‘Are you the policemen?’ she asked in a tentative voice. She managed to move her lips and tried to smile.
‘Yes, we are,’ Brunetti said in as pleasant a voice as he could muster.
‘But you don’t have uniforms. And she’s not a man,’ she said, pointing an agitated finger at Griffoni.
‘But I do work for the police,’ Griffoni said calmly. ‘We’re called policewomen, and we don’t have to wear a uniform.’ She produced a smile, warm and large enough for a person to plunge into.
Manuela nodded, but Brunetti wondered if her mental capacities had a category for policewomen.
She turned to Brunetti and pointed at him, but spoke to Griffoni. ‘He isn’t wearing a uniform, either.’
‘He doesn’t have to wear one,’ Griffoni said smoothly. ‘We’re bosses, and bosses don’t have to wear them.’
‘But you can if you want?’
‘Of course.’ Then, with real interest, Griffoni asked, ‘Do you think it would be better if we wore them?’
Manuela stopped to consider this. Brunetti watched her face as she tried to decide. First her lips tightened, and then her eyes. She brought her right hand to her forehead, the way a bad actor would, to show indecision. Then her face flushed, and her breathing quickened. A low humming noise came from her mouth.
Griffoni intervened when she heard this. ‘Oh, who cares, anyway, Manuela, so long as we’re here and can talk to your mother. She said you’d answer the door and take us to her. Do you think you can do that now?’
Manuela took a step towards Griffoni and latched her arm in hers. Her face cleared and her breathing returned to normal. ‘Oh, yes. She’s in the sitting room and told me to bring you there.’ She smiled and then lost her smile when she said, ‘But I forgot.’
‘Oh, I forget everything, too,’ Griffoni said. Then, to her new best friend, placing her hand on hers the better to anchor their arms together, she said, ‘Let’s go and see your mother.’
‘Yes, please,’ Manuela said.
Brunetti had watched all of this, marvelling at the woman’s beauty. No makeup, hair pulled back and hanging straight, but she’d cause heads to turn on the street. As she walked away, arm in arm with Griffoni, Brunetti noticed that her left foot did not rise as high as the right. She did not drag it, but it was evident that it did not make a matched pair with the other.
He followed them down a corridor that led towards the back of the house. Manuela stopped abruptly outside a door, as though she had walked into something solid. Then she turned to the left and said, ‘In there,’ leaving it to Griffoni to open the door. They walked in, still arm in arm, and Brunetti followed fast upon them.
A woman a bit taller than her daughter stood looking out of a window, her pose so studied and artificial that Brunetti had to stop himself from laughing at the sight of her. ‘Signora Magello-Ronchi?’ he asked formally, as if uncertain who this woman might be.
She turned slowly to face them but said nothing. Brunetti used her consciously dramatic pause to study her face. In it, he saw the eyes she had passed to her daughter: clear blue and almond-shaped. Human intervention had thinned Barbara’s nose: either nature or her father’s genes had thinned that of her daughter. Her hair was artfully streaked with blonde, and she was careful to stand straight, shoulders back, as if she had been told she’d be punished if her hair touched her shoulders.
Her mouth, a colour somewhere between strong pink and delicate red, was poised in a half-smile as she formulated the proper greeting. ‘Buon giorno,’ she said, having found it.
She looked at Brunetti and graced him with a smile, then nodded in Griffoni’s direction, leaving it to her to decipher if the nod were meant for her or for her daughter. Griffoni nodded in return, and Manuela said, ‘Mamma, these are the policemen, but they don’t have to wear uniforms to be policemen and they don’t have to be men, either.’ She turned to Griffoni for confirmation, and Griffoni smiled, patting Manuela’s arm as she did so, as if to praise her for having learned so much, so fast.
Manuela laughed, a bright tinkle that filled the room with delight and caused Brunetti’s hands to curl into tight fists. He looked at his shoes until the moment passed and then returned his eyes to the mother.
‘That’s very interesting, Manuela,’ she said with enough interest to make it sound as though she believed it herself. ‘But aren’t you helping Alina in the kitchen?’ Before Manuela could answer, her mother went on. ‘Why don’t you go and ask her to make coffee for our guests?’
Then, to Brunetti, ‘You’d both like some coffee, wouldn’t you?’