‘Pucetti said yesterday that he’d seen something he would tell his grandchildren about. I think the same thing has just happened to me. Absent only once in thirty-five years.’ He gazed at the far wall, as though he were watching a flaming hand write the numbers. Then, suddenly tired of foolery, he said, ‘What else?’

‘He and his mother rent an apartment up near San Leonardo. They lived in Castello until three years ago, when they moved into an apartment in a palazzo on the Misericordia.’

‘Very nice,’ Brunetti said, suddenly alert. ‘Does the mother work?’

‘No. Never.’

‘Be interesting to know how he pays the rent, wouldn’t it?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I doubt he’d have difficulty paying it,’ she surprised him by saying.

‘Why? Is the place small?’

‘No, quite the opposite. It’s a hundred and fifty square metres.’

‘Then how does he manage to pay for it?’

Her small, self-satisfied smile warned him to prepare for her next remark, but even Brunetti could not have imagined what was to come. ‘Because the rent’s only four hundred and fifty Euros,’ she said. From that, she progressed to arrant grandstanding and said, ‘Or so the monthly transfers from his bank account would suggest.’

‘For an apartment on the Misericordia? A hundred and fifty square metres?’

‘Perhaps now you have something else to tell your grandchildren, Dottore,’ she said with a smile.

His mind shot ahead, trying to find an explanation. Blackmail? A contract written with a falsely low rent so that Fontana could pay the rest in cash, letting the landlord avoid taxes? A relative?

‘Who does the payment go to?’ he asked.

‘Marco Puntera,’ she said, naming a businessman who had made a fortune in real estate in Milano and then moved back to his native Venice seven or eight years before.

A cat, Brunetti knew, could look at a king, but how on earth did an usher know a man as wealthy as Puntera was reported to be, and how was it that he was given an apartment with such a rent?

‘He owns lots of apartments, doesn’t he?’ Brunetti asked.

‘At least twelve, and all are rented out. And two palazzi on the Grand Canal,’ she said. ‘Also rented.’

‘At comparable rents?’ Brunetti asked.

‘I haven’t had time to check, sir. But I believe many of them are rented to foreigners.’ She paused, as if in search of the proper phrase. Finding it, she went on, ‘He is said to be an ornament to the Anglo-American community.’

‘But he’s neither Anglo nor American,’ said Brunetti quickly, having gone to elementary school with Puntera’s younger brother.

‘In the sense that he is involved in their social life, sir,’ she went on imperturbably. ‘Membership at the Cipriani pool; Christmas carols at the English Church; Fourth of July party; first-name basis with the owners of the best restaurants.’

To Brunetti, this sounded like one of the tortures Dante had overlooked. ‘And Fontana gets a deal on his rent from a man like this?’ he said, more in the sense of one repeating a wonder than asking a question about it.

‘So it would seem.’

‘Have you learned anything else?’ he asked.

‘I thought I’d speak to you first, Commissario, and see if you found their association as thought-provoking as I do.’

‘I find it fascinating,’ Brunetti said, always interested in the possibilities that arose from the various relationships formed among people in the city. The more unusual the couple, the more intriguing the possibilities often turned out to be.

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I thought you might.’ She paused, then said, ‘But taking a closer look might require me to call in some favours, so I wanted to see if you agreed before I began to ask questions.’

He looked at Signorina Elettra and asked, ‘What did you have in mind?’

Instead of answering, Signorina Elettra said, ‘I’m pleased you approve of the staffing schedule, Commissario. I’ll have it posted by the end of the day.’

‘Good, Signorina. I appreciate it,’ Brunetti replied seam-lessly and turned towards the door, then gave every evidence of being surprised to discover there Vice-Questore Giuseppe Patta and, to his right, Lieutenant Scarpa, his creature.

‘Ah, good morning, Vice-Questore,’ Brunetti said with a pleasant smile. Then, like Copernicus recognizing a lesser planet, ‘Lieutenant.’

Patta had reached the near-zenith of his summer colouring. Since May, he had been swimming daily in the pool of the Hotel Cipriani and had almost attained the colour of a horse chestnut. A few more weeks and he would have achieved that, but soon after, the days would begin to shorten and the sun’s rays would lose their ferocity. And by October the Vice-Questore would