Free The Jewels of Paradise by Donna Leon

leaving the wreckage of a man.
    When she glanced at his cousin, Signor Scapinelli, her attention was drawn, as it had been the first time, to his eyes. Her memory flashed, not to anything he had said when they met, but to the vision Dante had given of the usurers. She forgot what circle he had consigned them to—the seventh? The eighth? They sat, for all eternity, on the burning sands of hell, flapping at falling flames the way dogs swat at flies to rid themselves of them. Around their necks hung bags, small purses that held their meaningless wealth, and Dante described the way their eyes still, even in that place, feasted on the sight of those bags. Their eyes, she decided, must have been eyes like Signor Scapinelli’s: deep set, never still, with dark half moons below them.
    She had watched him notice Dottor Moretti’s briefcase and the gold frames of his glasses, had seen him tote up the cost of his suit, and she felt a shiver of embarrassment that she had done much the same. To save herself from her own harsh accusations, she offered the excuse that she had done it in a complimentary way, in admiration of his taste and not in envy that he had the available wealth to permit himself that casual elegance.
    Scapinelli’s clothing disguised his wealth, had perhaps been chosen to achieve that end. His jacket was faintly threadbare at the cuffs; a button had been replaced by another that could do nothing better than resemble the others, and not very closely. His hands were as large as his cousin’s, though much better cared for, as were, strangely enough, his teeth, where she saw evidence of a great deal of work and expense.
    He was round-faced and balding and walked with the ponderous splay-footed tread of the obese, though he was not a fat man. Caterina had no clear idea how closely related the two sides of the family might once have been, but all resemblance had been worn away by the passing of time, and now the only way these men looked alike was in the possession of two eyes, a nose, and a mouth.
    Scapinelli, she was reminded when he caught her glance and moved his mouth in a quick rictus, had the distracting habit of smiling at inappropriate times, as if his face were on a timer or programmed to respond to certain expressions. Strangely, the smile never came in reaction to anything funny or witty or ironic. The last time, she had attempted to figure out what the key was, but she had abandoned the task as hopeless and let him smile at will, which he did when he said even the most innocuous things, or when he heard them.
    One might dismiss him as a happy fool because of those smiles, but that would be a mistake, for above the vacuous smile rested those reptilian eyes.
    He spoke first, in the rough voice she remembered and speaking in Veneziano. “Good. If she’s accepted all the terms, then she can go to work.” What was next, Caterina wondered? They put a time clock by the front door and she stamped in and out every day?
    Before she could ask that, Dottor Moretti spoke again. “Before she does, Signor Scapinelli, there are a few things that remain to be settled.”
    “Like what?” Scapinelli asked with a pugnacity Caterina thought unnecessary.
    “You gentlemen have agreed, I think very wisely, that Dottoressa Pellegrini is to have complete freedom to expand her research.”
    Signor Scapinelli opened his mouth to speak, but Dottor Moretti ignored him and continued. “She is to send me written reports of what she reads and is to pay special attention to anything that might be regarded as your ancestor’s testamentary dispositions,” Dottor Moretti said. “Which reports I will forward to both of you with great dispatch.”
    There he went again, using those wonderful phrases, she thought. If only Italians could be taught to think of “testamentary dispositions” instead of “making a will,” they’d all have one drawn up by the end of the week.
    “Yes. That’s right. That’s what’s in the paper you gave