Free Drawing Conclusions by Donna Leon

said, pointing with his chin, ‘she started down there.’ Anyone in Venice would know he meant the old people’s home, the casa di cura , only a hundred metres away.
    ‘Started how?’ Brunetti asked. ‘Doing what?’
    ‘Visiting. Listening to them. Bringing them out here into the campo when the weather was good.’ This, too, was a phenomenon with which everyone in the city was familiar: tiny old people curved into their wheelchairs and covered up with blankets, regardless of the season, wheeled into the sunlight by friends or relatives or, increasingly, women of Eastern European appearance, who brought them into the campo to spend a part of what remained of their lives in company with what remained of life beyond their tiny, cramped rooms.
    Brunetti wondered if this man’s mother could have been one of the people who helped his own, but no sooner did the thought come than Brunetti dismissed it as irrelevant.
    ‘When the weather was bad, she read to them or listened to them.’ Niccolini leaned forward and again picked up the sandwich. He took a bite and set it back on the edge of the plate. ‘She always said how much they liked to be able to tell younger people about what life had been like when they were younger and what they had done and what the city was like: sixty years ago, seventy.’
    ‘People don’t have to be in the casa di cura to start doing that, I’m afraid,’ Brunetti said and smiled, thinking of the hours he had already spent lamenting the changes that had taken place in the city since the time when he was a young man. ‘I think it’s part of being Venetian.’ Then, after a moment, ‘Or part of being human.’
    Niccolini pushed himself back in his chair. ‘I think it’s worse for older people. The changes are so much more obvious for them.’ Then, as so many people did when this subject arose, he sighed deeply and waved a hand in a meaningless circle.
    ‘You said she started here,’ Brunetti said. ‘Where else did she visit them?’
    ‘That place down in Bragora. That’s where she wasworking. Still.’ Hearing himself say that word, Niccolini looked down at his hands.
    Brunetti remembered hearing about it, years ago: one entire floor of a palazzo in Campo Bandiera e Moro, run by some order of nuns who, though they were rumoured to charge the highest prices in the city, were also said to provide the best care. There had been no beds free when he was looking for a place for his mother; he had not thought about the place since then.
    A sudden intake of breath forced him to look across at Niccolini. ‘Oh, my God,’ the doctor said. ‘I’ll have to tell them.’ Niccolini’s face flushed red, and his eyes began to glisten. He leaned forward and, elbows propped on the arms of his chair, covered his mouth and nose with his hands.
    Brunetti looked at his watch. It was almost two.
    ‘I can’t call them. I can’t do this on the telephone,’ Niccolini said, shaking his head to dismiss the possibility.
    Tentatively, Brunetti asked, ‘Would you like me to speak to them, Dottore?’ Niccolini’s eyes flashed at him. ‘I know two of the sisters there,’ Brunetti quickly added. Well, he had spoken to them years ago, so in a certain sense he did know them. ‘It’s not far from the Questura.’ Brunetti didn’t know how hard to press here and didn’t want to seem too interested. ‘Of course, if you’d rather do it yourself, I understand.’
    The waiter walked past their table and Brunetti asked for the bill. In the minutes that elapsed while the waiter went inside to get it, Niccolini kept his eyes on his half-filled glass of wine and the uneaten sandwiches.
    Brunetti paid the bill, left a few euros on the table, and pushed back his chair. Niccolini got to his feet. ‘I’d like you to do it, Commissario. I don’t know if I’m going to be able … ‘he began but let his voice drift off, powerless to give a name to what it was he was unable to do.
    ‘Of course,’ Brunetti said,