Anonymous Venetian by Donna Leon Page B

not
pompous, Guido. At times you’re difficult, and sometimes you’re impossible, but
you are not pompous.’ No compliments here.
     
    He pushed himself back from the
table, feeling that it was perhaps time to go to the Questura.
     
    When he got to his office, he
looked through the papers waiting for him on his desk, disappointed to find
nothing about the dead man in Mestre. He was interrupted by a knock on the
door. ‘ Avanti ,’ he called, thinking it might be Vianello with something
from Mestre. Instead of the sergeant, a dark-haired young woman walked in, a
sheaf of files in her right hand. She smiled across the room at him and approached
his desk, looking down at the papers in her hand and paging through them.
     
    ‘Commissario Brunetti?’ she
asked.
     
    ‘Yes.’
     
    She pulled a few papers from one
of the files and placed them on the desk in front of him. ‘The men downstairs
said you might want to see these, Dottore.’
     
    ‘Thank you, Signorina,’ he said,
pulling the papers across the desk towards him.
     
    She remained standing in front of
his desk, clearly waiting to be asked who she was, perhaps too shy to introduce
herself He looked up, saw large brown eyes in an appealing full face and an
explosion of bright lipstick. ‘And you are?’ he asked with a smile.
     
    ‘Elettra Zorzi, sir. I started
work last week as secretary to Vice-Questore Patta.’ That would explain the new
desk outside Patta’s office. Patta had been going on for months, insisting that
he had too much paperwork to handle by himself. And so he had managed, like a
particularly industrious truffle pig, to root around in the budget long enough
to find the money for a secretary.
     
    ‘I’m very pleased to meet you,
Signorina Zorzi,’ Brunetti said. The name rang familiarly in his ear.
     
    ‘I believe I’m to work for you,
as well, Commissario,’ she said, smiling.
     
    Not if he knew Patta, she wouldn’t.
But still he said, ‘That would certainly be very nice,’ and glanced down at the
papers she had placed on the desk.
     
    He heard her move away and
glanced up to follow her out of the door. A skirt, neither short nor long, and
very, very nice legs. She turned at the door, saw him looking at her, and
smiled again. He looked down at the papers. Who would name a child Elettra? How
long ago? Twenty-five years? And Zorzi; he knew lots of Zorzis, but none of
them was capable of naming a daughter Elettra. The door closed behind her, and
he returned his attention to the papers, but there was little of interest in
them; crime seemed to be on holiday in Venice.
     
    He went down to Patta’s office
but stopped in amazement when he entered the anteroom. For years, the room had
held only a chipped porcelain umbrella stand and a desk covered with outdated
copies of the sort of magazines generally found in dentists’ offices. Today,
the magazines had vanished, replaced by a computer console attached to a
printer that stood on a low metal table to the left of the desk. In front of
the window, in place of the umbrella stand, stood a small table, this one of
wood, and on it rested a glass vase holding an enormous bouquet of orange and
yellow gladioli.
     
    Either Patta had decided to give
an interview to Architectural Digest , or the new secretary had decided
that the opulence Patta believed fitting for his office should trickle out to
where worked the lower orders. As if summoned by Brunetti’s thoughts, she came
into the office.
     
    ‘It looks very nice,’ he said,
smiling and gesturing around the small area with a wave of his hand.
     
    She crossed the room and set an
armful of folders on her desk, then turned to face him. ‘I’m glad you like it,
Commissario. It would have been impossible to work in here the way it was.
Those magazines,’ she added with a delicate shudder.
     
    ‘The flowers are beautiful. Are
they to celebrate your arrival?’
     
    ‘Oh, no,’ she replied blandly. ‘I’ve
given a permanent order to