Read Online Through a Glass Darkly by Donna Leon - Free Book Online

brought her lips together, opened her mouth to sigh, and said, ‘He says that Marco doesn’t love me and that he married me for my money.’ She did not look at him as she said this.
    Brunetti could understand her embarrassment at repeating her father’s remarks about her desirability, but these were not the threats Paola had mentioned. ‘
Do
you have any money, Signora?’
    â€˜That’s the crazy thing,’ she said, turning to him and stretching out a hand. She drew it backjust before it touched his arm, and she said, ‘I don’t have any. I own the house my mother left me, but Marco owns his mother’s house in Venice, which is bigger.’
    â€˜Who’s in that house?’ Brunetti asked.
    â€˜We let it,’ she said.
    â€˜And the money which comes from that? Is it enough to make you rich?’
    She laughed at the idea. ‘No, he lets it to his cousin and her husband. They’re paying four hundred Euros a month. That’s not going to make anyone rich,’ she said.
    â€˜Do you have any savings?’ he asked, thinking of the many stories he had heard, over the years, of people who had hoarded away their salaries and become millionaires.
    â€˜No, not at all. I used most of my savings when I inherited the house from my mother and had it restored. I thought I could let it and continue to live in my father’s house, but then I met Marco and we decided we wanted our own house.’
    â€˜Why did you decide to live on Murano instead of here in the city?’ From what Vianello had told him of Ribetti’s work, the engineer would have to spend a lot of time on the mainland, and that would probably be easier from Venice than from Murano.
    â€˜I work in the factory, and sometimes, if there’s a problem, I have to go in at night. Marco goes to the terra ferma a few times a week for his work, but he can get to Piazzale Roma easily enough from there, so we decided to stay onMurano. Besides,’ she added, ‘his cousin has been in the house a long time.’
    Brunetti realized that this was a coded way of explaining that the cousin either would not get out of the house without a court order forcing her to do so or that Ribetti was unwilling to ask her to leave. It was not important to Brunetti which of these was true, so he abandoned the subject and asked, searching for the proper way to refer to future inheritance, ‘Do you have prospects?’
    â€˜You mean the
fornace
? When my father dies?’ she asked: so much for Brunetti’s attempts at delicacy.
    â€˜Yes.’
    â€˜I think I’ll inherit it. My father has never said anything, and I’ve never asked. But what else would he do with it?’
    â€˜Have you any idea what a
fornace
like your father’s would be worth?’
    He watched her calculate, and then she said, ‘I’d guess somewhere around a million Euros.’
    â€˜Are you sure of that sum?’ he asked.
    â€˜Not exactly, no, but it’s a good estimate, I think. You see, I’ve kept the accounts for years, and I listen to what the other owners say, so I know what the other
fornaci
are worth, or at least what their owners think they’re worth.’ She looked at him, then away for an instant and then back, and Brunetti sensed that he was finally getting close to what she had come to talk about. ‘But that’s another thing that bothers me.’
    â€˜What?’
    â€˜I think my father might be trying to sell it.’
    â€˜Why do you say that?’
    She looked away for a long time, perhaps formulating an answer, then back at him before she said, ‘It’s nothing, really. Well, nothing I can describe or be sure of. It’s the way he acts, and some of the things he says.’
    â€˜What sort of things?’
    â€˜Once, I told one of the men to do something, and he – my father, that is – asked me what it would be like if I couldn’t order men