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

‘He used to be a priest,’ Brunetti explained. ‘So perhaps he felt more at home reading than going to see Bambi.’

  ‘Do people still go to see Bambi?’ Rizzardi asked.

  ‘I didn’t mean it literally, Ettore. It was the first film I thought of.’

  ‘Oh.’

  Brunetti thought that was the end of the conversation. The silence drew out, and just as he decided it was time to go back and talk to Franchini’s brother, Rizzardi said, ‘And now he’s dead.’ That said, the pathologist patted his pockets again, nodded to Brunetti, and left the room.

  14

  After telling Vianello to remain there until the boat came to take the body away, Brunetti went downstairs and started across the campo. As he approached the two men on the bench, he saw the back of Pucetti’s head next to Franchini’s. When he saw that they were turned towards one another, he stopped to observe them. Pucetti’s shoulders moved minimally in synchrony with his hands as he gestured while saying something to the older man. Franchini nodded, then both of his shoulders moved as he folded his arms across his chest. Pucetti raised a hand and pointed at one of the buildings on the other side of the campo, and Franchini nodded again.

  Brunetti grew nearer and heard Pucetti’s voice: ‘From the time I was seven until I was eleven.’

  He could not make out Franchini’s reply.

  ‘To Santa Croce. Down by San Basilio. The apartment was bigger, and there were three of us kids by then.’ Pucetti paused for a long time. ‘I got my own room then, for the first time.’

  Franchini then said something else Brunetti could not hear.

  ‘I had two sisters, so they got to stay together. It would have been nice to have a brother.’ Then, remembering, he said, ‘I’m sorry, Signore. I …’

  Brunetti watched Franchini turn as he gave Pucetti’s knee a fleeting tap, but again couldn’t hear what he said. He saw that Pucetti’s neck had flushed red, and was relieved at this proof that the young man was still capable of embarrassment. He moved off to the left and came upon them from the side.

  Pucetti got to his feet and saluted; Franchini looked at him with no sign of recognition.

  Brunetti told Pucetti he could go back upstairs and took his place beside Franchini.

  He let a minute pass, until finally Franchini asked, ‘Did you see him?’

  ‘Yes, I did, Signore. I’m sorry such a thing could happen to him. And to you.’

  Franchini nodded, as if words would take too much effort.

  ‘You said you were close, the two of you.’

  Franchini leaned back and folded his arms, then seemed to find that posture uncomfortable and leaned forward to resume his study of the pavement between his feet. ‘Yes, I said that.’

  ‘You said you studied the same things and were religious when you were young,’ Brunetti reminded him. ‘Were you still close enough to tell each other about your lives?’

  After some time, Franchini said, ‘There’s not a lot to tell. I’m married, but we don’t have children. My wife’s a doctor. Paediatrician. I still teach, but I won’t for much longer.’

  ‘Because of your age?’

  ‘No. Because students aren’t interested in studying Greek or Latin any more. They want to learn about computers.’ Before Brunetti could speak, Franchini went on. ‘That’s what they’re interested in, in this world. What good are Greek and Latin?’

  ‘They discipline the mind,’ Brunetti said as if by rote.

  ‘That’s nonsense,’ Franchini answered. ‘They show an ordered structure, but that’s not the same as disciplining the mind.’

  Brunetti had to admit the truth of this; nor, for that fact, did he really see why a mind should be disciplined in the first place. ‘Did your brother marry?’ he asked.

  Franchini shook his head. ‘No, when he left, it was too late for that sort of thing.’

  Brunetti decided not to inquire about that judgement and, instead, asked, ‘Was his pension enough to let him live comfortably?’

  ‘Yes,’ Franchini replied. ‘He had very few expenses. I told you: the house was ours, so he could live there. All he had to do was pay the gas and light.’ He nodded at the ground a few times, trying perhaps to persuade the pavement that his brother’s life had been comfortable.

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said. ‘Do you know if he had friends here, Signor Franchini?’ When he saw the man’s hands tighten, Brunetti said, ‘I’m sorry to ask you these things, but we need to know as much as we can about him.’

  ‘Will that bring him back?’ Franchini asked, as had so many other people in the same circumstances.

  ‘No. Nothing will, I’m afraid. We both know that. But things like this can’t be allowed to happen …’

  ‘It already has,’ Franchini interrupted.

  The Latin came to Brunetti unsummoned. ‘“Nihil non ratione tractari intellegique voluit.”’

  The words washed over Franchini, who moved to the side and turned to take a better look at Brunetti. ‘’There is nothing God does not wish to be understood and investigated by reason.’’ He failed to hide his astonishment. ‘How do you know that?’

  ‘I learned it in school, years ago, and it seems to have remained with me.’

  ‘Do you think it’s true?’

  Brunetti shook his head. ‘Too many people already tell us what God wishes or wants. I don’t have any idea.’

  ‘But you quoted it. Did you think we still have to obey Tertullian?’

  ‘I don’t know why I said it, Signor Franchini. I’m sorry if it offended you.’

  The man’s face softened into a smile. ‘No, it surprised me; it didn’t offend me. It was the sort of thing Aldo was always doing. Not only from Tertullian, but from Cyprian and Ambrose. He had a quotation for everything,’ he concluded and then had to wipe his eyes again.

  ‘Signore,’ Brunetti began, ‘I think it’s right to find out who killed your brother. Not because of God. Because things like this are wrong and should be punished.’

  ‘Why?’ he asked simply.

  ‘Because.’

  ‘That’s not a reason,’ Franchini said.

  ‘For me, it is,’ Brunetti answered.

  Franchini studied Brunetti’s face, then leaned back and spread his arms across the top of the back of the bench, looking as relaxed and casual as someone with nothing better to do but take the sun.

  ‘Tell me what you know about your brother, please, Signore,’ Brunetti said.

  Franchini tilted his head back, face up to the sun. After a long time, he said, ‘My brother was a thief and a blackmailer. He was also a liar and a fraud.’

  Brunetti stared off at the police boat, where Foa stood on deck, bent over the pink pages of La Gazzetta dello Sport. He thought of something Paola often repeated, maintaining it was Hamlet’s observation on his mother, that someone ‘could smile and smile, and be a villain’.

  ‘Tell me more, please,’ he asked.

  ‘There’s little to tell, really. Aldo always claimed he changed when he lost his faith, but that was a lie, too. He never had any faith in anything but his own cleverness, never had a vocation: he saw becoming a priest as a way to succeed. But it didn’t work for him, and he ended up teaching Latin to teenaged boys in a boarding school, not as a bishop with scores of people to obey him.’

  ‘Is that what he wanted?’

  Franchini lowered his face and turned to look at Brunetti. ‘I never asked him. I don’t think he knew, not really. He thought that being a priest would help him rise in the world: that’s why he wanted to do it.’

  Brunetti had no idea of what it meant to rise in the world and could not ask. Perhaps the thought of the answers he might get frightened him, especially after what Franchini had said about his brother. He realized his question had had no aim save to keep Franchini talking while he adjusted himself to this new vision of the dead man. Aldo Franchini was no longer a pious seeker of religious truth but a liar, thief, fraud, and blackmailer. No wonder he had not reported Nickerson to the sta
ff of the library.

  Brunetti thought back to the small figure crushed against the wall of the room upstairs and was relieved that he still felt a sense of loss and indignation that Tertullian had been made to suffer and die, regardless of what his brother had just said.

  He had been a priest teaching at a boys’ school, and he was a blackmailer. ‘Did these things you’ve told me about his character have anything to do with why he left the school where he was teaching?’

  Franchini was incapable of disguising his surprise. Brunetti watched him as he followed the verbal path that might have led Brunetti to that question. ‘Yes.’ Then, after a moment, ‘It’s the obvious explanation, isn’t it?’

  ‘Did he tell you?’

  ‘No, of course not. He never told me the truth, not about anything.’

  ‘How did you learn it, then?’

  ‘Oh, it’s a small world we live in, people who teach what we do. I knew the man who replaced him – he wasn’t a priest – and he told me what had happened.’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Aldo was blackmailing two of the priests.’

  ‘Ah,’ Brunetti sighed. ‘What happened?’

  ‘One of the boys finally told his parents about the priests, and they called the police.’ Franchini paused, as if reliving his discovery of those events. Brunetti searched his memory for any such incident in the last few years in Vicenza and found nothing, but it was not uncommon for the arrest of a priest not to be made public.

  ‘They were both arrested, the priests, and that’s when they told their superior about the blackmail.’

  ‘Did he tell the police?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘I don’t think so. Nothing happened to Aldo.’ Franchini looked at the pavement again, flicked a cigarette butt away with one foot and said, ‘You know, it’s very strange. For a time, I used to console myself by saying he was only blackmailing them, and that meant he didn’t do anything to the boys.’ He looked up and gave Brunetti a grim smile, then looked back at the pavement. ‘But that meant I was saying it was all right to be a blackmailer.’ He let them both think about this for a moment, and then he said, ‘I was so proud of him when I was a kid.’

  ‘He lost his job,’ Brunetti said when Franchini had not spoken for a while.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What happened to the two priests?’

  ‘My friend told me they were sent on retreat for a month.’

  ‘And then?’

  ‘Sent to other schools, I imagine.’

  ‘Did your brother do this to other people?’

  Franchini shook his head. ‘I don’t know. But he always lived well and took nice vacations.’

  ‘As a priest?’

  ‘He had a great deal of autonomy. Especially while he was at the school. He was there for fifteen years. He said he gave private lessons.’ He glanced at Brunetti and, seeing his confusion, said, ‘To explain the money.’

  ‘Ah,’ Brunetti said.

  As if losing patience with Brunetti’s failure to ask the proper question, Franchini said, ‘One of the priests was the Director of the school.’

  This time, it was Brunetti who nodded.

  ‘Do you know of any other things he did like this?’

  ‘Blackmail, no. But he stole things.’

  ‘For example?’

  ‘Some of the things in our parents’ house.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘There were four good paintings that had been in the family for generations. They were there when my parents died, and when Aldo moved in. They aren’t there now.’

  Before Brunetti could ask, Franchini said, ‘No, it wasn’t today I noticed they were gone. I realized it years ago.’

  ‘How long ago was that?’

  ‘Two years. He’d been in the house a year. They were all gone.’

  ‘Did you ask him about them?’

  Franchini sighed and gave a shrug. ‘What would be the sense? He’d only lie. Besides, I don’t have anyone to leave them to. It’s just more stuff to worry about.’ Then, in a lighter voice, he added, ‘If the money made him happy, then I’m glad of it.’ Brunetti believed him.

  ‘And the lying?’ Brunetti asked.

  ‘His whole life was a lie,’ Franchini said tiredly. ‘He pretended everything: pretended to want to be a priest, to be a good son, to be a good brother.’ There followed a long silence which Brunetti had no desire to break.

  ‘The only thing that was true about him was the Latin. He really loved it, and loved what was written in it.’

  ‘Was he a good teacher?’

  ‘Yes. It was the one thing he did with passion. He managed to inspire the boys in his class, to make them see the rigid clarity of the language, the profound sense of the way it put words, and ideas, together.’

  ‘Did he tell you this?’

  Franchini thought before he said, ‘No, he taught me. He was already at university when I began liceo, and he helped me in the first years, helped me see how perfect both languages are.’ He paused to think about this and then said, ‘He showed me the passion.’ Then, in a stronger voice, he added, ‘I’ve met some of his former students, and they all said the classes with Aldo were fascinating and that they learned more from him than from any of their other teachers. He taught us to love the languages, and we loved him for that.’

  Franchini’s use of the word made Brunetti nervous. ‘Was there any chance that your brother might have … with the boys, I mean?’

  ‘Oh, no. Aldo loved women. He had lovers all over the Veneto. He told me once – he’d had a lot to drink – that he managed to make a lot of money from them. Asking them to give money to the Church.’

  ‘They knew he was a priest?’

  ‘Some of them, not all.’

  ‘I see,’ Brunetti said, then asked, ‘You knew all of this?’

  ‘I’ve had a long time to learn it. All my life,’ Franchini said, and for the first time Brunetti heard betrayal in his voice.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti agreed. ‘But how did you find out about him?’

  ‘Friends we had in common,’ Franchini said. ‘Or I should say friends of mine who met him.’ He sat back again and stretched out his legs. ‘Or he would boast about it,’ he added, his voice uneasy. ‘I was the only person he could boast to: about the women and the money and being so much cleverer than anyone he met.’

  ‘When did he do this?’

  ‘It used to happen when we saw each other, but then I couldn’t stand it any more – especially after the paintings disappeared – so I stopped coming here to visit him.’ Franchini looked at the buildings on the other side of the canal. ‘We grew up here. It was home.’

  He opened his handkerchief and wiped his face with it, as if it were a towel, and put it back in the pocket of his trousers. ‘For the last few years, all we had were the phone calls. For some reason, I couldn’t stop calling him. Maybe I thought he would eventually listen to himself and hear how he sounded. But he never did. I think he had come to believe it, really, that he was so clever he could outsmart everyone.’ He studied the houses on the opposite side of the canal and waved in their direction. ‘That young policeman said he grew up here.’ Then, in a sober voice, he added, ‘It’s still a good part of the city.’

  He sat up straight and slapped his palms on his thighs in a gesture meant to display activity or the desire for it. ‘What do I have to do?’

  ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to identify him,’ Brunetti said.

  Franchini turned, his terror evident. ‘I don’t think I can see him again.’ The tears came to his eyes, but he was unaware of them.

  ‘Officially, Signor Franchini. I’m sorry, but that’s the law. You have to make a formal identification.’

  Franchini pushed himself back on the bench and shook his head. ‘I don’t think I can. Really.’ The sight of the tears on his face led Brunetti to say, ‘It will be enough if you go to see Doctor Rizzardi at the hospital and sign the papers there. I’ll talk to the doctor: it won�
��t be necessary for you to see him again.’ Then it came to Brunetti to suggest, ‘You won’t have to do it until tomorrow or the next day. If you tell us the time your train from Padova arrives, Pucetti – the young man you were talking to – will meet you in a boat at the station.’ He could not bring himself to say that Dottor Rizzardi would be in the morgue, so he added, ‘He’ll take you to the doctor’s office.’

  Franchini’s face relaxed. ‘Can I go now?’ he asked, as if surprised he had not asked this before. He got to his feet.

  ‘Yes,’ Brunetti said, standing and taking the older man’s arm, saying, ‘The boat will take you to the station, Signore.’

  Reluctant, Franchini made no attempt to walk towards the boat. ‘It’s a nice day. I could walk.’

  ‘Yes, it is. But it’s a long way to the station, and I think you’d be more comfortable in the boat.’ Brunetti released his arm, turning the gesture into a wave in the direction of Foa.

  ‘It’s kind of you,’ Franchini said.

  Brunetti found nothing to say in response. ‘I have a favour to ask you,’ he finally said.

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘I’d like you to think over the conversations you had with your brother in the last few months.’

  ‘I’ve been doing that for the last two hours, Signore,’ Franchini said, then added, ‘I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your rank.’

  ‘Commissario.’

  ‘Commissario,’ Franchini repeated formally.

  ‘Was he any different?’

  Franchini took a small step in the direction of the boat, and Brunetti, fearing he had pushed him too far, moved along at his side. Franchini stopped, took another step, then stopped again and looked up at the taller Brunetti. ‘He was excited by something. I don’t know what. I didn’t ask, and Aldo didn’t tell me. But he was excited. I know he wanted to tell me about it, but I couldn’t listen.’

  ‘Had this happened before?’ Brunetti asked.

  Franchini nodded. ‘He was like a hunter at times. It thrilled him to find something – or someone – new. I’d watched and listened to it happen in the past, and I couldn’t stand it any more. So I cut him off when he asked if I wanted to know what he was doing. I just asked how he was and what he was reading. That’s all I wanted to talk to him about.’