GB_23: By Its Cover: A Commissario Guido Brunetti Mystery Read online

  He lowered his head and studied the remains of his own coffee, then set his cup on the saucer beside hers. ‘I suppose it depends on how visible you make your contempt for Hollywood,’ he said.

  ‘All contempt for Hollywood should be made as visible as possible.’ That said, she smiled brightly and added, ‘You know she’s a snob. We all are. But she might have reason on her side.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Brunetti said, making it clear it was concession and not agreement. He glanced at his watch, saw that he still had half an hour before he had to start back to work, and decided to ask Paola: she read everything and thought about what she read. ‘You ever read science fiction?’

  ‘Henry James wrote so little,’ she said with a laugh.

  ‘I’m serious,’ he said.

  ‘Yes. Some. But no more.’

  ‘You ever read the one about burning books?’ he asked. If she had, he knew it would be in there, packed away.

  ‘No, not that I remember. Can you tell me more?’

  ‘I don’t recall the title, but it talked about a world where books had been outlawed by the state, and the firemen – this was very clever – the firemen went around burning any books that were found. If you had a book, you were killed.’

  ‘I’m sure my students would all want to move there,’ Paola said, straight-faced.

  ‘They wouldn’t like it because some people memorized entire books: they became the book. It was the only way to preserve them.’

  She turned to stare at him. ‘What made you think of it?’

  He shrugged and glanced at the table in front of them, covered with books in all stages of reading: dog-eared; cellophane-covered still; open and face down; kissing each other face to face to mark the page in both; pages spread open and staring at the ceiling. ‘I should have mentioned it to the Contessa.’ He doubted the Contessa’s familiarity with the genre and suspected she might not find his reference very compelling.

  ‘If you get rid of all the books, you get rid of memory,’ he said.

  ‘And culture, and ethics, and variety, and any argument that opposes what you choose to think,’ Paola said, as if reading from a list. Then, because he hadn’t answered, she repeated her question, ‘What are you thinking about?’

  ‘Something she said. It’s as if she thinks the prettiness of books as important as the text.’

  ‘To some people it is. Or they wouldn’t steal them, I suppose.’ Then, after a moment’s reflection, she added, as if conceding, ‘The physical object can tell a lot about the culture, and they have historical importance. And think of all those natural history books where the facts are wrong and the drawings perfect.’

  ‘We didn’t agree,’ Brunetti said.

  ‘You voted for the text, I hope,’ Paola said, turning to him.

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Good,’ she said. ‘Divorce would be so troublesome.’

  Brunetti huffed and shook his head. ‘Goose.’

  After a long pause, she said, ‘One thing you told me still makes no sense.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘That he bolted.’

  ‘Excuse me?’

  ‘That this Nickerson left the library in a hurry, leaving the books on the table.’ The sun had been crawling across the floor as they sat there, and it now touched the soles of her feet stretched on the table in front of the sofa. She slid down and stretched them farther, wiggling them in the sunlight. ‘Oh, that feels good,’ she sighed.

  ‘Is it warmer?’ he asked.

  ‘Not physically,’ she answered. Then, back to the original topic, she added, ‘Why would he do that?’

  ‘He saw someone watching him,’ Brunetti said, remembering Tertullian.

  ‘Or someone could have warned him,’ Paola suggested.

  ‘How?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘People can take their telefonini into the building, can’t they?’ she asked.

  ‘I would assume so. People take them everywhere.’

  ‘Then he could have had a call or an SMS.’

  ‘That would require an accomplice,’ Brunetti added.

  ‘The fact that he managed to have a false American passport suggests a more sophisticated organization than the local troop of Boy Scouts gone to the bad,’ she answered, but defanged the remark with a smile and added, ‘It seems we agree that something frightened him.’

  Brunetti allowed himself to sink into the sofa’s embrace. He closed his eyes and tried to remember what Sartor had said about the American. Something about being led by Nickerson’s enthusiasm for the books he was reading to read the same volume of Cortés.

  Brunetti pulled out his telefonino and called Signorina Elettra’s office number, hoping she would be there.

  She picked up on the second ring. ‘Sì, Dottore?’ she answered.

  ‘I have a favour to ask. Can you look at the Merula catalogue and see how many copies they have of the book by Hernán Cortés? It’s called Relación Something or Other.

  ‘Would you like me to do this now, Dottore?’ she asked.

  ‘If it’s no trouble.’

  ‘One moment, then,’ she said.

  He wedged the phone between his shoulder and his ear and leaned his head back. He heard a page turning beside him: Paola obviously had kept some text secreted about her person or under the cushion where she sat, left there in the event that life presented her with the necessity of spending three minutes with nothing to read. He didn’t bother to look at her, merely counted the pages she turned.

  After the fourth, Signorina Elettra was back on the line. ‘Their catalogue lists a copy of Segunda Carta de Relación, printed in Seville in 1522, one copy of Carta tercera, same city, one year later, and another of the Quarta relación, by Gaspar Avila of Toledo, that’s been removed for conservation.

  ‘There is also a version that was printed here in 1524, by Vercellese, translated into Italian by Nicolò Liburnio.’

  She allowed a long moment to pass and then inquired, ‘Anything else, Dottore?’

  ‘No, thank you, Signorina. I applaud you and I thank you.’

  ‘Dovere,’ she said and replaced the phone. Brunetti laughed out loud and switched off his telefonino.

  ‘What did she say?’ Paola asked, looking up from her book.

  ‘That she was only doing her duty.’ He laughed again. ‘She’s Patta’s secretary, not mine, yet she’s always willing to drop what she’s doing to help me. And she says it’s her duty.’

  ‘You have a weakness for irony,’ she said.

  He placed his hand on her knee and shook it a bit. ‘And you don’t?’

  Brunetti decided to stop at the Biblioteca Merula on his way back to the Questura and called Vianello to ask him to meet him at the Accademia Bridge so they would have time to talk while walking to the library. He chose to walk to the bridge, enjoying the rare freedom to pass through relatively empty streets. In two months, it would be impossible to walk through San Polo towards the bridge at this hour. He corrected himself: it would be possible, but it would be unbearable. When had this happened, he wondered; when had the city become unpleasant for so much of the year? But when he came down the bridge into Campo San Barnaba and saw three women sitting at a table in front of a café, their babies’ pushchairs parked at their sides, faces tilted upwards to catch the sun as they sat and chatted with one another, his grumbling was swept away in a riptide of euphoria.

  At the Accademia, he saw Vianello standing at the back of the edicola, watching the owner play chess with a friend. Approaching him, Brunetti said, ‘I didn’t know you played.’

  ‘I don’t, really,’ Vianello said. ‘I know how the pieces move and all that, but I’m no good at tactics or strategy.’

  Brunetti chose not to comment on this. That so fine a predator should fail to recognize his talent surprised him, but perhaps pursuing criminals was different from capturing rooks and bishops.

  Falling into step, they turned away from the water. ‘I want to talk to the guard at the library. And I�
�d like you to come along and tell me what you think of him.’

  ‘What are you going to talk to him about?’ Vianello asked.

  ‘He told me something when I spoke to him, and I want him to tell me more.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’d rather you heard it from him.’

  Vianello turned to face him as they walked and asked, ‘You suspect him?’

  ‘No, I don’t think I do. He seems an honest man.’

  ‘But you never know?’ the Inspector asked.

  ‘Exactly.’

  When they got to the library, Brunetti went to the desk on the first floor and told the same young man that he would like to have a word with Signor Sartor. He watched the emotions cross the younger man’s face: curiosity, concern, fear.

  ‘I’ll go and find him,’ he said, getting up from his chair.

  A few minutes later, the two men emerged from the door that led to the collection of modern books. Recognizing Brunetti, Sartor came towards him, extending his hand, but when he saw the man standing next to Brunetti, his hand dropped to his side. ‘Good afternoon, Commissario,’ he managed to say, his eyes moving between the two men.

  ‘Signor Sartor,’ Brunetti said, ‘this is my colleague, Ispettore Vianello.’ Sartor shook hands with both men but said nothing.

  ‘I’d like a few minutes of your time,’ Brunetti told him. Then, looking around them, he addressed both Sartor and the young man. ‘Is there some place where we can talk?’

  Sartor looked at his colleague but said nothing.

  ‘You could use the staffroom, Piero,’ the young man suggested.

  ‘Ah, yes,’ Sartor said after a moment. ‘Of course.’ He turned towards the door to the staircase, leaving it to Brunetti and Vianello to follow him. This time he went downstairs. When they reached the courtyard, Sartor led them along the pavement on one side and turned left, heading for a door at the end. Brunetti did not understand why he didn’t simply cut diagonally across the courtyard, but perhaps there was some prohibition about walking on the new grass. Nor did he understand why Sartor made sudden, awkward movements as they walked, as though he’d developed cramp in one leg, but then he realized he was avoiding stepping on the cracks between the paving stones. They passed under a large lilac bush that Brunetti noticed was in bud and stopped in front of steps leading to the wooden door with a double-glazed window.

  Sartor reached into the pocket of his jacket; when he took out his key ring, it pulled with it a number of brightly coloured cardboard rectangles, which fluttered to the ground. Vianello bent quickly and picked up three or four, saying, as he saw them, ‘Ah, Gratta e Vinci.’ He smiled and said, ‘My wife buys them: one a week. The best she’s ever won is fifty Euros, and I don’t want to think of what it’s cost her to win that.’

  Sartor hurried to pick up the rest of the cards and took the ones Vianello held out for him, then stared down at them as if they were a hand at poker and he had to decide what to bet on them. Finally he said, ‘I get them for mine, too. But she’s never won anything.’ He shrugged this off, muttered, ‘Gambling’s for fools: roba da donne,’ to express his disapproval of this weakness of women, and stuffed them back in his jacket pocket. He climbed the steps and opened the door. ‘It’s where we come for our breaks if we want, or to change our clothes.’ He stepped back to let them enter before him.

  Brunetti was pleased to find it so warm and welcoming, and so large. There was a sink, a fridge, even a small stove, everything spotlessly clean. Two windows at the back, giving on to a canal, allowed light into the white-walled room, as did the window in the door, which Sartor closed behind them.

  ‘They had it all raised when the restoration was done, so the acqua alta can’t come in,’ the guard said, pulling two chairs away from the wooden table, and then a third. ‘Not unless it’s over 140, that is.’ The unstained walls proved that to be true.

  A row of metal lockers with padlocks stood on one side of the room; a coat and a few jackets hung from hooks on the opposite wall. At the far end, three rather battered but equally comfortable easy chairs were arranged in a rough circle between the windows.

  ‘I can make coffee, it you like,’ Sartor said, playing host, his hand nervously slipping into and out of his pocket to assure himself that the cards were still there.

  Brunetti lied and said they’d just had one and went to one of the chairs at the table; Vianello did the same. The three men sat.

  ‘When we spoke two days ago, Signor Sartor,’ Brunetti began without introduction, ‘you told me that Dottor Nickerson had spoken so much and so well about a book he was using in his research that you read it.’

  Sartor looked back and forth between the two men, almost as if he were searching for some sign of reprimand for having read one of the library’s books. Finally he nodded. ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Could you tell me again what book that was?’

  Sartor’s mounting confusion was written clearly on his face. ‘But I told you that, sir: Cortés.’

  ‘In Italian?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Of course. It’s the only language I know.’

  ‘Was it a separate volume or was it collected as part of another one?’

  ‘It was a separate volume, Signore, the one that I found on Dottor Nickerson’s table the other day.’ He nodded emphatically. ‘Same book.’

  ‘You’re sure?’ Brunetti asked.

  As if searching for the trap, Sartor glanced aside at the silent Vianello, who was following the conversation with an interest he did nothing to disguise. ‘Yes, I’m sure. It was the same book. I know because it had a stain on the front cover, upper right corner. It might have been ink, but it was very old.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘Thank you.’

  Sartor relaxed visibly. ‘Could you tell me what this is about, sir?’

  ‘Let me ask you one more question,’ Brunetti said, ignoring the one he had been asked.

  Sartor nodded, and his hand patted the cards in his pocket from outside.

  ‘That morning, did you see Dottor Nickerson when he came in?’

  ‘Yes, I did.’

  ‘Is the morning your usual shift?’

  ‘It is now, sir, for the first two hours every day. It has been for the last two months.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Manuela – she’s the librarian who’s usually at the desk and accepts the requests – she’s going to have a baby and doesn’t come in now until eleven. So Dottoressa Fabbiani asked me if I’d take over the desk for two hours.’ He smiled and added, ‘Manuela refuses to tell us whether it’s a boy or a girl, but I’m betting it’s a boy.’

  Ignoring that remark, Brunetti asked, ‘Were you on the desk all the time that Dottor Nickerson was using the library that day?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘And did you talk to him every morning?’

  ‘Oh, no, only if there were no other people or if the runners took a long time to bring the books.’ Again Brunetti recalled his student days and suspected there would have been plenty of time for the two men to talk.

  ‘What sort of things did you talk about?’ Brunetti asked casually, as if to pass the time until he could get back to his real questions.

  ‘Fishing, for one,’ Sartor surprised him by saying.

  ‘Fishing?’

  ‘I don’t remember exactly how it started, but we were talking about the weather one day, and I said how eager I was for the season to start again.’ Sartor looked at Vianello, as if asking if he understood this desire. The Inspector smiled and nodded.

  ‘Did he fish?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘Yes, he did. Not in the sea, though. He said that, where he came from, there were only lakes, but some of them were very big.’

  ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Not much, really, just the sort of things you talk about when you have time to kill.’

  ‘You said it was his enthusiasm that made you read the Cortés?’ Brunetti sa
id with a smile, one reader to another.

  Sartor gave him a long look, then glanced at Vianello. Finally he answered. ‘When I asked him, for politeness, what he was working on, he told me he was reading about European travellers in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. I told him the only one I’d read – we had to, in school – was Marco Polo, and he said his book was very good, and then he named a few more, saying they were just as interesting.’

  Sartor pushed his chair back from the table and crossed his legs. Apparently Vianello’s presence had calmed him sufficiently for him to ask, ‘Are you sure you want to hear all of this?’

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti said.

  Sartor sighed and crossed his arms over his chest. ‘When he told me the names of the explorers he was interested in, the only one I recognized was Cortés.’ He cleared his throat a few times, then continued, ‘I wanted to take a look at it and … and surprise him by saying I was reading it.’ He paused to look back and forth between them, perhaps nervous about confessing his desire to impress the foreign professor.

  ‘And so?’ Brunetti prompted him.

  ‘So I read some of the first volume, as I told you. And then, the other day, when Dottor Nickerson came in, I told him how I’d enjoyed reading Cortés.’

  ‘Was he pleased?’ Brunetti asked in an easy voice. When Sartor didn’t answer, Brunetti asked, ‘Did he say anything when you told him?’

  Sartor looked away, as if suddenly puzzled by his memory of the conversation. ‘That’s strange,’ he said in a low voice.

  Brunetti was as quiet as a lizard on a rock. He permitted himself a small nod.

  ‘He seemed surprised at first. But then he said he was glad I’d liked the book, and then he went up to the reading room.’