Read Online Doctored Evidence by Donna Leon - Free Book Online

sort of job with the city or the provincial government, but I don’t know what it was. People said he spent most of his time after work in the bar on the corner, playing cards. They also said that’s the only thing that kept him from, er, from killing her.’ She looked up nervously, hearing what she had said, but then went on. ‘Everyone who ever mentioned him sounded like they thought he was a pleasant enough man.’
    â€˜Do you know the cause of his death?’
    She paused for a long time. ‘No, but I think someone told me it was a stroke or a heart attack.’
    â€˜Did it happen here?’
    â€˜I’ve no idea. They just said he died and left them everything, her and the son: the house, whatever money he had, another apartment onthe Lido, I think. When the son died, she must have inherited it all.’
    He nodded occasionally as she spoke, in acknowledgement that he understood what she was saying and in encouragement.
    â€˜I think that’s all I ever heard about the husband.’
    â€˜And the son?’
    She shrugged.
    â€˜What did people say about him?’
    â€˜They didn’t,’ she said, apparently surprised by her own answer. ‘No one ever mentioned him to me, that is. Well, aside from the person who told me that he’d died.’
    â€˜And about her?’
    This time, her answer was immediate. ‘Over the years, she fought with all of the people who lived around her.’
    â€˜About what sort of things?’
    â€˜You’re Venetian, aren’t you?’ she asked, but because this was so evident in his face and audible in his voice, she meant it as a joke.
    Brunetti smiled, and she said, ‘Then you know the sort of things we fight about: garbage left in front of someone’s door, or a letter put in the wrong letter box and not passed on, a dog that barks all the time: it doesn’t really matter what it is. You know that. All you’ve got to do is respond to it in the wrong way, and you’ve got an enemy for life.’
    â€˜And Signora Battestini sounds like the kind of person who responded in the wrong way.’
    â€˜Yes,’ she said, with an assertive double nod.
    â€˜Was there any incident in particular?’ he asked.
    â€˜Do you mean was there any incident that might have led someone to kill her?’ Signora Gismondi asked, trying to make it sound like a joke and not really succeeding.
    â€˜Hardly. People like this don’t get killed by their neighbours. Besides,’ he said with a small, bold smile, ‘from what you’ve told me, you were the most likely to have done it, but I hardly think you did.’
    Hearing him say that, she was struck by an awareness that this was one of the strangest conversations she’d ever had, though no less enjoyable for that.
    â€˜Do you want me to continue to repeat things people said or try to tell you what I made of it all?’ she asked.
    â€˜I think the second would be more helpful,’ he said.
    â€˜And quicker,’ she offered.
    â€˜No, no, Signora. I’m in no hurry at all; please don’t think that. Everything you have to say interests me.’
    From another man, these words might have sounded deliberately ambiguous, their flirtatiousness disguised by their apparent sincerity, but from him she took only their literal meaning.
    She sat back in her chair, relaxed in a way she could not have been with the other policeman, as she knew she could never be with him or with men like him. ‘I told you I’ve been in that apartment only four years. But I work at home,and so I’m usually willing to listen to people when they talk to me because I spend most of my time alone, working.’ She considered, then added ruefully, ‘That is, when the noise lets me.’
    He nodded, having learned over the years that most people need to talk and how easy it was, with either the reality or the semblance of concerned curiosity, to get