The Golden Egg by Donna Leon

sense; it fitted with what he had observed of her behaviour. How better to keep it at bay than by refusing to discuss or even accept what had happened?
    â€˜Well?’ Vianello asked. Pucetti watched his two super­iors, silent.
    â€˜Let’s go and talk to her,’ Brunetti said and got to his feet.

10
    Brunetti decided it would be better for all three of them to go. He and Vianello represented, he thought, the serious aspect of the law: men of a certain age and sobriety of bearing. Pucetti, looking more like a student, with the fresh-faced eagerness of a boy just in from the countryside, might clothe the law in less fearful garb. Pucetti had – rare in a man so young – the uncanny ability to induce people to confide in him. He had not learned it or studied it, any more than a cat studies how to make people scratch its neck. He smiled, he looked them in the eye, curious to know about them, and they spoke to him.
    Foa, who was idling in the cabin of the police launch, took them over to San Polo, commenting on the freshening wind as they went up the Grand Canal, convinced that this was a sign of approaching rain, and lots of it. Brunetti was glad to hear it: it had been an unusually dry summer, a fact that Chiara had drummed into their heads with relentless frequency; the arrival of rain, especially heavy rain, would put an end to her sermons about Armageddon, at least for a while.
    When they were still two bridges from the Cavanella address, Brunetti told Foa to stop and let them out. The arrival of three men, one of them an officer in uniform, would be sufficiently unsettling for Signora Cavanella: no need to pull up in a police launch and attract the attention of the entire neighbourhood.
    Seeing that it was almost six, he sent Foa back to the Questura. The three of them could go home directly after the visit.
    He rang the bell, and after a full minute he heard the window above him open. Ana Cavanella stood there. ‘You again?’ she said. ‘What do you want now?’
    â€˜There are some things I’d like to tell you, Signora. About your son. And there’s some information we have to get. For our files.’ This was certainly true. Behind him, he heard the sound of a window being opened, but when he turned to look at the house opposite he saw no one, nor any sign of motion at the windows.
    When he looked back at Signora Cavanella, her attention had moved to the house opposite and to the windows on the floor above hers. She said something, but Brunetti heard only the last word, ‘ . . . cow’. Then, looking down at them, she said, ‘I’m coming.’ Almost as an afterthought, she added, ‘But only one of you can come in.’
    The men moved closer to the door. Brunetti told Pucetti to position himself so that he would be the first person she saw when she opened it. Without consultation, Vianello moved behind them, allowing most of his bulk to be hidden by Brunetti’s body.
    The door opened. Just as she became visible, Pucetti raised his hand to his head and removed his uniform hat in a gesture he turned into one of great deference. He did not bow his head, but he did lower his eyes before her gaze. Chiara had once shown Brunetti a book about dog behaviour, and what he sensed of Pucetti’s made him want to shout out, ‘Beta Dog, Beta Dog!’
    Remaining a careful distance from the door, Pucetti said. ‘Excuse me, Signora’, his nervousness audible in his voice and evident in the way he moved his hat around in his hands. His glance was fleeting and he pulled his eyes away as soon as hers met them. And then, as though unable to contain his desire to speak, he asked, ‘Did your son play soccer in San Polo?’
    Her eyes grew sharp. ‘What?’
    â€˜Did he play soccer? In San Polo?’
    â€˜How do you know that?’ the woman demanded, as though he had told in public some shameful family secret.
    He locked his eyes on