Read Online Quietly in Their Sleep by Donna Leon - Free Book Online Page A

Da Prè’s handshake was firm, and the glance he shot up toward Brunetti’s eyes was clear and direct. His face was narrow, almost blade-like in its thinness. Either age or prolonged pain had cut deep grooves on either side of his mouth and scooped out dark circles under his eyes. His size made his age impossible to determine: he could have been anywhere from fifty to seventy.
     
    Taking in Vianello’s uniform, Signor da Prè did not extend his hand and did no more than nod in his direction. He stepped back through the door, opening it wider and inviting the two men into the apartment.
     
    Muttering ‘ Permesso ,’ the two policemen followed him into the hall and waited while he closed the door.
     
    ‘This way, please,’ the man said, heading back down the corridor.
     
    From behind him, Brunetti saw the sharp hump that stuck up through the cloth of the left side of his jacket like the breastbone of a chicken. Though da Prè did not actually limp, his whole body canted to the left when he walked, as though the wall were a magnet and he a sack of metal filings pulled toward it. He led them into a living room that had windows on two sides. Rooftops were visible from those on the left, while the others looked across to the shuttered windows of a building on the other side of the narrow calle.
     
    All of the furniture in the room was on the same scale as two monumental cupboards that filled the back wall: a high-backed sofa that seated six; four carved chairs which, from the ornamental work on their armrests, must have been Spanish; and an immense Florentine sideboard, its top littered with countless small objects at which Brunetti barely glanced. Da Prè climbed up into one of the chairs and waved Brunetti and Vianello into two of the others.
     
    Brunetti’s feet, when he sat down, just barely reached the floor, and he noticed that da Prè’s hung midway between the seat and the floor. Somehow, the intense sobriety of the man’s face kept the wild disparity in scale from being in any way ridiculous.
     
    ‘You said there is something wrong with my sister’s will?’ da Prè began, voice cool.
     
    ‘No, Signor da Prè,’ Brunetti returned, ‘I don’t want to confuse the issue or mislead you. Our curiosity has nothing to do with your sister’s will or with any stipulations that might be made in it. We’re interested, instead, in her death, or with the cause of her death.’
     
    ‘Then why didn’t you say that at the beginning?’ the little man asked, voice warmer now, but not in a way that Brunetti liked.
     
    ‘Are those snuff boxes, Signor da Prè?’ Vianello interrupted, getting down from his chair and going over to the sideboard.
     
    ‘What?’ the little man said sharply.
     
    ‘Are these snuff boxes?’ Vianello asked, bending down over the surface, bringing his face closer to the small objects that covered it.
     
    ‘Why do you ask?’ da Prè said, voice no warmer but certainly curious.
     
    ‘My uncle Luigi, in Trieste, collected them. I always loved going to visit him when I was a boy because he’d show them to me and let me touch them.’ As if to eliminate that fearful possibility from taking root in Signor da Prè’s mind, Vianello grasped his hands behind his back and did no more than lean closer to the boxes. He pulled his hands apart and pointed to one, careful to keep his finger at least a handsbreadth away from the box. ‘Is this one Dutch?’
     
    ‘Which one?’ da Prè asked, getting down from his chair and going over to stand beside the sergeant.
     
    Da Prè’s head came barely to the top of the sideboard, so he had to stand on tiptoe to see to the back of the surface, to the box that Vianello was pointing at. ‘Yes, it’s Delft. Eighteenth-century.’
     
    ‘And this one?’ Vianello asked, pointing still and not presuming to touch. ‘Bavarian?’
     
    ‘Very good,’ da Prè said, picking up the tiny box and handing it to the sergeant, who was careful to take it