Free Death in a Strange Country by Donna Leon Page B

half and handed the
larger piece to her.  
                    
                     
   
     
    He crammed most of the
other into his mouth and wiped at the juice that ran down his chin. He finished
the fig, ate two more, wiped at his mouth again, cleaned his hands on his
napkin, and said, ‘If you give me a small glass of port, I’ll die a happy man.’
     
    Getting up from the
table, she asked, ‘What else could she be afraid of?’
     
    ‘As you said, that she
might be suspected of having something to do with it. Or because she did have
something to do with it.’
     
    She pulled down a squat
bottle of port, but before she poured it into two tiny glasses, she took the
plates from the table and placed them in the sink. When that was done, she
poured them both glasses of port and brought them back to the table. Sweet, it
caught up with the lingering taste of fig. A happy man. ‘But I don’t think ifs
either of those.’
     
    ‘Why?’
     
    He shrugged. ‘She doesn’t
seem like a murderer to me.’
     
    ‘Because she’s pretty?’
Paola asked and sipped at her port.
     
    He was about to answer
that it was because she was a doctor, but then he remembered what Rizzardi had
said, that the person who killed the young man knew where to put the knife. A
doctor would know that. ‘Maybe,’ he said, then changed the subject and asked, ‘Is
Raffi here?’ He looked at his watch. After ten. His son knew he was supposed to
be home by ten on school nights.
     
    ‘Not unless he came in
while we were eating,’ she answered.
     
    ‘No, he didn’t,’ Brunetti
answered, sure of the answer, unsure of how he knew.
     
    It was late, they’d had a
bottle of wine, glorious figs, and perfect port. Neither of them wanted to talk
about their son. He’d still be there and still betheirs in the morning.      
                     
                     
    ‘Should I put those in
the sink for you?’ he asked, meaning the dishes but not meaning the question.      
                     
                     
                   
     
    ‘No. I’ll do it. You go
and tell Chiara to go to bed.’ The dishes would have been less trouble.      
     
     
    ‘Fire out?’ he asked when
he walked into the living room.  
                     
                     
                 
    She didn’t hear him. She
was hundreds of miles and years away from him. She sat slouched low inthe
chair, her legs stretched out before her. On the arm of the chair were two
apple cores, a packet of biscuits on the floor beside her.
     
    ‘Chiara,’ he said, then
louder, ‘Chiara.’
     
    She glanced up from the
page, not seeing him for a moment, then registering that it was her father. She
looked immediately down at the page, forgetting him.          
                     
                     
     
    ‘Chiara, it’s time to go
to bed.’  
                     
       
     
    She turned a page.
     
    ‘Chiara, did you hear me?
It’s time to go to bed.’
     
    Still reading, she pushed
herself up from the chair with one hand. At the bottom of a page, she paused
long enough to look up from the book and give him a kiss, then she was gone,
finger in the page. He lacked the courage to tell her to leave the book behind.
Well, if he got up to the night, he could turn her light off.
     
    Paola came into the
living room. She bent and turned off the light beside the chair, picked up the
apple cores and the packet of biscuits, and went back into the kitchen.
Brunetti switched off the light and went down the corridor towards the bedroom.
     
    * *
* *
     
    6
     
     
    Brunetti got to the Questura at eight the next morning,
stopping to get the papers on the way. The murder had made the eleventh page of
the Corriere, which gave it only two paragraphs, had not made it into La
Repubblica, understandable enough