Falling in Love by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online

in his as they reached the bottom of the stairs and started along the riva . More thoughtfully, she added, ‘Maybe it comes of your reading so much history.’
    ‘Excuse me?’ he said, completely lost.
    ‘Most history – at least the sort you read – is filled with lies: Caesar forced to accept power against his will, Nero playing the lyre while Rome burns, Xerxes having the waters of the Hellespont thrashed. So much of what gets passed off as truth in those books is just rumour and gossip.’
    Brunetti stopped and turned to face her. ‘I’ve no idea what point you’re trying to make, Paola. I thought we were talking about opera.’
    Speaking slowly, she said, ‘I’m merely suggesting that you’ve acquired the gift of listening.’ By the way she slowed both her speech and her pace as she said the last words, Brunetti knew she was not finished with the thought, so he said nothing. ‘In your work, much of what you hear is lies, so you’ve learned to pay attention to everything that’s said to you.’
    ‘Is that good or bad?’
    ‘Paying attention to words is always good,’ she answered immediately. She resumed walking but had to pull at his arm to get him moving again.
    Brunetti thought of the newspapers and magazines he read, the reports of crimes written by his colleagues, government reports. She was right: most of them were as much fiction as fact, and he read them with that knowledge. ‘I think you’re right,’ he said. ‘It’s often impossible to tell the difference.’
    ‘That’s what art’s all about,’ she said. ‘ Tosca is a bunch of lies, but what happens to Tosca isn’t.’
    How prophetic those words were Brunetti was to learn two nights later when they met Flavia for dinner at Paola’s parents’ home. He and Paola arrived at eight-thirty and found il Conte e la Contessa in the main salon, the one that looked across to the palazzi on the other side of the Canal Grande. There was no sign of Flavia Petrelli.
    He was surprised by how casually his parents-in-law were dressed until he realized this meant the Conte’s tie was wool and not silk, while the Contessa was wearing black silk slacks and not a dress. Brunetti saw, slipping out from the sleeve of her jacket, the bracelet the Conte had brought back for her from a business trip to South Africa some years before. Well, he brought her chocolates from Zurich, did he not? And so diamonds from South Africa were only fitting.
    The four of them sat on facing sofas and talked about the children and their schools and their hopes, and their own hopes for them: the sort of things families always talked about. Raffi’s girlfriend, Sara Paganuzzi, was study-ing in Paris for a year, but Raffi had not yet gone to visit her, which led the four adults to endless speculation about what might be going on between them. Or not. Chiara seemed still resistant to the lure of adolescent boys, which the four adults understood and applauded.
    ‘It won’t last much longer,’ Paola said, voicing the eternal pessimism of the mothers of young girls. ‘Some day soon she’ll show up at breakfast in a tight sweater and twice as much makeup as Sophia Loren.’
    Brunetti put his hands to his head and moaned, then snarled, ‘I have a gun. I can shoot him.’ He sensed the three heads snap in his direction and ran his hands slowly down his face to reveal his grin. ‘Isn’t that what the fathers of teenage girls are supposed to say?’
    The Conte took a sip of his prosecco and observed drily, ‘I begin to suspect I should have tried that when Paola brought you home the first time, Guido.’
    ‘Do stop it, Orazio,’ the Contessa said. ‘You know you stopped thinking Guido was an interloper after a few years.’ This information would have served as little comfort to Brunetti had his mother-in-law not reached across to pat him on the knee. ‘It was far sooner than that, Guido.’ How nice it would be to believe this, Brunetti thought.
    She was interrupted by the