The Golden Egg by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online

the Number Two to San Tomà, walked past the Frari, down the bridge and along the canal towards Campo San Stin. He crossed it and turned right at the second
calle
. The name he wanted was on the third door on the left. He rang it and waited.
    After what seemed a long time, he heard a shutter open above him. Brunetti stepped back and looked up. A woman with a cloud of too-red hair stood at the first floor window, looking down at him.
    â€˜Who are you?’ she asked with no preliminaries and less grace.
    â€˜I’m Commissario Brunetti, Signora,’ he answered politely, suddenly not at all sure just how it was he had ended up here, staring up at her uninviting expression. ‘There are some questions we have to ask you,’ he improvised. As he spoke, he studied her face – she was barely five metres from him – looking for signs of resemblance to a man he had to confess he barely remembered and, aside from his odd, robotic movements, probably would not have recognized.
    â€˜About what?’ she asked. Brunetti wondered what she thought the police might have come to ask about, but then his mind caught up with the absolute lack of emotion in her question and it occurred to him that she might have been pushed – either by grief or the drugs used to combat it – into a place beyond all emotion or the ability to register it.
    He backed into the
calle
, so that he could speak to her without having to look almost directly above himself.
    â€˜What do you want?’ she asked.
    â€˜To speak to you, Signora,’ he said, though he had still given no conscious thought to what he wanted to say to her.
    She considered his statement, said ‘
Va bene
’, then closed the window and turned away.
    Brunetti returned to the door and waited; and continued to wait. After a few minutes, the door was pulled open. The woman stepped forward and stood in the doorway, repeating, ‘What do you want?’ Her voice was neutral, devoid of interest. He could have been trying to sell her a set of cooking pots or to convert her to the love of Jesus.
    â€˜First, to express my condolences, Signora, and then to ask if there is any help you might need from any agency of the city.’ Brunetti knew he had only the authority of humanity to offer the first and no authority whatsoever to offer the second. But he had told Paola he would try to help, and he would do that in whatever form he could.
    She looked at him directly and Brunetti had the strange sensation that she was waiting for his words to be played back so that she could understand what they meant. In a situation such as this, Brunetti’s first impulse was usually to speak again, but he remained silent, curious to see how long it would take her to answer him. A long time passed: she looked blankly at him, while Brunetti studied her.
    She might have been in her fifties, but he wasn’t sure at which end of them he found her. The red hair stopped two centimetres from her scalp and slipped into white for the rest of the way home. Her eyes were a clear blue, the skin around them virtually unlined. Her nose and well-defined cheekbones were further evidence that she might once have been a great beauty. And it was in the angled line of those bones that he caught a fleeting glimpse of the dead man.
    She was taller than average, though the thickening around her waist suggested that she might once have been taller still. Her hands, he noticed, had inordinately short fingers and the shiny skin that comes to hands that have spent a lot of time in hot water.
    Brunetti realized that she had no intention of speaking: he could stand there for the rest of the afternoon and still she would not say anything to him. ‘Would you like to come to see Davide, Signora?’ he finally asked.
    At the mention of the name, she took a half-step backwards, as though trying to escape the name or the grief it brought her. She held up one of those thick, work-branded