The Waters of Eternal Youth by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online

bad . . .’ Her voice trailed off. She wiped at her forehead with the fingers of her right hand, looked at him and asked, ‘Excuse me. What was I saying?’
    â€˜You were telling me what he did with the money you gave him.’
    â€˜The police told me he was drunk for a month. They said he was a drunk and not to believe anything he’d told me because he was just trying to get my money.’ She surprised him by shrugging, a gesture that related to nothing she had said. ‘But it wasn’t until later that I learned about what he’d said about the man.’
    â€˜The police told you?’
    Her answer was a long time in coming. ‘In a way.’
    â€˜What do you mean?’
    â€˜The Questore had been a good friend of my husband; he told me what was in the original police report and that the man didn’t remember anything about it when he woke up. The Questore told me the police were convinced it was drunken invention and wasn’t true.’
    â€˜Did you believe him?’
    â€˜I had no reason not to.’
    â€˜And now?’
    She stroked the velvet covering of the arms of her chair. ‘And now I’d like to be sure.’
    There had been so many recent revelations of police brutality and ­cover-­ups that he preferred to spare them both the embarrassment of asking her to explain her change of mind.
    â€˜Did the Questore tell you anything else about him?’
    â€˜Only that he saved her life, and was a drunk. That’s what the police had already told me.’
    Brunetti leaned towards her and held up a hand. ‘Let me ask you, Contessa, precisely what it is you’d like me to do.’
    Her hands had moved to her lap. She laced her fingers together and stared at them.
    Brunetti took up his drink. He studied the surface of the liquid, telling himself he would remain like this until she spoke. No matter how long the silence lasted, he would force her to tell him what she wanted.
    Footsteps passed the closed door of the room; for a moment, Brunetti thought he could hear his watch ticking, but he dismissed that as fantasy.
    He heard her move restlessly in her chair, but he refused to look at her.
    â€˜I want my granddaughter back,’ she said in a voice that had passed beyond grief into agony.

4
    When he looked at her, Brunetti was astonished to find that she appeared to have shrunk: she sat lower in her chair, and her feet could not touch the floor; broad parts of the back of the armchair were visible on both sides of her shoulders. ‘I’m afraid there’s no way I can arrange that, Contessa. Knowing what happened won’t make any difference.’
    â€˜Nothing’s helped for fifteen years,’ the Contessa said, her voice raw. Like an obstinate child, she refused to look at him, as if by ignoring his gaze she could ignore the impossibility of what she was demanding.
    â€˜I’m sorry,’ Brunetti said, unable to think of anything better to say.
    When she finally did look at him, she had aged even more: her eyes were less bright, her mouth smaller, and she slumped forward, as though her back no longer had sufficient strength to keep her upright. She had spoken with the blind insistence of the very old. There were certain things they wanted before they went, and they believed that having them would help them let go of this world more easily. Perhaps it would, Brunetti was willing to admit; but, he added, perhaps it would not.
    It did not sound to him as though the Contessa were after vengeance. Perhaps she believed that simply knowing what had happened to her granddaughter would lessen her pain. Brunetti knew how illusory that belief was: as soon as a person knew what had happened, they wanted to know why, and then they wanted to know who.
    Almost without being aware of it, Brunetti had passed from curiosity about this young girl and her strange destiny to a desire to learn about its circumstances and, if