Wilful Behaviour by Donna Leon Read Free Book Online Page B

places of birth.
    The piercing blue eyes and the beaked nose would, Brunetti was certain, appear on all of them; Paola had never said whether the names on the passports were all the same, and he had never had the courage to ask.
    The Count crossed the room to meet his son-in-law with a firm handshake and a smile. ‘How nice of you to come. Have a seat and something to drink. Coffee?
Un’ombra
?’
    ‘No, thank you,’ Brunetti said, taking a seat. ‘I know you’ve got an appointment, so I’ll just ask you what I’ve come for and try to be quick about it.’
    Without looking at his watch, the Count said, ‘I’ve got half an hour, so there’s plenty of time for a drink.’
    ‘No, really,’ Brunetti insisted. ‘Maybe after we’ve talked, if there’s time.’
    The Count went back around his desk and sat. ‘Who is it?’ he asked, showing his familiarity with Brunetti.
    ‘An Italian named Luca Guzzardi who was convicted after the war, though I don’t know for what crimes, and who, instead of going to prison, was sent to San Servolo, where he died.’ Brunetti chose to say nothing about Claudia Leonardo nor to explain the reason for his questions. In any case, the Count usually didn’t care why Brunetti wanted to know something; the fact that Brunetti was married to his daughter was sufficient reason to offer him any help he could.
    The Count’s face remained impassive as Brunetti spoke. When he stopped, the Count pursed his lips and tilted his head to one side, as if listening to a sound from one of the
palazzi
on the other side of the Grand Canal. When he looked back at Brunetti, he said, ‘Ah, life really is long.’
    Brunetti knew that, like his daughter, the Count would not resist the temptation to elucidate. After a moment, he did so. ‘Luca Guzzardi was the son of a business associate of my father. He called himself an artist.’ Seeing Brunetti’s confusion, he explained, ‘The son, not the father.’
    Presumably, the Count was arranging the facts in an orderly way so as to tell the story clearly. He went on. ‘He was not an artist, though he did have a minor talent as an illustrator. This served him in very good stead, for he became a muralist and poster designer for the party in power before and during the war.’ There were times when Brunetti had no choice but to admire the Count’s arrogance: just as a man in his position did not call his servants by their first names, so too did he refuse to pronounce the name of the political party that had reduced his country to ruins.
    Brunetti, who was familiar with
I Fascisti
, now remembered where he had heard the name Guzzardi, or at least read it: in a book on Fascist art, page after numbing page of well-fed factory workers and bright-eyed maidens with long braids, dedicated, in the most glaring of colours, to the triumph of people just like themselves.
    ‘He was quite active during the war, Luca Guzzardi,’ the Count went on, ‘both in Ferrara, where his family was originally from – I believe they dealt in textiles – and here, where both he and his father held positions of some importance.’
    Brunetti had long since abandoned any idea of asking his father-in-law to explain how he came by the information he provided, but this time the Count supplied it. ‘As Paola may have told you, we had to leave the country in 1939, so none of us was here during the first years of the war. I was still a boy, but my father had many friends who remained, and after the war, when the family came back to Venice, he learned, and so did I, what had gone on while we were away from the city. Little of it was pleasant.’
    After this brief explanation, he went on, ‘Guzzardi
padre
supplied cloth to the Army, for uniforms and, I think, tents. Thus he made a fortune. The son, because of his artistic talents, had some sort of job in propaganda, designing posters and billboards that showed the appropriate pictures of life in our great nation. He was also one of the