Free Quietly in Their Sleep by Donna Leon

ask.’
     
    ‘No, that’s quite all right, Sergeant,’ da Prè said. ‘They tried, but they didn’t get a lira.’ A smirk filled his face, and he added, ‘No one who tried to get anything from her estate succeeded.’
     
    Vianello smiled broadly to show his joy at this narrow avoidance of disaster. Propping his elbow on the arm of his chair and his chin on his palm, he settled in to hear the tale of Signor da Prè’s triumph.
     
    The little man pushed himself back in his own chair until his legs were almost completely parallel with the seat. ‘She always had a weakness for religion,’ he began. ‘Our parents sent her to convent schools. I think that’s why she never married.’ Brunetti glanced at da Prè’s hands, gripped atop the arms of his chair, but there was no sign of a wedding ring.
     
    ‘We never got along,’ he said simply. ‘She had her interest in religion. And I had mine in art.’ By which, Brunetti assumed, he meant enamelled snuff boxes.
     
    ‘When our parents died, they left this apartment to us jointly But we couldn’t live together.’ Vianello nodded here, suggesting how difficult it was to live with a woman. ‘So I sold her my share. Twenty-three years ago. And I bought a smaller apartment. I needed the money to add to my collection.’ Again, Vianello nodded, this time in understanding of the many demands of art.
     
    ‘Then, three years ago, she fell and broke her hip, and it wouldn’t heal right, so there was no choice but to put her in the casa di cura .’ He stopped speaking here, an old man thinking about the things that made the nursing home inescapable. ‘She asked me to move in here to keep an eye on her things,’ he continued, ‘but I refused. I didn’t know if she’d come back, and then I’d have to move out again. And I didn’t want to have to move the collection in here — I wouldn’t live anywhere without it — and then move it again, should she recover. Too risky, too much chance of breaking something.’ Da Prè’s hands gripped tighter in unconscious terror at this possibility.
     
    Brunetti found that, as the story progressed, he too began to nod in agreement with Signor da Prè, drawn into the lunatic world where a broken lid was a greater tragedy than a broken hip.
     
    ‘Then, when she died, she named me her heir, but she tried to give them a hundred million. She’d added that to her will while she was there.’
     
    ‘What did you do?’ Vianello asked.
     
    ‘I took it to my lawyer,’ da Prè answered instantly. ‘He had me declare that her mind was unsound during the last months of her life — that’s when she signed that thing.’
     
    ‘And?’ Vianello prompted.
     
    ‘It was thrown out, of course,’ the little man said with great pride. ‘The judges listened to me. It was lunacy on Augusta’s part. So they denied the bequest.’
     
    ‘And you inherited everything?’ Brunetti asked.
     
    ‘Of course,’ da Prè answered shortly. ‘There’s no one else in the immediate family.’
     
    ‘Was her mind unsound?’ Vianello asked.
     
    Da Prè glanced over at the sergeant and answered immediately. ‘Of course not. She was as lucid as she ever was, right up to the last time I saw her, the day before she died. But the bequest was insane.’
     
    Brunetti wasn’t sure he understood the distinction, but instead of seeking clarification, he asked, ‘Did the people at the nursing home appear to know about the bequest?’
     
    ‘What do you mean?’ da Prè asked suspiciously.
     
    ‘Did anyone from there ask you about the will, or did they oppose your decision to have the bequest denied?’
     
    ‘One of them called me before the funeral and asked to give a sermon during the mass. I told him there wasn’t going to be any sermon. Augusta had left instructions in the will about the funeral, wanted a requiem mass, so there was no way I could get around that. But she didn’t say anything specific about a sermon, so at least I