A Question of Belief - By Donna Leon Page 0,85
that a faith healer corrupted this woman into falsifying medical reports?’
‘A faith healer with a long criminal record, Dottore,’ Brunetti added.
‘A long history of accusation of crime,’ Patta corrected. ‘I don’t think you, of all people, Commissario, should have to be reminded that they are not the same thing.’ Patta gave a friendly smile here, as if this were a joke with an old friend who had never understood the difference.
Brunetti was having none of it. ‘If this woman was tampering with test results, Vice-Questore, then the tests have to be redone.’
Patta gave another smile, but there was no humour in his voice when he said, ‘In the absence of any evidence that this woman was involved in criminal behaviour – regardless of what you suspect, Commissario – I think it would be irresponsible on our part to spread needless alarm among the people whose tests she might have performed.’ He paused in reflection and then added, ‘Or to weaken in any way the public’s faith in government institutions.’
As so often happened when Brunetti dealt with Patta, he was forced to admire the skill with which his superior could transmute his own worst failings – in this case blind ambition and an absolute refusal to perform any action that did not benefit him directly – into the appearance of probity.
Not bothering to explain or prepare for the change in subject, Brunetti said, ‘I’m going to Fontana’s funeral tomorrow morning, sir.’
The temptation proved too strong for Patta, who asked, ‘In hopes of seeing the murderer there?’ He smiled, inviting Brunetti to share the joke.
‘No, sir,’ Brunetti said soberly. ‘So that his death isn’t treated as something insignificant.’ Good sense and the instinct of survival stopped Brunetti from adding, ‘too’ to his sentence. He got to his feet, said something polite to the Vice-Questore, went upstairs and made two disappointing calls to his colleagues in Aversa and Naples, and then went home and spent the rest of the day and evening reading the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius, a pleasure he had not permitted himself for some years.
The funeral took place in the church of Madonna dell’Orto, the parish into which Fontana’s mother had been born and which had always been the spiritual centre of her life. Brunetti and Vianello arrived ten minutes before the Mass began and took seats in the twelfth row. Vianello wore a dark blue suit and Brunetti dark grey linen. He was glad of the jacket, for this was the first place he had felt cool since stepping into the house where he had found Lucia and Zinka.
The heat of the day had kept at bay the morbidly curious and the habitual attenders of funerals, so there were only about fifty people present, seated sparsely and in sad separation in the rows in front of them. After doing his rough count of those present, Brunetti realized they averaged only one person for each year of Fontana’s life.
Brunetti and Vianello were too far back to see who sat in the first rows, reserved for family and close friends, but they would soon file from the church after the coffin and reveal themselves.
The music began: some sort of dreary organ theme that would have suited an elevator in a very respectable, if not necessarily wealthy, neighbourhood. Noise from behind slipped under the sound of the organ; Brunetti and Vianello stood and turned to face it.
A flower-draped coffin on a wheeled bier came down the aisle, pulled along by four black-suited men who looked extraneous to any emotional weight this scene might have. Would the mother have hired mutes if they had been available, Brunetti wondered? When the coffin stopped in front of the altar, everyone in the church sat and the Mass began. Brunetti was attentive for the first minutes, but the ceremony was duller now than it had been when he, as a boy, had attended the funerals of his grandparents and his aunts and uncles. The words were spoken in Italian: he missed the magical incantation of the Latin. Suddenly aware of the silence, he wondered if the absence of the tolling of the death bell during the Mass, the sound that had accompanied so many members of his family to their last resting place, most recently his mother, was also planned in this modern – and banal – ceremony.
As he stood and sat, knelt briefly only to rise to his feet again, moved on the tides of memory, Brunetti reflected on this strange death. Signorina Elettra had