The Death of Faith (22 page)

‘Those, I assume, are meant to be synonyms?’ Brunetti asked.

‘Make jokes if you wish, but you do so at your peril.’

‘I am not here to make jokes, Mother Superior. I am here to find out why she left the place where she was working.’

The nun considered this demand for a long time. As Brunetti watched, one hand rose up to finger the crucifix on her bosom, an entirely unconscious and involuntary gesture. ‘There was talk of. . .’ she began but didn’t finish the sentence. She lowered her eyes, saw what her hand was about, and took it away from the cross. She glanced back at Brunetti. ‘She refused to obey an order given to her by her superior, and when I suggested spiritual penance for her sin, she left.’

‘Did you speak to her confessor?’

‘Yes. When she left.’

‘And did he tell you anything that she might have said to him?’

She managed to look shocked by this question. ‘If she spoke to him in confession, of course he couldn’t tell me. The vow is sacred.’

‘Only life is sacred,’ Brunetti shot back, regretting his words immediately.

He saw her bite back a reply and got to his feet. ‘Thank you,’ Brunetti said. If she was surprised by the abruptness with which he seemed to be terminating their interview, she gave no sign of it. He went to the door and opened it. When he glanced back to say goodbye, she was still sitting stiff in her chair, her hand fingering the crucifix.

* * * *

Chapter Twelve

He cut his way back toward the apartment, stopped and got some mineral water, and was home by seven-thirty. When he opened the door, he knew immediately that everyone else was at home: Chiara and Raffi were in the living room, laughing at something on television, and Paola was in her study, singing along with Rossini.

He took the bottles to the kitchen, said hello to the children, and went down the hall to Paola’s study. A small CD player stood on the bookshelf; Paola sat with the small, square libretto in her hand, sat and sang.

‘Cecilia Bartoli?’ he asked as he went in.

She looked up, astonished that he had recognized the voice of the singer she was helping with the aria, not suspecting that he had seen the singer’s name on the new CD of
Barbiere
she had bought a week ago.

‘How’d you know that?’ she asked, forgetting for a moment about singing along with ‘
Una voce poco fa’.

‘We keep an eye on everything,’ he said, then corrected himself. ‘An ear, that is.’

‘Oh, don’t be a fool, Guido,’ she said but laughed in the saying. She closed the libretto and tossed it on the desk beside her, leaned over, and switched off the music.

‘You think the kids would like to go out to dinner?’ he asked.

‘No, they’re watching some stupid movie that won’t be over until eight, and I’ve already got something cooking.’

‘What?’ he asked, realizing that he was very hungry.

‘Gianni had some beautiful pork today.’

‘Good. How are you cooking it?’

‘With porcini.’

‘And polenta?’

She smiled at him. ‘Of course. No wonder you’re getting that stomach.’

‘What stomach?’ Brunetti asked, pulling in the one he had. When she didn’t answer, Brunetti said, ‘It’s the end of the winter.’ To divert her, perhaps to divert himself from discussion of his stomach, he explained the events of the day, since he had received the phone call from Vittorio Sassi that morning.

‘Have you called him back?’ Paola asked.

‘No, I’ve been too busy.’

‘Why don’t you do it now?’ she asked. She left him there to do it from the phone in her study and went down to the kitchen to put on water for the polenta.

He came out about ten minutes later.

‘Well?’ she asked when he came in, handing him a glass of Dolcetto.

‘Thanks,’ he murmured and took a small sip. ‘I told him how she was and where she was.’

‘What kind of man does he sound like?’

‘Decent enough to help her find a job and a place to live. And worried enough to call me when this happened.’

‘What do you think it was?’

‘It could have been an accident, or it could have been something worse,’ Brunetti said, sipping at his wine.

‘You mean somebody trying to kill her?’

He nodded.

‘Why?’

‘That would depend on whom she’s been to see since she spoke to me. And what she told them.’

‘Would she be that rash?’ Paola asked. The only things she knew about Maria Testa had come from what Brunetti had said about Suor’Immacolata over the years, and they had always been in praise of her patience and charity as a nun, hardly the sort of information that would give her any idea of how the young woman might behave in a situation such as the one Brunetti had described.

‘I don’t think she’d even think it was rash. She’s been a nun most of her life, Paola,’ he said as though that would explain everything.

‘What is that supposed to mean?’

‘That she doesn’t have a very clear idea of how people behave. She probably hasn’t been exposed to human evil or to deceit.’

‘You said she was Sicilian, didn’t you?’ Paola asked.

‘That’s not funny.’

‘I didn’t mean it as a joke, Guido,’ Paola said, voice injured. ‘I’m quite serious. If she grew up in that society . . .’ She turned away from the stove. ‘How old did you say she was when she joined?’

‘Fifteen, I think.’

‘Then, if she grew up in Sicily, she had sufficient exposure to human behaviour to accept the possibility of evil. Don’t romanticize her. She’s not a plaster saint who will collapse at the first sight of impropriety or misbehaviour.’

Brunetti couldn’t keep the resentment out of his voice when he shot back, ‘Killing five old people can hardly be considered misbehaviour.’ Paola made no rejoinder, merely stared at him and then turned to add salt to the boiling water.

‘All right, all right, I know there’s not much proof,’ he temporized, and then when Paola refused to turn around, he corrected even that. ‘All right, no proof. But then why would there be a rumour that she had stolen the money and hurt one of the old people? And why would she have been hit and left by the road?’

Paola opened the package of dry corn meal that stood next to the pot and grabbed up a handful. As she spoke, she trickled a fine stream into the boiling water with one hand, stirring with the other. ‘It could have been a hit and run,’ she said. ‘And women alone don’t have much to do except gossip,’ she added.

Brunetti sat with his mouth open. ‘And this,’ he finally said, ‘this from a woman who considers herself a feminist? Heaven save me from hearing what women who are not feminists say about women who live alone.’

‘I mean it, Guido. Women or men, it’s all the same.’ Undisturbed by his opposition, she continued to dribble the corn meal into the boiling water, slowly stirring all the while. ‘Leave people alone long enough, and all they can do is gossip about one another. It’s worse if there are no diversions.’

‘Like sex?’ he asked, hoping to shock her or at least to make her laugh.

‘Especially if there is no sex.’

She finished adding the corn meal, and Brunetti considered what they had both just said.

‘Here, stir this while I set the table,’ she said, standing aside and leaving the place in front of the stove free. She held the wooden spoon out to him.

‘I’ll set the table,’ he said, getting up and opening the cabinet. Slowly, he laid out the plates, glasses, and silverware. ‘We having salad?’ he asked. When Paola nodded, he pulled down four salad plates and placed them on the counter. ‘Dessert?’ he asked.

‘Fruit.’

He pulled down four more plates.

He sat back in his place and picked up his glass. He took a sip, swallowed, and said, ‘All right. Maybe it was an accident, and maybe it’s entirely accidental that they’re speaking badly of her in the
casa di cura.’
He set the glass down and poured some more wine into it. ‘Is that what you think?’.

She gave the polenta another stir and placed the wooden spoon across the open top. ‘No, I think someone tried to kill her. And I think someone planted the story about taking the money. Everything you’ve ever said about her tells me it’s impossible that she would lie or steal. And I doubt that anyone who knew her well would believe it. Not unless the story came from someone in a position of authority.’ She picked up his glass and took a sip, then set the glass down.

‘It’s funny, Guido, I was just listening to the same thing.’

‘What same thing?’

‘There’s a wonderful aria in
Barbiere
— and don’t interrupt me and say that there are many wonderful arias in
Barbiere.
It’s the one where, what’s his name, Basilio, the music teacher, talks about “
una calunnia”,
the way once a slander is started, it will grow until the accused person’ — and here she astonished Brunetti by bursting into the final words of the bass aria, but in her own bright soprano — ‘
Avvilito, calpestrato, sotto il pubblico flagello per gran sorte va a crepar.’

Before she was finished, both children were at the kitchen door, looking in, astonished, at their mother. When Paola finished, Chiara blurted out, ‘But
Mamma,
I never knew you could sing.’

Paola looked at her husband, not her daughter, when she answered, ‘There’s always something to discover about the people you think you know well.’

* * * *

Toward the end of the meal, the subject of school came up and, as day must lead to night, that led Paola to ask about Chiara’s R.E. class.

‘I’d like to stop going,’ Chiara said, taking an apple from a bowl of fruit at the centre of the table.

‘I don’t see why you don’t let her stop,’ Raffi interrupted. ‘It’s just a waste of time, anyway.’

Paola didn’t grace his contribution with a response but, instead, asked, ‘Why do you say that, Chiara?’

She shrugged.

‘I believe you have been graced with the power of speech, Chiara,’ Paola said.

‘Oh, come on,
Mamma.
Once you start using that tone with me, I know you’re not going to listen to anything I say.’

‘And what tone is that, if I might ask?’ enquired Paola.

‘That one,’ Chiara shot back.

Paola looked to the males in her family for support against this unwarranted attack from her last-born child, but they turned implacable eyes upon her. Chiara continued to peel her apple, bent on creating a single strip out of the peel, now certainly long enough to reach the end of the table.

‘I’m sorry, Chiara,’ Paola said.

Chiara shot her a glance, cut off the last of the peel, sliced a piece of apple, and placed it on her mother’s plate.

Brunetti decided to reopen negotiations. ‘Why do you want to stop going to the classes, Chiara?’

‘Raffi’s right. It’s a waste of time. I memorized the catechism the first week, and all we do is recite it back to him when he asks us questions. It’s boring, and I could be reading or doing my other homework. But the worst thing is that he doesn’t like it if we ask questions.’

‘What sort of questions?’ Brunetti asked, accepting the last piece of her apple and thus setting Chiara free to begin peeling another one.