Free The Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon Page A

be grateful that the Contessa gave of her wealth to help the youth and save the monuments in the city.
    He thought of Pucetti, the most promising of the younger officers, who had told him some weeks before that he might be moving to Marghera, should his girlfriend be transferred there to teach mathematics. ­Castello-­born, Pucetti seemed to know everyone in the
sestiere
. He had once told Brunetti that his grandfather was the first person in his family to learn Italian and that his father still spoke it as a second language. His ­great-­grandmother had never left Castello, never once in her life.
    Why didn’t the other foundations emulate the Contessa and do something for Venetians instead of for Venice? The city, for all its promises, was unlikely to do so. The last time a large public building had been divided up into private apartments and offered for sale at affordable prices, a suspicious number of them had been sold to politicians and their wives. Brunetti pulled his mind back: only trouble would come of thinking of these things.
    Going downstairs, he thought of Muhammad and the mountain. As he entered her office, he saw Signorina Elettra at her desk and was instantly alerted to danger by the expression on her face. Her narrow smile was lethal, lips denying her adversary the sight of her teeth, perhaps to minimize the idea of them as a weapon.
    Brunetti followed her eyes and found Lieutenant Scarpa standing in front of the window nearest the open door and thus hidden by it from anyone passing in the corridor outside. The Lieutenant, his uniform a study in sartorial perfection, leaned back against the windowsill from which Brunetti usually conversed with Signorina Elettra and which, quite understandably, Brunetti thought of as his place.
    â€˜The very last thing I’d ever do, Lieutenant, is question your integrity,’ Brunetti heard Signorina Elettra say as he entered her office. ‘I couldn’t live with myself if I had to entertain the thought that you were less than fully loyal to the service to which you are an adornment.’ The dead tone – a bad actress reading a bad script, badly translated from some other language – was so at variance with the words themselves as to render the scene hallucinogenic. Her lips moved horizontally in what Brunetti suspected was meant to suggest a smile, but did not.
    â€˜That’s a great comfort for me to learn, Signorina,’ the Lieutenant said with syrupy piety. He cast his eyes in Brunetti’s direction but made no other acknowledgement of his presence. Returning his glance to Signorina Elettra, he went on, ‘Then I must look elsewhere for the person who attempted to hack into my computer.’ After all the soft pleasantries, this last phrase came like the snap of a whip.
    Aha! Brunetti thought: that’s what she’s been up to. He knew she had access to the ­Vice-­Questore’s computer; she was probably more familiar with what was in it than Patta himself. She’d known Lieutenant Scarpa’s password for ages, but perhaps he’d changed it and she’d been forced to break in again. Had she left the equivalent of a trace of her perfume, a dropped handkerchief, while she was having a look around?
    Drawing himself to his full height and taking one step into the small office, Brunetti waved a hand toward his ear, a gesture Lieutenant Scarpa could interpret as a salute and, if so, would have to stand up straight to return. The habit of obedience brought the Lieutenant forward and upright. He raised his right hand to his forehead, and as he did he gave a very knowing smile that showed how well he understood Brunetti’s attempt to impose his power and found it quaint, if not useless. ‘Commissario,’ he said, as if he’d only then noticed Brunetti.
    â€˜Is that all you wanted, Lieutenant?’ Signorina Elettra asked, this time not wasting any energy in a smile.
    â€˜For