By Its Cover (11 page)

‘I hope your plans are successful,’ was all he could think of to say.

‘Thank you,’ the Conte said, with a smile and a nod that acknowledged Brunetti’s right to avoid engagement with this subject. ‘And you? What are you doing?’

It was not necessary for Brunetti to ask the Conte not to repeat what he was told. His father-in-law had not achieved his position in the country by being a blabbermouth. ‘We were called about a robbery at the Biblioteca Merula. Someone who was using the library for research sliced pages from books. Others are missing.’

‘How did he get in?’ the Conte asked. ‘Didn’t they check him or check his application?’ Then, after a pause replete with feigned patience, he added, ‘If they make people fill out applications, that is.’

‘He filled one out. But he had a fake passport and a fake letter of recommendation from an American university.’

‘No one noticed they were fake?’

Brunetti shrugged. ‘They believed him to be a member of the community of scholars.’

This was greeted by a wild hoot of derision from Paola, who had apparently diverted her attention from her mother long enough to eavesdrop on their conversation. ‘“Community of scholars”,’ she repeated. ‘It would make the chickens laugh.’

Mildly, her mother said, ‘We sent you to all those famous schools, dear, and now you speak badly about your colleagues. Couldn’t you be a little bit kinder?’

Paola leaned to the side and put her arm around her mother’s shoulders. She kissed her cheek, then kissed it again. ‘
Mamma
, you are the only person on the planet
who would consider the riff-raff I’m at university with to be scholars.’

‘You went there and you’re one, please don’t forget,’ her mother said, still mildly.

‘
Mamma
, please,’ Paola begged. But before she could say more, the young man who had greeted them on their arrival appeared in the doorway and said that dinner was ready.

Brunetti extended his hand to the Contessa, who placed hers on it, as light as a feather, and got effortlessly to her feet. Paola stood up, far less gracefully, put on her shoes, and took her father’s arm.

Brunetti accompanied the Contessa to the small dining room. ‘It always troubles me to hear Paola speak so badly of her colleagues,’ her mother said as they entered the room.

‘I’ve met a few of them,’ Brunetti limited himself to saying.

She gave him a quick look and smiled. ‘She is a rash woman.’

‘Your daughter?’ Brunetti said in feigned shock.

‘Oh, Guido, I think you provide encouragement sometimes.’

‘She needs none, I suspect,’ was all Brunetti said.

They sat at a round table, Brunetti facing Paola, with the Contessa on his left, the Conte on his right. A young woman appeared and placed an enormous ceramic platter in the middle of the table, covered with a seafood antipasto sufficient to sate the appetites of the people at the table, in the kitchen, and probably in the adjoining
palazzi
as well.

The conversation was the normal talk of families: children, relatives, mutual friends, ailments – there was more of that with each passing year – and then on to the condition of the world, which they all agreed was dire.

Later, when the maid was removing the plates that had held
gnocchi di patate con ragù,
Paola asked, ‘Did you tell
Papà
about the library?’

The Conte answered, ‘Yes, he did. It’s starting here now, as well.’ He shrugged and took a drink of mineral water. None of them found it necessary to mention the Girolamini Library in Naples, one of the most illustrious in the country, which had been subject to the depredations of its own director, now in prison. Because the catalogue of holdings, such as existed, was believed to have been altered, there was no way to know what was missing: estimates ranged from 2,000 to 4,000 volumes, some of which had surfaced in Munich, Tokyo, in the shops of respectable book dealers and in the libraries of politicians who, of course, expressed astonishment at the presence of those volumes. In MY library? Heavily laden cars were reported to have been seen driving out of the library’s courtyard in the night, groaning under their weight of paper. How many volumes were missing? Who knew? Manuscripts, incunabula, gone, gone, gone.

‘Friends of mine have had things stolen from their libraries,’ the Conte interrupted his own reverie by saying.

‘May I ask … ?’ Brunetti said and immediately regretted having spoken.

The Conte looked at him and smiled. ‘I think they’d be happier if you didn’t know their names, Guido.’

Of course, of course: no one wanted the authorities to know what was in their homes. What happened if and when the government slapped a tax on private possessions? If they could reimpose a tax on your house, or houses, what was to stop them from putting a tax on what was in them?

‘They didn’t report it?’ Brunetti inquired.

The Conte’s smile was indulgent, but he did not bother to answer.

‘At least I stopped the man who was doing it at the university,’ boasted a self-satisfied Paola.

No one commented on this. None of them had wanted dessert, so they were drinking coffee while waiting to see what would appear in response to the Conte’s request for ‘
una grappina
’.

To break the silence that still lingered after Paola’s remark, Brunetti turned to his mother-in-law and said, ‘Contessa Morosini-Albani’s a patron of the Merula, so she’ll have to be told about the thefts. How do you think she’ll react?’

‘Patron? Elisabetta?’ the Contessa repeated. ‘How remarkable.’

‘Why is that?’

‘Elisabetta can be so tight-fisted at times, you’d think she was born here,’ she said, and Brunetti marvelled that Paola’s father let his wife loose among his Venetian friends. In a more reflective, sadder, voice, his mother-in-law continued, ‘She’s mad to be accepted into society, so perhaps being a patron of something is one of the prices she’s willing to pay.’

‘If she’s been here, with you,’ Brunetti said, waving toward a Moroni portrait of one of the Conte’s ancestors, ‘then she’s accepted into society, isn’t she?’

‘Oh, she’s here because she’s one of my oldest friends,’ the Contessa said with a warm smile. ‘But most people won’t have her.’

‘But you do?’

‘Of course. She was very good to me when we were at school together. She’s two years older than I, and she protected me. And so I try to do the same now, where I can and when I can.’ She thought for a moment, placed her coffee cup to the side and said, ‘I never thought about it before, but it’s much the same situation. I was an outsider,
and the older girls, the richer girls, bullied me terribly for that. Once Elisabetta – she was the daughter of a prince, after all, even if her family was ruined and the
palazzo
a shambles – became my friend, I was accepted.’

‘It doesn’t sound as if that’s happened here,’ Paola interrupted to say.

‘You know Elisabetta,’ the Contessa said. ‘She’s outspoken and judgmental and not an easy person. And she’s got those unfortunate stepchildren.’

Paola nodded. Brunetti, thinking of Signorina Elettra’s response, asked, ‘Unfortunate for themselves or for her or for other people?’

‘For all of them, I’d say,’ the Conte answered.

The Contessa couldn’t hide her surprise. ‘You know her stepchildren?’

‘I’ve done business with Gianni,’ he answered. ‘And I’ve met his two sisters. They tried to get some money back.’

‘From you?’

‘From an investment he made for them in one of my companies.’

‘What happened?’ interrupted Paola. ‘What company?’

‘Oh, it was a small thing, a wind farm in the Netherlands, and it wasn’t really very much money they were talking about.’

‘How much?’ Brunetti inquired, curious to know what sum ‘wasn’t much’.

‘Oh, half a million Euros, perhaps a bit more. I don’t remember now. It was about six years ago.’

‘What happened?’ Paola asked.

‘It was a well-run company, but Gianni decided to pull out too soon, and when he came to me, the stock had gone down about fifty per cent. He said he needed money. First he tried to borrow it from me, but I refused. Then he offered to sell me the stock.’ The Conte looked at his
wife, but the arrival of the grappa saved him from having to continue with the story.

He picked up his grappa and opened his mouth to pass judgement on it but was interrupted by the Contessa, who asked, ‘What was his offer?’

Brunetti, who had lacked the courage to ask that question, was curious about the answer. The Conte toasted his wife with his tiny glass of grappa and took a sip. He set the glass down in front of him and tilted his head to one side, as if acknowledging that he had no choice but to answer his wife’s question.

‘He said he’d accept a lower price for the stock if I’d give him a receipt with an even lower price he could show his sisters, and he’d give me half the difference in cash. The stock was owned by all three of them in common, but he was the administrator, and they didn’t have any real understanding of business.’ Then, significantly, he added, ‘They trusted him. At the time.’

‘What did you do?’ Paola asked.

‘I refused. I told him he was free to sell the stock any way he chose but that I wasn’t interested.’ The Conte took another sip; irritation seeped into his voice as he said, ‘He was very insistent, and I had to be curt with him. He left.’ Then, after some time, ‘The sisters came to me a month later and demanded that I make good their loss.’ The Conte sighed. ‘Gianni had told them I’d cheated him – cheated them all.’

‘You never told me this, Orazio,’ the Contessa interrupted.

‘Elisabetta’s your friend, my dear. I didn’t want to trouble you.’

‘What did you tell them?’ she asked, visibly troubled by what he had just said.

‘I told them they would have to ask their lawyer to speak to mine, and he’d explain what had happened.’

‘Did you tell them what Gianni had tried to do to them?’

‘I don’t think that would have been correct, my dear. He’s their brother.’

‘Did they do it? Did their lawyer get in touch?’

‘Yes. Arturo explained the sale to them.’

‘Did the lawyer tell them what Gianni had tried to do?’

‘I never told Arturo about that,’ the Conte said and finished his grappa.

‘What will happen to Gianni?’ the Contessa asked.

The Conte shrugged and rose from his chair. ‘I have no idea. I know only that he is not as clever as he thinks he is and that he is unable to resist his impulses – of any kind. So he will always fail at anything he does.’

9

They walked back to the apartment hand in hand, a desire brought on by the advent of spring or perhaps by Paola’s lingering admiration for Brunetti’s suit. ‘I’ve always considered her a friendly dragon,’ Brunetti said, believing Paola would understand.

‘Elisabetta?’ It was a request for confirmation, not a question.

‘Certainly not your mother.’

After some thought, Paola said, ‘I can see that: she is, and she isn’t.’

‘The times I’ve seen her at your parents’, she hasn’t been breathing smoke and fire from her nostrils, but she’s never much seemed to care if people like her or not, and she certainly doesn’t hesitate to express her opinion.’

‘With us, she knows that she’s with people who like her.’

‘Am I included in that?’ Brunetti asked.

Paola turned to look up at his face, surprised. ‘Of course you are. Goose. Because you’re one of us, she doesn’t pretend to be anything except what she is.’

‘Which is?’

‘Intelligent, independent, impatient, lonely.’

Brunetti, who had observed the first three qualities in the Contessa, had not considered the fourth. ‘What do you make of her giving that money to the library?’

‘I agree with my mother: it’s the price she thinks she has to pay in order to be accepted into society.’

‘You don’t sound as if you believe she’ll succeed.’

‘I know these people, Guido. For God’s sake, I’m one of these people. Remember that. She’s got pedigrees, both on her father’s side and her mother’s, that date to long before the titles of the noble families here. But she’s Sicilian, and she’s not a principessa – even if her father was a prince – so she’s never going to be let in. Not fully.’

‘Even though she married a Venetian?’ he asked.

Paola surprised him by saying, ‘Perhaps that’s the reason why.’

‘You see how crazy all this is?’ Brunetti asked in a level voice.

‘I’ve seen how crazy it is since I was six, but that’s not going to change it one whit.’ She stopped on the top of the bridge leading to San Polo and leaned on the parapet. ‘I wish she’d just forget about it, but I don’t think she’s capable of that. The wiring is too strong, or too old, and that’s the only world she knows, so it’s the world she has to be accepted into.’

Brunetti asked, ‘Do you think she’d talk to me?’

‘Elisabetta?’

‘Yes.’

‘I suspect she would. I told you, she thinks of you as one of us. And she likes you.’ Then, from habit, she added, just as he put his key in the front door, ‘I think.’

*

The next morning, Brunetti waited until ten-thirty to call the Contessa at the number Paola had given him. This gave him time to check both
Il Gazzettino
and
La Nuova
for any report of the theft at the library, but neither newspaper mentioned it.

He dialled the Contessa’s
telefonino
number, and after only two rings a woman’s voice answered, ‘Morosini-Albani.’

‘Contessa,’ Brunetti began. ‘This is Guido Brunetti, Paola Falier’s husband.’

‘I recognize you by your own name, Commissario.’ It was a jest, not a provocation.

‘I’m complimented by that, Contessa,’ he said. ‘We so seldom speak during the dinners.’

‘I’ve always considered that a pity.’ Her voice bore only the most minimal trace elements of her Sicilian origins.

‘Then perhaps we might speak today, if you have time,’ he said, having decided it would be best to be straightforward with the Contessa.

‘About?’ she asked, and he was reminded of Dottoressa Fabbiani’s reluctance to tell him about the bequest.