Free Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon Page A

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to stir, he added, ‘And very pretty.’
     
    Hearing that, she sipped
at the glass she held in one hand and looked at him.
     
    ‘Nervous about what?’ She
took another sip of the wine, held the glass up to the light, and said, ‘This
isn’t as good as what we got from Mario, is it?’
     
    ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘But
your cousin Mario is so busy making a name for himself in the international
wine trade that he doesn’t have time to bother with orders as small as ours.’
     
    ‘He would if we paid him
on time,’ she snapped.
     
    ‘Paola, come on. That was
six months ago.’
     
    ‘And it was more than six
months that we kept him waiting to be paid.’
     
    ‘Paola, I’m sorry. I
thought I’d paid him, and then I forgot about it. I apologized to him.’
     
    She set the glass down
and gave the liver a quick jab.
     
    ‘Paola, it was only two
hundred thousand lire. That’s not going to send your cousin Mario to the
poorhouse.’
     
    ‘Why do you always call
him, “my cousin Mario?”‘
     
    Brunetti came within a
hair’s breadth of saying, ‘Because he’s your cousin and his name is Mario,’
but, instead, set his glass down-on the worktop and put his arms around her.
For a long time, she remained stiff, leaning away from him. He increased the
pressure of his arms around her, and she relaxed, leaned against him, and put
her head back against his chest.
     
    They stayed like that
until she poked him in the ribs with the end of the spoon and said, ‘liver’s
burning.’
     
    He released her and
picked up his glass again.
     
    ‘I don’t know what she’s
nervous about, but it upset her to see the corpse.’
     
    ‘Wouldn’t anyone be upset
to see a dead man, especially someone they knew?’
     
    ‘No, it was more than
that. I’m sure there was something between them.’
     
    ‘What sort of something?’
     
    ‘The usual sort.’
     
    ‘Well, you said she was
pretty.’
     
    He smiled. ‘Very pretty,’
She smiled. ‘And very,’ he began, searching for the right word. The right one
didn’t make any sense. ‘And very frightened.’
     
    ‘Why do you say that?’
Paola asked, carrying the pan to the table and setting it down on a ceramic
tile. ‘Frightened about what? That she’d be suspected of killing him?’
     
    From beside the stove, he
took the large wooden cutting board and carried it to the table. He sat and
lifted the kitchen towel spread across the board and exposed the half-wheel of
golden polenta that lay, suit warm and now grown firm, beneath it She brought a
salad and the bottle of wine, pouring them both more before she sat down.
     
    ‘No, I don’t think it’s
that,’ he said, and spooned liver and onions onto his plate, then added a broad
wedge of polenta. He speared a piece of liver with his fork, pushed onions on
top of it with his knife, and began to eat. As was his habit, he said nothing until
his plate was empty. When the liver was gone and he was mopping the juice up
with what remained of his second helping of polenta, he said; ‘Ithink
she might know, or have some idea about, who killed him. Or why he was killed.’
     
    ‘Why?’
     
    ‘If you’d seen her look
when she saw him. No, not when she saw that he was dead and that it was really
Foster, but when she saw what killed him she was on the edge of panic. She got
sick.’
     
    ‘Sick?’
     
    ‘Threw up.’
     
    ‘Right there?’
     
    ‘Yes. Strange, isn’t it?’
     
    Paola thought for a while
before she answered. She finished her wine, poured herself another half-glass. ‘Yes.
It’s a strange reaction to death. And she’s a doctor?’ He nodded. ‘Makes no
sense. What could she be afraid of?’
     
    ‘Anything for dessert?’
     
    ‘Figs.’
     
    ‘I love you.’
     
    ‘You mean you love figs,’
she said and smiled.
     
    There were six of them,
perfect and moist with sweetness. He took his knife and began to peel one. When
he was done, juice running down both hands, he cut it in