the air and visible on the whitecaps, and by the time he got home, he was tired and chilled and very hungry.
After dinner, he and Paola moved into the living room, and he told her about his conversation with Contessa Landi-Continui and her request – entreaty, really – that he find out what had happened to her granddaughter.
‘Even though this happened fifteen years ago?’ Paola asked.
‘The Contessa said she needs to know. Before she dies.’
Paola stopped to consider that. ‘Yes, I suppose she does. A person would, wouldn’t they?’
‘Would what?’
‘Need to know they weren’t responsible, if nothing else.’
She had chosen to sit in one of the armchairs that faced the sofa, leaving him to stretch out on it. It was late and they were drinking verbena tisane, Brunetti having opted not to have a grappa and Paola fighting a sore throat.
‘But why would she be responsible?’ he asked, moving around until his head and shoulder were at the perfect angle on the arm of the sofa. ‘The girl was living with her mother, and the Contessa didn’t see much of her in the last months before it happened.’
‘She probably thinks that she should have.’
‘She’s her grandmother, not her guardian angel.’
‘Guido,’ she said, putting hard emphasis on the first syllable, the way she did when she was calling the children to account.
‘What?’
‘You’re being heartless. The girl was her granddaughter.’ That said, Paola sipped at her tisane.
Brunetti realized her voice sounded rougher than it had at dinner. Apparently the verbena had not succeeded in helping her throat, which meant the centuries-old Falier remedy had been bested by the germ theory.
He took the empty cup from her hand, carried it into the kitchen and put it into the sink. When he came back, Paola sat with her head resting against the back of the chair, eyes closed, no book in her hands.